Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway Muslim Minorities

Editors Jørgen S. Nielsen, University of Copenhagen Felice Dassetto, University of Louvain-la-Neuve Aminah McCloud, DePaul University, Chicago

VOLUME 10 Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway

By Christine M. Jacobsen

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.

Financial support was received from Th e Norwegian Non-fi ction Writers And Translators Association (NFF) and Th e Research Council of Norway (NFR).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jacobsen, Christine M., 1971- Islamic traditions and Muslim youth in Norway / by Christine M. Jacobsen. p. cm. -- (Muslim minorities, ISSN 1570-7571 ; v. 10) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-17890-8 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Islam--Norway. 2. Muslim youth--Religious life--Norway. 3. Muslim youth--Norway--Social conditions. 4. Children of immigrants--Norway. 5. Muslims--Cultural assimilation--Norway. 6. Multiculturalism--Norway. I. Title. BP65.N8J325 2011 297.0835’09481--dc22 2010041726

ISSN 1570-7571 ISBN 9789004178908

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to Th e Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... ix A note on language and sources ...... xi

Introduction ...... 1 Issues and perspectives ...... 3 Outline of the book ...... 11

Chapter One Situating Islam in Norway: ethnographic context and theoretical perspectives ...... 15 Muslims in Norway ...... 15 Religious pluralism and the Norwegian state church system ...... 18 Nation state, religion and secularism ...... 22 Towards an anthropology of Islam in Europe ...... 25 Muslim roots and routes ...... 25 Social imaginaries, the nation state and the politics of identity ...... 32 Islam as discursive tradition ...... 35 Individualization, authority and self-formation ...... 40 Some epistemological and methodological concerns ...... 47 Naming ‘them’ and the ‘not them’ ...... 49

Chapter Two Envisioning unity, coping with diff erence ...... 53 Th e Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU) ...... 54 Th e Muslim Student Society (MSS) ...... 59 Th e revivalist infl uence ...... 62 New forms of Muslim cooperation ...... 67 Promoting Muslim unity ...... 70 Being a Muslim youth ...... 78 A new generation ...... 85 Th e gender division ...... 88 Th e rural /urban distinction ...... 94 Th e importance of having an education ...... 96 Creating new Muslim spaces ...... 102 vi contents

Chapter Th ree Who are ‘we’? Social imaginaries ...... 105 A global community of Muslims ...... 107 Th e global imagined umma ...... 107 Sisters and brothers in Islam ...... 112 Global imaginaries in religious practice ...... 117 Situating Islam in Europe and Norway ...... 122 Euro-Islam and European Muslims ...... 122 Norwegian Muslims ...... 129 Th e ‘vernacularization’ of Islam ...... 133 Islam and national symbols ...... 138 Family, kinship and the ‘ethnic diaspora’ ...... 142 Journeying through social imaginaries ...... 147 Multiple imaginaries: heterogeneous spaces ...... 150 (Re)imagining Muslim identity ...... 155

Chapter Four Th e politics of recognition: (re)constructing identity/diff erence ...... 157 Th e faces and logics of misrecognition in the Norwegian context ...... 160 Culturalism and neo-realism in contemporary social imaginaries ...... 163 Th e emergence of Muslims as the Other ...... 168 Constructing and contesting ourselves as the Other ...... 176 Th e NMU, the MSS and the politics of recognition ...... 181 Identity politics and the problem of essentialism ...... 184 Religious practice in identity politics ...... 187 Jihad and dawa in identity politics ...... 188 Th e hijab in identity politics ...... 193 Gender and generation in the quest for recognition ...... 198 Engaging the Norwegian public sphere ...... 204 “Th ey do not speak for me” ...... 204 Citizenship and human rights ...... 214 Identity politics and socio-economic inequality ...... 217 Th e politics of recognition and the emergence of new political subjects ...... 222

Chapter Five Th e quest for knowledge: individualization and religious authority ...... 225 Religious knowledge and refl exivity ...... 227 Intergenerational disputes: Umar disagrees with his father ...... 227 contents vii

Th e objectifi cation of Islam ...... 231 Coming to know Islam: the family, the mosque and the school ...... 234 From person to print: new arenas of Islamic education ..... 240 Th e normativization of Islam ...... 247 Normativization and gendered knowledge ...... 249 Individualization and authority ...... 251 Young Muslim voices ‘speaking Islam’ ...... 251 Th e contestation and reassertion of authority ...... 257 Th e imam as an authority fi gure, prayer leader or good shepherd ...... 260 Interpreting Islam ...... 265 Feminist interventions ...... 270 Debating Islam and gender ...... 274 Exemplary models and authority in marriage ...... 278 Knowledge and belief ...... 282 Th e signs of God: Islam and science ...... 286 Th e quest for knowledge: a refl exive adherence to Islamic authority ...... 291

Chapter Six Becoming Muslim: working on the self ...... 295 Who are you? Muslim by nature: returning to Islam ...... 297 Noor’s return to Islam ...... 301 Becoming Muslim: continuities and ruptures ...... 304 Gendering the return: hijab stories ...... 306 On identity, exteriority and interiority ...... 314 Th e formation of pious selves ...... 318 Th e gender of desire ...... 322 Diff erent forms of self-realization ...... 325 Ibadat as techniques of the self ...... 329 Ethical formation ...... 334 Having the right intent ...... 340 Choosing what is good and the reward for this ...... 347 Beyond orthodoxy ...... 355 Th e self and religious practice in young Muslims’ ‘return to Islam’ ...... 357

Chapter Seven Tradition, authenticity and autonomy ...... 361 Authenticity, tradition and modernity ...... 361 Th e discourse of authenticity and the reform of tradition in modernity ...... 366 viii contents

Th e making of individualized religious subjects ...... 369 Th e individualization of religion in modern societies ...... 369 Th e production of self-governing individuals ...... 375 Th e discourse of autonomy and the problem of agency ...... 383

Bibliography ...... 389

Index ...... 409 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Th is book is based on several projects including my work on young Muslim women in France (Jacobsen 1999), an IMER Bergen research project fi nanced by the Research Council of Norway which resulted in the publication of Tilhørighetens Mange Former: Unge Muslimer i Norge (Jacobsen 2002), a project fi nanced by the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Bergen which resulted in “Staying on the Straight Path: Religious Identities and Practices among Young Muslims in Norway” (2006), and, fi nally, an ongoing project on transnationalism and political engagement undertaken with young people from minority backgrounds (TRANSNAT), also fi nanced by the Research Council of Norway. My thanks go to these institutions. While researching and writing this book, I have had the good for- tune to be affi liated with the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, IMER Bergen (International Migration and Ethnic Relations) and the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of people from these three stimulating research environments, in particular Leif Manger, Yngve G. Lithman, Anh Nga Longva, Randi Gressgård and Mette Andersson. I also wish to thank Bruce Kapferer, André Iteanu, Cathrine Holst, Cecilie Ødegaard, Nora S.Eggen, Hilde Danielsen, Tone Hellesund, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Anne Sofi e Roald, Monica Aarset, Cicilie Fagerlid, Nadia Fadil, Anne-Hege Grung, Lena Larsen, Oddbjørn Leirvik, Bente Nicolaysen, Dag Stenvoll, Vivienne Knowles and Karianne Drangsland. Garbi Schmidt and Werner Schiff auer deserve a special mention for their careful reading of the manuscript and for their stimulating comments. Th anks also to Schirin Amir- Moazami and Frank Peter for inviting me to spend the spring of 2009 in Berlin as a guest researcher at the European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), a privilege which allowed me time to work on this text. I am also grateful to the series editors at Brill, to Nicolette van der Hoek, to the anonymous reviewer and to Oliver Woolley who edited the text for publication. Th e book would also not, of course, have been possible without the generous cooperation of the young Muslims I came to know in Oslo. During the writing process I kept a greeting from the Muslim Youth of Norway reading “Th ank you for the company! A warm greeting from all of us in the NMU, we hope you will not forget us…” next to my x acknowledgements computer. Th rough all the years of research and writing, this greeting has served as a constant reminder not to forget the ‘real people’ I met through the Muslim Youth of Norway, the Muslim Student Society, the mosques and elsewhere. I would, therefore, like to take this opportunity to thank every one of you: for your willingness to teach and explain things to me and to share your stories as well as for your patience and your companionship over the years! Th anks also to those people who generously welcomed me into their homes during my fi eld trip to Nador and Al Hoceima. While I cannot guarantee that none of those who so generously contributed to this study will not feel ‘misrepre- sented’, I hope you will all feel that you have been listened to and taken seriously. Th e people that matter most tend to be the last to get mentioned! I will always be indebted to the many friends and family members who helped and encouraged me before, during and aft er the research undertaken for this book. To Dag and Selma, in particular, I will be everlast- ingly grateful. I dedicate this work to the memory of my mother whose years of struggle against cancer taught me to endure and to never lose courage. A NOTE ON LANGUAGE AND SOURCES

Several languages have been involved in the production of the data presented here and in the writing of this book. When translating quotes from interviews in Norwegian into English I have not attempted to recreate a particular colloquial style and have thus given the language a more standardized form than it originally had. For Arabic words in the text that are not translated, I have chosen to use established English spellings rather than ‘correct’ Arabic transliterations. Th is refl ects the emerging standardization of Islamic concepts and words in English and various other national languages (Metcalf 1996b). Young Norwegian Muslims increasingly speak and write about Islam in Norwegian and central religious concepts are either translated or directly incorporated into the Norwegian language, simultaneously being transformed through Norwegian spelling and grammar, though. Th e Islamic Norwegian vocabulary generally available, however, is still ‘chaotic’ and largely unfi xed. Th e usage of diacritical signs to mark long vowels or the Arab letter hamza, for instance, is irregular (one may fi nd the forms alim or ʹālim). To make the text more accessible, I have chosen to use ‘simplifi ed’ versions of words where these exist and to adopt these spellings consistently. Islamic Norwegian words are translated into Islamic English words. Endings and plural forms are written according to common Islamic English standards. Such words are, in general, italicized, although for the sake of readability the most common words are only italicized the fi rst time that they appear in the text. In addition I should mention that both Arabic terms and English translations are used, which partly depending on the language used by my discussion partners in diff erent contexts. Th ere are good arguments for both translations and for the use of Arabic terms. Translations (e.g. using God instead of Allah) may be seen to bring familiarity rather than diff erence to the foreground and may, thus, be less ‘exoticizing’ as well as helping to avoid the construction of ‘radical alterity’. On the other hand, making notions more familiar also runs the risk of ‘assimi- lating’ or distorting the meaning of a term and thus of complicat- ing rather than furthering understanding (as, for example, when din is translated into ‘religion’, and hijab into ‘veil’). Furthermore, translations may reinforce the power relationships involved in writing xii a note on language and sources

ethnography in that the languages of the people being studied are subjected to forcible transformations rather than the other way around (cf. Asad 1993). All references to the Koran, unless otherwise specifi ed, are taken from the translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, Oxford University Press, 2005. References to the Hadith collections are from the online resource made available by the University of Southern California at: . Norwegian organizations are referred to by their Norwegian acro- nyms in the text (e.g. the Muslim Youth of Norway is denoted as the NMU and not the MYN). To guarantee the anonymity of my interlocutors I have given them pseudonyms. For those cases where I consider anonymity to be particularly important, I have given individuals more than one pseudo- nym and changed biographical details such as age and place of residence. Citations from publicly available publications, such as the magazines of youth and student organizations, are referred to using the authors’ full names, however. INTRODUCTION

Bi-smi llâhi r-rahmâni r-rahîm al-hamdu li-llâhi rabbi l-‘âlamîn ar-rahmâni r-rahîm mâliki yawmi d-dîn iyyâka na‘budu wa-iyyâka nasta‘în ihdina s-sirâta l-mustaqîm sirâta lladhîna an‘amta ‘alayhim ghayri l-maghdûbi ‘alayhim wa-la d-dâllîn1

Th e young man fi nishes his measured and rhythmic recital and pushes the play button of the tape recorder standing next to him. “Th ere is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is His messenger”: the shahada2 is pronounced in Th ai, French, Bosnian, Somali, Arabic and English as “Sing, children of the world” by Canadian artist and educator Dawud Wharnsby Ali fi lls the room. Stencils with the English lyrics of the song are distributed to the twenty-fi ve girls and fi ft een boys that are gathered there: “Oh, sing children of the world, come together and hear the call! Sing children of the world, Islam will unite us all! Subhanallah, wal- hamdulillah, wallahu Akbar [Glory be to God, All Praise to God and God is the Greatest]”. Th e venue is the Deichmanske Library in Grünerløkka, a multi- ethnic former working-class neighbourhood in Oslo that has lately become trendy with students, intellectuals and artists. In the meeting room the boys are seated up front and on the left hand side with the girls at the back and to the right. Ages range from early teens to mid or late twenties. People are casually dressed in jeans, skirts, T-shirts, shirts and pullovers. A couple of girls are wearing shalwar kameezes with dupattas3 and roughly half the girls have their hair covered with hijabs

1 Koran, surah 1 Al-Fateha (Th e Opening). 2 Th e Islamic profession of faith. 3 Th e shalwar kameez consists of a kameez (long shirt or tunic) and shalwar (wide- legged trousers). While originally generally worn only in South Asia, shalwar kameezes are nowadays inspired by both Eastern and Western fashion and may be found in a variety of fabrics, cuts and styles. Th e girls wearing shalwar kameezes in the NMU are mostly of Pakistani origin. Boys do not usually wear the shalwar kameez on these occasions, although they might wear this outfi t at weddings, religious festivities etc. A dupatta is a long scarf that is oft en worn by women around the neck or head together with the shalwar kameez. 2 introduction of diff erent colours and patterns. As the song fi nishes, we are welcomed to the General Assembly of the Muslim Youth of Norway (Norges Muslimske Ungdom, henceforth the NMU). Th e young man who had recited the opening surah of the Koran so eloquently presents himself as the leader of the NMU and introduces the treasurer and the secretary, both women in their late teens. Th e meeting agenda is presented and a ‘sister’ and a ‘brother’ are appointed to chair the meeting and to take notes. Th e activities of the previous year (1998–99) are summarized. Every other Sunday there were darses (lectures on Islam) while during Ramadan a study circle was held for both ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ with an eid4-party marking the end of the fast. Representatives from various Muslim and non-Muslim organizations had been invited to talk about their work in the Muslim community and a youth delegation from Palestine had visited the NMU. Th ere had been a variety of outings including a bicycle tour, a trip to the woods and ice-skating. A special highlight had been the yearly trip to Sweden when eighteen young women and men had attended the international Islamic youth conference arranged by the Muslim Youth of Sweden. Aft er past and upcoming activities in the Muslim community have been mentioned or announced, the fi rst issue of the NMU’s own Muslim youth magazine, Explore, is presented. Th e front page poses the question: “Who are you? Th is is a thought that oft en haunts us. But where do we stand?” Explore is said to respond to the growing need for Norwegian-language material on Islam for the ‘second generation’: “We who are second generation immigrants need to read things in Norwegian to learn more about Islam”, the editor asserts. Some boys and girls volunteer to be in the editorial committee for future issues. Everyone is encouraged to contribute with pieces of writing. Following some issues to do with membership and fi nances, the next point on the agenda addresses a political question that was engaging many Muslims in Norway at the time: the recent introduction in primary school of a new model of religious education called “Knowledge of Christianity with Information about Religion and Life-stances [Kristendom med Religions og Livssynsundervisning]” (KRL).5 Information is given on the

4 Eid-al-fi tr: the feast marking the end of the fasting in Ramadan. 5 Th is case is further discussed in Chapter One and in Chapter Five. Th e core of the controversy was the compulsory status of this new religious education (exemption could only be granted from what was identifi ed as ‘the confessional aspect’) and whether this represented an infringement of the right to religious freedom. introduction 3 court case initiated by the Islamic Council of Norway (IRN, Islamsk Råd Norge) and the Norwegian Humanist Association (HEF, Human- Etisk Forbund) against the State and the young Muslims present are encouraged to speak up about their experiences with religious education in order to support the case. Aydin, the former leader of the NMU, closes this part of the meeting with a pep talk about the need the second generation has for more knowledge about Islam. He talks about how people need to know what Islam really is so as to not only get their images of Islam through the media. According to him, as a result of the negative images found in the media, young Muslims lack self-confi dence. “You should not let this happen but should have confi dence in yourselves”, Aydin encourages his listeners. To obtain this confi dence, knowledge of what Islam really is must be spread, this requiring active participation on the part of young Muslims. Th e NMU is an arena for such participation, Aydin underlines. As the time for salah6 approaches, Aydin’s pep talk ends and people leave to perform wudhu7 in the corridor bathrooms. A prayer mat is unfolded on the fl oor, this facing in the direction of Mecca. About half of those present line up behind Aydin and prostrate themselves in unison before God. Th e others sit together and talk in low voices or busy themselves with preparing for the more informal social gathering that will follow aft er the prayers. When we fi nish eating and chatting the committee members and a few others stay on to tidy up the meeting room. Th e male head of the NMU does the dishes at the request of the female treasurer, joking with me about the current changes in gender relations. Once everything is tidied away, no clues are left in the Deichmanske Library suggesting that it has just hosted the General Assembly of the Muslim Youth of Norway.

