96 b o ok r e v i e ws

views from some of the Jewish refugees themselves (that it would perpetuate the
lower socio-economic status of Mizrahi Jews within Israel), and views from some
Jewish Diaspora organizations, such as the Canadian Jewish Congress (To be
crass, its a bargaining tool at the table with Palestinians when it comes to
negotiating a settlement in the Middle East p. 255).
Overall, the book does a good job providing an overview of the key challenges
related to the question of Palestinian refugee compensation from a variety of
different perspectives. It outlines the terminological minefield of the topic, with
different parties preferring reparations, restitution or compensation, as well as
the normative concerns of both Palestinians and Israelis regarding (Palestinian)
victimhood and (Israeli) moral liability (p. 264). Although several of the chapters
are aimed at a specialist audience (politicians, negotiators, policy makers, and
scholars), providing very detailed methodologies, data-collecting procedures and
accounting mechanisms with extensive data, some of the chapters also engage with
broader themes of interest to those working in the fields of international law,
transitional justice, and refugee affairs. The collection of chapters illustrates how
the Palestinian refugee problem exemplifies what Christine Bell calls a meta-
conflict, or a conflict about what the conflict is about (p. 297) since the very
thing which is sacrosanct to the Palestinian refugeesrecognition of the principle
of the right of returnis unthinkable to many Israelis (p. 297). As technical
experts and not politicians, the authors do not express the full range of views on
the topic (Palestinian/Arab authors outnumber Israeli/Jewish ones for instance),
and several authors reiterate the need to include refugees themselves in all stages of
the decision making process if and when negotiations on the subject (re)commence.
The volume provides a valuable contribution by providing the technical expertise
that politicians and negotiators lack and that will be critical in operationalizing any
political agreement into a durable peace, and by documenting the extensive
research, analysis, and data collection that has been conducted on this topic. If and
when serious negotiations re-start, this volume should be required reading for
those working on the refugee file.
Maia Carter Hallward
Kennesaw State University
E-mail: mhallwar@kennesaw.edu
doi:10.1093/jis/etv089
Published online 17 October 2015

Religion, Ethnicity and Transnational Migration between West Africa

and Europe
Edited by StanisLaw Grodz and Gina Gertrud Smith (Leiden
and Boston, MA: Brill, 2014), xi 236 pp. Price HB E99.00. EAN
9789004270367.

