Preface

The editor-in-chief of *Religions*, Peter Kaufman, reached out to me in 2012 and offered me the opportunity to serve as the guest editor for a special issue dedicated to a topic of my choosing involving immigration and religion. I quickly settled on the theme of "Islam, Immigration, and Identity" for two reasons. First, my own research has focused on Muslim immigration in modern Europe, including the challenges posed to national and European identities in light of the increasing presence and visibility of Islam. A special issue that tackled these challenges but that did so in a broader geographical framework struck me as incredibly timely and necessary. Second, I anticipated that the special issue would come out in 2013, exactly twenty years after Samuel Huntington first published his famous article, "A Clash of Civilizations?" The influence of Huntington's article on Western political and public discourse concerning Islam and its relationship to the West cannot be underestimated, and so to mark the twentieth anniversary of Huntington's essay with an issue dedicated to reconsidering his thesis seemed appropriate.

All of the essays in this volume originally appeared in an online open access format. I am grateful that Peter Kaufman and MDPI showed interest in publishing these essays in a printed volume as well. The transition from an online to a traditional printed format has been smooth. The main difference involves the order of the essays. In the online issue, the essays were published in the order in which they were received and peer reviewed, whereas I have taken the liberty of organizing the essays for the book in a manner that reflects geographical and, to some extent, thematic connections. Some additional editing for syntax and structure has also taken place, but the basic content of each essay remains the same.

I am proud of the quality of the scholarship that readers will find in this volume, and I hope that the insights within these essays will provoke a deeper, more nuanced discussion concerning the place of Muslim minority communities in the West.

Todd H. Green *Guest Editor* 

### **Islam, Immigration, and Identity: An Introduction**

**Todd H. Green** 

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Green, T.H. "Islam, Immigration, and Identity: An Introduction." *Religions* 5 (2014): 700–702.

It has been two decades since Samuel P. Huntington, a Harvard political scientist, first published his famous essay, "The Clash of Civilizations?" [1]. In the essay, and later in his book with the same title (minus the question mark) [2], Huntington argues that conflict in the post-Cold War era will be driven largely by irreconcilable cultural and religious differences, particularly in regards to Islam and the West. The conflict between these two civilizations, while not new, is bound to persist in large part because Islam is prone to violence. Much of the global conflict that exists in the modern world, observes Huntington, involves Muslims. It is for this reason that he states so bluntly: "Islam has bloody borders" ([1], p. 35).

The "clash of civilizations" thesis did not originate with Huntington. Bernard Lewis, the prominent historian of Islam and orientalist, had already invoked this language in his own scholarship, most notably in his 1990 article for *The Atlantic Monthly*, "The Roots of Muslim Rage" [3]. In the article, Lewis explores many possible explanations as to why Muslims have so much hatred for the West. He concludes that Muslims are jealous and humiliated due to the superiority of Western civilization. Western secularism and modernism in particular are the objects of Muslim anger and the reason behind the surge in Islamic fundamentalism in recent history.

Both Huntington and Lewis invoke the very themes that Edward Said describes as the foundation of Orientalism [4]. Both view the West as superior and enlightened, in contrast to the Muslim world (*i.e*., the Orient), which they portray as monolithic, violent, backwards, and irrational. Conflict is inevitable in light of such profound differences, insist Huntington and Lewis, and yet both scholars maintain that the real source of this conflict lies within Islam.

After the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001, the clash of civilizations thesis found ready acceptance on both sides of the Atlantic as politicians, foreign policy advisors, and even some high-profile academics utilized the thesis both as an explanation for those events and more broadly as justification for the global War on Terror. Politicians and journalists also applied the thesis to domestic tensions stemming from the growth in recent decades of Muslim minority communities in the West via migration and immigration. The clash of civilizations narrative has now become the primary framework within which public discourse concerning the presence of the Muslim 'Other' within Western nations takes place. Prominent conflicts from the past few decades, including the Rushdie Affair, the Danish cartoon controversy, and the Ground Zero Islamic Center debate, are frequently explained through this narrative and its underlying assumption that Muslim and Western identities cannot be reconciled.

In this Special Issue, distinguished scholars from Europe and North America, representing diverse disciplinary and methodological approaches, problematize the clash of civilizations narrative by exploring more deeply and richly the intersection of Islam, immigration, and identity in the West. The themes addressed in these articles represent some of the most debated issues among scholars, journalists, and politicians pertaining to the place of Muslims in the West and include multiculturalism, Muslim political representation, Sharia controversies, the reconciliation of Muslim with national identities, racism, gender and sexuality, and Islamophobia. Geographically, the authors address the intersection of Islam, immigration, and identity in Western countries that include Britain, France, Italy, Malta, Spain, Sweden, Canada, and the United States.

What the authors share in common is the desire to shed light on how the growth and increasing visibility of Muslim minority communities in the West has led both Muslim and non-Muslim populations to reflect on and/or reconsider cultural, religious, and national identities in light of the 'Other.' While the authors take seriously the very real tensions that exist between Muslim minority communities and the non-Muslim majorities of Europe and North America, they argue, explicitly or implicitly, that recourse to a clash of civilizations framework to explain these tensions does not do justice to the complex ways in which Muslim and Western identities are negotiated and transformed in light of the historic and contemporary interactions between the two.

I want to thank the journal's Editor-in-Chief, Peter Kaufman, and the journal's managing editor, Jerry Zhang, for their support and guidance in putting first the Special Issue and then the book together. I also want to thank the many peer reviewers who vetted the articles and gave constructive feedback to the authors in this volume. Finally, I want to thank the authors for accepting the invitation to contribute to this Issue. I believe their scholarship reflects important dimensions in the ongoing debates concerning the multifaceted relationship between Islam and the West.

#### **References and Notes**


## **Migrants in Chains: On the Enslavement of Muslims in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe**

#### **Ariel Salzmann**

**Abstract:** Between the Renaissance and the French Revolution, hundreds of thousands of Muslim men and women from the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean were forcibly transported to Western Europe. Those who were not ransomed or who did not return to their homelands as part of prisoner exchanges, languished for decades and, many, for the remainder of their lives, in chattel slavery. This essay considers the enslavement process overall and the conceptual frameworks necessary to bring this poorly known chapter in European social history into focus. Emphasizing the case of the Muslim galley slaves of the Catholic ports of France, Italy and Malta, it argues that without appreciating this phenomenon as a form of migration, as well as part of a larger history of global slavery, it not possible to understand the specificity of confessionalized enslavement within the early modern Mediterranean.

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Salzmann, A. "Migrants in Chains: On the Enslavement of Muslims in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe." *Religions* 4 (2013): 391–411.

#### **1. Introduction**

It was one of the curious incidents of her Grand Tour of Italy in 1770. Strolling along the quay of Genoa on St. Martin's Day, the English lady and her companions heard men from a docked ship calling out. Introducing themselves as "poor Christians who have entirely abandoned Mahomet," they invited the tourists to come aboard to listen to them play music. Their performance, she wrote a friend afterward, "was by no means bad." But the men's appearance elicited a mixture of horror and compassion. Their "poor legs, which were naked, almost black, and, of some, the flesh had partly grown over their fetters." Muslim slaves, chained to the oars, begged the lady and her friends for money and to "listen to the details of their calamitous situation." These hapless souls, she learned, were but a few of the 350 Muslim "prisoners" in the city. Most of the men were condemned to a life of toil as galley slaves. Muslim girls and women were given to wealthy matrons for work in the "most menial department of their household." ([1], vol. 1, pp. 308–09).

Passing comments in an epistolary exchange between an anonymous English traveler and a friend open a small window on a large, unacknowledged story. It is the history of hundreds of thousands of Muslim men and women who spent much of their adult lives in bondage in early modern Catholic Europe. ([2], pp. 34–35) Of course, the enslavement of Muslims was only part of a larger, forced exchange of persons who experienced captivity, were either ransomed or subjected

to life-long servitude across the Muslim-Christian divide in the Mediterranean during these centuries. Numerous publications, popular, fictive and scholarly, recount the horrors of the "white" slavery of Christians in Muslim lands [3–5]. Yet, there has been decidedly less interest in hearing the stories of the Muslim victims. In fact, for more than a century there was little historical research on the subject ([2], pp. 1–13; [6]). When this past remains largely unknown even to historians and social scientists of European inter-religious relations and migration ([7], p. 13) (Compare [4,6]), it should not surprise us that there is no public awareness that the number of Africans, Mediterranean and Eastern European Muslims, Jews, and Orthodox Christians who languished in bondage in Western Europe greatly outnumbered the Catholics and Protestants enslaved in the contemporary Muslim world.

Archival research by historians on Muslim servitude in early modern Europe has begun to recover this past [2,8–15]. This essay does not pretend to add substantially new documentation to the reconstruction project. Rather, it seeks to reconsider scholarly approaches to the subject. To date, historians have treated the stories of Muslim men and women in Western Europe (as well as Protestants and Catholics held in North African and Ottoman captivity) almost exclusively from the perspectives of the historiography of slavery. Yet the Muslims of Enlightenment Genoa, whom our English traveler encountered, were both enslaved persons and forced migrants. As slaves, they suffered, in the formulation of Orlando Patterson, a form of "social death": a profound and brutal process of estrangement intended to deracinate them from home, kin, status and property [9]. However, the enslaved should also be regarded as part of a distinct flow of migrants [16]. This forced transfer of individuals from the Muslim shores of the Mediterranean accelerated just as the last indigenous Muslim communities were expelled from Portugal and Spain. Numbering in the hundreds of thousands over the centuries, Muslim men and women, some from as far east as Iran and as far west as Morocco, were, by virtue of circumstance and confession, forcibly resettled in kingdoms and city-states in the Catholic Mediterranean, from Spain to France, Italy and Malta. Segregated from the larger society on the basis of their faith, Muslim galley slaves forged their own communities with religious leadership, houses of worship, common languages of work and principles of solidarity. Approaching these isolated groups from the perspective of migration as well as from a history of global enslavement will contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics and dynamics of confessionalized captivity in the early modern world. It will also serve to remind us of the continuity of Muslim settlements in Europe, east and west, from the medieval period to the present.

#### **2. The Global Crusade and Human Captivity**

Human migration bridged the inner sea between the regions now known as "Europe," the "Middle East" and "North Africa". It was both the consequence and expression of the high degree of mobility between shores, the shifting political boundaries of empires and the intensity of cross-cultural exchange. Before the modern period, few moral qualms impeded the trade in human beings. All three monotheistic religions condoned human slavery; all post-Roman polities sought to regulate it to suit cultural, economic and political ends. The strong elements of continuity in the history of enslavement within the Mediterranean basin (and the Black Sea region) notwithstanding, at the end of the medieval period important geopolitical ruptures changed the institution, the direction of population flows and the ethno-religious and gender composition of persons ensnared in its nets.

For much of what S. N. Goitein called the "Middle, Middle Ages" (roughly 800–1250 C.E.) Islamic powers dominated the commerce of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean and with it, the traffic in domestic, agricultural and military slaves ([17], pp. 237–80). Although the transport of enslaved persons across the Sahara and from East African (as well as from the Caucasus and Central Asia) remained in the control of Muslim polities and merchants well into the nineteenth century, the medieval crusades against Islam redirected the Mediterranean slave trade and changed the confession of its victims. Latin Christendom's territorial conquests in Syria, Anatolia and North Africa proved largely ephemeral. But command of the inner sea coupled with an expanding trade network furnished the merchant marines of cities like Genoa with special advantages over Muslim and Jewish merchants and especially in the traffic in human beings.

The late medieval Mediterranean trade in human beings was skewed by gender. Most captives sold in Genoa's auctions were women and children, products of the mass enslavement of Muslim communities in Iberia and Sicily as well as from raids across the Mediterranean, including in the Maghreb [18–21]. The shifting frontier in Spain, which favored Christian colonization by land, also afforded opportunities for Jewish entrepreneurs to navigate between sides, selling Muslim slaves to Christians ([22], p. 65). At its height, Genoese domination of the Mediterranean traffic in slaves rested on the strategic placement of its entrepôts, including one in the northern Black Sea (Tana) and another in the Aegean on the island of Chios. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, which carried out their holy piracy from the island of Rhodes, supplied captives while the Byzantine state and its vassals, as well as smaller Turkic-Muslim states, secured the access points between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean [23].

Given this division of labor, the consolidation of a multi-continental Muslim empire over the next two centuries radically transformed the geopolitical coordinates of commerce overall and with it, the control over the slave trade. As Ottoman armies pushed westward, in fact on the eve of their conquest of Constantinople which would effectively turn the Black Sea into an "Ottoman lake" for the next three centuries, Pope Nicholas V (d. 1455) acceded to the request of King Afonso V (d. 1481) of Portugal for a special bull which would renew crusading privileges in more expansionist terms. *Dum Diversas* (1452) granted, in effect, the same license and indulgences to the Portuguese king and his heirs (and followers) that had been employed to induct noblemen in the medieval crusades against Islam in the Levant. However, in this and a second encyclical, *Romanus*  *Pontifex* (1455), the pontiff also authorized unprecedented sweeping enslavement privileges to Christianity's conquistadors. In sum, the king was permitted ([24]; [25], vol. 2, p. 469)

to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit...

With Christendom's eastern flank all but lost, there was a tone of urgency in these bulls. They permitted the Portuguese to use force against both Islamic and non-Islamic Africa as well as against the peoples of the African-Atlantic islands. Conquest and colonization in the name of St. Peter would at least create a *cordon sanitaire* between the advance of Islam and non-monotheistic populations. Of course, by offering a broad, indeed limitless, religious license, these bulls laid the ideological foundations for future Catholic conquests around the world, from West Africa, the Caribbean and Peru to Gujarat and the Philippines. That the Iberian Peninsula itself, after the Catholic conquest of Andalusia and the nearly simultaneous annexation of lands across the Atlantic, became a crossroads of a global slave trade did not diminish the symbolic and strategic centrality of the Mediterranean; nor did it undercut the significance of capturing Muslims and Africans as part of the post- medieval crusader-colonial "prime directive" [26]. Although the suggestion of Bartolomé de las Casas (d. 1566) to alleviate the suffering of the indigenous populations of the Americas through the enslavement of Africans smacks of medieval race prejudice, the Bishop of Chiapas may have actually sought to return to the letter of *Dum Diversas* which foresaw slavery in and conquest of Africa—not the religiously quarantined Americas—as a means of preventing further "contamination" of the known world by Islam.

In addition to unleashing a global crusade, fifteenth-century papal authority gave new impulse to territorial wars against the leading Muslim powers in the Mediterranean, especially the Ottoman sultans after their conquest of Mamluk Egypt and much of coastal North Africa. The early modern crusade—although uncommonly known as such—legitimized both large-scale holy war and endemic holy piracy. Well into the eighteenth century, Rome dedicated important revenues to the frontline Catholic sovereigns (such as the Habsburg emperors) by redirecting church tithes and other subsidies toward state treasuries. New military orders emerged or regrouped, from the Uskoks of Senj (in today's Croatia) to the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who after their rout from the island of Rhodes in the early sixteenth century rebuilt their raiding operations on Muslim military and civilian targets from the islands of Malta and Gozo [27]. Over the centuries, the early modern crusade against Islam sanctified alliances (*Liga Sacra*), the last of which was declared by the pope in 1684 after Ottoman armies again besieged Vienna ([28], pp. 215–36).

Wars against the Ottoman Empire by land and by sea (as well as intra-Christian competition within Europe during the Wars of Religion) led to a rapid and unprecedented escalation of the size of armies and armadas manned by salaried troops and mercenary battalions ([29], pp. 137–41). The scale of death and captivity increased apace. A single battle might yield thousands of casualties and captives. The carnage of the great battle of Lepanto in 1571, for example, took the lives of some

30,000 sailors and soldiers. More than 7,000 Muslim captives, most men in the prime of their lives, were distributed to the Spanish, the Venetians and the papacy at the close of the battle, on the basis of their investments in the combined armada [29,30]. Nevertheless, the Ottoman advance went unchecked. In record time, the sultan built a new fleet and, but two years after Lepanto, annexed Cyprus to the empire. If the Ottomans dominated the most important crossroads of the older routes of enslavement (through the Black Sea and via North and East Africa), by the early seventeenth century, the Mediterranean itself, convulsed by nearly constant small scale, "asymmetrical" holy conflicts, also yielded thousands of new victims for sale [31,32].

While armies required free male soldiers or mercenaries, hand- held gunpowder weapons as well as beasts of burden, the seaborne crusade demanded a largely unarmed and coerced labor force. The oarsmen in the galleys and laborers on the docks and in shipbuilding that were required to maintain and power the armadas were supplied in large part or subsidized by confessionalized captives of this permanent war economy, whether they were prisoners of war, victims of shipwreck, or persons kidnapped along the shores and borderlands. For those states that did not join in the new, global crusade from the Atlantic and the Red Sea to the Pacific, a display of military prowess and religious zeal against the Muslims in the Mediterranean also assumed the form of holy piracy. Medici Tuscany, a merchant-state seeking to preserve its autonomy in the face of French and Habsburg territorial pretensions on the Italian peninsula, established the Order of the Knights of St. Stephen, Pope and Martyr in 1561 [33]. Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (d. 1574) served as its first grand master. With the laudable goal of defending Christendom from Muslim raids in the Tyrrhenian Sea, the Medici state reaped both religio-political and economic rewards: its raids and skirmishes with the infidel yielded thousands of men for the oars of its fleet and a steady stream of human beings for sale to other, Catholic states. Perhaps, too, such a conspicuous display of fervor for the faith offset criticism for the relative leniency of Medici policies toward the Jews (and Orthodox Christians) who lived and traded in Florence and Livorno [34,35].

Of course, the holy wars that pitted Muslim states against Catholic powers alternated with cross-religious commerce and even, an occasional inter-faith alliance, the most controversial of which was concluded in 1536 between the French King Francis I (d. 1547) and the Ottoman Sultan Suleyman II (d. 1566). Notwithstanding the ongoing religious conflicts, throughout the early modern period the cultural make-up of the states of the Mediterranean world defied a neat, binary division between Christianity and Islam [36]. Ottoman cities remained resolutely multi-religious while much of Western Christendom was purged of its indigenous Jews, Muslims, and, after the Reformation/Counter-Reformation, its Christian dissenters. The treaties that enabled Catholic and Protestant vessels to harbor in Muslim coastal cities provided no reciprocal privileges for Ottoman or North African flagged ships or Muslim merchants in Catholic ports. Even Venice's famous *Fondaco dei Turchi*, after the sixteenth century, rarely hosted Ottoman Muslim delegations [37,38]. Catholic merchants and consuls who resided in Istanbul, Alexandria, Aleppo, Izmir, Tripoli and other cities could practice their faith and find moral succor in small communities of practicing Catholics that were supported by Rome and Versailles; they also relied upon political support from the permanent representatives of trading nations. By contrast, no parallel accommodations or political infrastructure for Muslims existed in Latin Christendom (with the possible exception of sixteenth-century Poland and seventeenth-century Dutch cities). In fact, between the mass

deportation of Iberian Muslim communities, from 1609 to 1613, and the late nineteenth century, no free community of Muslims, including those converted to Christianity, resided within Western Europe.

Like the new Christian captives who were paraded upon arrival to the docks of North African ports ([4], p. 55), the enslavement of Muslims and their public display filled more than practical needs. They became exotic specimens and "goods," trophies in a cosmological conflict. As captives enslaved through an ongoing crusade, the infidels who were brought in fetters to Europe personified the triumph of the true religion over the false and Christianity over the "superstition" of Islam. Depictions of Turks (meaning any subject of the Ottoman sultan from Hungary to Syria or, generically, a person of the Islamic faith) and Moors (a subject of either the deys of Tunis, Tripoli or Algiers or of the sultans of Morocco), as well as the great battles in which infidel men were killed or captured, were celebrated in paint and verse. The enormous figures of Muslim slaves on the columns of the Porta Nuova (1583), at the entrance of Palermo and Pietro Tacca's early seventeenth-century sculpture of the "Quattro Mori," composed of the figures of an enslaved Maghrebian father and his three sons, which forms the base of the statute of Ferdinando I de' Medici (d. 1609), expressed the public identities of regimes, cities and citizens [39].

Livorno in the early seventeenth century counted one of the highest number of servile residents (as a percentage of its total population) in the Mediterranean: roughly one in every 12 of its inhabitants was enslaved ([35], p. 93). For the cleric who compiled the list of the Knights of St. Stephen's valiant victories, it mattered little how the human prizes were wrested from Islam: the sack of the city of Bone/Annaba in Algeria in 1607 was qualified as the "most glorious enterprise ... ever undertaken." It resulted, he bragged, in the carrying off of 2000 Muslims, mainly civilians, of both sexes to Livorno ([40], p. 138; [41,42]). In this period, Muslim children were gifted as trifles for entertainment, like the "lively" young lad referred to in the letter of a cardinal [43]. So great was the nobility's demand for such trophy-human beings in the later sixteenth century, that Pope Paul III (d. 1549) authorized the general purchase and employment of Muslim domestic slaves in Rome itself ([2], p. xvi) (compare [44]; [45], p. 132).

Within the Mediterranean, there is no little doubt that faith played a determining role in the forced transfer of populations. Some states, notably the Knights of St. John at Malta, made confessional identity a zero-sum game. All non-Catholics—Orthodox Christians, Muslims and Jews alike—found aboard Muslim ships could be seized. Until the mid-sixteenth century, Maltese captains would routinely board Venetian ships, confiscating the cargo of Jews and Muslims. Even Jews with the requisite permits and passports would be sent to the slave auctions in La Valletta. ([14], p. 40; [46]).1 Yet while all non-Catholic captives from Ottoman lands were confessionalized and, as such, became technically subject to captivity (including, until the early eighteenth century, many Orthodox Christians), their status and hence their fate, were not uniform. Upon disembarkation at the port, before entering quarantine, secretaries and interpreters would record the personal name, place of origin, father's name and distinguishing features of each new captive ([2], p. 74). These scant facts of status determined their destiny; whether she or he would be a candidate

<sup>1</sup> Skippon [46] who visited Malta in the early seventeenth century noted a separate dungeon for the enslaved Jews.

for ransom, sold to the highest private bidder at auction, or transferred to the dungeon (*bagnio*) as an addition to the workforce owned by the state treasury or the military order.

Comparisons have been made between Mediterranean confession-based and Atlantic race-based slavery [4,47]. Despite the fact that opportunity factors, particularly geography and transport, facilitated who and when persons might be enslaved, there remained significant variables in the processes of confessionalized and racialized enslavement. For a confessionalized captive, whose homelands were proximate, ransom (and even escape) remained more than a theoretical possibility, precisely because ransoms were many times the price of a human being sold at a slave auction. Confessional identity functioned paradoxically: the same identity that rendered the individual vulnerable to enslavement could also afford a critical margin of personhood, which linked him or her to powerful states or to communities of coreligionists of means. In the case of some Ottoman Christians, it might lead to more lenient treatment by their Protestant and Catholic captors ([35], p. 115). Over these centuries, recurrent negotiations between the chief belligerents on land and sea, including Venice, the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, resulted in highly formalized terms of prisoner exchange in diplomacy and truce agreements [48,49].

Unlike the ports of Ghana or the terminus of the trans-Sahara routes in Tunis, where prince and pauper might have shared the same fate, the rank and provenance of confessionalized captives within the Mediterranean continued to play an important role in the treatment of captives overall. Even implacable foes like the Maltese grand masters and the deys of Tripoli concurred that captains of ships (provided they were not themselves converts) must be treated with deference while awaiting ransom or exchange ([14], p. 468). Moreover, it must also be underlined that the distinction between racialized and confessionalized identities was observed within the Mediterranean itself: preliminary censuses make clear that the numbers of East and Sub-Saharan Africans sold into bondage in the early modern period throughout the Mediterranean dwarfed the numbers of either Western Christians or Mediterranean Muslims ([2], pp. 34–9). Thus, for persons trafficked within the Mediterranean, proximity (and with it the possibility of flight) and provenance (which included the supposition that individuals retained ties that might yield ransom or exchange or even sanctuary aboard an allied ship) not only informed their classification as "Turchi" or "Mori," but also afforded them a critical margin of personhood which was denied to human beings labeled "Negri" or "Etiopici' ([35], p. 115; [50]).

#### **3. The Mediterranean's Galley Complex**

Whether through war, piracy, or shipwreck, once a Muslim fell captive in the western or central Mediterranean until the nineteenth century, he or she remained for a time suspended in the grey zone between temporary prisoner and servile migrant, domestic servant and galley slave. Gender was the first determinant in the fate of a Muslim, Jewish or Orthodox Christian captive. The terms of servitude for confessionalized captives/slaves remained gender-specific. Rank counted less for women, although families attempted to ransom their captive daughters, mothers, and wives, as well as their sons. Muslim women undertook dangerous travels across the sea to raise funds to purchase their own and their family's freedom ([14], pp. 207–8). Most women (including Jewish, African and Greek Orthodox) who were not ransomed were sold to private individuals and put to work in Catholic (and sometimes, Jewish, in the case of Muslim women) homes as domestics and not infrequently forced into forms of concubinage. The majority of adult male captives, subjects of the Ottoman Empire and the North African states, became part of a public workforce in the country of capture or were sold to service other Catholic fleets. From that point onward, it was only ethnicity (Balkan or North African origin) point of sale, and price that were recorded in the naval account books, as we find in an extant register from the Port de Toulon*,* entitled "Bagne des Galères*,*  matricules des Turcs (1682–1707)." In this period, "turc" simply meant galley slave [51].

Although we must resist a facile equation of race and religion in terms of enslavement processes, in an age of quasi-industrialized uses of forced labor, there were other parallels between the confessionalized slavery of the Mediterranean and the racialized enslavement in the Atlantic. The framework developed by Philip Curtin to analyze what he called the "Plantation Complex" in the Caribbean [52], might provide a comparative model to reassess the specificity of galley slavery, an important component of the forced labor systems throughout the early modern Mediterranean. Indeed, both the Plantation Complex and the "Galley Complex" involved a secular, feedback loop linking demand for labor with prevailing technologies of production. It is true that the Galley Complex relied on both (nominally) free and coerced labor forces, in addition to confessionalized slave crews. However, both forms of forced transfer were, to a great degree, determined by the state of technology. If galley slavery ended previous to plantation slavery in the Atlantic, it was not a question of moral outrage or differences in the identities of the enslaved, but of an earlier shift to wind-powered vessels within the Mediterranean. As long as galleys fleets were used for transport, war and piracy in the Mediterranean (and the Baltic), confessionalized enslavement persisted. 2

Like agricultural slavery in the Atlantic, the Galley Complex was built on pre-existing systems of captivity and enslavement. However, it also reshaped those flows, decisively contributing to the shift in demand from female to male captives [53–56]. A ship with 26 oars required five men per oar and an additional 20 oarsmen in reserve as replacements. Larger frigates might employ 500 men at the oars ([14], p. 339). As the size of the Mediterranean's galley fleets peaked in the late seventeenth century so did demand for able-bodied enslaved, Muslim oarsmen in Catholic ports. By the early eighteenth century, when wind powered vessels replaced ships powered by human strength, particularly among the Atlantic-bound fleets of kingdoms like France, the demand for galley slaves also decreased. It is little wonder that because most Mediterranean corsairs, whether the Knights of Malta, privateers, or the *rais* of the Maghreb, depended on the maneuverability of galleys to raid coastlines, prey upon merchant cogs, and beat a speedy retreat, especially in calms, the economy of confessionalized enslavement, albeit reduced in scale, would continue into the nineteenth century.

Employing confessionalized slaves satisfied the need for workers in a system so grueling and degrading that it was not possible to rely fully on convicts or conscripted individuals. Condemnation to the galleys remained a dreaded form of punishment and the direct precedent for the totalizing institution of the prison. For many convicts, what was supposed to be a short term at sea became a death sentence. Many men maimed themselves rather than be put to the oars. After a few weeks of confinement in the ships, the stench of human sweat and excrement was overwhelming. Enslaved oarsmen who were chained to their benches could not bathe, change their

<sup>2</sup> Davis ([4], p. 9) notes this relationship but does not pursue it.

clothing or even move to relieve themselves. For weeks they were offered only brief respites for sleep; their rations were made up of a monotonous diet of vegetable and legume soup and bread, although ships took on fresh water and other necessities as required while on patrol ([2], p. 185; [14]) Although concern for the economic losses resulting from the high mortality rates among galley slaves led to the employment of medical staff and the creation of a type of infirmary for those so impaired by disease or injury as to be finally removed from the bench, during the summer months many crew members sickened and died. The plague of 1720–1721 carried off one fifth of France's rowing force ([56], p. 246).

Like much of the Caribbean's racialized slave communities, the servile labor force of the galleys did not reproduce themselves by natural increase. Although a percentage of galley slaves survived for decades, some remaining at the oars into their sixties and even seventies, they were not permitted to marry. Given the morality rates due to combat, occupational injuries and disease, in addition to the sheer exhaustion of the human beings who powered the galleys, replacements were continually sought. While the pontifical fleet at Civitavecchia remained entirely dependent on external resupply, whether by gift or purchase, the Tuscan Knights of St. Stephen became self-sufficient by dint of their own regular, holy depredations as well as the human cargo transported to their shores by privateers. The ransom and sale of slaves was the mainstay of the economy of the Knights of St. John. Maltese auctions annually sent about two hundred human beings to Civitavecchia, the majority of the enslaved being subjects of the Ottoman Empire; they also sold slaves to Italian navies and to France ([14], pp. 241–46). Although France was a signatory to treaties with the Sublime Porte that prohibited the enslavement of their subjects, French consuls doubled as slave procurers in La Valletta and Italian ports. Muslims were sold into slavery by land as well: the Holy Roman Empire furnished Ottoman captives for the galleys of France, and even Malta ([14], pp. 264–70).

The core of the traffic in Muslim slaves corresponded with the changing theatres of war and the establishment of key auction sites between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Despite widespread piracy, slave auctions became concentrated in a number of Catholic ports. As such, over the centuries there were regional, boom and bust cycles. For example, Trapani in Sicily held 5,000 Muslim slaves in 1569, comprising approximately one sixth of its total population. But a century later, the city registered not a single adult slave among its inhabitants. Elsewhere, particularly in trading and crusading ports that relied on galleys, the numbers of Muslim slaves remained constant or grew over the seventeenth century. These ports often received human cargo from privateers as well as from their own slaving expeditions. In Livorno, the slave population reached 3,000 individuals in 1616 (of approximately 37,000 inhabitants); in Naples, between 10,000 and 20,000 individuals, or 4 to 7 percent of its estimated population of 270,000 inhabitants in the early seventeenth century belonged to the state or private persons ([2], pp. 24–31). Given its continuing role as one of the chief traffickers of non-Catholic slaves within the Mediterranean and as a state that issued letters of marque to other Christian entrepreneurs, Malta's cities held more than a thousand Muslims (and other non-Catholic individuals) in bondage at the end of the eighteenth century ([14], pp. 577–83).

Yet the Galley Complex also differed in important ways from agricultural slavery in the Americas. Unlike the plantation system, the actual oarsmen who were enslaved (as opposed to convicts and volunteers) were part of a crew owned, maintained and managed by a state or one of the state-like lay religious orders. State-appointed officials fed, clothed and punished them; an overseer was responsible financially for injuries, death, and flight. As a chattel crew, Muslim slaves could be sold along with the frigate. In battle or if the hull foundered upon shoals, chained to their benches, they and not the captain, went down with the ship. At the end of the sailing season, Muslim slaves would be pressed into the construction of public works projects such as bridges or walls in the outskirts of Naples and in Maltese towns of La Valletta and Senglea ([14], pp. 301–05).

