Backdoor Broadcasting Company

Event Date: 22 and 23 September 2011
Sunley Management Centre
Park Campus,
University of Northampton

Radicalism and New Media Group presents:

 Populist Racism In Britain and Europe since 1945

KEYNOTING:

• Professor Aristotle Kallis,
• Dr Hans-Georg Betz

Additional analysis:

• Professor Nigel Copsey,
• Dr Gavin Schaffer,
• Dr Jane Callaghan,
• The Think Project,
• Searchlight
• and  others

Following in tradition established by the Radical-ism and New Media research group, this two-day conference will bring together scholars, practitioners and third sector professionals either working on innovative research, or front line engagement with, the causes, nature and effect of populist racism in Britain and Europe.

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MAJOR THEMES COVERED:

 Topics to be discussed by practitioners and academics will include:

• The relationship between populist racism and violent extremism;
• The latest developments with the BNP, EDL and European far-right movements;
• Analysis of how the mass media represents populist racism;
• State responses to forms of populist racism;
• Factors that create ‘fertile conditions’ for popu-list racism to develop;
• The role of the new media.

ENCOURAGING NEW APPROACHES

As well as talks from experts, up-and-coming researchers, and professional perspectives, there will be networking opportunities for informal engagement with these themes, to encourage new approaches to tackling populist racism.

 Programme:

22 September 2011

Welcome and Opening Keynote:

Hans-Georg Betz, ‘Populism, Nativism and Contemporary Radical Right-Wing Ideology’
Due to technical failure we cannot provide you with the audio recording of this talk. However, we will attempt to bring you this sometiome in the near future.

Parallel panels I:

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Panel 1a: Northern Europe

Daunis Auers, ‘Mapping Populist Racism in the Baltic States’
[AUDIO HERE]

Simon Oja, ‘From Skinheads and Shouting to Suits and Debating’
[AUDIO HERE]

Kristina Boreus, ‘Right-Wing Populism and Discursive Discrimination in Austria, Denmark and Sweden’
[AUDIO HERE]

Panel 1a discussion .

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Panel 1b: Populist Racism and Lone Wolf Terrorism in Europe

Matthew Feldman, ‘Comparative Lone Wolf Terrorism’
[AUDIO HERE]

Paul Jackson, ‘Lone Wolf Terrorism and Right-Wing Extremism’
Rafael Pantucci, ‘How Xenophobic Are Lone Wolf Islamists?’

Due to technical failure we cannot provide you with the audio recording of these talks. However, we will attempt to bring you this sometiome in the near future.

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Parallel Panels II

Panel 2a: Eastern Europe

Alina Polyakova, ‘Civil Society and Right-Wing Politics: Explaining the Rightís Success and Failure in Central Eastern Europe’
[AUDIO HERE]

Parikrama Gupta, ‘Racism in Russia: Not a Problem for the Russian State’
[AUDIO HERE]

Andreas Umland, ‘Zhirinovskii as a Fascist: Palingenetic Ultra-Nationalism in Documents of the Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia in the early 1990s’
[AUDIO HERE]

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Panel 2b: Populist Racism against Roma and Sinti travellers

Zbigniew Wojcik and Lukasz Gazda, ‘Roma: NOT Hard to Reach Community’
[AUDIO HERE]

John Coxhead, ‘Roma: Deconstructing Populist Xenophobia’
[AUDIO HERE]

Gabriela Augustynowicz-Casey, ‘The Roma: The Need of a New Language of Social Communication‘
[AUDIO HERE]

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Parallel Panels III

Panel 3a: Western Europe

Brigitte Beauzamy, ‘The Role of the Radical Right in the Politicization of Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’
[AUDIO HERE]
Aurelien Mondon, ‘Nicolas Sarkozyís Legitimisation of the Front National’
[AUDIO HERE]

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Panel 3b: The Psychological Dimension of Populist Racism

Jane Callaghan, ‘There’s Something Happening Here: Visual Images of the EDL and BNP’
[AUDIO HERE]

Paul Crofts, “Us” and “Them” in Defining the “Other”. A Case Study on Framing Muslims and Islamaphobia and Racism from Kettering’
[AUDIO HERE]

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Panel 4 ‘Representing ‘Otherness’

Darya Malyutina, ‘From Racism to Cosmopolitan Sociability: Perceptions of ëOthersí in the Conditions of Superdiversity by Russian-speaking Migrants in London’
[AUDIO HERE]

Trev Preston, ‘Boots, Braces and Blogs: Representations of Right-Wing Extremism in Britain’
[AUDIO HERE]

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23 September 2011

Opening Welcome

Prof. Nick Petford, Vice-Chancellor, University of Northampton .

