Farid Hafez
Biographic Data
| ID | 653249 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Farid Hafez |
| GIVEN NAMES | Farid |
| FAMILY NAME | Hafez |
| SIGNATURE | HAFEZ F |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Salzburg |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6931-9712 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 96 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 23 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Rexhepi, P. (2023)
Eastern Europe and the Balkans are often left out of much of the literature on decoloniality, postcolonialism, and racial capitalism.Piro Rexhepi fills this gap.In his book White Enclosures, Rexhepi intends to offer a critical analysis of the European discourse on the so-called Balkan route, situating it in the larger context of coloniality, racial capitalism, and border control.Eastern Europe is not presented as an exception, but as a "periphera…
A Postcolonial Analysis of Austria’s Political Approach to Islam
This essay examines Austria’s political approaches to Islam between 2011 and 2022 at the interface of political science and religious policy as informed by postcolonial studies. Austrian political approaches to Islam are analyzed through the study of publications, press releases, government and party programmes, as well as laws, all conceptualized as an Islam dispositif. Against the backdrop of a restrictive policy on integration, it is considere…
From politicizing and dereligionizing religion to religionizing and depoliticizing politics. Reflecting on ‘Islam’ 20 years after 9/11
The rise of global Islamophobia in the War on Terror
Criminalizing Muslim agency in Europe
This article discusses the emergence of a discourse on ‘political Islam’ in the policy circles of European elites. It interprets this discourse on one hand as a manifestation of the further criminalization of Muslimness emanating from programs of countering ‘extremism’ and deradicalizing Muslim youth in the wake of the global war on terror. More specifically, the discourse on ‘political Islam’ is seen as an extension of countering violent extremi…
Surveilling and Criminalizing Austrian Muslims
In this commentary, I deal with how the governing conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) managed successfully to fundamentally reshape the state’s politics towards Muslim communities by introducing the terminology of ‘political Islam’ in the public discourse. I show how this affected the political discourse, how the governing ÖVP has been using institutions to produce knowledge in order to criminalize Muslimness, and how this also affected th…
Unwanted Identities
Institutionalizing Islam in Contemporary Austria
At the beginning of October 2014, a social democratic–conservative coalition government in Austria presented a draft for a new Islam Act. The unanimous voice of Muslims and the government declared that the existing Islam Act, which dated back to 1912, was now outdated. The government thus aimed to amend the existing act based on the constitutional framework of the Republic of Austria’s secular system, which can be characterized as a cooperative f…
Schools of Thought in Islamophobia Studies
Anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia are not just phenomena—they have increasingly become the focus of a new field of research: Islamophobia studies. Frequent national and international conferences and publications in this area bear witness to this. This article discusses the different prominent approaches to the concepts of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism that can be found in academic literature. It discusses the different theoretical strands…
Engineering a European Islam
Today, a number of European states’ policies on religion aim at creating a nationalized Islam. In many Western European countries, the Ministries of the Interior have institutionalized ‘dialogue platforms’ to discuss issues of Islam, society, inclusion and extremism with Muslim actors. This reveals the implicit assumptions of these governments when talking to Muslims. The underlying message is that Muslims pose a security threat to the state and …
Street-level and government-level Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four countries
Islamophobic mobilization has become a crucial aspect of right-wing populist mobilization. Hafez's article focuses on the case of the Visegrád Four countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Based on reportedly widespread hostility against Muslims among the population in this region, one would assume a large potential for street-level activism analogous to the German Pegida. Yet, attempts to organize grassroots Islamophobic movement…
Breaking with Austrian Consociationalism
This paper seeks to explain Austria's Islam-related politics by first suggesting that it can be best understood in terms of neo-institutionalist path-dependency and consociationalist policy-making. This is due to the fact that Austria gave Islam full legal recognition in 1912. Important institutional patterns and policies grew out of this law in the Second Republic, whose persistence we want to examine. The Islamic Religious Community constituted…
Thematisierung von „Religion“ in der österreichischen Politikwissenschaft. Status Quo, Tendenzen und kritische Anmerkungen
This article examinesthe relevance of religioninthe Austrian political science-landscape. Based on research conducted by political scientistsK enneth D. Wald &C lyde Wilcox
Thematisierung von „Religion“ in der österreichischen Politikwissenschaft. Status Quo, Tendenzen und kritische Anmerkungen
This article examines the relevance of religion in the Austrian political science-landscape. Based on research conducted by political scientists Kenneth D. Wald & Clyde Wilcox (2006) and Steven Kettell (2012), who see an underexposed position of religion in USpolitical science, this article raises the question of the relevance of religion in the Journal of Austrian Political Science. A content analysis will be conducted for all volumes published …