Issues and perspectives

Over the last few decades questions regarding the future of Islam in Europe have become increasingly pertinent to researchers as well as governments and their policy makers. One of the main issues being looked at concerns continuities and changes in the religiosity of ‘Muslim youth’ – a category that currently epitomizes both the fears and the hopes of multicultural Europe. How are Islamic traditions

6 Th e ritual prayer which is the Second Pillar of Islam. 7 Th e ritual ablutions that Muslims perform before their daily prayers. 4 introduction engaged and reworked by young people who are born and educated in European societies and what modes of religiosity will they contribute to shaping in the future? Th is book aims to throw new light on these and other related questions as they are seen from one particular location at the margins of Europe. It provides in-depth ethnographic material about young Muslims’ active engagement in (re)defi ning Islamic traditions, Muslim identities and their future in the Norwegian context. Th e religiosity of young Muslims in Norway is discussed in the light of broader trends identifi ed in the comparative research on Islam and Muslim youth in Europe such as those of individualization, the eff ort to move ‘beyond culture’, the identifi cation with a ‘global Islamic community’, the politicization of Muslim identities, emancipation within tradition and the formation of pious subjectivities (Amir- Moazami and Salvatore 2003; Cesari 2004; Fadil 2005, 2006; Jacobson 1998; Jouili 2006; Minganti 2007; Roy 2000; Schmidt 2002; Vertovec and Rogers 1998). Th e book also contributes to the emerging academic fi eld of ‘the anthropology of Islam in Europe’ by developing theoretical and analytical perspectives within which to examine continuities and discontinuities in religious identities and practices in the context of international migration, globalization and secular modernity. As in other European countries, young Muslims have emerged as a presence to be reckoned with in the shaping of Muslim landscapes in contemporary Norway. Active within the frame of mosques and religious organizations as well as in establishing their own forums and organizations, these young people have become a driving force in (re)defi ning Islamic traditions and Muslim identities. In this book I draw on years of anthropological fi eldwork and interviews with Muslim youths and Muslim students in Oslo. Th e establishment of two largely independent youth and student associations in the second half of the 1990s, the Muslim Student Society (MSS, Muslimsk Studentsamfunn) and the Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU, Norges Muslimske Ungdom), marked the ‘coming of age’ of a new generation of Muslims born and raised in Norway. Th e two multi-ethnic organizations represent collectivities within which individual members are situated at the meeting point of diff erent religious, cultural and social traditions and it is here that these members struggle to develop new forms of belonging and new ways of living as a Muslim within Norwegian society. Th e lived experiences of young Muslims who participate in these organizations are the point of departure for an ethnographic description and analysis of the contemporary (re)shaping of Islamic traditions and Muslim introduction 5 identities at the intersection between the local, the national and the transnational. Th e book traces how young Muslims, through their religious engagement, negotiate and mediate between diff erent approaches to Islam, between the Muslim communities and the Norwegian majority society, between ‘cultures’, between the younger generation and their parental generation and between diff erent gender regimes. Th e book thus addresses a number of notable issues that have been at the centre of such negotiations and mediations, including the question of the hijab, so called ‘arranged’ marriages, the role of imams and the representation of Muslims in public debate. Th e book draws on and contributes to several bodies of scholarship and ongoing debates notably those dealing with migration, globalization, transnationalism, multiculturalism, citizenship, the anthropology of Islam and feminist theory. In particular, the book aims to engage theories on the (re)production of religious traditions and identities, as they have been elaborated within migration and globalization studies (see, for example, Grillo 2004, Mandaville 2002, 2003, 2004; Roy 2000, 2004; Vertovec 2003, 2004; Vertovec and Rogers 1998) with discourse- centred approaches to Islam (see, for example, Asad 1986, 1993; Bowen 1993; Brenner 2000; Fischer and Abedi 1990; Ismail 2003; Mahmood 2005; Werbner 2002b). As Bowen (1993: 7) points out, these discourse- centred approaches have been particularly important in analyzing modern Islamic processes of cultural reproduction, and in closing the gap between decontextualized readings of normative texts on the one hand and an ethnographic approach that paid little attention to the social life of texts on the other. Th ey have also shown that the existence of various modalities for (re)producing, mediating and interpreting Islamic traditions, and the insertion of these into particular contexts with varied meaning/power eff ects, presents us with a multitude of discourses rather than a homogeneous and static symbolic system or social blueprint (Ismail 2003). Inspired by such discourse-centred approaches, in particular those within the Foucauldian tradition, I use the term ‘discourse’ to refer to a complex of ‘statements’ made by numerous people in diff erent social contexts that are characterized by certain rules and regularities, this allowing for the fact that ‘discourses’ are also productive of particular realities and subjectivities (Abu- Lughod 1986; Foucault 1971; Foucault and Gordon 1980). I also use the term in a more precise sense when drawing upon Asad’s (1986) conceptualization of Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’, as discussed in Chapter One. 6 introduction

Within the frame provided by a discourse-centred approach, this book focuses on the discussions and debates that occur as Islamic traditions are (re)produced, mediated and interpreted in a context of international migration, globalization and secular modernity. While discourse-centred approaches to Islam have tended to focus on imams, intellectuals and Islamic scholars, this study undertakes an investigation of how young Muslims increasingly engage in discussion and debate on issues that previously mainly represented areas for scholarly debate and traces the conditions of possibility of such engagement. Th e book thus examines how Islamic traditions are (re)produced, negotiated and/or opposed by focusing on the discussions and debates that young Muslims in Oslo engage in (e.g. about what it means to be a Muslim, what Islam is and how it should be lived and represented). Th ese discussions and debates are situated and analysed in terms of the social identities of those involved, the social relationships and subjectivities that are sustained or (re)shaped through them and the social contexts in which they come to take on particular forms. In particular, attention is paid to processes of ‘objectifi cation’, ‘individualization’ and ‘normativization’ of Islamic traditions and Muslim identities. Th e centrality of discourses of authenticity and autonomy and associated regimes of subjectivation to how the (re)production and negotiation of Islamic traditions unfold, and to the shaping of young Muslims’ subjectivities, is a theme running through several chapters. Th e focus on discussion and debate allows me to pursue a number of issues I think important. One range of questions, which can be broadly perceived of as that concerned with the temporal dimension, concerns processes related to social, cultural and religious continuities and discontinuities over time and the intergenerational (re)production of meaning. Another range of questions, which can be broadly perceived of as that concerned with the spatial dimension, relates to social, cultural and religious diversity in the context of migration, globalization and secular modernity. It is precisely at the intersection of these two broadly defi ned sets of issues that the central questions of the book emerge. In what ways are Islamic traditions and Muslim identities shaped by their movement across time (from one generation to the next, at one level, and through history, on another)? How are these temporal processes interwoven with social, cultural and religious diversity in the context of migration and globalization, which rearrange the social spaces people inhabit, through a deconstruction and reconstruction of boundaries, identities and practices? And how do the ‘local’ introduction 7 discussions and debates of young Muslims in Oslo address and intertwine with debates in what has been referred to as an emerging transnational or global Muslim public sphere (Bowen 2004a; Mandaville 2004; Salvatore 2004)? One major issue of debate in studies of Muslim youth in Europe is the extent to which their religiosity represents a fundamental continuity or discontinuity with Islamic traditions as these exist in ‘the Muslim world’ and in ‘the immigrant generation’. Centring the analysis on discussions and debates serves to bring out the heterogeneity and proces- suality of Muslim identities and Islamic traditions in the context of migration and globalization. Th is does not mean that I underestimate the more tacit and habitual reproduction of religious traditions and the durability and reproduction of religious identities and practices over time (cf. Bredal 2006; Prieur 2002). Rather, one argument I advance here is that discussion and debate should not be seen as per se synonymous with rupture or change or as opposite to ‘tradition’. Th e discussions and debates that I focus on draw attention both to the micro-practices of everyday interaction as these unfold within particular power relationships and to historically sedimented practices, institutions and forms of authority within and through which such discussions and debates play out. Drawing on Asad (1986), I suggest this can be theorized in terms of the notion of Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’. Young Muslims in Oslo are introduced into this tradition by means of a number of pedagogical practices and discourses that seek to instruct them on the correct form and meaning of given practices and through these they acquire a set of embodied knowledges and capacities. Whilst tacit and habitual reproduction is central to such processes, so is argument and debate. By describing and analysing “the kinds of reasoning, and the reasons for arguing” (Asad 1986: 16) that underlie young Muslims’ engagement with Islamic traditions, the book makes power relations and various positionings within the Islamic discursive tradition visible. In this respect, the perspective I have chosen provides a point of departure for exploring continuities and discontinuities in the complex confi gurations of power and authority within which such discussions and debates are embedded. A related debate in studies of Islam in Europe is the one concerning how to theorize observable discontinuities in religious formations. Some theorists primarily stress the migratory process and/or infl uence of European (modern, secular) societies as fundamental to explaining religious change. Indeed, as Cesari (2005) notes in her introduction to 8 introduction

European Muslims and the Secular State, many researchers in Europe consider that it is Islam’s status as a minority religion within democratic and secularized contexts which is the decisive element in the transformation of both Muslim practices and their relationship to Islam. In contrast, Cesari herself suggests an interactional approach, stressing the “dialectic relationship between group resources and their social environment” (2005: 1). While stressing such a dialectical relationship, Cesari characterizes the establishment of Muslim communities in Europe as a release from the ‘iron grip’ of authoritarian Muslim states on Islamic tradition, this ‘liberation’ coming in a variety of forms (2005: 4). Others put more stress on transnational and globalizing processes. Roy, for instance, argues in Globalized Islam (2004) that the sociology of immigration and ethnic relations is no longer suffi cient to understand contemporary transformations in the religiosity of European Muslims and that these are better grasped by the term ‘globalization’, indicating new forms of migration, mobility, communication and deterritorialization. Instead of highlighting discontinuities characterizing European or globalized Islam, some writers stress continuities between current developments in the religiosity of European Muslims and historical processes of reform within the Islamic tradition. Assessing what they term the ‘European Islam perspective’, which depicts emancipatory dynamics within Muslim communities as direct consequences of Islam’s transplantation to Europe, Amir-Moazami and Salvatore (2003) criticize the tendency to idealise the European public sphere. Such an ide- alisation, they argue, underestimates the “de facto and also de jure restrictive conditions for spaces of social action and claims of public representation for Muslims in Europe” (2003: 53). It also risks reproducing a negative and essentialist understanding of the Muslim tradition, bypassing its own internal dynamics and “the potential of transformation and reform that originates from within Muslim traditions”, they argue (see, also, Fadil 2008; Peter 2006). Addressing Muslim European youth’s cultivation of piety and quest for Islamic argumentations, Amir-Moazami and Salvatore point out that these youngsters oft en resort to the nineteenth and twentieth century reformist tradition, reshaping this in the light of the challenges posed by the European context, however. Both the colonial/postcolonial situation in Muslim majority societies and the situation of Muslim minorities in Europe, each involving diff erent but comparable forms of intervention and domination by other traditions, seem to “increase the introduction 9 degree of refl exivity as much as the eff orts for self-reform in Muslim tradition” (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003: 71), they argue. Amir- Moazami and Salvatore do not, however, see the reform of Islamic traditions as something unique to the modern or postmodern area or as something reducible to socio-structural fi elds and the interventions made by other traditions. Rather, by drawing upon Asad’s (1986, 1993) understanding of Islam as a discursive tradition (discussed in Chapter One), they argue that Muslim traditions have since their inception been subject to transformations both through their encounter with other competing traditions and through permanent internal interventions that can be accounted for as an impetus to self-reform produced by the “inherent search for coherence” of traditions (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003: 55).8 Th is book assumes that we need to explore both the continuities and discontinuities of Islamic traditions in Europe by employing a combination of several of the above mentioned perspectives. Th e religiosity of Muslim youth must be seen in terms of the relocation of Islamic traditions to Europe and the particular conditions of possibility this off ers for the shaping of religious identities and practices. Th ese conditions of possibility are signifi cantly shaped not only by the particular socio-historical contexts of various European nation-states and their histories of migration, modes of integration and secular formations, but also by the dynamics of ‘transnationalism’ and ‘globalization’. Th ese latter conditions aff ect not only the (re)shaping of Islamic traditions among Muslim migrants and their descendants in Europe or the West, but aff ect Muslim religiosity throughout the world. Current formulations of Muslim religiosity among young Muslims in Oslo, as elsewhere in Europe, proceed through references to (and in relative continuity with) revivalist and reformist discourses as they were developed in the Muslim world from the late nineteenth century on and may thus be seen as part of an ongoing reform of the Islamic discursive tradition, as discussed above. Situating young Muslims’ religiosity in the context of the reform and reconstruction of Muslim traditions has also stimulated researchers,

8 According to Asad (1986), Islam presupposes a form of coherence that renders actual or possible variations in practice a matter of discussion and debate on the part of scholars, clerics and lay practitioners: “Although Islamic traditions are not homogenous, they aspire to coherence, in the way that all discursive traditions do” (1986: 19). Debates and discussions about what is ‘correct’ and what must prevail are central to the constitution of a ‘domain of orthodoxy’. 10 introduction inspired notably by Mahmood (2005), to take the issue of Muslim piety and ethical self-fashioning more seriously (see, for example, Fadil 2008; Jouili 2006; Jouili and Amir-Moazami 2006), a line of inquiry that is also explored in this book. Th e focus on piety and ethical self-fashioning has partly been articulated as suggesting an alternative theorization of Islamic revivalism than the one provided by the framework of ‘identity politics’ (Mahmood 2005: 193). However, there is a need to recognize that processes of reform and revival are signifi cantly shaped by the particular socio-historical contexts and localities in which they unfold. In contrast to the Egyptian piety movement studied by Mahmood, which was only marginally organized around questions of identity, rights, recognition and representation, the framework of ‘identity politics’ is crucial to understanding the Muslim youth and student organizations that appeared in Europe with the coming of age of the so called second generation of immigrants. Across Europe we have seen how Islam is mobilized as a form of ‘identity politics’ in order to resist and claim identities, to claim recognition and rights within the framework of the nation state and to forge new modes of public engagement. Instead of seeing the ‘politics of piety’ (Mahmood 2005) and the ‘politics of identity’ as mutually exclusive approaches (or the second as somehow being super- imposed on religious practices that are fi rst and foremost self-disciplines aiming to fashion the pious self),9 I situate the religious engagement of young Norwegian Muslims precisely in the dynamic relationship between the two. While these dimensions are analytically distinguish- able they are in practice inextricably intertwined with each other and are therefore examined as they articulate across a variety of social contexts. How are young Muslims’ engagements with the Islamic tradition shaped by articulations of identity and diff erence in multicultural Norway? How are Muslim ‘identity politics’ inscribed into a process involving the revival and reform of the Islamic tradition and the fashioning of pious subjectivities? Bringing the mentioned lines of theorization and analysis together, the book discusses how ethnic, generational, class and gendered dynamics intersect with processes of internal reform as Islam becomes the basis for young Muslims’ ‘identity politics’, a means for reinterpreting certain aspects of ‘migrated traditions’, and for constituting oneself as an ‘ethical subject’ within the theological framework of the Islamic

9 Th is seems to be implied for instance by Jouili (2009). introduction 11 discursive tradition. Th e creation of Muslim ethical subjects involves relating to inherited traditions and practices within social imaginaries and relationships having to do with the family and the ‘ethnic community’ as well as being involved in a process of working on oneself, of cultivating and growing into an authentic Muslim identity. Th e “objectifi cation” of Islam and Muslim identity initiates a gendered process of subjectivation which links aspects of autonomy with aspects of obedience and obligation. Th rough appropriating Islamic traditions in their everyday practice, I argue, young Muslims also develop new modes for engaging with and participating in Norwegian society, as well as new modes of transnational belonging to the global Islamic umma (community).

Outline of the book

Chapter One introduces the ethnographic context, focusing on the composition of the Muslim migrant population and their descendants. It also presents and discusses existing literature on Islam and Muslims in Europe, as well as outlining central theoretical perspectives and analytical concepts that will guide the analysis in subsequent chapters. Some methodological and epistemological issues concerning the study and the problem of naming and categorizing are discussed towards the end of the chapter. Chapter Two introduces the two Muslim youth and student organizations that are the ethnographic focus of the book, the Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU) and the Muslim Student Society (MSS). Th e ethnographic presentation of the NMU and the MSS situates them within the wider context of Muslim organizations in Norway and discusses how Muslim identity is constructed through and interwoven with other types of social diff erentiations (age, generation, gender, ethnicity, class and education) and how these social diff erentiations are (re)produced and challenged within the youth and student organizations. On this basis, the chapter begins to explore the manner in which young Muslims address questions about what kinds of communities they are and want to be part of, what they want these communities to become and what kinds of traditions and values should be normative and binding in these communities. Chapter Th ree considers a varied range of practices relating to marriage, consumption, ritual, and young Muslims’ narratives and written 12 introduction texts and takes these as a point of departure for analysing the social imaginaries in terms of which young Muslims construct and orient their Muslim identities and practices, ‘the global Muslim community’, ‘Euro-Norwegian Muslims’ and ‘family and the ethnic diaspora’. Th e chapter explores how young Muslims in Oslo relate to these social imaginaries and how their social networks and relationships reproduce and cut across the diff erent visions of community that they off er. In addition, the chapter examines how they seek to realize some of the values and objectives associated with the diff erent imaginaries and the simultaneously occurring processes of hybridization and boundary- making thus energized. Chapter Four focuses on the emergence of new political subjects in the Norwegian public space and investigates the Muslim youth and student organizations as arenas for the creation and expression of a Muslim political subject position. One main lens for analysing the political engagement of young Muslims is provided by theories on ‘identity politics’ and ‘the politics of recognition’. Th e chapter investigates how dominant social imaginaries in Norway politicize the relation of Muslims to the nation state and the imagined national community and how the Norwegian state’s multiculturalist politics and discourses on cultural diversity, as well as historically established for- mulas for the separation of religion and politics and private and public spheres, form particular conditions of possibility for the creation and expression of a Muslim political subject position. Th e chapter also explores Muslim identity politics as these are intertwined with ‘the reform and reconstruction of Muslim traditions’. Th e second part of the chapter thus off ers an analysis of how central concepts and practices in the Islamic discursive tradition (such as jihad10, dawa11 and hijab12) are reconstructed by young Muslims in Oslo, of the individual and collective goods that they seek to realize and of the kinds of political subjectivities that are engendered as these concepts and practices inform, and are informed by, the politics of identity and recognition Chapter Five considers questions concerning the transmission of Islamic traditions in the context of migration, globalization and secular modernity and gives an overview of various pedagogical actors in the religious education of Muslim youth, these including their parents,

10 To strive, to struggle. 11 Call, invitation and appeal to Islam. 12 Practice of dressing modestly, Islamic headgear. introduction 13

Koran schools, siblings, extended family and the Islamic courses provided by Norwegian state schools. Identifying ‘objectifi cation’ as a major characteristic of contemporary Muslim imaginaries, I explore how Islam is passed on and made the subject of refl ection and debate in diverse social settings. Drawing on comparative research on young Muslims in Europe, I discuss to what extent we may observe an ‘individualization’ of the relationship of young Muslims to the Islamic tradition and how such individualization relates to broader changes in patterns of religious authority. I argue that young Muslims’ relationship to the Islamic tradition is not individualized in the sense of being disembedded from authorizing discourses and Islamic authorities, but that the objectifi cation of contemporary Islamic imaginaries entails both ‘individualization’ and ‘normativization’. In Chapter Six, I examine the ways in which people are made to respond to Islamic discourses and knowledges, and how they are subjectivized by means of a set of techniques of the self. Using ‘narratives of return’ as an ethnographic base, I analyse the ‘techniques of the self’ through which young Muslims construct themselves as pious moral subjects. Th e chapter also further probes the process of ‘individualization’, in particular in relation to how the relationships of interiority and exteriority, intention and action, individual choice and religious duty are made subject to debates and contestation. Th e chapter highlights how young Muslims’ religiosity is signifi cantly negotiated through discourses of ‘authenticity’ and ‘autonomy’ and associated regimes of subjectivation. Chapter Seven is less a conclusion than a theoretical elaboration of the key issues addressed throughout the book. Th e central question posed is whether young Muslims’ claims of a return to an authentic Islam represent a modern ‘invention of tradition’. Drawing on Asad’s notion of Islam as a discursive tradition, I defend a notion of tradition that does not oppose it to modernity and that encompasses continuity as well as change and reproduction as well as creativity. I subsequently question the tendency to see ‘individualization’ as the liberation of autonomous subjects from relations of authority and the construction of Muslim youths’ and women’s agency in terms of a stark opposition between choice and force as related to modernity /tradition. As part of this questioning process, I engage critically with the model of the autonomous subject that seems to underlie such a polarization and argue that the process of individualization can be read as the production of a particular kind of (post)modern subject rather than as the liberation of autonomous individuals from tradition.

