Ethnicised Religion and Sacralised Ethnicity in the Past and the Present

An expert panel discusses the phenomenon of ethnicisation of
religious identifications focussing especially on the nexus of
religious, ethnic and national identifications in colonial,
anti-colonial and postcolonial settings from Ireland to South Asia.
The commonly invoked phrase 'Islam is not a race' forms a
ubiquitous racist trope that represents Islamophobia as a
legitimate political critique of religious ideology, rather than a
form of ethnic and religious prejudice. Yet in spite of such
rhetorical acrobatics, it is clear that we are observing an
‘ethnicisation’ of Islam in 'the West' – the hegemonic
transformation of hugely diverse 'Muslim' populations into an
allegedly singular community, defined in essentialising racist
terms. Hidden behind the language of a binary between 'Muslim' and
'British'/'European'/'Western' 'culture' and 'values' – viewing
these as fixed communal essences, rather than endlessly variable
phenomena reproduced in the material practices of everyday life –
this ethnoreligious essentialism-come-racism has gained
ever-increasing acceptance in mainstream political discourse. Islam
forms a particularly salient example today, but the ethnicisation
of religious identifications is a phenomenon with a much broader
transtemporal and global history. So at this round table on
'Ethnicised Religion and Sacralised Ethnicity in the Past and the
Present', we will discuss this phenomenon, focusing especially on
the nexus of religious, ethnic and national identifications in
colonial, anti-colonial and postcolonial settings from Ireland to
South Asia.