From Harlem to the “Hoamatlond”
This article analyzes how hip-hop as a social movement influenced youth with a Muslim religious background in Austria. The study examines the influence of African American activist Malcolm X, a central figure in hip-hop culture, on young people in Austria in the 1990s, and specifically his influence on the Islamic Group of Upper Austria (IG OÖ), a social-movement organization founded in 1995. The article also explores what meaning hip-hop and Mal…
Whose Austria
The Austrian Muslim Youth was founded in 1996 by young Muslims of different ethnic backgrounds and has become the largest multi-ethnic, co-educational, German-speaking youth organization in Austria today. Since its inception, it has presented the concept of an ‘Austrian Muslim identity’ as a key philosophy. In this article, I ask how the idea of this identity was negotiated. I suggest that this concept is not reinforcing nativist notions. Rather,…
Debating the 2015 Islam law in Austrian Parliament
This article analyses the two national parliamentary debates on the new Islam law of 2015 using a Viennese School of Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks how the new Islam law was framed from the perspectives of the political parties in power and of those in opposition. It also shows in detail which arguments were raised to defend, alter or support the proposed law by identifying the list of topoi used. It asks especially how racist arguments wer…
Austrian Muslims Protest Against Austria's Revised “Islam Act
Austria legally recognized Islam in 1912 and has thus been characterized as a "liberal" country regarding the inclusion of Muslims. But when the law was revision in 2015, it was largely criticized as discriminatory, anti-constitutional, and authoritarian towards the Muslim minority. The paper asks how a number of different social movement organizations and networks have framed their political participation, protest, and activism. It asks what dem…
Political Beats in the Alps
While fun is the ostensible object of hip hop music, the politically conscious aspect of hip hop culture was part of Austrian hip hop from the very beginning. Against a dominant view that Austrian hip hop was an apolitical genre carried by White Austrian middle-class artists only, this article explores the political messages in the early stages of German-speaking Austrian hip hop music. Although only few hip hop artists—especially marginalized yo…
Pegida in Parliament
This article explains the failure of Pegida Austria as a social movement organization by testing three prominent theories of social movement theory: political opportunity structures, ideology, and resource mobilization. The failure of Pegida to play a role in Austrian politics is ascribed to the dominant role the Freedom Party (FPÖ) already plays in the Austrian parliament, the FPÖ's issue dominance on anti-immigration and Islamophobia in public …
Disciplining the ‘Muslim Subject’
The following article discusses the establishment of centers of Islamic Studies (Islamische Theologie) in Germany. While many authors have discussed different theories which shape the accommodation of Islam in Western European nation states, I suggest that the security dispositif (Foucault) has a strong impact on the way the state and religious communities interact with each other. I argue that against the backdrop of a hegemonic Islamophobic dis…
Shifting borders
In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties.…
Islamophober Populismus
Der Gottesstaat des Esad Bey
Esad Bey’s theocratic state. A Muḥammad biography from the perspective of a Jewish convert to Islam with special consideration for the political dimension.This paper analyses the political dimension of the Muḥammad biography written by Esad Bey (1905–1942), a.k.a. Leo Noussimbaum, a Jewish convert to Islam, who lived and worked as a writer in Berlin/Germany. Esad Bey, a Baku-born (Azerbaijan) Jew, who became a Muslim in an early stage of his life…
Shifting borders
In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties.…
Debating the 2015 Islam law in Austrian Parliament
This article analyses the two national parliamentary debates on the new Islam law of 2015 using a Viennese School of Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks how the new Islam law was framed from the perspectives of the political parties in power and of those in opposition. It also shows in detail which arguments were raised to defend, alter or support the proposed law by identifying the list of topoi used. It asks especially how racist arguments wer…
Breaking with Austrian Consociationalism
This paper seeks to explain Austria's Islam-related politics by first suggesting that it can be best understood in terms of neo-institutionalist path-dependency and consociationalist policy-making. This is due to the fact that Austria gave Islam full legal recognition in 1912. Important institutional patterns and policies grew out of this law in the Second Republic, whose persistence we want to examine. The Islamic Religious Community constituted…
Criminalizing Muslim agency in Europe
This article discusses the emergence of a discourse on ‘political Islam’ in the policy circles of European elites. It interprets this discourse on one hand as a manifestation of the further criminalization of Muslimness emanating from programs of countering ‘extremism’ and deradicalizing Muslim youth in the wake of the global war on terror. More specifically, the discourse on ‘political Islam’ is seen as an extension of countering violent extremi…
Street-level and government-level Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four countries
