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Living Islam in the Diaspora: Between Turkey and Germany

Living Islam in the Diaspora: Between Turkey and Germany The South Atlantic Quarterly :/, Spring/Summer . Copyright ©  by Duke University Press. Katherine Pratt Ewing these tensions shaping German discourse from within Turkey are based on images of the threat that Islam poses to Turkey’s identity as a Western country, given that the large majority of all Turkish citizens are Muslim, if only by their cultural and family heritage. But these images of Islam, I argue, are taken up in German public culture and transferred onto Germany itself, so that the visible, practicing Muslim is constituted as a threat to the foundations of German democracy and the German constitution. The phantasmic nature of this sense of threat is suggested when we ask what, in practical terms, this threat could be, given that Germany is a historically Christian country that is now a dominant player in the Western world of democracy and freedom. How could a small Muslim minority undermine the foundations of the German state? The association of Islam with threat is, of course, all too natural at the turn of the twenty-first century. Today much of the Western world, including some of its most influential leaders, recognizes ‘‘Islamic civilization’’ as the only serious challenge to http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png South Atlantic Quarterly Duke University Press

Living Islam in the Diaspora: Between Turkey and Germany

Ewing, Katherine Pratt
South Atlantic Quarterly , Volume 102 (2-3) – Apr 1, 2003
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2003 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0038-2876
eISSN
1527-8026
DOI
10.1215/00382876-102-2-3-405
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The South Atlantic Quarterly :/, Spring/Summer . Copyright ©  by Duke University Press. Katherine Pratt Ewing these tensions shaping German discourse from within Turkey are based on images of the threat that Islam poses to Turkey’s identity as a Western country, given that the large majority of all Turkish citizens are Muslim, if only by their cultural and family heritage. But these images of Islam, I argue, are taken up in German public culture and transferred onto Germany itself, so that the visible, practicing Muslim is constituted as a threat to the foundations of German democracy and the German constitution. The phantasmic nature of this sense of threat is suggested when we ask what, in practical terms, this threat could be, given that Germany is a historically Christian country that is now a dominant player in the Western world of democracy and freedom. How could a small Muslim minority undermine the foundations of the German state? The association of Islam with threat is, of course, all too natural at the turn of the twenty-first century. Today much of the Western world, including some of its most influential leaders, recognizes ‘‘Islamic civilization’’ as the only serious challenge to

Journal

South Atlantic Quarterly – Duke University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2003

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