Konrad Pędziwiatr

From unproblematic to contentious: mosques in Poland

ABSTRACT Although significant scholarly attention has been devoted to the study of mosque conflicts in Europe, up until now most of it has focussed on Western European countries. This has left a significant gap to be filled in the study of mosque tensions in Central and Eastern Europe, where scholarship is scant yet where tensions over constructions of mosques are not less intensive than in the West. Drawing on two recent case studies of mosque constructions in Poland, we argue that a significant shift has taken place in the ways that mosques are perceived, unveiling unprecedented opposition towards their construction. From being largely unproblematic before the Second World War and during the Communist era, mosques have become subjects of fierce public debate. We draw parallels to how anti-mosque arguments raised in Poland fit into a larger European meta-narrative on mosques and Muslims, yet our aim is to situate the paper historically to argue that Polish mosque conflicts must be contextualised within Poland’s unique historical encounter with Islam in order to more accurately make sense of its creeping Islamophobia.

Saving and fearing Muslim women in ‘post-communist’ Poland: troubling Catholic and secular Islamophobia

Abstract Sexual politics play a key role in anti-Muslim narratives. This has been observed by scholarship problematising liberal feminist approaches towards ‘non-Western’ subjects focusing on countries such as France, the USA and the Netherlands. Yet interrogations into how these debates play out in European national contexts that are located outside of the European ‘West’ have attracted significantly less scholarly attention. Drawing on qualitative data collected in Poland this article aims to begin to fill this gap by analysing the centrality of feminist discourses within Islamophobic agendas in Poland. The article asks how discourses around women’s rights are mobilised simultaneously, and paradoxically, by both secular and Catholic groups in ‘post-communist’ Poland. By showcasing how feminist sentiments are employed by ideologically opposing groups, we sketch out some of the complexities in the ways Islamophobia operates in a Central and Eastern European context.

L'activisme social des nouvelles élites musulmanes de Grande-Bretagne

Les changements generationnels au sein de la population musulmane de Grande-Bretagne manifestent une difference fondamentale non pas tellement en matiere de statut juridique, mais avant tout en matiere d’identite et de participation. Les membres des nouvelles elites musulmanes qui apparaissent dans les villes britanniques possedent une serie de moyens efficaces qui leur permettent de choisir entre differents modes d’action et d’abandonner les formes conventionnelles au profit de formes plus concretes de citoyennete. Cet article, qui propose un eclairage de differents cas d’activisme constructif sur le plan social, stimule par les idees religieuses en circulation aupres de cadres musulmans de Londres, examine les relations entre l’islam et les elements essentiels de la citoyennete que sont l’identite et la participation. Il soutient notamment qu’il existe un lien etroit entre l’activisme des jeunes musulmans et leur definition d’eux-memes en tant que musulmans et citoyens.