Search

This paper describes the process of religification through which assumed religious affiliation, rather than other identifications, becomes the main category of identity that Norwegian society uses to identify Turkish women living in Norway. Depending on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 41 first-generation Turkish women migrants living in Drammen and Oslo, the paper first demonstrates the variety in religious belief, identification, and adherence to religious practices among them. Secondly, it shows how their daily encounters in Norwegian society are largely shaped by the fact that Turkish womenv are primarily assumed to be religious Muslims. Many of these women feel uncomfortable being exposed to questions about religion yet, ironically, in a sense, they feel that they are being called to be more religious Muslims in the context of Norway. When they seem to diverge from the stereotype, they are told that they are not like Turks/other Turks. However, although all these women seem to differ from the stereotype, rather than leading to changes in the stereotype, they are considered exceptions.

Muslim women dedicate themselves to Islamic educational activities as an important aspect of their religious engagement, and pious Muslim Danish women are no exception. One important element of this engagement appears to be the sharing of the knowledge gained with younger generations. In this paper, I scrutinize this aspect of contemporary Danish Muslim piety, asking how and why Danish Muslim women ‘pass on’ knowledge to children. I show that this transmission should be seen as a way of caring for the children as part of the Muslim community, and that this way of caring appears especially important in a setting where Islam is practiced as a minority religion. At the same time, the sharing of knowledge should be perceived as a virtuous practice, given that it is an aspect of the women’s own efforts to live virtuous lives.

Although anti-Muslim hate crimes have been on the rise in most Western nations for decades, according to influential hate crime scholar, Barbara Perry, little attention has been given to the particular vulnerability of veiled Muslim females to such crimes (Perry 2013), thereby potentially disregarding a sustained source of human rights violations (Perry and Olsson 2009). This paper delves into Danish sociolegal reality to delineate the scope of such concern, attempting to ascertain any specific hate crime vulnerability among veiled Muslim women in Denmark. It identifies a number of preliminary empirical indications that resonate with Perry’s claim, reasoning that the hate crime vulnerability of veiled women be more thoroughly scrutinized in a Danish context. However, it also argues that such hate crime vulnerability is most productively addressed, at least prima facie, as a tangible and principal human rights issue (Brudholm 2016) rather than in the terms of human rights violations.

This paper examines how individualization changes young Muslims women’s interpretation of the headscarf as a religious tradition in their everyday life. Based on observation and indepth interviews this paper studies the reflections and considerations that underlie the women's choice to wear the headscarf (ḥijāb), the message they want to send about themselves as a fashionable and attractive headscarf-wearing woman living in Denmark, and last but not least how their interpretations of the headscarf as a religious tradition differ from the theological ones. This study concludes that the individualization changes young Muslim women's interpretation of the ḥijāb by that their choice of wearing a ḥijāb arises not only from their willingness to commit to Islam, but to a greater degree from a desire to express beauty, maturity and individuality as a woman. The hijab gives them the ability to express their beauty as Muslim women, giving them the ability to signal openness, which, according to their beliefs, provides them with easier access to the majority society. Last but not least the ḥijāb becomes a matter of interpretation, not based on the traditional Islamic understandings of the ḥijāb, but on individual reflections and considerations that are largely influenced by contextual conditions characterized among other things by choice, personal autonomy, and authenticity

With a point of departure in fieldwork conducted among Muslims connected with – or inspired by – the Naqshbandiyya Sufi tariqa in Post-Soviet Uzbekistan, this paper focuses on the paradoxes involved in realizing Sufism as virtue ethics. Through a continuous work on the self the Naqshbandis seek to approach God as well as to realize Sufism as this-worldly virtue ethics. What stands out as central in their experience of this process, however, is neither the encounter with the Divine, nor their own ethical perfection. Rather, it is insistent feelings of vulnerability, doubt and imperfection and a sense of being further and further away from the ideals of Sufism the more they seek them or seek to realize them. The paper will focus on these paradoxes – paradoxes which may be general to Sufism as such, or which at least lie as a potential in Sufism as well as other religious traditions which seek to realize transcendent ideals in an imperfect world, but which are accentuated in a context like the post-Soviet one: Here they are tied to the historical experience of loss related with the Soviet years as well as the social upheavals following the breaking up of the Soviet Union.

Since the beginning of the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria in winter and spring 2010-2011, the national Arab televisions (state or private owned) have found themselves in a challenging situation. They have been forced to find a balance between traditional loyalties to the ruling power and loyalty towards journalistic standards of critical and objective coverage of popular national uprisings. Gradually, during the periods of uprisings, television has changed its coverage in accordance with the local national development of the revolutionary movements. This paper will analyse such changes of coverage. The basis of the analysis is the coverage of the uprisings in Egyptian television, primarily in news programs, in the period January – August 2011. The general argument of the paper is that Egyptian television in this period has gone through six phases in their coverage. In the paper the phases will be explored and illustrated by examples.

The jihadi Salafi woman is generally portrayed as excluded from the battlefield. However, studies on the issue are few, and in the Danish context non-existent. This paper therefore explores how three Danish so-called jihadi Salafi groups construct the Muslim woman’s role in defensive jihad in their online communication. The paper is based on an open-source study of social media. It finds that while some Danish jihadi Salafi uploads exclude Muslim women from combat, others construct defensive jihad as an individual obligation even for women. The paper proposes and reflects upon three conceptual types of online construction: “mother”, “martyr wife”, and “mujahida”.

