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Confronting the Entanglements of ‘Religion’ and ‘Race’ in the Marginalisation of Muslims and Jews – and in their Strategies for Resistance

Margreet van Es explores how ‘race’ and ‘religion’ intersect in the social construction of majority and minority groups in modern Western European history. She examines the cases of two minorities at times when they were treated as Europe’s internal ‘Other’ while enjoying legal equality: Muslims during the last few decades, and Jews from the mid-nineteenth century until 1933. Her research pays attention not only to the discourses and practices through which particular minorities have been stigmatised and marginalised by the dominant majority, but also to their ‘strategies of resistance’. How have these minorities tried to strengthen their position and find acceptance as equal citizens? What do these strategies reveal about the role of perceived ‘religious’ and ‘racial’ differences in their marginalisation in a particular time and context? Valuable studies have been made of Jewish responses to anti-Semitism in past and present. Scholars across disciplines have also begun to explore how Muslims struggle against contemporary Islamophobia. In analytically bringing these research data together, van Es aims to provide a more comprehensive theoretical analysis of the entanglement of ‘race’ and ‘religion’ in Western European societies.