In the morning of September 11, 2001, a series of coordinated attacks by al-Qaeda in the USA, killed 2,996 people and injured over double that number. 9/11 led to legislation in the US and other Western countries that has been widely considered to represent a dangerous encroachment on civil liberties, as well as to an array of military campaigns internationally.
This “war on terror” as the US administration called it, reshaped western attitudes towards Islam and Muslims in the West, and has underpinned the politics of Islamophobia stalked by the far right, and often accepted by mainstream political parties. 18 years later, the defeat of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, marks a new phase of the “war on terror”, with Muslim communities in Europe suspected, demonized and scrutinized.
New counter-radicalization legislation targets not only acts of terrorism but also critical thought and, European Muslims who fought with, or supported the Islamic State face calls for their expulsion, citizenship revocation and even death upon their return to Europe. This lecture examines the implications of these transformations to our understanding of citizenship and of the rights underpinning it not only for our Muslim fellow citizens, but also for the future of our democracies.
Spyros Sofos is Research Coordinator at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University. He has written extensively on nationalism, populism, multiculturalism and collective action. His publications include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Routledge), Tormented by History (Hurst and Oxford University Press); Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (Palgrave Macmillan). He currently coordinates #rethinkingpopulism with OpenDemocracy and a project on democratic dialogue in divided societies with the Turkey Programme of the Raoul Wallenberg Institute.
2019-08-29