Precisely because the Galley Complex was not simply a system of production but a mainstay of the state's defenses, the composition of the labor force was rarely entirely servile. To minimize the risk of rebellion, Catholic fleets typically intermingled Muslim slaves on the bench with Christians, either convicts (including Protestants) or so-called *buonavoglie* or "volunteers," whom poverty or debt forced to become oarsmen. The proportion of Muslim galley slaves to Christian oarsmen varied from fleet to fleet as well as over time, but seems to have increased as the larger European fleets began to phase out their galleys in the early eighteenth century. In seventeenth-century France, Muslims accounted for about a quarter of all galley slaves, roughly 50 captives for every 150 *forçats* (convicts) in 33 ships although that proportion might change in large vessels ([51], p. 55; [56], p. 144). In Livorno, the proportion of Muslim galley slaves to either convicts or *buonavoglie* rose in St. Stephen's crews ([2], p. 31). By 1685, there were 647 Muslim slaves, the majority of whom were of North African origin, to 579 Christian convicts and 181 "volunteers"; similarly, in Genoa, Muslim slaves, who once composed only one quarter of the galley slaves in 1642, by the end of the century outnumbered the number of convicts (*forzati*) ([2], pp. 171–77). In mid-eighteenth century Malta, 639 of the 782 men at the oars were enslaved Muslims ([14], p. 345).

#### **4. Solidarity and Survival of a Forced Migrant Community**

Together the Galley and Plantation Complexes removed millions of individuals from their homes and families and forced them across the sea into perpetual servitude. Chattel slavery throughout the early modern Mediterranean and Atlantic subjected human beings to quotidian brutality, cruel punishments and deprivations; within the Mediterranean basin, Muslim and Christian survivors of captivity recounted comparable horrors. That said, there remained significant differences in the treatment of confessionalized slaves as individuals and groups within "receiving" societies. These conditions patterned and limited the possibility for an individual's integration or absorption into the new society and, hence, reflected more than culturally-specific attitudes or comparable survival strategies. As such, the experience of these displaced persons cannot be fully understood without considering how the confessionalized enslavement of larger groups of individuals produced both a servile workforce and a peculiar migrant community.

For Muslim galley slaves, the structure of their migrant communities and their survival strategies were critically determined by the degree of ostracism and outright hostility of the society in which they spent their lives. Although not all Catholic ports treated these forced migrants with the same degree of exclusion and, in some cases, such as in Marseilles, Balkan Muslims actually enjoyed superior "privileges" to French Protestants, overall there were notable contrasts in the Catholic and Muslim Mediterranean settings. Whereas in many Muslim ports foreign Christians, Jews and members of local Jewish and Ottoman Orthodox communities were a familiar sight to the majority society, in Italy and France, aside from the rare appearance of a heavily guarded diplomatic entourage from Persia, Morocco or Istanbul, the only Muslims that ordinary Catholics encountered in their daily lives were the enslaved. Muslim slaves in Malta complained that unlike the practices in Istanbul or the North African ports, they were not even allowed to eat or drink their purchases of food inside shops and taverns with Christian customers, but were forced to take their meals in the street ([14], pp. 124–25).

Muslims in Catholic societies were visually marked. That was not because they maintained the customary clothes of their homelands, such as turbans or long robes; nor did it owe to distinguishing facial features or to skin color. Rather, it was because being dressed and groomed as "turchi" was prescribed by law and the regulations of naval administrations. Their heads were shaved except for a distinctive pigtail ([14], pp. 75–77). Although the ordinary galley slave may have retained a long mustache that covered his lips, only their chaplains were allowed a beard. Clothing too was uniform: a roughly woven woolen cape with a hood. Converted slaves and Muslims alike carried a one to two pound iron footlock around their ankle; Muslims also bore chains or were chained to the little kiosks they were permitted to open on the docks and in marketplaces ([2], p. 88).

Life in port for galley slaves was certainly an improvement over the weeks of torment they endured during the rowing season on patrol and in battle. Nevertheless, both the galley and the prison-like structures called the *bagnio* (in Genoa, the *darsena*) which were constructed at the docks to shelter them constituted the Muslim ghettos of early modern Europe. In Malta, more than three prison-like structures were dedicated to housing Muslim and Jewish slaves at night; after 1749, privately owned male slaves were also required to overnight in one of these structures ([14] pp. 93, 440). The French sculptor Charles Marguerite Jean-Baptiste Mercier Dupaty inspected the *darsena* of Genoa in 1785. In its "low, dark, and dank," masonry chambers he found that younger, active men were chained in cells measuring 6 by 6 feet. This provided just enough room to move and to change their clothes ([2], p. 188).

All of these conditions—the rigors of work and life aboard the galley, their treatment at port, and the hopelessness of a future without the comforts of a familiar culture or family—drove a very high percentage of Catholics and Protestants in the *bagnio*s of North Africa and the Ottoman capital toward conversion ([4,10]; [5], pp. 77–78). 3 In theory, adopting the faith of the receiving society should have functioned as the primary modality through which the forced migrant might attempt to integrate within or actually achieve some form of "naturalization" in an early modern society. The receiving society's institutional capacity to accept (or deny) converts, in turn, would have played a key role in reinforcing or undermining the bases of solidarities within these forced migrant communities (compare [58]). However, the rate of Muslim galley slave conversion to Christianity remained inexplicably lower than their counterparts across the sea. Part of this may have to do with the method of religious "outreach". A zealous and astute Jesuit in early seventeenth-century Naples who dispatched Arabic speaking priests to the prisons met with greater

<sup>3</sup> Article 23 of the French-Ottoman Treaty of 28 May 1740 accepted the inevitability of frequent conversions, establishing procedures for the transfer of property should a commercial factor or sailor convert to Islam. For the treaty see [57].

success; a new *Casa dei Catacumeni* (a type of half-way house for new converts) for Muslims in Rome which offered instruction in Christianity attracted some slaves ([2], pp. 268–75; [59]). But attempts to proselytize slaves met with opposition from galley administrators. Overseers in the papal port of Civitavecchia complained that even this limited opportunity to receive instruction in a new faith should be discontinued. Catholics should not expect that Muslims would ever really foreswear their faith; it was only abused by "Turks who feign to be Christian until, at the first opportunity, they flee to their homelands" ([2], p. 271).

Although the missionaries were far less successful with adult male Muslims of the galleys, baptism of Muslim women and children in domestic service occurred with some frequency in the early modern period. The fact that most of the conversions in Rome and Livorno were of children or enslaved women ([59]; [2], pp. 276–78), lends support to the supposition that the higher rates of conversion in Muslim lands may partially be attributed to the greater prevalence of household slavery. The Ottoman historian Suraiya Faroqhi observes that slave-owners often pressured their Christian slaves into accepting Islam [60]. But if we consider conversion not as a novelty, a question of force, or an expedient but rather as part of a larger, multi-faceted process of migration and absorption into a new community, it is not only the push factors that might explain an individual's choice to change the beliefs of his or her natal society. Muslim societies, because of the higher number of slaves in homes, the structure of households, and the potential for social mobility despite servile and foreign birth, facilitated this process in ways that Catholic society did not: Islamic laws recognized the free, Muslim status of offspring of a slaveholder and his concubine who, if her child was male, might also demand to be manumitted [61]. Muslim masters of converted slaves often emancipated them and willed them property and support (through endowments). Although both Muslim and Catholic states had a vested interest in keeping their fleets well supplied with slave labor and thus, ultimately, in discouraging mass conversion, it is not surprising to find the Ottoman controller of the state *bagnio* writing about the rewards due a Catholic slave after his conversion to Islam, which might include a pass to release him permanently from the prison, new clothes, and even a stipend from the treasury.<sup>4</sup>

By contrast, in Catholic lands, the real and anticipated benefits for converts, particularly galley slaves, were modest indeed and rarely involved manumission. In France, the small number of converted "turcs" were not permitted to leave the oars, although they did gain the right to bequeath their meager property upon death ([56], pp. 264, 284). In Tuscany, converts could shed their chains and sleep outside the *bagnio* but they were still considered "prisoners of war" and hence property of the order ([2], p. 255). Catholicism raised a host of ancillary problems that had no parallel in Ottoman lands or in the North African context where many "Muslim" corsairs were in fact converts from Catholicism or Protestantism. While in the Muslim world, the neophyte was allowed his or her "ambiguous" forms of adherence to the new religion with little scrutiny [63], in Catholic societies an entire multi-state apparatus, the early modern Inquisition, had been created to eradicate such spiritual ambiguity and syncretism of belief, as well as to prevent "backsliding" into Judaism

<sup>4</sup> For an example from Ottoman archives: see [62]. The controller of the shipyards requested the release of a Maltese by the name of Antoine Tondo; after his conversion; his name was to be struck from registry and he was released from the prison.

and Islam. An abiding distrust of the sincerity of the Muslim (or Jewish) convert affected both laity and clergy in early modern Europe. Even in old regime France where officials increasingly separated the state business of naturalization from membership in the Roman Church, Peter Sahlins did not find a single case involving the "secular" denization of an adult Muslim convert [64] (compare [65]).

Thinking of conversion and the integration of forced migrants in a new society only in terms of "push-pull" factors associated with migration should not allow us to disregard the power exerted by migrant communities over their members. A convert, in addition to potentially forfeiting the remote chance that a prisoner exchange might restore him to his kin and facing the prospects of punishments more terrifying than the galleys if the Inquisition convicted him of backsliding to Islam, also lost the companionship and solidarity of his former co-religionists at the oars. If solidarity among Muslim galley slaves might have been stronger than their Catholic counterparts in Muslim lands, it may have to do with both the relatively limited opportunities for conversion/manumission/naturalization and the slaves' ability, despite (and perhaps because of) local conditions, to create a fairly autonomous social order. Unlike the leadership imposed by religious orders, such as the Trinitarians, or the chain of command binding newer missions sponsored by Louis XIV (d. 1715) to France, which pretended to represent the spiritual and political interests of Catholics enslaved in Tripoli, Tunis, Salé and Algiers, Muslim galley slaves may have achieved greater autonomy because of the absence of on site representatives of their religio-political authorities They elected their own leaders at sea and on land. Muslim chaplains (or judges), called in Italian *papasso/papassi* or *cadi* (kadi), had to earn the respect and trust of their co-religionists on the basis of their character, experience and learning ([4], pp. 113–21). Relying on the precedent set by Ottoman and North African tolerance of Catholic missions, Muslim chaplains gained special privileges including the right to dress in a dignified manner, a private room in the prison and exemption from the most degrading forms of manual labor. Chaplains wrote petitions on behalf of slaves and acted as interlocutors with administrators of the fleet in addition to leading prayers ([2], p. 247; [66], pp. 145–48).

Initially, Catholic states conceded few religious privileges to these early modern Muslim migrants. However, Muslim slaves leveraged the asymmetries of travel and settlement between the Muslim and Christian worlds to their advantage. It must be remembered that although no free Muslim communities resided in Western Europe after the Morisco expulsion from Spain, there remained large indigenous and foreign Christian communities throughout the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb. In addition to thousands of enslaved Catholics and Protestants, many freemen—diplomats, clerics and merchants—settled in the religiously inclusive environment and enjoyed the protection of sultans, governors and deys under bilateral treaties [35,36]. Thus, Muslim galley slaves who took advantage of foreign merchants' willingness to relay letters and to mediate in the collection of ransom funds across the sea [35], also addressed petitions to Muslim authorities about their general treatment and the lack of religious accommodations. In response, the rulers of the Maghreb, in particular, exerted pressure on local Catholics representatives. They threatened to retract normal or special liberties accorded to Christian slaves and the Catholic orders if parallel religious "accommodations" were not extended to Muslims enslaved in Christendom [2,11].

Thus, isolated though they remained from the larger society and deprived of the support of free co-religionists, forced Muslim migrants in Italian ports and Malta were able to wrest from Catholic authorities significant concessions with respect to their cultural and religious rights. Consider: at a time when there were no Protestant houses of worship in France, Muslims in Malta and Italian cities prayed according to their own cult in small chapels found within the *bagnio*s. It was the Knights of St. John who may have first permitted enslaved Muslims and Jews a small room or chapel within Malta's slave prisons; by the eighteenth century there was at least one free-standing mosque near the Muslim cemetery at Marsa ([14], p. 447). In Italy, Livorno's prison might have held a chapel by the end of the seventeenth century. It was a common enough practice in Italy, that the Bey of Tripoli was able to prevail over the reluctance of a pope in the early eighteenth century. Reciprocity worked: either Muslims would have their own prayer room in Civitavecchia or all the Catholic orders would be expelled from Tripoli. In Genoa, a chapel was granted in the *darsena* sometime before 1737 ([2], pp. 242–43).

Naples, perhaps because of its limited commercial interests in Muslim lands, persisted in denying its large slave population any accommodation for the practice of their faith. When the subject of a chapel was broached to the ruling council, it was rejected categorically. Providing Muslims with a place to pray was tantamount to heresy: Catholics would become "co-conspirators" in "the superstition of Mohammedan practice" ([2], p. 245). In other cities, Catholic authorities needed to be "coaxed" by Muslim rulers into granting Muslim galley slaves real estate beyond their ghettos (the ship and the dungeon) for proper burials. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Dey of Tunis warned that he would destroy the Catholic cemetery in his city if papal authorities did not finally provide Muslims with a dedicated burial ground. Genoa pledged to give Muslims burial plots outside the walls of the city, near the beach, in 1711, although they only made good on their commitment six years later. Finally, in 1768, only after it had concluded important treaties with the Ottoman Empire, did Naples' city fathers relent: although there was still no chapel, they conceded a cemetery to Muslim slaves, so that their dead would no longer be left on the road to be eaten by stray dogs ([2], pp. 248–52).

Culture may have reinforced ties of interdependence among Muslim migrants in Enlightenment Europe, but the individual's very survival depended critically on his relationship with his community. A galley slave received a yearly ration of clothing, a bunk, and monotonous daily ration of food with some slight variation including a bit of meat over the course of the month, scarcely enough to maintain his health. To purchase straw for his bunk, to procure sufficient food and some extra comforts, as well as to painstakingly scrimp and save for his ransom over decades, required ingenuity and cooperation. The English lady who visited late eighteenth-century Genoa related that slaves were permitted to open kiosks, "little shops or sheds on the quay," where they sold " pedlary [sic] goods" as a reward for good behavior. Shackled to their kiosks, some tended coffee hearths or set up lemonade stands; "chained in couples" other slaves hawked such items as fish, mats, and knitted goods ([1], pp. 210–12). Muslim slaves had a great deal of mobility around La Valletta and other Maltese towns which enabled them to carry out chores for private persons as well as to engage in little enterprises for their own benefit. Among many different by-occupations, Jewish and Muslim slaves on Malta, to the dismay of churchmen, ran micro- credit operations [14,67].

Like their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, Muslims who were fortunate to return home after their captivity in Malta and the Holy Roman Empire have left autobiographical accounts of their experiences [68–70]. However, it is the memoirs of a Huguenot, Jean Marteilhe (d. 1770), who served alongside Muslims during his years at the oars in the French navy, which offers unusually perceptive insights into how these isolated migrant communities survived in the early eighteenth century ([66], pp. 145–48]). Acquainted with many of the "turcs" in Marseilles, Marteilhe found them to be brave, loyal, generous and honest. On shore, Muslims from the Balkans and from the Maghreb dined communally; they shared their food with one another and offered sustenance to non-Muslim galley slaves. Since Muslims had greater liberty to travel into the city than the Huguenots, Marteilhe and his co-religionists asked their help in obtaining supplies and money which were sent from Geneva. This was not a small favor to ask: to collect these funds and distribute among the Huguenot convicts put the Muslim couriers in great danger. Yet, without expectation of material reward, Muslims willingly risked beatings and torture to help the Protestants.

Protestant-Muslim collaboration relied on ties between communities and not simply an individual's good will. Marteilhe's close ties with a courageous ex-Janissary ended abruptly when, in 1708, Yusuf was torn to pieces on the bench beside him as the ship took canon fire upon entering the Thames. Upon learning of his commission with Marteilhe from their chaplain, Yusuf's co-religionists stepped forward to continue his good work. A sympathetic observer of their religious beliefs, Marteilhe directed his reader's attention to the role that Islamic precepts played in helping Muslim migrants survive emotionally and socially in a hostile land. "It must be known that when Turks have an opportunity to exercise charity or other good works, they communicate this joy to their *papas*, as their theologians are called." ([66], p. 147)

For the Muslim migrant isolated in Mediterranean Europe, *thawab* (a deed meriting divine recompense) served not only as a principle of mutual aid but also as a source of personal dignity and hope for reward in the afterlife. The moral obligation to carry out such charitable works including the emancipation of one's co-religionists motivated the Alaouite sultan of Morocco, Muhammad III (d. 1790) to embark on a campaign, unparalleled before the French Revolution, to liberate captives en masse. Determined to empty Malta's dungeons of its enslaved Muslims, in 1782 his diplomats initiated complex and difficult negotiations with the Knights of St. John under the auspices of the Spanish court. By the time the final installment of money was paid out to the Grand Master, a year before the sultan's own death, Muhammad III had freed more than 1,000 subjects of the North African states and the Ottoman sultan from life-time bondage at the enormous cost of nearly six hundred thousand *scudi*. 5 By means of a supreme act of *thawab*, in 1789, for the first time in more than two centuries, not a single enslaved Muslim remained in Malta ([14], pp. 577–83).

<sup>5</sup> Consider: the annual income from a particularly large eighteenth-century estate owned by the noble Chigi family of Rome was 8,000 *scudi* [71].

#### **5. Conclusions: Islamic Diasporas or Returning Europeans?**

By the French Revolution, the decline of the Galley Complex and an enlarged umbrella of diplomatic and commercial agreements binding Muslim and Christians Mediterranean powers reduced the availability and demand for confessionalized slaves in Catholic lands. 6 Of the estimated half million souls who spent all or good part of their adulthood as forced migrants in early modern Italy alone, several hundred Muslim migrants remained in chains until the arrival of the French Revolution's soldiers and sailors after 1797 ([2], pp. 34–35, 188–89). In Genoa, but four years before the Revolution, a visitor found elderly and disabled Muslims shackled prone to the wooden planks that served as their beds. Shrouded in dirty covers, they were condemned to suffer their last months of life unattended and lying in their own filth ([2], p. 188). Even in freedom, many of former slaves lacked the means and stamina to return to a distant homeland. A visitor to Sardinia in 1812 estimated that more than 80 former "Turkish slaves" had been stranded without "shirts or proper clothes, many without leggings, pale, famished." Left to the mercy of the good citizens of Cagliari, many succumbed to starvation in public view ([72], p. 76). The graphic descriptions of the destitution and degradation of the survivors of decades of enslavement, as well as the cruel indifference of society to their plight, suggest the actual etymology of the term "Muselmänner," which resurfaced in the jargon of inmates of the Nazi death camps during World War II ([73], p. 46).

Despite the disparaging idioms in European languages that bear witness to the centuries of Muslim servitude in early modern Europe [37], there remains no public acknowledgment of their lives, deaths and communal histories. Of course, Salvatore Bono is correct in attributing the suppression of the memory of Muslim slavery during the Renaissance and Enlightenment to colonial burnishing of the West's image [2]. However, there are other reasons why acknowledgment of this history might discomfit the gatekeepers of the European Union today. As Julia Clancy-Smith reminds us, [74] the end of the Galley Complex did not stop the movement of populations between the Muslim and Christian Mediterranean. Rather, the flows and forms of migration were transformed. The French armies and navies that liberated the last captive Muslims in Genoa would later subject North Africa and the Middle East to forms of imperial control. An unprecedented imbalance of power between the northern and southern shores of the internal sea brought tens of thousands of new settlers from the north—the political refugees of the revolutions of 1848, Italian artisans, French engineers, and Corsican colonial farmers—to Muslim cities and countryside [75]. Free emigration of Italy's poor to the "terra promessa" remained a central goal of Prime Minister Giovanni Giolitti's colonial war for Libya in 1912–1913 [76].

The unacknowledged multi-lateral movement of migrants within the Mediterranean from the medieval period until today adds another layer of complicity to the ideologies that have keep these

<sup>6</sup> "O Fie, Father! Tho' it Part of your Function to make a dismal Story of Slavery among the Infidels… yet you should, methinks, adhere only to the Truth. You come lately from Marseilles where you must, or might have seen the Turks, Moors, & c. in much worse Condition than the most unhappy Beylic [sic] Slave in Algiers… You likewise must needs have seen or heard, how Slaves are treated in Spain, Malta, Genoa, &c." commented the translator, undoubtedly a Protestant, who chastised the authors of Philemon de La Motte's *Several Voyages to Barbary* [1721] for their imbalanced reporting. ([4], p. 130).

coerced migrant communities of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in history's shadows. The long waves of Muslim settlement in the West before the twentieth century challenges cherished myths of cultural uniformity and civilizational superiority that undergird European Union policies toward membership and migration [77]. Pundits and politicians, so fond of pronouncing the death of multi-culturalism and ascribing its inevitable decline to immigrants themselves or to Islam more generally, would have to concede that the integration of Muslim communities in previous centuries failed because the West lacked ecumenical institutions that would allow them (even after conversion) to live as free men and loyal political subjects, and not because of the intransigence of belief or the inability of individuals to adapt to their condition as religious minorities. Textbooks would have to be re-written to reflect the reality that it was the perseverance of Muslim communities of faith and the insistence of Muslim rulers that tested and then put into practice Enlightenment ideals before the French Revolution. Indeed, for European governments, like Germany and Spain, which claim the right to confer national citizenship on long, lost ethnic diasporas or in order to redress historic wrongs [78], public acknowledgement of the almost uninterrupted settlement of Muslim communities in the West from the early Middle Ages to the present forces the real question: Are the Muslims of today's Europe "migrants" at all? Or, are they not in effect returning Europeans?

#### **Acknowledgments**

The seeds of the ideas in this essay first germinated in an interesting discussion that took place between Haideh Moghissi, Tariq Ramadan and myself in Toronto (at the 2007 York University conference, "Muslim Diasporas: religious and national identity, gender, cultural resistance". Comments from anonymous readers and from Carolle Charles, an expert on transnational migration, on an earlier draft helped sharpen the conceptual focus of the essay. All errors are, of course, the author's own.

#### **Conflicts of Interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References and Notes**



## **Rhetorical Conflicts: Civilizational Discourse and the Contested Patrimonies of Spain's Festivals of Moors and Christians**

**David A. Shefferman** 

**Abstract:** The title of this essay identifies a series of verbal scuffles—or "rhetorical conflicts"—that developed in the fall of 2006 within Spain's larger culture wars. The political skirmishes coalesced around an announcement by the Popular Party (PP) to champion a class of regional festivals for U.N. designation as indispensible elements of "human patrimony." The war of words stemmed from the PP's politicization of cultural designations, but the celebrations in question—the *fiestas* of Moors and Christians common in the south of Valencia region—already generated controversy since they display "rhetorical conflicts" of a different sort: In potentially offensive fashion, the festivals present carnivalesque re-enactments of battles in the medieval "Reconquest" of Iberia by Christian armies over Islamic "Moors." The essay situates these entangled controversies in the broader context of waves of immigration that have accompanied, or even fueled, a trans-Atlantic discourse centered on notions of a geopolitical "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West. Accordingly, the debates about the Moors and Christians festivals—like the celebrations themselves—reveal deep ambivalence about the role of Islam and of Muslims in Spain's past and present.

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Shefferman, D.A. "Rhetorical Conflicts: Civilizational Discourse and the Contested Patrimonies of Spain's Festivals of Moors and Christians." *Religions* 5 (2014): 126–156.

#### **1. Introduction: Conflicts of Rhetoric and Rhetorics of Conflict**

On Friday, 13 October 2006, Eduardo Zaplana made an announcement that—on the surface, at least—would seem relatively straightforward and cause for excitement and even celebration. In his role as official spokesman for the Popular Party (PP), one of Spain's two main political organizations, Zaplana announced that the PP would present a non-binding resolution (*proposición no de ley*) in the Congress of Deputies (*el Congreso de Diputados*), the nation's lower legislative house, supporting the candidacy of a class of regional festivals for international recognition as an indispensible part of "human patrimony." Zaplana explained the specifics of his party's initiative as well as its timing. The PP wanted clear congressional support for Spain's application to the United Nations Educational, Science, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to inscribe a number of new elements on UNESCO's list of "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity." As Zaplana emphasized, the inclusion of these particular *fiestas* (festivals) on the list of

candidates made perfect sense at that moment. Some European organizations had recently declared the celebrations a matter of "international tourist interest" and on the preceding Monday (9 October)—only four days earlier—prominent representatives of the *fiestas* had participated as honored guests in the Hispanic Heritage and Columbus Day Parade in New York. Fittingly, as Zaplana pointed out, the special Spanish emissaries carried out some of the celebrated traditions as they marched down Manhattan's famed Fifth Avenue, only blocks away from the UN headquarters where the world-heritage application would be filed. Using his well-honed skills as a political spokesman, Zaplana made his best effort to give the announcement a festive air. What could be better than celebrating renowned celebrations, than feting famous festivals, than securing them the global recognition they deserved? Zaplana wondered openly how anyone could possibly object to the proposition.

However, in raising that question, Zaplana implicitly acknowledged that there were people who *did* oppose the Popular Party's plan. In fact, beyond his scripted announcement, Zaplana spent most of the 13 October press conference framing his party's initiative as a deliberate counterattack. In other words, he made clear that the PP's declaration of intentions served as the latest retort in a broader political battle that had intensified during the week leading up to the announcement and in which the traditions lauded by the Popular Party served as the immediate object of dispute. The celebrations that the PP planned to bring to the Congress for validation were *Las Fiestas de Moros y Cristianos*—the Festivals of Moors and Christians—especially popular on or near the Mediterranean coast in the southern part of the Valencia region in Spain's east. Even before the developments leading up to Zaplana's announcement, the *fiestas* generated periodic controversy. And, in that regard, the October 2006 debates followed a familiar script. Because the festivals invoke the so-called "Reconquest" of Iberia by Christian forces from Islamic powers, pockets of critics regularly decried the celebrations as symbolically violent and thus offensive, especially to contemporary Muslims. In the late 1990s, public condemnations of the festivals from various quarters began to grow louder and more frequent in conjunction with the increased size and visibility of the nation's population of Muslims from immigration and other factors <sup>1</sup> . In light of the growing presence of Islam in Spain, did the Popular Party really want Congress—much less the

<sup>1</sup> For data and analysis related to the increase of Muslims in Spain, see [1,2]. As Gunther Dietz explains, the unofficial count of self-identifying Muslims in the country in 2009 was around 700,000 ([1], p. 3). Alfonso Pérez-Agote places the count closer to (or even above) one million as of 2010 ([2], p. 230). The majority resides in and around the urban centers of Madrid, Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia. Dietz and Pérez-Agote both refer to government assessments as well as to other scholarly studies that estimate that at least 80% of Muslims in Spain came into residence in the country in the past thirty years as immigrants or as the descendants of immigrants. As Dietz notes, the remainder of the Muslim population is comprised of: (a) Spanish converts to Islam (especially concentrated in Andalusia); (b) longstanding but small, multi-generational communities of Muslim Spaniards; (c) "nationalized Muslims" consisting of inhabitants of Spain's territories in northern Morocco who gained citizenship beginning in the late 1980s. For more specific information on Muslims in the Valencia region, where the Moors and Christians festivals are concentrated, see [3]. As Javier Zapata de la Vega explains in that article, the rapidly expanding presence of Islam in the Community of Valencia since the late-1980s reflects the broader national trends identified above. Labor-related immigration of North African Muslims in the region remains the primary factor. For history and analysis of relations of Muslims and non-Muslims in Spain from the seventh century until around the year 2000, see [4].

**26** 

United Nations—to sanctify these potentially offensive celebrations as the apex of Spain's cultural contribution to humanity? Or, in fact, was the Popular Party's move a direct reaction to the nation's changing demographics, an attempt to secure global recognition for collective identities supposedly on the wane?

In his 13 October press conference, Zaplana did not address either of those possibilities but instead tried to shift attention away from questions regarding the role of Muslims and Islam in Spain's changing social realities. He attempted to present his adversaries as the problem, painting them as threats to the collective spirit engendered in the festivals as well as impediments to the *fiestas'* economic and civic benefits: "Under no circumstances will we address the demands of those who try to coerce us. We feel very proud of these *fiestas*, of this tradition, of this spontaneous demonstration that we live so intensely and of the great splendor they manifest—and which is so important for the development of our tourist sector." Zaplana also made clear that the Popular Party's proposed resolution amounted to a counter-offensive against the ongoing criticisms of the Moors and Christians celebrations, insisting that the effort thwarted "a distinct threat to the liberty of expression, a self-censorship, [that] is spreading" [5,6]. The debates about the festivals continued throughout October in the halls of government, in the press, among families, friends, and neighbors, and in other domains of public discourse. The intensity of the discussions died down over the months that followed, flaring up every few weeks as the press reported on new moves or statements in the political chess-match, until February. That month the Popular Party presented the non-binding resolution on the *fiestas'* candidacy to Congress as promised, and when the effort failed to pass the battle effectively ended.

Although the disputes beginning in October 2006 about the Moors and Christians festivals followed a familiar pattern—and turned out to be relatively short-lived—the context of the debates nevertheless differed from the past. That environment—the particular landscape of the conflict serves as the focus of this essay. The oppositional language with which I have outlined the topography of events clarifies the first meaning of the title of this essay. Most immediately, I outline here the war of words—the wrangling through rhetoric—that entangled the festivals at the time. In doing so, another connotation of the title quickly arises: Not only did the debates about the Moors and Christians festivals amount to rhetorical conflicts; the controversy also unfolded around a public discourse centered on notions of geopolitical contestation. More specifically, "civilizational" rhetoric—consistent with Samuel Huntington's famous thesis about a post-Cold War "clash of civilizations"—resonated deeply. With the arrival of the fifth anniversary of the events of 11 September, 2001 and only two-and-a-half years after deadly bombings on commuter trains outside of Madrid, considerations in Spain—as elsewhere in Europe and across the Atlantic—swirled around the figure of "Islam" and questions about its fundamental nature and the extent of its reach. Despite important and deep differences of opinion, the collective conversation in Spain advanced on a common ground where "Islam" and "the West" represented two distinct and oppositional entities vying for global power.

In this regard, the dispute in late 2006 over the candidacy of the festivals for "human patrimony" designation serves as only part of a longer series of skirmishes in Spain's ongoing culture wars. The public disagreements about the *fiestas* that erupted during the first week of October 2006 only made more immediate and contextual a broader set of national, continental, and global issues with which Spaniards already had grappled for almost a month. As I explore in detail below, the conflicts over the Moors and Christians celebrations make sense in light of the worldwide debates generated by Pope Benedict XVI's reflections on characteristics of Islam during an academic talk delivered the preceding 12 September. Those issues took on new shape and intensity eleven days later when, during a talk in Washington, DC, Spain's former prime minister, José María Aznar, added to the uproar by following up on the pontiff's speech with his own comments about the role of Islam in the contemporary world as well as in Spanish history. In a peninsula long characterized by diverse and often competing claims of affiliation—be they individual or collective, national or regional, continental or global, religious or secular, to identify only a number of possibilities—the status of "Moors" and "Christians" cut to the heart of apprehensions both historical and contemporary. Accordingly, the rhetoric of "civilizational clash" that framed the public discourse in Spain in late 2006 exposed underlying anxieties regarding issues of immigration and national security. As I show, those pressing concerns exposed fundamental questions of identity and—in a broader sense—of "patrimony."

