Chapter 4 is the first of the four analytical chapters anchored in the qualitative interviews, and focuses on the topic of women’s representation in the MENA at the national level. The chapter presents an overview of women in parliament from independence to the present day, covering the right to vote and stand for office as well as the number of female parliamentarians per country following the most recent elections. The analysis then moves onto barriers to women’s representation, beginning with the pre-nomination stage and the role of factors such as patriarchy and violence against women. The subsequent sections detail different paths to parliament in the pre- and post-Uprisings eras. Among the topics covered are internal party culture and electoral rules, as well as the background characteristics of the women who make it in politics. The final part of chapter 4 is dedicated to the factors behind success at the campaign stage and once in office with particular reference to the importance of extra-party networks, access to finances and qualifications, as well as the issues of discrimination and self-discrimination at the time of portfolio allocation.

Chapter 7 begins with a discussion of how colonialism and the climate issue in the MENA are strongly linked, and how this relationship affects not only development trajectories, but also the status of the climate as a policy area and women’s representation. The second part of the chapter covers Othering, that is, the portrayal of women as vulnerable victims or saviours, focusing on the dangers of feminizing vulnerability and responsibility, whilst also showcasing how Othering of women in the Global South occurs among female parliamentarians in the MENA. In terms of the global climate crisis, this has led to a situation where the climate issue is not prioritized as much as it could be if the female parliamentarians were more accountable to the electorate and identified more strongly with a broader group of women, that is, beyond the narrow elite segment of the population from which they themselves were recruited. At present, those that are the most passionate about combatting the climate crisis are the youth, whereas those who stand to gain the most are marginalized women — two groups that are nothing like the female parliamentarians, who are supposed to act in their interest.

The last chapter contrasts separation and integration at the highest ends of oppositional self-other hierarchization. The focus is on formal representations of Iran’s religious state authority (whether through marjaʿiyat or rahbari) and non-Iranian lay organizations with transsectarian tendencies supporting the Islamic Republic. The former (e.g., the Islamic Centre of England in London and the Imam Ali Centres of Hamburg and Vienna) have moderated abrasive expressions of oppositional hierarchy while the latter (e.g., Siddiqui’s London-founded Muslim Parliament and the ‘Kaplan Gemeinde’ in Cologne) thrived publicly on unapologetic Islamic supremacism. Only a trace remains of the transsectarian current of Muslim segregation in Europe, whereas Shiʿism’s state-bound, sectarian institutionalization has flourished — even while overtly ecumenist and opposed to self-isolation. Its treatment is prefaced by a reading of multicultural secularism as seeking assimilation in reverse. Among the cases of institutionalization is Germany’s national Shiʿite representation, the IGS Gemeinschaft, which is led by Khomeinists who also advocate Muslims’ European integration. Some entryist strategies are documented around regimist integration discourse serving the Shiʿite indigenisation of Europe, which are increasingly recognized and countered by European (supra-)state institutions. The text ends on a counterpoint with the exceptional case of Ayatollah Qāʾem-Maqāmi, a regime representative who also developed a ‘theology of integration’ inviting Muslims to engage positively with Europe as it is.

The third chapter treats the geography of collective Shiʿite self and other and the question of its global contexts. It reassesses ʿĀshurā ritual to trans-European backgrounds of Shiʿite blood donation and charts the transnational evolution of the Twelver Khojas. While the first chapter presents it as local civic integration, blood donation is also a global practice supported by high religious authorities. Thus, blood donation involves cultural exchange on religious terms that both incorporates Shiʿites within national contexts of secular diversity and integrates the latter into Shiʿism’s orbit. Among Twelver Khojas, European settlement gave rise to globalized religious identity, political solidarity, or communal organization. Away from the Africa Federation in Britain, the Shia Ithnaʿashari Community of Middlesex broke open the caste mould, lowering the threshold for extramural relations while rebalancing communal self religiously. This involved strengthened transnational Shiʿite solidarity and a predilection for Middle East-centred, anti-Western Islamism. The World Federation of Khoja Shia Ithna-Asheri Muslim Communities emerged post-migration as a Britain-oriented body that evolved into the community’s global agent. Its international relations sectarianized and amplified the Twelver Khojas’ proto-statal functions on a world scale. In sum, the chapter demonstrates European transformations of Shiʿite identity in global religious contexts shaping trans-European selves.