By exploring how West African migrants negotiate their religious and ethnic
affiliations in Europe, the editors of this volume brought together a collection
 b o ok r e v i e w s 97
that highlights specifically the inter-religious contexts migrants move inboth in
their home countries and in their host countries. In doing so, they bring a most
welcome addition to the study of religion and migration which has focused,
overwhelmingly, on either Christian or Muslim migrants, thus disregarding the
intermingling of Christians and Muslims within ethnic groups, communities, and
family units, as well as disregarding the fluid boundaries between Christianity
and Islam in some individual life histories. Furthermore, with seven of the eight
contributions addressing the lives and struggles of West African Muslims in
Europe, it clearly fills a lacuna in current research on Muslims in Europe, which
tends to focus, almost exclusively, on North African, Middle Eastern, and (in the
UK) Asian Muslims.
Editors Grodz and Smith, experts on religious interaction in Ghana and
Europe at Lublin University, and on Islamic education in Senegal at Copenhagen
University, started the workshop forming the basis of this edited volume with
questions on a transnational feedback loop. They hoped to encourage research
on how West Africans migration to Europe impacts their socio-political
situation, ideas, and attitudes, both in Europe and in their countries of origin.
This type of multilocal and interdisciplinary research proved difficult to pursue,
as the editors and Professor Martha Frederiks (from Utrecht University), in an
epilogue, state. The editors and Professor Frederiks therefore highlight the need
for more research on the full circle circulation of people as agents of change.
Nonetheless, in five of the eight chapters, the authors comment on the various
contexts of migrants in both West Africa and Europe, making for a coherent and
insightful edited volume: Senegal and France (Gina Smith, Etienne Smith),
Casamance and Catalonia (Heil), Ghana and the Netherlands (Frederiks &
Grodz) and Cameroon and the Netherlands (Van Santen).
Four of the eight contributions study Senegalese migrants. Gina Smith questions
the colonialist construction of Senegalese Islam as being an islam noir, a peaceful
Sufi Islam posing no danger to colonial rule, as opposed to Arabian Islam which is
perceived, in the same orientalist view, as inherently violent. Smith describes how
remnants of these notions still form a basis for self-identification of Senegalese today.
In her chapter, Smith contrasts French migrants from the almost exclusively Muslim
and Halpulaar region of the northern Futa Toro with French migrants from the
multi-ethnic and multi-religious southern Casamance. Smith is the only author in
this volume who addresses the impact of returned migrants on ideas and beliefs in
the home country, although the scope and content of this impact remain sketchy.
One of Smiths main conclusions is that northern Muslim migrants, in France, are
challenged by the ways in which their faith, from being the norm in their home
context, becomes regarded as utterly marginal in a secular and Christian context,
where the majority of Muslims are North African and do not always recognize
Halpulaar Islam.
The double burden of West African Muslim migrants in France, being invisible
both as Blacks and as Muslims, is also a main theme in Etienne Smiths contribution.
Smith, a political scientist at the Paris School of International Affairs, gives colourful
ethnographic accounts of five families and one man, in which he shows that their
invisibility as Muslims in the eyes of outsiders (both French and Maghrebis) stands
98 b o ok r e v i e ws
in total contradiction to their own self-perception. Through these accounts, he
furthermore disputes the Huntingtonian idea of antagonistic religious blocks
suggesting that migrants become more tolerant through a prolonged stay in a
liberal country such as France. Instead, Smith claims, most Senegalese migrants in
France are liberal and republican because they were so already in Senegal. He sees
the changes in religious orientation that some of his informants are experiencing as a
generational rather than as a minority dialectic.
Tilmann Heil, like Gina Smith and Etienne Smith, studies aspects of Senegalese
religious cohabitation and the marginality of Senegalese Muslims in Europe.
Anthropologist Heil, from Konstanz University, compares the everyday use of public
space and its use for religious and ethnic celebrations in the lower Casamance and in
Catalonia, through lively ethnographic accounts. Heil emphasizes that Casamancais,
both in the Casamance and in Catalonia, use and appropriate public space for
spontaneous gatherings and cultural festivities in which religious and ethnic
differences are accommodated. Muslim celebrations are, however, in Catalonia,
structurally marginalized and confined to the urban periphery.
Professor Salzbrunn of Lausanne University also analyses festive events organized
by Senegalese migrants abroad. By comparing public activities of Sufi Murid
brotherhood members in Switzerland and in New York, Salzbrunn shows the links
and overlaps between transnational Murid networks operating across Africa,
Europe, and the United States. On the other hand, she also outlines local political
discourses and opportunity structures impacting the ways in which Senegalese
negotiate public space. In Switzerland, Senegalese situate their presence in a scientific
framework (by setting up a Murid research institute) and in a cultural context (by
participating in local festivals). In New York, Senegalese Murid migrants tap into the
American minority discourses on diversity and, especially in the aftermath of 9/11,
distance themselves from Muslims of Arab origin by emphasizing the non-violent
messages of the founder of the Murid brotherhood.
While Professor Salzbrunn thus emphasizes the organizational skill and political
involvement of Senegalese in Europe and the United States, Miriam Schader, by
contrast, concludes her chapter with the observation that, in Berlin, Sub-Saharan
African Muslims are considerably less organized and exert less political influence
than Sub-Saharan African Christians. Political scientist Schader of Muenster
University, taking the City Councils official register of associations as her main
source of data, observes that hardly any African Muslim support structures exist in
Berlin, which she attributes to the Christian context, the unfavourable climate for
Muslims, and the organizational structure of churches as compared to mosques.
Afe Adogame, senior lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, questions the
value of registration when it disregards African diversity. Taking the 2001 UK
census as an example, where the ethnic box Africa misrepresents the
pluriformity of the continent, Adogame explores the dialectics between historical
European concepts and African self-consciousness regarding African identity.
Jose van Santen, senior lecturer at Leiden University, also centres her chapter
on dialectics between Africans and Europeans concerning ethnicity and religion.
Drawing on her research on Cameroonian Fulbe migrants in the Netherlands,
Van Santen states that the Fulbe way of life, pulaaku, does not make for an
 b o ok r e v i e w s 99
explicit public profile since it stresses withdrawal and reserve. Like other authors
in this volume, Van Santen thus emphasizes that idealized cultural stereotypes,
greatly influenced by colonial rulein this case that of the noble, delicate and
introvert Fulbe, are idealized by the migrant group themselves as well.
In another contribution on the Netherlands, Professor Frederiks and Stanislaw
Grodz tentatively explore Ghanaian Muslim migrants relations with non-Muslim
Ghanaians and Muslims of other backgrounds. Like contributors Smith, Heil, and
Van Santen, these authors also conclude that attitudes pertaining to cultural and
religious pluralism migrate with migrants to the new migration context and shape
their responses to the religious and cultural diversity in the new context. Professor
Martha Frederiks stresses furthermore, in an epilogue, that migrants coming from a
multi-religious context seem to adapt more easily to the European milieu than
migrants coming from a predominantly Muslim context. While this statement might
be too broad a generalization, Frederiks, on the other hand, also acknowledges the
racism and hostility West Africans experience in Europeas Etienne Smith, Afe
Adogame, Miriam Schader and Jose van Santen also emphasize.
The recurring theme in this volumeAfrican adeptness at living with religious
and cultural diversitycould have been problematized more. Ethnographic
evidence departing from and clashing with this colonially influenced represen-
tation, such as the recent violent Islamization of northern Mali, the anti-
Christian stance of former Senegalese president Wade, and other inter-religious
tensions, are here merely mentioned as exceptions to an otherwise harmonious
model. Nonetheless, the emphasis on West African Muslims in Europe and the
recurrent themes of West Africans self-perception versus their socio-political
marginality in Europe make this edited volume a much needed and valuable
contribution to the study of migrants identity formation.
Amber Gemmeke
Bayreuth University
E-mail: Amber.Gemmeke@uni-bayreuth.de
doi:10.1093/jis/etv049
Published online 10 June 2015

At Freedoms Limit: Islam and the Postcolonial Predicament

By Sadia Abbas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2014),
xvi 247 pp. Price PB $24.00. EAN 9780823257867.

This is a work of literary criticism; Sadia Abbas selects works of art, literature,
film and other media and popular culture emanating principally from Europe and
the US, and South Asia and the Middle East. She presents these texts and images
as the most intricate and complex evidence of a new Islam (p. 1). According
to her account this new form of Islam began around 1988 with the condemnation
of Salman Rushdie (the Rushdie affair, p. 1) and the end of the Cold War the
following year.
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