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- Convenors:
-
Mentor Mustafa
(Boston University)
Boštjan Kravanja (University of Ljubljana)
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- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 325
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 August, -, Friday 29 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
The focus is diversity and mutuality within Islam, how Muslim communities in different settings incorporate mutuality into their discourses, and how Islamic communities in religiously diverse contexts experience diversity and mutuality across religious and secular lines
Long Abstract:
This workshop brings together ethnographic accounts on the experience of diversity by Islamic communities in the Balkans (namely Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Croatia) and other European settings (namely Austria, Poland, Germany, Norway, and Finland). The accounts under study represent an array of settings where Muslim communities find themselves immersed in an ongoing discourse of diversity and mutuality, be it in their religious understandings and ritual practice, in their ways of life or in their ways of socio-political participation. The experience with the "other" and "othering" necessitates a heuristic commitment to the interplay between diversity and mutuality in socio-cultural processes. How are the communities considered here coping with their particular situations in regards to power relations within, in some cases, diverse Islamic communities, as well as with non-Muslim ones? What are the processes at play that make possible the balance between mutuality and preserving the boundaries of diversity that each community depends on for self-recognition as well as imagination and recognition by others as different? What are the different ways of identifying within particular communities? How are the processes of establishing mutuality between and within various Islamic groups influenced across religious, secular, ethnic, political, transnational and other lines? These are some of the questions and organizing themes that concern Islam within and across religiously diverse communities in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
The aim of my research is to find answers of the questions wether islamic women are victims of racism and discriminiation. I discuss personal impressions of the women with developments in the german society, who are impressed of the theories of „European Islam“, parallel society and Islamophobia.
Paper long abstract:
The veil is a central symbol for muslim women and muslim communities in Western Europe. In my fieldwork I was in contact with muslim women who attend the Islamic Centre Munich. Some of them where converted to the islam in the last years, after they married a muslim man. The Islamic Centre Munich is one of the oldest mosques and most discussed islamic centre in Germany.
The aim of the research is to find answers of the questions wether islamic women are victims of (cultural) racism and discriminiation. I discuss personal impressions of the women with developments in the german society, who are impressed of the theories of "European Islam", parallel society of migrants and Islamophobia.
Important is the reality, that muslim women are always visible in the public sphere, when the wear the veil. Because of this situation the are often constructed as "the others" in the society, the ones who have to be integrated and who have to learn the German "High-Culture". There are also discriminations from the state, as veiled women are e.g. not allowed to work in schools, when they wear a veil.
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on the transformations of identities and communities in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina, mainly through the prism of Muslim dress and veiling, as well as other religious practices. It explores what resources different people are using in order to reconstruct their identities as Muslims, Bosniaks and Bosnians.
Paper long abstract:
The paper, based on ethnographic research in Sarajevo, focuses on the transformations of identities and communities in post-war Bosnian-Herzegovinian society, mainly through the prism of Muslim dress and veiling, as well as other religious practices. The paper looks at veiling, and other Muslim dress practices, including men's dress, as a transnational phenomenon that is nevertheless always inflected by the local situation in which it is given shape. In the Bosnian context different forms of Muslim dress, as well as references to it, can be indicative and form part of wider processes of social change and identity transformations. Most importantly, they do not influence only Muslim - non-Muslim relations, but are, along with other religious practices, also crucial in negotiating new relationships among Muslims themselves. Many Bosniaks (i.e. Bosnian Muslims) who see themselves as modern and European, look upon veiling as foreign to the Bosnian tradition. These questions are further confounded by the presence and influence of transnational networks and organisations, mainly of Salafi orientation, that appeared during and after the war in the 1990s, which commonly denounce many traditional Bosnian Muslim practices as non-Islamic. Questions and debates often centre on what is Islamic and what belongs to the Bosnian tradition, with differing interpretations of how they relate to, or exclude each other. The aim of this paper is to explore how different people, men and women, draw on these discursive resources in order to reconstruct their own identities as Muslims, Bosniaks and Bosnians.