In that way, the essay's title carries yet-another implication. While the debates played out around a discourse of "culture clash," the *fiestas* themselves present "rhetorical conflicts," that is, mock performances of past battles between "Moors" and "Christians" as distinct "civilizations" sparring for control of the territory. The rhetoric *about* the festivals in 2006 paradoxically mimicked the traditional rhetoric *of* the festivals. And, at that level, the essay's title encapsulates another dynamic: While the notion of culture clash predominates in and provides the structure of the *fiestas*, the celebrations also include an obvious counterpoint. At a number of points in the performances—and, especially at their climatic moments—the identities of the "Moors" and "Christians" quickly shift and the divisions between them break down. At those junctures, different rhetorics—one of clear separation, the other of equivocality and hybridity—come into dramatic conflict. In the concluding section of the essay, I look closely at one of those critical junctures to show how, in the end, the festive performances call into question familiar claims of identity and of patrimony and, in turn, unsettle Samuel Huntington's "culture clash" thesis in particular and civilizational discourse in general. Accordingly, the festivals, as well as the debates about them, illuminate the profound and ongoing anxieties among Spaniards about the place of the proverbial "Moor" in Spanish history and identity and how those competing sensibilities relate to the social locations—that is, the very real presence—in contemporary Spain of residents still firmly linked in the popular imagination to that Moorish past.

#### **2. Moors and Christians on the Rhetorical Battleground: The Politics of "Human Patrimony"**

In his press conference on 13 October 2006 explaining the Popular Party's intentions to bring the non-binding resolution to the Congress of Deputies in support of inclusion of the Moors and Christians festivals on UNESCO's list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, Eduardo Zaplana framed the announcement as a necessary political response to recent criticisms of the *fiestas*. His characterization surprised some observers for two reasons. First, "world heritage" initiatives traditionally developed in Spain through the coordinated efforts of government agencies and local organizations. Political parties did not claim responsibility for

instigating such efforts. So why did Zaplana, as the PP spokesman, declare his party would assume that role in this case?

The PP's unprecedented endeavor generated the second point of surprise. Why was the PP pushing for a new legislative measure when, in fact, the drive to secure UNESCO recognition of the Moors and Christians celebrations already had been underway for at least two years? In June of 2004, La Unión Nacional de Entidades Festeras [The National Union of Festival Entities]—commonly known by the acronym UNDEF—announced the organization's commitment "to initiate the opportune labors to secure the declaration of the *fiestas de Moros y Cristianos* as oral and immaterial patrimony of humanity by UNESCO" [7]. At that time UNDEF also announced the chairs of the commission that would lead the effort: Francisco López Pérez, the newly elected president of UNDEF, and Pedro Escrig Negrete, head of the Association of Moors and Christians Santa Marta of Villajoyosa, a town in the province of Alicante.

The commission, led by its two coordinators, subsequently spent the following years in active pursuit of UNDEF's declared goal. The group did so in the expected and familiar manner, working closely with governmental agencies and U.N. deputies to develop a case and to navigate the application process. As October of 2006 arrived, the commission pointed to a tangible result of their months and months of hard work: some outstanding representatives of the Moors and Christians festivals—a selection from the Alicante town of Alcoy's neighborhood associations—had been invited to march in New York's Hispanic Heritage and Columbus Day Parade [8]. UNDEF and others considered the invitation an encouraging sign that UNESCO eventually would recognize the *fiestas* with the "human patrimony" designation.

Like many others, the members of UNDEF also understood that—should the campaign achieve its goal—the achievement would culminate a process that began in earnest in the 1990s. During that decade, Spain joined a number of other nations with formal initiatives to establish national and international mechanisms for celebrating and protecting important—and potentially vulnerable—forms and sites of cultural expression. In fact, the Spanish government played a critical role leading to the Proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO's Director-General in 2001, successfully presenting the Mystery Play of Elche that year as one of the first candidates for recognition [9,10]. At the same time, the government initiated the recognition process for another popular rite—the famous "Patum" commemoration held in the Catalan town of Berga during Corpus Cristi observances—that finally earned formal "masterpiece" status in 2005.

More broadly, Spanish diplomats spearheaded efforts to expand and to systematize "intangible heritage" mechanisms at both the domestic and international levels. Spain's delegation was instrumental in UNESCO's 2003 draft of a Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage [11]. The Convention provided both an international structure and financial support for preservation of key elements of "living culture." In advance of the Convention's anticipated approval by member states and its assumption of force, the government encouraged entities around Spain to nominate candidates for UNESCO recognition. After more than two years of public discussion and consideration and with the inauguration of the Convention on schedule, the government headed into the fall of 2006 confident that UNESCO would approve its first slate of proposed elements under the new pact. Representatives of the Popular Party proclaimed that, with the presentation of its nominees at the major upcoming meeting at the United Nations' headquarters, the time had come to enjoy the fruits of a sustained campaign and, most importantly, to revel in international recognition of Spain's illustrious contributions. Among all the world's nations only Italy had more "world heritage" elements than Spain, and now a significant collection of oral and intangible "masterpieces" would add to that long, internationally recognized list of the nation's outstanding "human patrimony".

This brief review of the development of the international "intangible heritage" movement—and of the particular location of the Moors and Christians festivals within that history—clarifies the reasons why the Popular Party's announcement on 13 October 2006 caused surprise and also why the PP would make that move. Simply put, "world heritage" designations depend on a complex, often tense process carried out across various arenas of domestic and international politics. Much is at stake in those labels as well as for those who get credit for their success <sup>2</sup> . They generate much more than national pride. As almost anybody in Spain—and especially any deputy in its government—understands, U.N. recognition of "World Heritage" sites—like the Great Mosque of Córdoba, Granada's Alhambra, the Royal Palace and Monastery at El Escorial, or Barcelona's Gaudi-designed Parc Güell and Casa Milà—brings substantial economic benefits, including international financial support and status-inspired tourism.

Eduardo Zaplana—and the political organization for which he spoke—clearly understood these high stakes when he announced the Popular Party's unexpected attempt to carry the issue of the "human patrimony" of the Moors and Christians festivals through the doors of the Congress of Deputies and, thus, to politicize the issue explicitly. But why would the Popular Party make that move when it did, presenting these *fiestas*—out of all the possibilities—as the lightning rod? As Zaplana and the PP also knew, UNESCO and the wider spheres of international diplomacy can serve too as frontlines in the culture wars. The time and place were right to pick up the fight, it seemed. But in order to understand why, we need to consider first the unique character of the object of conflict, that is, of a unique class of festivals that, curiously, dramatize their own version of "culture wars."

#### **3. The Rhetorical Battlegrounds of Moors and Christians**

While popular studies of the Moors and Christians festivals—including frequents exposés by travel writers and for the benefit of tourists—are extensive, scholarly analysis is more limited <sup>3</sup> . Yet, even a cursory review of this body of literature quickly exposes the cluster of tensions that define the festivals. For example, Moors and Christians celebrations take place throughout much of Spain as well as in areas around the world that belonged to the vast Spanish empire, and the widespread celebrations lay claim to a common format comprising a long-running, far-reaching

<sup>2</sup> For more on the history and politics of "human patrimony" movements related to Spain, see [12–16]. [16] focuses specifically on the 2006 patrimony debates surrounding the Moors and Christians *fiestas*.

<sup>3</sup> Below I discuss some good examples of travel writing on the festivals, including [17]. Key scholarly studies of the Moors and Christians festivals are [18–26]. As evident throughout this essay, I build especially on the work of Flesler in [24].

tradition <sup>4</sup> . At the same time, each site presents an independent and dynamic iteration of the festival ostensibly based on an exclusive, local history. In every case, the festivals center on a stylized series of battles that adhere to a set structure. Over the course of the festival (usually four to seven days), members of the community re-enact a historical drama defined by a few key plot points. First, a powerful army of "Moors" invades and takes possession of the area, typically marked by the capture of and raising of their flag at the town's main "fortress." <sup>5</sup> . Over the ensuing days of the celebration, a steely and overmatched band of "Christians" face long odds and temporary setbacks, yet eventually defeat and expel the Moorish "occupiers," restoring both land and culture into the fold of Christendom (see Figures 1–4 [27–30]). In other words, each festival re-enacts—in a compressed and schematic form—the so-called *Reconquista*, or "Reconquest," of Iberia ostensibly completed in 1492. On January 2 of that year Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain's venerated "Catholic Monarchs," secured the takeover of Granada (the peninsula's only remaining Islamic emirate) and, a few months later, issued the Edict of Expulsion requiring all Jews to leave the monarchs' territories by the end of July.

While the common narrative that structures each of the Festivals of Moors and Christians is basic—Moorish invasion followed by the Christians' eventual recovery—the celebrations are, invariably, far from simple. In fact, complexity of detail—or, more precisely, comprehensive spectacularity—functions as the essential characteristic of the festivals, regardless of its scale or duration. The process of amplification begins with the founding historical narratives themselves. As noted earlier, the heaviest concentration of festivals, including the largest and most renowned observances, lies along the coast and in the near-interior of Alicante, Valencia's southernmost province (Figure 5 [31]). Many towns and neighborhoods in and around Alicante city, the provincial capital, also hold celebrations. In each case, the "host" area—whether town, village, or neighborhood—presents and explains the historical events that serve as the basis for their particular observance. For example, in the town of Alcoy—the site of the largest festivals and the source of the 2006 Columbus Day Manhattan marchers—participants link the celebrations to a battle in April 1276. According to local legend, St. George (commonly known in Spanish as "Matamoros," that is, "Moor Killer") enabled the decisive victory of Christian forces over a powerful Moor army. Thus, Alcoyanos observe their *Fiesta de Moros y Cristianos* in conjunction with St. George's April feast day. Similarly, Villajoyosa—a village not far south of Alcoy along Alicante's coast and site of another of the most famous festivals—holds its celebrations in July around the Feast of St. Martha, who supposedly came to the miraculous aid of the Christian community in 1538 to repel a Barbary naval assault on the village.

These historiographic justifications often comprise intricate chronicles constructed, preserved and perpetuated by an association of local societies <sup>6</sup> . The network of groups organizes into distinct

<sup>4</sup> Hundreds of villages and towns in eastern, southern, and central Spain (in the regions of Valencia, Andalusia and Castile-La Mancha, respectively) hold annual celebrations, and Festivals of Moors and Christians are still common in parts of Mexico and the Philippines. In [26], Max Harris offers a comprehensive study of Mexican variations of the festivals.

<sup>5</sup> The castle may be an actual historic monument (cf. Figure 3) or a more modest theatrical construction set up on a local street for the festivities.

<sup>6</sup> See [32] for an excellent example from one of Alcoy's most prominent associations.

units, each with its own identity and shield and known alternately as *embajadas* (embassies), *cuarteles* (barracks or platoons), or *escuadras* (squadrons) (see Figure 6 [33]). In this way, a complex institutional network in each town, village, or neighborhood prepares at length for and then carries out its celebration at a different time—usually during the spring or summer and often in conjunction with the feast day of a particular Catholic saint—and in correlation with distinct historical episodes over the centuries of "the Reconquest." In some places, a unit plays the same role each year but, in many cases, the groups alternate jobs and identities, playing a "Christian" part one year and then appearing as "Moors"—often in blackface (Figure 1)—the next. In addition to the military re-creations—which can involve full caravels arriving by sea (Figure 2) and armies storming a town's medieval castle (Figure 3)—the multi-day celebrations include festive parades of the regiments of "Christians" and "Moors" and impressive firework displays to mark the heroic accomplishments of each army, especially of the "Christians'" final triumph (Figure 4). The costumes and props are extravagant, expensive, and evocative.

**Figure 1.** A squadron of Moors enters the city. Town of El Campello, Alicante province, 2006.

Photo by Bereber. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [27].

**Figure 2.** The Moors "disembark". Town of Villajoyosa, Alicante province.

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [28].

**Figure 3.** The battle for the castle. Town of Petrer, Alicante province.

Image provided by Fiestas de Moros y Cristianos [29].

**Figure 4.** The "Basque Christians" advance, seeking "reconquest". Town of Alcoy, Alicante province, 2006.

Photo by Popezz. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [30].

**Figure 5.** The domain of Moors and Christians: Alicante province, Valencia Community, Spain.

Note: Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons [31].

**Figure 6.** Sample of shields of association "squadrons" from San Blas neighborhood, city of Alicante.

Images provided Asociación de Moros y Cristianos de San Blas [33].

However, these invocations and re-enactments of historical events expose a central tension in the festivals between socio-historical ideals and realities. Most immediately, the *fiestas* summon "the Reconquest" as a clear—albeit powerful—overarching narrative: The Christian heroes bring Spain out of the Middle Ages and into the modern epoch by restoring the peninsula to its unified and rightful cultural identity after prolonged and oppressive fragmentation under the grip of invading Moors. Yet, at the same time, every version of the festival claims a singular chapter in this broad history. This appeal to historical particularity offers an implicit reminder that "the Reconquest" was not a simple, cohesive, or even linear march to the reunification of Iberia under the banner of Christianity after a long and shameful "interlude" under Islamic Moorish power. The historical realities were much more complex, such that many of the conflicts during the centuries leading up to (and even occurring after) 1492 and now celebrated as part of the teleology of

"reconquest" actually involved Christians fighting Christians and/or Muslims fighting Muslims <sup>7</sup> . For instance, archival evidence suggests that the occasion for St. George's extraordinary intercession in April 1276 and the source of Alcoy's festive commemoration each year in fact played out as something quite different than a showdown between "Moors" and "Christians." <sup>8</sup> . The conflict apparently arose as an episode in the fierce rivalry at the time between the two Christian-led kingdoms of Aragon and Castille ([18], p. 236). Similarly, Ferdinand and Isabella's "defeat" of Granada—typically heralded as the crowning event of "the Reconquest"—ultimately unfolded not as a military victory but rather as Emir Muhammad XII's handoff of control to "the Catholic Monarchs" after months under siege and in the face of potentially worse prospects at the hands of the Muslim Marinids from northern Africa.

Precisely because of such disparities between the archetypal narrative summoned by the Moors and Christians festivals and their underlying historical actualities, the *fiestas* function as what David Guss identifies as "semiotic battlefields" ([35], p. 10). The audience and actors—all participants in the shared public performances—find diverse, often divergent meanings in them. The representational mechanism of the festivals—the stories, the symbols, and so forth—'say' and 'do' different things for different people. In the concluding section of this essay I explore in greater depth the points of friction at work in the celebrations. As I show there, the tensions arise not only from the play between schematic invocations of "the Reconquest" and complex, local histories or from competing understandings of the *fiestas* among participants. Rather, the Moors and Christians observances ultimately publicize and attempt to sublimate the various cultural elements on which modern Iberian identities are founded. In other words, the festivals convey a critical subtext that inherently complicates the bipartite schema of "Moor versus Christian" and the narrative of territorial and cultural reunification that predominates. After all, the maneuvers carried out on the *fiestas'* "semiotic battlefields" are more intricate than they initially appear.

Nevertheless, as Guss reminds us in delineating conflicting forces at work in certain twentieth-century Venezuelan celebrations, surface appearances matter tremendously in the festive realm. Popular festivals operate with the immediate purpose of conveying and reinforcing specific ideals, even if those principles begin to unsettle upon closer examination or from competing perspectives. Whether employed deliberately or not, public festivities serve as strategic elements in the inevitable politics of culture. The human patrimony debates that arose around the Moors and Christians celebrations indicates the extent to which the cultural politics embedded in this

<sup>7</sup> [34] provides a provocative, popular account of the social and political complexities of medieval Iberia by María Rosa Menocal, a respected scholar of the literature and culture of those epochs.

<sup>8</sup> The familiar term "Moor" encapsulates the incongruities between popular conceptions of competing "civilizations" and the historical realities of Iberian culture. The word, derived from Roman designations for a particular North African province (in present-day Libya) as "Mauretania" and its Berber natives as "Mauri" (implying a "dark" hue), assumed more generic meanings in medieval romance languages. By the eleventh century, "Moor" circulated through the Iberian Peninsula in reference, alternatively, to anyone from the north of Africa, to a person of dark complexion and of seemingly African origin, or to any Muslim. Thus, "Moor" became a monolithic (albeit shifting) category for a variety of individuals and groups who made their way into the peninsula over the course of many centuries. In [34] (mentioned in preceding note), Menocal usefully delineates the origins and meanings of the term "Moor" as well as of other common designations of ethno-religious identity that came into popular use over the centuries.

particular set of festivals connects directly with Spain's long-running tradition of struggles over historical memory. How is the past represented? Where, and by whom? Those questions have led especially to recurring public tussles about conceptions of Iberia's medieval past <sup>9</sup> .

Indeed, as Max Harris explains in his comprehensive account of the parallel development of Moors and Christians observances in Spain and in Mexico, the festivals probably originated in the late 1500s at the instigation of King Felipe (Philip) II, who famously revised and promoted a variety of traditional celebrations in order to assert Spain's imperial glory ([26], p. 46). When local militias responsible for protecting the coast of Valencia against the Turkish navy and Barbary pirates began to enact mock battles, the king recognized the opportunity to formalize the practice in festive public dramatizations of his forces' victories. Thus was born the tradition of popular *fiestas* centered on re-enactment of heroic "Christian reconquest" against formidable "Moor" occupiers.

The origins of the festivals more than four centuries ago as instruments of imperial propaganda provide an important reminder of the ostensible function of current versions of the celebrations. While they no longer serve to mythologize Felipe II's empire, the *fiestas* still explicitly present and support specific myths about Spanish history and its role in shaping national and regional identities 10. Similarly, the festivals' emergence from the machinations of a "Golden Age" monarch also underscores the specific stagecraft on which the celebrations—then, as now—have always depended in depicting their respective mythologies. In that regard, the Festivals of Moors and Christians have always been decidedly and purposefully carnivalesque. In all of their individual variations and claims to singular historical episodes, the *fiestas* follow a skeletal structure that is fleshed out in intricate terms in almost every aspect of the festival. As José Luis Bernabeau Rico demonstrates in his pioneering study of the Moors and Christians commemorations, the festivals follow in the grand tradition of the *carnavales* (carnival celebrations) by constructing parallel universes of time and space where participants might transcend—and ultimately, transform—familiar dimensions of everyday life [19]. At the very least, the celebrations unfold along the lines of what Roland Barthes, in his famous diagnosis of the world of professional wrestling, calls "spectacles of excess." In self-contained arenas, bombastic gestures, symbols, and material accouterments reinforce particular "mythologies" in the clearest and most visceral terms [41]. Similarly, the unrelenting grandiloquence of the Moors and Christians festivals proffer and reinforce the idea of the Christians' triumph—and, thus, the historical process of "reconquest" and territorial

<sup>9</sup> There are too many examples to mention of disputes in Spain over historical representation, just as the critical literature focused on the politics of memory is too vast and rich to review here. The debates leading up to and following congressional approval of Spain's Ley de Memoria Histórica (Historical Memory Law) on 31 October 2007 serves as only one obvious and recent example to emerge from the broader socio-political context discussed in this essay. That legislation, sponsored by the Socialist Party and including formal condemnation of measures used by the Franco regime, most specifically addresses issues of public recognition of victims of and participants in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and during the subsequent four decades of Francisco Franco's rule. [36–39] represent some outstanding samples of scholarship exploring the high stakes in the cultural historiography of medieval Iberia.

<sup>10</sup> My references to "mythologies" here draw upon Henry Kamen's discussion of "the myths of Spain" in [40]. Kamen identifies narratives of "the Golden Age" (running from the mid-1400s and the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella through the early 1600s and the rule of Felipe II) that continue to shape predominant conceptions of Spanish identity and, thereby, to influence popular discourse and public policy.

reclamation—as inevitable, even divinely sanctioned. At every turn Moors and Christians appear, in excessive terms, as polar opposites. Undoubtedly, the *fiestas* operate as rhetorical conflicts, that is, as mock battles and dramatized showdowns between two distinct cultural entities. Was it a strange twist of fate, then, that when the festivals were drawn into other sorts of rhetorical conflicts—wars of words in the political sphere—in the fall of 2006 that the public skirmishes played out, like Moors and Christians celebrations themselves, in terms of a "clash of civilizations"? Whatever the causes for the curious convergence of these various rhetorics of conflict, we need to turn our attention back to the contexts of those debates and the discursive framework in which they played out.

#### **4. "Marching Under New but Often Old Flags": Huntington on "The Clash of Civilizations"**

As 2006 moved toward its conclusion, notions of profound culture clash circulated not only in the Festivals of Moors and Christians but also in public discussion on all sides, and that reality brings me to some of the central concerns of this special issue of *Religions* and of this essay. Twenty years after its initial proposition, Samuel Huntington's controversial thesis regarding "the clash of civilizations" still holds influence, particularly as it has impacted not only collective discussions about but also public and private actions regarding Islam and Muslims in Europe and North America. The 2006 debates about the Moors and Christians festivals demonstrate the enduring legacy of the "civilizational" approach.

In a now-familiar set of developments, Huntington first floated the idea—in the form of a question—in "The Clash of Civilizations?", an article published in the summer 1993 issue of the journal *Foreign Affairs* [42]. Since the article "stirred up more discussion in three years than any other article they had published since the 1940" (according to the journal's editors), Huntington offered a self-described "fuller, deeper, and more thoroughly documented answer to the article's question" in a 1996 book framed with a now-declarative instead of interrogative title: *The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order* [43]. Despite the substantially more detailed presentation, Huntington's main premises in the book remained the same as in the original piece. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Huntington observed that the end of the Cold War engendered:

the beginnings of dramatic changes in peoples' identities and the symbols of those identities. Global politics began to be reconfigured along cultural lines. […] In the post-Cold War world flags count and so do other symbols of cultural identity, including crosses, crescents and even head coverings, because culture counts, and cultural identity is what is most meaningful to most people. People are discovering new but often old identities and marching under new but often old flags which lead to wars with new but often old enemies ([43], pp. 19–20).

Based on this analysis, Huntington concluded that "the post-Cold War world is a world of seven or eight major civilizations. […] The key issues on the international agenda involve differences among civilizations. Power is shifting from the long predominant West to non-Western civilizations. Global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational" ([43], p. 29). Huntington proceeded to delineate nine "major civilizations" (despite his reference to a "world of seven or eight"): "Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist,

and Japanese" ([43], pp. 26–27). The list already belies his sense of the fundamental role of religion in defining "culture and cultural identities, which at the broadest level are civilizational identities" ([43], p. 20). He highlighted that, even in the "multipolar and multicivilizational" configuration of the new world order, a broadly "religious" division between the Christian-based "West" and "Islam" would continue to deepen as a primary fault line in global affairs.

If Huntington's paradigm generated widespread debate in 1993 and the years following, those discussions now look mild compared to the interest in his self-described "civilizational approach" almost a decade after. Following the events of 11 September 2001, 11 March 2004 and other acts of terrorism, commentators on both sides of the Atlantic and in many spheres of public discourse praised Huntington as prescient and adopted the "civilizational" perspective as an explanatory model for a variety of developments. Still, in all of its iterations and adaptions, proponents built on Huntington's basic assumptions: most immediately, that "the West" and "Islam" represent distinct historical formations guided by fundamentally different—and irresoluble—worldviews currently engaged in a "clash of civilizations" and, in turn, that such "clashes of civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace" and must be diffused by some means or another ([43], p. 321).

#### **5. Igniting a Rhetorical Fire: Pope Benedict at Regensburg**

Five years after 11 September, 2001, civilizational rhetoric continued to resonate deeply on both sides of the Atlantic. The year began with ongoing and sometimes-deadly protests over cartoon depictions of Muhammad in Denmark's leading newspaper, and the year included a number of other serious episodes stemming from controversial representations of Islam. As 2006 extended into September, many people took the year's developments as clear evidence that a "clash of civilizations" indeed was underway. In a show of respect—but also certainly out of fear for potential backlash—many municipalities in Spain already had altered festive traditions in the wake of the Danish cartoon controversy [44]. Still, in the days commemorating the fifth anniversary of the traumatic events of September 11, the words of one of the world's most visible figures amplified the idiom of "culture clash"—whether by chance or by design—and set in motion the debates that would flare up in Spain the next month over the Moors and Christians celebrations. The sequence began in earnest on September 12 in Regensburg, Germany. It was there and then that Pope Benedict XVI—in the course of a five-day tour of his home country—delivered a talk entitled "Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections" to a gathering of eminent "representatives of science" 11. In the now-famous speech, the Pope argued that the pursuit of truth and knowledge—the modern university's most fundamental task—must proceed from two foundational and mutually constitutive standpoints, namely, reason and faith. Benedict introduced this argument by framing his remarks as a response to his recent encounter with a modern edition of a late-fourteenth-century text—*Twenty-Six Dialogues with a Persian* (c. 1399)—by the Christian emperor Manuel II Paleologus (1350–1425? C. E.). The Pope used the text as a point of entry into more general reflection on the fundamental historical and philosophical differences between Christianity and Islam and, ultimately, as a means of outlining a mode of rationality that "listen[s]

<sup>11</sup> The Vatican's website provides further contextual details as well as the full transcript of the Pope's speech [45]. All citations below derive from this version of the text.

to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular." To that end, Benedict completed his speech by circling back to Manuel II's manuscript and by letting the Byzantine emperor—in his effort to bridge a seemingly inherent divide between Christianity and Islam—have the final word. He cited Manuel's insistence that God, by nature, calls us to "act reasonably." "It is to this great *logos*, to this breadth of reason," Benedict concluded, "that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university" [45].

Despite the pontiff's final invocation of a "dialogue of cultures," it was Benedict's initial discussion of Manuel II's text that garnered widespread attention and incited a global controversy. In setting his agenda, the Pope explained that he "would like to discuss only one point—itself rather marginal to [*Twenty-Six Dialogues with a Persian*] as a whole"—and turned his attention to the seventh of the twenty-six "conversations" between (according to Benedict's own characterization) "the erudite Byzantine emperor … and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both." This particular exchange, Benedict explained, "touches on the theme of the holy war," and in it Emperor Manuel

addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness, a brusqueness that we find unacceptable, on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.' The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable [45].

The consequences of Benedict's move, of his decision to include verbatim the evidence of Manuel II's "startling brusqueness," are now well known. The citation made news around the world and provoked fierce reactions. Upon hearing the Byzantine emperor's words uttered by the Holy Father, many people decried the statement as the Pope's unequivocal, general indictment of an inherent violence in Islamic thought and practice. Alongside discussions and debates across the globe about Benedict's intentions, large and heated protests developed at various sites in Turkey, India, Pakistan, Gaza, and elsewhere. By the end of the same week, Benedict felt compelled to offer a public apology and explanation as part of his regular Sunday address: "I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims," Benedict stated. "These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect" (as quoted in [46]).

Indeed, a broad view of Benedict's remarks reveal his emphasis on dialogue and partnership, as demonstrated in his concluding invocations of Manuel's text and in other passages quoted above. Elsewhere in the speech—and even in the same paragraph, when he quotes sura 2:256 of the Qur'an ("There is no compulsion in religion.")—the Pope tries to qualify and to temper the "startling brusqueness" of the Byzantine's remarks. Nevertheless, the wider look at Benedict's speech also makes clear his effort to delineate a clear and deep-seated distinction between Christianity and Islam in order to celebrate the "profound encounter between faith and reason" that

occurred during the peculiar engagement of Christian theology with classical Greek thought. Building on a critical observation made by Théodore Khoury, the respected editor of and commentator on *Twenty-Six Dialogues with a Persian*, Benedict underscores Manuel II's key point—"not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature"—by calling attention to the Byzantine emperor's opinions about how and why Islam strayed from this foundational Christian concept. "For Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent," Benedict summarized. "His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." This perspective theologically justifies even seemingly irrational actions as consistent with divine will. While Benedict does not impute these characteristics onto all Muslims, a particular implication still haunts his discussion: Christianity and Islam occupy distinct theological territories, and the former more naturally reconciles reason with faith.

#### **6. Throwing Fuel on the Rhetorical Fire: José María Aznar on "Living in a Time of War"**

Pope Benedict's September 12th speech set the stage for the events that developed in Spain over the following month. As in most places, a flood of opinions—from many social, religious, and cultural sectors and across the political spectrum—moved through the peninsula in waves in the days and weeks that followed. Notably, the debates carried out publicly in the media, in the halls of government, among religious communities, and elsewhere quickly shifted from the question of the Pope's intentions—or used that issue as springboard—toward the issue of Islam's essential nature and its implications in the contemporary world. In Spain, as in most places, the discussions centered on the inclusion of those contentious words about the "evil and inhuman" consequences of Muhammad's staggering legacy despite the Vatican's continued insistence that the words were the relic of a medieval text rather than the true sentiments of the pontiff. The focus on that single line suggests that most commentators probably did not bother to read Benedict's fuller statement. And, even if they did, many probably remained confused or underwhelmed by his comparative reflections on the intricacies of Christian and Islamic theological development.

Still, the general disregard for the context of the Pope's citation and the pervasive preoccupation with its ostensible indictment of Islam reveals a curious convergence of perspectives. Lending further credence to Samuel Huntington's prediction that the metanarrative of a "clash of civilizations" would predominate public discourse in the early twenty-first century, the discussion in Spain of the Pope's speech unfolded around the same assumption that structured the lecture itself, namely, that "Islam" and "the West" represented two fundamentally distinct and conflicting ideological entities vying for global influence and power. That symmetry of viewpoints serves as a vivid reminder that, while unique interests and apprehensions in Spanish society would refract public discussion of the Pope's speech in certain directions, the conversations formed part of a spectrum of common concerns in Europe and elsewhere about the nature of Islam and its role in the contemporary world.

Those questions, as they related to Spain and its specific role on the geopolitical stage, surfaced explicitly ten days after the Pope delivered his talk in Regensburg and five days after his public apology for any offense the speech had caused. José Maria Aznar, one of the towering figures in the Popular Party as Spain's former longstanding Prime Minister (1996 to 2004), raised the issues—and added a new dimension to the ongoing debates—while offering some brief remarks at the opening reception of a conference on "Global Threats, Atlantic Structures" sponsored by the Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank, The Hudson Institute 12.

In that context, Aznar took about fifteen minutes to provide some general reflections on the conference's broad theme. He emphasized the need for the U.S., Spain, and other long-standing allies to recommit, even after the end of the Cold War, to "the Atlantic alliance" formalized after World War II in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as a means to confront Soviet power. NATO remained essential, Aznar asserted. While it was still needed to contain post-Soviet Russian influence, the Atlantic states now faced another, even more nefarious threat: "radical Islam." Aznar delineated the current state of global affairs as a matter of stark contrasts. He identified "the West" as civilizations stemming from western European culture and, therefore, rooted in Christianity. ("It's impossible to explain Europe without Christian roots," he insisted again and again [47].) Because the Atlantic connected most of this "civilization," a strong transoceanic alliance was indispensible to the survival of "the West." In his view, survival remained the immediate reality in the face of the ascendant rival civilization he figured as "Islam." "We are living in a time of war," Aznar explained. "It's them or us. The West did not attack Islam; it was they who attacked us." He continued: "We must face up to an Islam that is ambitious, that is radical and that influences the Muslim world, a fundamentalist Islam that we must confront because we don't have any choice. We are constantly under attack and we must defend ourselves." In framing these comments, Aznar not only vigorously defended the Pope's efforts at Regensburg to consider the theological roots of this "ambitious" Islam but also tried to redirect the outcry back at Benedict's critics. The Westerners who take issue with the Pope are "soft," Aznar contested, and take their cue from some of their own "leaders who don't believe in the West." Accordingly, the most "decisive task" we now face is a "battle of values" to preserve and to promote "Western civilization" [47].

