Sindre Bangstad

Eurabia Comes to Norway

Andres Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 22/7/11 terrorist attacks in Norway, was profoundly inspired by what has become known as the Eurabia genre. Behring Breiviks 1516-page cut-and-paste tract, 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, makes extensive reference to Eurabia authors, and most prominently to the blog essays of the Norwegian extreme right-wing blogger “Fjordman,” also known as Peder Are Nøstvold Jensen. A popular transnational genre found in both film and literature, the Eurabia genre is central to understanding the worldviews of extreme right-wing “counter-jihadists.” It is a conspiratorial genre in which a central rhetorical trope is that Europe is on the verge of being taken over by Muslims. It alleges that European Muslims want to establish continent-wide Islamic domination in the form of an Islamic state or a caliphate, using higher fertility rates and immigration as their main means of achieving this. The Eurabia genre has, however, hitherto received limited academic attention. In this article, I use the insights of critical discourse analysis in order to analyse some central contributions to this profoundly Islamophobic genre and its popularization and political mainstreaming in Norway in the past decade.

Hydra's Heads: PAGAD and Responses to the PAGAD Phenomenon in a Cape Muslim Community

People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), a Cape Town-based movement that arose out of the context of some of the most violent and crime-ridden Coloured townships in Cape Town in the 1990s, has attracted a lot of interest in the media and from academics. A central issue in the debate on PAGAD has been what role Islamist discourses have played in the generation of support for the movement and, more specifically, whether one can regard such discourses as motivating factors for individual PAGAD members. In this article, I present the case-story of a convicted PAGAD member in a community in Cape Town, and the ways in which the Muslim community in which he resided responded to the phenomenon. On the basis of ethnographical data, I argue that PAGAD ought to be seen as a movement attracting actors from a variety of social backgrounds within Muslim communities in Cape Town, and that the common-sensical assertion of a linkage between Islamist discourses and PAGAD violence therefore is problematic. PAGADs violence is linked to the long history of vigilantism in non-white areas in South Africa, to young South Africans’ exposure to violence in the anti-apartheid struggle, to the absence of legitimacy of the police and the courts, to local models of masculinity, and to marginalisation. PAGAD was bound up with the hybrid social and religious formations of Coloured communities in Cape Town, yet its outward expressions as an Islamist movement cannot be reduced to a mere epiphenomenon in relation to its social and cultural origins. In the community of Mekaar, PAGAD failed to attract a substantial following due to the fact that most actors in the community stalled at the prospect of a cycle of violence between local PAGAD-members and local drug-lords. This article emphasises the general significance of local social and cultural contexts for the understanding of so-called Islamist movements.

Inclusion and exclusion in the mediated public sphere: the case of Norway and its Muslims

Norway has in recent years been rated as one of the most democratic societies in the world. But how open and democratic are Norways mediated public spheres when it comes to minority individuals? This article is based on in-depth interviews with a number of individuals of Muslim background in Norway who in recent years have been active in debates in the mediated public spheres. I argue that the existence of a hierarchy of preference among Norwegian liberal media editors includes and privileges the voices of individuals of Muslim background engaged in critiques of Islam, while it often excludes Muslims who are not prepared to engage in such critique.

‘Anthropologists Are Talking’ About Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism in the New Europe

The terms anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are common in the media, but what do they actually refer to? Has traditional anti-Semitism run its historical course while Islamophobia threatens to become the defining condition of the new unified Europe? Both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are phenomena of exclusion of minorities, but does that make them comparable? And if yes, in what ways can such an attempt at comparison escape the pitfall of analogizing the historical situation of the Jew and the contemporary situation of Muslims? These are some of the questions that are addressed in the following conversation between Prof. Matti Bunzl and Dr Bangstad, based on transcripts from an event at The House of Literature in Oslo, Norway, on 18 September 2009.

‘Anthropologists Are Talking’: About Anthropology and Post-Apartheid South Africa

In 2010, South Africa hosted the first World Cup in soccer ever to take place on the African continent. Twenty years after the fall of Apartheid, South Africa presents a series of fractured and contradictory images to the outside world. It is, on the one hand, an economic powerhouse in sub-Saharan Africa, but on the other hand a society in which socio-economic inequalities have continued to flourish and increase. What can anthropology tell us about contemporary South Africa? As part of an ongoing series in public anthropology, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Postdoctoral Fellow Sindre Bangstad sat down for a public conversation with Professors John L. and Jean Comaroff in The House of Literature in Oslo, Norway, on 28 September 2010.

‘ Daʿwa is Our Identity’—Salafism and IslamNet’s Rationales for Action in a Norwegian Context

This article examines the emergence of Salafism in Norway, a relatively new phenomenon in the country that manifests itself mainly through two Muslim organisations, namely IslamNet and the Prophet’s Ummah. Recent research has emphasised that the activism of IslamNet may be characterised as being haraki , or “politically” orientated—a categorisation emerging out of the frequently cited so-called tripartite typology of transnational Salafism. While we agree that the model is useful as an ideal type, we argue that Salafi organisations such as IslamNet may adjust their orientation from puritanism to politics, depending on shifting social-political circumstances.

