Thomas Sealy

Bio: Thomas Sealy is an academic researcher from University of Bristol. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Diversity (politics). The author has an hindex of 4, co-authored 13 publications receiving 85 citations.

Multiculturalism, interculturalism, ‘multiculture’ and super-diversity: Of zombies, shadows and other ways of being:

Abstract: Multiculturalism has increasingly become challenged and outcast, whether directly or summarily, as theoretically useful or empirically valid. This has come prominently from three corners: intercult...

Identity, difference, religion : multiculturalism and British converts to Islam

Abstract: This thesis is concerned with British converts to Islam and multiculturalism. It argues that the conceptual tools for thinking about identity and belonging in the literature in these areas fall short. To address this, it develops discussions of two central problematics: the dynamics between continuity and change, and between religion and culture. Doing so, it makes three interrelated contributions to existing scholarship. The first is to multiculturalism. It is argued that multiculturalism has not taken sufficient account of religious identities with regard to its central concepts of difference and recognition, conceiving these based on ethnic difference, which resultantly fall short of being able to include converts. However, addressing religiosity provides a fruitful perspective to the goals of multiculturalism. Furthermore, this has implications for how belonging and the position of converts to Islam are conceived in British society. This is explored through a discussion based on an analytical framework that draws on Simmel’s stranger and his distinction between religiosity and religion. The second contribution is to the sociological literature on religious identities, notably that of conversion to Islam. It is argued that concepts in this literature unnecessarily mischaracterise these identities but that through Simmel’s notion of religiosity, a theoretical shift can open up space for religious subject positions. It does so alongside developing a theoretically informed methodological approach to studying religious identity based on narrative. The third contribution is to the representations of Muslim converts in the West, based on a problematic understanding of the religious and cultural. It is argued a sociological account enriched through a conversation with theological principles provides a different perspective on conceiving the relation between the religious and the cultural as well as the religious and the secular. This, furthermore, has implications for thinking through Islamophobia and the necessity of a multi-level analysis.

Making the ‘Other’ from ‘Us’: The Representation of British Converts to Islam in Mainstream British Newspapers

Abstract: There is now a great deal of literature that shows how Islam and Muslims are routinely represented in negative ways in the mainstream newspapers. With overt or covert reliance on Orientalist discou...

Beyond Euro‐Americancentric Forms of Racism and Anti‐racism

Abstract: Following the killing of George Floyd by the police in the US in May 2020, a new anti-racism has erupted across the world. While this anti-racism is squarely focussed on dismantling anti-black racism, scholarship—especially in western Europe—has for some decades now been emphasising racisms: Anti-South Asian racism, Islamophobia and Sinophobia in Britain, anti-Arab racism in France and anti-Turk and anti-migrant racisms in Germany, and so on. These various forms of racism do not just refer to the use of biological features, but also perceived cultural features in the way that particular groups are constructed and rendered as ‘other’—cultural racisms. Yet, this scholarship is deeply Euro-Americancentric as it barely acknowledges racisms outside the West and least of all racisms that do not involve white perpetrators. This special issue considers a number of such racisms and anti-racisms in Asia and the Middle East.

The Practice Of Everyday Life

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Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject

Abstract: WOMEN Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, by Saba Mahmood Princeton, NJ and Oxford, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004 xvi + 199 pages Gloss, to p 203 Refs to p 223 Index to p 233 $55 cloth; $1795 paper This book explores "the conceptual challenges that women's involvement in the Islamist movement poses to feminist theory in particular and to secular-liberal thought in general through an ethnographic account of the urban women's mosque movement that is part of the Islamic Revival in Cairo, Egypt" (p 2) However, Saba Mahmood promises more than an ethnography based on two years of fieldwork (1995-1997) She embarks on an intellectual journey of selfreflection in which she has come "to believe that a certain amount of self-scrutiny and skepticism is essential regarding the certainty of my own political commitments, when trying to understand the lives of others who do not necessarily share these commitments" (p xi) By refusing to take her own political stance as the necessary lens through which the analysis proceeds, the author opens up the possibility that "my analysis may come to complicate the vision of human flourishing that I hold most dear and which has provided the bedrock of my personal existence" (p xii) It is necessary, the author cautions as she embarks upon her inquiry, not to assume that the political position we uphold will necessarily be vindicated or provide the ground for our theoretical analysis As readers, we are invited to join her in "parochializing our assumptions, about the constitutive relationship between action and embodiment, resistance and agency, self and authority - that inform most feminist judgments from across a broad range of the political spectrum about non-liberal movements such as the women's mosque movement" (p 38) It is within that spirit that I have critiqued this book The five chapters are a running argument with and against key analytic concepts in liberal thought as these concepts have come to inform various strands of feminist theory through which non-liberal movements, such as the women's mosque movement, are analyzed Through each chapter Mahmood makes her ethnographic talk back to the normative liberal assumptions about human nature against which such a movement is held accountable "The Subject of Freedom" illustrates the different ways in which the activism of the mosque movement challenges the liberal conception of politics Mahmood analyzes the conception of self, moral agency, and politics that undergird the practices of this non-liberal movement in order to come to an understanding of the historical projects that animate it The pious subjects of the mosque movement occupy an uncomfortable place in feminist scholarship because they pursue practices and ideals embedded in a tradition that has historically accorded women a subordinate status "Topography of the Piety Movement" provides a brief sketch of the historical development against which the contemporary mosque movement has emerged and critically engages with themes within scholarship of Islamic modernism regarding such movements We sense the broad-based character of the women's mosque movement through the author's description and analysis of three of six mosques where she concentrated her fieldwork Despite the differences among the mosque groups - ranging from the poorest to the upper-middle income neighborhoods of Cairo - they all shared a concern for the increased secularization of Egyptian society and illustrate the increasing respect accorded to the da 'iya preacher/religious teacher (who undertakes da'waliterally call, summons or appeal that in the 20th century came to be associated with proselytization activity) "Women and the Da'wa" (pp 64-72) is particularly insightful, as the author juxtaposes the emergence of secular liberalism with the da'wa movement and concludes that "the modernist project of the regulation of religious sensibilities, undertaken by a range of postcolonial states (and not simply Muslim states), has elicited in its wake a variety of resistances, responses and challenges …