Despite their "startling brusqueness"—to borrow Benedict's description in the Regensburg talk of the words of another, much earlier critic of Islam—Aznar's comments came as little surprise. Both during and after his tenure as Prime Minister, Aznar had been one of President Bush's most vocal supporters in the so-called "War on Terror." Despite the opposition of a majority of his compatriots, he had committed Spanish troops and material support to efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Moreover, many observers attributed Aznar's political undoing to an Al-Queda-linked terrorist cell that, through a series of coordinated explosions on March 11, 2004 along one of Madrid's commuter train lines, killed 191 people and wounded around 1800 more. The attacks occurred three days before the general elections that voted Aznar's party out of office amid a swirl of questions and suspicions about his government's handling of the situation.

Still, in the midst of the debates already taking place about the Pope's Regensburg speech, Aznar was bound to draw attention for his austere view of Islam and its "war" on "the West." Even so, his biting comments did not end with his prepared remarks. Upon finishing them, he took a number of questions from his audience. One woman asked him to speak more specifically about

<sup>12</sup> The Hudson Institute website provides summary details about the conference [47]. The page also includes a link to the complete audio record of the reception, including Aznar's remarks, audience questions, and responses. Citations below refer to the audio file provided there. For further information on the proceedings, see also [48] and [49].

"Spain's views of Islam" today in light of its long historical presence in and deep influence on the Iberian Peninsula, beginning with the successful military campaigns of North African "Moors" in the early 700s until Ferdinand and Isabella's takeover of Granada in 1492. Aznar acknowledged that history, but added: "It is interesting to note that, while a lot of people in the world are asking the Pope to apologize for his speech, I have never heard a Muslim say sorry for having conquered Spain and occupying it for eight centuries" [47]. He concluded by invoking the expulsion edict by "the Catholic Monarchs" five centuries earlier, implying a need for a renewed effort—both in and beyond Spain—against the ambitions of the "radical" Islam that, to him, presented a real and severe threat. "I support Ferdinand and Isabella!" Aznar proclaimed. "They were a great king and queen" [47].

Aznar's unwavering endorsement of Ferdinand and Isabella—in a speech on global security, no less—pulls the Festivals of Moors and Christians back into view. After all, the festivals dramatize and commemorate precisely that history of Moorish "conquest" and Christian "reconquest" invoked by Aznar. And, just as a whole slew of questions circle around the implications of the festivals and their grandiloquent representations of Spain's medieval past, a flood of responses and interpretations followed Aznar's declaration that present threats to global security connected directly with Iberia's historical "clash of cultures." <sup>13</sup>. Aznar's comments quickly intensified the public discussion already underway about the Pope's Regensburg speech and its implications. However, Aznar's remarks also introduced a host of new questions and considerations into the discussions sparked by Benedict. Was there merit to his clear association between the complex, centuries-long cultural and political conflicts of medieval Iberia and the current state of world affairs, more than half a millennium later? Was the world population in 2006 really "living in a time of war," much less one between "Islam" and "the West" that essentially stretched back to Islam's origins in the seventh century?

Yet, despite the efforts of various commentators to isolate Aznar's views as idiosyncratic 14, the uproar they caused reveals the wider socio-political stage on which the Moors and Christians festivals—and the debates about them—took place. The context becomes even clearer in additional comments that Aznar made in the concluding portion of his Hudson Institute talk. In the final question of the night, a member of the audience pressed Aznar for his views about the Alliance of Civilizations. He referred to the initiative brought in September 2004 to the United Nations General Assembly by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who—as head of the Spanish Socialist Party and one

<sup>13</sup> A cursory review of the Spanish press in the days following Aznar's speech indicates the abundance and passion of reactions to Aznar's statement from various perspectives. For the week beginning on 23 September 2006—the first day of the news cycle in Spain following Aznar's speech—virtually every major Spanish media outlet, including the state-run RTVE, private radio and television networks, and the country's most widely read dailies and weeklies, featured multiple stories on Aznar's comments and of the diversity of responses to them. For instance, *20 minutos*—a popular (and free) daily with an active Internet presence—received almost 1400 online comments on its initial report about Aznar's remarks [50]. Similarly, in its popular Sunday edition on September 24, *El País*—Spain's highest-circulating and most respected newspaper—showcased reactions to Aznar's speech from some of the nation's prominent religious and political leaders [51].

<sup>14</sup> Even Mariano Rajoy, Aznar's successor as head of the Popular Party, tried to distance himself and the party from his predecessor's comments. When asked to react to Aznar's statements, he said: "I am not responsible for the past, neither Franco nor of the invasion of the Arabs. I take care of the future" [51].

of Aznar's longtime critics and political rivals—succeeded him as prime minister in 2004. In the aftermath of the bombings of the trains in Madrid that year, Zapatero called for the U.N. to take the lead in fostering international cooperation in overcoming problematic divisions between cultures, particularly the deadly opposition between "Islamic and Western civilizations." <sup>15</sup>. Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, co-sponsored the initiative, and on 14 July, 2005 the U.N. Secretary General announced the formal launch of "an Alliance of Civilizations aimed at bridging divides between societies exploited by extremists" and outlined the expectation of actionable recommendations by the end of 2006 that U.N. member states could adopt 16. Since the High-Level Group charged by the U.N. with developing those recommendations stood on the verge of releasing its final report at the time of the Hudson Institute conference, the questioner reminded Aznar, "Your party in Spain has been very critical about this idea launched by the current prime minister. But then President Bush and Secretary Rice have endorsed this idea of the Alliance of Civilizations as a way of engaging Islam in a dialogue—at least moderate Islam—so what's your take on this project?" Once again, Aznar pulled no punches in his reply. "For me, the Alliance of Civilizations is stupidity," he quickly retorted. "I'm in favor of a dialogue between civilizations. […] But what does it mean, the 'alliance of civilizations'? That we in the European Union, or the United States, should be in alliance, for example, with the Ayatollah's regime? This is another 'civilization'?" [47].

At first glance, Aznar's immediate dismissal of the Alliance of Civilizations initiative set in motion by Zapatero as sheer "stupidity" reveals the former prime minister's deep political and ideological antipathies toward his successor <sup>17</sup> . He underscores his opposition to the idea of excessive collaboration and insists that it is endemic to Zapatero and some of the other world leaders who, in preceding portions of his talk, he explicitly identifies as "soft." In assessing diplomatic strategies, he explains that "alliances" should be reserved for allies, for those who share your "way of life," so that you can "dialogue" with your adversaries from a position of cultural unity and political strength. Nevertheless, the audience member's question about Aznar's "take" on the Alliance of Civilizations already points to the significant common ground between Spain's political rivals. Zapatero's proposal of an "alliance of civilizations" serves as a clear signal that, although his tactics may have diverged substantially from Aznar's views, both men accepted the kind of "civilizational approach" to global politics outlined by Samuel Huntington. Each operated with the notion that the dynamics among fundamentally different cultural blocks—and especially the opposition between radically opposed coalitions of "Islam" and "the West"—defined

<sup>15</sup> See [52] for the full text of Zapatero's initial presentation of the idea at the U.N.

<sup>16</sup> The opening of the statement reads: "The Secretary-General is pleased to announce the launch of an initiative for an "Alliance of Civilizations". The initiative is intended to respond to the need for a committed effort by the international community—both at the institutional and civil society levels—to bridge divides and overcome prejudice, misconceptions, misperceptions, and polarization which potentially threaten world peace. The Alliance will aim to address emerging threats emanating from hostile perceptions that foment violence, and to bring about cooperation among various efforts to heal such divisions." [53].

<sup>17</sup> Zapatero's idea for the Alliance of Civilization, and the contrast of his positions from Aznar's assertions about Spain as "Christian," developed in part from his active and ongoing relations with communities of Muslims in Spain, especially groups of Spanish converts to Islam. For more on these developments, see [54]. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of this essay for calling attention to this point.

contemporary affairs. Accordingly, both men—or, more precisely, the major political parties they represented—sought to pursue their different "civilizational" strategies through domestic as well as international political mechanisms. When Aznar delivered his talk at the Hudson Institute conference in Washington, DC in late September 2006—two weeks after Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech and two weeks before a slate of activities scheduled around Columbus Day and Hispanic Heritage celebrations in New York—discussions about U.N. proposals already reverberated across the Iberian Peninsula as part of a much wider set of debates about politics, religion, immigration, and culture and about the role of each of those elements in shaping who Spaniards "really" were and wanted to be.

#### **7. Back to the Battlegrounds: Moors and Christians on the Rhetorical Front**

Against the critical backdrop of the developments of the preceding weeks, we can return to where we started—October of 2006—and see more clearly how the Moors and Christians festivals surfaced at that moment as a flashpoint in Spanish public discourse. With continued coverage in the press about Aznar's comments and the reactions they provoked, the *fiestas* moved directly into the political spotlight. On October 4, Félix Herrero—the president of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Entities and imam of the Union Mosque of Málaga—made the key move, narrowing the broad discussion of the role of Islam in Iberian history and culture toward more focused consideration of popular representations in Spain of Muslims. In light of Pope Benedict's and Aznar's speeches, Herrero offered the Moors and Christians festivals as an obvious and significant example. He issued a public statement in which he challenged the validity of the *fiestas* and their portrayal of Muslims of the past, insisting that they negatively impacted Muslims of the present. Herrero called for the immediate suspension of the festivals. They "have no place in the democractic Spain of today," he asserted. "In the service of the goal of peaceful coexistence [*buena convivencia*] these festivals should disappear" ([55]; see also [56]). He objected especially to a component of certain celebrations in Alicante province, like those of Bocairent and Beneixama. In those towns, the *fiestas* included a tradition in which the victorious Christians, after their final triumph over the Moors in the re-enactments, burned an effigy, called "El Mohama"—a clear reference to Muhammad—carried by the Moors' front guard throughout the festival as a literal figurehead. In the course of the following days, festival organizers in both towns agreed to suspend the "Mohama" burning.

But, of course, the timing of the imam's criticism of the festivals was not accidental. Building on the long-running efforts of UNDEF and of Spain's diplomatic mission, La Asociación San Jordi [The Association of St. George], which oversees the town of Alcoy's renowned Moors and Christians celebrations, had spent months preparing to send representatives to New York to march as Moorish and Christian "squadrons" in the upcoming Columbus Day and Hispanic Heritage parade. Imam Herrero was well aware of the mission's intentions to apply for human-patrimony recognition. And there too his intervention proved effective. On October 6, the organizers from Alcoy, which hosts one of the oldest, largest, and most elaborate celebrations each year, decided at the last minute to break with their long-running and much-cherished tradition by changing their plans for the parade in New York. The group decided that the Christian regiments would march alone, without the squadrons of Moors (Figure 7 [57]). Javier Moreno, the president of La

Asociación San Jordi, denied that pressure following Imam Herrero's objections made any difference to the group's representatives in New York. "It's possible that the presence of the Moor [squadrons] could wound some sensibilities," he acknowledged after announcing the decision, "but if they're not here it is simply because that the Christian procession has more rhythm than the Moor one, and was better to head the parade" [58]. He added: "In Alcoy there are no polemics. Other people create polemics with declarations that are respectable but gratuitous. All of the squadrons— Moor and Christian alike—represent the people." With similar assurances that the decision was "exclusively a matter of infrastructure," Amparo Ferrando—Alcoy's Councilor of Tourism as well as one of the Popular Party's national deputies—insisted, "our festivals portray historical events and are not a matter of, nor offensive to, any particular religion" [58].

Despite these explanations, many supporters of the festivals took issue with the decision to abandon the Moors. The debate about the *fiestas*—beginning with Herrero's initial statement on 4 October—had garnered widespread coverage in the national press throughout the week and, with the news of the Moorish squadrons' absence from the New York exhibition, the Popular Party decided to act. The stage was set for Eduardo Zaplana's announcement on Friday, the thirteenth, that the PP would bring the non-binding resolution to the lower legislative house to win support for the festivals' "human patrimony" candidacy. As Zaplana asserted in explaining the unprecedented move, the Popular Party saw the need for a courageous counterattack in order to defend free expression in the face of the "debilitating self-censorship" recently on display with regard to the *fiestas*.

**Figure 7.** 'No more Moors!' A Christian squadron from Alcoy (province of Alicante) marches alone, without traditional Moorish counterparts, down Fifth Avenue in New York's Hispanic Heritage and Columbus Day Parade, 9 October 2006.

Photo by Miguel Rajmil/EFE [57].

The Popular Party's move complicated the ongoing public discussion of the festivals. Although the party took up the cause of promoting the Moors and Christians celebrations for UNESCO designation, local representatives of the festivals strongly criticized the initiative. UNDEF should coordinate the effort, they noted, not some political organization. As one member of the UNDEF commission put it, the process of applying for international recognition "should be separate from any opportunistic and electoral maneuver … to confuse our respected celebration with politics" [59]. Accordingly, Zaplana's announcement effectively shifted the national debate away from questions about Islam and representations of Muslims to the issues of politicization of local traditions. The driving concerns became a matter of who has the right to represent popular celebrations—the Moors and Christians festivals or otherwise—and how to do so. In this way, the *fiestas* remained in the press and part of the national conversation for the next month and a half 18. Finally, on 21 November, UNDEF filed a formal petition with the Spanish government to direct the process of filing for UNESCO recognition, undercutting the Popular Party's efforts to take control of the issue. Even though political skirmishes—and public interest in them—continued through February, when the Popular Party eventually presented the *fiestas* to the national legislature for UNESCO candidacy, the measure never came before the full Congress of Deputies for approval 19. Public debate about the festivals largely died down. With or without UNESCO's official stamp, townspeople and tourists continued with their preparations for and participation in the celebrations 20.

### **8. Final Battles: The** *Fiestas* **Un-Moored**

Although the political showdowns over the Moors and Christians festivals finished with more whimper than bang—and also proved, after all, fairly short-lived—the episode demands a bit more consideration. In the concluding portion of this essay, I want to return briefly to one of the climactic moments in the series of developments that played out in the wake of Pope Benedict's Regensburg speech. As noted earlier, the announcement on October 6 that the Alcoy representatives in New York would march without squadrons of Moors marked a critical moment in the public debates that had developed in Spain about Islam and its place in the history and culture of the Iberian Peninsula. The decision not only sparked widespread discussion but also provoked the Popular Party's legislative initiative.

Upon closer examination, the explanations offered by Javier Moreno and Amparo Ferrando two of the officials responsible for the decision quoted earlier—are similarly provocative. Whether or not Moreno and Ferrando really believed what they said—namely, that political pressures did not play, or should not have played, a part in the decision to keep the Moor squadrons out of the New York parade—a sense of understandable uncertainty and defensiveness inhabits their explanations. As primary spokespeople for Alcoy participants, both speakers acknowledged that

<sup>18</sup> See, for example, [59,60]. [61] offers a helpful archive of press coverage of the political debates about the festivals.

<sup>19</sup> In September 2012, the Popular Party tried to initiate the process for UNESCO certification once again [62]. This effort also failed but set off a new round of discussions about the festivals and their implications. Comparison of the debates of the fall of 2006 with those from the fall of 2012 remains a task for future study.

<sup>20</sup> In fact, the Moors and Christians *fiestas* continue to expand. Each year, more neighborhoods, villages, and towns around Valencia, encouraged by local, regional, and national tourist councils, introduce new celebrations. Flesler reports how "since the 1960s … [the] festivals have experienced continuous growth in size, showiness, and popularity**,** together with a gradual increase in the number of towns celebrating them. This double expansion is directly related to the continuous development of the tourism industry in Spain" ([24], p. 98).

their traditions were under public fire, shrouded by suspicions of prejudice. The inclusion of Moorish squadrons might "wound some sensibilities," Moreno admitted, although Ferrando emphasized that the festivals are "*not* … offensive to any particular religion" despite what some observers might think. Yet, along with diffidence, a tone of melancholy resonates in their responses. And why not? They knew that something was missing. Their town's famous traditions, as displayed publicly in New York, lacked something fundamental. After all, what are the Moors and Christians celebrations without the Moors? That simple and seemingly obvious question points us back to the actual structure and content of the *fiestas*. The move also forces us to turn the analytical lens around. Rather than examining the socio-political context to gain insight into the festivals, we can look to the festivals to illuminate the socio-political context.

That critical turn is productive since, as it happens, the showdown between "Moors" and "Christians" in the *fiestas* is more complicated than it initially appears. As Daniela Flesler masterfully delineates in "Playing Guest and Host"—a key chapter on the festivals in her 2008 volume, *The Return of the Moor*—"an essential ambivalence" inhabits the celebrations and, in turn, that tension both expresses and produces a deep sense of unease in the *fiestas* and in Spanish society more broadly [24] 21. In a short piece for readers of *The Guardian* (UK), British travel writer Andromeda Agnew picks up on a strange pattern, one that Flesler subsequently explores in greater depth. In observing a variety of Moors and Christians celebrations in Alicante province, Agnew casually notes how "the festivals give [Spaniards] a chance to revel in their Islamic ancestry." The celebrations trumpet the cultural sophistication of the Moors of Spain's past. "In contrast to the magnificent yet cumbersome armour of the Christians, the Moors float down the street, resplendent in yellow and purple chiffon. These characteristics confound her initial expectations. "Everyone wants to be a Moor!" she observes [17].

In "Playing Guest and Host," Flesler pursues this idea even further. She too underscores the point that the role-playing on which the festivals depend arises from the desire to celebrate Spain's Moorish legacy and, more immediately, to claim it as a unique and foundational component of Spanish culture and identity. However, Flesler follows her deconstructionist intuitions—already figured in the title of the essay—and argues that such assertions of identity belie uncertainties about who "belongs" in Spain and, in turn, to whom the land "belongs." Who is "guest," and who is "host"? Drawing on Jacques Derrida's and Sarah Ahmed's considerations of those categories to illuminate the roles acted out in the festivals, Flesler shows how "the efforts to delimit clear spaces of separation fail. Moors and Christians become simultaneously guests and hosts in what Homi Bhabha calls a 'third space' that is neither one of complete separation nor one of homogenization" ([24], p. 97).

In this way, Flesler looks beyond immediate appearances. As already noted in my initial description of the festivals, everything about them conveys the sense of encounter between distinct cultures. Again, to describe the celebrations in Huntington's terms, they dramatize the spectacular "clash of civilizations." As Flesler summarizes, "the true protagonist of these celebrations is the excess that permeates all the festive rituals at both the discursive and performative levels" ([24], p. 101). For, through "the rhetorical excess," the festivals present "narratives that aim at justifying

<sup>21</sup> Flesler's chapter is based on [63], an earlier article co-written with Adrián Pérez Melgosa.

an essential, Christian right to the land, while explaining away the presence of the Moors as something temporary and inconsequential" ([24], p. 102). From this angle, the spectacular dramatizations of local legend really speak to contemporary circumstances. Flesler explains: "The preoccupation with current changes in the racial and ethnic composition of Spanish society is displaced into a distant and safer past." Thus, "the festivals are plagued by an anxiety of delimiting, in that past, the concrete space occupied by each group, to ensure that the limits appear well-established" ([24], p. 97). The context of the festivals makes the "anxiety of delimiting" particularly acute. As noted earlier, not only was the Islamic legacy long and rich in the area of Valencia Community that serves as the heartland of the celebrations but the region also remains one of the main destinations in Spain for Muslim immigrants as well as tourists.

Furthermore, by locating the apprehension at the heart of the process of "delimiting" that the festivals attempt to enact, Flesler stresses how the efforts to establish those limits ultimately fail. The boundaries of distinction, so clearly marked in every aspect of the performance, constantly break down as the roles of Moors and Christians continually flip back and forth. As Flesler summarizes,

within the many rituals of separation between the two sides that make up the festivals, there are traces that reveal how the official discourse making the Christians as hosts is only intelligible if one notes their position as guests in that same territory. During the celebrations, each one of the groups takes turns at occupying the position of host, [serving alternately as victors and victims, possessing and losing the castle,] with an awareness of the transitory nature of this role, aware that both in the festival and in the history of the area, both Moors and Christians are guests ([24], p. 103).

Despite the spectacular mechanisms employed in the festivals to delimit roles and to distinguish "Moors" from "Christians," the collapse of those boundaries occurs not only in fleeting moments but also in obvious ways at critical junctures of the proceedings. For instance, the climax of every Moors and Christians *fiesta*—regardless of its length and complexity—arrives with the Christians' "reconquest," after a prolonged battle, of the territory overtaken by the Moorish invaders during the early stages of the festival. At that critical moment, the Moors leave and the Christians enter the castle (or other symbolic stronghold) on which the preceding battles focused with all of their booming retorts from life-size guns and canons. In this transposition of conqueror and conquered, the troops come into direct contact. Their leaders address each other in extended dialogue. The confrontation represents the dramatic apex of the entire festival, as the Moorish leader expresses despair at the loss and pleads for compassion. The Christians weigh the request—usually with a conflicted and laborious consideration of the facts—before finally expelling the Moors from the land.

The conclusion of the 2012 celebration in the San Blas neighborhood of Alicante offers an outstanding example <sup>22</sup> . As the Moor and Christian groups faced each other across the final "battleground"—in fact, a local intersection where organizers erected the stage-set castle—the Moors' emir emerged from among his battalions. In a long monologue presented in the rhetorical style of a medieval epic poem and directed toward the Christian leaders—the queen and her generals—standing at the head of their army, the emir acknowledged his peoples' defeat and the

<sup>22</sup> All descriptions, images, and transcriptions of the 2012 festival in San Blas derive from materials produced by the author at the event.

loss of their possessions (Figure 8). He felt "pitiful" and lamented his "broken soul" [*alma partida*] now that the Christians were forcing him and his community to leave. "Blood ties me to this land, *my* land!" he cried. His own blood as well as that of his family and of his people had mixed with that soil, where generations of his ancestors were buried [*enterrados*]. Banishment, "*el destierro*"—literally, "removal from the land"—felt worse than death to them, he wailed. As "exiles," the Moors would be completely … *unmoored!* In turn, the emir's emotional petition moved the Christians. Holding his head in his hands, their lead general agonizes over what to do. "I feel two impulses," he cried. "I don't know … to punish or to pardon?!" [*Siento los dos impulsos. ¡No sé! ¿Condenar o perdonar?*] And then, quickly finding his resolve and acting on it before it leaves him, he issued his final command: "Leave now! Take your liberty instead of death!" As the Moors marched solemnly past him and the other Christians, unmoored after all, the general recovered his conviction. "Alicante is now Christian! Glory to God!" he proclaimed. In light of the obviously conflicted emotions of the preceding action, an uncertainty echoed from the general's words. His pronouncement sounded more like a statement of possibility than of fact. Either way, he led his charges into the reclaimed castle to the rhythm of the victory march rising from the loudspeakers temporarily installed in the streets.

**Figure 8.** After the "reconquest," the Moor emir pleads for mercy from the Christian queen. San Blas neighborhood, Alicante city, 9 July 2012.

Photo by author.

While the words and details may differ from festival to festival and place to place, San Blas's 2012 iteration portrays a now-familiar scene. In almost every case, the final encounter follows the same general script: the lamentations of the Moor leader of the impending *destierro*, of the final unmooring from the beloved place; the conflicted emotions of the Christian figureheads; uncertainty followed by the sudden, resolute expulsion of the defeated…. Watching these dramas, with their flip-flopping roles and obvious ambivalences—highlighted through the performers' histrionics and only made more apparent by the Christian leaders' artificial claims to definitive victories—the questions raised by Flesler rush to the surface: Who is 'guest' here, and who is 'host'? Who "belongs" to these lands, and to whom do these lands "belong"? In the end, the "clash of civilizations" portrayed in such exaggerated terms in the festivals—the narrative of Muslim 'invaders' versus Christian 'natives'—feels more like a showdown of intimate adversaries, if not a nasty family quarrel.

In this way, the different rhetorics of the festivals—their overarching clarity countered by the palpable uncertainties—conflict. When all is said and done, the overriding carnivalesque quality of the *fiestas* points to the fact that the celebrations truly are carnivals, in the vein of Spain's long and abundant tradition of popular rituals: The Moors and Christians festivals provide a release from the strictures of everyday expectations, as Bernabeu Rico argues ([19], p. 99); they unsettle social roles and hierarchies, as Harris explains ([25], pp. 48, 59). And, as noted earlier, the stylized battles on the streets create "semiotic battlefields" where conflicting meanings and interpretations of audience and actors alike take shape and play out. Still, the festivals speak clearly of a popular desire to present Spain as an exemplar of "*convivencia*"—cultural and religious coexistence—by embracing the legacy of the Moors (and Jews and others). Yet, in order to sustain this claim—a "multiculturalism *avant la lettre*," as Flesler calls it ([24], p. 97)—those 'other' elements must be constrained within the controlled spaces of the medieval past or the ritual present. But as this ideal of *convivencia* circulates through the mock confrontations and resolutions of Moors and Christians, what other meanings and desires make their way onto the "semiotic battlefields" of the *fiestas*? What do tourists take from the dramas? And, more pointedly, what do they say to "the Moors" of today, including the thousands of Muslims who reside—whether as recent immigrants, long-time residents, or new converts—in the places where the celebrations occur? 23.

A viable catalog of answers to those questions, much less feasible analysis of responses, falls beyond the scope of the present essay. Nevertheless, the queries pull our attention back to the primary topic at hand. The image of the Alcoy contingents in New York's Columbus Day parade comes back into view, and it is striking (see Figure 7). As the Christian squadrons march alone down Fifth Avenue, without their familiar counterparts and out of their usual context, they appear a bit like those adversaries at the conclusion of the typical *fiesta* back home. They appear, literally and figuratively, unmoored. As a representation of "Spanish culture"—much less of the festivals themselves—the picture is incomplete, and the glaring absence of Moors among the Alcoy procession paradoxically heightens our awareness of the overarching reality of Iberian history as well as its continual re-imaginings in cultural forms like the *fiestas*: The Islamic presence, whether as an enduring power from the past or as a collection of immigrants and converts in the present, remains indispensible to the idea of "Spain" as well as to social realities on the peninsula across many centuries.

In that light, the final image captures the tremendous irony of the situation. The "Christian" squadrons—the victorious "hosts" at the *fiestas* on home turf—suddenly find themselves as guests

<sup>23</sup> I recognize my limited discussion in this essay of Muslims' participation in and perspectives on the *fiestas* and the public debates about them. Flesler addresses this issue in ([24], pp. 99–101). For a broad and illuminating consideration of Muslim viewpoints on issues of cultural representation in contemporary Spain, see [64].

at a celebration of a literal and figurative departure from that Spain of the "Old World" that their own festival gloriously invokes. The American parades also center around the achievements of "the Catholic Monarchs" in 1492, as do the Festivals of Moors and Christians but, rather than mark Ferdinand and Isabella's ostensible completion of "the Reconquest" with the expulsion of the Jews and the takeover of the last Islamic emirate at Granada, the Columbus Day and Hispanic Heritage festivities memorialize the "New World" that Columbus set in motion in the name of those same royal patrons. So, in the midst of commemoration of leaving behind Europe for a land of opportunity, we see the remnant from Alcoy playing the "Christian" part in an unfamiliar popular celebration serving a different national mythology. The Alcoyanos parade through the heart of one of the world's financial and cultural centers, heading southward in the direction of the statue of Lady Liberty who proudly stands in New York's harbor as a symbol of welcome and protection to all who wish to enter her territory ("Give me your tired, your poor…."). The revelry of which the "Christians" find themselves part is, like that statute, intended as a tribute to the foundational role of immigrants (whether they claim "Italian," "Hispanic" and/or other identities) in building and populating the great metropolis and the nation beyond. The whole scene makes one wonder not only whose "patrimony" is on display but also who determines, and how, exactly what counts as "patrimony" in the first place.

On that day if the Alcoy marchers had kept going, past Lady Liberty and straight across the Atlantic, they would have arrived back on Iberian soil where Spaniards continued to invoke, to reflect on, and to debate those various histories. What passed through the Alcoyanos' minds as they processed through midtown Manhattan without any "Moors," strangers in a strange land and spectacularly outfitted as the triumphant denizens of an earlier epoch? Did they too appreciate the paradoxes arising out of that odd scene, with their "squadron" surrounded on all sides by a multitude of posters and banners? The signs included inscriptions—in English, in Spanish, or more often in both idioms—of the theme of the day's celebration. The phrase provided clear indication of why the "Christians" always depended upon the "Moors" in their *fiestas* back home. More broadly, it offered a reminder of the underlying hybridity of Spanish as well as American cultures, despite the predominance in public discourse of rhetoric about the defining impact of distinct "civilizations." "¡*Todos* somos imigrantes!" the placards proclaimed. "We are *all* immigrants!"

#### **Acknowledgments**

Many thanks to Todd Green for initial encouragement and subsequent support of this project, first as a presentation at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and then as a contribution to this special issue of *Religions*. I also greatly appreciate the generous and constructive commentary provided by the anonymous reviewers of the initial submission of this essay. Their feedback has helped to make the current version much stronger. Finally, I am deeply indebted to my wife (and resident *alicantina*), Nereida Segura-Rico, for many reasons, including her invaluable engagement with evolving drafts of the project.

#### **Conflicts of Interest**

The author declares no conflicts of interest.

#### **References and Notes**


## **New Labour and the Re-making of British Islam: The Case of the Radical Middle Way and the "Reclamation" of the Classical Islamic Tradition**

#### **Stephen H. Jones**

**Abstract:** This article examines the emergence of new forms of Islam in Britain between the 1990s and the present, and in particular the role played by the New Labour government (1997–2010) in encouraging new expressions of Islam. It charts the development of the Islamic tradition in Britain between the migration of mainly South Asian Muslims in the 1950s and 1960s and the Rushdie affair in the late 1980s, before outlining some of the challenges Muslims in Britain have faced transmitting Islamic traditions in a stable state to younger generations. Against the backdrop of increasing public concern about an inter-generational divide among Muslims and its supposed role in allowing radicalism to flourish, the article explores recent attempts to develop and promote forms of Islam that are "authentically British" and that challenge radical perspectives. Using the case study of the Radical Middle Way initiative, it looks into the uneasy relationship between these newer forms of Islam and the supportive New Labour administration, highlighting weaknesses in literature that focuses on the 'disciplining' of Muslims. Finally, it explains how the concept of *classical Islamic tradition* is utilised in creative ways not anticipated or engaged with by advocates of the "clash of civilisations" thesis.

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Jones, S.H. "New Labour and the Re-making of British Islam: The Case of the Radical Middle Way and the "Reclamation" of the Classical Islamic Tradition." *Religions* 4 (2013): 550–566.

#### **Abbreviations**

RMW: Radical Middle Way; MCB: Muslim Council of Britain.

#### **1. Introduction**

"In the realm of the political", Kwame Anthony Appiah has remarked, "theories have a habit of becoming part of what they theorize" ([1], p. x). For no recent political theory has this comment seemed more apt than Samuel Huntington's (in)famous "clash of civilizations" thesis, which is notable today not for its analytical power so much as the role it has played in shaping the West's perception of itself and of recent world events [2]. The conservative philosopher Roger Scruton has proposed that Huntington's hypothesis "has more credibility today that it had in 1993" ([3], p. vi), when it was first published in *Foreign Affairs* [4]. In one sense, this claim seems to be entirely wrong. The analysis that Huntington offered—in particular his suggestion that there exists today a coherent cultural entity called "Islamic civilization"—has been repeatedly shown to be incorrect. Roy and others have demonstrated that traditional Muslim cultural formations and forms of knowledge production have been undermined by colonialism and globalization, and that many radical forms of Islam have been influenced by the militant Left [5–8]. Yet at the same time it is hard to deny Scruton has a point. Huntington's position is certainly now more widely believed, in part because his theory has had a performative effect, helping to make into a reality the very clash it predicted.

