‘Eastern History with Western Eyes’: E.A. Freeman, Islam and Orientalism

Orientalism and images of Eastern Poland

A much more ambiguous issue revolves around the origins of these regional inequalities and extends to the broader question of how development plans for the region are interpreted and understood. What seems particularly controversial is the diagnosis of the problems of Eastern Poland as a 'natural' function of the link between economic issues and subjective interpretations of contemporary social...

Miwokan Eastern and Western

Islam, Politics and Violence in Eastern Sri Lanka

This article bridges Sri Lankan studies and the academic debate on the relation between contemporary Islam and politics. It constitutes a case study of the Muslim community in Akkaraipattu on Sri Lanka’s war-ridden east coast. Over two decades of ethnically colored conflict have made Muslim identity of paramount importance, but the meanings attached to that identity vary substantively. Politici...

Islam, religiosity, and immigrant political action in Western Europe.

The issues of migration and immigrant political integration in western democracies have become increasingly intertwined with debates on religion, particularly Islam. To date, however, we have surprisingly little systematic research on how religious beliefs are related to immigrants' political engagement. In this study, we argue that religion has a capacity to mobilize immigrants politically but...

Television and Orientalism

Orientalism, proposed by Edward Said (1995), refers to the network of interlocking discourses about the “orient” constructed in western civilization. The orients, in western conceptions, are stereotypically inflated others drastically different from the collective imagination of the civilized West. Said’s argument was initially focused more on Europe and Islamic Culture, but has been applied to...