Transnational Islam In Interwar Europe

The book examines Muslim-European interactions in the interwar period and provides original insights into the emergence of geopolitical and intellectual East–West networks that transcended national, cultural, and linguistic borders.

The Muslim population of interwar Europe interacted intensely with members of other communities. The Ahmadi-Lahori missions of Berlin and Woking, for example, engaged in an intense correspondence and exchange of ideas with Albanian religious leaders. Essays in this volume discuss the emergence of a distinctly "European" Islam (a genesis that took place much earlier than many scholars realize) and the fraught interplay between Islam and politics, especially the development of Muslim "agendas" by certain governments. Essays also address the richness and significance of debates within Europe's Muslim community, the attempts by Nazis to foment "jihad," and the operational strategies of transnational networks in the 1920s and 1930s.

Muslims in Interwar Europe provides a comprehensive overview of the history of Muslims in interwar Europe. Based on personal and official archives, memoirs, press writings and correspondences, the contributors analyse the multiple aspects of the global Muslim religious, political and intellectual affiliations in interwar Europe. They argue that Muslims in interwar Europe were neither simply visitors nor colonial victims, but that they constituted a group of engaged actors in the European and international space. Contributors are Ali Al Tuma, Egdūnas Račius, Gerdien Jonker, Klaas Stutje, Naomi Davidson, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, Umar Ryad, Zaur Gasimov and Wiebke Bachmann. This title is available online in its entirety in Open Access.

To what extent can Islam be localized in an increasingly interconnected world? The contributions to this volume investigate different facets of Muslim lives in the context of increasingly dense transregional connections, highlighting how the circulation of ideas about ‘Muslimness’ contributed to the shaping of specific ideas about what constitutes Islam and its role in society and politics. Infrastructural changes have prompted the intensification of scholarly and trade networks, prompted the circulation of new literary genres or shaped stereotypical images of Muslims. This, in turn, had consequences in widely differing fields such as self-representation and governance of Muslims. The contributions in this volume explore this issue in geographical contexts ranging from South Asia to Europe and the US. Coming from the disciplines of history, anthropology, religious studies, literary studies and political science, the authors collectively demonstrate the need to combine a translocal perspective with very specific local and historical constellations. The book complicates conventional academic divisions and invites to think in historically specific translocal contexts.

The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires. In the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, a pivotal change in seafaring occurred, through which western Europeans played important roles in politics, trade, and culture. Viewing this age of empires through the lens of the Hajj puts it into a different perspective, by focusing on how increasing European dominance of the globe in pre-colonial and colonial times was entangled with Muslim religious action, mobility, and agency. The study of Europe’s connections with the Hajj therefore tests the hypothesis that the concept of agency is not limited to isolated parts of the globe. By adopting the “tools of empires,” the Hajj, in itself a global activity, would become part of global and trans-cultural history. With contributions by: Aldo D’Agostini; Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste; Ulrike Freitag; Mahmood Kooria; Michael Christopher Low; Adam Mestyan; Umar Ryad; John Slight and Bogusław R. Zagórski.

"Kindred Spirits focuses on a network of Catholic historians, theologians, poets, and activists who pushed against both the far-right surge in interwar Europe as well as the secularizing tendencies of the leftist movements active in the early to mid-twentieth century. Brenna Moore focuses on how this group sought a middle way anchored in "spiritual friendship"-religiously meaningful friendship conceived of as uniquely capable of engaging the social and political challenges of the era. For this interconnected group, spiritual friendship was inseparable from their resistance to European xenophobia and nationalism in the 1930s, anti-racist activism in the US in the 1930s and 1940s, and solidarity with Muslims during the Algerian War in 1954-1962. Friendship was a key to both divine and human realms, a means of accessing the transcendent while also engaging with our social and political existence. The project primarily centers on France, but members of this group also hailed from Russia, Egypt, Syria, and New York. Some of the core figures are well-known-philosopher Jacques Maritain, influential Islamicist Louis Massignon-while others are lost to history. More than a simple idealized portrait of a remarkable group of Catholic intellectuals from the past, Kindred Spirits is a deep dive into both the beauty and the flaws of a vibrant social network worth recovering from historical obscurity"--

Studying the entangled histories of the areas conceptualized as Middle Eastern and North Atlantic World in the interwar years is crucial to understanding the two areas' respective and common histories until today. However, many of the manifold connections, exchanges, and entanglements between the areas have not received thorough scholarly attention yet. The contributors to this volume address this by bringing together various innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to the topic. They thereby further the understanding of the two areas' entangled histories and diversify prevailing concepts and narratives. Through this, the volume also offers enriching insights into the global history of the early 20th century.

During the first half of the twentieth century, European countries witnessed the arrival of hundreds of thousands of colonial soldiers fighting in European territory (First and Second World War and Spanish Civil War) and coming into contact with European society and culture. For many Europeans, these were the first instances in which they met Asians or Africans, and the presence of Indian, Indo-Chinese, Moluccan, Senegalese, Moroccan or Algerian soldiers in Europe did not go unnoticed. This book explores this experience as it relates to the returning soldiers - who often had difficulties re-adapting to their subordinate status at home - and on European authorities who for the first time had to accommodate large numbers of foreigners in their own territories, which in some ways would help shape later immigration policies.

We often think of the Balkans as a region beset by turmoil and backwardness, but from late antiquity to the present it has been a dynamic meeting place of cultures and religions. Marie-Janine Calic invites us to reconsider the history of this intriguing, diverse region as essential to the story of global Europe.

The Routledge Handbook of Muslim-Jewish Relations invites readers to deepen their understanding of the historical, social, cultural, and political themes that impact modern-day perceptions of interfaith dialogue. The volume is designed to illuminate positive encounters between Muslims and Jews, as well as points of conflict, within a historical framework. Among other goals, the volume seeks to correct common misperceptions about the history of Muslim-Jewish relations by complicating familiar political narratives to include dynamics such as the cross-influence of literary and intellectual traditions. Reflecting unique and original collaborations between internationally-renowned contributors, the book is intended to spark further collaborative and constructive conversation and scholarship in the academy and beyond.