Afterword: Muslim ethical self-making and secular governmentality in Europe

ABSTRACT

Prompted by the contributions to this collection, this afterword reflects on questions about how Europe is imagined and inhabited. Talal Asad once claimed that ‘Muslims are present in Europe and yet absent from it’. He suggests that this paradox arises from the ways in which Europe is imagined such that Muslims are excluded in profound manner from its history and development. Not recognising their historical and long-running presence in Europe, albeit in varying numbers over time, means that they are not seen as an integral part of it, only as an additive extra. The contributions collected here explore the implications of this erasure of Muslims as Europeans from the European public imagination, while also shedding light on the ways in which continued Muslim presence and commitment to ethical self-making contests and engages with modes of governance suspicious of Muslims.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethics and selfhood
• Islamic ethics
• reimagining Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. For discussion of the challenges of defining neoliberalism, see Iqtidar (2017). Critics of neoliberalism have often used the term so broadly that it loses distinction and meaning. For critique to carry force, it has to be more careful in parsing out the exact contours.

2. For the Italian nationalist thinker and leader Giuseppe Mazzini, the nation carried spiritual meaning. For the English thinker and politician John Stuart Mill, the nation is a cultural and social grouping. For an overview see Iqtidar (2021).

3. Mignolo (2012) traces the origins of European fascination with homogenisation to the Reconquista and the Inquisitions that followed.

4. For a brief overview of the place of Islam in European imagination and political ideas, see Curtis (2009, 2–25).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Humeira Iqtidar

Humeira Iqtidar is a Reader in Politics in the Department of Political Economy, King’s College London. Her research brings together a focus on modern Islamic thought and practice with postcolonial and comparative political theory. She is the author of Secularizing Islamists? Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawa in Urban Pakistan (Chicago, 2011) and numerous articles in premier disciplinary journals such as Political Theory, Journal of Politics, Political Studies and Critical Inquiry.