This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the Religious Matters in an Entangled World program, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Public manifestations of Islam remain fiercely contested across the Global West. Studies to date have focused on the visual presence of Islam - the construction of mosques or the veiling of Muslim women. Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape is the first book to add a sonic dimension to analyses of the politics of Islamic aesthetics in Europe. Sound does not respect public/private boundaries, and people experience sound viscerally. As such, the public amplification of the azan, the call to prayer, offers a unique opportunity to understand what is at stake in debates over religious toleration and secularism. The Netherlands were among the first European countries to allow the amplification of the azan in the 1980s, and Pooyan Tamimi Arab explores this as a case study embedded in a broader history of Dutch religious pluralism. The book offers a pointed critique of social theories that regard secularism as all-encompassing. While cultural forms of secularism exclude Muslim rights to public worship, Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape argues that political and constitutional secularism also enables Muslim demands for amplifying calls to prayer. It traces how these exclusions and inclusions are effected through proposals for mosques, media debates, law and policy, but also in negotiations on the ground between residents, municipalities and mosques.

In Why Do Religious Forms Matter?, Pooyan Tamimi Arab reflects on the Early Modern roots and contemporary relevance of a materialist perspective on the politics of religious diversity. Taking as a starting point the insight that religions manifest in myriad sensible forms-in architecture, in images, in the use of objects in rituals, and in distinctive ways of speaking-Tamimi Arab traces to Spinoza the material-religion approach prevalent in anthropology and religious studies. It is in Locke's political philosophy, however, that forms are tied to toleration-understood as a neutrally applied civil right-which Tamimi Arab discusses through contemporary case studies of mosque construction, amplified calls to prayer, and the right to ritual slaughter. Going beyond the Enlightenment criticism and toleration of religions, the book concludes with an inclusive reading of Rawls's ideal of public reason, which assumes forms of discourse-religious and non-religious-to always be several. Religious forms thus turn out to be indispensable to liberal democracy itself.

A dynamic and authoritative collection on material religion with contributions from leading figures in the field. Deep and thorough coverage of material religion, essential for any student religious studies and media studies. The Handbook will also be very useful for those in related fields, such as cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, and art history.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by the Religious Matters in an Entangled World program, Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Public manifestations of Islam remain fiercely contested across the Global West. Studies to date have focused on the visual presence of Islam - the construction of mosques or the veiling of Muslim women. Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape is the first book to add a sonic dimension to analyses of the politics of Islamic aesthetics in Europe. Sound does not respect public/private boundaries, and people experience sound viscerally. As such, the public amplification of the azan, the call to prayer, offers a unique opportunity to understand what is at stake in debates over religious toleration and secularism. The Netherlands were among the first European countries to allow the amplification of the azan in the 1980s, and Pooyan Tamimi Arab explores this as a case study embedded in a broader history of Dutch religious pluralism. The book offers a pointed critique of social theories that regard secularism as all-encompassing. While cultural forms of secularism exclude Muslim rights to public worship, Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape argues that political and constitutional secularism also enables Muslim demands for amplifying calls to prayer. It traces how these exclusions and inclusions are effected through proposals for mosques, media debates, law and policy, but also in negotiations on the ground between residents, municipalities and mosques.