Islam and Heritage in Europe pdf download

Islam and heritage in Europe pasts present and future possibilities Edited by Katarzyna Puzon, Sharon Macdonald and Mirjam Shatanawi

ISLAM AND HERITAGE IN EUROPE PASTS, PRESENTS, AND FUTURE POSSIBILITIES

In looking at heritage, Islam and Europe, this volume seeks to productively trouble all of these terms and throw new light on the relationships between them.

In this way, it contributes fresh insights to existing debates in heritage and museum studies, and to the discussion of Islam in Europe.

The position and role of Islam in Europe are contested – especially as it intersects with ideas of heritage. On the one hand, Islam is frequently depicted as not properly European or at odds with what are claimed to be European values or European heritage.

On the other, however, are arguments that Islam has long been part of Europe and should, therefore, be seen as part of European heritage; or that the many and diverse heritages of those who currently live in Europe – whenever and from wherever they arrived – should today all be regarded as part of the continent’s and its various national heritages.

The notion of Islam itself is also contested. Is it a religion, a tradition, or a culture? Or a civilisation, a premise that undergirds most museum representations? Is Islam characterised by internal ‘difference, diversity and disagreement’ – or the opposite?

Can, and should, a distinction be made between ‘Islam’ (the religion, as an unchanging universal core) and ‘Muslim culture’ (its fallible human interpretations) – positions that some see as diametrically opposed (e.g. Ahmed, 2016; Jouili, 2019)?

 Some European Muslims have argued that such a distinction is especially important to make in the face of the current negative public representations of Islam. And what are the pre-suppositions and effects of ‘Islamic heritage’ (see also Rico, 2017)?

In this volume, we examine such debates, highlighting how particular ideas of Islam, heritage and Europe are variously mobilised at different times and in different places, and looking at how they play out in specific instances.

To do so is to take all of the terms of our title not as designating fixed entities but, rather, as subject to diverse interpretations, and as changeable and changing. At the same time, however, we are interested in when and how these may be stabilized (as well as opened up), by whom and in what ways.

In particular, we are concerned with how they are materialized through infrastructures, practices, and processes, such as those of museum taxonomies, buildings and sites, exhibitions, rituals, and creative reworking of traditional forms.

Thus, our contributors variously look both at official sites of heritage, such as museums and designated heritage buildings, including not only some mosques but also those, for example, sacred landscapes and cemeteries, that