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AbstractOver the last decades, Europe debates on Islam have been framed increasingly through the lens of cultural difference. In this discursive climate, culture constitutes a crucial terrain of investment for European Muslims in their struggle for inclusion and recognition. Based on two different ethnographic research projects among European Muslims, this essay examines two distinct types of culture discourses. One employs an Islam-versus-culture trope that serves to disconnect Islam from certain patriarchal practices perceived to exist within Muslim communities. The other discourse defends the intrinsic and symbiotic link between Islam and culture, especially in order to elevate the place of artistic practices within Muslim communities. To make sense of these seeming contradictions, I explore the multivalent meanings contained in my interlocutors' uses of the culture concept by tracing the respective genealogies of these meanings. This includes an investigation of culture's conceptual histories, formulated successively by Enlightenment thinkers, Romanticists, and early anthropologists, as well as by Islamic reformers and their more recent successors. My investigation into these conceptual histories exposes broader concerns about individual freedom and agency on the part of cultural theorists, which have furthermore enabled various claims about modernity and backwardness. While European Muslims creatively integrate various articulations of the culture concept into their world-making projects, I argue that the ontological assumptions underpinning the culture concept continue to haunt and render precarious efforts to demonstrate Muslim belonging to Europe via culture.

Democracy as historical practice has managed to survive twists and turns in its gestation, birth, and growth to maturity. In Greek Antiquity, the inclusion of women and slaves was an issue to contend with. This was hardly resolved before the Athenian States were dissolved into the Roman empires. With much larger populations, more effective rationality, vital civilization and sophistication, democracy was resuscitated in the eighteenth century in Britain and North America, and has spread around the world. This is not to imply a sense of security, which would be false; newer and still more sophisticated, tremors, contractions, and paroxysms have emerged. But these problems have often led to moral dilemmas and conflicting traditions. This essay arguees that two formidable obstacles to the steady development of democracy and liberty and an exacerbation of the dilemma of democratic tradition arise from Islam and traditional cultural accretions. By reviewing the basic concepts and issues associated with the notion and practiceof democracy, this article identifies specific areas of culture and Islam within the Nigerian context that tend to frustrate democratic processes – a problem that calls for caution on the part of practitioners, active and prospective.

1. Introduction: Eschaton and Civility in Islamic History; Milad Milani -- 2. The Quandary of Modernity: Islam and Civility; Milad Milani & Vassilios Adrahtas -- 3. Islamic Civility: Narrative Habitus and Institution; Armando Salvatore -- 4. Good Behaviour: Islam and Christianity as Framework for Religious Life; Bryan S. Turner -- 5. Considerations in Hadith and Qur'an: Text and Interpretation in a Study of Civility; Aisha Y. Musa -- 6. Court Culture of Literature and Poetry: Indo-Persian Notions of Civility; Prashant Keshavmurthy -- 6. The Limits of Islamic Civility in India; Prashant Keshavmurthy -- 7. Islam Divided: The Underlying Political Culture of the Conflict between the Sunni and the Shi'a; Vassilis Adrahtas & Milad Milani -- 8. The Paradox of Gendered Holiness in Islamic Mysticism; Milad Milani & Marley Krok -- 9. Conclusion: The Prospect of an Eschatological Civility; Vassilis Adrahtas.

Bassam Tibi offers a radical solution to the problems faced by Islam in a rapidly changing and globalizing world. He proposes a depoliticization of the faith and the introduction of reforms to embrace secular democracy, pluralism, civil society and individual human rights. The alternative to this is the impasse of fundamentalism. The pivotal argument is that Islam is being torn between the pressure for cultural innovation and a defensive move towards the politicization of its symbols for non-religious ends.

A global world is a paradoxical world, just like a "double-edged sword". On the one hand, globalization offers a variety of ease of life. On the other hand, it carries risks that threaten the existence of human life. It also imposes a universal culture which implies a general view that the presence of culture is always inseparable from humanity and the general acceptance of values, beliefs, orientations, and institutions by mankind around the world. However, the so-called universal culture is nothing but the West because the West, with all its superiority, is most likely to claim itself as the representation of universal civilization. When civilization is fully controlled by the West, there is a psychological burden for Islam. Islam as a force that had been a superpower of the world for approximately 12 centuries might feel uncomfortable to be the underdog. This situation has made Muslims aspire to get out of colonialism and Western hegemony. There are two responses that arise: a strong desire to re-excel in all aspects such as science, technology, politics, economy, military, etc. on the one hand, and deep hatred towards the West one the other hand. It is this latter which may have spawned terrorism that is being countered by international communities, mainly Western nations.