CHAPTER ONE

SITUATING ISLAM IN NORWAY: ETHNOGRAPHIC CONTEXT AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

Muslims in Norway Th ere is no offi cial statistics registering religious faith or belonging in Norway. Based on immigration statistics, 2008 fi gures from Statistics Norway estimated the population of immigrants from Muslim countries and their descendants to be 163,000. 84,000 were registered as members of Muslim faith-communities.1 Most Muslims in Norway are either migrants (this category including labour migrants, asylum seekers and refugees) or descendants of migrants. Although migration to Norway from Muslim countries started comparatively late, it followed a pattern similar to the ‘Muslim migration cycle’ described for other West European countries (Alwall 1998; Cesari 1994; Kepel 1987; Leveau and Kepel 1988; Leveau 1990; Nielsen 1992; 1999; Opsal 1994). From the late 1960s male migrant workers (for the main part) started to arrive from Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey. A majority of the largest Muslim group, the Pakistanis, came from the rural Punjab area although some came from urban areas in Punjab and elsewhere. Of the Moroccans approximately 80 per cent were Berbers from the rural areas of northern Morocco in the vicinity of Al-Hoceima and Nador (Vogt 2000). A majority of the Turkish labour migrants came from the Konya area, and this migrant group also included quite a large number of Kurds. Th e labour migration to Norway from these three countries largely took the form of ‘chain migration’, in which pioneer migrant workers were joined by compatriots from the same areas as well as by spouses and children. Aft er the ban on labour migration introduced in 1975,

1 Th e most common way of estimating the number of Muslims in Norway is to look at immigration statistics in relation to the percentage of Muslims in a given country of emigration. Th ese statistics do not provide any information about how many of these people consider themselves to be Muslims, however, or the diverse ways of being Muslim that such identifi cations encompass. Furthermore, statistics relating to minority religions and immigration are generally contested as they oft en form the basis of competing political arguments. 16 chapter one the Muslim population was added to mainly by means of family reuni- fi cation and refugee movements from such countries as Bosnia, Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. In addition, there are smaller groups of Muslims from other countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Africa, as well as a modest number of converts (which has been estimated at approximately 900–1,000). Oslo has attracted a larger number of Muslim immigrants than other parts of the country. Figures from 2003 show that at the time 43 per cent of those who were previously categorized as non-Western immigrants in national statistics, this including descendants, lived in Oslo, Oslo having 11 per cent of the population of Norway as a whole (Melve et al. 2003). Th is group thus made up some 18 per cent of the city’s population. For some subgroups this concentration in Oslo was even more signifi cant with 80 per cent of the Pakistanis, for example, living in Oslo. Recent estimates indicate that approximately 6–7 per cent of Oslo’s inhabitants are members of a Muslim organization while a survey conducted among pupils in Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh grade showed that 17.6 per cent of Oslo pupils stated Islam to be their religion (Øia and Vestel 2007). Th e spatial distribution of immigrants in the city is closely related to existing socio-economic structuring and the bulk of Muslim immigrants, and non-Western immigrants in general, live in Oslo Centre (East) and the eastern suburbs (Blom 2002).2 Muslims have gradually become more visible in the eastern city centre with some thirty mosques and organizations concentrated here in 2007. While most mosques come in the shape of fl ats, loft s, basements, warehouses, old factories, converted schools or houses (Naguib 2001), purpose-built ones also exist. Th e fi rst purpose-built multifunctional mosque was inaugurated in 1994 and since then two more mosques have been raised in Oslo Centre (East); all three were founded by Pakistani Muslim communities. Th e Pakistani Barelwi movement,3 originating in rural Pakistan, has a strong presence for Pakistani Muslims in Norway and is represented by, among others, the largest mosque in Oslo, the Jamaat-e

2 Originally, immigrants settled in the traditional working-class neighbourhoods of the eastern inner city but with the current gentrifi cation of these areas there is a tendency for immigrants, who may also wish to buy something of their own and who need more space, to move out to the eastern suburbs where prices are generally lower (Blom 2002; Melve et al. 2003). 3 Th e Barelwi is a Sunni Islamic Sufi movement originating in the Indian subcontinent. situating islam in norway 17

Ahl-e Sunnat. In the tradition of the Deobandi reform movement,4 the Islamic Cultural Centre, the fi rst mosque established in Norway, is close to Jaamat-i-Islami (Irgan 2005; Larsen 1995) while the Tablighis have their own mosques as well as maintaining a presence in certain other ones (Leirvik 2006a).5 Among Turkish Muslims, the Diyanet have their own mosques as do the Süleymanci (Elgvin 2007) and the Milli Görus. Bosnians and Albanians set up their own mosques in the early 1990s. While there are some nationality-based mosques and organizations among Arabs and Africans, these tend to have a more international composition. Several politico-religious organizations also have a presence in Norway, notably the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn) and the Renaissance Party (Hizb Ennahda).6 Th e Sufi tradition has an important presence in particular in the Pakistani, Turkish and also some of the African mosques. Between 10 and 20 per cent of Muslims in Norway belong to the Shia tradition, this being present mainly in various Pakistani, Lebanese, Iraqi and Iranian mosques and organizations (Alyasan 2000; Kamalkhani 1988; Vogt 1995, 2000). Th e Ahmadiyya movement was among the fi rst to be established by Pakistanis in Norway and has an active high profi le mosque in Oslo.7 In the 1990s a number of new organizations were established that recruited members across ethnic, linguistic and doctrinal boundaries; some of these had ambitions to achieve a nationwide presence. Th e fi rst Muslim umbrella organization, Th e Muslim Defence Committee,8 was established in 1989 as a response to the crisis among European

4 Th e Deobandi reform movement was founded in Deoband, India in the 1860s. For an account of the Deobandi tradition in Norway, see Ahlberg 1990. 5 Tablighi Jamaat is a dawa movement founded by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas at the Indian subcontinent in 1927. According to Døving (2004), the Tablighi came from Sweden to Norway during the 1970s and attract mainly those with Pakistani and Moroccan backgrounds. 6 According to Vogt (2005), there are also a handful of people affi liated with such organizations as the Front Islamique du Salut, the Hizb al-Tahrir and the Hezbollah. In addition, radical Islamists have had a presence through the Islamic Vision group in Norway, founded by a leader of the Ansar al-Islam movement in Iraqi Kurdistan. While the organization does not exist anymore, the presence of ‘Mullah Krekar’ has animated debates about radical Islamism in Norwegian public debate and has led to severe challenges to both the Norwegian authorities and the legal system. 7 Th e Ahmadiyya, a worldwide religious movement that originated in Punjabi India in 1889, numbered around 1,500 members in Norway in 2010, according to their own fi gures. Orthodox Muslims tend to view the Ahmadi as heretical and non- Muslim. 8 According to Vogt (2000), it primarily united the Pakistani mosques. 18 chapter one

Muslims that the Rushdie aff air generated. Th e Islamic Information Association was established in 1989,9 joined in 1991 by the Islamic Women’s Group of Norway (IKN, Islamsk Kvinnegruppe Norge) as well as the Urtehagen Foundation, which runs several Muslim kindergartens, a Muslim primary school and a publishing company. In 1993 the Islamic Council of Norway, an umbrella organization that by 2006 gathered together around twenty-fi ve Muslim organizations found across the country, was established partly in relation to a dialogue initiative coming from the Church of Norway. In addition, the two Muslim youth and student organizations that are the focus of this book gathered young people from diff erent ethnic, linguistic and doctrinal backgrounds during this time.

Religious pluralism and the Norwegian state church system Norway is a social democratic welfare state with an established state church system, the Church of Norway. About 83 per cent of a total population of 4.4 million are members of this Lutheran State Church.10 Th e present Norwegian state church system goes back to 1536 when the Reformation, introduced by means of a decree made by the Danish king, established a new relationship between Church and State, this relationship depending on and promoting Protestant doctrines of society. Th e State and the king were perceived as being of ‘God’s grace’

9 In 1989 a branch of the Swedish Islamic Information Association (DIIF, Den Islamske Informasjonsforening) was established in Oslo. In 1993 this became independent. Until 1998 it was run by ‘ethnic Norwegian’ converts although young Muslims of the so called second generation gradually became more involved. DIIF in Oslo was initiated by Rabita, Th e Islamic Foundation, which was closely related to the Swedish Rabita branch because of annual conferences in Stockholm. DIIF publishes material on Islam in Norwegian, responding to an increased demand for Islamic information material, lectures and general information on Islam. Th e Islamic Foundation, as well as the Islamic Cultural Centre, also translates and distributes books published by the Islamic Federation of Student Organisations (IIFSO) that, according to Roald (2001), have had a huge infl uence on the religious and political development of Muslims in Europe, most importantly by making accessible the writings of writers associated with the Islamist trend such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Hassan al-Banna, Muhammed al-Ghazzali and Abu al-Ala Maududi. 10 To provide a comparison, only 3.7 per cent of the inhabitants were not members of the Church of Norway in 1960. Th e high rates of Church membership combined with the comparatively low proportion of people with a ‘belief in God’ means that a common form of religiosity in Norway could be characterized by the phrase ‘belonging without believing’ (Berger, Fokas, and Davie 2008). situating islam in norway 19 with the Church coming under the power of the king. Non-Lutherans were excluded entry from the country and baptism and confi rmation were compulsory for all inhabitants until 1912. Th e new democratic Constitution of 1814 changed the relationship between subjects and the Crown but maintained the state church system stating that “the Evangelical-Lutheran religion remains the public religion of the state” and that the Crown was still to be the head of the Church (Furseth and Repstad 2006). Despite this continuity, the nineteenth century also witnessed signifi cant shift s in terms of the concepts and practices relating to Church and State. It is not my intention here to provide a history of secularization or a ‘genealogy’ of ‘the secular’ in Norway, however. Th e shift s in Church–State relations from the moment of the Reformation up until today and the extension and dynamics of ‘secularization’ in this period is a highly contested matter which has been accounted for in divergent ways depending, among other things, on the importance accorded to diff erent ideas and actors. Th orkildsen (1997) traces shift s in conceptualizations of ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ in Norway from the Reformation, through pietism and on to enlightenment philosophy. Th e political struggle of the lay Lutheran movement (represented most notably by the Hauge movement in the early nineteenth century), laid the ground for religious pluralization in Norway, he argues. Simul- taneously, liberal ideals concerning the ‘freedom of religion’ and ‘human rights’ increasingly found their way into public debates from the nineteenth century onwards. Th e religious monopoly of the Lutheran State Church was thus challenged both by other ‘dissenting’ churches and by lay movements as well as by liberal ideals promoted by politicians and representatives within the Church itself (Th orkildsen 1997). In 1845 an act allowing Christian dissenters to practice their faith was passed by Parliament, thus introducing a distinction between citizenship and religious membership. In the 1880s non-Christian religions as well as Catholic orders were allowed to organize themselves although the so called Jesuit paragraph, banning Jesuits from entering the realm, was not removed until 1956, aft er Norway had signed and ratifi ed the European Convention on Human Rights. Th e twentieth century was marked by struggles between what are oft en referred to as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ tendencies within the Church of Norway, these struggles being focused most importantly on the legitimacy of historical approaches to the Bible. Th is century was also marked by the growing infl uence of humanist ideas such as those propagated by the Norwegian Humanist Association (founded in 1956) 20 chapter one in particular which,11 in addition to developing ‘secular’ alternatives to the major Christian rites of passage, challenged the position of Lutheran Christianity in schools and even its constitutional foundation. Norway’s commitment to various international conventions was also a signifi - cant factor in the gradual extension of the freedom of religion in the twentieth century. In 1964 the paragraph in the Constitution establishing Lutheranism as the public religion of the state was supplemented with the additional provision that “All inhabitants of the Realm shall enjoy free exercise of religion”. What Th orkildsen (1997) refers to as “the Nordic pattern”, the combining of a state Church with the ideal of freedom of religion, was thus established. In light of these principles, and with the growing religious pluralism that resulted from post-war immigration and globalization, particular arrangements were gradually developed for ‘faith and life-stance communities’. By means of the laws on faith communities (1969) and on fi nancial support for faith communities (1981) every religious and non-religious life-stance community in Norway became entitled to, in principle, the same amount of fi nancial support per member as the State Church receives for each of its members, an arrangement that is meant to compensate for the fact that the budget of the Church of Norway is still integrated to a signifi cant degree in municipal and state budgets. Th e way in which the state handles the situation of having a state Church in an increasingly pluralized religious context consequently tends to transform minority religions into state-supported ‘membership religions’ that in order to be eligible for fi nancing have to satisfy certain requirements (including not representing a threat to public order).12 Despite this institutionalization of religious plurality

11 Th e Norwegian Humanist Association is considered to represent one life-stance among others and has from 1981 onwards been covered by the same public funding as minority religions. 12 Due not least to such structurations, membership in registered mosques and Muslim communities increased signifi cantly from the 1980s onwards (from about 10 per cent of those with a Muslim family background in 1980 to 50 per cent in 1990 and between 60 and 70 per cent in 2001) (Leirvik 2006a). In addition there are several unregistered Islamic organizations. In comparison, one may note that only about 10 per cent of those of Muslim background in France are registered in Muslim organizations where there is no equivalent state funding accorded to faith communities. Th e structuring of Islam as a ‘membership’ religion has contributed to giving mosques and organizations a certain bureaucratic structure. As religious communities receiving state support, they are instructed to perform certain tasks such as registering membership and writing applications and annual reports (Vogt 2000). Th e state has also given mosques certain rights that otherwise belong to the State Church, such as the right to conduct marriages and funerals. situating islam in norway 21

(which, one could argue, also provided new means for state power to govern religious minorities) the existence of a Lutheran State Church has continued to privilege the Lutheran religion in some senses. For instance, the Christian objectives clause in public state schools has obliged primary schools to help give pupils a Christian and moral upbringing (cf. Chapter Five), and a paragraph in the Constitution has required half of the members of the State Council to “confess to the public religion of the State”. With the new ‘Church agreement’ that was adopted by Parliament in 2008 the Norwegian state church system is at present up for a thorough revision. Th is revision responds to debates that are by no means new, but that have nevertheless intensifi ed in the context of the increasing religious pluralization and secularization of society. Th e debates over mandatory religious education, the Christian objectives clause in the laws regulating the state school system and the paragraph in the Constitution that establishes Christianity as the Norwegian polity’s offi cial value foundation and the Lutheran State Church as its institutional form have been particularly fi erce (Lindholm 2008).13 Challenges to the state church system have come both from those who wish to secure the freedom of the Church from the constraints of state power and from those who base their arguments on the need for a secular (perceived as ‘neutral’) state to ensure ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ between citizens. Support for the system has been expressed by those who fear that the Church would become more ‘conservative’ if it was freed from state control, by those concerned with the role of religion in national identity and by religious minorities who fear that a Church–State separation would weaken the general legitimacy of religion in the public sphere. Muslims, like Christians and secularists of various kinds, diff er on the position they adopt vis-à-vis the major controversies surrounding the state church system. Th e Islamic Council of Norway has supported moderate reforms rather than the full disestablishment advocated by the Humanist Association and the non-Lutheran Protes- tant Churches. As Leirvik (2009) notes, their arguments for the maintaining of this position have been various: fears of mounting secularization and the relegation of religion to the private sphere (with France being invoked as a negative example); an emphasis on the role

13 Th e emphasis in the Norwegian school system has been on public schooling for all and the private school sector is very small. A Muslim private school was established in 2002 aft er considerable debate but was closed down in 2004 mainly due to internal problems. 22 chapter one of religion in collective identities; a concern for morality supported by public religion; and the fi nancial benefi ts of the current system.

Nation state, religion and secularism Th e very existence of a state Church implies that the Church of Norway has a privileged position but it also suggests that the autonomy of the Church and the extent of state control over it have been subject to contestation. Th ese contestations have in recent years focused particularly on gender and sexuality and to what extent the state should regulate religious practice and religious organizations that contradict the principle of ‘gender equality’ [likestilling] and non-discrimination in relation to gender or sexual grounds.14 From the 1970s onwards the Social Democrats, in particular, have explicitly promoted a Church policy supporting the ‘liberal wing’ of the State Church, calling for an ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ church and calling for more female ministers and bish- ops and (more recently) also gay ministers (Roald 2004). To what extent and how such a policy should be adopted also towards minority religions, or whether this would infringe on rights to religious freedom has been a recurrent issue in public debate. In line with the argument for ‘checking’ conservative trends, some Muslim politicians have also expressed the view that the state should exercise ‘some control’ over religious practices (Leirvik 2009) while others have opposed what they see as illegitimate state control aimed at reshaping religion according to liberal values and sensibilities. Ongoing debates in Norway signifi cantly thematize the relationship between state, nation and religion. Although a white paper on Church– State relations from 2007–08 reaches the conclusion that “one is just as Norwegian and as good a citizen if one belongs to a diff erent faith or life-stance community [to that of the Evangelical Lutherans]”, Protestant Christianity continues to signifi cantly shape the construction of Norwegian national identity. In the 1990s, a number of politicians and religious leaders reasserted the view that the Norwegian nation, and ‘Norwegianness’, is defi ned by the Christian tradition of the country (Brekke 2004)15 and/or that Christianity off ers some ‘fundamental

14 Th e law concerning equality between sexes, which was introduced in 1978, exempts faith communities from the claims and regulations relating to this aspect; this exemption has been much disputed. 15 Th e sentiment that Christianity is central to a nation’s heritage remains quite common in Europe in general, not just in Norway (Asad 2006). situating islam in norway 23 values’ of importance to the nation. Such constructions of national identity have been articulated in quite diff erent ways, though. Th e populist Progress Party, which in 2006 grew to become the country’s largest party according to polls, has expressed the fear that the values of Muslim immigrants threaten the unity of the nation. According to Leirvik (2006b), there has also been a growing political alliance (with shared rhetoric) between the Christian Right and the populist political Right articulated around, among other things, anti-Islamic discourses, this development tending to take the form of Christian nationalism. Th e Social Democrats, on the other hand, have presented Christianity as an integration ideology – as the glue in a multi-religious context in other words. Policy documents on religious education prior to the introduction of the school subject ‘Knowledge of Christianity with Information about Religion and Life-stances’ in 1997 demonstrate this approach as they present Christianity as part of the Norwegian people’s “common and unifi ed ways [of being]”, equating Christianity, civil virtues and national identity (Borchgrevink 2002c). In these latter formulations of the relationship between Christianity, the Church and the nation, the concept of ‘religion’ increasingly comes to be conceptualized in terms of ‘identity’ and ‘values’. Although the entanglement of Christianity and national identity is not a new phenomenon in Norway, its various contemporary forms are in a signifi cant sense reactions to religious pluralization (and Islam, in particular) and processes of globalization (Brekke 2004). Debates about whether the paragraph in constitution establishing the Evangelical-Lutheran religion as the public religion of the state should be replaced by a ‘values paragraph’ specifying the common value foundations of the Norwegian polity, and whether, for example, “the Humanist heritage”, Human Rights or religious traditions other than the Christian one should be included in such a paragraph, demonstrate the intimate relationship between eff orts to reassert and reformulate national identity and concepts and practices of religion and secularism.16 Despite the commitment of the Norwegian state to protect religious freedoms and to the ‘equal treatment’ of citizens regardless of their religion, there have been a number of controversies around particular

16 Th e Church agreement adopted by Parliament in 2008 replaces Paragraph 2 with a formulation asserting that “the basic values remain our Christian and humanist heritage” and that the constitution shall ensure democracy, the constitutional state and human rights. 24 chapter one minority religious practices. Given the particular religious and secular formations outlined above, Norwegian Muslims have forged a range of alliances with representatives from the majority religion, other religious communities and the secularist humanist association as part of their struggle against majority practices, laws and regulations that they see as limiting religious freedom. Based on her analysis of how Muslims struggle for the right to practice their religion (with respect to, for example, halal meat, adhan (the call to prayer) and the KRL religious education subject) Borchgrevink (2002c: 21–22, my translation) has noted how the particular form which secularity takes in Norway: provides a confi guration which is hard to understand: a religious indif- ference which simultaneously allows Christian interests to impose themselves relatively unrestrictedly; something unprincipled and not refl ected upon, preventing predictability and maybe even accommodating a mixture of arrogance and sloppiness on the part of the majority. With regard to how such issues as halal meat, adhan and to some extent the hijab have been dealt with both legally and/or in public debate it is striking how these issues have tended to be treated not in terms of ‘religious freedom’ but in terms of Norwegian civil laws regulating things like ‘health’ and ‘security’ (Borchgrevink 2002c; Gressgård 2005a, 2010). Th is may be seen as a result of what Borchgrevink refers to as “religious indiff erence”, “arrogance” or “sloppiness” or, in more structural terms, as Gressgård argues, a consequence of the ethnocentrism in Norwegian integration policies more generally and the way in which these particularize the Other and universalize ‘Us’ (see Chapter Four). Also, when Muslim religious practices are discussed as questions of ‘religious freedom’ in public debate, this freedom increasingly tends to be constructed in opposition to, and ‘weighed’ against, other concerns ranging from national unity and Norwegianness, to protecting women and children, to defending so called ‘liberal values’. Th ese debates about ‘freedom of religion’ bring into play a range of dichotomies opposing Us to Th em, individual to society, science to belief and modernity to tradition. As can be seen from this short discussion, the concepts and practices of ‘religion’ in Norway have changed importantly over time and continue to be (re)defi ned within shift ing social and historical contexts and power relationships. Signifi cantly, religion has increasingly come to be conceived of as a distinct domain of individual belief, as well as of individual and collective identities and values. Asad (2002) has argued that, today, eff orts at defi ning religion as diff erent from economy, law, situating islam in norway 25 science, politics and so forth converge with diff erent strategies for the confi nement or defence of religion and that these are used to “discipline” or criticize Islam and other religious traditions that are seen as not conforming to such a line of diff erentiation. From this perspective, diff erentiation between (what counts as) ‘religion’ and ‘politics’ etc. emerges as something continuously shaped through discourses, institutions and power struggles rather than as an ‘emancipation’ from the controlling power of religion. Th e secularist discourse of ‘emancipation’ through diff erentiation shapes contemporary reactions to the new Muslim presence in Norway and energizes charges that Islam is ‘incompatible’ with Western secularism precisely because it fails to distinguish ‘religion’ from ‘politics’. Furthermore, this distinction serves to produce Muslim subject positions in that those who speak publicly of Islam as ‘a way of life’ that surpasses the ‘spiritual domain’ and which includes cultural, economic and political fi elds have on several occasions been accused of being ‘Islamists’ or ‘fundamentalists’.17 What religion is, and where its boundaries should properly be, is thus negotiated in contemporary Norway through debates about Church–State relations, about religious pluralism and about ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ expressions of minority religions.