Of course, Huntington's book is not the sole cause of the widespread perception that the "Islamic world" and the "Western world" are two separate and incompatible cultural entities, and that episodes such as the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers are best understood as the consequences of those entities colliding, like two tectonic plates; he can perhaps, as Roy has argued, be seen as a symptom as much as a cause ([5], p. 9). Yet his writing is certainly the most influential of a family of narratives about the West made by academic researchers, historians, media commentators and political figures. (In the UK, the current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, takes a view not far from Huntington's [9].) The most incendiary of these narratives, such as those by the author Bruce Bawer and the journalist Melanie Phillips, have tended to focus on Muslim immigration [10,11]. The argument in these cases has been that, as Muslims have moved in large numbers to European nations, they have gradually weakened the West's once-strong cultural foundations.

In this article I also focus on Muslim migration to Europe—and Britain specifically—though my analysis and conclusions are quite different. I offer an account of the development of the Islamic tradition in Britain, beginning with the migration of mainly South Asian Muslims in the 1950s and 1960s and focusing on new expressions of Islam that came to prominence under the New Labour government between 1997 and 2010. In doing this, my aim is not to offer a Panglossian account of the migration of Muslims to the UK in contrast to the pessimism of Huntington and his supporters. On the contrary, I highlight the significant challenges that Muslims in Britain have faced transmitting Islam in a coherent form to younger generations, as well as the profound tensions engendered by New Labour's policies toward Muslims and radicalization. However, I do focus on an organisation that presents an ironic challenge to Huntington's thesis. Central to Huntington's hypothesis is the idea that Islam and the West are culturally distinct, the latter being based on modern and secular ideas and the former being rooted in pre-Enlightenment traditions. In what follows, though, I show how new initiatives in Britain have sought to bypass imported South Asian forms of Islam, counter "youthful radicalism" and facilitate the Islamic tradition's cultural and political integration within British society precisely by "reclaiming" Islam's traditional classical heritage.

The analysis in this article is based upon research carried out between 2008 and 2010 which comprised a combination of 15 interviews with Muslim intellectuals, activists and religious scholars and observation of and regular participation in events held by three London-based Muslim organizations—of which one, the Radical Middle Way, is the focus here. After a first section in which I give a (necessarily brief) description of the process of Muslim migration and community formation in the UK, I describe the policy context that led to the Radical Middle Way being formed

and coming to prominence, aided by government. The involvement of New Labour in a bewilderingly wide range of Muslim organisation caused, for good reason, significant controversy and has attracted significant criticism from academic researchers. While agreeing with much of this criticism, in describing the emergence of Radical Middle Way I try to point to areas of neglect, specifically the agency of Muslim intellectuals in the process of Islamic knowledge production.

#### **2. The Making of Islam in Britain**

Opposition of Huntington's thesis have often highlighted how, contrary to popular perception, Islam is not a *new feature* in the UK or, more broadly, in the West. Saeed, for example, has observed that rather than it being "a recent phenomenon mostly of the twentieth century, Islam, from its inception in the seventh century CE, has been part of the Christian West and the western psyche" ([12], p. 201). On a level, this opposition is well founded. As far back as 1641 CE documents can be found referring to sects existing in London "with a certaine foolish beliefe of Mahomet" ([13], p. 27). There are even records of the powerful Anglo-Saxon king Offa of Mercia, who died in 796, having coins minted that had the *shahada* inscribed in Arabic on one side ([14], pp. 6–7). Nevertheless, it is only in the last fifty to one-hundred years that a significant minority of Muslims has settled in Britain—as well as a number of other European nation-states—permanently. In 1951 there were just 21,000 Muslims in the UK, which at the time accounted for around 0.05 per cent of the country's population ([15], p. 19). In 2001 there were 1.6 million (2.7 per cent of the total), with the figure increasing still further by the time of the 2011 Census to 2.7 million (4.8 per cent of the total).

The first large-scale migration to the UK by Muslims occurred around the time of the First World War after the fighting on the European Continent resulted in huge demand for labourers to replace soldiers abroad. Muslim seamen from the British colonies were attracted to port towns in the UK such as Cardiff, Newport and South Shields ([13], pp. 40–45 and 97). These Muslim communities, which were treated terribly following the war's end, were however small compared to those that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s following the migration of Muslim workers from (now former) British colonial territories. Migration to Britain in the mid-twentieth century was prompted by both "pull factors" (the chance to escape poverty) and "push factors" (the partitioning of India and "Africanization" policies in countries such as Kenya and Uganda). Though of diverse origins, the overwhelming majority of migrants came from what are now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; even today, despite considerable recent diversification of the British Muslim population, 60 per cent of the UK's Muslims originate from these countries. Migration from these contexts tended to take the form of a "chain", with initial "pioneers" from South Asia being later joined first by their immediate family, and then in many cases by members of extended kinship networks.

According to Ansari, prior to the 1950s modernist forms of Islam were in the ascendant in the UK. The Muslim port communities in Cardiff and South Shields were fairly insubstantial and slow to establish religious institutions. The main Islamic centres were places such as Liverpool, where for a while there was a Muslim collective active in the public domain led by the prominent convert William Abdullah Quilliam, and Woking, where members of the Pan-Islamic Society ran a successful mission from the small but ornate Shah Jahan Mosque. Recognising that to make Islam appealing to a British audience it would need to be presented in a familiar form, these groups wrote

in English, drew parallels with Christianity and challenged traditional Islamic position regarding the seclusion of women and punishments for "apostates" ([13], pp. 130–33). Members of the Pan-Islamic Society in London also distilled the *hadith* volumes into short books with the aim of correcting misconceptions about the faith (see for example [17]).

Most of the migrants that journeyed to the UK from South Asia in the 1960s came, as Lewis observes, from "rural contexts where Islam was part of the rhythm of life" ([15], p. xvii). They were thus unfamiliar with this modernist movement. Upon migrating many had little intention of making the UK their permanent home, but as the dream of one day returning to their country of birth began to fade they started to construct institutions and communities that would enable them to practice the Islamic tradition with which they were familiar as best they could and help them preserve that tradition for future generations. Efforts were made to import distinctive Islamic traditions into the UK (sometimes literally, with religious leaders being brought in from overseas) and slowly from the 1960s through into the 1970s and '80s these forms of Islam became dominant. Mosques and *madrasa*s were set up which inevitably reflected the particular linguistic and doctrinal character of their founders ([13], pp. 342–43; [18], pp. 56–58). Indeed, the creation of these institutions following migration led to Muslim migrants separating into groups, as Ansari explains:

Segregation [between different Muslim groups followed chain migration], and previously ethnically mixed Muslim communities increasingly fragmented according to village-kinship, tribal, ethnic and sectarian affiliation. Indians, Yemenis and Turkish Cypriots who had lived together in boarding houses during and after the Second World War, sharing more or less the same religious facilities, gradually separated to form ethnic settlements that then established their own distinct institutions. Mosques and religious schools also reflected this process of segmentation, and imported religious functionaries reminded Muslims of their traditional values and reinforced conformity to embedded practices ([13], p. 343).

These new communities, in which religious, ethnic and cultural identification were all tied into one another, were semi-autonomous, often providing support networks for their members. They remained aloof from British society to an extent (for details see [13], p. 213), making few demands and entering into political debates rarely. When Muslims did enter into political debates it was generally to secure accommodations from government, most successfully in education. During the 1970s numerous efforts were made to change education policy, primarily to facilitate the smooth transition of Islamic traditions. For many, this meant protecting younger Muslims from "undesirable" influences in British society, with requests being made for the expansion of same-sex schools, or schools with a specific confessional ethos (see [13], pp. 309–17).

Because the ancestry of the British Muslim population is extremely complicated, it is impossibly difficult to describe all the different varieties of Islam that emerged in the UK following the post-World War II period of migration. There are, however, two strands of the Islamic tradition that have been particularly influential due to the fact that they predominate in the South Asian context: the Barelwi and Deobandi movements. Both of these emerged in the 1850s during the period of British colonial rule in India. The former is the largest in Britain, followed by the latter. Barelwis follow a form of Sufi-inspired devotional Islam which was consolidated in Bareilly in northern India, after which the tradition is named. Cities such as Bradford have large Barelwi communities, with fifteen of the thirty-four mosques that were based there during the late 1980s being linked to

the tradition ([13], pp. 346–47; [19], pp. 118–19). The Deobandi movement is historically based on the teachings of the Dar al-Ulum Deoband in India, which was founded in the 1860s by a group of *'ulama* who were committed to preserving Islamic scholarship and learning at a time when the influence of the British and Christian elite was growing ([18], pp. 36–38; [20], p. 183). This movement has tended to subvert classical scholarship by insisting that Islamic norms must be linked to scriptural proofs found in the Qur'an and collections of *hadith* ([13], p. 347; [20], p. 188). Although literalistic in some respects, in contrast to politicized Islamic movements such as the Jamaat-i-Islami, the Deobandi movement has generally been apolitical or even anti-political ([15], pp. 93–103; [20], pp. 183–94). In the UK this anti-political trend has become predominant, partly due to the outreach movement Tablighi Jama'at, which has its European headquarters in Dewsbury. The Deobandi movement is particularly strong in Leicester and Birmingham, and has been successful in establishing a network of *dar al-ulum*s across the UK, with a main centre of learning located in Bury ([15], p. 89; [20], p. 187).

#### **3. A Crisis in Transmission?**

Muslim migrants to Britain have faced considerable barriers when they have tried to establish community infrastructure—such as, for example, local authorities needlessly obstructing planning applications for religious buildings [21]. Their success in doing so is therefore impressive for a range of reasons—even if, as this I will discuss shortly, the existence of semi-autonomous ethno-religious communities in the UK has recently been singled out by policy-makers as a problem. However, what has become apparent in recent decades has been the profound difficulties the Muslim groups that emerged in the UK in the 1970s have had maintaining their interpretations of Islam in a stable state over time. Lewis for example has observed that "many parents and religious leaders, imported into Britain's mosques from the [South Asian] religio-cultural world, are often at a loss to help their children answer questions about Islam posed by school friends, teachers or youth workers." They are, he suggests, unable to provide Islamic teachings that "can connect with [the] lived experience [of] British Muslims whose first language is English" ([15], p. xvii).

An insight into these problems can be gained by looking at the content of the curriculum taught in some of the Deobandi *dar al-ulum*s in Britain. Research into these institutions has indicated that, at least until relatively recently, they worked from an attenuated version of the religious education syllabus developed in Lucknow known as *dars-i-nizami*, which was itself inherited from eighteenth-century Farangi Mahall scholars. The educational system developed by these earlier scholars was rich, covering elements of Persian literature, logic and mathematics. Yet for reasons outlined earlier, these elements were marginalized by the Deobandis in favour of renewed emphasis on the Qur'an and *hadith* and the preservation of the core "Islamic sciences" (that is, methods of exegesis and the formulation of legal opinions) ([18], pp. 36–38). This is reflected in the British institutions, where the curriculum has focused on the study of textual commentaries, usually on matters of law and *hadith*. Students are required to translate the Qur'an and *hadith* collections from Arabic into Urdu, and are asked to show an awareness of key texts and commentaries. They may be encouraged to ask questions of clarification, but not of substance. Teaching itself is often in Urdu, although with a minimal English curriculum taught in the afternoon in order to conform to English law ([15], p. 100; [20], p. 188; [22], pp. 65–66).

The problem with this that various researchers—and indeed some Muslim religious leaders (see the quotes in [23], pp. 15–16)—have identified is that it lacks much by way of a relationship to the distinct history and character of the UK. The centres produce new religious leaders yet, as Gilliat-Ray has noted, "what is striking is the absence of subjects that might help graduates engage with British Muslim youth, and the society in which they are based" ([22], p. 66). The situation in mosques appears to be similar. One study, which surveyed five-hundred of the UK's fifteen-hundred or so mosques, indicated that 44 percent of mosques do not include English in their Friday sermons, preferring instead Punjabi, Bengali or Guajarati ([23], p. 14). Figures from the British Foreign Office also indicate that large numbers of imams are still imported to serve in places of worship ([15], p. 94), meaning that perhaps 90 percent receive their religious formation abroad ([23], p. 14). Women appear also to be for the most part excluded from these places of worship: just 46 per cent have prayer facilities for women, and rarely can women speak with an imam ([23], pp. 19–20).

On its own, it is unlikely that this issue would have attracted the interest of policy-makers and political commentators. However, since the Rushdie affair in the late 1980s, and particularly since the turn of the century, the isolation of Muslim communities and the tension between younger and older generations has been singled out as one of the causes of a number of violent episodes. For example, efforts to maintain stable Muslim communities came to be identified as one of the major barriers to "community cohesion", which in turn was singled out as a major contributing factor to a series of riots in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the North of England in 2001 [24]. This led to renewed emphasis in UK social policy on the need to foster mixing between religious groups and identification with the British nation (as well as, critics have persuasively argued, less emphasis being placed upon economic deprivation and prejudice against minorities [25]).

More significantly, challenges in transmitting Islamic traditions to the younger generation have come to be linked with events such as the London bombings of July 2005. With young, Englishspeaking Muslim men and women who hold their religious faith to be of fundamental importance being, supposedly, badly served the older, foreign-born individuals who retain control over the majority of mosques, young Muslim have turned to other outlets for their religious guidance ([26], pp. 124–25). Concern has arisen because, in a few cases, young Muslims' frustration with their parents' faith has resulted in a search that leads ultimately to the adoption of a literalistic and intolerant form of Islam ([5], pp. 257–65). For some, radical parties have, as one former member of the revivalist movement Hizb ut-Tahrir has observes, "fill[ed] a void for the young intellectually frustrated youth who had been told that Islam is the truth and they must pray and fast by people who couldn't explain why" ([15], p. 138). The account of Hassan Saleemi, another ex-Hizb ut-Tahrir member now working on the Islam Channel, is illustrative of this tendency:

At eighteen—with the unearthing of Public Enemy, who were talking about "fight the power," imperialism and slavery—I was unhappy with Pakistani Asian culture, I was unhappy with British culture and I was not happy with the sectarianism in my local mosque. I felt alienated from Muslims and I had some grounding in colonialism. I had a history GCSE and was doing a history A-level as well, so I knew a bit about colonialism.... And [then] there was a tall white guy outside my mosque [who was a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir] talking about Bosnia and Kashmir, and giving out leaflets, and the fact that he was white struck me. I attended the talk, and you could say the rest is history [27].

The emergence of such viewpoints and their apparent link to movements that have inspired militant protest and violence led to the widespread problematization of what has been termed the "subculture" of mosques and madrassahs. Between 2005 and 2010 in particular it became common to see views such as the following from Paul Goodman, the former Conservative Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government (who withdrew from British politics following the 2010 general election), expressed among policy-makers:

The consensus about how to combat violent extremism can be summed up in three words: reform the mosques. British mosques and *madrassahs*—the argument runs—are dominated by elderly men from abroad who don't speak English and have limited means of communication with the younger generation. This leaves young British Muslims vulnerable to exploitative English-speaking al-Qa'eda operatives. The solution to this seems obvious: open up the mosques. Bring in young, English-speaking people to run them. Sweep away the old-fashioned assumptions, and empower Muslim women. Above all, monitor the *masjids* and *madrassahs*. Inspect them, regulate them, control them and subject them to the blizzard of best practice and quality standards guidance that's done so much for local government [28].

#### **4. New Labour and the "Remaking" of Islam in Britain**

Goodman above does not, in fact, just express a widely held opinion, but provides a summary of what, in the wake of the 2005 London bombings, became official policy in the New Labour government. The Labour Party has traditionally attracted a disproportionate number of the votes of ethnic minorities in Britain, and has a long and complex history of forming partnerships with ethnic minority associations. Upon coming to power in 1997 New Labour formed a close relationship with the recently formed Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), a group that had been developed ostensibly in order to allow Muslims to speak, politically, with "one voice". This relationship remained close for a little under a decade, and was marked by efforts to secure various gains for Muslims in Britain including, *inter alia*, strengthened religious discrimination legislation and the addition of a question about religious identity in the decennial national census. Following the London bombings, however, this relationship broke down and the character of New Labour's engagement altered.

Firstly, under considerable pressure from a rapidly proliferating array of Muslim representative bodies and a growing body of critics on both sides of the political spectrum, who viewed the MCB as dominated by conservative male elders (and in some cases dangerous "Islamists"), New Labour sought out new partners such as Quilliam and the Sufi Muslim Council (for details see [29,30]). Secondly, under pressure to develop a response to the extremist perspectives that the London bombers espoused, the party started to adopt a more direct (or even invasive) approach to Islam in Britain. Islamic knowledge was not something that often entered into the political arena in the 1990s and early 2000s when New Labour engaged with the MCB regularly. Indeed, the MCB has never sought to represent Islam but rather "British citizens with an Islamic heritage", implying the full range of Muslims, from the devoutly religious to those who do not identify with any theological vision [31]. Yet in this new environment religious knowledge became an issue, with the UK government endeavouring to influence the production and dissemination of Islamic knowledge.

This shift happened following the development by New Labour of the "Prevent" (known also as "Preventing Violent Extremism", or PVE) agenda [32,33]. Announced in February 2007 by Ruth Kelly, the then Secretary for Communities and Local Government, the agenda's conscious aim was to develop a "British version of Islam" ([34], p. 11). This mirrored the remarks of Nicolas Sarkozy in France, who has favoured a more "corporatist" approach to state engagement with Muslims ([35], p. 182) and who has stated on various occasions that what he would like to see is an "*Islam de France*" rather than "*en France*" ([36], p. 71). At the time of its launch, five-million pounds were dedicated to Prevent, money to be spent training foreign-born imams and, Kelly said, inducing a "step-change in the role of *madrasah*s in teaching about citizenship" ([34], p. 11).

From there, the strategy progressed rapidly: in 2008/2009 one-hundred and forty million pounds were earmarked for Prevent-related community initiatives ([37], p. 10). The funding of Muslim groups increased and at the same time broadened. Prevent money was offered to a bewildering array of community initiatives, some very different to the others. The Preventing Violent Extremism Community Leadership Fund funded organizations such as, in 2007/2008: the Muslim Youth Helpline (£35,000); Khayaal Theatre Company (£38,450); the Muslim Youth Development Partnership (£40,000); the Sufi Muslim Council (£58,500); the Luqman Institute of Education and Development (£30,000); and the Fatima Women's Network (£10,000). At the same time, pots like the Community Leadership Fund were made available to groups such as the British Muslim Forum, British Muslims for Secular Democracy, and the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB), which received just over £75,000. Money was also targeted at Muslim women's projects such as the Muslim Women's Network with the aim of "enabling [women's] voices to be heard and empowering them to engage with Muslims at risk of being targeted by violent extremists" [38].

At a rhetorical level and in decisions about the allocation of public funding, the interpretation of Islam became more salient. Ministers such as Kelly began to quote Muslim intellectuals such as Tariq Ramadan, suggesting that they offer a vision for a fully integrated British Islam [34]. Islamic Studies was named by the Labour Government as a "strategically important subject" in 2007 ([39], p. 4; [40]). This was also supported by government-sponsored university-based initiatives such as "Contextualising Islam in Britain", a project funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government and based at the University of Cambridge whose main aim was to allow Muslims to come together to discuss what it means to faithfully live as a Muslim in modern Britain. This project did not shy away from theology, covering Islamic conceptions of justice, the objectives (*maqasid*) of Islamic law, and the nature of divine sovereignty. Funds were made available to train imams [42–44], and partnerships between Islamic centres of higher learning and universities were considered [45]. Finally, New Labour funded organizations involved in the dissemination of Islamic knowledge through "tours" of religious scholars and through on-line videos and podcasts. One of these organizations I shall concentrate on in the remaining sections: The Radical Middle Way.

#### **5. Reclaiming the Centre Ground: The Case of Radical Middle Way**

The Radical Middle Way (RMW) is an initiative that grew out of the Muslim magazine *Q-News*, which was established in the early 1990s and continued until 2006. In its heyday, *Q-News* had a readership of 60,000 people per month, comprising mainly second and third generation British-born Muslims as well as non-Muslim religious educators and policymakers. Justly regarded by commentators as an energetic and innovative publication ([14], p. 236–38), *Q-News* tended to treat established Muslim representative bodies with a degree of scepticism; the magazine characterised the MCB at one point as "lassi Islamists" (a South Asian variant on the derogatory characterization of leftist groups as "champagne socialists" [31]). As Fozia Bora, one of the magazine's contributing editors, notes, *"Q-News* was jaded with all these institutions and made it clear that these organizations were not representative in any way because they didn't represent" (interview, 6 March 2012). Notably, though, the magazine was respectful of Islamic scholarship, and included a regular series on "questions and answers about Islam" by prominent religious scholars [46].

In its early days, *Q-News* struggled to attract the attention and support of public bodies. In fact, this lack of support was the reason behind the magazine's name. According to the founding editor of *Q-News* and RMW's founder, Fuad Nahdi, faith-based publications in the early 1990s were not able to attract advertising revenue from public equalities bodies, which tended to focus on relations between groups defined by "race" and ethnicity. *Q-News* did not wish to align itself with any ethnic group but needed this advertising revenue to survive, and so a "non-religious" name was adopted ([29], p. 31). By the time the magazine published its final issue in 2006 after RMW was launched, this situation had changed entirely. Public funding for religious groups, especially Muslim groups, was readily available for cohesion, capacity building and preventing extremism projects. Thus in the second half of the 2000s RMW received considerable public support—for example, £350,000 in 2009 from the Department of Communities and Local Government [38].

RMW has thus been since its inception firmly entangled in New Labour's efforts to re-make the Islamic tradition in Britain, even if it has never been funded by Prevent monies directly. It is important, though, to treat this issue with care. Academic analysis has tended to see the policies of the UK government toward British Muslims as characterized by a range of strategies and policy mechanisms designed to contain dissent, discipline (or "securitize") Muslim communities and "domesticate" Islam [37,47,48]. Neo-Foucauldian writings on governmentality (see [49]) have had considerable influence [50]. The focus in research has, in general, been on the discourses and conduct of government: for example, New Labour's tendency to frame Muslims as "good" and "bad" or "moderate" and "extremist" [48,51]; or the characterisation of Muslim women as "wives and mothers" capable of mollifying "combative masculine" forms of Islam [52]. This body of criticism has made a number of forceful points. Among other things, it has drawn attention to the way in which New Labour effectively placed the burden of the 7/7 bombings on contemporary Islam and British Muslim communities, rather than addressing any deeper sociological or political tensions. It has highlighted how New Labour policy was developed in such a way that reinforced regressive gender roles, even as New Labour sought to open up mosques to Muslim women [52].

Nevertheless, this overriding focus on the discourses and conduct of government has left relatively little room to examine the production of Islamic knowledge. As Sunier explains:

The emphasis on governance, national identity politics, and integration and security in the study of Islam in Europe ... often conceals and ignores certain issues and trends among Muslims in Europe that are very important. This has produced a paradoxical situation. Whereas Islam has become the common denominator for a wide range of phenomena, attitudes and developments, as fields of research, religious practices and the production of religious knowledge among Muslims have suffered from programmatic concealment and downright neglect [53].

A side-effect of this has been a tendency to neglect of the practical uses of Prevent and other funding, which in turn has led to the creative agency of individuals involved in project delivery being downplayed. As the disciplinary role of the state is emphasised, critics can often imply that the forms of Islam that find favour with government are state creations certified by government and "imposed" on Muslims from above through various policy programs. The case of RMW indicates, however, that the situation is more complex than this. Certainly, the change from the early days of *Q-News* to the launch of RMW in 2006 was profound, and involved an at times uncomfortable move among the staff of the two organizations from being "poachers" to being "gamekeepers". In the period during which RMW received large amounts of public funding RMW had to make, as Abdul-Rehman Malik, who works for RMW and who wrote for *Q-News*, acknowledges, "a big trade-off in terms of fighting for credibility and fighting for the money to operate" (interview, 26 August 2008). One of RMW's most prominent speakers observes that by taking public funding organisations such as RMW risk being "generically discredited" because "everyone assumes that point of view is being pushed for political reasons by the same politicians that support Israel and smashed up Iraq" (interview, 27 August 2008). Yet there is continuity in the positions argued by the people behind both the organizations. There is a distinctive approach and a reliance upon specific forms of scholarship that has remained consistent and that has built up a following over more than two decades.

Throughout, *Q-News* and RMW have drawn on a distinctive range of Islamic scholars from the UK (such as Abdal-Hakim Murad, Zaki Badawi and Hasan Le Gai Eaton), Muslim-majority countries (Abdallah Bin Bayyah from Mauritania and Ali Gomaa from Egypt) and the US and Canada (Suhaib Webb, Hamza Yusuf and Ingrid Mattson). Scholars from the US have been particularly notable. (The links between British and American Islam have not been subject to much scrutiny: it is an area in need of further research.) All of these individuals have one thing in common: they have scholarly qualifications—usually from both Islamic seminaries and conventional universities (indeed many are religious teachers and university professors)—but they are not "conventional" mosque leaders. They differ from dominant South Asian forms of Islam and are consciously opposed to Salafism of the kind that influences the youthful revivalisms described earlier in this chapter. This dual break was crucial to *Q-News*'s success and is even more central to RMW.

Between 2006 and 2010 RMW's activities were concentrated on "tours" of scholars around the UK, London, Birmingham and Bradford being a particular focus. These were highly popular: in February 2003 the American *'alim* Hamza Yusuf, founder of the Zaytuna Institute in California, drew an audience of between four- and five-thousand when he arrived in England to speak at a mosque in Bradford—a huge audience given that the talk took place in a city of around 300,000 people, of whom around 16.1 per cent are Muslim [15]. Consistently across these tours radical

revivalism is treated with scepticism. On occasion, it is treated to a form of sociological examination, as in the following excerpt from a talk given in London by the charismatic American preacher Suhaib Webb:

[We need to understand], in the spirit of Ibn Khaldun,<sup>1</sup> the sociological reality of the Western Muslim. We come from the DMX *madhhab*. 2 We come from Star Wars. We come from professional wrestling. We come from Bruce Lee. We come from a misogynistic reality that dominates women, in hip hop music.... And you give this religion to someone who comes from that background and what type of mentality is he going to have to his fellow brothers and sisters? He is Luke and Obi-Wan *vs.* Darth Vader.... [T]he social constructs that we live [with] in the West are those of *domination*. We seek to dominate others – and then we're given a group mentality that transforms itself into attacking fellow Muslims.... [S]o Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant now know about Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Arabi,<sup>3</sup> and they're going to take it to the *masjid* and battle each other! Go on-line and look at our forums about how we talk about scholars and individuals, how we talk about each other – the *hatred*, the *spite*. Why? DMX mentality [54].

More regularly, though, opposition to such forms of Islam is rooted in emphasis on the authoritative role of Islamic traditions of scholarship. Its outlook has been heavily influenced by, in Malik's words, "Western Muslims who [are] reclaiming the classical tradition" (interview, 26 August 2008). The following two excerpts are among the clearest examples of this. The first comes from a talk on extremism by the American Muslim Umar Abd Allah, who has taught in Jeddah and the United States. This talk was delivered at Birmingham Central Mosque in 2006:

Extremism often expresses itself in a personal quest for immediately accessible knowledge.... And often this is in defiance of authority; I mean by that in defiance of traditional authority, of the schools, the tradition, the teachers. As one of the great scholars that I used to know in Morocco used to say, who was a great *muhaddith*, he would say: "I studied *hadith* all my life; I studied Islam all my life, and a young man who doesn't even pray goes into the movie theatre, comes out, buys a pamphlet, and the next day he's calling me a *kaffir*".... The religiosity of extremism is often based upon personal experience, and not *legacy* [55].

The second comes from the British Muslim convert Abdal-Hakim Murad (a.k.a. Tim Winter). Murad is one of British Islam's most prominent intellectuals. He teaches at Cambridge University, though he is also an imam as well as one of the founders of the Cambridge Muslim College, a recently established educational institution that seeks to enable religiously trained imams to engage successfully with British society. The following was delivered at a talk in London in 2005:

[The Islamic tradition is in need of] renewal, every Muslim accepts that. The religion has become old, doddery, cantankerous. The sole source of renewal is that which was good for the earliest generations of this *Umma*; that's established, nobody will deny it. But the difference between *'alim* the and the amateur

<sup>1</sup> Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) was a philosopher sometimes characterized as a sociologist *avant la lettre* on account of his work mapping the character of different societies.

<sup>2</sup> DMX is a popular US-based hip-hop artist.

<sup>3</sup> Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) was a significant Sunni Muslim jurist and Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) was a theologian and philosopher influential in Sufism.

is that the *'alim* says we'll deal with the tree as it is, we keep it going; *alhamdulillah* we still have it and over the years it has acquired a certain magnificence, that in itself has the right to be respected and enjoyed. The amateur scholar says, "No, the best thing is to cut it down and we'll be back in 1453 again, or indeed back at the time of the Hijra, in the time of the Prophet, *sallallahu alaihi wa sallam*". This is really what is at stake. We have a tree that is more intact than the trees of the other [major religious traditions]; but we have, given the nature of the age, an increasing proliferation of people who misunderstand it, who are not grateful for it, who can't see its current beauty, who have not trained with those who have been looking after it, and think that the solution is actually to cut it down. The great calamity in our age is not that Islam needs a Reformation or that we need a liberal Islam; the great calamity is that we are not being true to our own traditions of scholarship [56].

The normative emphasis placed upon authority in these passages is easily misinterpreted. It is important to remember that RMW is not a traditional institution at which students spend years studying the intricacies of *fiqh*. For the most part, its activities remain distinct from mosques and formal educational institutions, and events are usually held in secular spaces. The Internet is a central medium for the dissemination of information, and browsers can dip into and out of the different sermons and teachings that are provided. Moreover, alongside these scholar-focused events RMW has organized events involving music and forms of cultural expression that are more conventionally associated with the 16 to 30 year olds who make up the majority of the audience at most of RMW's meetings. Rather than simply stressing the importance of maintaining existing tradition, this emphasis on classical scholarship and a legacy that stretches back hundreds of years becomes a way of reworking the Islamic tradition within the context of contemporary Britain.

It is important to note, too, that the scholars and preachers involved in RMW stress the possibility, indeed the necessity, of embedding Islam in British traditions and cultural forms. This indeed is the main point on which the RMW's founders and New Labour agreed. Murad for example, stresses the point that classical *fiqh* traditionally recognised local laws and customs ('*urf*) if they did not directly conflict with Islamic teachings. "Islam, as a universal religion, in fact as the only legitimately universal religion," Murad notes, "also makes room for the particularities of the peoples who come into it" [57]. The Cambridge-based imam has even edited a book of Muslim songs of the British Isles, taking traditional British folk songs and fusing them with Islamic themes [58]. Classical tradition and Westernization are portrayed as proceeding hand-in-hand.

The fact that RMW is not a traditional Islamic educational institution makes it difficult to evaluate its impact on the behaviour and thinking of British Muslims, and ultimately its success in reconnecting the Islamic tradition with British cultural forms. The organisation produces what Roy ([5], p. 7) terms "floating discourses"—one-off sermons and podcasts whose physical effects are difficult to trace. We do know that during the period it received large amounts of funding the organisation was very popular, with an estimated 70,000 people attending the organisation's events prior to 2009 [60], but it is hard to be clear about RMW's direct role in the creation of new institutions or community movements. Whatever its immediate impact, RMW's capacity was reduced substantially following a 2010 general election, which saw New Labour replaced by a Liberal–Conservative coalition. RMW had a number of supporters in Parliament and, unlike the MCB, maintained cordial relations with government. While its support by the state prompted some criticism, its patronage was never as controversial among British Muslims as that of Quilliam, a 'counter-extremism think tank' openly supportive of Prevent. Yet despite this RMW's funding fell victim to the coalition's austerity programme, with Conservatives in particular arguing that as the organisation did not engage consistently with the problem of militant religious extremism its continued funding could not be justified.

