Description:

While populist rhetoric is on the rise in both Europe and the U.S., Islam and Muslims have been consistently defined as a threat and as a foreign entity. This talk will examine how Islam contributes to revealing deep divides and anxieties about the meaning of secularism, democracy, feminism, and national identity in France and the U.S., and will discuss how Muslims have succeeded in asserting their rights and voice in both contexts. Nadia Marzouki is a research fellow at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She is presently a visiting fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. She is the author of Islam, an American Religion (Columbia University Press, March 2017) and co-edited with Olivier and Duncan McDonnell, Saving the People, How Populists Hijack Religion (Oxford University press, November 2016).