Religion in the European Refugee Crisis

318 Pages·2018·2.847 MB·English

by  Ulrich Schmiedel, Graeme Smith, (eds.)

Edited by
ULRICH SCHMIEDEL and GRAEME SMITH
RELIGION IN
THE EUROPEAN
REFUGEE CRISIS
Religion and Global Migrations
Series editors
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
Oxford Dept of International Development
Oxford, United Kingdom
Jennifer B Saunders
Stamford, Connecticut, USA
Susanna Snyder
Ripon College
Oxford, United Kingdom
As the first series of its kind, Religion and Global Migrations will examine
the phenomenon of religion and migration from multiple disciplinary per-
spectives (e.g., historical, anthropological, sociological, ethical, and theo-
logical), in various global locations (including the Americas, Europe, and
Asia), and from a range of religious traditions. Monographs and edited
volumes in the series explore the intersections of religion and migration
from a variety of approaches, including studies of shifting religious prac-
tices and ideas in sending and receiving communities, among migrants
and also among those who interact with migrants in places of origin and
destination; public responses to migration such as religiously informed
debates, policies, and activism among migrants and nonmigrants alike;
gender dynamics including shifts in gender roles and access to power in
sending and receiving sites; identity in relation to religion and migration
that include constructive, as well as descriptive, scholarship; empire, from
the ancient Mediterranean through the height of European colonization
to contemporary relationships between the developing and developed
world, and the way it has profoundly affected the movement of people and
development of religions; and other topics connecting to the theme of
religion and global migrations.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14511
Ulrich Schmiedel • Graeme Smith
Editors
Religion in the
European Refugee
Crisis
Editors
Ulrich Schmiedel Graeme Smith
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München University of Chichester
Munich, Germany Chichester, United Kingdom
Religion and Global Migrations
ISBN 978-3-319-67960-0 ISBN 978-3-319-67961-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67961-7
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A
cknowledgments
What came to be called the current refugee crisis has stirred up contro-
versy across the public squares and the political spheres of Europe. Since
any scholar who analyzes and assesses this so-called crisis runs the risk of
getting her or his hands dirty, we thank, first and foremost, all the con-
tributors who confronted this risk. We are grateful for their careful and
compelling studies, for their cooperative spirit, and for the support with
which they met the tight deadlines driven by the contemporary nature of
our subject. Thanks are also due to Tommy Lynch and Hannah
M. Strømmen who organized the international and interdisciplinary con-
ference, “Radical/ized Religion: Religion as a Resource for Political
Theory and Practice,” at the University of Chichester in the summer of
2017, when we were about to finish and finalize editing this compilation.
Their conference allowed us both to tease out and to try out what we had
learned from our contributors. We are also grateful to the anonymous peer
reviewer who helped us to sharpen the concerns and the concepts of our
compilation. Despite her or his efforts, mistakes might have crept into our
compilation. These are, of course, our own. We thank the editors of
“Religion and Global Migrations,” Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Jennifer
B. Saunders, and Susanna Snyder, for including our compilation in their
striking new series. Last but not least, we thank Amy Invernizzi and Philip
Getz at Palgrave Macmillan in New York for the expertise and the enthu-
siasm with which they have seen through the production of this compila-
tion from the start.
August 2017 Ulrich Schmiedel and Graeme Smith
v
c
ontents
1 I ntroduction: Charting a Crisis 1
Ulrich Schmiedel and Graeme Smith
Part I Constellations 13
2 Perceptions of Plurality: The Impact of the Refugee Crisis
on the Interpretation of Religious Pluralization in Europe 15
Gert Pickel
3 Infiltrators, Imposters, or Human Beings? The Slovenian
Socio-Political Imaginary, Christianity, and the Responses
to the 2015–2016 Migrant Crisis 39
Gorazd Andrejč
4 Between Traditionalism, Fundamentalism, and Populism:
A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Media Coverage
of the Migration Crisis in Poland 61
Joanna Krotofil and Dominika Motak
vii
viii CONTENTS
5 Confronting the Current Refugee Crisis: The Importance
of Islamic Citizens’ Initiatives in Germany 87
Mohammed Khallouk
6 Fearing the Faith of Others? Government, Religion,
and Integration in Norway 105
Sturla J. Stålsett
Part II Conflicts 121
7 Christianity in a Post-Christian Context: Immigration,
Church Identity, and the Role of Religion in Public
Debates 123
Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg
8 “Refugees” and the Problem of Identity in the UK 145
Martin Kettle
9 Against the Manichees: Immigration Detention
and the Shaping of the Theo- political Imagination 163
Anna Rowlands
10 None Is Still Too Many: Holocaust Commemoration
and Historical Anesthetization 187
Alana M. Vincent
11 “We Can Do This!” Tackling the Political Theology
of Populism 205
Ulrich Schmiedel
CONTENT S ix
Part III Consequences 225
12 Who are the People? Toward a Theological Ethics
of Citizenship and Community 227
Reiner Anselm
13 Turning a Curse into a Blessing? Theological
Contributions to a Resource-Orientated Narrative
on Migration in Europe 243
Regina Polak
14 Christ, the Stranger: The Theological Relevance
of Migration 265
Stephan van Erp
15 What Does It Mean To Be a Progressive Intellectual after
the Refugee Crisis in Europe? A Dialogue with Tariq
Ramadan 281
Morteza Hashemi
16 Conclusion: The Theological Takeover 297
Ulrich Schmiedel and Graeme Smith
Index 309
n c
otes on ontributors
Gorazd Andrejc ̌ is a senior researcher in the Department of Philosophy
at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, an affiliated lecturer at the Woolf
Institute, Cambridge, UK, and a research associate at the Von Hügel
Institute, St Edmund’s College, University of Cambridge, UK. He is a
philosopher of religion, with a significant part of his research involving
multi- and interdisciplinary work. His recent study, Wittgenstein and
Interreligious Disagreement, analyzes new ways of interpreting Ludwig
Wittgenstein’s philosophy in order to shed light on interreligious
communication.
Reiner  Anselm is Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. He has written
widely on theological ethics, particularly political and medical ethics. He is
one of the founders of the research unit focusing on the significance of
Protestantism for public and political debates in postwar Germany, funded
by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. In 2016, he was appointed
President of the Chamber for Public Responsibility of the Evangelische
Kirche in Deutschland.
Stephan van Erp is Professor of Fundamental Theology at KU Leuven,
Belgium. An expert in the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx, his research
interests range from aesthetics to dogmatics to political theology. He has
held fellowships at the University of Oxford and King’s College London.
Currently, he is writing a biography of Edward Schillebeeckx.
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