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Ethics without borders: solidarity and difference in inter-community dialogue
Author(s): Egorova, Yulia
Date: 2023
Topics: Ethnography, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Inter-Communal Relations, Interfaith Dialogue, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: The article offers an ethnographically embedded analysis of a UK-based Jewish-Muslim inter-community network to contribute to anthropological research into the ethical efforts that groups seen as polarized invest in negotiating boundaries of difference. The article makes two sets of arguments. First, it suggests that sometimes such groups have to negotiate not one but several ‘borders across difference’ and follow diverse ethical routes to navigate them depending upon how they conceptualize these borders. Second, it shows that in negotiating different sets of boundaries, network members often use techniques that at first glance appear to be artificial or even superficial in that they build on formal rules and/or contain no promise of achieving a consensus on issues important for the participants. However, I argue that these seemingly superficial efforts could still be seen as ethical endeavours underpinned by a strong commitment to inter-group solidarity and that they could be best understood as what Ruth Sheldon has described in her recent intervention in the ethics of Jewish ethnography as the movement between surface and depth.
Common difference: Conceptualising simultaneity and racial sincerity in Jewish-Muslim relations in the United Kingdom
Author(s): Egorova, Yulia
Date: 2023
Topics: Interfaith Dialogue, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Anthropology, Ethnography, Main Topic: Other, Race
Abstract: Building upon ethnographic research conducted among participants in UK-based initiatives in Jewish-Muslim dialogue, the paper contributes to anthropological literature on the essentialising nature of state-sponsored constructions of minoritised groups. More specifically, I put forward two sets of arguments. Firstly, I suggest a concept of simultaneity that challenges colonially inflected conceptualisations of the relationship between communities and their respective traditions. Activists of Jewish-Muslim inter-community work subvert dominant conceptualisations of intergroup commonalities and divergencies by developing a theorisation of Jewish-Muslim relations that acknowledges group similarities and differences as overlapping categories. Secondly, I contribute to John Jackson's (2005) theorisation of racial sincerity, a notion offering a conceptual challenge to the notion of authenticity. I argue that the complexity of my interlocutors’ thematisations of Jewish-Muslim relations underpinned by the diversity of the sources of knowledge that they rely on could be best understood as an example of this analytic. On a broader theoretical plane, the paper proposes a framework that underscores the agentive power of minority communities and pays close attention to the way they define their positionalities vis-à-vis the majorities and each other in ways that go beyond binaries-based theorisations.
“This Is Just Where We Are in History” Jewish-Muslim Dialogue, Temporality, and Modalities of Solidarity
Author(s): Egorova, Yulia
Editor(s): Gidley, Ben; Everett, Samuel Sami
Date: 2022
Topics: Main Topic: Other, Jewish - Muslim Relations
Abstract: Building upon an ethnographic study of initiatives in Jewish-Muslim dialogue in the UK, I explore the way Muslim participants in such initiatives conceptualise the position of their community in the UK in relation to that of their Jewish co-citizens. I argue that while at first blush my Muslim interlocutors appear to read their community, in some historical time-frames, as being in a position of relative disadvantage in comparison to that of their Jewish counterparts, further analysis of their understanding of the positionalities of British Jews and British Muslims reveals a theorization that conveys a strong sense of solidarity with British Jewish citizens and unequivocally conceptualizes them as a political minority. I also suggest that these comparative reflections on the minority condition bear a productive potential for drawing public attention to specific challenges that different minority groups face.
The Impact of Antisemitism and Islamophobia on Jewish-Muslim Relations in the UK: Memory, Experience, Context
Author(s): Egorova, Yulia
Editor(s): Renton, James; Gidley, Ben
Date: 2017
Topics: Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Main Topic: Antisemitism