The first chapter concerns the significance of ethnic-national identity. It first gives a methodological argument for the focus on organizations. It then offers a breakdown of Shiʿite organizations and their interlocking board memberships in Britain and the Netherlands. This establishes ethnic-national identity as the bedrock of Shiʿite organization in the UK-Dutch sample. An Islamic thought pattern exemplified by the Shiʿite notable Ali Allawi is used to frame several cases of civic engagement that transcend the ethnic-national mould and show Shiʿism as a political actor, whose role is limited, however, by low organization density. The organizations of this chapter are ‘contrapuntal’ not only in the civic-ethnic contrast, but also in that between ethnic-national reality and the Islamic norm of parochial transcendence. Moreover, organizational reality contrasts a key trend in the social science theory of Islam in Europe, which presents Europe as an assimilating force leading to Muslims’ de-ethnicization. This first chapter indicates the opposite: identitarian retention.

Chapter 2 is a comprehensive overview and critical assessment of the extant academic literature on gender and the global climate crisis. It begins with a section showcasing how the emphasis has largely been on women at the micro level, which often ends up portraying women as victims that need rescuing, thus habitually overlooking women’s agency. The subsequent section discusses in brief the concept of climate governance, before moving onto a discussion of the theory of representation. This section focuses on Pitkin’s (1967) typology of representation as well as extant research on the four dimensions of representation, whilst simultaneously outlining and anchoring the research questions upon which the book rests. The nine research questions cover a range of topics, including (but not limited to) the factors governing the success of female parliamentarians, gendered portfolios, leadership opportunities, the role of political parties, women representing women, intersectionality, and gender quotas.

The introduction treats Shiʿite-European encounters; locates them in the social science theory on Muslims in Europe; frames the research question alternatively; and gives chapter outlines. It starts with a sketch of Shiʿite Muslims’ migration to Europe and the development of their communities. The literature review juxtaposes assimilatory approaches to Muslims in Europe that see Europe as a cultural transformer and sceptical perspectives asserting mal-integration or its absence. The alternative hypothesis holds that European Shiʿism has been significantly self-contained, with traditions key to grasping its self-other relations, which range from segregation to assimilation. The (post-)migration context brings self-other relations to the fore, provoking questions of relative order that are answered in more exclusionary fashion by actors closer to high jurisprudential authority. The main themes in this theory of European Shiʿism are mapped on to chapter outlines and case studies.

The topic of chapter 6 is unequal representation with particular emphasis on intersecting identities, voice and agency. The chapter digs deeper into the issue of policy priorities with a view to uncover who — and to some extent also what issues — female parliamentarians in the region represent as well as the reasoning behind their choices, not based on voting patterns as has traditionally been the case in such analyses, but anchored in personal narratives. The chapter accordingly explores the quality of representation (symbolic, descriptive and substantive) and helps us gain an understanding of which women and policy areas are represented, and which are underrepresented in politics at the national level, something which has very significant implications for not only climate change mitigation, but also adaptation and impacts. As the analysis progresses, it becomes clear that the female parliamentarians in the MENA tend to represent ‘people like me’, a reality which poses a serious problem for the quality of women’s representation, because the majority of women are simply not represented in earnest.