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Keynote

Aristotle Kallis, ‘The “Contagion” Dynamic of the Far-Right’
[AUDIO HERE]

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Launch of RNM Groupís report on the English Defence League

Dr Paul Jackson and Dr Mark Pitchford .

(download PDF)

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Panel 1 by Practitioners

The Think Project: Geraint Whittaker, Laura Lake and Rocio Cifuentes
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Panel 2 by Practitioners

Searchlight: ‘The Post War Impact of Julius Evola on British Politics and Beyond’

Alfio Bernabei, ‘The Mind of Julius Evola: Between Fascism and Mysticism’
[AUDIO HERE]

Gerry Gable, ‘The Devil’s Disciples: From Fiore to Griffin’
[AUDIO HERE]

Sonia Gable, ‘Are Griffin’s Appeals for Race and Civil War Helping Britain’s Far Right?’
[AUDIO HERE]

Searchlight Panel discussion .

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Book (and Series) Launch

Far-right.com, first in “Mapping the Far Right” series, eds. Paul Jackson and Gerry Gable
book available HERE:
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Academic Panel

Gavin Schaffer, ‘The Vision of a Nation: Making Multiculturalism on British Television 1960-1980′
[AUDIO HERE]

Nigel Copsey, ‘Au Revoir to “Sacred Cows”? The Nouvelle Droite’s Impact on Britain’s Far Right’
[AUDIO HERE]

Anton Shekhovtsov, ‘Far-Right Music in Britain’
[AUDIO HERE]

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Final Panel discussion .

Concluding Round table discussion

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selected photos from the conference:

Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs
Third Wave Shi‘ism: Sayyid  ‘Arif Husayn al-Husayni and the Islamic Revolution in Pakistan

Struggles over orthodoxy and religious authority have plagued Pakistan’s Shi‘a minority since the inception of the state. Early clashes about proper religious taxation (khums) coincided with an expansion of institutions of religious learning in the late 1950s. From the 1960s onwards, scholars who had studied in the shrine cities of Iraq tried to inject a reformist agenda into Pakistani Shi‘ism which they deemed to be in current form irrational, dominated by meaningless rituals and, worst of all, caught up in the heretical and esoteric ideas of Shaykhism. Yet, the reformists faced substantial opposition from infuential, mostly Lucknow-educated Pakistani ‘ulama who went as far as labelling them ‘Shi‘a Wahhabis’. Additionally, the reformists came under attack from a new generation of students who had graduated in the 1970s from madrasas in Qom, a phenomenon that increased tremendously after the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Even though many scholars have referred to a clear-cut ‘Qomization’ of Shi‘ism in Pakistan since then, the complexity of this process has often been left unexplored, with Iranian infuence in the sphere of theology being more often assumed than actually demonstrated. My paper aims to fill this gap through a close reading of speeches, interviews, and declarations by Sayyid ‘Arif Husayn al-Husayni, who served from 1984 until his assassination in 1988 as the leader of Pakistan’s most infuential Shi‘a organization, the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Ja‘fariya-i-Pakistan. After providing a short outline of the major conflicts between the diferent camps of Pakistani Shi‘a scholars in the twentieth century, the paper will discuss al-Husayni’s formation as a scholar (and activist) in Najaf and Qom. Finally, I shall identify how the hallmark themes of the Iranian revolution (taqrib, anti-imperialism etc.) shaped al-Husayni’s worldview, and how he adapted them to his Pakistani context, thus establishing the ‘orthodoxy’ of his views against opponents within his own mazhab.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Hasan Ali Khan
The role of the Auqaf Department in re-defining Sufi and Shi‘a built heritage in Pakistan

This paper describes the general role of the Auqaf Department of the Government of Pakistan in the Islamization era of the 1970s and the 1980s, and its development into a monolith which, along with the affiliated Department of Archaeology, is responsible for the complete management of the built heritage of the country. It will first briefly look at the establishment of the original Auqaf, under British administration after India passed under direct rule, and its early development in the first half of the twentieth century. After partition both India and Pakistan inherited their respective Auqaf departments, along with the colonial-era laws which regulated and governed them. In the case of Pakistan the ministry was quickly restructured to expand, and started taking over shrines not under state control. The process sped up when the Auqaf was subdivided into the Provincial Auqafs, which took direct control of all shrines and mosques in the respective provinces, and the Federal Auqaf, which hence forth dealt only with larger monuments considered to be national treasures, like mosques and forts. In time the provincial Auqafs began a conscious process of dispossessing any shrines not under their control, by deposing the lineal caretakers, and in cases remodelling the monuments on a foreign iconoclastic archetype. This period coincides with the Islamization era of the 1980s, and has resulted in a great loss of Sufi and Shi‘a architectural heritage, especially in the Punjab.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Saleem Khan
The Shia dominance of the legal profession in British India :A Study of Lawyer-Politicians of Bihar