Towards an anthropology of Islam in Europe

Muslim roots and routes While ‘the anthropology of Islam’ has long been associated with the ethnographic region of the Middle East (Abu-Lughod 1989; Asad 1986; Marranci 2008), anthropologists have for quite some time contributed to understanding Islam as it developed in a variety of locations around

17 When dealing with this question in the MSS magazine Tankevekkende (2001), Yasir Ift ikhar opposes the ‘confi nement’ of Islam to a ‘religious sphere’ and concludes that Islam is more than a religion in the usual sense of the word: “Islam is described as a ‘Di`n’ by God in the holy Koran. Th is Arabic word is best understood as ‘the complete way of life’ because Islam includes the spiritual, intellectual, social, cultural, economic and political fi elds. It is therefore more comprehensive than what is understood by the concept of religion, which is only a part of the spiritual fi eld of Islam. We can thus confi rm that Islam is the only ‘Di`n’, ‘the complete way of life’, in this universe”. In a similar vein, Tariq Ramadan, a leading Muslim intellectual in Europe, has argued that it is not without complications to call Islam a religion. Since Islam is not only about the relationship between men and the Sacred (God) but also includes “les éléments du mode de vie, de la civilisation et de la culture”, Islam seems to surpass the domain defi ned by the modern term ‘religion’ (1994: 42). 26 chapter one the world. A hallmark of anthropological approaches has precisely been the willingness to study Islam within diff erent local contexts (Manger 1992, 1999) and to focus on the diff erent religious styles that develop as Islam is embedded in local social structures and symbolic systems (see, for example, Boddy 1989; Geertz 1968; Lambek 1993; Rosen 1984). Th is approach has much to be said for it, in particular in a climate where generalized and non-contextualized statements about ‘Islam’ and ‘the Muslim world’ are central to the construction of ‘friends and enemies’ in international politics. But in a context of increased mobility of people, goods and ideas combined with the sometimes vio- lent imposition of local, regional and national boundaries, the idea of ‘the local’ has become increasingly problematic. Th e social spaces created by post-war Muslim immigration to Europe aptly exemplify a development in people’s life-worlds where, to quote Geertz on diversity in the contemporary world: “seriously disparate approaches to life are becoming scrambled together in ill-defi ned expanses, social spaces whose edges are unfi xed, irregular, and diffi cult to locate” (Geertz 1994: 464). An important challenge for the emerging anthropology of Islam in Europe is, thus, to develop theoretical approaches in which Islam may be theorized in relation to the internal diversity found among Muslims in localities produced by international migration and globalization and in relation to the multifaceted local, national and transnational imaginaries and networks that link people across localities. Addressing this challenge, two partly overlapping major reorientations came to impact signifi cantly on studies of Muslims in Europe: the increasing concern in the social sciences with phenomena related to ‘globalization’ and ‘transnationalism’ and the broad anti-essentialist critique which within the fi eld of migration studies was importantly infl uenced by cultural studies, feminist and postcolonial theories and post-structuralism and postmodernism more generally. Th ese reorientations marked signifi cant changes in underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions about mobility, displacement and identity, these being expressed through a shift in spatial metaphors from ‘roots’ to ‘routes’ (Cliff ord 1997; Hall 1995) and ‘uprootedness’ to ‘deterritorialization’ (Appadurai 1996; Deleuze and Guattari 1983; Malkki 1992). Th e critique of what Malkki (1992) refers to as the “metaphysics of sedentarism” in modernist approaches to migration challenged the underlying identifi cation of place, community and culture expressed through metaphors of rootedness /uprootedness and guest /host situating islam in norway 27 relationships.18 Migration, instead, increasingly came to be seen in terms of a culturally creative process, giving birth to hybridized spaces (conceptualized as diasporas, borderlands, interstices, third spaces and heterotopias) and identities (conceptualized as hybridity, bricolage, creolization, mestizaje, mongrelization, mélange, montage and third cultures) (cf. Hannerz 2002). Cultural diff erence at the margins of society (e.g. multicultural youth groups) was reconceptualized as a site of creativity and resistance (to capital, the State, racism or majority hegemonies) rather than simply as a sign of exclusion from a ‘centre’. With this shift , youth cultures in (global multi-ethnic) cities became privileged sites for exploring the impact of globalization on the cultural identities of migrants. In particular within the so called cultural studies approach (spearheaded by the Centre of Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham) attention was paid to the ways in which interstitial spaces allowed diff erent aspects of popular culture such as food, cinema, dance and music to fuse and mix in new and interesting ways. Th ese reorientations and new perspectives also had an impact on Scandinavian studies of immigrant youth cultures (see, for example, Ålund 1992 on Sweden; Vestel 2003, 2004 on Norway and Andersson, Lithman and Sernhede 2005 on Scandinavia and Europe more broadly). Th ese approaches have also been infl uential within research on Muslim youth in Europe. While research in the 1970s and 1980s on Muslims in the West had focused on Muslim migrants, attention became increasingly directed towards the new generations in the late 1980s (Marranci 2008). With his 1987 book Les Banlieues de l’Islam, Gilles Kepel was among the fi rst to write about the ‘re-Islamization’ of the young beurs in France as “the birth of French Islam”.19 While much work on Muslim youth in the 1990s remained within the conceptual apparatus of the sociology of migration (describing young Muslims as torn between two cultures and re-Islamization primarily in terms of

18 Th e ‘metaphysics of sedentarism’ refers to the profoundly territorializing tendency to identify peoples and cultures with particular pieces of land and to isomorphi- cally relate people and place to nation (Malkki 1992). Because of this perspective children and youths of immigrant background were oft en described as undergoing identity crises and as suff ering from the predicament of being suspended ‘between two cultures’, the ‘home-land culture’ and the ‘host-land culture’ (see, for example, Andersson, Lithman and Sernhede 2005 for a critique of this perspective). 19 ‘Beurs’ means Arabs in verlan, a slang and youth language involving the inversion of syllables used by youth in French suburbs. ‘Les beurs’ is used as a general term for so called second-generation immigrants of North African origin in France. 28 chapter one the ‘integration’ process), Vertovec and Rogers’ edited Muslim European Youth (1998) was important in introducing an anti-essentialist approach to the study of identity, community and religion with respect to Muslim youth in particular. Premised on the conceptual language of multiplicity, hybridity and cultural creativity, it challenged accounts of closed and impenetrable systems and allowed instead for ideas of permeabil- ity and transformation in Muslim identities and practices. In a similar way Mandaville, in his infl uential book Muslim Youth in Europe (2002: 222), argued that to capture the varied and complicated relationships of Muslim youth to Islam and the emergence of a ‘Muslim youth culture’ in Europe, analysis should be reoriented from a focus on stability and continuity towards fl ux and disjunction. In her study of identity among young British Pakistani Muslims in London, Jacobson (1998) critically engaged theories of fl uid, hybrid and malleable ‘postmodern identities’. While pointing out that the second generations’ negotiation of identity was likely to feel like a “peculiarly open-ended and uncertain project” (Jacobson 1998: 79), Jacobson warned against overlooking the signifi - cance of externally imposed restrictions on identity-formation and of assuming that young Muslims necessarily wish to challenge ethnic and religious traditions. Th eories of globalization, transnationalism and diaspora also came to have a signifi cant impact on the understanding of Islamic traditions and Muslims in Europe (Ahmed and Donnan 1994; Allievi and Nielsen 2003; Beyer 2001; Fischer and Abedi 1990; Grillo 2004; Mandaville 2004; Turner 1991; Vertovec 2003). A number of studies focused on the forms of identity and community that developed among Muslims in Europe within this context of global connections and transnational processes. ‘Muslims in Europe’ were, among other things, conceptualized as constituting ‘diasporas’ (Cesari 2000; Saint-Blancat 1997; Werbner 2000, 2002a) and as living in “the new but quintessential borderland” (AlSayyad and Castells 2002)20 and Islam in Europe as

20 On the concept of ‘borderland’ AlSayyad and Castells refer to Gupta and Ferguson (1992: 18) who write that: “Th e term does not indicate a fi xed topographical site between two other fi xed locales (nations, societies, cultures), but an interstitial zone of displacement and deterritorialization that shapes the identity of the hybridized subject”. Donnan (2001) has similarly suggested the term ‘borderland’ to refer to intercultural spaces which exist not only at the edges of the nation state but anywhere cultures meet. According to Donnan, borderlands are “zones of cultural overlap characterized by a mixing of cultural styles. Th ey are liminal spaces, simultaneously dangerous and sites of creative cultural production open to cultural play and experimentation as well situating islam in norway 29

“travelling Islam” (Pieterse 1997) and as an “emerging Th ird Space” (AlSayyad and Castells 2002). Referring to Bhabha’s (1994) theorizing of ‘third spaces’ AlSayyad and Castells suggest that Islam in Europe can be seen as an interstitial zone of displacement and deterritorialization in which diff erent cultural practices transform each other to shape new cultural forms and hybrid identities. Concluding his essay “Diaspora, transnationalism and Islam”, Vertovec (2003: 324) argues that there is much weight to the argument that transnational dimensions of Islam have been radically aff ected by today’s globalized socio-economic and political conditions alongside the increasingly worldwide dispersal of Muslim communities linked by technologically advanced communication and media. Th ese conditions have presented Muslims with both opportunities and predicaments, these challenging their identity as Muslims and their ways of enacting this identity. With the focus on globalization and transnationalism, attention has also been paid to emerging transnational public spheres, transnational infrastructures of communication and the emergence of global Muslim identities (Eickel- man and Anderson 1999; Eickelman and Salvatore 2002; Mandaville 2004; Pieterse 1997). Several works have tried to capture the emergence of a “global infrastructure for the maintenance, reproduction and dissemination of Islam” (Mandaville 2004) and the emergence of a transnational or global Muslim public sphere (Bowen 2004a; Mandaville 2004; Salvatore 2004). Th e broad anti-essentialist critique of terms such as culture, identity and ethnicity and their redefi nition as more open, fl uid and contested and as socially constructed and the insistence on the importance of transnationalism and globalization certainly marks an advance in conceptualizing emergent forms and modes of expression among Muslim youth and importantly challenges popular understandings of Islam in Europe as a tradition that migrants ‘transplant’ from the ‘home country’ to the ‘host country’ and as something that the ‘second generation’ either reproduce or abandon. However, we also need to consider some

as domination and control” (Donnan 2001: 1290). Similarly, Pieterse (1997) refers to ‘borderlands’ as sites where the formation of Muslim culture is shaped by intercultural cohabitation in which there is a dialogue between the local context and the Islamic paradigm. A problem with such notions of ‘borderland’ is similar to the problem of ‘hybridity’ (cf. Caglar 1997) in that it seems either to assume that there exist such fi xed locales as nations, societies and cultures that are not borderlands or that all spaces may to some extent be characterized as borderlands since no ‘culture’ or ‘society’ can be wholly homogenous and self-contained. 30 chapter one theoretical objections to these reconceptualizations. Th e initial ‘cheer- fulness’ of theories stressing mobility and the decentred subject has been challenged on the basis that mobility needs to be theorized in terms of (penetrating) power (see, for example, Asad 1993; Brah 1996; Friedman 2002) or a “power geometry” (Massey 1994). Furthermore, the celebration of the contemporary cultural predicament of increased mobility as something enabling creative human agency (see, for example, Cliff ord 1988) has been criticized for overlooking that it is also by means of geographical and psychological movement that modern power inserts itself into pre-existing structures (Asad 1993). Th ere is thus a risk of overstating fl ux, fl uidity and creativity, of overlooking social and symbolic structures of power and their reproduction and of romanticizing ethnic minorities and other ‘marginalized’ groups as sites of resistance and cultural innovation. In the context of this book, I draw on Massey’s understanding of globalization as the processes of movement and circulation by which diff erent kinds of, for example, social, economic, cultural, and religious relationships are stretched over space (Massey 1994). Such relationships establish and are established by the (far from frictionless) transnational fl ows of people, ideas and goods and are imbued with meaning and symbolism, as well as with power.21 Conceptualizing globalization in this way does not imply a historical rupture or that this phenomenon should be considered as ‘new’. Rather than making such assumptions, one should probably make sense of how diff erent fl ows and the stretch- ing out of relationships are enabled by, for example, new communication technologies and disenabled by, for example, international visa regulations in a variety of ways in diff erent socio-historical contexts and the diverse eff ects that are thus produced. A question addressed in this book is precisely about the eff ects of particular processes of movement and circulation on religious identities and practices. Massey’s stress on the “power geometry” of globalization importantly brings

21 Whereas the terms ‘transnational’ and ‘global’ are oft en used interchangeably, the notion of transnationalism is sometimes used to indicate a particular form of globalization that illuminates migrants’ practices of building social fi elds across so called countries of origin and settlement (Basch, Schiller and Blanc-Szanton 1994). In the context of this book, the term ‘transnational’ will not be restricted to this homeland– host-land paradigm, referring instead more broadly to imaginaries, relationships and social fi elds that are built across geographic, cultural and political borders (Brah 1992). situating islam in norway 31 attention to the fact that people are placed in distinct ways in relation to transnational fl ows and interconnections: Diff erent social groups have distinct relationships to this anyway diff erentiated mobility: some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate fl ows and movement; others don’t; some are more on the receiving end of it than others; some are eff ectively imprisoned by it. (Massey 1994: 149) A further reservation of particular relevance to the study of Muslims in Europe should be noted with regard to how mobility, change, fl uidity, mixture and openness are oft en constructed in hierarchical contrast to an assumed category of ‘reactionary’ or ‘fundamentalist’ ethnic and religious movements (cf. Asad 1993; Kaplan 1996; Mahmood 1996a, 1996b). One instance of this is provided by Eriksen’s Ambivalence and Fundamentalism (1999) where he suggests that so called second generation immigrants are faced with three kinds of options with respect to identity-formation: pure identities, hyphenated identities or Creole identities. Eriksen characterizes ‘pure identities’ as a “puritan and traditionalist choice”, one off ered by “conservative religious and identity-politicians”. Th ese, Eriksen writes, “neutralize the chaos that characterizes the surroundings and frees the individual from ambivalence and impossible dilemmas”, they “defi ne clear-cut boundaries, defi ne rules for behaviour and prohibit negotiation of values and morals” and they are “means to acquiring a positive self-image”. Th e result of such ‘pure identities’, however: is both a lack of integration and big personal frustrations, because the pure identities must be experienced as a straitjacket when they are to be acted out in modern, culturally mixed surroundings that celebrate the individual’s infi nite options of choice. (Eriksen 1999: 19) Eriksen does not specify which kinds of movements would fi t into his defi nition of ‘pure identities’ but he decries the development of such identities among immigrants to Norway who were “not much occupied with belonging and cultural identity when they came here” and had “a relaxed attitude to their religion, which they practiced without making a big issue of it” but who, driven by the realization that they were not being treated as equals, were “tempted by pure identities” and reacted with “cultural puritanism and identity politics”. In contrast, Eriksen’s creolized Muslims “can for instance be Muslims and drink beer and eat roast pork” and “they go to the mosque one day and to a disco the next” (Eriksen 1999: 19). I agree with Eriksen that the 32 chapter one relationship between purity and impurity and closure and openness is a signifi cant aspect of identity processes. However, I believe that a sche- matic distinction between ‘pure’ and ‘mixed’ identities and a generalized understanding of the experiences such identities engender, the forms of integration they off er and the factors they ‘respond to’ provide only limited help for understanding the complexities involved in, for example, a phenomenon such as religious revitalization among Muslim youth in Oslo. Most importantly, it does not pay suffi cient attention to the modern forms of power and regimes of subjectivation associated with the celebration of the individual’s infi nite options with regard to choice. Eriksen’s approach, and in particular his suggestion that someone suff ering from “identity hypochondria” may eventually seek out a “mullah, a novelist, a professor, or a sex-partner” to recover, seems to take for granted a particular subject form (which could be glossed as liberalist and secular) where the individual is somehow detached from memberships, values and capacities and remains outside any particular framework of moral questions or discursive tradition (cf. Asad 2003; Brown 2006; Larsen 1999; Gressgård 2010; Gressgård and Jacobsen 2006; van der Veer 1997).

