Islam and Secularity: The Future of Europe's Public Sphere

by NilÃÂÂfer GÃÂÂle

Overview

In Islam and Secularity Nilüfer Göle takes on two pressing issues: the transforming relationship between Islam and Western secular modernity and the impact of the Muslim presence in Europe. Göle shows how the visibility of Islamic practice in the European public sphere unsettles narratives of Western secularism. As mutually constitutive, Islam and secularism permeate each other, the effects of which play out in embodied and aesthetic practices and are accompanied by fear, anxiety, and violence. In this timely book, Göle illuminates the recent rethinking of secularism and religion, of modernity and resistance to it, of the public significance of sexuality, and of the shifting terrain of identity in contemporary Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822359982
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	10/23/2015
Series:	Public Planet Books
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Nilüfer Göle is Professor of Sociology at the Centre d'Études Sociologiques et Politiques Raymond Aron and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris). She is the author of Islam in Europe: The Lure of Fundamentalism and the Allure of Cosmopolitanism and editor of Islam and Public Controversy in Europe.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

1. Public Sphere beyond Religious-Secular Dichotomies  1

2. Secular Modernity in Question  31

3. Religious-Secular Frontiers: State, Public Sphere, and the Self  53

4. Web of Secular Power: Civilization, Space, and Sexuality  73

5. The Gendered Nature of the Public Sphere  103

6. Public Islam: New Visibilities and New Imaginaries  135

7. Public Culture, Art, and Islam: Turkish-Delight in Vienna  161

8. Europe's Trouble with Islam: What Future?  193

Notes  227

Bibliography  243

Index  257

What People are Saying About This

Craig Calhoun

"The secular is never neutral, but it has been deployed in particularly challenging ways in relation to Islam. Nilüfer Göle's discussion in Islam and Secularity takes up the shifting projects and stances that shape this relationship, especially in Turkey and France, but in ways that are of global significance."
 
 

Joan W. Scott

"Nilüfer Göle's insistence on the 'interpenetration' of Muslim and European experience is a major contribution, offering incisive theoretical formulations. In explicating the mutual interactions and transformations that arise from the conflicts and anxieties that accompany the proximity of Islam within Europe, she comments in new and insightful ways about Muslim/European relations. Göle is a major thinker who deserves more prominence."
 

Editorial Reviews

"Islam and Secularity makes for very rewarding and stimulating reading. It is exceptionally well suited to relocate debates about European secularity and Islam into global and historical perspectives. Concise and clearly written, the book is packed with wide-ranging arguments that will challenge the reader on many levels and with fascinating case studies."--Frank Peter "Journal of Islamic Studies" (1/1/2019 12:00:00 AM)

"Göle's contributions are manifold. . . . This work is a must-read for a graduate seminar on the topic. It is highly recommended for both researchers and nonprofessionals."--Hakan Erdagöz "Sociology of Religion" (1/17/2017 12:00:00 AM)

"Once again, then, Göle attends simultaneously to the asymmetries of power and the dynamics of reinvention--the hallmark more generally of this readable, analytically complex, and timely new book."--Mayanthi Fernando "Reading Religion" (6/25/2016 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"Göle’s contributions are manifold. . . . This work is a must-read for a graduate seminar on the topic. It is highly recommended for both researchers and nonprofessionals."

Sociology of Religion - Hakan Erdagöz

"Once again, then, Göle attends simultaneously to the asymmetries of power and the dynamics of reinvention—the hallmark more generally of this readable, analytically complex, and timely new book."

Reading Religion - Mayanthi Fernando

"Islam and Secularity makes for very rewarding and stimulating reading. It is exceptionally well suited to relocate debates about European secularity and Islam into global and historical perspectives. Concise and clearly written, the book is packed with wide-ranging arguments that will challenge the reader on many levels and with fascinating case studies."

Journal of Islamic Studies - Frank Peter

"Göle’s contributions are manifold. . . . This work is a must-read for a graduate seminar on the topic. It is highly recommended for both researchers and nonprofessionals."

Sociology of Religion - Hakan Erdagöz

"The secular is never neutral, but it has been deployed in particularly challenging ways in relation to Islam. Nilüfer Göle's discussion in Islam and Secularity takes up the shifting projects and stances that shape this relationship, especially in Turkey and France, but in ways that are of global significance."
 
 

Craig Calhoun

"Nilüfer Göle's insistence on the 'interpenetration' of Muslim and European experience is a major contribution, offering incisive theoretical formulations. In explicating the mutual interactions and transformations that arise from the conflicts and anxieties that accompany the proximity of Islam within Europe, she comments in new and insightful ways about Muslim/European relations. Göle is a major thinker who deserves more prominence."
 

Joan W. Scott