The Politics of Contestation and the Construction of Injustice

Abstract

As we have seen, the technologies of time-space distantiation employed by the various media used by European Muslims (as well as similar technologies that make physical mobility much easier and faster) have substantially altered the experiences of presence and absence through their capability to overcome distance and boundaries and to bring remote others together. Situated in remote locations, our informants access news from other parts of Europe and further afield almost instantaneously. Being in a position to enable instantaneous communication, the media that make up what we have termed Muslim Media Space constitute part of the technologies and infrastructures that give rise to and sustain what Mandaville calls ‘translocal space’ (2001: 49). In other words, they have the capacity to bring about and sustain a sense of immediacy, contemporaneity and synchronicity to the dispersed populations that they link. This temporal convergence and sense of co-presence is very significant as it brings a qualitative change to the experience of being a European Muslim and the dynamics set in motion by it.