Islamophobic mobilization has become a crucial aspect of right-wing populist mobilization. Hafez's article focuses on the case of the Visegrád Four countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Based on reportedly widespread hostility against Muslims among the population in this region, one would assume a large potential for street-level activism analogous to the German Pegida. Yet, attempts to organize grassroots Islamophobic movement…
Pegida in Parliament
This article explains the failure of Pegida Austria as a social movement organization by testing three prominent theories of social movement theory: political opportunity structures, ideology, and resource mobilization. The failure of Pegida to play a role in Austrian politics is ascribed to the dominant role the Freedom Party (FPÖ) already plays in the Austrian parliament, the FPÖ's issue dominance on anti-immigration and Islamophobia in public …
Whose Austria
The Austrian Muslim Youth was founded in 1996 by young Muslims of different ethnic backgrounds and has become the largest multi-ethnic, co-educational, German-speaking youth organization in Austria today. Since its inception, it has presented the concept of an ‘Austrian Muslim identity’ as a key philosophy. In this article, I ask how the idea of this identity was negotiated. I suggest that this concept is not reinforcing nativist notions. Rather,…
Austrian Muslims Protest Against Austria's Revised “Islam Act
Austria legally recognized Islam in 1912 and has thus been characterized as a "liberal" country regarding the inclusion of Muslims. But when the law was revision in 2015, it was largely criticized as discriminatory, anti-constitutional, and authoritarian towards the Muslim minority. The paper asks how a number of different social movement organizations and networks have framed their political participation, protest, and activism. It asks what dem…
Der Gottesstaat des Esad Bey
Esad Bey’s theocratic state. A Muḥammad biography from the perspective of a Jewish convert to Islam with special consideration for the political dimension.This paper analyses the political dimension of the Muḥammad biography written by Esad Bey (1905–1942), a.k.a. Leo Noussimbaum, a Jewish convert to Islam, who lived and worked as a writer in Berlin/Germany. Esad Bey, a Baku-born (Azerbaijan) Jew, who became a Muslim in an early stage of his life…
Islamophober Populismus
Disciplining the ‘Muslim Subject’
The following article discusses the establishment of centers of Islamic Studies (Islamische Theologie) in Germany. While many authors have discussed different theories which shape the accommodation of Islam in Western European nation states, I suggest that the security dispositif (Foucault) has a strong impact on the way the state and religious communities interact with each other. I argue that against the backdrop of a hegemonic Islamophobic dis…
Shifting borders
In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties.…
Political Beats in the Alps
While fun is the ostensible object of hip hop music, the politically conscious aspect of hip hop culture was part of Austrian hip hop from the very beginning. Against a dominant view that Austrian hip hop was an apolitical genre carried by White Austrian middle-class artists only, this article explores the political messages in the early stages of German-speaking Austrian hip hop music. Although only few hip hop artists—especially marginalized yo…
Pegida in Parliament
This article explains the failure of Pegida Austria as a social movement organization by testing three prominent theories of social movement theory: political opportunity structures, ideology, and resource mobilization. The failure of Pegida to play a role in Austrian politics is ascribed to the dominant role the Freedom Party (FPÖ) already plays in the Austrian parliament, the FPÖ's issue dominance on anti-immigration and Islamophobia in public …
Thematisierung von „Religion“ in der österreichischen Politikwissenschaft. Status Quo, Tendenzen und kritische Anmerkungen
This article examinesthe relevance of religioninthe Austrian political science-landscape. Based on research conducted by political scientistsK enneth D. Wald &C lyde Wilcox
Thematisierung von „Religion“ in der österreichischen Politikwissenschaft. Status Quo, Tendenzen und kritische Anmerkungen
This article examines the relevance of religion in the Austrian political science-landscape. Based on research conducted by political scientists Kenneth D. Wald & Clyde Wilcox (2006) and Steven Kettell (2012), who see an underexposed position of religion in USpolitical science, this article raises the question of the relevance of religion in the Journal of Austrian Political Science. A content analysis will be conducted for all volumes published …
From Harlem to the “Hoamatlond”
This article analyzes how hip-hop as a social movement influenced youth with a Muslim religious background in Austria. The study examines the influence of African American activist Malcolm X, a central figure in hip-hop culture, on young people in Austria in the 1990s, and specifically his influence on the Islamic Group of Upper Austria (IG OÖ), a social-movement organization founded in 1995. The article also explores what meaning hip-hop and Mal…
Whose Austria
The Austrian Muslim Youth was founded in 1996 by young Muslims of different ethnic backgrounds and has become the largest multi-ethnic, co-educational, German-speaking youth organization in Austria today. Since its inception, it has presented the concept of an ‘Austrian Muslim identity’ as a key philosophy. In this article, I ask how the idea of this identity was negotiated. I suggest that this concept is not reinforcing nativist notions. Rather,…
Debating the 2015 Islam law in Austrian Parliament
