The Arab Spring and escalating effects among Muslims in Denmark

(Postdoctoral project, Anja Kublitz)

This project will explore the effects of the Arab Spring among Muslims living in housing projects in Denmark. The Arab Spring and, more specifically, the Syrian uprising, has led to an intensification of Danish Muslims’ engagement in conflicts in the Middle East. The project will investigate two different avenues followed by Danish Muslims in order to help the Syrian people.

The first approach is humanitarian assistance, mainly carried out by collecting money or clothes to be sent to Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan through Muslim organizations. This contribution is considered part of practising one of the five pillars of Islam, namely charity (zakat).

The other avenue is primarily chosen by young Muslim men who, encouraged by an international group of Muslims, travel to Syria to support different Islamic groups of the Syrian opposition. This course of action, which may be militaristic or humanitarian, is also considered by its practitioners to be an Islamic duty, namely jihad (meaning 'to struggle in the way of Allah').

The project will explore how the Arab Spring has led to new imaginaries of the future that animate present actions and escalate conflicts among Muslims in Denmark and between Muslims and the Danish state in novel ways. Furthermore, it will examine how existing scales of 'doing good' among Muslims in Denmark are being actualized and repeatedly transformed through their different engagements with the Syrian uprising.