Paper short abstract:
The paper is based on observation and narrative interviews, both particular anthropological fieldwork methods. The short-term ethnographic fieldwork was conducted among dervishes of the Rufai order, situated in Pehlin (improvised settlement, town of Rijeka, Adriatic Coast) while celebrating Nevruz (22.3.). In general, the intention of the research was to gather deeper insights into the question of minorities as a whole, as well as the different aspects of social and religious life of minority groups in Croatia.
Paper long abstract:
Dervishes from the Rufai order in Rijeka are mostly immigrants from Albania and Kosovo, and as such they form an ethnic and religious minority group in Croatia. In this paper we examine the ways in which the self-identity is constructed through by having specific musical skills or, on the other hand, being a woman. The research was conducted from two different sights, both according to our individual research interests. Firstly, the role and status of being a “professional” musician as well as the use of traditional musical instruments were examined from an ethnomusicological perspective. Secondly, particular dervish women’s experiences of rituals were to be observed from a gender perspective.
Both music and traditional musical instruments play relevant role in religious ceremonies within Rufai order in Pehlin. Both present the overlapping and central performing element which follows movements and text.
Women’s experiences of rituals seem to mainly reflect everyday social life within a dervish community. Since women and men are traditionally spatially separated while participating in a religious ceremony (singing, pronouncing the ritual text, swinging, etc.), in this research space is being considered as a projection of symbolic meanings and social and cultural patterns implemented therein. The attention was directed on how feminine spirituality and religiosity is constructed and obtained, and what part of it is eventually determined by silence and oppression or autonomy and creativity.
Paper short abstract:
The focus here is on the popularization and re-interpretation of Sufi music and texts, and how it affects the young adults of Sudanese Muslims. It is based on fieldwork carried out amongst the Sudanese communities in Vienna enriched with four year-long observations of Sudanese mainstream media.
Paper long abstract:
The diverse Sufi tariqas which facilitated and assisted the spread of popular Islam in Sudan are undergoing a transformation into an official channel of beliefs in accordance with the state visions about what a Sudanese Islamic culture should be. Through my observations of the contents broadcasted in the Sudanese National TV, many Sufi leaders as well as composers debate about the contents and performances that are transmitted in the mainstream media. This research concentrates on the traditional ritual practice of the Tijaniyya Order, their music and texts. It contextualizes these ethnographic materials with the new socio-political milieu which emerged in the last two decades of the contemporary era.
One important question has to do with the new position that the adult generations of 20 - 30 years old are now finding themselves in. How do they interpret the sacred texts and which role does music play in their interpretations and re-interpretations of these texts? Do these new, (re-) constructed music styles characterize the urban North Sudanese? Is music an instrument to strengthen or perhaps to weaken the relation of the young immigrants with the more established Sudanese communities in Austria? Is the music text which is widely listened to by a wide array of the immigrants in Austria related to Islam or is it a form of entertainment attracting particular target groups in an effort to persistently identify with their culture of origin?
Paper short abstract:
The Muslim community of Tatar origin has lived in Poland for 600 years. After 1989 the Tatar religious identity has undergone significant changes mainly due to new approaches to Islam. In my presentation, I would like to examine the interactions between the Tatars and Muslim immigrants.
Paper long abstract:
Recent studies of Islam in Europe nearly neglect the old Muslim presence in Central-Eastern Europe. In Poland, the Muslim minority of Tatar origin has been living for more than 600 years. It has created a local, moderate version of Islam and in effect its religious beliefs are largely compatible with modern European culture. After 1989, an increased Muslim immigration has taken place, affecting the localized Tatar Islamic tradition. Drawing on my fieldwork conducted in January 2008 in north-eastern Poland, in a region with significant number of Muslims of varied backgrounds, the paper focuses on contemporary religious practices among Muslim Tatars in Poland. It considers the recent transformation of Tatar religious identity, the interactions and tensions between supporters of the Tatar syncretic form of Islam and the `normative' or `scriptural' version propagated by the Muslim immigrants that have come to Poland in recent decade as well as by the group of Polish converts. I will show how the global influences can be seen in the practices and articulated beliefs and concerns of the Tatar community. The current debates and events lead to divisions inside among the Tatars who, after becoming a minority inside a Muslim minority in Poland, need to find a way to handle with the Islamic diversity.
