The Backward and the New: National, Transnational and Post-National Islam in Europe.

The background to this paper is the need to reconcile at theoretical and political levels the quest for recognition of Muslims in the West with skepticism towards essentialist and uncritical understandings of Islam. Whereas in Europe there is a growing tendency to celebrate the challenges that the presence of transnational Muslim identities pose to the presumed universal nature of the liberal nation-state, Middle Eastern feminists are denouncing relativistic approaches towards Islam as the expression of an emergent alliance between multiculturalism, neo-orientalism and fundamentalism. My contribution to the unfastening of this theoretical and political deadlock is to demonstrate the multiple meanings and practices of being Muslim in Europe, and reveal the contradictions and contestations embedded within them. The paper sheds light on the unease that some young Muslims feel about the dichotomous constructions which mark the debate on Muslim identities in both the academic and political arena, and shows that Muslims' experience in the West is inscribed in, and cross-cuts, diverse socio-political identities, challenging the presumed dichotomy which opposes universalism to difference. Yet, far from simple acts of bricolage , these processes of identity renegotiation are deeply painful and conflictual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]