This article analyses the two national parliamentary debates on the new Islam law of 2015 using a Viennese School of Critical Discourse Analysis. It asks how the new Islam law was framed from the perspectives of the political parties in power and of those in opposition. It also shows in detail which arguments were raised to defend, alter or support the proposed law by identifying the list of topoi used. It asks especially how racist arguments wer…
Austrian Muslims Protest Against Austria's Revised “Islam Act
Austria legally recognized Islam in 1912 and has thus been characterized as a "liberal" country regarding the inclusion of Muslims. But when the law was revision in 2015, it was largely criticized as discriminatory, anti-constitutional, and authoritarian towards the Muslim minority. The paper asks how a number of different social movement organizations and networks have framed their political participation, protest, and activism. It asks what dem…
Schools of Thought in Islamophobia Studies
Anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia are not just phenomena—they have increasingly become the focus of a new field of research: Islamophobia studies. Frequent national and international conferences and publications in this area bear witness to this. This article discusses the different prominent approaches to the concepts of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism that can be found in academic literature. It discusses the different theoretical strands…
Engineering a European Islam
Today, a number of European states’ policies on religion aim at creating a nationalized Islam. In many Western European countries, the Ministries of the Interior have institutionalized ‘dialogue platforms’ to discuss issues of Islam, society, inclusion and extremism with Muslim actors. This reveals the implicit assumptions of these governments when talking to Muslims. The underlying message is that Muslims pose a security threat to the state and …
Street-level and government-level Islamophobia in the Visegrád Four countries
Islamophobic mobilization has become a crucial aspect of right-wing populist mobilization. Hafez's article focuses on the case of the Visegrád Four countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. Based on reportedly widespread hostility against Muslims among the population in this region, one would assume a large potential for street-level activism analogous to the German Pegida. Yet, attempts to organize grassroots Islamophobic movement…
Breaking with Austrian Consociationalism
This paper seeks to explain Austria's Islam-related politics by first suggesting that it can be best understood in terms of neo-institutionalist path-dependency and consociationalist policy-making. This is due to the fact that Austria gave Islam full legal recognition in 1912. Important institutional patterns and policies grew out of this law in the Second Republic, whose persistence we want to examine. The Islamic Religious Community constituted…
Institutionalizing Islam in Contemporary Austria
At the beginning of October 2014, a social democratic–conservative coalition government in Austria presented a draft for a new Islam Act. The unanimous voice of Muslims and the government declared that the existing Islam Act, which dated back to 1912, was now outdated. The government thus aimed to amend the existing act based on the constitutional framework of the Republic of Austria’s secular system, which can be characterized as a cooperative f…
Unwanted Identities
Surveilling and Criminalizing Austrian Muslims
In this commentary, I deal with how the governing conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) managed successfully to fundamentally reshape the state’s politics towards Muslim communities by introducing the terminology of ‘political Islam’ in the public discourse. I show how this affected the political discourse, how the governing ÖVP has been using institutions to produce knowledge in order to criminalize Muslimness, and how this also affected th…
The rise of global Islamophobia in the War on Terror
Criminalizing Muslim agency in Europe
This article discusses the emergence of a discourse on ‘political Islam’ in the policy circles of European elites. It interprets this discourse on one hand as a manifestation of the further criminalization of Muslimness emanating from programs of countering ‘extremism’ and deradicalizing Muslim youth in the wake of the global war on terror. More specifically, the discourse on ‘political Islam’ is seen as an extension of countering violent extremi…
A Postcolonial Analysis of Austria’s Political Approach to Islam
This essay examines Austria’s political approaches to Islam between 2011 and 2022 at the interface of political science and religious policy as informed by postcolonial studies. Austrian political approaches to Islam are analyzed through the study of publications, press releases, government and party programmes, as well as laws, all conceptualized as an Islam dispositif. Against the backdrop of a restrictive policy on integration, it is considere…
From politicizing and dereligionizing religion to religionizing and depoliticizing politics. Reflecting on ‘Islam’ 20 years after 9/11
Rexhepi, P. (2023)
Eastern Europe and the Balkans are often left out of much of the literature on decoloniality, postcolonialism, and racial capitalism.Piro Rexhepi fills this gap.In his book White Enclosures, Rexhepi intends to offer a critical analysis of the European discourse on the so-called Balkan route, situating it in the larger context of coloniality, racial capitalism, and border control.Eastern Europe is not presented as an exception, but as a "periphera…
Political science (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Politics (19 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Islam (12 works) · Religion, Theology, and Education (10 works) · German legal, social, and political studies (9 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Law (8 works) · History (7 works)