‘Public Islam’ and the Nordic Welfare State: Changing Realities?

A volume containing the proceedings of a seminar held at Youngstown State University on the theme of 'Public Islam' and the Nordic Welfare State has just come out as a special issue of Studies in Contemporary Islam and the Tidsskrift for Islamforskning. 



The contributions in the volume are diverse yet interconnected. The articles that open the volume discuss how the two different welfare and civil society models represented by the Nordic countries and the USA may affect the institutionalization of Islam and Muslims’ public presence and values in these societies. Ulrika Mårtensson does that by providing a historical survey of the Nordic welfare state and its developments, including debates about the impact of neoliberal models and (de)secularization. Rhys Williams reflects on US civil society and its implications for American Muslims, while Tuomas Martikainen, provides a critical commentary on US research that juxtaposes European ‘religion-hostile’ management of religion and Islam with US ‘religion-friendly’ approaches. The essays that follow focus on ‘public’ dimensions of Nordic Islam and on relations between public and Islamic institutions and values. Mustafa Hussain reports on research from Nørrebro, an admittedly overresearched quarter and ethnographers' usual port of call in Copenhagen, . on the issue of Muslim integration in the locality and the local community. His argument that local Muslims feel rooted in the locality resonates similar research elsewhere although I am not convinced with the corollary suggestion that they are well socially and culturally integrated in the local community. Drawing material from Oslo, Oddbjørn Leirvik explores public discourses on Islam and values with reference to national and Muslim identity and interreligious dialogue. Eli-Anne Vongraven Eriksen and Ulrika Mårtensson chart the evolution of a pan-Islamic organization Muslim Society Trondheim (MST) from a prayer room for university students to the city’s main mosque and Muslim public representative.Ulrika Mårtensson casts a closer look on a Norwegian Salafi organization and the cultural obstacles to civic engagement its members confront. Colleagues from Lund, Johan Cato and Jonas Otterbeck explore aspects of Muslims political participation through associations and political parties and argue that bringing their Muslim identity to the public arena usually discredits them and renders them suspect of alterior motives. Anne Sofie Roald discusses multiculturalism’s implications for Muslim women in Sweden, while Jenny Berglund focuses on the value-contents of Islamic religious education. Finally, Göran Larsson describes the Swedish government commissioned investigation back in 2009 that explored the need for a national training program for imams and its conclusions.

This is a fascinating collection of articles that provide an excellent primer to aspects of the interaction between the Nordic welfare state and the Muslim communities of the Nordic countries that will hopefully stimulate further research and debate, not only on Islam and Muslims, but also the present and future state of Nordic multiculturalism.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Muslim associations in Malmö and Lund - a snapshot [part 1]

Image
translated from 'Muslimska föreningar i Malmö och Lund – en ögonblicksbild'  originally published in islamologi.se on December 2nd, 2010 and translated by Spyros A. Sofos By Erica Li Lundqvist & Leif Stenberg During a visit to the urban district of Rosengård in Malmö in order to photograph the "cellar mosques", we suddenly got lost in the suburban jungle. A group of children and young people noticed us wondering and asked us what we were doing. "We are looking for a mosque", we said, after which they replied in chorus: "There are many!" And they pointed in all directions. The development of Muslim neighbourhoods in Malmö and Lund has been gaining momentum since the first Muslim community was established in Malmö in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today, Islam is a natural, albeit controversial, part of Swedish society. Nevertheless, very little commentary on Islam in Sweden is premised on comprehensive empirical investigation. [1] A prob
Read more

The voice behind the veil

Image
The debate about the face veil, and more generally the acceptability of other forms of female Muslim attire in the West, is not a novel one. Muslim notions of modesty, have often been subverted and colonized by patriarchal practices seeking to restrict women's autonomy. As such, the veil issue has mobilized social forces inspired by liberalism and feminism and generated valuable criticisms of patriarchy in Muslim communities. On the other hand, the 'out of place' look of veiled women in European public spaces has provided fertile ground for the transformation of the veil issue into a potent mobilizing symbol for xenophobic, right wing forces only too happy to jump into the bandwagon of the secular, liberal and feminist opposition to the veil and, often, to incorporate these discourses into their own arguments. In this way, for example, spokespersons of the conservative Spanish Partido Popular such as Alberto Fernandez, a Barcelona city councillor, shed crocodile tears about
Read more

Western Europeans more likely than Central and Eastern Europeans to say they would accept Jews, Muslims into their family

Image
There is a line separating Western and Eastern Europeans when it comes to public attitudes toward Muslims according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan organization that generates data on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world .  The questions Pew Center asked related to the public's acceptance of Muslims in familial, and public contexts as well as to the association of religion to national identity.  The continental divide in attitudes and values can be extreme in some cases. For example, in nearly every Central and Eastern European country polled by the  Pew Research Center ,  fewer than half  of adults say they would be willing to accept Muslims into their family; in nearly every Western European country surveyed,  more  than half  say they would accept a Muslim into their family.  In a separate question, Western Europeans also are much more likely than their Central and Eastern European counterparts to say they would accept Muslims in their neighborhoods. F
Read more