Date: Nov 13, 2007

Identity, Religion and Ideology among Muslim Prisoners in Britain

Researcher to talk about a crisis of identity among Muslim immigrants and how that leads to talk of jihad

Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY – The crisis of identity among Muslim immigrants and their children and the circumstances that cause Muslims to speak of jihad will be the subject of a lecture at Hofstra by Gabriele Marranci, Ph.D., of the School of Divinity at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.

"Identity, Religion and Ideology among Muslim Prisoners in Britain" will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007 from 2:20-3:45 p.m. in the Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Joan and Donald E Axinn Library, south campus. It is jointly sponsored by the departments of Anthropology and Religion and the European Studies Program.

Dr. Marranci has written about his research on Muslim communities in Ireland and England, most recently a study of Muslim prisoners in British prisons. He has been granted unprecedented access to these prisoners by the British government so that his research is both timely and significant.  Dr. Marranci is co-editor, along with Daniel Varisco, Ph.D., chair of Hofstra's anthropology department, of Contemporary Islam, a major international journal published by Springer. He recently established, with Prof. Bryan Turner of the National University of Singapore, a new book series entitled Muslims in Global Societies, also published by Springer.

Dr Marranci is the author of Jihad beyond Islam (London, New York: Berg, 2006), in which he proposes a new interpretation of the reasons why Muslims in the West might radicalize or understand jihad as violent struggle. His second book, The Anthropology of Islam (Berg, in press 2007), challenges the state of the art of the discipline. His third book is Understanding Muslim Identity, Rethinking Fundamentalism (Palgrave Macmillan), due out in 2008.
 
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