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Culture is a constant reference in debates surrounding Islam in Europe. Yet the notion of culture is commonly restricted to conceptual frames of multiculturalism where it relates to group identities, collective ways of life and recognition. This volume extends such analysis of culture by approaching it as semiotic practice which conjoins the making of subjects with the configuration of the social. Examining fields such as memory, literature, film, and Islamic art, the studies in this volume explore culture as another element in the assemblage of rationalities governing European Islam. From thi

This essay examines the connections between art and politics in Middle East arts events in the U.S. since 9/11/2001. It critiques the universalist assumptions about humanity and the agentive capacity of art to build bridges of understanding in contexts of so-called civilizational conflict—assumptions that have strong roots in anthropology. By juxtaposing evidence of how the notion of "humanity" is deployed in exhibitions of Palestinian art with an analysis of the three more predominant types of arts events (historical Islamic art, Sufi arts, and contemporary art by Muslim women), the essay demonstrates how American secular elite discourse on Middle Eastern art corresponds to that of the "War on Terror."

This article focuses on the ways in which the European aesthetic realm becomes a battleground of intercultural and intercivilizational conflicts as well as a domain of borrowings and mixings between "native" and "Islamic" values, thereby creating a transnational public sphere. Through a two-way interpretation of a controversial statue depicting a naked woman with headscarf, entitled Turkish Delight and exhibited in a public garden in front of the Kunsthalle Museum in Vienna in 2007 before it was wrenched from its pedestal and left lying on the ground, the author examines how the artistic scene as an interactive space between art and politics, between cultures and publics, participates in the elaboration of a bond between Muslims and Europeans, a bond not without elements of confrontation and violence. It is argued that while the statue violates the intimacy and piety of a Muslim woman by exposing her nakedness to the public gaze, it also seeks ways to relate to the familiar other, Turkish migrants in Europe, albeit in a provocative manner. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate how the public space is not fixed once and for all but is always being recreated anew and inhabited through performativity, conflict and confrontation.

This article examines diverse perceptions and discourses of Islam, fundamentalism, spirituality, and culture in the contemporary Central Asian context, revealed through the study of contemporary art and its discussions about these phenomena. While many online sources and social media accounts provide a framework for different types of religiosity—cultural, pious, or fundamental—contemporary art in the region serves as a platform for critiquing religion as a whole. I use the examples of the most famous works by prominent Central Asian contemporary artists, who discuss Tengriism, Islam, and other religious practices in their works, performances, and videos. The diversity of online platforms that transfer discussions of Islam and religion to the digital forums through which third-wave artists promote their works also create space for more pluralistic views of—and discourses on—Islam.

The second edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI/2), published since 1954 by E.J. Brill in Leiden, is well known as an unparalleled scholarly reference for the history and culture of the Islamic lands. By late summer 1994, the Encyclopaedia had reached the entry Riḍā Shāh in the middle of the eighth volume. The volumes, each approximately 1000 pages long, are lodes of information about the people, places, events and ideas of Islamic history and thought; but simply by handling the volumes, a reader would never realize that the visual arts were an important component of Islamic culture. There are very few illustrations, none of them in color. Even to the most unsophisticated eye, EI/2 is a dense, ponderous, and user-antagonistic reference tool. Nevertheless, it is a useful resource for the history of art and architecture in the Islamic lands, particularly to those who already know something about Islamic civilization, although the reader must be an experienced miner to discover the ore-bearing strata.