Social imaginaries, the nation state and the politics of identity In order to theorize the complex spaces that young Muslims inhabit, I draw on the notions of ‘social imaginaries’ (Appadurai 1996; Taylor 2002)22 and ‘imagined diasporas’ (Werbner 2002), as developed in Chapter Th ree. Th e main objective here is to describe how young Muslims “imagine the categories, collectivities and social values that they feel affi liated with or distance themselves from” (Gullestad 2006a: 9) and how these imaginaries are enacted and actualized through cultural performance and organizational mobilization. Social imaginaries gives us a sense of who we are, how we fi t together, how we got where we are and what we might expect from each other when carrying

22 Th is notion of ‘imaginaries’ draws on Anderson’s (1991) notion of ‘imagined communities’, on Werbner’s (2002a) notion of ‘imagined diasporas’ and on Taylor’s (2004) notion of ‘social imaginaries’, as well as on Appadurai’s (1996) elaboration of the importance of ‘imagination’ in the construction of contemporary identities where the nexus between media and migration provides a productive and positive instability in the creation of identities in that it allows people to ‘imagine’ communities that are not locally based. To say that communities are imagined is not to say that they are ‘just’ imaginaries, though, as imagined communities are also materialized in, and underpinned by, social institutions, relationships and practices. situating islam in norway 33 out collective practices. Social imaginaries are ‘normative’ in the sense that they suggest what is good, just and desirable. Th ey also relate to particular pasts and visions of the present as well as projecting particular futures. Although the mobility of people, capital, ideas, media and technology (Appadurai’s (1996) fi ve ‘scapes’) enables people to imagine themselves beyond the limits of the local, people are not free to ‘move’ or relate imaginatively to spaces simply in any way they want. Th e extensions of spaces are variously defi ned – their limits variously imposed, transgressed and reset (Asad 1993: 8). Th e main challenge is, therefore, not to determine whether young Muslims ‘choose’ ‘pure’ or ‘hybrid’ identities but to explore how the social imaginaries in terms of which they understand their identities and their place in the world are shaped by the complex power geometries of the contemporary world. Th e nation state, along with the idea of a national people, has been the central social imaginary in modernity. Whereas some scholars seem to suggest that international migration, transnationalism and globalization both refl ect and contribute to the disempowering of the nation state (Appadurai 1996) others detail the ways in which the nation state is currently responding to, adapting to and collaborating with the broader processes at work in what is commonly referred to as globalization (Ong 1999). While it is not my intention to address these questions at a general level, I believe that in fi elds such as immigration, and when it comes to structuring the conditions of existence of young Muslims in Norway, the nation state, although challenged on several accounts, continues to play a crucial role. Modern nation states remain one of the most important powers organizing and authorizing spaces today, defi ning, among other things, people’s mobility in the world, who are members or not of national ‘imagined communities’ and people’s rights and duties as citizens. Islamic traditions and Muslim identities while situated within migratory movements and processes of globalization are also made and unmade in the context of modern nation states and their ways of coping with diff erence. Indeed, while researchers have become increasingly occupied with deconstructing essentialist notions of identity, community and culture, the political arenas of European nation states seem increasingly to be constructed around struggles involving group identities and diff erences of various sorts related to, for example, race, ethnicity, gender, culture and religion. Th e various ways in which European nation states create, respond to and seek to discipline cultural and religious diff erence has been 34 chapter one extensively treated in the literature, not least in relation to such concepts as multiculturalism, citizenship, recognition, representation and identity politics. Research on Islam in Europe has importantly problematized how various Muslims groups mobilize to obtain recognition and rights within the framework of the nation state, focusing on the conditions that structure the possibilities for obtaining such recognition and rights in diff erent European public spaces (Asad 2003; Baumann 1999; Cesari and McLoughlin 2005; Hunter 2002; Jonker and Amiraux 2006; Modood, Triandafyllidou and Zapata-Barrero 2006; Shadid and Koningsveld 1996). Young Norwegian Muslims’ quest for public recognition and representation, their concern with securing a space for and rights to religious practice and their desire to be treated as full citizens involve a politicization of religious identity that I will investigate in light of theories about ‘identity politics’ and ‘the politics of recognition’.23 I understand identity politics, in line with Calhoun (1994: 21), as collective and public struggles that involve both ‘claiming’ certain identities, on the one hand, and questioning and refusing imposed or prescribed identities, on the other hand.24 My analysis of the identity politics of young Muslims in Chapter Four counters liberal assumptions that identity politics necessarily confl icts with the process of ‘integration’. Engaging critically with both liberal and communitarian accounts of identity politics, I seek to explore how young Muslims

23 I draw on the work of Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Iris Marion Young and Craig Calhoun in particular. My analysis is also informed by anthropological perspectives on the formation of ethnic groups and boundaries and the critique provided by these of the essentialist understandings of identity and culture that underlie much current theorizing about recognition and multiculturalism (cf. Turner 1994b). 24 In contrast, Fraser (1998, 2003) distinguishes between what she calls ‘the politics of identity’ and ‘the politics of diff erence’. Th is is an important distinction to Fraser as she sees the politics of identity as a strategy tending to reinforce restrictive identities rather than one allowing for a multitude of crosscutting diff erences. Whereas the politics of identity may be vital in challenging cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect, it also tends to essentialize diff erences between groups in ways that simultaneously place important restrictions on the behaviour of individual group members. As has been noted by, for example, Yuval-Davis (1997), such restrictions tend to be more forcefully imposed on women, who are oft en constructed as symbolic as well as biological guarantors of the reproduction of the identities in question (of a nation, an ethnic group, a religion). In contrast to this, Fraser evokes a ‘politics of diff erence’ that resists (imposed) social identities such as those of gender, ethnicity etc., in so far as these are seen as restricting and normalizing diff erence. As Calhoun (1994) notes, this distinction is not a clear-cut one as the operations of claiming and deconstructing identities tend to coexist and to inform one another. situating islam in norway 35 are inserted into specifi c economic, political and cultural conditions and the ways in which this insertion structures the politicization of Muslim identities and practices within the space of the nation state. While the identity politics of young Muslims should not be seen as expressing a predefi ned collective identity, but rather as performatively producing ‘a unique group identity’, the particular form their identity politics comes to take is shaped by the fact that this is articulated within an Islamic discursive tradition. Chapter Four therefore investigates how ‘diff erence’ is produced and negotiated in Norwegian social imaginaries related to ‘immigration’ and ‘Islam’ and in the everyday lives of young Muslims; it also examines the particular historically situated concepts and practices that are the vehicles of contemporary Muslim identity politics.

Islam as discursive tradition Since the critique provided by Orientalism (Said 1978) set in motion a wider refl ection about essentialist representations of Islam in the West, developments in world politics where Islam tends to be constructed as a monolithic opposite to ‘the West’ have made anti-essentialist critiques more pertinent than ever. In the aft ermath of 9/11, Said (2002) relaunched the suggestion made by Al-Azmeh (1996), and before him El-Zien (1977), that we speak about Islams rather than Islam, always specifying which kind and for during which particular time we are speaking about (Said 2002: 1). In Al-Azmeh’s words: “there are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it” (1996: 1). Baumann (1999) characterized Al-Azmeh’s contention as “the only safe starting point” if we wish to avoid a reifi cation and an essentialization of Islam that locks people into false alternatives and pits reifi ed and essentialized communities against each other. I agree with Al-Azmeh that “pre- sumptions of Muslim cultural homogeneity and continuity do not correspond to social reality” (1996: 4) and that the essentialism on which culturalist understandings of Islam rests should be challenged, at least in an academic context; I also, however, wish to challenge the strategy of pluralization as a way of countering the problem of essentialization. Pluralizing categories has become a common strategy as part of a widespread critique of essentialism in the social sciences. Th ere has been a move from feminism to feminisms, from modernity to 36 chapter one modernities, from woman to women and from Islam to Islams.25 Following Fuss (1990), I will argue that this strategy is neither necessary nor suffi cient since it seems to displace rather than counter the problem of essentialism. Speaking about Islam in the plural replaces the question ‘What is Islam?’ with ‘What is women’s Islam?’ or, to overstate the point somewhat, ‘What is black, lesbian women’s Islam?’ My point is that by pluralizing the term Islam we may slip into new essen- tialisms, essentializing particular ‘kinds’ of Islam, rather than Islam as such. If modelled in the way that Said proposes, such that “[e]ach region and people who came under its sway developed its own kind of Islam” (2002: 1), the notion of Islams could easily end up reproducing the arguably essentialist assumptions found in much culture-talk in anthropology (see, for example, the book edited by Borofsky (1994) ). Al-Azmeh’s contention that “there are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it” thus begs the question “What is a situation?”, raising the same kinds of questions about boundaries, sameness and diff erence that have haunted anthropological refl ections on ‘culture’ and ‘society’ over the last decades.26 Th e internal heterogeneity and transnational orientations of organizations like the Muslim Youth of Norway and the Muslim Student Society inevitably raise theoretical questions about what diff erence makes a diff erence (is it, for example, nationality, ethnicity, locality, gender, generation, age, class, or denomination?). Should I identify the Islam I have studied with a particular location and, if so, at what level? Is it Oslo’s Islam, Norwegian Islam, Euro-Islam, or even global Islam? Should I identify it as the Islam of a particular group, for instance, L’Islam de Jeunes (Khosrokhavar 1997), Women’s Islam (Kamalkhani 1998) or yummie’s Islam.27 Or should it be defi ned by a particular relationship to movement in space, such as L’Islam de la Diaspora (Saint- Blancat 1997) or migrant or Travelling Islam (Pieterse 1997)? Given that the ‘subject’ is now increasingly seen as a changing site of diff erence, multiple subjectivities and contestation, should Islams have to

25 Similarly – to avoid the question of borders and diff erence evoked by substantive forms –, we have moved to adjectival forms such as ‘religious’ instead of ‘religion’, ‘cultural’ instead of ‘culture’ etc. 26 In this connection it should be noted that hegemonic power works not only by suppressing diff erence within Islam, but also by diff erentiating and classifying groups and practices as ‘good’ and ‘bad’, ‘modern’ and ‘anti-modern’, ‘fundamentalist’ or ‘liberal’ etc. 27 Al-Azmeh uses this term for young, upwardly mobile Muslims (1996: 9). situating islam in norway 37 appear in the plural form even when we are talking about individual subjects? Th is suggests that sameness /diff erence is a problem of levels of abstraction and the balance between the general and the particular and unity and diversity, as well as a question of which samenesses /dif- ferences are seen to ‘make a diff erence’. An alternative to the strategy of pluralizing that nevertheless avoids a reifi cation and essentialization of Islam is arguably Asad’s (1986, 1993) suggestion that we view Islam as a ‘discursive tradition’. His approach is ‘constructivist’ in that it focuses on the discursive production and organization of ‘truth’ and ‘essentials’ in the Islamic tradition. Asad sees Islam not as a fi xed social structure (Gellner 1981) nor as a system of symbols (Geertz 1973) but as a ‘discursive tradition’ that includes and relates itself to a set of foundational texts (the Koran and the Hadith28), comments made thereon, and the conduct of exemplary fi gures (Asad 1986).29 In drawing upon the work of MacIntyre (1985), Asad puts forward the following notion of tradition:30

28 Th e corpus of records of the sayings of the Prophet Mohammed. 29 Asad’s formulation here refl ects MacIntyre’s insistence that to fl ourish tradition must take as its “authoritative point of departure” a set of canonical texts that “remain as essential points of reference for enquiry and activity, for argument, debate, and confl ict within that tradition” (1988: 383). In this respect, Bowen (1993) argues that for many Muslims such texts are not limited to the Koran and the Hadith and that for that reason we should include as part of the discursive tradition linkages drawn to other foundations of Islamic knowledge such as oral traditions of prophetic history and systems of cosmological speculations. 30 In Aft er Virtue (1985: 222) MacIntyre defi ned a tradition as “an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute a tradition”. Th e concept was subsequently developed (and modifi ed) in Whose Justice? Whose Rationality? (1988), Th ree Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (1990) and Dependent Rational Animals (1999). In “Th e Idea of an Anthropology of Islam”, Asad notes his indebtedness primarily to Aft er Virtue whereas in Geneaologies of Religion he also refers to Whose Justice? Whose Rationality? Asad uses MacIntyre’s notion of tradition without providing any substantial discussion of MacIntyre’s work, the centrality of the concept of tradition within it or its broader theoretical implications. Furthermore, he does not explicitly problematize how MacIntyre’s understanding of tradition may be combined with the Foucauldian perspective that he is in addition indebted to. As Mahmood (2005) notes, Asad’s indebtedness to Foucault (and others) constitutes some critical diff erences between MacIntyre’s and Asad’s notion of tradition. In contrast to MacIntyre, Asad emphasizes relations of power as necessary both for the propagation of tradition in relation to other discursive traditions and to the process by which certain practices and arguments become hegemonic within a tradition. Furthermore, Asad puts more emphasis on the role of embodied capacities in addition to the role of rational argumentation that MacIntyre emphazises. I have chosen to draw on Asad’s notion of Islam as a discursive tradition, without taking on the philosophical framework of MacIntyre as such, which has been subject to much well-founded criticism. I believe this to be reasonable and feasible in so far as Asad’s 38 chapter one

A tradition consists essentially of discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practice that, precisely because it is established, has a history. Th ese discourses relate conceptually to a past (when the practice was instituted, and from which the knowledge of its point and proper performance has been transmitted) and a future (how the point of that practice can best be secured in the short or long term, or why it should be modifi ed or abandoned), through a present (how it is linked to other practices, institutions, and social conditions). (Asad 1986: 14, italics original) Elaborating on what this means more concretely with respect to Islam as a discursive tradition, Asad specifi es that, “An Islamic discursive tradition is simply a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions of the Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in the present” (Asad 1986: 15). In contrast to the view of Eriksen (1999) that paying attention to “historical depth and continuity” primarily requires attention to the implicit, non-refl exive, doxic foundations for thought and action, this conceptualization draws attention both to historically extended, socially embodied arguments and debates and to the embodied forms of knowledge and capacities associated with a particular discursive tradition. In this respect, Asad suggests that we pay attention to the institutionally and discursively grounded production and organization of ‘truth’ and ‘essentials’, which shape the discourses and social practices of a given tradition. Even though Asad approaches Islam as a discursive tradition that is socially and historically constructed by actors who are diff erently positioned within overlapping discourses and networks of power, he still insists on the limitations of how such constructions are made. Th is is not a question of establishing absolute essential being or metaphysical foundations but one of allowing for the existence of certain constituent elements,31 which in the case of the Islamic discursive tradition would include the Koran and the Hadith, comments made thereon and the conduct of exemplary fi gures. It could be argued that Asad’s insistence on the ‘coherence’ of Islam as a discursive tradition makes it diffi cult to apply when studying young Muslims’ religiosities in Europe as these seem to be more fl uid and creative than Asad’s conceptualization of traditions suggests. But, as Mahmood rightly notes, “an appeal to indebtedness to MacIntyre seems to be more to do with this work serving as a source of ‘inspiration’ than as a complete theoretical frame. 31 For a more extensive discussion of essentialism in relation to the debate over whether one should use Islam in the singular or in the plural, see Jacobsen 2006. situating islam in norway 39 understanding the coherence of a discursive tradition is neither to justify that tradition, nor to argue for some irreducible essentialism or cultural relativism. It is, instead, to take a necessary step toward explaining the force that a discourse commands (Mahmood 2005: 17)”. In the context of this book, the concept of Islam as a discursive tradition precisely allows me to engage questions of continuity and discontinuity, reproduction and change and individualization and normativization without taking for granted the triumph of any one of these elements over any of the others. Asad’s conceptualization of Islam as a discursive tradition is com- mensurable with and indebted to Foucauldian understandings of power and discourse. As Mahmood (2005) suggests, tradition as defi ned by Asad may be conceived as a particular modality of what Foucault terms a discursive formation, in which refl ection upon the past is a constitutive condition for the understanding and reformulation of the present and the future. Islamic discursive practices “link practitioners across the temporal modalities of past, present, and future through a pedagogy of practical, scholarly, and embodied forms of knowledges and virtues deemed central to the tradition” (Mahmood 2005: 115).32 Just like Foucault, Asad (1986, 1993) treats discourses as historically situated and as produced in power relations. Emphasizing genealogy as a way of grasping the ‘conditions of possibility’ of particular discursive

32 Asad’s perspective was fi rst developed in an article called “Towards an Anthropology of Islam” and later developed in a series of articles that were subsequently collected in Geneaologies of Religion. In these works, explicit references to Foucault are rare. In Formations of the Secular, however, Asad specifi es that: “My resort to genealogy obviously derives from the way it has been deployed by Foucault and Nietzsche, although it does not claim to follow them religiously” (Asad 2003: 16). Th e fact that Asad does not develop a consistent Foucauldian framework may, of course, be criticized. On the other hand, one may, as I tend to do, see the underplaying of the genealogies of Asad’s theoretical framework as providing the possibility of reading across theoretical and analytical domains instead of restricting oneself to the application of Foucauldian perspectives only to the area of the religious. Following Asad, I will thus allow myself to be inspired by the works of Foucault, as of others, without ‘committing’ to a totalizing Foucauldian perspective as such. In a critical discussion of Asad’s attempt to defi ne Islam as a discursive tradition, Saler (2000: 100) has argued that it is a paradox that Asad should be so critical of, for instance, Geertz’s conceptualization of religion, which Asad sees as built on a particular modern and Christian conceptualization, when Asad himself draws on the theoretical work of Foucault to theorize the Islamic as well as the Christian traditions. Foucault’s conception of religion can no doubt be characterized as a particular Christian one, if not as an “una- shamedly Christian, and more specifi cally Catholic, cultural inheritance”, as Carrette (2000: 21) would have it. Since Asad does not ‘religiously follow Foucault’, however, this last objection may seem minor even though the general point remains important. 40 chapter one formations, Asad (1986: 17) asserts that the anthropology of Islam should “seek to understand historical conditions that enable the production and maintenance of specifi c discursive traditions, or their transformation”. A genealogical approach will not be applied in this book but Asad’s understanding of Islam as a discursive tradition will nevertheless provide a theoretical frame for exploring how the religious identities and practices of the young Muslims I worked with were constituted within a wider tradition of Muslim discourse and how the ‘historical conditions’ of secular modernity, globalization and international migration within a modern nation-state regime enable particular ways of engaging the practices of this tradition.

Individualization, authority and self-formation Focusing on young Muslims with a migrant background raises important questions about the ‘transmission’ of Islamic identities and practices in the context of migration and globalization and about the possibilities for reproduction and change provided by diff erent social situations. In literature and public discourse on migrant youth there has been a tendency to treat these young people as socially and culturally substantially embedded in collectivities comprised, for example, of close-knit family or networks of co-ethnics and to treat their religious identities and practices as largely determined by their belonging to such culturally and socially eff ective entities (cf. Andersson, Lithman and Sernhede 2005). In contrast to this, there seems to be an emerging consensus among those researching Muslims in Europe that broader processes of individualization are currently reshaping Muslim identities and practices, particularly those of young Muslims (Peter 2006). Th e argument that individualization is a major trend in the reconfi guration of Muslim identities and practices in Europe has been elaborated in diff erent ways (Babès 1997; Cesari and McLoughlin 2005; Khosro- khavar 1997; Roy 1999, 2000; Schiff auer 1990; cf. Peter 2006 for a review of some central contributions). Th ese and other studies focusing on individualization raise important questions about the relationship between tradition and modernity, collectivism and individualism and external authority and individual autonomy (cf. Peter 2006). Although these studies are varied and cannot be given due consideration here, a theme running through much of the literature is the way in which religious identities and practices are transformed into matters that involve a larger degree of individual choice in relation to religious situating islam in norway 41 options and a privatization of religious belief and practice. Th e stress put on diff erent factors energizing processes of individualization varies, though. Individualization has been described in terms of a fundamental rupture between Muslim beliefs and practices in Europe, on the one hand, and those in the migrants’ countries of origin, on the other hand (Cesari 2003, 1998), this rupture relating to the relocation of Islamic traditions to a democratic and secularized context. Others see individualization in terms of processes of modernization and rural– urban migration operative both in the countries of origin and in Europe but intensifi ed in the latter and particularly so for the so called second generation (Schiff auer 1990). Individualization has also been principally related to new communication technologies and transnationalism and globalization more broadly (Mandaville 2004; Roy 2004). One line of research approaches the issue of individualization from the angle of religious authority. Here, individualization is related to the declining authority of traditional institutions such as mosques, imams, and Islamic scholars vis-à-vis young Muslims of the so called second generation (Cesari 1998). While many have pointed to the decline of traditional religious authorities, and the ways in which young Muslims in Europe increasingly make their own individual assertions regarding Islam, attention has also been paid to how such authorities persist and are transformed in the context of international migration and globalization (Mandaville 2004; Otterbeck 2000, 2003; van Bruinessen 2003). A number of studies, oft en based on a top-down actor-centred approach, have investigated the role of specifi c types of religious authorities, particularly imams but increasingly also muft is, preachers and new Muslim intellectuals.33 Attention has also been paid to new forms of articulating authoritative statements on all matters Islamic (collective fatwa bodies, media muft is, Internet fatwas, etc.) (Caeiro 2004b; Eickelman and Anderson 1999; Mandaville 2003, 2004; Sisler 2006). However, these studies have tended to focus on scholars and other elites rather than on how Islamic authority is accepted and/or contested by ‘ordinary people’ in their everyday lives. Th is book thus seeks to go one step further by expanding the question of how textual knowledge is

