Yolanda van Tilborgh

Waarom lijkt emotie in de politiek steeds belangrijker te worden? Waarom moeten wetenschappelijke theorieen met vuur verdedigd worden als ze bewezen zijn? Welke invloed heeft hersenonderzoek op ons verdriet als dit steeds beter ?behandeld? kan worden? We zijn vaak geneigd om te denken dat kennis en emotie elkaars tegenpolen zijn, waarbij emotie vooral een lastig bijverschijnsel is dat ons brein in verwarring brengt. Zo eenvoudig ligt het echter niet in de kennissamenleving. Kennis en emotie zijn veeleer verweven: kennis bepaalt onze emoties en aan kennis ligt emotie ten grondslag. Het vijfde Jaarboek KennisSamenleving onderzoekt de aard van de verwevenheid van kennis en emotie, in onderwijs, politiek en cultuur. Speciale aandacht is er voor de debatten rond risico?s van nieuwe technologieen. De antwoorden in dit jaarboek geven richting aan de discussie over de relatie tussen kennis en emotie in onderzoek en beleid.

In the present era of heated debates on free expressions involving religious sensibilities, Muslim artists form a sociologically interesting group. Comparing the UK and the U.S., based on specific case studies of Black convert Muslim artists, the author found that Sufiand Salafioriented performers display different dynamics in their career developments characterized by the intent to find congruity between their artistic aspiration and Islamic belief. Drawing from process-oriented sociological perspectives, the phases of formalization, informalization, and intensified formalization are theorized as constituting trajectories by which Muslim performing artists grapple with the relationship between art and religion. They reflect varying ideological orientations and influences regarding the (dis)embedment of Islam in culture.

In examining the relationship between the political theology of Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and the socio-political cultural attempts of British and North American Muslim performing artists to cope with the power structures they experience, the influence of Malcolm X appears to be mediated, personalized, and expressed in manifold ways. Besides the liberating and normalizing effects of Malcolm X and his political theology by externally directed expressions towards societies and states, I found transformative, emancipative effects among expressions directed towards Muslims and Islamic currents. On the meta- level, specific Muslim artists may have become part of the informal Anglophone network of interdependent Islamic teachers and institutions that is focussed to re-explain the most powerful mainstream of Islam and its cultural standards in the world by incorporating the inclusive symbol that Malcolm X is.

The Spectrum of Mediation of Malcolm X In the course of my study of how Muslim performing artists in the US and the UK relate art and religion,1 it came to the fore that a significant number of artists have been influenced by the (political theology of ) Muslim human rights activist Malcolm X (1925–1965), also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, mediated in more or less indirect ways .2 Ranging from popular culture to social and religious authorities, these ways include the determined, multiple recorded speeches of Malcolm X on the Internet, his compelling autobiography as phrased by Alex Haley (1921–1992), the persuasive Malcolm X (1992) movie by Spike Lee, the powerful hip-hop music that samples Malcolm X’s confrontational allegations, and the Malcolm X resurgence in the 1980s and 1990s .3 In the case of African American artists and those with Caribbean backgrounds, influences may have derived from

In examining the relationship between the political theology of Malcolm X, also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and the socio-political cultural attempts of British and North American Muslim performing artists to cope with the power structures they experience, the influence of Malcolm X appears to be mediated, personalized, and expressed in manifold ways. Besides the liberating and normalizing effects of Malcolm X and his political theology by externally directed expressions towards societies and states, I found transformative, emancipative effects among expressions directed towards Muslims and Islamic currents. On the meta- level, specific Muslim artists may have become part of the informal Anglophone network of interdependent Islamic teachers and institutions that is focussed to re-explain the most powerful mainstream of Islam and its cultural standards in the world by incorporating the inclusive symbol that Malcolm X is.

