Tahir Rashid

This course is available on the MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe, MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Columbia) and MSc in Culture and Conflict in a Global Europe (LSE & Sciences Po). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access) and demand is typically very high. Priority is given to students from the European Institute, so students from outside this programme may not get a place.

Muslims are a well-established minority in Europe, constituting more than 5% of the European population. Yet the story of Muslims/Islam in Europe is very often blighted and understood through the lens of ‘clash of civilisations’ or race. In fact, the interaction between Muslims and Europe is far more interesting than accounts of embattled minorities fuelled by resentment. But is in fact a story that stretches over a millennium in the making and has had a fundamental role in the shaping of European identity. This is also a story of rich intellectual exchange, mutual learning, symbiosis and also suspicion. This course embraces a multi-disciplinary approach that focuses on the history, social, political, and cultural impact of Muslims in Europe as well as focusing on the diverse experiences of contemporary Muslims in Western and Eastern Europe. In particular we are interested in how the diverse experience of Muslims in Western and Easter Europe are shaped by questions of racism, ethnicity, migration, citizenship, secularism, gender that essential to contemporary European politics.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 25 hours across Autumn Term. This course includes a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

1 x 1200 word essay

1 x presentation 

• Cesari Jocelyne, The Oxford Handbook for European Islam, 2014
• Nielsen Jorgen, Muslims in Western Europe, 2015
• Ozyurek, Esra. Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in Contemporary Germany, 2014
• Journal of Muslims in Europe, Gilliat-Ray, Muslims in Britain 2010
• Luber Diana, Islam in Europe, 2023
• Daniel Norman, Islam and the West: The Making of an Image, 2009
• Rodinson Maxime, Europe and the Mystique of Islam, 1988
• Bowen John, Can Islam be French? Pluralism and Pragmatism in a Secularist State 2009
• Ansari Humayan, The Infidel Within, 2004
• Laurence, Jonathan, Emancipating Muslims 2012
• Bowen John, Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves, 2006
• Cesari Jocelyne, When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and United States; Lewis Bernard, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, 2000
• Garcia Humberto, Islam and the English Enlightenment 1670-1840
• Said Edward, Orientalism 1978
• Balibar, Etienne 1991
• Is There a ‘Neo-Racism’? Bunzl, Matti. 2005
• “Between Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Some Thoughts on the New Europe.”; Philip Gorski, ‘After Secularisation’, 2008

Online assessment (100%) in the ST.

The online assessment for this course will be administered via Moodle. Questions will be made available at a set date/time and students will be given a set period in the ST to complete the answers to questions and upload their responses back into Moodle.