33 Recent anthropological studies, mainly from the Middle East, such as those by Ahmed (1992), Antoun (1989), Eickelman (1985, 1990, 1999), Fischer and Abedi (1990), and Rosen (1984, 2000) have shown that the production of Islamic knowledge, authority and orthodoxy is a complex process of (re)interpretation and contestation. 42 chapter one attained, used, contested and authorized beyond the domain of ‘experts’ and institutions. Th ese concerns with religious authority and transformations of authority structures partly draw upon and converge with recent writings in the anthropology of Islam focusing on how traditional structures for the (re)production, transmission, distribution and authorization of Islamic traditions are transformed as a consequences of mass education, mass mediation and international migration (Caeiro 2004b; Eickelman 1985, 1992; Eickelman and Anderson 1999; Eickelman and Piscatori 1996). Hirschkind (2001) identifi es two major lines of argument in the attempts made to theorize the eff ect of globalization and modern media technologies on religious practice and authority, focusing on what he refers to as the “deliberative” and the “disciplinary” eff ects of these. Within the deliberative approach, it is argued that media and mass higher education enable a growing number of individuals to engage with and revise the religious tradition, thus ‘democratising’ religious authority. Stress is put on the way in which actors are, hence, enabled to choose between diff erent interpretations and make their own ‘individual assertions’ regarding Islam (see, for example, Eickelman and Piscatori 1996; Mandaville 2002, 2004). Within the disciplinary approach, attention is paid instead to the ways in which media technologies enable the extension of an authoritative religious discourse, this resulting less in a deliberative space for argument and contestation than in a normative space promoting and securing a uniform model of moral behaviour. Globalization and media technologies, in this view, enable an extension of authoritative religious discourses while suppressing and marginalizing local variations and diff erences (cf. Al-Azmeh 1996; Gilsenan 1982; Kepel 1986; Roy 1994; Salih 2003). Hirschkind (2001) criticizes the opposition between deliberative and disciplinary perspectives for being premised on a tendency within liberal thought to view the individual as necessarily in confl ict with the community and the forms of collective discipline that sustain it. In his study of the contemporary Islamic public in Egypt, Hirschkind, like Eickelman and Piscatori, focuses on the way in which the advent of modern mass education, literacy and the wide availability of written texts and audiotaped religious sermons has equipped recent generations of Muslims in the Middle East with new competencies in traditional and contemporary Islamic scholarship. He shows how a new kind of public debate cutting across divisions of age, gender and situating islam in norway 43 generation has been made possible by this (Hirschkind 2001: 9). In these public debates, Hirschkind argues, reference to authoritative Islamic sources does not close debate but rather provides the foundation on which opposing viewpoints can then be articulated. What is particularly instructive about Hirschkind’s approach is the way in which he sees the kind of public space that has been created by the dawa movement in Egypt as both normative and deliberative, a domain for both subjection to authority and the exercise of individual reasoning. In the light of these debates, important questions arise about the conditions of possibility for religious debates and contestation among young Muslims in Oslo. What are the eff ects of mass higher education, new information technologies and globalization more broadly on the relationship between individualization and normativization and deliberation and discipline with respect to the religious practices and debates involving these people? On the basis of what kinds of knowledges and competencies do people take part in debates and contestation that engage with and revise the religious traditions? What are the institutional and discursive regulations of such debates and contestations? In this respect, I suggest that Asad’s conceptualization of Islam as a discursive tradition is illuminating in that it encourages an investigation into the ways in which ‘truths’ and ‘essentials’ are produced within the Islamic discursive tradition and into the ways in which such ‘truths’ and ‘essentials’ are underpinned by authorizing discourses (or truth regimes) of a more general order. Asad’s understanding of Islam as a discursive tradition that “consists essentially of discourses that seek to instruct practitioners regarding the correct form and purpose of a given practice” (1986: 14) raises important questions relating to how such discourses operate through the production, transmission and authorization of ‘knowledge’.34

34 Given that Asad draws both on the notion of ‘discourse’, as elaborated by Michel Foucault, and the notion of ‘tradition’, as elaborated by MacIntyre, it is not clear how ‘practice’ should be understood in relation to Islam as a discursive tradition. In Aft er Virtue MacIntyre (1985: 187) defi nes ‘practice’ as “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realised in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially defi nitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended”. Th is defi nition is linked to the notion of tradition as a basis for a particular conception of moral rationality that MacIntyre goes on to develop in his later work. Religious practices such as salah or hajj 44 chapter one

Instead of basing my analysis on the commonly made distinction between ‘normative’ and ‘popular’ Islam, a fundamental trope in research on Islam in Norway, I follow Asad (1993) in seeing normativity and orthodoxy as a relationship of power, rather than as particular ‘forms’ of Islam that remain unchanged by shift ing historical confi gurations of power and authority. What this approach enables is an explo- ration of how, despite apparent processes of ‘individualization’ in the case of the young Muslims I worked with, authorized Islamic discourses continue to form a basis for these people’s collective and individual identities, for the debates and contestations they engage in and for how they come to see themselves as subjects of a particular kind, with particular ethical valorizations. In following this line of questioning, I investigate the relationship of young Muslims to diff erent authorities and authorizing discourses that seek to instruct them regarding the correct interpretations, forms and purposes of Muslim practice. How do processes related to migration, mass media and mass education impinge on how young Muslims in Norway come to ‘know’ Islam and in what ways do such processes aff ect the relationship they establish with authorized forms of Islamic discourse and the institutions and religious authorities that maintain, produce and circulate such discourses? How is knowledge about Islam produced, transmitted and authorized in the contemporary Norwegian context? And in what ways are selves required to respond to such knowledge? Th ese are central issues with respect to social, cultural and religious continuities and discontinuities over time and to the intergenerational (re)production of identities and practices. Th is complexity is important not least when it comes to the question of how young Muslims relate to the Islamic norms that are embodied in the Islamic discursive tradition as transmitted to them in diff erent ‘pedagogical’ settings (in the context of the family, youth and student organizations, Islamic conferences etc.). Here, I argue that we need to move beyond a dichotomization of ‘individual choice’ versus

(pilgrimage) may be seen to be practices in this sense whereas bending down with skill or travelling to Mecca may not. Asad’s notion of practice diff ers from that of MacIntyre, however, in that Asad also draws upon Marcel Mauss in his attempts to defi ne an ‘anthropology of practical reason’, the historically constituted practical knowledge which articulates an individual’s learned capacities. Asad sees Mauss’s concern with ‘body techniques’ as an important way of challenging the assumption in symbolist anthropology that religious objects and practices are primarily ‘symbolic’ references to religion as a system of meaning. situating islam in norway 45

‘unrefl ective or forced conformity’ (understood as the habitual enactment of religious traditions acquired through socialization or as enforced restrictions coming from, for example, parents or the ethnic community) in order to inquire into the kinds of subjectivities that are formed in such processes and how people come to conceive of and act upon themselves as selves of a certain kind. An interesting approach in connection to this is provided by Mahmood (2005), whose complex theoretical framework draws on the work of Foucault and Asad as well as Butler. Drawing on Foucauldian accounts of ethics, Mahmood argues that the religious practices of the participants of the women’s mosque movement she worked with in Egypt presupposed the existence of a divine plan for human life – a plan embodied in the Koran, the exegetical literature and the moral codes derived therefrom – that each individual was seen as responsible for following. By means of invocations of divine texts and edifi catory literature, participants in the mosque movement were summoned to recognize these moral obligations. Mahmood emphasizes that the mosque movement had a strong individualizing impetus that required each woman to interpret the moral codes for herself, in accordance with traditional guidelines, and to adopt a set of ascetic practices for shaping moral conduct. I will only deal with the many issues that Mahmood raises about the relationship between religion and politics and her critique of feminist theorizing of freedom, agency, authority and the human subject to a limited extent.35 Nevertheless, I fi nd her approach inspiring both in the context of my use of Asad’s theoretical framework and in terms of shed- ding light on parts of my ethnographic material. In line with Mahmood (2005), I investigate young Muslims’ religious practices in light of Foucault’s notion of ‘technologies of the self’ as operations one performs on oneself in order to become an ethical subject. Technologies of the self are the specifi c practices by which subjects constitute themselves as subjects within and through systems of power (Foucault 1997, 2000; Mahmood 2005; McNay 1992) (cf. Chapter Six).36 Given that

35 See, for example, Waggoner (2005) for a critical engagement with Mahmood’s critique of secular modernity. 36 Foucault’s use of this concept is complex, placed as it is in the wider framework of his study of ethics. I will not deal with this framework in its entirety here but will use it as a point of departure in order to investigate how religious practices may be understood as kinds of operations one performs on oneself in order to become an ethical subject and the kinds of knowledge and authority upon which such operations rest. According to Foucault (1984a), technologies of the self can be found in all cultures in diff erent forms. 46 chapter one young Muslims are positioned at the intersection of diff erent ambivalent and sometimes contrasting discourses and traditions, it is not possible to resolve these understandings of, and ways of relating to and transforming, the self as a symbolic bounded ‘whole’.37 One question will thus be how diff erent understandings of the self inform the ways in which young Muslims refl ect upon the relationship between the internal and the external, intention and action and autonomy and submission. In particular, I want to explore if and how certain of those religious understandings of the self transmitted in a diversity of pedagogical settings shape young Muslims’ subjectivities as they seek to reconstruct their own knowledges, desires, motivations and ethical dispositions in accord with models of Islamic moral personhood and piety. In analysing narratives of ‘return to Islam’ and religious practice, I further investigate how such processes of subjectivation, in the Foucauldian sense,38 intersect with the shaping of subjectivities according to a liberal ethics of authenticity and autonomy. Th is allows me to examine ‘individualization’ along somewhat diff erent lines to what is commonly found in the literature on Muslims in Europe by paying attention to how young Muslims’ valorization of ‘individual choice’ and individual assertions regarding Islam are bound to a discursive production of individualized selves. Th e importance of ‘individual choice’ to young Muslims’ identities and practices is, hence, not seen as expressing an unrestrained individual freedom to choose but as pointing to particular forms of subjectivity shaped within contemporary ethics of authenticity (Taylor 1992) and autonomy (Rose 1996).

37 Mahmood notes that her position diff ers from that of most anthropological studies of diff erent cultural notions of self and personhood in that she does not assume a homogenous notion of self that is coextensive with a given culture, structure or temporality. Rather, she emphasizes how diff erent confi gurations of personhood inhabit the same cultural and historical space and how each confi guration is a product of a specifi c discursive formation rather than of the culture at large. Mahmood, however, is concerned primarily with elaborating such concepts of self and personhood in the context of the Islamic piety movement in Egypt as distinct from and opposed to those suggested by secular liberalist frameworks. As will be argued in Chapter Six, though, my focus is rather on how diff erent concepts of self and personhood shape the religious subjectivities and practices of young Muslims as diff erent confi gurations of personhood inhabit not only the same cultural and historical space but also shape individual subjectivities. 38 Subjectivation refers to the processes by which subjects are constituted. Th e Foucauldian notions of the subject and subjectivation are elaborated on in Chapter Six. situating islam in norway 47

Some epistemological and methodological concerns

While there is now a considerable body of ‘immigration studies’, religious engagement, ritual practices and the establishment of Islamic institutions have until recently been the least researched parts of migrants’ lives in Norway (Vogt 2000). Th e literature has refl ected the dual interests of the scholars involved with, on the one hand, a Christian- based concern with religious dialogue (Leirvik 1990, 1993, 1996, 2002b; Leirvik and Eidsvåg 1993; Opsal 1994; Opsal and Bakke 1994) and, on the other hand, a social scientifi c concern with patterns of socio-economic inequality and cultural diff erence (see, for example, Ask et al. 1986; Grønhaug 1979, 2001; Prieur 2004). In recent years ‘reading across’ this division by investigating the religious dimensions of Muslim immigrants’ lives within the Norwegian socio-cultural context has become more common (see, for example, Ahlberg 1990; Bredal 2006; Døving 2005; Jacobsen 2006; Larsen 1995; Leirvik 2002a; Naguib 2001; Natvig and Markussen 2005; Predelli 2004; Vogt 1995, 2000; Østberg 2001; Aarset 2006). Th is book adds to the existing literature on Muslims in Norway on the basis of ethnographic fi eldwork undertaken with youth and young adults who were members of, or more loosely affi liated to, two mixed gender Muslim organizations that gathered youth and students from a variety of national backgrounds and from diff erent parts of Oslo, the Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU) and the Muslim Student Society (MSS). Not all of the interlocutors included were born in Norway but most spent most of their childhood in Norway and were therefore aff ected by socialization in the majority society. However, both in the interview material and within the Muslim Youth of Norway and the Muslim Student Society, there were also a number of refugees whose primary socialization had taken place outside Norway as well as some foreign students who had come to Norway as young adults. I have followed activities of the Muslim Youth of Norway and the Muslim Student Society over a period of ten years, with two main periods of fi eldwork being undertaken in 1999 and 2002 and an additional shorter period in 2009, using participant observation, qualitative interviews and the analysis of written material, media and policy discourses as well as material taken from the Internet. While I did follow the same people in 1999 and 2002, my fi eldwork in 2009 was with a new group of young people who were then active in the Muslim community. What lacks from my presentation is thus a more longitudinal focus on what 48 chapter one happended to the young people that were active in the organizations at the turn of the millenium as they grew up, got married, set up their own families and entered working life. Although the book analyses more general aspects of religious continuities and discontinuities in the context of international migration, globalization and secular modernity, the empirical descriptions should be read not as a general account of Muslims in Norway, but as a historically situated account of how some young Muslims in a certain time and space relate to Islamic traditions, to themselves and to others. Since the mid-1980s immigration has been one of the most controversial subjects in Norwegian public debate with this source of controversy intensifying in the 1990s as ‘the immigrant Other’ increasingly emerged as the ‘Muslim Other’ (see Chapter Four). Public debates on Islam, Muslim immigrants, ethnic minorities and racism represent an important part of the context in which I have been writing, just as they represent an important part of the context in which the young Muslims with whom I worked live their lives. Since the beginning of the 1990s the increasing involvement of Norwegian anthropologists, as well as academics from other disciplines, in these public debates has revealed important diff erences in the epistemological, theoretical and ethical approaches that underlie current research (Gullestad 2006a, 2006b; Borchgrevink 1997; Fuglerud 2003; Jacobsen 2008; Lien 1991, 2002; Lithman 2004; Razack 2008; Wikan 2002). I have not attempted any systematic analysis of these debates here but I have argued elsewhere (Jacobsen 2008) that the current nexus between a dominant politico- administrative research paradigm, methodological nationalism and anti-relativism results in a particularly strong ethnocentric approach to the Muslim ‘Others’ in Norwegian public debate. My own engagement in these debates, and that of the young people with whom I worked, has signifi cantly shaped my understanding of the discursive context within which my work has taken place. As a white female middle class non-Muslim ethnic majority Norwegian, I came to inhabit particular positions in the sites where I did my fi eldwork. But these positions were not fi xed in terms of identity and diff erence or of outsider and insider and should not be understood in terms of totalizing concepts of diff erence, as absolute cultural Otherness or ‘radical alterity’ (Keesing 1994). In part, I shared the material, social, cultural and political universe of the young Muslims I worked with even though substantial parts of our lives were also lived and shaped in sites that only rarely intersected. During fi eldwork situating islam in norway 49

I worked with shift ing sets of people with regard to whom I was diff erently positioned, both contextually in social interaction and in terms of the structural power relationships underpinning these contexts. Fieldwork ‘at home’ thus implied a continual negotiation of categories such as home and the fi eld, insider and outsider and identity and diff erence, a process that was central to the meaning that was produced in my interaction with the young Muslims. While anthropological knowledge production has oft en been assumed to require a ‘cultural distance’ making ‘anthropology at home’ problematic, I have sought to make use of my position as an insider /outsider and to achieve a critical distance by “the determined eff ort to refuse the couching of [my] work at its very beginning – in its very conception – in naturalized, commonsense categories” (Marcus 1998: 16).

Naming ‘them’ and the ‘not them’ A major concern with respect to migration issues in both academic and public debate is how to fi nd ways of speaking about groups or categories of people without homogenizing, essentializing and reifying them as ‘the Other’. Once we acknowledge that language does not only describe social reality but contributes signifi cantly to constituting it, developing a language that does not exclude and stigmatize certain groups and categories is critical. Th e social eff ects of linguistic practices have become a major issue of debate in Norway with the two major opposing views seeming to be that, on the one hand, the focus on language is an expression of ‘political correctness’ that stifl es public debate on immigration and, on the other, that linguistic practices must change in order to refl ect both socio-cultural developments (i.e. Norway becoming more multicultural) and to bring about a more ‘inclusive’ society. In 2008 Statistics Norway, the bureau that produces offi cial government statistics, altered several of their statistical categories, explicitly problematizing the eff ect of these on how society is perceived. Th e categories ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ were replaced with more precise geographical indicators and the term ‘second-generation immigrants’ was abolished on the grounds that it was perceived by many as imprecise, value-laden and exclusionist. ‘Second-generation immigrants’ had already been replaced in 2001 with ‘persons born in Norway by two foreign-born parents’ but while linguistic usage in offi cial contexts partly shift ed towards ‘descendants’ the new category was not 50 chapter one incorporated into common language use. In 2008 Statistics Norway settled on the term ‘Norwegian-born of immigrant parents’. While these new categories constitute a marked improvement over those previously used, any designation of a group or category reduces the complex and multiple identities and qualities of individual members. Categories inevitably emphasize certain characteristics to the exclusion of others, although they do not necessarily attribute essence to the distinguishing characteristics of those singled out by the categories. Naming and categorizing may overlook diff erences within groups or categories and overstate diff erences between. Given that whatever categories we use will mask some diff erences as well as similarities, I adopt a ‘pragmatic’ approach, using categories that highlight the dif- ferences I consider most important in a particular context and that best fi t my research questions and theoretical purpose (Martin 1994: 637). Since my focus is on Islamic traditions, then, and in particular on how they are articulated and lived by young people, I frequently refer to my interlocutors as ‘young Muslims’. When my focus is on migration, and the relationship between the young and their parents or the majority society, I oft en refer to them as immigrant youth or the ‘second generation’. While these terms are far from unproblematic, they do have the advantage of being widely used in international academic literature, thus providing a vehicle for comparison between diff erent contexts. Th roughout this book I use the term ‘the Muslim community’ and, amongst others, ‘the Pakistani community’ from time to time. Th ese designations should not be seen to imply the existence of bounded or homogeneous collectivities. I understand the communities in question as historically contingent formations, negotiated and experienced dif- ferently from diff erent subject positions even as they are implicated in the construction of a common (and oft en essentialized) ‘we’ (Brah 1996; Werbner 2002). Rather than rejecting the notion of community altogether, however, a great deal of this study is concerned with how communities are imagined and enacted by people who are diff erently positioned in terms of such things as class, gender and political orientation. I focus both on how communities are internally diff erentiated, and on how they are situated in relation to one another. Th e use of the concept ‘community’ in the context of this book should thus be seen as allowing for internal diversity and confl ict, crosscutting ties and multiple identities, and as pointing towards processes of construction through intersecting ‘samenesses’ and diff erences, inclusions and exclusions and solidarities and antagonisms. situating islam in norway 51

I also use the terms ‘back home’ and ‘at home’ when referring generi- cally to ‘countries of emigration’ and ‘countries of immigration’ (instead of, for example, ‘home country’ and ‘host country’). Instead of fi xing the meaning of ‘home’ to a particular geographical place (usually the place one’s parents or oneself were born, as expressed by the common racist slogan: ‘Go home’, cf. Malkki 1995), I draw upon a more fl exible notion of ‘home’ that may include meanings such as ‘my house’, ‘where I was born’ or even a temporary residence (one of my interlocutors, for instance, said: ‘Home is wherever I am’). Th e terms ‘at home’ and ‘back home’ are relative to each other, rather than fi xed, and allow for multiple forms of belonging and ways of being at home in the world. Th e terminology of home also has the advantage of not necessarily referring to the nation state level. Nations may be constructed as homes but people oft en, in fact, relate to particular places, persons and relationships as the foci of being at home. Another problem is how to conceptualize the category ‘those Norwegians who do not have an immigrant background’. Th e term ‘the Norwegians’ is problematic in so far as it constructs immigrants and their descendants as groups somehow outside of the national community of ‘Norwegians’. Th e frequently used term ‘ethnic Norwegian’ might be seen as an attempt to resolve this since it allows that immigrants and their descendants may be Norwegian, although diff erent in ‘ethnicity’ from ‘ethnic Norwegians’. However, the term has also been criticized as defi ning Norwegianness through ethnicity rather than citizenship, thus reproducing patterns of exclusion from the national community. While the newspaper Aft enposten deemed ‘ethnic Nor- wegian’ an unproblematic concept for the majority population in 2007, Statistics Norway listed it as an outdated concept along with ‘negro’, ‘of foreign culture’, and ‘second-generation immigrant’ in their 2008 revisions. My use of language is, as stated, guided primarily by a pragmatic approach, highlighting the diff erences that I consider most important in a particular context. Th e context-sensitive use of diff erent labels for groups and categories is also in keeping with the stress on ‘emic’ terminology in anthropology. My interlocutors in the fi eld referred to themselves and others by means of myriad concepts that were largely oblivious to, but occasionally intersected with, public debates on the importance of an inclusive language. I have chosen to let some of the empirical diversity and ambivalence of naming, categorising and self- positioning be refl ected in my writing and to make this phenomenon 52 chapter one an object of investigation and analysis. Th e categories in use whether used in everyday discourse, in the media and policy making or in analytical and theoretical approaches are not taken for granted, but are seen as articulating particular histories and contestations and as being shaped within particular power relationships. CHAPTER TWO

