This project about representations of Islam explores textbooks currently used in history, politics and social studies lessons in a number of European countries, and thereby deals with one of the central topics of the Georg Eckert Institute. By addressing current perspectives, and by adopting a transnational and transdisciplinary approach, the project aims to uncover similarities and differences between the various national perspectives. At the same time, the project will identify gaps in existing research in relation to the debate about Muslims in European migration societies.

The results of the pilot study show that textbooks currently in use in European countries continue to convey simplified representations of Islam and thereby prolong perceptions of Muslims branded as a religious collective of non-European ‘others‘. Most of the history and politics textbooks from Germany, Austria, France, Spain and England arouse the impression that ‘Islam’ and ‘modern Europe’ are mutually exclusive units between which contact is confrontational and which largely exclude overlapping elements and similarities. This perspective is grounded in the lack of distinction made between Islam as a religious model and cultural and political practices which have been marked by Muslim cultures in the past and present. As a result, difference is explained in religious terms and qualities are attributed collectively, such that cultures are essentialised. However, the current focus of these polarised distinctions lies not in the presentation of Muslims as religious opponents in violent conflicts, but in the representations of Muslim society as premodern, an ‘other’ which therefore is not compatible with European culture. Historical representations which pay tribute to the Middle Ages of the Arab-Islamic world generally do not destabilise, but rather sustain this polarised conception.

More about this project will soon be posted on this site. 

Duration: July to December 2010, funded by the German Foreign Office.

Project leader: Dr Susanne Kröhnert-Othman

Project members: Melanie Kamp MA, Constantin Wagner MA