British and North American Muslim performing artists have the opportunity to translate Islamic knowledge in relation to art in various ways and in circumstances in which religion may be no longer obviously anchored in culture. At the same time, a reversed autonomisation in the field of Muslim artists seems at stake. If the main drive of the agents in the field is to improve social positions, according to Bourdieu, how can the level of autonomy of the field of Muslim performing artists in the UK and the US be understood? Taking the Bourdieusian concepts of field, habitus, capital into account, this paper intends to investigate in which ways the fields of art and religion intersect and how the orientations to art, culture and Islam are distributed among Muslim artists in the Muslim-minority contexts of the West.

The present chapter will explore the kind of authoritative voices and the significance of relative autonomy in the field of Muslim artists in hip-hop, stand-up comedy, poetry, theatre and contemporary art considered from empirical data through in-depth interviews, content analysis of secondary sources and structural analysis of cultural events in the UK and the US. The disparate ideological orientations are influenced by views to restrict or, in contrast, reinforce the significance of art and culture and imply distinct struggles for social and artistic autonomy. Ranging from strict to secular perspectives, the encountered cultural views are assessed by their relatively weak and strong ties with the field of religion and the field of art. Reflecting gender, race and ethnic background as categories of difference, the scheme of cultural orientations might be transferable to other settings in which culture, religion and ideology are involved.

In the present era of heated debates on free expressions involving religious sensibilities, Muslim artists form a sociologically interesting group. Comparing the UK and the U.S., based on specific case studies of Black convert Muslim artists, the author found that Sufi- and Salafi-oriented performers display different dynamics in their career developments characterized by the intent to find congruity between their artistic aspiration and Islamic belief. Drawing from process-oriented sociological perspectives, the phases of formalization, informalization, and intensified formalization are theorized as constituting trajectories by which Muslim performing artists grapple with the relationship between art and religion. They reflect varying ideological orientations and influences regarding the (dis)embedment of Islam in culture.

In short: Using conceptions of Norbert Elias and Cas Wouters, I reflect on statements of Olivier Roy about religio-cultural spheres in society by focusing on a specific field of art related to Muslims in Muslim-minority countries.

When a number of Muslims in non-Muslim majority countries in North America and Western Europe gained attention as upcoming performers in the genres of hip-hop, stand-up comedy and performing poetry in the last decades, this was perceived as a remarkable phenomenon by  public media and social scientists. Firstly, a lot of these  performers bring Islam to the fore in their artistic expressions in the public domain, whereas, secondly, the relation  between art and Islam is perceived as troublesome at various social levels. While gaining visibility after the multiple terrorist attacks, the phenomenon of entertaining Muslims is often understood as an expression of post-Islamism, the attitude of tolerance in Islamism that synthesizes contrasting opinions. Expressions of Muslims are explained as “purposeful art” and the performing arts as a repertoire to diffuse (positive) Islamic values. To comprehend the complex manifestations of religion in modern day societies as reflected by these trends, existing social perspectives are now no longer considered satisfactory. The forthcoming  paper examines if the perspectives of symbolic interactionist,  process and relational sociology are indeed insufficient to discuss and explain several significant understandings of Muslims, their practices and discourse regarding (popular) art. Do all of these artists equally pursue art with a social  purpose? Are Islamic authoritative voices significant to everyone? Or do the artists follow wayward conversion strategies in order to achieve their objectives and become established?

This paper is developed from the author’s lectures British and American Muslim Artists Regarding Bourdieu’s Field of Art at the ESA Conference in Turin, Italy, 2013, and The Rules of Art and the Field of Muslim Performing Artists in the UK & the USA at the ESA Conference in Cluj Napoca, Romania, 2014.

By studying significant cultural orientations in the field of Muslim performing artists after Nine Eleven, I encountered interesting civilising attempts by high-profile Muslims trying to change the patterns of cultural taste and behaviour in the UK and the US.
van Tilborgh, Yolanda (2024). Civilising Attempts in Art and Islam: Muslim Artistic Performance Facing Social Orders in the UK. In: de Rooij, Laurens (eds) British Muslims and Their Discourses, p. 141-182. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45013-6_7