Europe risks repeating past mistakes on Islam (Jonathan Laurence, Brookings)

Many have recently sought to understand and explain today’s crisis of legitimacy within Islam, with some analysts placing the blame for that crisis squarely on Islam itself. In my view, today’s crisis of Islamic religious legitimacy and the spread of Salafi ideology are a direct legacy of 20th century European empires. I don’t mean that as a moral cudgel, nor as a plea for political correctness. But to avoid making the same mistakes again, we need to understand both the contingency of that history and the vacuity of the term “Islamic fundamentalism,” which is used as a stand-in for everything from traditional views of gender roles and homosexuality to religiously-inspired mass murder.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/markaz/posts/2016/07/21-europe-islam-salafism-laurence

Turkish democracy: Battered but not yet sunk (Jonathan Laurence, Brookings)

The videos showing an unruly scene in and around Brookings last Thursday during the visit of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan make for distressing viewing. The incongruity of what occurred—think Trump security meets Turkish nationalism—invites introspection about how scholarly institutions manage appearances by controversial leaders.

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Jonathan Laurence, Brookings, focuses on Transatlantic relations, Muslims in Europe and the politics of Islam in the West. He is an associate professor of political science at Boston College, where he teaches courses on European politics and state-religion relations in modern Europe. He is the author of numerous articles, essays, and books including, most recently, The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims: The State's Role in Minority Integration.