Muslims’ online participation: Subaltern spaces, identity, community, and religious belonging European Muslims and New Media offers perspectives on the various ways in which Muslims use new media to form and reform Muslim consciousness, identities, and national and transnational belongings, and contest and negotiate tensions and hegemonic narratives in Western European societies. The authors explore how online discussion groups, social media communities, and other online sites act as a ‘new public sphere’ for Muslim youth to voice their opinions, seek new sources of knowledge, establish social relationships, and ultimately decentre established discourses that are projected on them as Muslims in Europe. The possibilities and challenges of new media transform existing debates on Islamic knowledge, authority, citizenship, communities, and networks. European Muslims and New Media critically explores the multifaceted transformations that result from Muslims using online spaces to present, represent, and negotiate their identities, ideologies, and aspirations. Contributors: Anna Berbers (KU Leuven), Claudia Carvalho (Tilburg University), Laurens de Rooij (Durham University), Leen d’Haenens (KU Leuven), Merve Kayıkcı (KU Leuven), Sahar Khamis (University of Maryland, College Park), Joyce Koeman (KU Leuven), Jana Jevtic (Central European University), Viviana Premazzi (FIERI), Roberta Riccuci (University of Torino), Charlotte van der Ploeg (Leiden University)

Antisemitism from Muslims has become a serious issue in Western Europe, although not often acknowledged as such. Looking for insights into the views and rationales of young Muslims toward Jews, Günther Jikeli and his colleagues interviewed 117 ordinary Muslim men in London (chiefly of South Asian background), Paris (chiefly North African), and Berlin (chiefly Turkish). The researchers sought information about stereotypes of Jews, arguments used to support hostility toward Jews, the role played by the Middle East conflict and Islamist ideology in perceptions of Jews, the possible sources of antisemitic views, and, by contrast, what would motivate Muslims to actively oppose antisemitism. They also learned how the men perceive discrimination and exclusion as well as their own national identification. This study is rich in qualitative data that will mark a significant step along the path toward a better understanding of contemporary antisemitism in Europe.

There are roughly eight million Muslims in south-east Europe, among them Albanians, Bosniaks, Turks and Roma -- descendants of converts or settlers in the Ottoman period. This new history of the social, political and religious transformations that this population experienced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries -- a period marked by the collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires and by the creation of the modern Balkan states -- will shed new light on the European Muslim experience. Southeast Europe's Muslims have experienced a slow and complex crystallisation of their respective national identities, which accelerated after 1945 as a result of the authoritarian modernisation of communist regimes and, in the late twentieth century, ended in nationalist mobilisations that precipitated the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo during the break-up of Milosevic's Yugoslavia. At a religious level, these populations have re--mained connected to the institutions established by the Ottoman Empire, as well as to various educational, intellectual and Sufi (mystic) networks. With the fall of communism, new transnational networks appeared, especially neo-Salafist and neo-Sufi ones, although Europe's Balkan Muslims have not escaped the wider processes of secularisation.

This collection of twelve papers provides case studies and thematic reflections on the growing transnational networking of European Muslims and their involvement with contemporary global Islam. The volume pays particular attention to the mechanisms and significance of this phenomenon.

Discusses how a distinctive 'European' identity has grown over the centuries, especially with the EU.

The interchange between Muslims and Europe has a long and complicated history, dating back to before the idea of 'Europe' was born, and the earliest years of Islam. There has been a Muslim presence on the European continent before, but never has it been so significant, particularly in Western Europe. With more Muslims in Europe than in many countries of the Muslim world, they have found themselves in the position of challenging what it means to be a European in a secular society of the 21st century. At the same time, the European context has caused many Muslims to re-think what is essential to them in religious terms in their new reality.In this work, H.A. Hellyer analyses the prospects for a European future where pluralism is accepted within unified societies, and the presence of a Muslim community that is of Europe, not simply in it.

This social, cultural, and political history of Slavic Muslim women of the Yugoslav region in the first decades of the post-Ottoman era is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the issues confronting these women. It is based on a study of voluntary associations (philanthropic, cultural, Islamic-traditionalist, and feminist) of the period. It is broadly held that Muslim women were silent and relegated to a purely private space until 1945, when the communist state “unveiled” and “liberated” them from the top down. After systematic archival research in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria, Fabio Giomi challenges this view by showing: • How different sectors of the Yugoslav elite through association publications, imagined the role of Muslim women in post-Ottoman times, and how Muslim women took part in the construction or the contestation of these narratives. • How associations employed different means in order to forge a generation of “New Muslim Women” able to cope with the post-Ottoman political and social circumstances. • And how Muslim women used the tools provided by the associations in order to pursue their own projects, aims and agendas. The insights are relevant for today’s challenges facing Muslim women in Europe. The text is illustrated with exceptional photographs.