The Global Left between Race and Religion - Competing or Converging Categories?

The debates around migration and Islam become decisive in erasing the differences between left and right, challenging pluralistic democracies of European countries. The visibility of Islam in public life, and the emergence of cultural controversies around the headscarf, prayer in public, mosque construction, halal eating, and visual representations of Islam, challenges responses from the European left and multicultural, and secular goups. The place of religion in society is widely rejected and remains a blind spot in critical leftist thinking while the category of race and racism, associated with human rights discourses, is applied to encompass all kinds of discrimination in modern societies. How to entangle the categories of religion and race, islamization, and racialization? Are they competing or converging categories? What is the heuristic contribution of race and religion to critical thinking and inclusive politics? How does the global left enmesh race and religion?

Lecture Nilüfer Göle, response and discussion with Ranabir Samaddar, moderated by Sandro Mezzadra