21 million Germans belong to the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). This report will highlight initial official theological reactions of the EKD to the Corona pandemic. The Protestant Church faced widespread criticism from prominent figures for its handling of the pandemic. This papers gives an overview of the major objections and it looks at how the EKD and its representatives reacted to it. Yet this report also looks at the numerous resourceful initiatives of churches to react in creative formats to social distancing measures issued by the German Länder and/or the federal government. In sum, Covid-19 has had a huge impact on each congregation – as a community and for individual believers but also on the self-perception of the Protestant Church and its social relevance in an increasingly secularised society.

This article explores the intersection of subjectivity construction among Muslim youth with Danish welfare state governmentality. More specifically, it looks at campaigns in which successful professionals and students of non-Western descent, primarily Muslims, are used strategically as role models to target ethnic minorities in general, and Muslims in particular. By communicating their life stories, the role models become real life examples of successful integration meant to inspire others to follow their path. Thus the campaigns are a part of the prevalent discourse that views minorities (i.e. non-Danish and non-Christian) as particularly problematic to integrate and therefore needing special attention for becoming “compatible” with the values of the Danish welfare state. Taking its departure in these campaigns and applying a governmentality-inspired approach, this paper seeks to investigate normative state-prescribed forms of being a “good Danish Muslim.” It analyses how this image is being constructed and negotiated in a matrix combining welfare state policies and individual self-interpretation. Denne artikel undersøger krydsfeltet mellem subjektivitetskonstruktion blandt unge muslimer og den danske velfærdsstats governmentalitet. Mere specifikt ser artiklen på kampagner, hvor unge studerende og erhvervsaktive med anden etnisk baggrund end dansk, primært muslimer, bruges strategisk som rollemodeller for etniske minoriteter generelt og muslimer i særdeleshed. Ved at fortælle egne livshistorier bliver rollemodellerne levende eksempler på succesfuld integration til inspiration for andre. Således er kampagnerne del af en eksisterende diskurs, inden for hvilken minoriteter (altså ikke-danske og ikke-kristne) anses for at være særligt vanskelige at integrere og dermed en gruppe, der kalder på en særlig indsats for at blive “kompatible” med den danske velfærdsstats værdier. Med afsæt i disse kampagner og en governmentalitetsinspireret analyse undersøger denne artikel sta tens normative bud på, hvordan man kan være “en god dansk muslim”. Analysen viser, hvorledes denne forestilling konstrueres og forhandles i et felt, der forbinder velfærdsstatens forskrifter og individers selvfortolkning.

In the aftermath of the cultural renaissance movement (naḥḍa), especially during the second half of the 20th century, philosophy succeeded in regaining the status it enjoyed in medieval times as an important part of the Muslim intellectual discourse. In recent decades, philosophical thought (falsafa) has gained more prominence and relevance, especially with regard to the Islamic debate about the role and function of the Islamic tradition in the contemporary modern world. In this debate, Muslim philosophers deal with various questions and issues, foremost among them: the concept of knowledge, the wider question of reform (iṣlāḥ), and the relationship between religion and secularism. How Muslim thinkers and philosophers understand the questions and how they answer them vary widely, depending on their methodological approach to these issues - metaphysics, historicity, hermeneutics, and deconstruction – as well as their different positions regarding the role of philosophy in relation to contemporary Islām in general and its role in understanding the Islamic tradition’s relation with modernity in particular. The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the methodological diversity in contemporary Muslim philosophy, through readings of the work of four thinkers.

Employing the notion of “great intellectual” from Gramsci, this paper argues that the most important great intellectual of Syrian, Sayyed Ramadan al-Buti (b. 1929) has had compelling reasons for continuing his support for Bashar al-Assad at a time when most of the Sunni population has revolted against his regime. For decades, al-Buti has been promoting an anti-Islamist agenda, whilst arguing for a socially conservative Syrian society. Although this ran counter to the regime’s modernist and secularist aspirations, al-Buti succeeded in getting it his way by staying loyal during political crises, if his demands were met. This was also his strategy in the spring of 2011. However, with the Baath ideology all but obsolete, this time the regime has had no ideological defense against a popular uprising calling for democratic institutions. Instead, it has opted for a policy of violent suppression of the uprising. This has created a new type of resistance, with more “organic” intellectuals who have delivered unprecedented and daring blows at al-Buti’s own person.

The issue of the relation between religion and philosophy has re-surfaced in modern Jewish-Israeli and Arab-Muslim philosophical discourses. Facing unprecedented waves of re-traditionalisation and radicalisation in both Israel and Arab-Muslim societies this issue has become a privileged terrain upon which many ideological, cultural and political “wars” have been waged. In this paper, I shall focus on how two prominent philosophers and public thinkers, Leibowitz (d. 1994) and al-Jaberi (d. 2010), have brought the issue of the relation between faith and reason – and with it critical thinking – back to centre stage by engaging both their own philosophical and theological traditions and European philosophical thought.

Artiklen vil med udgangspunkt i Johannes Pedersens efterladte pa- pirer dokumentere, hvorledes en forskerkarriere, oprindeligt planlagt til studiet af Det Gamle Testamente, gennem studieophold hos flere af Europas førende orientalister i årene mellem 1909 og 1912 endte ud med være rettet mod det arabiske og islam. ____ "Johannes Pedersen and Danish Research into Islam in the Interwar Period" Using the surviving papers of Johannes Pedersen, the article shows how a research career that was originally planned around the study of the Old Testament became, through study with several of Europe's leading orientalists during 1909-1912, a research career into the Arabs and Islam.