Paper short abstract:
In search for the Bektashi Order on Macedonian-Albanian border, new tekke-like »sacred places« were found. They are examined through the dynamics of ethnographic fieldwork and analysis with a focus on the diversity of Islam in the region from the theoretical concepts of mimicry and creativity.
Paper long abstract:
Traditionally, the religious landscape in Macedonia, as well as in other countries in this region, is very diverse. Rather than comprehending diversity through religious syncretism, which stems from world religions, religious life itself is the point of departure here. In my case, religious life is imagined and practiced along the secular, socio-political and (trans)national domains (or relations). The history of the Bektashi Order of Dervishes in Macedonia is intimately connected with the Bektashiyya in Albania and by implication also to Albanian national history. Bektashiyya, like other Sufi movements, represents a heterodox counterpart to legalist Islam, often mediating between Islam and Christianity. It was rather due to accidental discoveries during fieldwork that we found newly built "tekkes" in the area of Macedonian-Albanian border. The area contributes continuous outgoing migrant labor abroad. Most diaspora communities are established in USA, as well as in western European countries like Germany, Switzerland, Italy and others. Nowadays powerful migrating individuals are investing in home villages, also in actual and would-be public objects, such as mosques, churches, "tekkes" and in the construction of other sacred sites. The motivations for such investments are diverse; they are mutually cohabiting across national and political domains. The questions of competitive status on one hand and cooperation on the other are important. I suggest that the interesting part of such alternative socio-cultural practices of supporting and applying traditional religious symbols has to do with the balance between communal diversity and mutuality in relation to larger contexts such as the state, the region, European Union and the Islamic world. These may be locally explored through the concept of (trans)national mimicry and creativity.
Paper short abstract:
The interplay between diversity and mutuality in constructing Muslim identity in post-communist Albania is documented in the everyday lives of Bektashi Muslims. Inter-faith relations between Albanian Bektashi, Sunni Muslims, and Orthodox and Catholic Christians of Albania are considered here.
Paper long abstract:
Here I present dissertation fieldwork data on the experience of Islam in contemporary Albania. The focus is on religious understandings and ritual practices amongst the Albanian Bektashi - a Sufi Order of Islam - as well on their ways of life and socio-political participation. The ethnographic narratives presented here focus on the contemporary experiential manifestations of diversity and mutuality within the context of Albanian Bektashi and their relations to Sunni Muslims along with the Albanian Christians of Orthodox and Catholic faiths. These materials are complimented by data sets offered by a historical anthropology of Bektashiyya, and present these from a perspective of inter- and intra-faith dialogue.
The historical-anthropological perspective employed here is mobilized in order to understand the post-communist return of religion in Albania. How was religion experienced in "atheist" Albania? What can we recover from the historical accounts of the establishment and persistence of world religions in Albania that better addresses questions of Albanian religiosity? Aside from seeking answers to the above questions, I document present-day commitments to inter-faith dialogue within a multi-religious context.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on Muslim youth and student organizations in Norway, and the ways in which their members ebrace, resist and negotiate national and religious identities.
