The Politics of Mediated Presence: New Muslim Voices in Contemporary Norway

The increased public presence and heightened visibility of Muslims in Europe is seen by many Europeans as a challenge to hegemonic conceptions relating to the secularity of the public spheres. This has arguably been at the center of re-conceptualizations of the relationship between the "religious" and the "secular" found in the work of for example Jürgen Habermas after his so-called "post-secular" turn in 2001. In Norway, the past decade has seen an increase in the number of young and often well-educated and highly articulate Muslim youth of the "second generation" born and raised in Norway engaging in public and mediatized debates on Islam, Muslims, immigration and integration. Part of an often self-conscious "politics of mediated presence" this engagem ent has opened up a vista to the pluralization of Muslim identities in Norway. It has also raised profound questions relating to the status and function of "religious" versus "secular" modes of reasoning and arguing in Norwegian mediated public spheres, a nd the normative and hegemonic assumptions about their relationship on the part of the media editors who control access to these spheres in Norway. In as much as Norwegian liberal media editors as well as the general public often perceive of Muslims as Is lam as the pre-eminent contemporary threat against freedom of expression in Norway, their presence in the Norwegian mediated public spheres have also raised questions regarding freedom of expression and its limits.