Nevertheless, when considering both the impact of RMW and its rise and fall in the eyes of government it is helpful to keep in mind that it, as I have been arguing, forms one part of a wider network of organisations and individuals whose history can be traced back to at least the 1990s and that remain active in Muslim civil society. Its aim of reworking Islamic scholarship is shared by a number of other British Muslim educational organisations (some of which have direct links to RMW), such as Maslaha, the An-Nisa Society the Cambridge Muslim College, the Muslim College and Campusalam. These groups together are illustrative of a longer term civil society response to sociological changes within the British Muslim population that is still being gradually worked out and that, while certainly affected by government policy, is not reducible to it.

#### **6. Conclusions**

In this article I have, by focusing on transitions and processes of contestation and change within Islam in Britain, presented a picture that contrasts sharply with the characterisation of Islam as a coherent, undifferentiated cultural formation. With these processes of contestation and change taken into account, it becomes much harder to argue coherently—as Huntington and his more uncompromising followers such as Bawer and Phillips do—that there exists a fundamental cultural tension between Western and Islamic cultures, and next to impossible to see events such as the London bombings in 2005 as the product of a profound cultural divide. More specifically, I have sought to show how, in response to a complex combination of tension across generations, New Labour policy and the distinct social makeup of the UK, Muslim organisations and intellectuals have begun to reach back into and "reclaim" the Islamic past to address challenges of the present. This effort has not been widely discussed—in part, I have suggested, because of a lack of scholarly focus on Islamic knowledge, but also because fails to fit the preconception common to Huntington and his followers as well as policymakers in the UK that the successful acculturation of Islam in Britain requires simply the liberalization of the tradition to "bring it up to speed" with modernity.

It would nevertheless be misleading to suggest that there are no points of tension within the Islamic tradition in Britain or between the Islamic tradition and wider British society. Government policy toward Muslims has responded to some genuine challenges, including a difficulty translating Islamic traditions and movements into the UK and a resulting tension between Muslim generations. The extent to which these difficulties have encouraged extreme interpretations of Islam is debatable; often overlooked in debates are factors such as foreign policy and poverty (young Muslims in the UK are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than the national average [60]). Nevertheless, they cannot be entirely discounted. Moreover, efforts at renewal also have internal tensions. RMW's emphasis on scholarly authority and the classical tradition has allowed it to bypass established centres of religious transmission and challenge literalism, but presently there is not yet the institutional capacity to creatively reinterpret this tradition and authoritatively address social questions about political rights, social relations, personal morality and the appropriate relation

between these. As I have noted, some new Islamic educational institutions have emerged in recent years with something like this aim, but these are at best initial steps in what could be a long process.

There have also been tensions and difficulties within UK government policy toward Muslims. In this article I have offered an account of Islam and public policy in Britain that differs in some respects from accounts stressing the "domestication" of Islam and the "securitization" of Muslim communities. Nevertheless, it has been clear that, across successive governments, policy has been fixated on security, to the point where almost all government support given to Muslims has been justified by making reference to the need to counter extremism. New Labour were certainly guilty of this but it is perhaps the decision by the coalition to cease funding RMW in part because it addressed broader concerns than terrorism that perhaps provides the most vivid illustration. There has not been space in this article to fully consider this issue, but it may be that reducing the emphasis on combating extremism might, paradoxically, allow Islam in Britain to develop on its own terms, eventually even becoming stable, confident and capable of opposing extremism more effectively.

#### **Acknowledgements**

The research on which this article is based was made possible by a studentship provided by the Economic and Social Research Council (pta-031-2005-00210). Although based on research carried out between 2008 and 2010, this article has also benefitted considerably from conversations with colleagues at the University of Bristol with whom I worked on the "Muslim Participation in Contemporary Governance" project between 2011 and 2012. I am grateful in particular to Therese O'Toole, Daniel Nilsson DeHanas, Tariq Modood and Nasar Meer. Of course, I bear sole responsibility for the argument and any errors.

#### **Conflict of Interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References and Notes**


## **Minority Political Representation: Muslim Councilors in Newham and Hackney**

#### **Eren Tatari and Ahmet Yükleyen**

**Abstract:** Scholars have long been intrigued by the role of minority elected officials in representing the interests of their communities. There is an on-going debate on whether distinctive minority agendas exist and whether the existence of minority representatives (descriptive representation) is a necessary condition to secure the representation of minority interests (substantive representation). This article analyzes original interview data to examine these issues through a case study of Muslim city councilors and the dynamics of local government in the Newham and Hackney Borough Councils of London. It finds that the exceptionally high ethnic diversity of Newham with no dominant ethnic group, the lack of racial or religious divides among neighborhoods, and low racial tensions shapes the political culture of the Council, as well as the Muslim councilors, and yields high responsiveness for all minorities. It also finds that non-Muslim councilors play a significant role in the substantive representation of minority interests, including Muslim interests. In contrast, the case study of the Hackney Council reveals that beyond high party fragmentation, ethnicity and religiosity of the Muslim councilors vary widely and hinder effective representation. In addition, their political incorporation is low, and the leadership positions they hold seem to have symbolic rather than substantive impact. The political behavior and representative styles of Muslim councilors reveal a balancing perspective, whereby they advocate for group interests with a more moderate tone. These factors account for the low government responsiveness to Muslim interests in Hackney.

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Tatari, E.; Yükleyen, A. "Minority Political Representation: Muslim Councilors in Newham and Hackney." *Religions* 4 (2013): 502–528.

#### **1. Introduction**

Scholars have long been intrigued by the role of minority elected officials in representing the interests of their communities. There is an on-going debate on whether distinctive minority agendas exist and whether the existence of minority representatives (descriptive representation) is a necessary condition to secure the representation of minority interests (substantive representation). Descriptive representation refers to how much and in what ways the representatives resemble the represented; whereas substantive representation involves actions of the representatives on behalf of the represented, which is assessed through policy outcomes. This article analyzes original interview data based on fifty-one interviews conducted in London between June 2006 and August 2009 to examine these issues through a case study of Muslim city councilors and the dynamics of local government in the Newham Borough Council. It finds that the exceptionally high ethnic diversity of the borough with no dominant ethnic group, the lack of racial or religious divides among neighborhoods, and low racial tensions shapes the political culture of the Council, as well as the Muslim councilors, and yields high responsiveness for all minorities. It also finds that non-Muslim councilors play a significant role in the substantive representation of minority interests, including Muslim interests.

#### **2. The London Borough of Newham**

The London Borough of Newham was established in 1965 and is the most ethnically diverse local authority in England and Wales, with no particular ethnic group dominating [1]. Newham has the highest youth population and the second highest percentage of Muslims in Britain (24.3%), after Tower Hamlets. Based on 2006 Office for National Statistics estimates, over 39% of the population is White, 38% is Asian (12.2% Indian, 10% Bengali, and 8.9% Pakistani), 20% is black (6.5% Caribbean and 12.4% African), and 1.6% is Chinese [2]. Newham is also known for its poverty. Although there has been some regeneration and investment, particularly new housing, in the borough over the last two decades, based on the 2006 Index of Multiple Deprivation scores, it is still the eleventh most deprived local authority in England and Wales and the third in London [2]. This high diversity coupled with high levels of deprivation leads to some racial tension. Councilor Abdulkarim Sheikh, one of the longest serving Muslim councilors in Newham, confirmed that there are incidents of hate crime in Newham, like being called Bin Laden because of a long beard or being insulted on the bus for wearing a headscarf. Yet, he also contended that the police and the Muslim community have good relations and argued that the relatively low levels of racial tension can be attributed to the make-up of the population, where no ethnic group dominates. Since whites and all other ethnic minority groups are less than 30% of the overall population of the borough, they are all minorities. Unlike most other London boroughs, Newham's neighborhoods are not segregated along religious or ethnic lines. Additionally, the council has implemented certain policies, which contributed to the social cohesion of the borough. For instance, Newham schools are closed for *Eid*, as well as other religious holidays, and the council flies the flag of every country on its national day.

The number of Islamic schools has increased from one to four in the last decade, and the borough has the second highest number of mosques (37) after Tower Hamlets. Twelve percent of grant money allocated to volunteer groups by the Newham Council is distributed among predominantly Muslim groups, despite the fact that 24.3% of the borough's population is Muslim. Although Muslim immigration started in the late nineteenth century, the numbers were miniscule until the post-World War II period. In the 1911 census, there were only 143 Asians recorded in East Ham and seventeen in West Ham [3], and by the 1921 census, there were 1,000 Indians in Canning Town alone [4]. As the British government and large companies began to recruit workers from Commonwealth countries, Newham began to develop a significant Muslim population in the 1960s and 1970s. Initially, the majority of immigration from India and Pakistan comprised of single workingmen, who subsequently brought over their wives and children in the 1970s and

1980s. They worked as seamen; ship builders at the docks; construction workers in the sugar refineries, flourmills and leather factories; and at the Dagenham Ford factory.

Today, 53% of the 60,000 Muslims living in Newham are foreign-born. Eighty percent of Newham's Muslim population is of South Asian origin: with 19,000 Pakistanis, 20,000 Bengalis, and 7,000 Gujarati Indians. The remaining minority includes 6,000 African Muslims (mostly Somalis, Nigerians, and Tanzanians), more than 1,000 white British Muslims, and 2,000 other white Muslims (mainly from Eastern Europe and Turkey). A majority of the mosques are Hanafi Sunnis of *Barelvi* and *Deobandi* schools. 1 In addition, there are a few Wahhabi-influenced mosques, a Shia mosque, and an Ahmadi organization. There are two umbrella organizations active in the Muslim community. Newham Muslim Alliance represents the thirty affiliated mosques in Newham in consultation with the Council, whereas Newham Muslim Citizen's Association is an apolitical association appealing to secular Muslims. Overall, Newham and its Muslim community can be characterized by diversity, deprivation, and strong community involvement.

After the 2000 Race Relations Amendment Act, public authorities were required to fulfill steps to identify and address racial discrimination, promote racial equality, and publish yearly Racial Equality Schemes. Newham Council's 2002 Racial Equality Scheme sets out the aims of eliminating racial discrimination, promoting equality of opportunity, and encouraging good racial relations between people of different racial groups. It also requires ethnic monitoring and sponsors research to evaluate the impact of council policies on racial equality and diversity. Furthermore, Newham Community Strategy, published in 2003 by the Local Strategic Partnership, sets the priorities for spending the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund awarded by the central government into these categories: health and wellbeing, crime and antisocial behavior, environment and housing, employment, community, and social regeneration of young people. The second target is to build an active and inclusive community, such that "everyone in the borough should have the same chances in life, whatever their background and Newham should be a place where people live harmoniously and respect each other." It outlines three main strategies to achieve these goals: promoting equalities, the Supporting People me to help vulnerable people in care to live independently, and community involvement through the community forums and other consultative mechanisms and partnerships.

The Newham Community and Police Forum enables local residents to become involved in policing matters and has regular public meetings to discuss community safety and policing. Muslim councilors and associations regularly attend these meetings, and raise issues of antisocial behavior and racial and religious discrimination. The police also have an independent advisory group consisting of eighteen members, four of whom are Muslim. This group attends planning meetings relevant to policing at community events and overseas operations.

As mentioned earlier, community relations in Newham are relatively smooth compared to other cities with substantial Muslim populations (Bradford, Burnley, and Birmingham), which experienced race riots. Community workers attribute Newham's cohesion to its diversity and residential feel. In

<sup>1</sup> These are the two major Sunni orthodox schools influential to sub-continental India and Muslim immigrants from this region. Deobandi promotes strict following of the Prophet's tradition. They also believe in the role of Saints. However, the Barelvi school is more puritanical and rejects Saints.

the 1970s and 1980s, the British National Party (BNP) heavily targeted Newham, and racist murders were commonplace. In the face of organized racism, the black and South Asian communities in Newham also became politically organized, setting up the Newham Defence Committee and the Newham Youth Movement that led to the foundation of the Newham Monitoring Project in 1980. In 1980, the murder of a young Muslim male prompted the founding of Newham Muslim Citizens Association. Right-wing groups continued to be active in Newham during the 1990s, but their strength has waned considerably since 2000. There have not been any race-related uprisings in the borough since 2001 when a young Muslim was killed in disturbances.

The Muslim councilors and community members interviewed stated that although overt racist discrimination is rare, subtle forms of discrimination are persistent. Surveys show that a tenth of working-age men and women in Newham, particularly Pakistanis and black Africans, have experienced discrimination in employment on the grounds of race or ethnicity [5]. Newham does not have excessive antisocial behavior problems compared to neighboring inner-city boroughs. However, as anywhere, some young males loiter on the streets. One recurrent issue pertaining to Muslims is on *Eid* and Pakistan Independence Day, when numerous young Muslim males drive through Green Street with loud music and waving Pakistani flags. Elders hold campaigns in the mosques before *Eid* to try and dissuade young people from doing this, arguing that this behavior does not present a good image of the Muslim community. However, as one Newham councilor explained, police reports suggest that youth violence is not directly related to ethnic or religious differences but to conflict between rival schools or families. There are also concerns about fighting amongst Muslim youth, and Mosque elders hold talks with young men to try to defuse tensions by appealing to the common brotherhood of Islam.

Newham was profoundly affected by the London bombings. There was widespread fear of reprisals against mosques and Muslims, which turned out to be largely unfounded. In the week following the July 7 bombings, one faith crime and one incident of racist graffiti occurred [5]. The Newham Council, police, and Muslim associations showed unity, holding a gathering at the East Ham Town Hall to observe two minutes of silence in memory of the victims, condemning the bombings, and to discuss community safety. Newham Monitoring Project also held a meeting at the Minhaj-ul-Quran Mosque in Forest Gate to discuss the threat of terrorism in Newham. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales, and MP Lyn Brown spoke against the bombings calling for no one community to be singled out for the attacks. Furthermore, Newham police organized information-sharing meetings between the borough commander, senior police officers, councilors and concerned groups, and consulted with mosque leaders on what the police response to the bombings should be. Mosque leadership expressed desire for life to resume normally, and rejected the offer of posting police officers outside the mosques.

Muslim councilors in Newham contend that international events impact community relations as much as local events. For instance, there was widespread local opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2003, an antiwar march on Green Street attracted 10,000 protesters, including people from mosques, trade unions and political parties. Responding to this popular sentiment, the Respect Party made major inroads in local politics in Newham, which has traditionally been a Labour stronghold. In the 2005 general elections, East Ham showed the seventh largest swing from Labour in the country. Newham Respect heavily targeted Muslims and the majority of its supporters in the East End are Muslims [6]. This may have precipitated a greater appreciation of Muslims as a distinct political force in Newham amongst the other political parties. In addition, days before the 2005 general election, a small group of Pakistani males, assumed to be associated with fringe Islamic movements *Al-Muhajiroun* and *Hizb ut-Tahrir*, drove down Green Street carrying posters against all the local candidates calling them "Satan" and shouting through loudhailers "voting is *haram*" in Urdu.

#### *2.1. The Newham Council*

The London Borough of Newham consists of twenty wards, each electing three councilors. Until 2002, the leader of the council was elected among the majority party, whereas the ceremonial mayor was elected by the full Council. However, the mayor and cabinet system was approved by the residents in a referendum held in January 2002, making Newham one of the three London boroughs (and one of thirteen in England) that have a directly elected mayor. Under the new system, the Civic Ambassador fulfils the role previously undertaken by the ceremonial mayor. The first mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, was elected in the May 2002 local elections. Out of the five candidates staged in the first round of elections by Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats, Respect, and Christian People's Alliance, three were Muslim. Labour's Sir Robin Wales (64%) beat Respect's Abdurrahman Jafar (36%) in the second round. Judge Graham Lane, one of the longest-standing Newham councilors, criticizes the new mayoral system as being "…totally undemocratic. All the power goes to the mayor. In reality it is the election of a king. He/she makes all the decisions" [7]. Likewise, Respect Councilor Abdulkarim Sheikh, who is of Pakistani origin, lived in the borough for fifteen years before becoming active in local politics in the mid-1980s, contends that "The new system of directly elected mayor has blocked everything. Council does not have much to put in" [8]. In addition, the Newham Council has been an overwhelmingly Labour Council since its inception (see Table 1). Moreover, Labour did not lose a significant number of seats in Newham following the Iraq War.

Respect Clr Abdulkarim Sheikh argued that Labour's continued success in the 2006 local elections was largely because opposition did not act wisely and the Muslim vote was divided among too many Muslim candidates. He blamed the Liberal Democrats with staging the same "dirty game" as before and "playing Muslim against Muslim." He was the only incumbent who got re-elected after defecting from Labour. Labour Clr Graham Lane also argued that Newham does not have a very healthy democracy since it is hard to win a seat for other parties. Moreover, he contends that the Conservatives won only twice in the last thirty years because blacks vote solid Labour, and the Conservative Party fought a semi-racist campaign in the past [9]. The Respect Party also had support in Newham. Three Respect councilors were elected in May 2006 (Abdulkarim Sheikh, Asif Karim, and Hanif Abdulmuhit), all from the Green Street West ward. Since then, Councilors Karim and Abdulmuhit became Independents.

The first Muslim councilor was elected to Newham Council in 1990. The number of Muslim councilors has been increasing steadily since then. In the 1990 local elections, four Labour candidates (Shama Ahmad, Abdulkarim Sheikh, Riaz Mirza, and Akbar Chaudhary) were elected to Newham Council.


**Table 1.** Composition of Newham Council, 1965–2009.

#### 2.1.1. Fragmentation

There are two types of fragmentation: party and gender. We measure party fragmentation as the number of parties among Muslim councilors in a given council divided by the number of Muslim councilors, where the greater the number, the greater the fragmentation. Among the thirteen, there are three female Muslim councilors, one of whom (Clr Shama Ahmad) has been a councilor since 1990. Newham Muslim councilors are ethnically more mixed. Among the ten Muslim councilors during the 2002–2006 term, three were Bengalis, four Pakistanis, one Indian, and two Kashmiris. Likewise, all thirteen Muslim councilors during the 2006–2010 term were also South Asians from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Kashmir.

Until 2005, when the first Muslim councilor defected to the Respect Party, all Muslim councilors were from the majority Labour Party. Hence, the party fragmentation was zero for the 1998 and 2002 terms, and 0.2 for the 2006 term. In the 2006–2010 term, only 77% of Muslim councilors were in the majority party (see Table 2). As of January 2010, Newham has thirteen Muslim councilors (see Table 3). Ten are from the Labour Party, one from Respect, and two were elected as Respect candidates in May 2006 and have since become Independents. Clr Sheikh, who unsuccessfully tried to run as an Independent, joined the Labour Party in the late 1980s and was elected as a councilor in May 1990. He has been a Labour councilor since 1990 and defected to Respect in 2005. He served as mayor, deputy leader, leader, and finally as leader of Respect Party. He explained his defection from the Labour Party:

There is a strong control apparatus within the Labour Party as the whip. We need to treat all sections of the society equally, we are not asking for special treatment, but equal status and equal opportunity so there is harmony. There is harmony in neighbourhoods, like between Hindus and Muslims (...) but as far as service delivery is concerned I am not very comfortable. Labour Party has to change within. I blame our [Muslim] brothers and sisters not to come up with a hard approach and say you will be losing more seats. Now they see, they were nearly losing 10 more seats [8].


**Table 2.** Descriptive Statistics of Muslim Councilors in Newham.

**Table 3.** Party Breakdown of Muslim Councilors in Newham, 1982–2010.


He argued that nobody was listening while the community was suffering and their genuine demands were not being met [8]. Although there were ten Labour Muslim councilors at the time of the interview, Clr Sheikh contends that they do not have much autonomy, and that their "lips are tied." He argued that within the Labour Party there is a strong whip system, which demands councilors not to speak for or against Party decisions. On the other hand, being a Respect councilor gives him a "free hand" and lets him speak up his mind [8]. He contends that although a good proportion of the Labour Party is Muslim, they were helpless and unable to change the Party over time because of the whip structure put up in place [8].

Gender fragmentation refers to the ways in which gender impacts the representative roles of councilors. The experience of Newham Clr Rohima Rahman illustrates gender fragmentation as well as the impact of gender fragmentation on substantive representation of Muslim interests. She is a first-generation immigrant from Bangladesh and was elected in 2006 at the age of 33. In her brief tenure in office, she has been an active advocate of Muslim women's interests, yet taking a balancing perspective. Together with Clr Shama Ahmad, she established an English literacy

program for Muslim women, which is supported by the Newham Council. She explained the necessity for the program as follows:

They [Muslim women] say, I have been here for 20 years" but they have never been out of Newham or out of their locality of their house! They have never been to city parks… last week we took them by DLR to different places, they said I cannot believe this train goes without driver... majority are thirty plus, not that old. Think how their children are abusing that system, thinking mom doesn't know where I am going… [10].

Education of Muslim women is also important to remedy the vast gap with their children. It is common for second-generation Muslims not to speak the native tongue of their parents, and for parents, especially mothers, to speak very little English. This causes serious problems in that:

Sometimes we see Muslim children drifting away from mainstream system, their mothers or parents don't speak English. They don't know whether the child is going to school or is into bad habits. They might be wearing scarf at home but as soon as they go out, we see with our own eyes, they take it off. Parents don't know, they cannot communicate with their schools [10].

Clr Rahman experiences ethnic, religious, and gender stereotyping in her council work. She explained the discomfiture in her interaction with white constituents as follows:

Whites come, they show they feel comfortable but I don't know how they feel inside. They hear my name and expect a male councilor to be there. When they see a scarf, recently we had a consultation meeting on zoning, the way one or two approached me, the first expression I saw was they didn't expect me to be at that level, when I started speaking to them, explaining them the issues, explaining them the advantages and disadvantages, they really liked it, I felt their attitudes have changed [10].

In her political and public life, she, like all other Muslim councilors, has to find a level of compromise between her religious beliefs and doctrines, and the British way of life. She told that:

Sometimes I socialize with other colleagues, I talk with them and handshake, I chose that myself to be in this system, if there are certain issues if Islam does not allow me to do, I am married, my husband is okay with this, I know my limits, if I am in a Muslim community I don't hand shake that's not in our system, but if it is a white non-Muslim person I do it, it is their tradition I want to value that. But some white men know Muslim women don't hand shake so when they see my headscarf they don't extend their hands (...) but if they do, I shake it, that's not how we should show the world what Islam is, they are offering friendship and you refuse it, no [10].

As a female Muslim councilor, she faces varying levels of discrimination or different treatment from male Muslim councilors, Muslim constituents, and non-Muslims. When asked how Muslim male councilors responded to her, she replied:

At the beginning, I have seen some male Muslims' attitudes was "why you are here if you are wearing scarf, you should be at home." But I have changed that. I believe Islam is modern… all there is, now Qur'an has it, science is there. Women have a big role in Islam as well. To change community and women's needs, and my Muslim women's needs, set up a role model for other Muslim women to come to politics… [10].

Likewise, she criticized the way Muslim male constituents treat her during surgery or mosque visits:

I have been to a few mosques, and the way they see us, they don't treat a white or non-Muslim councilor that way. Sometimes we find that part quite difficult. For example, if there is a white female councilor and me, they will handshake with her and say "oh madam, madam." But they talk to you as if they know you from long ago, and you are his daughter, no respect. I don't like it, that's why I try to avoid those kinds of people. When they come to me for help, I try my best to show them I am capable, same as that other person actually. They sometimes feel and treat you low. They demand things more from us. It is not requesting it is demanding. I still try to help them [10].

Among the sixty Newham councilors, she is the only one who wears the headscarf. She said she is proud to represent it and would like to see more Muslim women in the council [10]. She has been offended when non-Muslim councilors offered her to join them in the pub to discuss council matters. She also points that non-Muslim councilors are confused because Muslim councilors practice Islam differently; for instance, some drink alcohol and others do not.

One of the challenges to her political career is that she feels excluded from the male-dominated public spaces among the Muslim community, as well as the white English community:

For example, in Muslim community when there is an important issue, to ask for vote, all men go to the mosque…That's our culture, it is the gathering place for men. Pub is the same in British culture, they relax, talk, make decisions, drink. This is their gathering place. But we do miss out, the more I talk and socialize with you, the more I will know about you. Otherwise, if we just say "hi" and "bye" we have a distance, and we don't understand each other we don't have that dialogue. And here in politics it is very important to know each other, without support you cannot do anything, especially being minority, we need to get everybody's support not just Muslim or minority councilors [10].

She said she goes to the women in the literacy program to ask for votes and believes that women are more important in voting time, for they can also convince men. The other two councilors from her ward are Pakistani males. I asked her if female constituents come to see her more. Clr Rahman replied that she has "noticed that more men come to women. More men come to me. Men feel more comfortable with women, when they have a problem they feel uncomfortable to talk to a man and say 'I am having this problem.' But with women they don't feel that" [10]. She strongly feels that minority representation is important to address the needs of minority communities. For example:

…because I am female and I am from Bengali community I speak several different languages. So ethnic minorities feel that if they don't speak English they can come to me and talk in their language, where they can address the issue and problem they are facing. So they feel I can help them [10].

In conclusion, Clr Rahman faces different forms of discrimination from her Muslim male colleagues and constituents, as well as white constituents and councilors.

#### 2.1.2. Political Incorporation

Political incorporation of Muslim councilors in Newham (number of leadership positions they hold, their mean seniority/average number of years served as a councilor, and strategic institutional positioning) is notably high. Among the 36 Newham mayors (1965–2002), three were Muslims. The first Muslim mayor of Newham was Shama Ahmad (1996–1997) who was also the first and only Muslim female mayor of Newham. She was followed by Abdulkarim Sheikh (1998–1999), and Riaz Ahmad Mirza (1999–2000). Moreover, the average of the mean seniority of Muslim councilors for the three terms was 5.7 years. In the 1998–2002 term, Newham Muslim councilors had the fifth highest mean seniority; and the seventh highest in the 2002–2006 and 2006–2010 terms. In the 1998–2002 term, Newham Muslim councilors held the highest number of leadership positions. In the 2002–2006 term, they held the fifth highest, and in the 2006–2010 term, the third highest, number of leadership positions. In all three terms, Muslim councilors in Newham held the second highest number of prestigious committee assignments such as those that impact the greatest number of residents. In the current term, thirteen Muslim councilors hold six leadership positions and twelve prestigious committee assignments.

#### 2.1.3. Political Behavior and Representative Styles

The political behavior and the representative styles of Muslim and non-Muslim councilors in Newham are rather similar. Arguably due to the political culture of the borough and the council, non-Muslim councilors are more understanding and responsive to Muslim interests and the interests of other minorities. Likewise, Muslim councilors take a more balancing perspective and they do not unequivocally support all Muslim demands at all costs but balance the interests of Muslims with the other minority groups and the borough. In the case of Newham, both Muslim and non-Muslim councilors are able to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of minority demands and council decisions for minority groups and the borough.

Among the issues of concern for the Newham Muslim community, two are particularly noteworthy for the purposes of this study; namely, the establishment of a Muslim cemetery, and opposition to mosque applications, in particular, the Abbey Mills Mosque in Stratford. The key committee for both the issues is the planning committee. Although the planning committee is independent in its decision-making, councilors do not have a lot of discretion and are advised by council officers as to what the legislation dictates. It is occasional that councilors can exercise some judgment [9]. Newham Muslims, who constituted one fifth of the population, have lobbied the council for a separate Muslim cemetery for decades, before being granted a separate section in the only council-run burial ground in 1991. West Ham Cemetery at Forest Gate, found in 1857, is the only cemetery owned and managed by the Newham Council. It is divided into three areas, consecrated, unconsecrated, and a section for Muslim burials. Clr Abdulkarim Sheikh, the longest-serving Muslim councilor in Newham, played a crucial role in establishing the Muslim section in the West Ham Cemetery, which is in use since 1991 [8]. As the only Respect councilor during the 2006–2010 term, his views and political behavior lean towards a group representative. He decided to be a councilor because he "thought that the service delivery was not tailored to the composition of the population. And if you have to say something, if you stand in front of the town hall and make noise, it does not make any difference. So it is better to be involved in the decision-making process" [8]. He acknowledged that although he counts on the votes of the 4,000 Muslims in his ward, he also needs the votes of other communities to get elected [8].

In the 2006 local elections, he fought his first campaign as a Respect candidate. He said that the campaign was not focused on Muslim issues as such but focused on specific local issues, such as Sir Robin Wales' proposal to replace an historic market with Walmart and closing down a secondary school. Clr Sheikh has been involved with the Newham Alliance of Islamic Associations since it was formed in 1981. Dr. Zulfiqar Ali became the chairperson of the same organization in 2007 after being elected as a councilor. Clr Sheikh claimed that partially due to his involvement in this organization, he is more aware of Muslim issues than the other Muslim and non-Muslim councilors [8]. He has tried to help out the Muslim community in the public sphere because he believes that "To be a good Muslim, you have to be a good citizen" [8]. He told me that he is the only Muslim councilor in Newham who refuses to come to evening meetings in the council during Ramadan.

Clr Sheikh named mosque applications as one of the "burning issues" in Newham. For instance, the planning application for Green Street Mosque was objected by the neighbors and, according to Clr Sheikh, council officers were inefficient in helping the Muslim community to prepare a successful application. Mosque applications are often rejected on the basis that (a) there are too many mosques, (b) it is encroaching on others' privacy, and (c) it causes traffic and parking problems. Clr Sheikh stated that:

When I was on the planning committee and there was an application for a Hindu temple or synagogue I never objected. I said this is civil liberty. If we have churches established centuries ago, why should we have restrictions on others? Technically they have reasons to refuse, which should be addressed, but indirectly there is discrimination. Because the officers' job is to advice the client how they can improve their planning so it meets the requirements of the law and could be successful. Both officers and councilors have implicit discrimination. If one says no, it goes out of the window [8].

The development committee, which processes planning applications, had fifteen members since its inception sixteen years ago. However, Labour reduced the number of members to ten by the pretext that there is not as much work to be done by councilors. Although the opposition demanded to have two seats, only one seat was allocated, which makes it hard to impact decisions without a seconder. Furthermore, Clr Sheikh strongly believes that there is discrimination against Muslims in housing, and he commented that 'There are 80,000 housing units owned by the Council. No Muslim housing association, my heart bleeds. We don't have that spirit; people go for individual gains (...) Specific needs like *wudu* facilities, has to be addressed.' [8]. Bengali households are more likely than the white British to be living in local authority housing [11]. Whilst less than 40% of the borough's overall population is white, 60% of council tenants are white [11].

Clr Sheikh helped Muslim constituents to get a center for the youth. Although the council designated funds, and the center was established a few years ago, it was never handed back to the Muslim community. Another contentious issue is the lack of an exclusively Muslim cemetery. When Muslim councilors, including Clr Sheikh, and constituents tried to negotiate with the local authority, they were told that it is not the responsibility of the Council, and that there is no money or land. After much opposition and demonstration, Muslims:

…were given 120 spaces for cemetery. We wanted to have a virgin land, certain direction for burials. The nicest cemetery is the City of London Cemetery, but we did not get a chance to get space there. They said come and use it but bury as we do. We cannot do that. This is the local authority's job to negotiate but they have failed to do that [8].

On the other hand, Newham Clr Rohima Rahman's cautious approach to demands from Muslims is more representative of Newham's Muslim councilors. She has been an active community worker for over fifteen years. During her first term in office, she helped an Islamic school get planning application. However, she is cautious about small-scale faith schools established by non-qualified administrators and teachers:

It is not only an issue about planning but about managing it. How you will run it, if we give you permission, that's fine but how will you run it. These young people will come to your school, who will be responsible? What the kids' future will be, we have to consider all of this (...) Small schools ran by small communities is quite difficult (...) [10].

