Muslim ethical self-making and secular governmentality in Europe: an introduction

Abstract

In recent years, scholarship on Islam in Europe has highlighted the many attempts to govern Muslims and Islam. Concerned with discussions about secularism, security, integration, or national sentiments more generally, Muslims and Islam have become a target of governmental power. However, the effects of such governmental discourses, practices, or strategies are rarely analysed. In filling this lacuna, we turn to the scholarship on Muslim ethical self-making and specifically ask how configurations of a liberal-secular paradigm govern Muslim subjects in Europe. Focusing upon the nexus of governmentality and the (re-)making of an ethical self, we make visible the ways Islamic ethical and moral commitments are contested, negotiated, or even restructured through the liberal-secular powers of the modern state, its institutions, and its agents in different European contexts.