The Politics of Recognition

Abstract: In recent decades, struggles for recognition have increasingly dominated the political landscape.1 Recognition theorists such as Charles Taylor (1994) and Axel Honneth (1995) seek to interpret and justify these struggles through the idea that our identity is shaped, at least partly, by our relations with other people. Because our identity is shaped in this way, it is alleged that feelings of self-worth, self-respect and self-esteem are possible only if we are positively recognised for who we are. Consequently, for many political theorists, recognition is an integral component of a satisfactory modern theory of justice, as well as the means by which both historical and contemporary political struggles can be understood and justified.

The spiritual revolution : why religion is giving way tospirituality

Abstract: List of Plates.Preface.Introduction.1. Distinguishing Religion and Spirituality: Findings from Kendal.2. Testing the Spiritual Revolution Claim in Kendal.3. Evidence for a Spiritual Revolution: Britain and USA.4. Bringing the Sacred to Life: Explaining Secularization and Sacralization.5. Looking to the Future.Appendices.References.Index.

Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah

Abstract: Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah, by Olivier Roy. New York: Columbia University Press, in association with the Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, Paris, 2004. xi + 340 pages. Index to p. 349. $29.50. Olivier Roy devotes much of Globalized Islam to the distinction between what he calls "Islamism" and "neofundamentalism." He argues that Islamist movements tend to seek power in specific countries and have become increasingly nationalistic. Neofundamentalist movements, on the other hand, tend to focus on the Islamic world as a whole and do not concentrate on achieving power. According to Roy, neofundamentalists usually favor da'wa, or preaching, over jihad. "For neofundamentalists the aim of action is salvation, not revolution" (p. 248). Even when neofundamentalists do engage in jihad, they still shun "political action" (p. 250). Yet, Roy's list of "neofundamentalist" movements includes al-Qa'ida as well as the Tablighi Jama'a (p. 234). It is hard to see how anyone could argue that al-Qa'ida is more interested in salvation than revolution or that its acts of violence are not political. Roy is a knowledgeable and insightful scholar, and he makes many important points. He rightly stresses that Islam often serves primarily as a marker of national and/ or ethnic identity rather than as a political program. He rightly criticizes those who think that the behavior of Muslims today can simply be explained by examining verses of the Qur'an. And he correctly emphasizes that al-Qa'ida has an anti-imperialist dimension that should not be ignored (although this is hard to reconcile with his characterization of al-Qa'ida as an apolitical neofundamentalist movement). At the same time, however, Roy makes many sweeping generalizations that are simply inaccurate. He claims that "Bin Laden only paid lip-service to Palestine till the end of 2001" (p. 3). This is a common assertion. It is also an erroneous one. In a 1994 letter to Sheikh 'Abd al-'Aziz bin Baz, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden wrote: "The Shar'i obligation regarding Palestine and our Palestinian brothers, [who are] among the helpless oppressed men, women, and children, is jihad in the path of God and inciting the Umma to jihad to liberate all of Palestine and return it to Islamic rule." Much of this letter is devoted to rejecting the very idea of a peace agreement with Israel. (The Arabic text of the letter is available online at http://www.alwahabiya.org/articles/binladen_to_binbaz.htm) Roy asserts that "popular mobilisation in the Middle East centres around nationalism...not around Islam" (p. 51). Similarly, he contends that "Osama Bin Laden did not grasp that the genuine antiAmericanism of the 'average' Arab had never led to a sustainable political mobilisation, and that if such mobilisation ever did happen it would be over Palestine and Iraq that is, over Arab and not Islamic issues" (p. 56). It is true that groups like Hamas and the main movements fighting the American-led occupation of Iraq have a nationalist dimension, and this is an important point. …