Being German, Becoming Muslim

Esra Ozyurek is an associate professor at the European Institute of the London School of Economics. She is the author of Nostalgia for the Modern: State Secularism and Everyday Politics in Turkey.

• Acknowledgments ix Introduction Germanizing Islam and Racializing Muslims 1 Chapter 1 Giving Islam a German Face 24 Chapter 2 Establishing Distance from Immigrant Muslims 51 Chapter 3 East German Conversions to Islam after the Collapse of the Berlin Wall 69 Chapter 4 Being Muslim as a Way of Becoming German 87 Chapter 5 Salafism as the Future of European Islam? 109 Chapter 6 Conclusion 132 Notes 137 References 149 Index 163

"The result of her research is a fascinating exploration of the dynamics of Islam in contemporary Germany, seen through the prism of its capital, Berlin. Her account provides a multifaceted profile of the many faces of Islam in one Western European country, and it offers readers a good sense of the diversity of contemporary Sunni Muslims in Germany... [A]n excellent study."--Ursula King, Times Higher Education "This book provides a judicious and well thought-through consideration of such contradictions and challenges in the lives of German Muslims and offers a fascinating discussion on blurring boundaries between Germans and Muslim, and the changing realities of European identity."--Dr. Digdem Soyaltin, Turkish Review "This book is remarkable."--Ruth Mandel, History and Anthropology "Ozyurek's Being German, Becoming Muslim makes a welcome and distinctive contribution to--as the subtitle sums up--the study of Race, religion and conversion in the New Europe."--Nasar Meer, History and Anthropology "An engaging, poignant study of how the different paths taken by converts converge in life-long, collective practices of self-pedagogy that involve learning how to negotiate German secular-Christian social norms and institutions."--Paul A. Silverstein, History and Anthropology "A powerful work about the politics of inclusion and exclusion, security and threat, and recognition and fairness."--Joel Robbins, History and Anthropology "A groundbreaking book that sheds much light on the lives of German converts to Islam, their ways of becoming Muslims and being German in the aftermath of conversion, their ambivalent relationships with immigrant Muslims, their strategies and struggles with respect to broadening a space of Islam, and even making it a German religion, and finally their curious relationship with the Salafis in Germany."--Erdem Dikici, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations