Turkish Origin Migrants and Their Descendants by Ayhan Kaya

Author:Ayhan Kaya
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Politics of Honour : The Code of Conduct in Exclusion

Recently, Islam has come to be, by and large, considered and represented as a threat to the European way of life. It is frequently believed that Islamic fundamentalism is the source of current xenophobic, racist and violent attitudes directed against Muslim-origin migrants and their children in the West. Right-wing populism has also become widespread along with the growing stream of Islamophobia (Kaya 2017). Conversely, this book claims that ethno-cultural and religious resurgence may be interpreted as a symptom of existing structural social and political problems such as unemployment, racism, xenophobia, exclusion and assimilation. Scientific data uncover that migrant-origin groups tend to affiliate themselves with politics of identity, ethnicity and religiosity in order to tackle such structural constraints (Clifford 1987; Gilroy 1994; Kaya 2012). This is actually a form of politics initiated by outsider groups as opposed to the kind of politics generated by ‘those within’ as Alistair MacIntyre (1971) decoded earlier. According to MacIntyre (1971), there are two forms of politics: politics of those within and politics of those excluded. Those within tend to employ legitimate political institutions (parliament, political parties, the media) in pursuing their goals, and those excluded resort to honour, culture, ethnicity, religion, roots and tradition in doing the same. It should be noted here that MacIntyre does not place culture in the private space; culture is rather inherently located in the public space. Therefore, the main motive behind the development of ethno-cultural and religious inclinations by migrant and minority groups may be perceived as their concern to be attached to the political-public sphere. Similarly, Robert Young (2001) also sheds light on the ways in which the discourse of culturalism has recently become salient. Referring to Mao, Fanon, Cabral, Nkrumah, Senghor and many others, Young (2001) accurately explicates that culture turns out to be a political strategy for subordinated masses to resist ideological infiltrations in both colonial and postcolonial contexts. Thus, the quest for identity, authenticity and religiosity should not be reduced to an attempt to essentialize so-called purity. It is rather a form of politics generated by subordinated subjects. Islam is no longer simply a religion, but also a counter-hegemonic global political movement, which prompts Muslims to stand up for justice and against tyranny—whether in Palestine, Kosovo, Kashmir, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Syria or elsewhere.

Individuals, or groups, tend to use the languages that they know best in order to raise their daily concerns such as poverty, exclusion, unemployment and racism. If they are not equipped with the language of deliberative democratic polity, then they are inclined to use the languages they think they know by heart, such as religion, ethnicity and even violence. In an age of insecurity and uncertainty, the ‘wretched of the earth’ becomes more engaged in the protection of their honour , which, they believe, is the only thing left. In understanding the growing significance of honour, Akbar S. Ahmed (2003) draws our attention to the collapse of what Mohammad Ibn Khaldun (1969),

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