ABSTRACT
In the last few months (October and November 2007), several news items about ‘new’ Islamized products or phenomena appeared in Dutch newspapers. The daily newspaper Spits published a story on the first ‘Muslim singles-night event’ in the Netherlands (Spits 2007). This first-ever datingevent organized especially for Muslims who are in search of a life-partner was, according to the reporter, a big success. The daily newspaper de Volkskrant reported on “a Muslim comedy tour”, talking about the debut performance of three American-Muslim comedians in the Netherlands (Henfling 2007). The same newspaper that same day also contained a short item on “the production of an Islamic car”, about a Malaysian car-factory that wants to produce an Islamic car, including a compass to find the direction of Mecca and special filing compartments for the Qur’an and headscarves (Reuters 2007). Islamization appears to be applied in various fields of popular culture and in the production of new commodities. Is this also a reflection of changing identification processes that are shifting their focus from ethnicity to religion?
