Public Workshop - Sociology of Muslim Terrorism: Causes and Consequences

Event Name
Public Workshop - Sociology of Muslim Terrorism: Causes and Consequences
Date
17 September 2014
Time
06:00 pm - 08:00 pm
Location
Bankstown Campus

Address (Room): Building 3, Room G.55

Description
Terrorism in a general sense is an act of violence intended to create fear and terror in people and society for differing ends. It has featured in human history for millennia and continues to be perpetrated by people of varying social, economic, cultural, political and ideological backgrounds. In this sense, terrorism is not unique to a particular people or culture. However, especially in the last ten years dubbed as “the Age of the War on Terror”, terrorism almost exclusively has been attributed by the media and some intellectuals and academics to Muslims to denote Muslim predisposition to terrorism, and Islam as its abode. Yet, there is no support for terrorism in scriptural Islam and a vast majority of Muslims are law abiding, decent citizens of their respective countries. Importantly, there have been numerous incidents of terrorism in the same period perpetrated by non-Muslims highlighting the cultural diversity of terrorism. This paper explores terrorism not as a religious, but a sociological phenomenon. It locates terrorism in the crisis situation of the modern world or modernity and seeks to demonstrate terrorism as a religious response to the crisis of society - economic deprivation, social inequality and political instability. It looks at some of the pivotal causes of it using Bourdieu’s A Theory of Practice and his important concept of habitus, in it, as tools of analysis. Habitus denotes an inclination towards a particular way of behaving. It is almost a natural world view that embodies us as individuals and to what we are beholden; ingrained in our bodies as well as our intellects, normally at the subconscious level. It locates individuals as social beings in a particular context which acts as a reference point and against which individuals evaluate all life experiences. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is employed to explain the nature of Muslim terrorism and redefine the contours of contemporary terrorism in order to replace it from its surrogate abode in Islam to its rightful domicile in the crisis situation of Muslim everyday living. The paper argues that Muslim terrorism is a response to the negative consequences of modernity or the crisis of society. What we are dealing with today is a terrorism habitus evolved out of the crisis situations that afflict many Muslims. The roots of the terrorism habitus are deeply embedded in the negative consequences of modernity.

Speakers: Dr Jan Ali

Web page: http://www.uws.edu.au/religion_and_society/home

Contact
Name: Judy Fishman

j.fishman@uws.edu.au

Phone: 9772 6440

School / Department: Religion and Society Research Centre

Attachments