Faith-based engagement and place : Searching for a Swedish muslim identity

In a recently published study of the political psychology of globalisation and Muslims in the West, the authors identify three ideal type strategies of identity formation among Muslim immigrants: retreatism, essentialism, and engagement. The authors themselves normatively argue in favour of the latter, suggesting that both majority and minority communities in society should strive to become “postnationalist, self-dialogical, and engaged in dialogue with a range of others. Activist, assertive, and agonistic rather than antagonistic”. They conclude that “Muslims are positioned to contribute toward new cosmopolitical potentialities for a renewed pluralistic global order” (Kinnvall and Nesbitt-Larking 2010). Starting with the notion that emotional geography “commonly concerns itself with the emotions that people feel for one another and, more extensively for places, for landscapes, for objects in landscapes and in specific situations” (Pile 2010: 15), we want to explore how Muslim immigrants arriving in Sweden emotionally and in action identify with and take part in social life at their place of arrival, i.e. their housing estate, their town/city and in their new country more generally. Focus will be on a few selected people, and a civic association, who openly refer to their Muslim identities as a faith-based driver in order to help their fellow immigrants to adapt to and identify themselves as members of their new habitat. Methodologically we will draw upon narratives told by Muslim immigrants, a recently established association of Muslim adult education, media articles, and observations done by ourselves. We will also, briefly, draw the attention to the “counter-emotional” islamophobian stance against Muslim immigrants in general as displayed in Swedish society. In conclusion we will reflect upon and critically discuss the challenges and potentialities of an emotionally engaged Muslim standpoint in front of a rather ignorant, partly even negative domestic population.
Titel på presentation vid konferens: Faith-based engagement and place identity: Muslim immigrant initiatives in Swedish localities