She is equally cautious when it comes to mosque applications. As in localities with high percentage of Muslims, mosque planning applications are an ongoing controversy in Newham. Contrary to common perception, Muslim councilors do not necessarily support all mosque applications. For instance, Clr Rohima Rahman acknowledged that sometimes new mosques create more problems than they solve, and "By building the mosque if it creates problems for others, I personally don't support building it to create more problems" [10]. On the other hand, non-Muslim councilor Alec Kellaway seemed equivocal on the issue and said that mosque applications are:

…mostly a concern because Newham is very crowded, and parking is always a problem. If they want a mosque in a small shop, there is not parking available. There are sizable mosques developed. There are no problems. Sometimes residents complain, but then it is resident associations who deal with noise or night parties.' [12].

His attitude is representative of the non-Muslim councilors in that he approaches the issue from a practical stance, weighing the pros and cons while trying to empathize with the minority group.

Another recent mosque controversy clearly revealed the political attitudes and representative styles of Muslim and non-Muslim councilors in Newham. In 2007, *Tablighi Jamaat*, a movement founded in India in 1927 with 80 million followers worldwide, submitted plans to build Britain's largest place of worship, the Abbey Mills Mosque, next to the 2010 Olympic Park in Newham. More than 48,000 people have petitioned the government to abolish plans for the 100-million-pound mega-mosque with a capacity for 12,000 worshippers to be built [13]. A Newham councilor from the Christian People's Alliance, Alan Craig, is leading the campaign against the mosque, while Judge Graham Lane, a white Englishman and one of the longest serving councilors in the Newham Council, takes a rational, unbiased stance [14]. In analyzing the dynamics of the debate, he explained that although in theory the planning committee is independent of the Council, it is likely that the mayor will get involved in such a controversial decision:

I got a feeling he is ambivalent, and since many Muslims are involved he doesn't want to annoy the Muslim community. However you have to make a decision based on planning law properly. Muslims are divided, and most Muslims are opposed to it. It is organized by a fundamentalist group with dubious connections. I would say that I would object to Westminster Abbey moving to Newham on the grounds that it is too big… Having a mosque with tens of thousands of people is too big for a densely populated area. It is an inappropriate place to build it; it has to be on the countryside. It has to be taken on planning grounds not religious grounds. Some Muslim councilors think it is something they ought to support, but there are one to two who see the planning arguments. The opposition is from Christian People's Alliance; the least people opposing this should be them. But they oppose due to planning arguments…. Council cannot interfere with planning decisions. But now the mayor will make his view known privately to the chair of the planning committee, but in law they have to make the decision. I don't think it will be a decision that is left entirely to the hands of Newham; Borris Johnson, the current mayor of London, and national government may have a say as well [9].

Although Clr Lane believes that Newham's strength is its diversity for there is no ruling minority, he alluded to discrimination by the mayor in cabinet appointments:

There are plenty of Asian councilors but they don't hold key positions. That's the interesting thing and it is to some extent the fault of the mayor, he gives them titles but the real jobs go to white names. When we held elections for those positions, we got a slightly better balance… Ayesha Chowdury is very intelligent and capable but they haven't given her anything to do these last four years. She has been fed up. But she is a very rich business woman, who owns 40–50 properties [9].

He argued that some Muslim constituents purposefully avoid going to surgeries of Muslim councilors but acknowledge the positive effects of having minority councilors:

Minority councilors change the way we operate here for the good because there are certain things we would have done different if it had been all white councilors. Having Asians and other we have become more aware of what the people need, that's been the good side of it. We realize that there are certain traditions in different communities that we ought to respect. And we understand those communities more [9].

Moreover, Clr Lane accused Muslim councilors, as well as some white councilors, for getting caught up in a patronage role, and thinking that they can do favors for people:

Where we won't tolerate is any sort of local patronage or corruption. It wasn't just Asian councilors in some cases who were doing this. White councilors were doing it as well. There was a custom here, when somebody was housed, they used to come and bring you a bottle of whiskey or a present. Now it is illegal and any gift over 25 pounds has to be reported. But in those days, nobody noticed it… one or two councilors, whites as well, thought that this was alright. That sort of thing is frowned upon and you would possibly lose your council seat. It could be reported to the standards board because it is kind of bribery [9].

He defined patronage as doing something that you benefit from, such as a councilor accepting money or a free ticket for helping a constituent. He also cited manipulating the rules and bullying council officers, like insisting to move a constituent up on the list for housing [9]. What a councilor can do to help his or her constituent is to get the details of their case, and take it up with the officer, "If you disagree with how it has been handled, you can challenge that. What you cannot do is ask for a favor to be done for that constituent" [9]. Hence, Clr Lane identifies the positive and negative impacts of the presence of minority councilors in a rather unbiased manner. Likewise, according to Clr Peck, the problem with patronage politics is that "…many Muslim representatives on institutional bodies operate within a more familiar patron-client mode in relation to their own communities" [15]. Similar to Clr Peck, Michael equally blames party strategies for sustaining this mode of local politics:

… there was a great willingness to talk to community leaders, who were perceived to be influential, in order to recruit into the Labour Party. From that period onwards, MPs looked to groups to whom they could offer patronage, via a "community leader," who would present the MP with (usually) the deportation or housing queries of his constituents. "Vote-brokering" became commonplace across the black communities, and it is a common slur upon modern community leaders that such forms of instrumental politics are still practiced. But that it did occur for so long is testament to the effectiveness of patronage in achieving for black communities at least some solutions to the immediate problems, although damaging to political participation and education in the long term…. Political empowerment of black and Asian communities was simply not on the agenda. ([15], p. 19–20).

The representative style of Alec Kellaway, another white Labour councilor since 1981, is also particularly telling for he is an active pastor among the Christian community in Newham. As most councilors, he also represents an ethnically mixed ward. He contends that "Ethnic communities vote along party lines, and the ethnic vote goes to Labour. There are very practicing Sikhs, Christians and Muslims in the Council. And they do reflect this in their campaigning and work, Labour Party is okay with this" [12]. He does not feel that Muslim councilors overemphasize their religious or ethnic background. He feels that it is normal for Muslim constituents to prefer Muslim elected officials over non-Muslims. African Christians prefer coming to see him in surgery, because people "tend to come to people they have met at events. We had a choral concert at Christmas, being seen at events like that encourages people to come and see us" [12].

#### **3. The London Borough of Hackney**

The case study of the Hackney Council reveals that beyond high party fragmentation, ethnicity and religiosity of the Muslim councilors vary widely and hinder effective representation. In addition, their political incorporation is low, and the leadership positions they hold seem to have symbolic rather than substantive impact. The political behavior and representative styles of Muslim councilors reveal a balancing perspective, referring to how they advocate group interests with moderation. However, both Muslim and non-Muslim councilors are also reserved to extend particular group rights to avoid the escalation of similar demands from the other minority groups in the borough. Finally, the Hackney Council had been through a period of political turmoil and instability since the late 1990s, which impacted the ability and willingness of minority councilors and the council as a whole to represent constituent interests effectively. Arguably, all these factors account for the low government responsiveness to Muslim interests in Hackney.

The London Borough of Hackney was established in 1965, uniting the metropolitan boroughs of Hackney, Shoreditch, and Stoke Newington. Similar to Newham, Hackney has been a hub of low-skilled immigration since the late nineteenth century, becoming an ethnically diverse borough. The proportion of ethnic minorities remained stable at 40.6% from 1998 to 2006, and dropped to 38.9% in the current term (see Table 4).


**Table 4.** Hackney Data.

According to mid-2005 estimates, 47.3% of Hackney residents describe themselves as white British, 10.6% black African, 9.2% black Caribbean, 4.1% Indian, 2.9% Bengali, and 1.4% Pakistani [2]. There is also a large Turkish population in Hackney, many of whom are Turkish Cypriot. According to the 2001 Census, 66% of the resident population was born in the UK, while 29% was born outside of the UK and Europe. The 2001 Census also shows that Christianity (44%) is the largest religion in Hackney, followed by Islam (18%) and Judaism (4%) [2]. A significant concentration of Hasidic Jews exists in the northern wards, which are represented by Orthodox Jewish councilors. There are many commonalities among the issues of concern for Orthodox Jews and Muslims in Hackney, like kosher or *halal* food provision, dress code regulations in schools, gender-separate education, and emphasis on religious education.

Comparable to Newham, Hackney is one of the most deprived boroughs in London as well as England. All Hackney wards are among the 10% most deprived in England, and 47% of children in Hackney live in low-income households [1]. In 1998 and 2002, Hackney was the second most deprived borough in London and became the most deprived borough in 2006 [1]. Furthermore, Hackney has one of the highest crime rates among London boroughs, but cooperation between local police and the council led to 28% reduction in crime rates between 2003 and 2007. Table 4 summarizes the data on Hackney Council and the borough relevant to this study. Hackney has the fourth largest Muslim population (13.8%) among the 32 London boroughs.

Moreover, Hackney was the thirty-fifth least competitive borough in 1998. Due to the increase in the number of Labour seats from twenty-nine to forty-five, Hackney became the thirteenth least competitive borough in 2002 and the sixteenth in 2006. The percent of council grant money allocated to organizations with predominantly Muslim clients increased steadily from 8% in the 1998–2002 term, to 9% in the 2002–2006 term, and 10% in the 2006–2010 term. Although it is less than the percentage of Muslims in the Borough (13.8%), it gradually approaches parity.

#### *3.1. The Hackney Council*

Since its establishment in 1965, Hackney had been a Labour run authority, except a period of Conservative administration from 1968 to 1972 (see Table 4). The borough is divided into nineteen electoral wards, each returning three councilors in a first three past the post election system. Currently, the fifty-seven seats representing the nineteen wards of the borough are divided up between the Labour Party with forty-five, the Conservative Party with nine, Liberal Democrats two, and the Green Party with a seat (see Table 4). During the 1998–2002 term, Labour held the majority holding only 51% of the seats and increased its majority to 77% in the following two terms (see Table 4).

Following the Mark Trotter affair, a child abuse scandal involving a council social worker, a period of changing coalitions occurred in the late 1990s. Hackney Labour Party split between councilors who were following Clr. Nick Tallentire and following Clr. John McCafferty, who succeeded getting the backing of the national Labour Party. By the 1998 elections, all but two of the Hackney New Labour councilors defected to the Liberal Democrats or the Conservatives, and a coalition was launched between the Liberal Democrats, the Conservatives, and two Green Party councilors. Later, there was a coalition between Labour led by Jules Pipe and the Conservatives led by Eric Ollerenshaw. After the 2002 local elections, Labour returned as the majority party, and unpredictably, it was one of the few boroughs where Labour did not lose any seats in the 2006 local elections (see Table 5).

Largely due to the period of instability following the Mark Trotter affair, the Audit Commission for Local Authorities expressed serious concerns about the performance of Hackney Council in its 2000 report, for most council services were failing. This led to considerable negative press coverage for the borough and the council. However, only four years later MORI reported that residents were significantly more satisfied than they had been in 2002. In addition, the Audit Commission reported that the council achieved three stars in 2007. All these developments have impacted the ability and willingness of the councilors to represent minority interests effectively.

Hackney is one of the three London boroughs governed by a directly-elected mayor and run by a mayor and cabinet system. Labour's Jules Pipe was the first directly elected mayor of Hackney in 2002 and got reelected in 2006. Under the new system, the Speaker fulfils the civic and ceremonial duties previously undertaken by the ceremonial mayor. The mayor of Hackney selects approximately nine councilors to make up the Cabinet. Cabinet members are responsible for the governance of the borough's civil service and represent the mayor and council on strategic bodies. The regulatory functions of the council are carried out by back-bench councilors. The planning and licensing committees make independent decisions that oversee both the private and public sector and decide upon a wide range of petitions for permission to build, demolish or transform the built environment. Additionally, the borough consists of two parliamentary constituencies, Hackney North and Stoke Newington, represented by Labour's Diane Abbott, and Hackney South and Shoreditch, represented by Labour's Meg Hillier. MP Diane Abbott was the first black woman elected to the British Parliament in 1987 and is a renowned civil rights activist.


**Table 5.** Composition of Hackney Council, 1964–2009.

The first Muslim elected to the Hackney Council was the Labour candidate Shuja Shaikh in 1974. He has been the only Muslim in the council for three terms, until the election of Syed Bangle in 1986. The first Muslim female elected to the Hackney Council was Meral Hussein Ece in 1994. Clr. Ece, who is of Turkish and Bengali background, is one of the few mixed-race Muslim councilors in London.

The number of Muslim councilors remained miniscule until the 1998 local elections when five Muslims were elected (see Table 6). The number of Muslim councilors doubled to ten in the 2002 local elections and dropped to nine in the 2006 elections. It is the only council among the two case study boroughs to see a drop, though minute, in the number of Muslim councilors during the three terms.


**Table 6.** Party Breakdown of Muslim Councilors in Hackney, 1974–2010.

#### 3.1.1. Fragmentation

Muslim councilors in Hackney are exceptionally diverse with regards to party affiliation, ethnic background, gender, age, and religiosity. The interview data shows that each of these sources of fragmentation hinders the cooperation among the Muslim councilors, in turn deterring government responsiveness to Muslim interests. However, unlike Newham, the strongest sources of fragmentation among the Muslim councilors in Hackney are ethnicity and religiosity. Even though the gender and party fragmentation ratios are high, their impact on the political behavior of Muslim councilors as a group is not as strong.

On average, 14% of Hackney Council was composed of Muslim councilors between 1998 and 2010, yet they were divided among Labour, Conservatives, and Liberal Democrats during each

term. Less than half (40%) were in the ruling Labour Party in the 1998–2002 term. This figured increased to 80% in the following term and remained at 78% in the 2006–2010 term. Clr. Shuja Shaikh, the longest serving Muslim councilor in Hackney, was a Labour councilor from 1974 to 1996 and a Conservative since then. Currently, there are seven Muslim Labour councilors, one Conservative, and one Liberal Democrat. Hence, two of the nine Muslim councilors are in opposition, and seven are in the ruling Labour Party. The party fragmentation index was 0.3 for the first two terms and 0.4 for the current term. However, this high party fragmentation index does not impact the cooperation between Muslim councilors based on party lines. For instance, Clr. Demirci confirmed "Muslim councilors vote together on Muslim issues across party lines." [16]. Moreover, when it comes to ethnic minority issues or Muslim interests, Demirci "would ask for the support of the ethnic minority councilors. For example, we got a group of Muslim councilors that if we are facing an issue they would vote with me… There is that ethnic vote, I will have their support. But in terms of asking for advice, it depends on the subject, I would go to anyone." [16].

Hackney councilors are divided among four ethnicities. Out of the nine Muslim councilors, four have Indian ethnicity, three are Alevi Kurds, one is a Sunni Turk, and one is of Pakistani background. Moreover, what makes the ethnic fragmentation particularly influential is the presence of three Alevi Kurds (Gülay İçöz, Feryal Demirci, and Deniz Oğuzkanlı), who self-identify as either non-practicing cultural Muslims or atheists. Some Sunni Muslims, like Clr. Siddiqui, do not consider Alevis to be Muslims on theological grounds, which increases in-group tensions.

The three Alevi Kurds, who are in their thirties and were born in Turkey, and are in their thirties, were elected in 2006. Clr. İçöz and Demirci are two of the three Muslim female councilors in Hackney. Clr. Oğuzkanlı is a lawyer, who previously worked in Citizens' Advice Bureau—tackling residents' problems with benefits, housing, and immigration. He is a committed human rights activist and a member of Amnesty International and Lawyers for Liberty. Clr. Oğuzkanlı has been an active member of the Kurdish community in Hackney and is a founding member and trustee of the Kurdish Education and Training Centre. His commitments are increasing the number of police officers on the streets, improving schools, and getting young people involved in the community by setting up youth centers. Likewise, Clr. Demirci was elected the Chair of Scrutiny Committee for Youth in 2009, primarily due to her work with Turkish and Kurdish youth. Although she has no religion, Demirci commented, "I do come from a Muslim family, so regardless of me not having a religion, I am approached by Muslims and have close links with the Turkish Mosques." [16].

Moreover, the ratio of female Muslim councilors in Hackney is 0.33. However, gender fragmentation remains weak compared to religiosity and ethnic divide. For instance, UK-born Clr. Nargis Khan is one of the female Muslim councilors and one of the younger and more secular ones. Although she has been engaged in minority issues, she does not particularly focus on Muslim interests and appeal to the broader concerns of the local community. She first got elected in 2002 from the Dalston Ward and has been the Cabinet Member for Community and Leisure since 2004, holding a portfolio which includes health, adult social care, the voluntary and community sector, leisure, libraries and culture. Her political priorities include improving opportunities for children and getting more people actively involved in the community. She is the vice-chair of the Local

Government Association's Community Wellbeing Board. In 2002, Clr. Nargis Khan contributed to the Cantle Review of Community Cohesion, suggesting practical solutions for the role of political and community leadership. She has also advised the Home Office task force *Preventing Extremism Together*, with a focus on engaging women in politics and public life. In 2006, Clr. Nargis Khan was appointed to the Commission for Integration and Cohesion, contributing to the commissions 2007 report *Our Shared Future* on how local areas can play a role in forging cohesive and resilient communities. In a TV interview, she expressed that faith is a personal matter for her and she does not feel it is necessary to express it through dress. She expressed that although she might not look at it on the face, she holds traditional values, and that she does not want to be elected based on her religious background but based on merit [17].

There is a stark divide between these young generation of councilors who self-identify either as cultural Muslims or as having no religion at all, and the four older Muslim councilors (Clr. Shuja Shaikh, Saleem Siddiqui, Faizullah Khan, and Muttalip Ünlüer) who are in their sixties or older and whose political views and behavior is informed by theological convictions. For instance, Saleem Siddiqui, a seventy year old Labor councilor of Indian origin, has been a councilor in Hackney since 1990. Despite being highly outspoken on moral issues like abortion, teen pregnancy, and alcohol related crimes, he has held prominent leadership positions in the Council. Clr. Siddiqui stated that his forthright stance has not caused any problems with the Labour Party. For example, he was the only councilor in Hackney who served as the mayor twice (1995–1996 and 2001–2002). In addition, he was the Chief Whip in 1993–1994, the Deputy Leader in 1994–1995, and is the current Chair of Hackney Standing Advisory Committee for Religious Education (SACRE). His attitude towards the non-observant Muslim councilors is the strictest among the four religious Muslim councilors, in that he does not "mix with them" at all. Moreover, he explained his stance towards the Alevi Kurdish councilors as follows:

Hackney Council cannot respond adequately to our needs. Problems are more than resources we have. Muslims have not made their case as the Muslim community. It is not the fault of the council or racism… They are not withholding. Jews get it because they made their case and fought for it, 2.5% have seventeen Jewish councilors, for 15%–19% Muslim there are not more than four Muslims, for I don't consider the Alevis Muslim. There is competition for resources. I believe in equitable rather than equal distribution. If my needs are more, I should get a bigger piece of the cake. [18].

Similar to Clr. Siddiqui, Islamic ideology of serving humanity led Clr. Shuja Shaikh to be a councilor. He runs his political campaigns on the Conservative Party platform, including single-sex schools. Since the beginning of his political career, Clr. Shaikh sought to establish a Muslim identity, leading other non-Muslim Asians to accuse him of wanting to separate the Asian group. Moreover, secular Muslims from all backgrounds are not supportive of the Muslim label as well. When asked whether the level of religiosity of the Muslim councilor would make a difference, he replied, "I think if the councilor is a secular Muslim, it would make a difference… a practicing Muslim councilor would carry more weight than a secular Muslim… It depends if the secular Muslim councilor is anti-Muslim or against observance. But if the secular Muslim works to help Muslims, he would carry as much weight as anybody else." [19]. Although he works with the other Muslim councilors, he also acknowledges the effects of party fragmentation in that:

Outside you put on a united front, you cannot disagree with your party in the council or outside. Otherwise you will be gotten rid of or politically punished. But within the party you can talk, discuss, disagree or persuade other people to accept your point of view. But once within the council chamber you have to stick together. Muttalip [Clr. Ünlüer] is doing a good job within the party and trying to accept the point of view, as I do the same in my part. But I am in a better position because I am in opposition. That is why I can get up and say whatever I want to say. But they are in power, the party decides the policies and they have to stick together. My job is to attack them [19].

Unlike Clr. Siddiqui, Clr. Muttalip Ünlüer cooperates with Muslim councilors from all backgrounds, even "with atheist Kurdish councilors for our community's needs." [20]. For instance, after July 7 bombings, Muslim councilors initiated a bridging effort and brought together leaders of different faiths, the mayor and the police:

Muslims or others, it does not make a difference. People come to us with their problems, with housing, services…*etc*. seeking their rights. The only difference is if a Muslim constituent comes we say *salamun alaykum*… But we serve their rightful cases and behave them all the same… Muslims do not come with special demands. They are not aware that they can in fact. The Jewish people openly make special demands, but Muslims are not aware they can make those demands. [20].

#### 3.1.2. Political Incorporation

The political incorporation of Muslim councilors in Hackney is relatively better than most other councils and does not seem to play a significant role in the low government responsiveness. Muslim councilors are relatively experienced with the lowest average seniority being four years, and they hold a notable number of leadership positions and committee assignments. In the 1998–2002 term, among the five Muslim councilors, the mean seniority was 6.4 years, making Hackney the third highest London borough with regards to the mean seniority of Muslim councilors. In the 2002–2006 term, five new Muslim councilors were elected; hence, the mean seniority of the ten Muslim councilors dropped to four years, the fourteenth highest among the 32 boroughs. However, in the 2006–2010 term, the mean seniority increased to 6.7 years (the sixth highest).

In the 1998–2002 term, five Muslim councilors held two leadership positions (the third highest); in the 2002–2006 term, ten Muslim councilors held only four positions (the second highest); and in the 2006–2010 term, nine Muslim councilors held four leadership positions (the fifth highest). Although Hackney has had fewer Muslim councilors compared to Newham, it has had a considerably higher number of Muslim mayors. Former Muslim mayors of Hackney include Clr. Syed Bangle (1987–1988), Clr. Sham (90-91), Clr. Saleem Siddiqui (1995–1996, 2001–2002), Clr. Mulla (2003–2004), Clr. Faizulla Khan (2007–2008). Notably, Clr. Siddiqui is the only councilor in the history of Hackney to serve as mayor twice. Moreover, in the 1998–2002 term, none of the five Muslim councilors held a prestigious committee assignment. However, in the 2002–2006 term, ten councilors held nine assignments (the third highest); and in the 2006–2010 term, nine held seven prestigious committee assignments (the seventh highest).

#### 3.1.3. Political Behavior and Representative Styles

The political behavior and representative styles of the younger and older generation of Muslim councilors vary. Although, ethnic and religious fragmentation puts them asunder and hinders their cooperation on Muslim issues, both groups advocate on behalf of Muslim interests with a balancing perspective. They advocate for group interests with a more moderate tone compared to Muslim councilors, such as in Tower Hamlets. However, both Muslim and non-Muslim councilors are also reserved to extend particular group rights to avoid the escalation of similar demands from the other minority groups in the borough. This seemingly paradoxical stance, advocating for Muslim interests yet refraining from extending specific group rights due to budgetary pressures, contributes to the low government responsiveness to Muslim interests in Hackney.

In the case of the non-practicing Muslim councilors, ethnic and religious ties overlap. For instance, in explaining her advocacy work, Clr. Feryal Demirci uses the terms ethnic interests and Muslim interests interchangeably. She explains the reasons for running in local elections as follows:

I have always been active in my community since a young age because of the issues of Kurds in Turkey. So being involved in the community center here, I built close relationship with the local party here, and began being interested in local politics and thought I could do this not just for my community but for all. I was a member of Labour Party for two or so years before I was approached by the Party to run for council. The idea came from them, and they felt that although they work with the community center, it would serve the community better if there was someone from the community who actually understood the issues. [16].

She also emphasized the fact that "People assume that you have a huge ethnic voter base, but not necessarily. A lot of our community is not even registered!" [16]. Despite self-identifying as not having a religion, she still advocates for Muslim interests, "There was an issue with getting permission for a school for Muslim kids from constituencies represented by Tory councilors. Muslim Labour councilors supported it as well. As an ethnic minority and as a woman I understand the issues with those communities better than my other colleagues, so when there is an issue, I am the first one to be asked for advice and I do advocate for those communities" [16].

Similarly, Clr. Siddiqui liaises with the police on issues of concern for the Muslim community. Moreover, "There was an issue when a police officer harassed a minority and arrested him, I took it up with the police chief and made the officer apologize. The point is to make officers realize they cannot break the line" [18]. Although he is very passionate about Muslim issues, he does not support all Muslim demands blindly. For instance, for a rejected mosque application he commented "Discrimination is there, I am not saying there is none, but the officers know the lines. The planning application came after it was established, and it was residential, not appropriate for a mosque, so they didn't get the permission" [18]. He cited another example when the Muslim community did not follow the appropriate procedures. Tawhid Boys School, an Islamic school established in 2000, applied to convert another building as an addition, "Yet they didn't even have permission for the first building. Officer didn't take it further since there was no complaint" [18].

The observant and non-observant Muslim councilors agree that minority representation is crucial for the substantive representation of minority interests. For instance, Clr. Demirci believes that minority representation "definitely matters" because:

Although there are consultations, they sometimes overlook ethnic minorities when making policies because they do not understand. So it is very effective to have councilors from ethnic minorities because we raise the issues and policies are made to ensure that communities are considered. But also, sometimes there are certain allocated budgets and they cannot cater to the needs of every community but have to be universal. [16].

Likewise, Clr. Ünlüer contends that having Muslim councilors has positive effects for the community:

A non-Muslim cannot know a Muslim's needs more than a Muslim. We brought it up for instance to have a worship place in the council for Muslim employees. A Christian cannot think of this need ever, because he does not need it. For women, how to behave to them, not to shake hands, when I did not shake at the beginning they thought it was weird now they learned it.[20].

Likewise, Clr. Ünlüer told that "Me being a Muslim councilor must have been an inspiration for others" and "I wish to motivate young Muslims and find someone to take over my job when I leave." [20]. Although he encourages young people saying it would be helpful for the development of the community, few of them get involved [20]. Clr. Chris Kennedy, a forty-year-old white Labour councilor elected in 2002 to Hackney Council, also shares these opinions. He favors the idea of positive discrimination and having ethnic minority-only short-lists for parliament, which is an ongoing debate in Labour National Committee [20]. Clr. Kennedy believes that "Unless you deliberately start the process, it will not happen automatically because rules and general processes, even in Labour Party, favor white older males" [21]. He said that Hackney Mayor Jules Pipe "was told by the Labour Party that the cabinet should not be too white" [21]. He also contends "Cultural difference around the table helps to make a balanced decision. We try to vary gender and culture of the Speaker. When there is a Turkish constituent, the Turkish councilor can tell us better where they are tweaking the truth…" [21]. Likewise, Clr. Shuja Shaikh outlined the positive impacts of the presence of Muslim councilors as follows:

The very presence of a Muslim either as a councilor or any other representative makes a difference in the sense that the non-Muslims become conscious of the Muslim representative's presence and also of the Muslim community. It has two effects: one is that the non-Muslims come to know about the requirements, needs, and demands of Muslims. Also, it deters them from being racist or anti-Muslim… They would not express their prejudice openly, so it deters them. And the other element is gradual contact with the Muslim representative helps them to maintain continuous contact with the Muslim community and know more and more about it. It is a venue, an opportunity to learn more about Muslims [19].

Yet he also acknowledges that the representation styles of Muslim councilors would make a difference and lead to positive or negative consequences:

But it depends on the Muslim representative. If the Muslim elected representative is positive, then he or she will receive positive response from councilors and others. But if the person is negative and aggressive, then people do not like aggression. Also the representative needs to know how the system works, know the rules, regulations, laws, the way of behavior, and language, because words are important. If you use the wrong word in the wrong place, then people can misunderstand or do not know what you are saying. I think it is also important to speak loudly and distinctly…there is a learning process on both sides. We, the ethnic minorities, have to learn of and about the majority community… also we have a job to teach others about our culture and history. It is how you behave, kind, polite, but firm. In other words, you do not take insults [19].

Muslim constituents raise issues in his surgeries on personal and local level issues including housing, social security benefits, immigration problems, planning application for mosques, Islamic schools, hate crimes (especially women with headscarves), health, education…*etc*. No more burials take place in Hackney cemeteries, and the Muslim community bought a land in Edmonton Cemetery in Enfield. Slaughterhouses have to be licensed and inspected by the Department of Health and Safety. In Hackney, there is one privately owned business which allows Muslims to use its facilities to slaughter their animals. Secular social and cultural activities are funded by the council, but not religious activities. He believes that lack of English proficiency and communication skills of Muslims is the greatest barrier to accomplishing their requests.

The majority of Muslims who participate in public life are older, first-generation immigrants who lack a good command of English and do not understand the psychological and cultural connotations of words [19]. He points out the fact that the generation of 35–50-year-olds is lost from political life. They were born abroad but raised in the UK by first-generation immigrant parents planning to return to their country of origin; hence, they did not pay much attention to their children's development or integration. Whereas the new generation born and raised in the UK is already settled, and according to Clr. Shaikh, socio-politically they will do much better than the first-generation immigrants [19].

Another first-generation immigrant Muslim councilor, Muttalip Ünlüer, became a Labour Party member in 2000 upon the advice of another Muslim councilor and by "taking another Muslim councilor as a role model." He is one of the four councilors born in Turkey, but is the only Sunni and ethnic Turk. When he first joined the Party, Hackney Council, and especially the Labour Party, was in disarray with services coming close to a stop. He believes that since that time, there have been vast improvements in the borough and the council—where all services are restored, and it became a functioning council again. Clr. Ünlüer contends that although the Labour Party lost votes in many local authorities in the 2006 elections, this was not the case in Hackney, largely due to the hard work of local Labour councilors. He sought to be a councilor, because minorities do not know their rights and the services that are available to them. He pointed that councilors do not get high salaries or have prestige or power, and "the only reward is to help someone in need." [20]. Similar to the experiences of Muslim councilors of different ethnic backgrounds, Turkish constituents, even from other wards, prefer attending his surgery particularly because he speaks Turkish.

He has been an active leader in the Turkish community, centered on the Aziziye Mosque in Stoke Newington, run and attended by the Turkish community. Aziziye Mosque's planning application had been accepted 12 years ago, when there were only two Muslim councilors in the Hackney Council. However, community leaders chose not to approach the Muslim councilors, and it took the Council almost three years to grant the permission. Clr. Ünlüer had become a councilor by the time Aziziye Mosque applied to open a supplementary school. He emphasized the fact that the application went through the normal legal procedure, and no special provisions were made. The school, which is situated in the Mosque, receives funds from the Local Education Fund, but not the council. It has English classes for women, most of whom are Turkish, and after-school program for kids.

Muslim and non-Muslim councilors point to several barriers to the achievement of Muslim demands. Some barriers have to do with the Muslim community (lack of English proficiency, unfamiliarity with the system, laziness, and an unwillingness to integrate), while others are due to direct and indirect forms of discrimination and budgetary pressures. For instance, Clr. Kennedy acknowledged that there are forms of subtle discrimination against ethnic minority councilors. For example, what he calls "accentism" refers to prejudice caused by poor English skills of a councilor or constituent. It is hard to avoid it, for Kennedy even catches himself stereotyping because of accentism [21]. Clr. Siddiqui also addressed the problem and said that when there is discrimination "it is most subtle than apparent" [18]. For instance, he told the story of a former Muslim councilor in Hackney, who lost his seat because of a smear campaign. Apparently, there were 17 council workers with his last name, and an Orthodox Jew, who wanted his ward, gave an interview to a racist newspaper—accusing the Muslim councilor of nepotism and corruption [18]. Clr. Ünlüer also acknowledged that there are written and unwritten stereotypes of white English people as well as ethnic minorities [20]. According to Clr. Demirci, another systematic factor that hinders the substantive representation of Muslim interests, is the budget:

Hackney is a very multicultural borough. If you provide something catered for one community, you have to do it for others and that puts a huge pressure on the budget. So they will try to be sensitive but they will not cater to one community and that's where we come in. If it's a huge issue for my community but not so much for another community, then we need to put pressure and say "no, actually you need to design this service for our community and take these specificities into consideration" [16].

