ABSTRACT
In the last few decades, digital media and the Internet have changed practices of communication and political representation in the European public sphere in significant ways, especially regarding the presence of more marginalised or disenfranchised groups, such as migrants. The MIG@NET research project focussed specifically on religious practices, migration, gender and new media and was conducted in the Netherlands, the UK, and Greece. The Dutch case examined how young Muslim women make use of digital media to negotiate their religious and national belongings, how their multiple belongings could contribute to recent debates about agency (Mahmood, 2005; Bracke, 2008; Braidotti, 2008; Midden, 2012, 2014), and what possibilities they have to practice their faith in the public sphere. In this chapter, I describe how Muslim women use new media in the Netherlands to become more visible in the public sphere as Muslims and to discuss how it is to live as Muslims in a secular society. Many of them explicitly also present themselves as both Dutch and Muslim and talk about the different aspects of this combined identity. The three themes that I will address in this chapter are multiculturalism, post-secularism and the intersection of religious and national identities. I then theorise the position of Dutch Muslims in the Netherlands by bringing together critical multiculturalism and post-secular theory.
