Spain Unmoored: Migration, Conversion, and the Politics of Islam

291 Pages·2017·2.57 MB·English

by  Mikaela H Rogozen-Soltar

SPAIN UNMOORED
new anthropologies of europe
Michael Herzfeld, Melissa L. Caldwell, and
Deborah Reed-Danahay, editors
public cultures of the middle east and north africa
Paul A. Silverstein, Susan Slyomovics, and
Ted Swedenburg, editors
Spain
Unmoored
Migration, Conversion,
and the
Politics of Islam
MIKAELA H. ROGOZEN-SOLTAR
Indiana University Press
Bloomington & Indianapolis
This book is a publication of Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.48-1992.
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing Manufactured in the United States of
Herman B Wells Library 350 America
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA Cataloging information is available from
the Library of Congress.
iupress.indiana.edu
ISBN 978-0-253-02474-9 (cloth)
© 2017 by Mikaela H. Rogozen-Soltar ISBN 978-0-253-02489-3 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-02506-7 (ebook)
All rights reserved
1 2 3 4 5 22 21 20 19 18 17
No part of this book may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the
publisher. The Association of American
University Presses’ Resolution on Permis-
sions constitutes the only exception to this
prohibition.
∞ The paper used in this publication meets
the minimum requirements of the Ameri-
can National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for
For Arthur, Isabel, Manny, and Frances;
the last of whom earned a PhD in her sixties,
decades after being told that women did not do such things,
and whose memory inspired me as I trudged through the snow
in Ann Arbor and the sunshine in Spain.
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix
Preface: Between Convivencia and Malafollá:
Coexistence or Exclusion? xiii
Introduction: Andalusian Encounters and the Politics of Islam 1
1. Historical Anxiety and Everyday Historiography 41
2. Paradoxes of Muslim Belonging and Difference 75
3. Muslim Disneyland and Moroccan Danger Zones: Islam, Race, and
Space 115
4. A Reluctant Convivencia: Minority Representation and Unequal
Multiculturalism 158
5. Embodied Encounters: Gender, Islam, and Public Space 189
Conclusion: Granada Moored and Unmoored 225
Bibliography 239
Index 255
This page intentionally left blank
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Writing a book takes a long time. I began thinking about Islam and mi-
gration in Spain as an undergraduate and finished this project as a faculty
member. Many generous people helped me along the way.
Thanks cannot express my debt to the people who opened their homes
and lives to me in Granada. I was humbled to share in the joyous and
painful, benevolent and disagreeable, strong and vulnerable sides of their
lives. While they are named pseudonymously here, I hope they will see
their experiences and beliefs represented. They made this book.
At Indiana University Press, I am grateful to Rebecca Tolen for bring-
ing this project on board, and to Gary Dunham and Janice Frisch for guid-
ance through the later stages of publication. Thanks to Michael Herzfeld,
Melissa L. Caldwell, and Deborah Reed-Danahay, and to Paul Silverstein,
Susan Slyomovics, and Ted Swedenburg for including my book in the New
Anthropologies of Europe series and the Public Cultures of the Middle
East and North Africa series, respectively.
Research is expensive and cumbersome, and I thank the institutions
that made this project financially and logistically possible: the National
Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program; the U.S.
Department of Education FLAS Fellowship program; the Department of
Anthropology, the Rackham Graduate School, and the Center for Mid-
dle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan;
the Council on Middle East Studies and the Department of Anthropol-
ogy at Yale University; the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry at Emory
ix