Overview

This book provides a critical investigation into Sikh and Muslim conflict in the postcolonial setting. Being Sikh in a diasporic context creates challenges that require complex negotiations between other ethnic minorities as well as the national majority. Unsettling Sikh and Muslim Conflict: Mistaken Identities, Forced Conversions, and Postcolonial Formations maps in theoretically informed and empirically rich detail the trope of Sikh-Muslim antagonism as it circulates throughout the diaspora. While focusing on contemporary manifestations of Sikh-Muslim hostility, the book also draws upon historical examples of such conflict to explore the way in which the past has been mobilized to tell a story about the future of Sikhs. This book uses critical race theory to understand the performance of postcolonial subjectivity in the heart of the metropolis.

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9780739178744

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Unsettling Sikh & Muslim Conflict takes central topics of our time -diaspora politics, postcoloniality, anti-terrorism, identity, immigrants and national belonging, Islamophobia, religion, secularism, and race- and places them under a new, penetrating light. This book radically shifts the focus from the current preoccupation with 'multiculturalism versus security,' to a more critical terrain of how subjects and nations come into being. Uniquely, the argument focuses not only on majority-minority relations, but on how relations among minorities are articulated and rearticulated through dominant frameworks that perpetuate racism, and that simultaneously invite/require Sikhs to align themselves to Islamophobic imaginings of the nation. This book compels readers to re-think how we understand Sikh identity, the political nature of Sikh-Muslim relations, and the possibilities of decolonization. At the same time, it not only challenges us to re-imagine how we understand Sikh diasporas in this 'age of terror', but also how political constructions of religion and Otherness more generally are produced in ways that secure both hegemonic practices of nation-building and colonized formations of the 'model minority.' Katy Pal Sian offers a compelling and insightful analysis that should be read by scholars and non-academics concerned with the politics of difference. -- Rita Kaur Dhamoon, University of Victoria

This book may be located within diaspora studies and the study of intercultural and interethnic relations, and more broadly, within the discourse on narrative performance where identity is viewed as intrinsically linked to storytelling. Using postcolonial theorists such as Said, Foucault, and Barthes, Sian attempts to interrogate existing narrative/s of 'Sikhness' that are rooted in tales of 'Sikhs and their battle against the Muslim enemy.' It is a battle centered on the notion of 'brave, courageous and heroic Sikhs' who emerge victorious in the face of 'oppression...and tyranny [by] the Muslim antagonist' (2). Stories, she rightly argues, shape identity...Sian's narrative questions the present discourse and masterfully weaves her own story...[S]killfully expressed. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations Unsettling Sikh & Muslim Conflict takes central topics of our time -diaspora politics, postcoloniality, anti-terrorism, identity, immigrants and national belonging, Islamophobia, religion, secularism, and race- and places them under a new, penetrating light. This book radically shifts the focus from the current preoccupation with 'multiculturalism versus security,' to a more critical terrain of how subjects and nations come into being. Uniquely, the argument focuses not only on majority-minority relations, but on how relations among minorities are articulated and rearticulated through dominant frameworks that perpetuate racism, and that simultaneously invite/require Sikhs to align themselves to Islamophobic imaginings of the nation. This book compels readers to re-think how we understand Sikh identity, the political nature of Sikh-Muslim relations, and the possibilities of decolonization. At the same time, it not only challenges us to re-imagine how we understand Sikh diasporas in this 'age of terror', but also how political constructions of religion and Otherness more generally are produced in ways that secure both hegemonic practices of nation-building and colonized formations of the 'model minority.' Katy P. Sian offers a compelling and insightful analysis that should be read by scholars and non-academics concerned with the politics of difference. -- Rita Kaur Dhamoon, University of Victoria In this groundbreaking and challenging book, Katy Sian explores the under researched and often fraught issue of relationships between minority ethnic groups in the UK. Combining historical and textual analysis with empirical research and personal reflections, and tracing the complex connections and disjunctions between South Asia and Britain, Sian provides a provocative insight into the formation of contemporary intra-Br-Asian and diasporic identities. This book poses difficult and important questions for researchers of race, ethnicity, religion and identity, and anyone who wishes to understand the textures and tensions of modern multi-ethnic Britain. -- Claire Alexander, University of Manchester

Author Information

Katy P. Sian is a lecturer in sociology at The University of Manchester. Previously she was a postdoctoral research fellow at The University of Leeds where she also completed her PhD. She takes a key interest in debates surrounding racism and ethnicity studies, sociology, Sikh studies, Islamophobia, postcolonialism, Diaspora and South Asian identity.

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