ENVISIONING UNITY, COPING WITH DIFFERENCE

A central feature of the changing Muslim landscape in Europe over the last two decades has been the entry and increased visibility of a new generation, born and socialized in European societies. Th e Muslim Student Society (MSS) and the Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU), established in 1995 and 1996 respectively, marked the ‘coming of age’ of a new generation of Muslims in Norway. Aft er their initial focus on eff orts to obtain a place for prayer at the university campus and to provide an Islamic environment for Muslim youth, the MSS and the NMU gradually widened their scope of ritual, educational and social activities; they also became increasingly visible as actors in public debates on the place of Muslims in Norwegian society. In this chapter I will look at how Muslim identity is constructed and intermeshed with other social diff erentiations and how these social diff erentiations are (re)produced and challenged within the frame of the Muslim youth and student organizations. Social diff erentiations have organizational, intersubjec- tive, experiential and representational forms. Th e focus here is on the processes of social diff erentiation that are expressed in ways in which the young think about themselves and their organizations as well as their attitudes and ways of relating to others. Th e chapter also traces continuities and discontinuities in patterns of social diff erentiation by looking at how, more concretely, religious activities are organized and the aims and aspirations formulated for the organizations. Th e religious engagement of the young upwardly mobile members, as formulated in a certain periode of time in their lives, is shaped by intergenerational, gender and minority–majority relations as well by contemporary Islamic ‘revivalism’. As the NMU and the MSS strive to provide a space and a voice for young Muslims within Norwegian society, social dif- ferentiations and relationships are variously reproduced, contested and transgressed. Th e chapter points to the ways in which debates about what it means to be a Muslim in the migration setting, what constitutes correct or appropriate belief and practice and how multiple forms of belonging can be accommodated are consequently energized. It, thus, starts to trace some of the dilemmas, debates and ‘contested matters’ discussed later in the book. 54 chapter two

Th e Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU) Th e Muslim Youth of Norway was founded in 1996 by young Muslims who “felt a strong need to learn more about Islam and to have a meeting place independent of nationality” (Explore (1) 1999). In the bro- chure printed to make people aware of its existence, the organization was presented as a place where “you can meet Muslim brothers and sisters, learn about Islam, ask questions and raise your concerns, discuss and share your thoughts and views with others”. One of the founders, Aydin, recounts how it all started: We had been to some Islamic conferences abroad and, then, in 1995 the Swedish government invited Muslim youth from all over Europe to discuss the integration of Muslims in Europe. We went there, two others and me, and found out that there were a lot of Muslim youth organizations in Europe. Upon returning we had the idea of doing something similar. We talked about it, but nothing really happened. Later on, I met up with Mohammed and then Noor and we all went to a Young Muslim UK summer camp.1 Aft er that trip we tried more concretely to get something started. We got in contact with other youth in Oslo and arranged a big meeting. I remember the fi rst time, a room full of people. Th at is when we decided to form an association. And then we started having darses [lessons or lectures on Islam], and things moved on. Inspired by Islamic youth organizations abroad, the newly formed NMU wanted to create a meeting place for young Muslims in Oslo. Aydin explains: We wanted to reach those who did not have any off er from the Muslim minority here. In the mosques we saw young kids coming to learn Arabic and the Koran, but as they grew older they disappeared. When you saw them again four or fi ve years later, they did not have any relations with Islam. We wanted to provide a context in which the next generation could forge an identity; to be able to come forth and say that they were Muslims without being afraid. Th e range of aims that were formulated over time in order to decide on NMU activities included:2 creating an Islamic milieu among Muslim

1 YMUK (Young Muslims UK) is a British Muslim national youth organization affi liated to the Islamic Foundation in Leicester. Th e Islamic Foundation in Leicester forms part of the reforming Islamist intellectual activist movement in Britain. It was founded in 1973 by the Pakistani Kurshid Ahmad and is engaged in international dawa work. 2 I have put these together from various slightly diff erent formulations found in leafl ets and on Internet pages. envisioning unity, coping with difference 55 youth in Norway; uniting youth; and building bridges between diff erent cultures, especially between ‘Norwegian culture’ and ‘Islamic culture’. It was also thought that the organization should serve to further mutual respect and understanding (while at the same time preserving, protecting and reinforcing the identity and self-esteem of young Muslims), to fi ght discrimination and violence, to work for dialogue, tolerance and understanding and to encourage positive participation in society at large.3 From the start, the NMU was closely linked to one of the most infl u- ential, mainly Arabic, mosques in Oslo. Th e Islamic Foundation of Norway (DIF, Det Islamske Forbundet i Norge), commonly known as Rabita (Al-Rabita al-Islamiyya fi Nurwij), supported the newly founded youth group by giving it premises and a small amount of economic help.4 Th e initiative was also supported by a local community centre in Grönland district and by the Norwegian Youth Council (LNU, Landsrådet for Norges barne- og Ungdomsorganisasjoner).5 Th e number of participants ranged from less than ten to about thirty during meetings in 1999 with participation signifi cantly increasing in 2002. Meetings centred on darses (religious lectures) and were followed by more informal social gatherings. Th e darses were topic-oriented and addressed a variety of subjects concerning ritual practice (e.g. Salah), social relationships from an Islamic perspective (e.g. ‘Home and the education of children’, ‘Human rights in Islam’), and central Muslim beliefs and ethics (e.g. ‘Predestination’, ‘Life aft er death’, ‘What Allah likes and dislikes’). Most oft en dars would be given by one in particular of the founders. Th is man had no formal religious training but was known and respected for his broad knowledge of Islam. While the

3 Th e form such positive participation should take was subject to discussion, particularly when it concerned the issue of integration (see Jacobsen 2002 and Chapter Four for a further discussion of these issues). 4 Th e NMU later moved out of Rabita and aft er that moved again several times, these moves being made in relation to the networks that the diff erent committees and leaders were able to draw upon. Th e lack of funding made setting up permanent premises diffi cult, something which also made the NMU less independent of the mosques than many of their members wanted to be. 5 Th e Norwegian Children and Youth Council (LNU, Landsrådet for Norges barne-og ungdomsorganisasjoner) is an umbrella organization for Norwegian non- governmental organizations working for children and youth through which organizations may apply for fi nancial support provided that they have a certain number of registered members. Getting people to register and to pay the NMU membership registration fee (which ranged from NOK 100 (roughly 12 euros) to NOK 50) so as to be eligible for this support at times proved to be rather demanding. 56 chapter two darses took the form of religious lectures, dialogue and debate were also an integral part of these pedagogical settings. Th ose attending would contribute with their own experiences and examples sometimes confi rming the views of the lecturer and at other times questioning and debating them. In addition to these educational activities, the NMU subsequently developed a range of social and ritual activities that came to include such things as picnics, sports activities and ift ar6 and eid-parties during Ramadan. In cooperation with the MSS (introduced in the next section), the NMU arranged larger seminars with speakers invited from Norwegian mosques and organizations and even from abroad. A highlight for many was the yearly trip to attend the Islamic Youth Conference in Stockholm, held by the Muslim Youth of Sweden (SUM, Sveriges Unga Muslimer)7 as part of the Swedish Islamic Foundation’s annual international conference. Some members would also attend Islamic conferences and summer camps in other European countries.8 Th rough such activities the NMU developed a transnational network, though one largely made up of links that had already been established by Rabita.9 Members of the NMU also engaged actively in the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO)10 that

6 Th e fi rst meal eaten at the end of a day’s fasting in Ramadan. 7 Th e NMU and its Swedish counterpart, SUM (previously SMUF), were established more or less at the same time though the SUM has now grown to be a much larger organization than the NMU. According to its homepage (2008) the SUM is an umbrella organization for about forty Swedish Muslim youth organizations and has about 5,000 national members. Th e SMF (Sveriges Muslimska Förbund) was central in the initiative to establish the SUM although it seems that the youth branch has been working to gain more independence from the mother-organization lately. 8 For example, the one arranged by the Islamic Information Association in Gothenburg. 9 Rabita has cooperated with its sister-organization in Sweden since its founding in 1987 and members from Norway have always attended the Stockholm conference that the Swedish Rabita runs every year. Th e Swedish youth conference that NMU members attend is held parallel to these events. Th e contact with the YMUK was facilitated by already established links with the UK Islamic Mission and Th e Islamic Foundation in Leicester (cf. Vogt 2000: 22). 10 According to how they present themselves on the Internet, FEMYSO aims to act as a platform for Muslim youth organizations to congregate, exchange information, gain experience and benefi t from each other across Europe. Th e JMF (Jeunes Musulmans de France), the YMUK (Young Muslims UK) and the SUM (Sveriges Unga Muslimer) started working towards European cooperation during the fi rst Europe- wide meeting of Muslim youth organizations in Sweden in 1995 when the Foreign Ministry of Sweden, in cooperation with the Swedish Muslim youth organization SUM, organized the international conference on Islam in Europe that I previously mentioned as the ‘starting point’ for the NMU. Later on, the Federation of Islamic Organizations envisioning unity, coping with difference 57 was established aft er the Europe-wide meeting of Muslim youth organizations held in Sweden in 1995. In 1999 the NMU published the fi rst issue of Explore, the fi rst Muslim youth magazine in Norway (the magazine later changed its name to Ung Muslim (‘Young Muslim’) ). Here, one could read articles written by young Muslims themselves as well as translations of (mainly) English texts. Some articles presented some of the fundamental Islamic beliefs, rituals and practices (e.g. “Knowledge in Islam”, “Hajj11”, “ As-Salah”). Other articles discussed social topics of importance to young Muslims’ daily life, challenges related to being a Muslim in the ‘West’ and issues that had been subject to public controversy. Th ey dealt, for example, with generation confl icts between the young and their parents and had titles like “Forced marriage versus arranged marriage”, “How to be a Muslim in Norway?”, “Th e Muslim Woman in the West” and “Terror”. Th e magazine also included essays recounting the experiences of individual members (of conversion, of going on the hajj, of going to their ‘back home’ country etc.), columns where people could air their frustrations and voice their opinions on a diversity of matters and songs and poems conveying pious messages. In 2002, two issues of Ung Muslim were published in cooperation with ‘sister-organizations’ in Sweden (SUM) and Denmark (FASM),12 this creating the fi rst Scandinavian Muslim youth magazine (only a few issues were published). Th e NMU was also among the fi rst Muslim organizations in Norway to actively make use of the Internet. On a homepage that was under continuous construction the NMU informed users about their activities and pointed internauts towards other major Islamic Internet sites. E-mail was used to distribute information on religious meetings and other social and political issues and events considered important to Muslims and immigrants in general (e.g. demonstrations against the US invasion of Iraq or the French ban on the hijab in state schools).

in Europe and Th e Islamic Foundation (Leicester) also became involved and a meeting was held in Birmingham. In 1996, thirty-fi ve participants from eleven countries representing nineteen youth/student organizations met in Leicester and FEMYSO was launched. By 2006 FEMYSO had developed into a wide network made up of thirty- seven member organizations, bringing together young Muslims from over twenty-fi ve countries. 11 Pilgrimage, the Fift h Pillar of Islam. 12 Foreningen for Studerende Muslimer, a Muslim student union in Denmark. Th e FASM was established in 1988 and off ers lectures on Islam in high schools and semi- naries etc. In 2002 they changed their name to Islamisk Info & Foredrag. 58 chapter two

Th e organizational structure varied somewhat over time but it typically consisted of a working committee with a head, a secretary and a treasurer who were, in accordance with the written statutes, chosen by a general assembly. Activities were further organized by diff erent sub- committees.13 In addition, an ‘advisory council’ (which initially consisted of three adult members of Rabita) was, according to its own description, meant to “back up and give advice to the younger members of the working committees”.14 As the NMU grew and activities were added, the organization assumed an increasingly active role in ‘presenting’ Islam to a Norwegian, non-Muslim public and in responding to requests from students, teachers and other people interested in learning more about Islam and Muslims in Norway. In particular when the media ‘sponsored’ a particular debate on, for example, hijab or arranged marriages, journalists would frequently turn to the NMU, so much so, in fact, that the organization sometimes had trouble meeting the media demand for ‘young Muslim voices’. Members of the NMU also participated actively in public debates by writing social commentaries in leading newspapers on issues such as the hijab, the role of women in Islam and integration policies. Th e NMU network was actively used for recruiting people to diff erent projects, these including my own research, dialogue and inter-faith projects and youth and cultural work. With this expansion it became increasingly clear that central fi gures had diff erent visions of what the organization ought to be and become in the future. Aft er a particular confl ict that occurred in 2002 and 2003 (discussed later in this chapter) the NMU never fully recovered and although several attempts were made to revive the organization it was not until 2008 that a new semi-autonomous youth organization was established within the framework of the general children’s and youth work section of Rabita. So far this organization, which has a board containing both young Muslims and a couple of more senior members, has focused on youth work within the cadre of the mosque, off ering seminars, sleepovers in the mosque and outings as well as keeping up the tradition of attending the Stockholm youth conference. Like the previous NMU, it off ers darses on a number of issues,

13 While giving young people experience with organization work was not an explicit goal, several old members stressed that the experience they gained from the NMU was signifi cantly useful later on in life. 14 In Norwegian the term ‘fadderråd’ is used. Th e term ‘fadder’ means godparent, sponsor and helpmate. envisioning unity, coping with difference 59 in particular addressing the experiences and challenges of being a ‘Muslim youth’. It has also engaged actively on several political issues, mobilizing for demonstrations during the Israeli off ensive against Gaza in 2008/09 and for the right of female police offi cers to wear a hijab with their uniform, a question that caused much debate in early 2009.

Th e Muslim Student Society (MSS) On 20 March 1995, a small group of Muslim students at the University of Oslo founded the Muslim Student Society. Th ey felt there was a need for a place to pray on the university campus,15 a forum where Muslim students could meet and discuss current issues regarding Islam and somewhere they could increase their own knowledge about Islam.16 Th e main aims of the MSS were, according to its founders own self- presentation, to generate contact among Muslim students and to further understanding and knowledge of Islam among both Muslims and non-Muslims. Diff erent activities were arranged each semester, the repertoire expanding from collective prayer and study circles to later include larger seminars, dawa-courses, dialogue work and a diverse range of social and community projects. A stated goal for these activities was that they should “enable Muslim students to meet challenges in the future, so that they can contribute to developing society” ( accessed 16.06.2002). Th e MSS was open to all Muslim students in Norway regardless of “race, gender, nationality and colour”. Like the NMU, the organization included students from a variety of diff erent ethnic and national backgrounds, both male and female. Th e MSS has developed and broadened its scope during its fi ft een years of existence. Th e study circles I attended in 1999 attracted somewhere between thirty and forty students. In 2003 up to eighty students,

15 A prayer room that grew too small as the MSS expanded was allocated to Muslim students at the campus. 16 Half a year earlier the Pakistani Student Society had been founded but this association only catered to Pakistani students and was mainly concerned with issues of Pakistani culture and identity and promoting Pakistanis within Norwegian society (see Andersson 2005). Since then several student associations catering to Muslim and ethnic minority students have been founded at the University of Oslo. Th e MSS, like other student associations, has received some economic support from the Student Welfare Council. It has also received project-based funding from other sources including the Norwegian Children and Youth Council (LNU). In addition to paying a member’s fee, members have been encouraged to donate money to the organization’s dawa account. 60 chapter two and at some particularly large seminars 150–200 people, attended. Th e MSS declared itself to be politically neutral and independent of other organizations,17 although this did not hinder close cooperation on a case to case basis with other organizations and mosques in both Oslo and abroad. Much like the NMU, the MSS had a semi-bureaucratic structure with a working committee elected by a general assembly. Th ere was no formalized advisory board comparable to the one in the NMU but there was nevertheless an important informal leadership consisting of people holding a certain authority on the basis of their knowledge of Islam, their contacts and social network within the Muslim community and the amount of work they had put into the organization.18 Th is informal leadership to some extent overlapped with that found at the NMU. According to one previous MSS head, “In the MSS those who are a bit older are present and make sure that everything functions properly according to Islamic principles”. Th e MSS, like the NMU, published a magazine, Tankevekkende,19 aimed at “bringing out facts” to change the “distorted picture of Islam” presented in the media. In 2004 the name of the magazine was changed to Salam to stress a message of peace in “days of war and unrest in the world”, as the new editorial board put it in the fi rst issue. Th e MSS has also published several introductory booklets on Islam in Norwegian, some of them translated and others written by members. Like the NMU, the MSS was among the fi rst Muslim organizations to actively use the Internet, putting up a homepage and creating an e-mail mailing list to disseminate information and promote discussion. Th e study circles have been central from early on. Originally intended to focus on reading and discussing surahs from the Koran, these study circles came to address a range of issues related to Islamic history, beliefs and practices such as ‘Th e Prophet Mohammed’, ‘Th e importance of Salah’, ‘Death’, ‘Isa’ (Jesus), and ‘Tawheed’ (Th e Oneness of God) as well as contemporary social and political issues such as ‘Th e Islamic state, democracy and Marxism’, ‘Th e Iraq confl ict and its consequences’,

17 In the aft ermath of 9/11 this neutrality has become even more important as suspicion has quickly extended to those who have ‘been in contact with’ organizations suspected of supporting terrorism. As a former head of the MSS pointed out to me, it would be impossible for them to track down all the connections that international partners had therefore making it better to be on the safe side. 18 With the term ‘authority’ I am not primarily referring to a power used to control or coerce behaviour but to the ability to exert infl uence by getting one’s point of view accepted by others as authoritative. 19 Th e literal translation of this is ‘thought-provoking’. envisioning unity, coping with difference 61

‘Women in Islam’, ‘Islam and integration’, and ‘Th e contribution of Muslims to the modern West’. Usually, people from local mosques and organizations or members of the MSS have appeared as the lecturers. In addition to the study circles, open seminars have been held on a variety of issues as well as a larger seminar every semester with invited speakers, sometimes from abroad. Th ese larger seminars have become more ambitious over time and have featured Islamic preachers of international renown like Ahmed Moft i, Shabir Ally, Abdullah Hakim Quick and Murad Hofmann. In the month of Ramadan the MSS normally arranged ift ar followed by a dars20 and tarawih21 at the university campus. Th is arrangement, allowing students to spend the maximum amount of time at university to prepare for upcoming exams, while off ering them a cadre for communal religious practice and education, well exemplifi es the combined stress placed by the MSS on secular and religious education. Like the NMU, MSS members have engaged in a number of social issues including mobilizing for demonstrations (for example, for the right of women to wear the hijab, against racism and against the US-led war in Iraq). Th ey have also engaged in relief work and in some community work, this directed towards the elderly and Muslim refugees. Th e MSS is also an active part of student life on the university campus. Halal meat, for instance, was made available in the cafeterias, this not least due to eff orts on the part of some MSS members who fronted this issue as representatives in the student parliament. Another aspect of this increasing orientation towards society at large was represented by the so called dawa courses that the MSS arranged in later years in cooperation with Th e Islamic Information Association in Sweden. Signifi cantly, these courses dealt with the issue of ‘How to present Islam and make da’wah to non-Muslims’;22 an estimated thirty to forty people received a diploma for their participation in the fi rst two years. MSS members have also been active in inter-faith dialogue together with diff erent religious and life-stance communities.23 Th e shock of 9/11 produced a new

20 During these gatherings the evening/sunset prayer is performed communally and food is served. Usually, there is a short dars aft er the meal. Th e Ramadan activities gather more people for salah than what would be normal throughout the year. 21 Th e term tarawih refers to the extra prayers undertaken on a voluntary basis during the nights of Ramadan. 22 Dawa courses were led by Swedish-based Mostafa Malaekah together with Ahmed Moft i, both of whom were popular lecturers among Scandinavian Muslims. 23 Notably in the National Christian–Muslim Contact Group between the Churches and the Islamic Council of Norway and in the Council for Religious and Life-Stance 62 chapter two interest in inter-faith dialogue, an interest that had already been ongoing since the beginning of the 1990s, and several associations sought out the MSS as partners in such ‘dialogue projects’. Young Muslims usually see themselves, and are seen by others, as particularly skilled in such dialogue-work because of their familiarity with ‘Norwegian society’ and Christianity as well as with Islam. In addition to dialogue-work, teachers, students and others who were interested in getting information about Islam regularly consulted the MSS on questions relating to things like Muslim everyday life, rituals and religious feasts and the Islamic view of politics as well as practical information about mosques and organizations. Inquiries from the national media were also frequent and in 2004 the MSS arranged a course for its members on how to handle the media. As Samir, who was the head of the MSS when I interviewed him, pointed out, the MSS is very much aware of its future role in Norwegian public debates: Th e MSS will be an active contributor to the Muslim debate, at least externally in relation to the Norwegian setting. In this respect I think we have a very important role to play. Th e demand from the media and politicians for Muslims who can comment on a variety of issues involving Muslims and who can represent the Muslim community has, thus, made it important for young Muslims to acquire the skills and knowledge needed to meet this demand.