‘Ulema, religious rituals, sectarian violence and aristocrats have generally been the focus for studies on Shi‘ism and Shi‘as in South Asia, while high caste, upper middle class British educated Hindu Brahmins such as the Sapru-Nehru clan usually provide the focus for studies on lawyer-politicians. Yet some of the best barristers of British India were Shi‘as by origin or choice. A few like the Muslim modernist Syed Amir Ali and Muhammad Ali Jinnah have been the subject of several publications. In particular, the focus of this paper is on the Shi‘a Muslim Barristers of Bihar, who have received much less attention.  Centred on two brothers, Sir Ali Imam and Justice Hasan Imam of Patna, and their distant younger relative Sir Sultan Ahmed of Gaya, they each rose to the apex of both the political and legal professions during the British Raj. The elder brother Sir Ali Imam headed the Muslim League, while Hasan Imam became the leader of the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress. Sir Sultan Ahmed, in contrast to the Imam brothers, later on came to head the All India Shi‘a Conference. The descendents and relatives of the Imam brothers acquired an elite education, often at British private schools, Oxbridge and the Inns of Law, and were well represented in the Indian Supreme and High Courts until the 1970s. This paper also looks at the relations between these Bihari Syed Shi‘a barristers with the much larger Sunni community, the Hindu majority, and their co-religionists in Awadh.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Sajjad Rizvi 
Establishing the principles of the faith for a new Shi‘i polity: the theology of Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi

For those familiar with north Indian Shi‘i Islam, Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali (1753-1820) is a well known individual credited with the formation of a rationalising hierocracy in the new Shi‘i polity of Awadh at the end of the eighteenth century. The process by which the elites established Twelver Shi‘i doctrines and their practices, and disseminated them in such a way that they still provide the basic motifs and parameters of modern Shi‘i identity in the subcontinent, has been studied by Juan Cole and others: facets of this process include the development of a political theology, establishment of institutions of learning and commemoration, and the production of literature for disseminating Shi‘i ideas in the scholarly and elite Mughal languages of Arabic and Persian as well as the vernacular of Urdu.

While his polemical works, countering anti-Shi‘i texts such as Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s Tuhfa-yi ithna ‘ashariya and attacking Sufis and Akhbaris, have some studies associated with them, the broad outlines of Dildar ‘Ali’s philosophical works and philosophical theology, which provided the foundations for these polemics and exchanges, have been rather neglected. A careful (although at this stage fairly cursory) study of Dildar ‘Ali’s major theological text, Mira’t al-‘uqul fi ‘ilm usul al-din, better known as ‘Imad al-Islam, will constitute the main part of my paper. Divided into the classic five-fold scheme of Shi‘i theology, it was written in Arabic for a scholarly audience. It was designed not only to establish his own credentials as a scholar and demonstrate the contribution of the ‘ulama of India to Shi‘i thought, but also to posit the basic metaphysical foundations for the critique of others: whether Sunni scholars of Farangi-Mahall and elsewhere, Sufi pirs, or traditionist Akhbaris. By way of some concluding remarks, I will also raise some of the contestations against his work, particularly focusing on an Arabic critique of Dildar ‘Ali produced by Sayyid Murtaza Nawnihravi, a sayyid from the qasbas like himself but very much outside of the hierocracy, entitled Mira’t al-‘uqul fi sharh du‘a al-mashlul.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Justin Jones
Khandan-i-Ijtihad: authority and transition in a family of Shi‘a ‘ulama in north India, c.1850-1950

Scholarship on Shi‘ism in north India has, to a great degree, looked at the religion in terms of its Nawabi incarnations, and its associations with the project of state-building in pre-colonial Awadh. This is perhaps especially true of the so-called ‘Khandan-i-Ijtihad’, the most significant household of Indian Shi‘a ‘ulama over a number of successive generations. Through early mujtahids such as Dildar ‘Ali and Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi, this family projected great influence upon the Nawabi court, and epitomised the Usuli Shi‘a revival of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Lucknow.

