Rearticulating Islam: A New Generation of Muslim Religious Leaders
Muslim religious authority structures are changing, in Denmark as well as globally. A new generation of Muslim religious leaders are facing particular challenges, possibilities and audiences, which demands a continuous rearticulation of Islam.
The research project Rearticulating Islam explores central aspects of this process by dealing with three questions:
- How do Danish-speaking Muslim preachers and teachers articulate and embody Islam in religious discourse, and how can these expressions be understood?
- Why do Scandinavian Muslims pursue Islamic education abroad, and what impact does this have?
- How does the Danish public sector accommodate and use Muslim religious actors, practices and norms? The project’s researchers will investigate these questions through e.g. interviews, document analyses and participant observation.
Danish Muslim Religious Oratory (Senior project, Simon Stjernholm)
New types of Muslim religious leaders are emerging that combine social and religious functions as well as develop new modes of oratory. This subproject will contribute the first detailed analysis of selected Muslim preaching and teaching activities in Danish. It will be carried out in dialogue with research on Islamic preaching, media and religion, multimodality, and rhetorical criticism. Its primary data are preachers’ and teachers’ own media productions, researcher-produced video and audio recordings, as well as interview material.
Accommodation of Islam in the Danish Public Sector (Postdoctoral project, Kasper Ly Netterstrøm)
This subproject aligns itself with a body of international research that studies how the public sector in European countries has adapted to and accommodated Muslims. The aim is to give a comprehensive overview of the scale and nature of this accommodation, and whether it is contentious, ideological or pragmatic. The focus is on local institutions such as kindergartens, schools and elderly homes. Data will be collected from Danish municipalities and regions.
Women Teaching Women in Danish Mosques (PhD project, Maria Lindebæk Lyngsøe)
Muslim women across the world fulfil religious leadership roles that are often less public than men’s, but hardly less significant. This subproject will investigate Muslim women’s teaching of and participation in religious classes. Focus will be on the contents and practices of classes on Qur’anic recitation and Islamic jurisprudence, the relations between teachers and students, as well as the role played by these classes in pious self-formation. This will be done in dialogue with international research on conservative religious women’s agency, material and embodied aspects of religiosity, and cultivation of the pious self. Primary research methods will be participant observation and interviews.
Scandinavian Muslims Pursuing Islamic Education Abroad (PhD project)
This subproject seeks to answer the following overarching question: Why do young Scandinavian Muslims pursue Islamic education abroad, what kind of universities and schools are they attending, and what impact does this education have? The PhD candidate will employ qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews and textual analysis. Project descriptions need to show awareness of the relevant research literature, provide a suitable theoretical framework, and convincingly show the methodological and practical feasibility of the imagined PhD project. Documented language skills in the key language(s) used in the educational institution(s) in question are highly meriting. Project descriptions may focus on individuals from either one or several Scandinavian countries.
Professor Masooda Bano, University of Oxford
Professor Nadia Marzouki, École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Professor Catharina Raudvere, University of Copenhagen
Panel on the topic "Continuations and Disruptions in Muslim Religious Leadership in Europe” at the European Association for the Study of Religion (EASR) annual conference in Tartu, Estonia, on 25–29 June 2019.
Stjernholm, Simon: DIY Preaching and Muslim Religious Authority, Journal of Muslims in Europe, vol. 8, 2, pp. 197–215, 2019.
Stjernholm, Simon: Muslim Religious Oratory on Swedish Public Service Radio, Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol. 34, 1, page 57-73, 2019.
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lyngsøe, Maria Lindebæk | PhD Fellow | ||
| Netterstrøm, Kasper Ly | Postdoc | ||
| Stjernholm, Simon | Associate professor | +45 51 30 07 01 |
Funding
Rearticulating Islam: A New Generation of Muslim Religious Leaders is financed by the Velux Foundations.
PI: Associate professor Simon Stjernholm.