Muslim Minority State Relations

This volume explores the dominant types of relationships between Muslim minorities and states in different parts of the world, the challenges each side faces, and the cases and reasons for exemplary integration, religious tolerance, and freedom of expression. By bringing together diverse case studies from Europe, Africa, and Asia, this book offers insight into the nature of state engagement with Muslim communities and Muslim community responses towards the state, in turn. This collection offers readers the opportunity to learn more about what drives government policy on Muslim minority communities, Muslim community policies and responses in turn, and where common ground lies in building religious tolerance, greater community cohesion and enhancing Muslim community-state relations.

State, Religion and Muslims offers a comprehensive insight into the discrimination against Muslims at the legislative, executive and judicial level across the 12 Western countries situating discriminatory practices in their institutional framework with a multidisciplinary look.

The movement away from secularist practices and toward political Islam is a prominent trend across Muslim polities. Yet this shift remains under-theorized. Why do modern Muslim polities adopt policies that explicitly cater to religious sensibilities? How are these encoded in law and with what effects? Sadia Saeed addresses these questions through examining shifts in Pakistan's official state policies toward the rights of religious minorities, in particular the controversial Ahmadiyya community. Looking closely at the 'Ahmadi question', Saeed develops a framework for conceptualizing and explaining modern desecularization processes that emphasizes the critical role of nation-state formation, political majoritarianism, and struggles between 'secularist' and 'religious' ideologues in evolving political and legal fields. The book demonstrates that desecularization entails instituting new understandings of religion through processes and justifications that are quintessentially modern.

Although they are typically portrayed by the media as dangerous extremists in distant lands, Muslims in fact form a permanent, peaceful and growing population in nearly every Western country. While Westerners are now more commonly seeing mosques in their neighborhoods or scarved Muslim women in their streets, misperceptions and stereotypes remain. With expanding numbers and desires to protect their rights and identities, Muslims are coming into more and more into the public view. In Muslim Minorites in the West noted scholars Haddad and Smith bring together outstanding essays on the distinct experiences of minority Muslim communities from Detroit, Michigan to Perth, Australia and the wide range of issues facing them. Haddad and Smith in their introduction trace the broad contours of the Muslim experience in Europe, America and other areas of European settlement and shed light on the common questions minority Muslims face of assimilation, discrimination, evangelism, and politics. Muslim Minorities in the West provides a welcome introduction to these increasingly visible citizens of Western nations.

In this volume 30 of the field's top scholars examine historical and contemporary aspects of American Islam, and explore the meaning of religious identity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics.

This paper examines the history of Islam in the Philippines and contemporary developments, with a focus on Philippine state policies and practices with regard to the Muslim Filipinos, including security issues and foreign relations, especially with Islamic countries like the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. More specifically, it touches on the following domains: (1) the history of Islamic development and how it changed the course of the Philippine state, (2) the Philippine state’s traditional approach toward Philippine Islam and its adherents, and the mechanisms of religious control throughout history and in the contemporary era, (3) changing attitudes and policies concerning Islam, along with possible departures from traditional approaches of control, as may have been influenced by foreign relations with Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia and Libya, as well as actual or perceived attempts to use such relations as a legitimizing role, (4) Philippine-Saudi relations, and (5) conclusions or implications, along with policy recommendations for strengthening bilateral relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Other possible interventions in the evolution of Philippine state policy toward the Filipino Muslims will also be considered and analyzed. The most significant of these are the changes in actions or perceptions toward the Muslim Filipinos which are taking place as a result of the globalizing process and the increasing demand for democratization and access to a good life.

The involvement of minorities in politics has been the subject of a considerable number of studies. However, these studies are rarely concerned with the views of Muslims on their participation in the political processes of non-Muslim societies. Several Western scholars have thought and still think that the world, from the perspective of Muslims, can be divided in accordance with the dichotomy of the classical Islamic Law that distinguishes between the "Territory of Islam" and the "Territoryof War". however, during the last decennia various Muslim scholars have tried to reinterpret the position of Muslims in non-Muslim societies in new religious terms by which this classification has been emended and corrected. In this book, four different views are distinguished: the pragmatic, idealistic or utopian, re-interpretative, and traditionalist views. It goes without saying that the practical implementaion of these views to a large degree depends upon the types of Muslim organizations and representative bodies in those societies, as well as their denominational and ethnical backgrounds. From an international comparative perspective it appears that, contrary to the situation in Australia, Muslims of most Western European states have been thus far unsuccessful in creating representative organizations at national levels. This is also illustrated by studies of Muslim organizations in Germany, Italy and the united Kingdom. Another important factor consists of the views of the younger generations of Muslim immigrants about the compatibility of their Islamic identiity and full participation in the non-Muslim, secular societies in which they are living. Research on this subject contained in the present book responds to this question in an affirmative way.

'In an increasingly interconnected world, the relationship between majority and minority communities, both in the United States and abroad, must be better understood. What is the role of not only the Muslim-minority population in the United States, but also of the majority population toward American Muslim communities? Muslim minorities, especially in the West, are increasingly becoming ambassadors and advocates of social justice and freedom in their societies, yet they continue to face a number of challenges. Similarly, what are the roles and responsibilities of Muslim majorities toward minorities, and what can Muslims, both in the West and in Muslim-majority countries, learn from each other's experiences? This working group, convened at the 2011 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Washington, DC, brought together theologians, clergy, academics, activists, and politicians from across the United States and the Muslim world to discuss the roles and responsibilities of minority and majority communities toward each other and in a global context. The working group discussed these questions in the context of five major issues: integration and identity, the impact of media and politics, security and counterterrorism, the treatment of marginalized communities, and interfaith relations. The group's participants also came up with a number of recommendations, summarized at the end of the paper."--Publisher description.