Chapter 1 sets out the foundations of the book, beginning with a basic discussion of what is climate change and the global climate crisis. The chapter then moves on to the important Global North-Global South colonial context and the fundamental issues of environmental justice, climate justice and carbon colonialism. From there, the discussion ventures into an overview of who bears the brunt of climate change, concluding in a final section on the calls for a gender-based approach to solving the global climate crisis and the rationale for the book.

Chapter 5 explores women’s substantive representation in the MENA. Whereas most previous studies have focused predominantly on what portfolios female politicians have been offered, the analysis here centres on which policy areas female parliamentarians in the MENA have pursued with a view to uncover the factors behind such choices. In other words, do female parliamentarians pursue portfolio areas based on their own gender and the presumed gendering of the portfolio area? According to their own experiences, does the number of women in parliament, women’s status in politics and women in central positions within the party leadership play a role in what policy areas they themselves pursue and are offered? Do they think the electoral system plays a role and, if yes, how? Are they attracted to the climate (or environment) portfolio? And what role do factors such as geography, qualifications and expertise play?

The fourth chapter concerns a key institution in Shiʿism’s reproduction, namely its system of higher learning. Two British institutes that long defined the field in Europe are focused on and compared with a flagship German seminary and other, especially Scandinavian cases. Two theoretical trends are contrasted: of ‘integrative blending’ in studies of Islam in Europe and ‘diversity challenge’ in the field of education and citizenship. Each perspective is traced in Shiʿite higher education, where they produce a paradox of local adjustment and foreign frames. Birmingham’s Al-Mahdi Institute and London’s Islamic College are each read for manifestations of ‘European Islam,’ seen in curricula rebalanced with secular topics; diversity engagement perceived as an Islamic challenge; or ambitions for Western contributions to ‘minorities jurisprudence.’ At the same time, the locally particular practice is led by a cultural logic of transnational religious organization. ‘Western’ Shiʿite seminaries are encompassed as their Dumontian ‘contrary’ within organizational hierarchies of ‘Eastern’ religious (state) education. In the continental European seminaries, these facts show in the outsized role of the Qom-based Al-Mustafa University and its emphasis on proselytizing as opposed to the local formation of independent scholars who might help reform Shiʿism.

The conclusion summarizes chapter findings and brings them in mutual conversation. This is focused on assessing the nature of integration in Shiʿite-European interactions, substantiating the thesis on European Shiʿism, of peripheral engagement and religious retention. Assimilation defined in the introduction as a negative value distribution for cultural maintenance and outgroup relations (following Berry’s model) has few empirical referents among Shiʿite organizations in Europe, while segregation – assessing outgroup relations negatively and cultural maintenance positively - was associated with a particular historical moment. Integration, to the contrary - where both variables are positively valued or pursued – is a dominant occurrence, but it matters to discern in each case what drives it. Contrary to externalist views, European Shiʿism is held to emerge through a religious mode of engagement, involving hierarchizations of collective self and other identities. Shiʿite parties further removed or with greater independence from the high centres religious authority abroad are more likely to engage in cultural exchange with their European milieu. On the one side stands the mainstream of Shiʿite organizational life that often demonstrates bracketed, provisional, or otherwise limited formal engagement of others in Europe. The other shows striking cases of civic outreach, ritual transformation, and integrationist theology.

While ethnicity remains the bedrock of Shiʿite organization, it is overlain with religio-political identities. This chapter treats a Europe-wide organization in the quadrant of marjaʿiyat-oriented bodies that are pro-velāyat-e faqih (the Ettehādiye). As this alignment suggests East-West, top-down religious transmission (the ‘model’), the question arises of whether it precludes European identity. Two cases of clerical organizations are cited, one associated with Ayatollah Fāzel-Lankerāni, that recognize the relevance of European particularity – as in stronger ecumenist than sectarian self-presentation. The picture is further complicated by a dissection of authority and identity flows in the lay Iranian student Ettehādiye, or ‘Union.’ Among the Union’s peculiarities (‘modes’ of European Shiʿism) were grassroots initiative and Islamist vanguard formation. The political clergy were its lodestar, but none controlled the Union before the Iranian revolution. When incorporation followed, reformism emerged within its ranks, imagining an alternative religio-political system. Even within this cluster of Shiʿite organizations, in other words, ‘crossflows of identity and authority’ occur. But where European inspiration travelled up and East post-1979, it was not a match for Islamic Republican control of the organization. Unlike the civic cases of the first chapter, its struggles remain internal, focused on Iranian state politics, and distant from Shiʿite-European interaction.