In regards to the Muslim community's failure to achieve a substantial amount of council grants, Clr. Siddiqui said "There is a system in place to get all these things, and there are things they lack: the knowledge of how the system works, and they have to establish that they have been a service provider" [18]. In all three cases—mosque, school and grant applications—he criticized the Muslim community, for "Muslims have not learnt there is a way to go about it. It's our fault, they keep it as personal not professional organizations" and "Hackney is in unfortunate situation. Muslim community is not well organized, and they are individualistic." [18]. According to Clr. Siddiqui, the best-working cohort of councilors is the Orthodox Jews, and the Muslim community does not:

…realize we have to work in the system. Orthodox Jews, I am praising them, there are seven recognized nurseries in this borough although only 2% Jews, two single-sex boy and two girl ones, they had three million of their own and the government gave them 10 million to run the system. They got this because they work with the system and they got the right. I am not saying they got it badly. It is not that they got 10 million so Muslims and Christians should get 10 million too. The Jews have two buildings for their old people, council gives them lunch, transportation, *etc*. for socialization. Muslims are 13.5% officially they have only three schools, but run on a family basis. They have been offered government grant, but they don't want it because they want to keep their hold on it. We live in the UK, so I don't drive on the right like I am in the US! If I do the other way, I will be in collision. Therefore, we have to follow these and live like this. We live here, we have to compromise a bit. [18].

Another impediment working against the Muslim community is prevalent lack of English proficiency and the unwillingness to get over this. For instance:

Certain people think their language isn't good enough to see their councilor so they contact me. I try to encourage them because it is not good for me to solve their case for them. They should come and have contact with you. His contact with his local representative gives two things to that person: the councilor needs to realize he needs their vote; second, our people should realize that they live in the UK, there is a system to work, and they will never learn it if I help them. I joke with my Turkish friends to turn off their Turkish TV. They must learn the language, go to the library, read children's books, and listen to radio. [18].

Clr. Ünlüer contend that, except the last three years (2003–2006), England had been rated the best among all European countries for foreigners not being discriminated against, and allowing their socioeconomical success. The one exception, he argued, is the Turks who are lazy themselves [20]. As for the barriers to the accomplishment of minority demands, he said that:

The problem is with the attitude of Muslim communities. All those I know, they see themselves as guests here. They don't want to get involved in the politics here, but earn enough and leave. But they cannot leave either, their children are born and raised here. So this is a mistake in our thinking, and the first reason why particularly Turks are not involved in local politics. I do not think it has anything to do with the system here. I do believe there is unwritten discrimination but I find ourselves more responsible for this lack. [20].

Finally, Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK) CEO Zulfi Bukhari and Newham Councilor Abdulkarim Sheikh pointed about another barrier to the accomplishment of Muslim demands, and blamed mosque structure for lack of civic engagement [8]. Clr. Sheikh has been involved in Muslim organizations for 32 years, and believes that some people are very orthodox and primitive in their approach; in particular, the public engagement of women is curtailed [8].

#### **4. Conclusions**

The data sheds light on the link between descriptive and substantive representation. Although the findings do not undermine the role of minority representatives in advocating minority interests, it reveals other causal factors. The data finds that the high ethnic diversity of the Newham Borough with no dominant ethnic group, the lack of racial or religious divides among neighborhoods, and low racial tensions shapes the political culture of the council as well as the Muslim councilors and yields effective minority representation. Newham's unique demographic characteristics and local sociopolitical culture render non-Muslim councilors a significant role in the substantive representation of minority interests, including Muslim interests.

On the other hand, the case study of Hackney Council reveals that beyond high party fragmentation, ethnicity and religiosity of the Muslim councilors vary widely, thus hindering effective representation. In addition, their political incorporation is low, and the leadership positions they hold seem to have symbolic rather than substantive impact. The political behavior and representative styles of Muslim councilors reveal a moderate level of advocacy for Muslim group interests. However, both Muslim and non-Muslim councilors are also reserved to extend particular group rights to avoid the escalation of similar demands from the other minority groups in

the borough. Finally, the Hackney Council had been through a period of political turmoil and instability since the late 1990s, which impacted the ability and willingness of minority councilors and the Council as a whole to represent constituent interests effectively. All these factors account for the low government responsiveness to Muslim interests in Hackney.

The implication of Newham's case for broader discussions on representation is as follows: descriptive representation can serve substantive representation in local politics if the ethnic and religious composition of the local population is diverse enough without the dominance of a group. The voting power of a diverse local population encourages all politicians to collaborate with political representatives of the minority. The Hackney case supports this, as well as providing an example of how fragmentation on political, ethnic, religious, and gender lines prevents descriptive representation from transforming into substantive representation. In this case, the representatives from the minority groups remain mostly symbolic rather than serving group interests.

#### **Acknowledgements**

We thank Rollins College and the University of Mississippi for their continuous support for the research and writing of this article. Ahmet Yükleyen contributed to this article while he was on sabbatical at Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey with the support of TUBITAK's (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) 2221 Fellowships for Visiting Scientists and Scientists on Sabbatical Leave Program.

#### **Conflicts of Interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

#### **References and Notes**


## **Sport, Islam, and Muslims in Europe: In between or on the Margin?**

#### **Mahfoud Amara**

**Abstract:** The aim of this paper is to reveal how misconceptions—or using the concept of Mohammed Arkoun, "the crisis of meanings"—about the role and position of Islam in Europe is influencing the discourse on sport, Islam, and immigration. France is selected as a case study for this paper as it is in this country where the debate on religion in general and Islam in particular seems to be more contentious in relation to the question of the integration of Muslim communities with secular (French republican) values. Recent sources of tensions include the ban of the burqa in the public space; the debate on national identity instigated by the former French president Nicholas Sarkozy, which became centered around the question of Islam and Muslims in France; the provocative cartoons about Prophet Mohammad in the satirical magazine *Charlie Hebdo*; opposition against the provision of halal meal in France's fast-food chain Quick; and resistance toward Qatar's plan to invest in deprived suburbs of France, to name just a few. The other context which this paper examines in relation to the question of sport, Islam, and the identity-making of Muslims in Europe is the phenomenon of "reverse migration" or the re-connection of athletes of Muslim background in Europe, or so-called Muslim neo-Europeans, with their (parents') country of origin. The paper argues that sport is another highly politicised space to judge the level of "integration" of Muslim athletes in European societies, and the degree of "religiosity" in their (parents') country of origin.

Reprinted from *Religions*. Cite as: Amara, M. "Sport, Islam, and Muslims in Europe: In between or on the Margin?" *Religions* 4 (2013): 644–656.

#### **1. Introduction**

The question of religion in Europe, particularly Islam, has been defined to a certain extent around the following dichotomies: homogeneity *versus* cultural diversity*,* private *versus* public spheres, and belief *versus* disbelief. The question of sport and religion (including Islam) is also shaped by how these discourses affect other debates such as accommodating sport to religious needs (or *vice versa*), and access to public funding and sport facilities by Muslim communities [1, 2]. There have been a number of questions raised in Europe, and more recently in Canada (particularly in Quebec), around the use of tax money to fund sport projects targeting Muslim communities

only; the expression of religiosity, for instance wearing the veil (or even the turban for Sikhs); and the issue of sport practice in schools in a mixed gender environment [3].

Muslims in the West are facing multiple dilemmas concerning the complexity of combining multiple identities: a sense of belonging to the *Ummah* (the global community of Muslim believers) and a sense of belonging to host societies or countries of birth. They are under pressure more than ever to demonstrate their loyalty to Islam on the one hand, and to their nationality/citizenship on the other. Jocelyne Césari explains this complex variety of belonging(s) as the contradiction between individual, collective, and national identities. These complex, and for some contradictory, layers of identity are being felt in the domain of sport, particularly in football and in events such as the FIFA World Cup and the summer Olympics. Demands are being made by Muslim communities—in the name of democracy, citizenship, and rights to cultural and religious differences—to accommodate specific times for Muslim women and young girls at local leisure centres, to allow men to wear long swimming trunks in public swimming pools, and to allocate specific training/nutrition programmes for professional athletes to meet their religious duty of fasting during the month of Ramadan. For Muslim Europeans, sport is another field to explore (or to "conquer") in order to reconcile their multiple identities. For conservative-nationalist movements and states authorities in Europe, sport is another public (secular) space to safeguard from the over-expression, or over-visibility, of Islamic identity in Europe [4].

In terms of structure, the paper will first discuss the question of religious phenomena in Europe in relation to the debate of cultural diversity, ethnicity, and citizenship rights. The second part of the paper examines the question of Islam and Muslims in the West in general and in France in particular. The last part of the paper reveals examples of tensions around Islam and Muslim communities in the domain of sport. The media portrayal of athletes of Muslim background in the country of birth or citizenship, but also in the country of origin, are used as illustrative examples of the crisis of meanings today around Muslim faith and culture in Europe.

### **2. Religious Phenomenon in Europe: "Ritual"** *versus* **"Cultural," "Particular"**  *versus* **"Universal"**

According to Alain Touraine:

What is new today, is that groups previously defined on the basis of their nationality, ethnicity or religion, which had existed only in the private sphere, are acquiring today a public existence so strong that it risks damaging their belonging to a national society…(this is taking place) whilst we are witnessing the weakening of national communities and the strengthening of ethnic communities ([5], p. 235, translated from French).

In Touraine's terms, we should not confuse the tendency toward cultural plurality, linked to growing international migration, with *communautarisme*, 1 defined in the strictest sense by the

<sup>1</sup>*Communautarisme* is defined as anti-liberalism doctrine. The concept is mainly applied in France relation to the high visibility of Islam in the public domain (praying in the streets, the provision of halal meals in school and in the market, or wearing the veil in public offices) which for some is not compatible with, and perhaps even poses a threat to, the republican values (or *republicanisme*) and cohesion within the French national community.

power of the ruling group in imposing practices and internal restrictions on their community members, which in Touraine's terms "usually takes the form of a rejection of everything that is foreign." In this sense *communautarisme*, which is commonly used in France to refer to the self-segregation of certain communities, defines itself in opposition to citizenship, limiting the civic rights of men and women and therefore contradicting the political rights of individuals. Touraine here prefers to refer to "cultural rights" (the particular), which are positively linked to (and do not contradict) "political rights" (the universal). Moreover, as argued by Touraine, "cultural rights," like "social rights," can become anti-democratic and even totalitarian instruments if they are not closely connected to "political rights," which are universal. Touraine [6] concludes:

Multiculturalism does not mean the endless fragmentation of cultural space, and it is not a world-wide cultural melting pot. It is an attempt to reconcile the diversity of cultural experiences with the mass production and distribution of cultural goods…No multicultural society is possible unless we can turn to a universal principle that allows socially and culturally different individuals and groups to communicate with one another ([6], pp. 166–67, translated from French).

It should be noted here that Touraine strongly believes in modernity as the only possible platform for a cross-cultural dialogue between those societies that have reached modernity and those that have certain elements of modernity but have yet to fulfill their modernisation. Accordingly, Touraine asserts that "the Other has to be recognised as such, as different, only if the same Other, as myself, accepts the universal principles which define modernity" ([5], p. 263). This is problematic when we know the role that modernity and the European Enlightenment played in reducing religion to its cultural expression in the private sphere. The intellectual disqualification of religious reason in the past by scientific reason (at least in its anti-clerical version)<sup>2</sup> has contributed to what Mohammed Arkoun [7] describes as "the generalisation of a culture of disbelief" in western societies. This is even more problematic for Islam, which does not disassociate between the ritual, the moral, and the law (the dimensions of Islamic legality), on the one hand, and between the public and the private spheres on the other. Oubrou explains:

The fact that the Koran tackles the principle of sanction, responsibility, obligation of laws as regards to family…it means that Islam is interested in the supervision of life in society and community. It is thus a foundational principle in the existence of an Islamic law ([8], p. 130, translated from French).

For Tariq Ramadan, "whether we like it or not, the essence of Islam is religious":

The central principle of tawhid, which we have often referred to, the foundations of faith and practice, the general guidance we find in the scriptural sources, leave no room for doubt about the reality of this. To speak of Islam is first of all to speak of faith, spirituality, and ethics, which together make up a conception of humankind and of life (…). Around the body of principles that define the fundamentals of allegiance to Islam, the area of social affairs is a field that is open to the cultures, customs, discoveries, and creativity of human kind as long as they do not violate a prohibition that is specific and explicit and recognised as such ([9], p. 214).

<sup>2</sup>So called 'tele-techno-scientific' is spreading a new pragmatic instrumental form of reasoning led by the principle of 'just do it', as long as so doing ensures concrete, significant technological and economic success.

Notwithstanding the dominance of secular discourse in science, politics, and the media, many commentators agree that there is a global resurgence or revitalisation of religious movements, including Islam, which started according to Martin Riesebrodt in the 1970s [10]. Jürgen Habermas recognises that we are in "post-secular" epoch. In his article "Notes on a Post-Secular Society," Habermas asks about the current place of religion in Europe, how we should see ourselves as members of *a post-secular* society, and what must we reciprocally expect from one another in order to ensure that in firmly entrenched nation-states, social relations remain civil despite the growth of a plurality of cultures and religious world views. To answer these questions, Habermas proposes that a distinction should be made between "secular" and "secularism":

Unlike the indifferent stance of a secular or unbelieving person, who relates agnostically to religious validity claims, secularists tend to adopt a polemical stance toward religious doctrine that maintains a public influence despite the fact that their claims cannot scientifically justified.

Habermas goes on to describe the main features of "post-secular" modern societies as follow:


They can attain influence on public opinion and will-formation by making relevant contributions to key issues, irrespective of whether their arguments are convincing or objectionable… Let me remind you that the visibility and vibrancy of foreign religious communities also spur the attention to the familiar churches and congregations. The Muslims next door force the Christian citizens to acknowledge to the practice of a rival faith. And they also give the secular citizens a keener consciousness of the phenomenon of the public presence of religion [11].

#### **3. 'Islam' and 'Muslim identities' in the West**

According to Arkoun, the imposition of positivist scientific knowledge, which happened in Western society in the name of secularism (or *laïcité* in France), liberalism, and socialism, has 'discredited' or 'eliminated' religion in society without providing an adequate alternative as a symbol of human existence and a source of unifying ethical values for the group [12].

One can argue, however, that despite the apparent triumph of secularism, the division between the transcendent and the temporal is not always explicit. Sometimes the Judeo-Christian tradition of Europe is used as an argument to justify the incompatibility between Islam and European culture.<sup>3</sup> Secularism means different things in different national contexts. The same is true for the relationship between the state and religion (including Islam). Regarding this point, Césari asserts that the relationship of the government to religion in Europe, and thus the institutionalisation of Islam, tends to pattern itself on one of three principles: cooperation between church and state (Austria,

<sup>3</sup> For example, debates surrounding the question of Turkey's integration into the EU. It is worth noting here that Turkey is accepted as part of the European space in sport but not in cultural and political spaces.

Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Germany); the existence of state-sponsored religion (Great Britain, Denmark, and Greece); or the 'total' separation of religion and politics (the case of France) [4].

The second source of incomprehension about the 'others' (*i.e.*, Islamic faith and Muslims culture) lies in what Said refers to as Orientalism [13]. The construction of Islam, in the Western/collective imagination, is argued to be a product of opposition between, or in contrast to, the East/Orient/Islam on one side, and the West/the Occident/Christendom on the other. As a result of this antagonistic differentiation, Islam and the 'Orient' as depicted in the West have been reduced to a set of references and characteristics, linked to "a collective fiction" which sees the 'Orient' as a place of 'violence,' 'superstition,' and 'irrationality' [14].

The third cause of incomprehension lies in the discourse on identity (of 'we' and 'others') in the so-called era of globalisation, which has increased, according to Habermas (cited in Borradori, 2003), the sense of fear of "the violent uprooting of traditional ways of life." The tendency toward an exclusive-oriented approach to identity within 'immigrant' communities, but also within 'non-immigrant' national minorities, has also been reinforced by the absolutist discourse of nationalist populist movements. The discourse of exclusion, fueled by fear from increasing migrant flows, has been used by nationalist parties across Europe to portray the foreign 'others' (ethnic minorities, religious communities, refugees, and asylum seekers) not only as guilty by virtue of their "foreignness," but also by their cultural heritage [14].

The other aspect in this crisis of meanings is in the dialectic of Muslim 'authenticity.' Who is an 'authentic Muslim' and who is not? The Muslim community, at least for those accepting to be categorised as such due to their cultural background or their religious worldview, can be divided in relation to the question of authenticity (negotiated in relation to the *Quranic* fact and the authentic tradition of the prophet and his companions and early followers) into mainly six groups (see Table 1). To add to these six groups there is a growing minority represented by Western-converted Muslims, defined by Jean-Paul Charnay [15] as European neo-Muslims, which he distinguishes from Muslim neo-Europeans representing the second and third generations of Muslims in Europe.

One should also distinguish between Islam as a religion, and what Ahmed Akbar refers to as Muslims' responses to the forces of globalisation, actions, and strategies that Muslims are adopting as a result of their current political or economic situations as a minority in non-Muslim societies. Akbar categorises these responses into "accepting" (reaching out to other faiths), "preserving" (traditionalists), and "synthesising" (synthesising with other non-Muslim and secular systems) [16]. To illustrate the different strategies that Muslims adopt in mobilising Islam (or not) as a frame of reference, Mandville provides the following example:

There are a good number of Muslims involved in social and political movements who take the pursuit of goals and agendas defined in terms of Islamic normativity (interpreted in widely varying ways) as their primary raison d'être. Likewise, there are also many Muslims whose public identities under most circumstances are not constructed in reference to Islam, but who –under certain conditions—may mobilise themselves around Islam as a form of political expression ([17], p. 493).

The last component in the crisis of meanings is Occidentalism. In opposition to Orientalism, another form of exclusivism has emerged, namely 'radical Islamism,' which purports to be the sole 'owner' of Islam and which builds its identity exclusively in relation to the 'other,' 'evil,' 'atheist,' 'imperialist,' 'fashion-addicted,' 'selfish,' 'morally corrupt' West, as the (sole) cause of 'our' (Muslim societies) decadence. This dehumanising picture of the West is characterised as the root of anti-Western sentiments [18].


**Table 1.** Muslim identity and Islamic 'authenticity' in the West ([15], p. 21).

#### **4. Sport and Muslims in Europe: Case Study of France**

According to Pew Research data from 2010 on religion in Europe, the number of Muslims in Western Europe has reached 11.3 million. The Muslim share of Western Europe's total population is expected to increase from 6.0% in 2010 to 8.6% in 2030 [19]. In the absence of census data for ethnicity and religious affiliation, Islam is considered to be the second largest religion in France. Although it is hard to get a precise picture about the number Muslims in France, including French citizens of Muslim heritage and other Muslim residents, it is commonly accepted that their number is around five to six million (8%–9.6%), the majority of whom are of North African origin (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, known as the Maghreb). The rest are mainly from sub-Saharan Africa and Turkey.

Islam, as the "second largest religion following Catholicism," often finds itself at the heart of the debate in France about national identity, secularism, migration, national security, and riots in the suburbs (*the banlieues* or underprivileged housing estates). As described by Césari:

Too often discussions about Islam in France begin and end with a treatment of Muslims as a social problem. Too often the question is asked: Can Muslims fit into French society? That question presupposes that Islamic values are inherently incompatible with western ones and that Muslims constitute a "dangerous class" [20].

The French republican reassertion of the need to conform to the non-religious nature (known as *laïcité*) of the state has been reinforced by the ban on wearing of religious symbols in schools. Such a ban on public displays of religious affiliation also implies that such dress or religious symbol would be unacceptable in public sector sports facilities and services. As a consequence, the questions of the veil and the demand by members of the Muslim community for women only swimming hours at municipal swimming pools are becoming the centre of electoral campaigns. This is to measure the loyalty of candidates for different elections at local and national levels to the French republican value of *laïcité*. Martine Aubry, previously the head of the socialist party and the mayor of Lille, was highly criticised for allowing the allocation of specific time for women (mainly Muslim) in a public swimming pool [21]. She and the socialist party have been accused by conservative party and far right movements of seducing electorates among Muslim communities at the determent of secular values of France and its assimilissionist/republican model.

Having described the general context about the debate on Islam in France, we will explore in the subsequent section some of the emerging discourses that characterise media depictions of the question (or the problem) of Islam and/in sport. A number of recent events in France are worth exploring from a sociological, political, and media perspective in order to make sense of the debates on sport in relation to wider societal issues such as the politics of identity or questions of integration, and diversity and *laïcité* in France and its former colonies in North Africa.

#### *4.1. "Moderate"* versus *"Radical" Islam*

In an interview with a French radio station, the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut asked the following question about French residents of North African background: What do they think of France? He noted:

We have the impression that the imaginary identity is Algerian and France is just an insurance company, and at most, an object of execration. It is for this reason that the campaign of French identity is a success in France. Some say that such affirmation of identity is exclusionary. No! We invite all French citizens to share this identity and there are some who aggressively and firmly reject it. ([22], translated from French)

Media coverage and political commentaries around selected incidents are symptomatic of the crisis of meanings, which we explained earlier about Islam and Muslim identities in Europe in general and in France in particular. The first incident occurred during the final of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany between France and Italy. Zinedine Zidane's famous headbutt of Marco Materazzi, a global media event par excellence, witnessed by millions of spectators, was explained as being the by-product of a 'clash of civilizations.' On the one hand, Zidane, with his Algerian immigrant origin, somehow represents the Muslim World. He grew up in a suburb of Marseille, which is known for its multicultural population. On the other hand, Metarazzi, the Italian player, was representing 'the West.' Zidane's reaction was explained in orientalist fashion as 'irrational'

and symptomatic of his 'hyper-masculine' North African culture and the delinquent-like culture of *les banlieue* or suburban zones of Marseille [23]. Similarly Jiwani contends that French coverage of the incident reproduced "Orientalist frames (animal imagery, violence, and irrationality) but also underscored associations between Muslims and terrorists in its speculations regarding what Marco Materazzi had said to provoke Zidane's actions" ([24], p. 1).

The second incident occurred during the friendly match between Tunisia and France on 14 October 2008 in *Stade de France*. France's national anthem, *La Marseillaise*, sung by Lââm, a French female R&B singer of Tunisian origin, was booed by some in the crowd. This scandalised and even enraged French politicians, particularly those from the center-right majority, led by President Sarkozy, who not only asked for an investigation into the matter, but also requested that measures be put in place to prevent the reoccurrence of such an event in French territory. Some of the measures presented in response to this demand stipulated that all friendly games with the country concerned are to be suspended for a period determined by the president of the federation or, even more drastically, that France should no longer play friendly matches against countries from the Maghreb region. Of course, this incident was an occasion for some in political, football, and intellectual circles to question the loyalty of the Maghrebi community (Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan) to the French nation and its values. When asked by the media to comment on the incident, Hatem Ben Afra, born in France of Tunisian parents and later a member of the French national football team, declared: "it's a bit of a shame but it's not a major problem. They need to exist, you have to understand them" [25].

The third incident was during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. In the midst of the scandal of the French football team, the image of Franck Ribéry's wife, with her Algerian flag and t-shirt displaying the slogan 'Yes, We Can' in support of the Algerian national team, was at the centre of another polemic in France. Her loyalty to France, and thus the loyalty of her husband (a Muslim convert), were put in doubt. In her campaign to replace her father, Jean-Marie le Pen, as the new leader of the far right National Front Party, Marine le Pen declared:

Most of these people think that one day they can represent France in the World Cup, and another day they can consider themselves to be from another nation or to have another nationality […] if they behave correctly […] if we sometimes hear about patriotism from these players, if it happened that some of them do not refuse to sing La Marseillaise, and they do not take on the flags of other countries, maybe things will change. But currently, I do not particularly recognize myself in this team. ([26], translated from French)

The misconduct in South Africa of some players, such as Nicolas Anelka and Franck Ribéry (both Muslim converts) was portrayed in the media and within political circles as a product of the "violent", "non-French", and "non- republican" culture of suburbs that are mostly populated by French of immigrant decent and particularly of North African origin. This was re-emphasised in the intervention of the French Minister of Health and Sport, Roselyne Bachelot, during a parliamentary debate about the French National Team:

The government should never have had to get involved in the World Cup, but you have all seen the disaster that resulted from immature thugs leading frightened players, a coach without authority, and a federation that's out of its depth. That's why the government has decided to take charge [27].

Finkielkraut, the French Philosopher, went a step further by explaining, yet again, the reasons behind the fiasco of the French team in South Africa: "the French team suffers from ethnic and religious divisions… it is a team of hoodlums… with mafia ethics… a team of people that doesn't care about France" [28].

In light of the media pressure to protect the secular values of the French Republic within the national football team, particularly after the bad publicity of Les Bleus in South Africa, Lauren Blanc, the new appointed coach, declared in an interview that halal meals will not be provided at the national performance centre or during training camps [29].

#### *4.2. Living in between*

When asked about their identities either in their country of birth or country of origin, athletes from immigrant backgrounds are torn between a symbolic connection and a deeper connection with the country of origin. This is exemplified by a statement made to the media by Djamel Bouras, the French judoka (from an Algerian background) and a gold medal winner in the 1996 Atlanta Games: "What does it mean: French Jews, Arabs… who are the Arabs? Am I Arab or French? I am French Muslim!" ([30], translated from French).<sup>4</sup>

For some French citizens of immigrant origin, sport (particularly soccer) is an occasion to celebrate their double sense of belonging to a 'hybrid' identity—that is, an amalgam of aspects of migrant culture and French citizenship, expressed neither in terms of fully belonging to 'French culture' nor in terms of belonging to the 'culture of origin.' However, due to the sentiment of being marginalised in their country of birth or to improve their international career, other athletes from immigrant decent choose to represent their country of origin at international sport arena. This is evident in the steady increase in the number of third-generation young players from immigrant communities in North African national teams (Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria). If we take the example of Algeria, the number of players with an immigrant background participating on the Algerian national football team has increased. This increase has been facilitated by the new FIFA rules. 5 These players are principally from France and Belgium, which are known for high concentrations of residents with Algerian immigrant origins, but also from other countries such as Holland, Denmark, and Canada. One can argue that, for these athletes, participating with the Algerian national team represents a unique opportunity to compete at international level. The same pattern can be seen in other North African countries and in the Middle East, particularly in Palestine and Lebanon, which have large immigrant communities in Europe and North America [31].

The reintegration of top athletes into the national team of their parents' country of origin is not always celebrated in a positive way. In addition to the fact that these players are subjected to criticism in their countries of birth, as discussed earlier, their identities and loyalties are also questioned in the country of origin, particularly when the performance expected from them is not

<sup>4</sup> It was reported that after winning the gold medal in Atlanta, Djamel Bouras offered the medal to "all Muslims who suffer in the world." This provoked a number of comments in mainstream media and in social media about his ideology. He was even accused by extreme right circles of being pro-Palestinian Hamas and pro-Lebanese Hezbollah.

<sup>5</sup> The example of Rais Mblouhi, the goal keeper of the Algerian national football in the 2010 FIFA world, born in France to a Congolese father and Algerian mother.

there. The Algerian national team that qualified for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, after 24 years of absence, was depicted as 'the other French team.' They were asked to prove more than other players their loyalties to the Algerian flag and to demonstrate their Algerian "male aggressiveness" during the competition and their faithfulness to Islamic morality (for instance abstaining from alcohol). The fact that some players tinted their hair blond for the opening group game between Algeria and Slovenia was severely criticized in the Algerian media and was described as 'non-Algerian,' 'non-Arab' (Algeria being the only Arab country in the competition), and even 'non-Islamic.' To counter these stereotypes and to affirm their attachment to Islamic morality players make *Sujud* (prostrations) after scoring a goal [31].

Top athletes who choose to compete for their country of birth are still celebrated as 'ambassadors' of their country of origin, and their performance is explained as a direct product of the creativity, courage, and intelligence they inherited from their culture. Zidane, Samir Nasri, and Karim Benzema have been praised for their 'Algerian,' Ben Arfa for his 'Tunisian,' Ibrahim Afellay and Khalid Boulahrouz for their 'Moroccan' style of football; Mehdi Baala—a French middle-distance runner—for his natural 'North African' ability to run. By contrast, in their country of birth, these athletes' performances are explained as a direct result of (Western) discipline, rational and strategic thinking and socialization (de-culturation) in schools. However, sometimes the Western culture of these top athletes is not well accepted in their country of origin. Sometimes, these players are even deemed *heretics*. A Tunisian newspaper, *Attounisia*, published a revealing picture of a Tunisian-German player, Sami Khedira, with his model girlfriend, Lena Gercke. The photograph generated a state of shock in Tunisia. Mass demonstrations, led particularly by the Salafi movement, were organised in the country. As a result, three journalists from the newspaper were taken into custody and charged for offending public morality. This is happening while Tunisia is undergoing a political transition and societal transformations characterised by the resurgence of religiosity (*tadayoun*) after more than three decades of secular rule under Bourguiba and Ben Ali. Following international pressure, the charges against the journalist were dropped, but the incident sparked a national debate in the country about the limits of freedom of expression and morality [32], as well as the debate on national identity in the post-Ben Ali era.

#### **5. Conclusions**

Sport is at the centre of the debate on integration and national identity of immigrant communities in Europe, and since 9/11 the debate is now centered on immigrants of Muslim faith or culture. For Muslim athletes sport, and particularly football is a terrain for identity making and resistance against stigma. The incidents in sport involving Muslim athletes is an occasion for the supporters of a clash of cultures to exacerbate existing ethnic tensions in cases that involve athletes of immigrant and Muslim backgrounds, mixing thus in their interpretation aspects of "violence, Islam, and masculinity."

For Muslim athletes, playing for their country of origin is an occasion to reconnect with Islamic culture, or at least Islamic spirituality, and to support important causes of the global Muslim community (Ummah). The example of Frédéric Omar Kanouté, French of Mali origin and professional footballer with Seville FC, who was fined 3000 Euros by the Spanish Football Federation for revealing a T-shirt displaying a pro-Palestinian slogan. Similar to Kanouté, more top

professional footballers in Europe are celebrating their Muslim identity in public. This, in turn, creates tensions with regards to competition and fasting during Ramadan or sponsorship of football clubs by alcohol and betting companies [33].6

Some media and intellectual commentators explain public expressions of religious identity in France, including in sports, as a means of defying France's secular republican values. Such explanations accompany incidents ranging from providing halal meals in football training camps to Djamel Bouras's gesture of offering his Olympic gold medal to "Muslims around the world." These same commentators frequently interpret public expressions of religious identity in sports as symbols of religious awakening and the 'Islamisation' of French suburbs. "The religious belief is more structured than the belief in republican values," wrote *Le Monde* (October 4, 2011) after the 2011 riots to explain the phenomenon of "cultural re-islamisation "or "intensification of religious practice" among Muslims in France [34].

Sport is becoming the space to test the success of "integration" policies of minorities into the host society and to question the loyalty of Muslim minorities to the "host" nation. Muslims of immigrant origin are caught between affirming their (multiple) identities while avoiding and combating stigmatisation both in their country of birth and country of origin.

#### **Conflicts of Interest**

The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


<sup>6</sup> According to BBC documentary on Muslims in the Premier league there are nearly 40 Muslim players in the English Premier league. 20 years ago there were none.


marine-le-pen-certains-joueurs-de-l-equipe-de-france-ont-une-autre-nationalite-de-coeur-03- 06-2010-462559\_23.php (accessed on 10 October 2012).