‘Anthropologists are Talking’:About Islam, Muslims and Law in Contemporary Europe

Abstract In contemporary Europe, Islam and Muslims are rightly or wrongly often perceived as the ‘other’. Among the central foci of concern in many Western European countries with a significant presence of Muslims, the law has featured prominently in recent years. What can anthropology tell us about the multiple ways in which European Muslims engage with liberal and secular laws and the state? Perhaps no other contemporary scholar in anthropology has written more extensively about these issues than Professor John R. Bowen. As part of an ongoing series in public anthropology, Professor Bowen engaged in a public conversation with Professor Oddbjørn Leirvik and Postdoctoral Fellow Sindre Bangstad at The House of Literature in Oslo, Norway on 27 September 2011. Due to technical failures, the conversation had to be re-recorded at the Grand Hotel in Oslo on 28 September 2011.

Ambiguous Accommodation: Cape Muslims and Post-Apartheid Politics

This article explores how the elite among Muslim religious leaders in the Western Cape of South Africa, organised in the Muslim Judicial Council (MJC), have positioned themselves with regard to political power in the post-apartheid era. We argue that the MJCs positioning may be characterised as premised on a ‘loyalist-accommodationist’ relation to power, in which the comforts and religious freedoms of a religious minority are seen as best ensured by accommodation with the party in power, the African National Congress (ANC). This strategy is closely linked to the interests of the middle-class elite, from which the elite among the ‘ulama’ is largely recruited. We demonstrate that this loyalist-accommodationist stance has survived the ideological and discursive shifts within the ANC over the course of the post-apartheid era, and attempt to explain why a politics of direct challenge to political power from the MJC is unlikely in the ‘new South Africa’, in spite of the ‘ulamas’ ambivalence with regard to societal secularisation.1

Islamophobia: What’s in a Name?: Analysing the Discourses of Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge (Stop The Islamisation of Norway, SIAN )

The term Islamophobia is not of recent vintage. However, while its origins date back to the 1910s, its current usage is relatively new, and dates back to the 1990s. It is also a heavily contested term, not only in far-right circles in the West, but also among liberal elites, and even within academia itself. In its current usage, it has a genealogy dating to the emergence of scholarly literature on ‘cultural’ and/or ‘neo-racism’ in the 1980s and 1990s. In the legal arena in Norway, the term itself consequently carries no weight whatsoever, and the very meanings of the term ‘racism’ have, until recently, been limited to classical ‘biological racism’ in a strict and narrow sense. In a landmark case before the Kristiansand Magistrate’s Court in March 2015, the court acquitted a local imam of charges of alleged ‘defamation’ of the erstwhile leader of the far-right and Islamophobic organisation Stopp Islamiseringen av Norge (Stop The Islamisation of Norway, SIAN), Arne Tumyr. The accused had alleged in a media interview that Tumyr and his organisation “based their activities on racism.” Thus, a Norwegian lower court had for the first accepted arguments based on ‘cultural’ or ‘new racism.’ The author of this article was an expert witness in this civil lawsuit, and this essay analyses the rhetorical representation of Islam and Muslims in the far-right and Islamophobic discourse of SIAN.

Norwegian Right-Wing Discourses: Extremism Post-Utøya

Since the terror attacks in Oslo and at Utoya in Norway in which 77 civilians lost their lives on 22 July 2011 there have been a number of attempts to provide explanations for the atrocities committed by Anders Behring Breivik. This chapter contends they cannot be understood without reference to the ideology with which he legitimated his actions. It explores the intersections between extreme and populist/radical right-wing discourses on Islam and Muslims in Norway since the 1980s through the methods of critical discourse analysis and shows that among politicians in Norway’s most popular political right-wing party The Progress Party (PP) there is a long record of utilising rhetorical tropes of extreme right-wing provenance and/or distribution when it comes to immigration, multiculturalism, Islam and Muslims. Central PP politicians in Norway have, for 25 years, cast Muslims in Norway as an ‘existential threat’ to Norway and Norwegians. In so doing, some of the central PP politicians have endorsed and promoted a discourse which, even though it did not directly incite violence, have certainly advanced ideas about Muslims and Islam which are of extreme right-wing provenance and are taken by some extreme right-wingers to offer tacit support for their cause. From an analytical point of view, extreme and populist/radical right-wing discourses on Islam and Muslims form part of a continuum, rather than being discourses clearly demarcated from one another. Whilst there is no direct and unmediated link between rhetorical ‘fighting words’ and behavioural ‘fighting acts’, the ideology that drove the terror of 22 July 2011 cannot be understood without exploring these intersections which Anders Breivik came to construe as legitimating specific courses of violent action.