Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
1, March 2009
ISSN 1360-2004 print/ISSN 1469-9591 online/09/010001-3 # 2009 Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs
DOI: 10.1080/13602000902726947
2 A Word about Ourselves
North Africans in France and Arabs, Asians, and Africans in European states and in
North America. The fallout from the Gulf War in the early 1990s and the festering
Afghan crisis from the Soviet times, along with the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
have created a worldwide climate of tension and accountability for Muslim communities,
particularly where they constituted political and cultural minorities.
There then followed the grave and tragic events of the 9/11 attacks in America in
2001, and as their aftermath, the “war on terror” (and the war of words on the “axis
of evil”) that carried the world’s largest armies to the “culprit” states in the Muslim
heartlands, all of which contributed to a spate of “field research” and investigative
studies on Muslims and Islam into the twenty first century.
The Journal has covered all of these issues in their varied forms and varying contexts.
Indeed, the pages of JMMA, through the past twenty eight volumes, have recorded for
history and for posterity the experience of Muslim minority communities who were fre-
quently caught in the eye of the storm. Through this period the thrust of the articles and
the contents of the Journal have evolved to reflect the ever-changing situation with an
ongoing concern for analysis, interpretation, and explanation of the causes and conse-
quences of emerging events. As the first decade of the new millennium concludes on a
sobering note of severe economic crises worldwide, impacted in many ways by the
“war on terror”, one notices the gradual decline in hostilities and cessation of active mili-
tary engagement in various theaters of war in and around the Muslim world. There
appears a new era on the horizon where the challenging issues and stark questions
faced by minority communities will once again be of economic and cultural survival
and of integration.
At a time in history when most Muslim majority countries continue to be classified as
“developing” and some as “emerging” economies, Muslim minority communities, irre-
spective of their location (whether in developed or developing societies), often remain
culturally and economically challenged. In these difficult times, they will face increasing
hardship in a world of decreasing opportunities and perhaps a pressure to move and
relocate, thus creating additional pockets of minority communities while dislocating
the existing ones. Indeed, in a world facing the most serious economic downturn,
while it confronts equally grave though less openly acknowledged environmental
crises; combined with increasing demand from a burgeoning world population for the
rapidly decreasing resources, there are serious issues that Muslim minority communities
will encounter in the ensuing decades. How will these communities be affected by such
varied challenges? Will there be a renewed cycle of mobility and economic migrations,
and how will that affect social life and community relations within increasingly hetero-
geneous populations? How will the issues of identity and identity formation be
addressed? Will we come full circle at the end of the third decade of publishing
the Journal to cover henceforth and once again in our pages the social, cultural, and
historical aspects of Muslim minority communities in order to “understand” their
lives and their challenges?
Thus, Issue 1 of Volume 29, as perhaps the harbinger of things to come, offers a selec-
tion of papers covering the social and cultural experiences of Muslim minority commu-
nities and their search for identity. The papers in this issue cover encounters of Muslim
communities with the “other” in Greece and in Germany; the use of collective memory
and of myths in perpetuating violence in Chechnya; the search for belonging among
Muslim sojourner students on foreign soil in England; a similar striving in Turkey
among international, albeit Muslim, asylum seekers in a Muslim land; and the issue of
identity and the search for familiarity among life partners who are sought through
A Word about Ourselves 3
match making services in cyberspace. Even more academic issues of relating legal and
administrative systems to the historical context of colonial rule and its legacy in
Africa; and the implications of the applications of the shari’ah law within the legal
systems of Singapore and its practice in Malaysia and in Thailand are also explored in
this issue of JMMA.
As a fitting culmination of three decades of publication of the Journal, at first biannu-
ally, then moving to three issues per volume, we are pleased to announce that starting
with this volume, we are now moving to four issues per year. We encourage and invite
submissions of previously unpublished original articles on the life and experiences of
Muslim minority communities. We welcome papers written around theoretical, concep-
tual, historical, and contemporary themes, and analytical interpretations and presenta-
tions, as well as reviews of books of significance.
We also invite readers’ comments on what we publish and suggestions on what we
could cover and accomplish further. We hope you will find each issue of JMMA to be
informative, illuminating, as well as thought provoking.
SALEHA S. MAHMOOD
Director & Chief Editor
NOTE
1. Syed Z. Abedin, “Acknowledgements”, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1, May
1979, p. 3.