Off and on stage interactions: Muslim-Jewish encounter in urban Europe

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic and interview-based research in six cities (Berlin and Frankfurt in Germany, London and Manchester in the UK and Paris and Strasbourg in France), this article explores intercultural, interethnic and interreligious encounter as exemplified by Jewish-Muslim interaction. We look at three sites across the cities: “staged” encounters which take place in formal interfaith and municipal settings, and “unstaged” encounters in public and commercial spaces, both often relying on the role of key “entrepreneurs of encounter”, who tend to occupy liminal or marginal spaces in relation to their ascribed identities. We show that the texture and the possibilities (and sometimes impossibility) of encounters are structured intersectionally (crucially by class and by generation), and shaped by patterns of insecurity and securitisation and by different available discursive repertoires and cognitive frames (produced at supra-national, national, local and micro-local levels – e.g. Israel/Palestine politics, laïcité or communitarianism, city narratives and neighbourhood identities respectively). Although insecurity, securitisation, policy panic and geopolitical pressures can block meaningful encounter, emerging transdiasporic cultural formations point towards some fragile resources for hope.

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