Paper long abstract:
In February 2006, TV-spectators around the world watched the Norwegian flag burn as Muslims in the Middle East protested the publishing by Danish and Norwegian newspapers of the so-called Mohammed-caricatures. When confronted by the media as to his reactions, the leader of the Muslim Student Association in Oslo declared himself to be doubly offended: first by the caricatures, and subsequently by the burning of the Norwegian flag. This paper deals with young women and men affiliated to Muslim youth and student organizations in Oslo, and the ways in which they publicly engage in redefining what it means to be a Muslim in Norway. Focusing on the production of the category "Norwegian Muslim", and the ways in which young Muslims embrace, resist and negotiate national and religious identities, the author argues that what it means to be a Norwegian Muslim to activist young Muslims is shaped both by the discourses and practices of the nation-state and by the discourses and practices of transnational Islam. The ways in which young Muslims are shaped and shape themselves as citizen-subjects is shown to be neither a passive adaptation to dominant norms, nor a refusal of these, but a complex process of negotiation that foregrounds "participation" rather than "integration".
Paper short abstract:
How does Islam enter the public space in diasporic contexts where global and local influences and state generated structures intersect? The paper observes the ways in which the sectarian violence in Iraq reflects itself in the refugee community in Finland and becomes translated into social/religious categories and boundaries.
Paper long abstract:
How does Islam enter the public space in diasporic contexts where global and local influences and state generated structures intersect. Under these complex influences diasporic muslims construct new scales of communication and dimensions of identity. While diasporic communities maintain ties to globally shared Islamic traditions they also host a variety of conflicting and competing identity processes which contest the credibility of that tradition.
Between 2005 and 2008 I carried out ethnographic fieldwork among Arabic speaking Iraqi refugees in Finland. Collapse of Saddam's regime and escalation violence in Iraq led to rapid redefinition of social boundaries within the international Iraqi community. The paper observes the ways in which the sectarian violence in Iraq reflects itself in the heterogeneous diasporic community in Finland. The ethnographic focus is on a number of leftist secularist men, many of whom were underground political activists and suffered extended prison sentences, torture and finally painful escape from Iraq. A number the subjects of this paper are writers and film makers who constantly analyze the Iraqi diaspora in their work and provide both challenges and methodological opportunities for ethnographic representation. Rather than understanding field work in a traditional dyadic format I perceive the ethnographic project consisting of series of co-operations with these men. I have participated in four large projects - namely translation of two works of fiction from Arabic to Finnish, making of two film documentaries, and writing a biography of a man who experienced eight years of imprisonment in Bagdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
Paper short abstract:
The paper focuses on the conflicting Islamic discourses in post-war Chechnya. It examines the divide between the 'traditional' Sufi Islam appropriated by the Chechen government and the more recent reformist trends, termed 'Wahhabism' and claimed the main source of terrorism by the power elite.
Paper long abstract:
Based on recent fieldwork, this paper examines the conflicting Islamic discourses in post-Soviet Chechnya, in order to determine how the religious ideology of Chechen government affects subjective beliefs and practices.
The power elite's use of Islam as an ideological tool rests on the dichotomy between the 'right' or 'traditional' Islam, i.e. Sufism, and the 'wrong' or 'terrorist' Islam locally termed 'Wahhabism'. Building on the clashes between the followers of 'traditional' Sufism and Islamic reformists in the 1990s, as well as on the widespread public antipathy towards 'Wahhabism' as an ideology that was appropriated by the dominant rebel faction in the period between the two armed conflicts in Chechnya (1996-1999), the current Chechen government is engaged in a crackdown on the adherents of reformist or 'non-traditional' Islam, all of whom are lumped together as 'Wahhabis'. In line with the policies of Moscow, 'Wahhabis' are equated with terrorists, and often referred to as 'Satans'. At the same time, the power elite is sustaining a public display of the 'right' practices of Islam and allocating considerable resources to the construction and renovation of mosques and shrines.
I argue that the fight against 'Wahhabi terrorists' on the one hand and the ideological phrasing of resistance in terms of a pan-Caucasian jihad against infidels by a faction of rebel movement on the other has created an atmosphere of fear in which reformist-minded Chechen Muslims cannot openly practice their faith and are forced to find discreet ways of maintaining their beliefs. Moreover, the forceful yet shallow governmental religious campaign ignores the diversity of Islam within its own accepted 'traditional' camp.