For all that has been assumed about the historic demise of the religious and secular elites tied to the Nawabs, this clerical family have retained their public primacy in India until the present. This paper, then, is an attempt to explore the little understood post-annexation history of this family, who have remained prominent figures in Shi‘a life across modern South Asia. Focusing upon the social milieu and public functions of the key figureheads of this lineage, this paper will explore the family adab (sense of honour and identity), exploring the nature of the household, their ties to both Lucknow and their qasbas of origin, and their response to the socio-political transformations accompanying the collapse of Shi‘a power in 1856. It will argue that the ‘ulama were able to exercise an occupational transition, from being the jurisconsults and state functionaries of the 1850s, becoming important lay functionaries and, later, representatives of their community before the colonial state. The paper thus carries implications for our understanding of the functional adaptability of the Shi‘a ‘ulama, and their ability to re-craft their socio-religious role in changing historical settings.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011

Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Keynote Address:

Francis Robinson - Reflections on the Shi‘a in South Asia and the wider Muslim World.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011

Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Michel Boivin -
The Ithna ‘Ashari- Isma‘ili divide among the Khojas: exploring forgotten judicial sources from Karachi around 1910. 

When Hasan Ali Shah (d. 1882), the living imam of the Isma‘ili Shias, came to settle in India, a section of his alleged followers, known as the Khojas, rejected his authority. After a number of court cases, they shifted to Sunnism or Ithna ‘Ashari Shi‘ism. This divide is well documented by scholars working with Bombay judicial sources, in particular the Aga Khan Case (1866); on the contrary, the judicial sources from Karachi have not yet received significant attention. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Karachi was challenging Bombay as a main economic centre of the Empire. Karachi was thus a hub for the Khojas, as well as for other merchant groups. From the 1850s, the “Pearl of the East” was regularly visited by Hasan Ali Shah’s son and heir, Ali Shah (d. 1885). Ali Shah’s own son and successor, Sultan Muhammad Shah (d. 1957), was born there in 1877. This paper wishes to explore such resources for fostering a fresh understanding of the Ithna ‘Ashari-Isma‘ili divide among the Khojas around 1910.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011

Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Ian G Williams
Shared and disputed symbols within Twelver Shi‘ite and Ahl-i-Sunnat Traditions of Islam:  an examination of theological constructions and devotional practices amongst leaders and adherents of these traditions, from nineteenth century South Asia to the contemporary UK.

Within post-1857 British India, Muslim groups were engaged in rivalry and competition with each other for adherents, and to some extent in rivalry with Christian missionaries and Hindu revivalists.  In addition, Muslim traditions found themselves in a new political and religious context as a minority.  Movements emerged to create fresh Muslim identities by which to address this situation. Amongst the symbols used in the Muslim intra-faith conflicts were the Prophet, ‘Ali and their family. Drawing upon a scholarly past tradition, Ahmad Raza Khan (1856-1921) led the Ahl-i-Sunnat wa jama‘at movement which, alongside the Shi‘a tradition, emphasised perspectives upon the Prophet and the grace transmitted through his genealogical line.  In addition, Raza Khan held as highly significant another understanding shared with the Twelver Shi‘a: that the Prophet’s light pre-dated the creation of the material and spiritual universes and Adam.  Both the Prophet and ‘Ali also pre-existed Adam, with their light being the source of origin for all other beings.  This paper examines such developments and emphases within both Ahl-i-Sunnat and Shi‘a traditions in India, and their subsequent interactions and transfer of ideas into twentieth and twenty-first century diasporic Muslim communities in the UK.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Ludovic Gandelot
Religious and social identities of the Aga Khani Isma‘ilis, as seen through the firmans of Sultan Muhammad Shah at the beginning of the twentieth century

At the end of the 1920s, some of the firmans attributed to Sultan Muhammad Shah (1885-1957), Imam of the Aga Khani Isma‘ilis, were compiled and printed in Bombay. The Imam’s speeches form an insight into the religious community, revealing the intimacy of the meetings occurring in the jama‘at-khana between followers and their religious leader. From the two hundred firmans which composed the re-published Bahere rahemat firmans and Khangi firmans books, we will extract thirty-five of them relating to a crucial historical period for the community. Twenty of them, from the first volume, were delivered in Zanzibar during Sultan Muhammad Shah’s first visit there in 1899. The fifteen others, taken from the Khangi firmans compilation, were given in India, mostly in Bombay, in the early years of the twentieth century. In both places, Sultan Muhammad Shah had to face some internal divisions, with his legitimacy being called into question.

This paper will firstly examine religious identities, principally the vocabulary used by Sultan Muhammad Shah to define the different protagonists in question, discussing how they were perceived and described. We will then analyse the content itself, to conclude that Sultan Muhammad Shah’s talks were mainly directed to two recurrent themes: the raising of the moral behaviour of his followers, and the promotion of the unity of the social group. Finally we will unravel the socio-religious dynamics involved in the building of the community. Some of the devotees, united by vows and secret and specific rituals, composed a new internal stratification. Added to these special practices, a new consciousness of responsibility towards their religious leader and the community was widely diffused among themselves.

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