Th e revivalist infl uence

To understand the Islamic discourses that emerged from these two organizations and their members at the turn of the millennium, we need to locate them in the broader discursive fi eld of the ongoing

Communities in Norway which gathers representatives from the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jewish and Humanist communities. From 1999 to 2001 the Council for Religious and Life-Stance Communities together with the ‘Human values commission’ organized a broad national dialogue on religion and beliefs in which the MSS participated. Th e MSS has also engaged in inter-faith dialogue with diff erent religious student groups (e.g. Norway’s Christian Student Society, the Christian Student Community and the Baha’i Student Group). In 2003 they initiated a project of Muslim– Christian dialogue with Norway’s Christian Student Society, and a joint pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine was arranged. Members from the MSS also participated in the series of dialogue seminars arranged by the Fund for Danish–Norwegian cooperation for the period 2000–04. Members have also been invited by the government to participate in discussions on integration. envisioning unity, coping with difference 63

Muslim debates in Western Europe at that time. Several authors have argued that in the 1980s and 1990s sympathisers of Islamist movements (Otterbeck 2000; Roald 2001b) were among those most actively involved in Islamic activities in European countries.24 In Norway, transnational missionary movements such as the Tablighi and Islamist organizations such as the Jamaat-i-Islami had a presence in the Pakis- tani mosques in Oslo while the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Ikhwān al-Muslimūn) and related dawa work already had a presence in the Arab mosques from the late 1970s onwards (Vogt 2000). In addition to infl uence from Islamist organizations and dawa movements with their base in Muslim countries the importance of European movements springing out of these, and of Islamic organizations originating in Europe, was signifi cant in the 1980s and 1990s. Roald also notes the emergence of independent networks of activists, such as the independent Islamist trend ‘post-Ikhwān’, among Scandinavian Muslims. According to Roald, the ‘post-Ikhwān’ trend is a composite of various individuals from diff erent backgrounds who are “born out of the ikhwān tradition with its salaf 25 direction” but who are active in a variety of European Islamic organizations rather than in the Muslim Brotherhood or organizations linked to it (Roald 2001b: 56). Due to the ‘post-Ikhwᾱn’ trend’s independence from Islamist organizations, Roald argues (2001b: 54–57, 2004: 122), there is a greater rationale for change. Identifying Islamism primarily with eff orts to establish an Islamic state through political action, Roy (2004) argues that the infl uence of Islamism among European Muslims was succeeded by what he refers to as a post-Islamist privatization of re-Islamization, this being expressed primarily as what he terms “neo- fundamentalism”. Although such concepts as ‘Islamism’, ‘the Islamic movement’, ‘post-Islamism’ and ‘neo-fundamentalism’ cover a variety of Islamic positions, they can all be seen in relation to the broader category of ‘Islamic revivalism’ denoting the broad array of Islamic

24 Roald (2001b: xii) defi nes Islamists as Muslims who regard Islam as a body of ideas, values, beliefs and practices encompassing all spheres of life, including personal and social relationships, economics and politics. 25 Salaf (Arabic for ‘to precede’) refers to the devout elders who served as companions to the Prophet and virtuous forefathers of the religion. Th e term is generally extended to include the fi rst three generations of Muslims comprising the companions of the Prophet (Sahaaba), their immediate successors (Tabiun) and the generation aft er these. Th e Muslim Brotherhood advocates the “return of Islam to its pure sources” (the Koran and the sunna) (Roald 2001b). 64 chapter two movements whose eff orts to ‘reform’ or ‘revive’ Islamic traditions have been variously entangled with colonialism, decolonisation, the building of nation states and class and gender relations (Salvatore 2004). Despite the great heterogeneity within the NMU and the MSS the broader discursive fi eld in which they emerged, and in and through which their own discourses were shaped in the late 1990s, was characterized by the signifi cant infl uence of various ‘revivalist’ movements and the circulation of dawa literature promoting, among other things, a return to the Koran and the sunna26 in matters of jurisprudence and politics. One signifi cant infl uence on youth and students in the NMU and the MSS came from the close affi nity with the Rabita mosque,27 which held ideas close to those of the Muslim Brotherhood. Th e Arab Islamist dawa organization IIFSO also had a signifi cant presence through its distribution of literature which,28 among other things, included writings by members and sympathisers of the Muslim Brotherhood (Roald 2004; Vogt 2000). In an interview conducted in 2002 Nabil, a long-time member of the MSS, suggested to me that the Islamic orientation of the organization could be characterized by the term ‘post-Ikhwān’ as used by Roald (2001b) in Women in Islam, a book he had just fi nished reading. It is interesting that Nabil used this academic categorization of diff erent Islamic trends as a point of departure for refl ecting on what kind of approach to Islam he saw the MSS as embodying. By doing this he found a conceptual means for describing the fact that although the MSS was composed of individuals from dif- ferent backgrounds there was nevertheless a convergence in members’ religious discourse. Th e dominant Islamic discourse in the MSS and the NMU in the late 1990s and early 2000s shared some important notions with the ‘post-Ikhwān’ trend in that they, to quote Roald (2001b: 56), “uphold the ikhwān and the salaf notion of ‘returning to the Koran and the sunna’, the ikhwān idea of Islam as a ‘rational’ religion and the understanding of Islam as a complete way of life”.

26 Th e practices of the Prophet; the specifi c actions and sayings of the Prophet Mohammed. 27 Rabita and Masjid Bilal (both internationally oriented, predominantly Arab and attracting Norwegian converts) and, to a lesser extent, the Islamic Cultural Centre were popular both in terms of their multi-ethnic composition and their general theological orientation. 28 Th e International Islamic Federation of Student Associations, based in Kuwait. Th is dawa-movement was important in making available the works of the well-known Islamists associated with the ikhwān trend of thought, such as al-Banna, Qutb, al-Maududi and Qaradawi. envisioning unity, coping with difference 65

Also of note here is the infl uence of revivalist movements from the Indian subcontinent representing the broad Deobandi reform tradition and Islamist political parties such as the Jamaat-i-Islami. Th is infl uence was felt notably by way of a close affi nity with the Islamic Cultural Centre, which represents the Deobandi movement in Oslo. Among the Pakistanis in the NMU and the MSS there was also a signifi cant number of members who issued from the Barelwi tradition which represents the largest Pakistani Muslim community in Norway. In these circles the dawa movement of Taher-ul-Quadri, Idara Minhaj- ul-Quran, attracted many, including young people, in the 1990s. At the same time, Saudi oil wealth helped energize dawa work in Europe and some young Muslims participated in Islamic events fi nanced by or held in Saudi Arabia. Also of note here is the popularity of internationally renowned dawa preachers with a ‘literalist’ and ‘apologetic’ approach. Following the popularity of Ahmed Deedat in the 1990s,29 the controversial founding president of the Islamic Research Foundation, Zakir Naik,30 had, according to Asheim (2007), become a popular reference among some of the students she interviewed in the 2000s. What above all seems to have characterized this period, then, is an eclectic orientation towards ideas propagated by various transnational Islamist organizations and revivalist dawa movements and scholars. While the religious discourse in the NMU and the MSS in the late 1990s and early 2000s was importantly shaped by the trends mentioned above, the dominant orientations within the organizations have varied over time, this both in relation to shift ing constellations of members promoting particular Islamic discourses and in terms of more general shift s in the Islamic discourses informing Muslim debates in Europe. A popular fi gure whose impact was notable a few years into the new millennium was the American convert Nuh Ha Mim Keller, a prominent sheikh of the shadhiliyya order, who advocated adherence to the Shafi law school. Th is also goes for the popularity of Internet portals such as the Sunni Path Online Islamic Academy (where Keller fi gures

29 Ahmed Deedat is a South African preacher who has gained worlwide popularity; he is founder of the Islamic Propagation Centre International. 30 Zakir Naik is oft en spoken of as a student of Ahmed Deedat. Naik’s book Non- Muslims’ Common Questions about Islam was translated into Norwegian in 2006 and made available online by Rogaland Islaminfo Center and his thoughts have been spread not least through the international satellite TV-channel Peace TV. Naik’s writings are also promoted by a recently established student organization in Oslo called Islam Net Student (INS, Det Islamske Nettverk for Studenter). 66 chapter two as one of the teachers) which teaches Islamic jurisprudence from the point of view of the four established Sunni schools of law.31 Th e internationally renowned American convert Hamza Yusuf, who established the online Zaytuna institute and who combines a Sufi approach with a dedication to the revival of traditional study methods and the sciences of Islam, has also had an impact.32 In contrast to the previous stress on ‘returning to the Koran and the sunna’, there seems to have been a reorientation in the general discourse of the MSS a few years into the 2000s moving towards a new stress on the importance of adherence to the Islamic schools of law and traditional study methods. Th is shift seems to have re-energized, but also reconfi gured, debates between those (mainly of Pakistani background) affi liated with the Deobandi and the Barelwi traditions. Interviews conducted in 2009 also revealed the increasing popularity among youth of those Roy (2004) refers to as “emotional preachers”, those such as Amr Khalid33 and Fetullah Gülen for whom, in Roy’s words, “feelings prevail over law in order to achieve repentance and return to a true faith” (2004: 191). Based on these and related trends authors have identifi ed a shift towards a ‘post-Islamist’ trend among European Muslims (Roy and Boubekeur 2009) as well as in Muslim societies (Bayat 2007). Th e fact that the present study draws mainly on fi eldwork and interviews conducted right before and aft er the turn of the millennium does not allow me to systematically trace how and to what extent various more recent trends have impacted on the ways in which young Muslims engage and rework Islamic tradition. It should be noted, then, that although some more recent developments transpire in the following chapters, the ethnography presented in this book mainly covers a particular period around the turn of the century in a shift ing terrain of organizational structures and Islamic discourses. Locating the NMU and the MSS within Islamic revivalism does not imply that the organizations as such, or their individual members, represent a coherent Islamic position. Many of those who attended

31 Th e four major madhabs or schools of law in Sunni Islam are the Hanafi , the Maliki, the Shafi ’i and the Hanbali. Th ere is also one major Shiite school, the Ja’fari. 32 According to Schmidt (2005), central fi gures in the Muslim Youth of Sweden (SUM) started referring to Yusuf and the Zaytuna institute in the late 1990s. 33 Bayat (2007) gives an account of the Egyptian television preacher Amr Khalid’s rise to stardom in Egypt and beyond in the early 2000s, associating him with a new trend in religiosity marking a shift from Islamism as a political project to one concerned primarily with personal salvation, ethical enhancement and self-realization. envisioning unity, coping with difference 67 meetings in the NMU and the MSS were only cursorily familiar with theological diff erences distinguishing diff erent Islamic tendencies34 Among these latter, and this in particular concerns the younger members, revivalist discourse was articulated at a much more ‘experience- near’ level as an eff ort to ‘think for themselves’, ‘apply reason’ and search for ‘real Islam’. My attempt to position the organizations with regard to such tendencies is thus primarily of importance in stressing some aspects of the Islamic discourse that young Muslims encountered when attending activities in the NMU and the MSS during a particular period and not as a means of characterizing the diverse religious sensibilities and understandings of their members. Although the organizations infl uence and shape the views of members over time, individual views vary greatly and do not necessarily concur with the dominant Islamic discourses and tendencies within the organizations. Furthermore, if we look at individual life histories rather than organizational trends, it is clear that people’s modes of engagement with Islamic traditions are in many cases subject to considerable change. Although this book mainly addresses the issue of how young people shape themselves as pious Muslims, it also points to how such eff orts may come to be redefi ned or made less central to individuals as they move into new phases of their lives. Such individual religious trajectories are further discussed in Chapter Six.

New forms of Muslim cooperation

Up until the 1990s the main trend in the organization and institutionalization of Islam in Oslo was the establishment of new mosques and Islamic organizations along ethnic, linguistic and denominational lines. Pakistanis, Turks, Moroccans, Arabs, Somalis, Gambians, Bosnians etc. each organized religious activities for themselves (see Leirvik 2006a for a survey; Larsen 1995).35 Th is pattern tended to be

34 Cf. Østberg (2001) who similarly notes that both Pakistani children and the ‘average’ adherents of Pakistani mosques in Oslo have little awareness of the theological distinctions between the mosques they frequent and other Islamic mosques and organizations. In the NMU and the MSS this is partly also a question of age and of how long members have been active in the organizations; younger and more recent members are oft en less aware of the larger theological debates taking place within the Islamic community. 35 Th e establishment of mosques was not simply a refl ection of existing communities, however. Th e very formation of mosques generated ongoing debates and struggles 68 chapter two reinforced by the arrival of new groups of Muslim refugees and asylum seekers who established their own mosques and organizations. A new trend in the 1990s was the establishment of organizations that recruited members across previous demarcation lines. Common to these new organizations was their concern with questions related to the ‘recognition’ (see Chapter Four) of Muslims in Norwegian society.36 Some of the new organizations of the 1990s were also established on the basis of the (assumed) needs and interests of particular social categories within ‘the Muslim community’, notably those of women, children and youth, rather than according to shared ethnic, linguistic and denominational identities. Several factors energized this trend. Until the late 1980s, those who now fi gure in public discourse as Muslims were more oft en represented as ‘immigrants’ or in terms of their country of emigration. Th roughout the 1990s ‘Muslims’ increasingly came to be seen by politicians, bureau- crats, journalists etc. as a segment of the population to be managed within the overall frame of the Norwegian nation state with its particular ‘needs’ and ‘problems’. As in other European countries, demands arose for a representative organization of Muslims to function as interlocutors and mediators between the state (and also to some extent semi-governmental and non-governmental organizations in ‘civil society’) and the Muslim population. Th e Church of Norway, and in particular its eff orts to involve Muslims in inter-faith dialogue, was central to this process and vital for the founding of the Islamic Council of Norway. Th e (largely negative) focus in politics and public discourse on the needs and challenges facing Muslim women and children in the Muslim community also contributed to singling out areas of special concern.

and schisms and fi ssions occurred both in relation to denominational disagreements and to confl icts of a more personal character concerning, for instance, leadership. Although the main trend was for people from the same country to initially organize religious activities together, with language being an important reason for this, there were some notable exceptions. Th e Islamic Cultural Centre (ICC), established by Pakistani sympathizers of the Jamaat-i-Islami in the early 1970s, remained a meeting place for Muslims regardless of their nationality and denomination in the fi rst years aft er its establishment (Vogt 2000). However, ideological diff erences subsequently led to a fi ssion between the Barelwi and the Deobandis as member fi gures grew and complicated internal cooperation. Some Muslims of other nationalities and of other ideological sympathies nevertheless remained in the ICC well into the 1980s. 36 Th is is part of a broader development in the landscape of European Muslim organizations (cf. Tietze 2008). envisioning unity, coping with difference 69

Muslims also increasingly started to make their Muslim identity a decisive element of their self-representation vis-à-vis the majority society. Not least in matters regarding the exercise of the cult, Muslims experienced a need to develop more unifi ed attitudes towards the majority society. Th e agendas of the new organizations centred on things like the provision of halal meat, the provision of Muslim funerals, the provision of prayer spaces and mosque construction. Th ey also focused more explicitly on minority–majority relations by means of engaging in dialogue, information work and positioning themselves as ‘bridges’ between the Muslim communities and Norwegian society. As Østberg (2001) argues, the increased formal networking and formalized cooperation within the Muslim community and towards Norwegian mainstream society entailed, at an institutional level at least, the presentation of a more unifi ed position towards the majority society, this despite increased internal diff erentiation. Th e 1990s also marked the emergence of a ‘new generation’ and the NMU and the MSS were the foremost examples of the Muslim community-structures that this generation founded. Th e NMU and the MSS carried the trend of organizing across previous demarcation lines even further. In contrast to the umbrella organizations, the members of the NMU and the MSS did not come together as ‘representatives’ of diff erent Muslim groups or communities. From the very start, the NMU and the MSS consisted of young people from a variety of diff erent national and ethnic family backgrounds, these including most of the major Muslim migrant groups from Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Bosnia as well as some Norwegian converts. Th is multi-ethnic composition was largely a function of the social networks of those involved as many of these people had grown up in multi-ethnic neighbourhoods.37 Th e multi-ethnic composition thus refl ected the emergence of new patterns of identifi cation and sociability in the spaces created by migration and globalization. As suggested by Cesari (2003), the way in which young people seek Islam outside of the ethnic religious traditions and communities, and the emphasis they put on the worldwide religious community, seems to be a general tendency among the so called second generation in Europe.

37 I use the term ‘ethnic’ to refer to communities and identities that are constituted on the basis of national background within the context of migration to a new nation state. 70 chapter two

Th e members of the NMU and the MSS viewed the ‘international’ and ‘multi-ethnic’ composition of the organizations as importantly distinguishing them from existing mosques and migrant organizations and perceived this as a privileged point of departure for creating Muslim unity. Th eir vision of Muslim unity was shaped both by discourses of national citizenship and the quest for recognition within the frame of the Norwegian nation state and by transnational forms of religious association and revivalist discourses stressing the universality of the Islamic message and the notion of a global umma (Islamic community). Th is vision of unity created the basis for a national as well as a transnational orientation in the organizational work. Beyond the case- based cooperation between existing Muslim groups, young Muslims contributed to envisaging the emergence of a single united Muslim community in Norway transcending ethnic, linguistic and theological boundaries. Th is unity, it was said, would make the Muslim community stronger and more capable of dealing with challenges. As will be further discussed in Chapter Th ree, young Muslims have worked towards furthering Muslim unity through engagement in common organizational structures (for instance, the Islamic Council of Norway) and through eff orts to develop a common ritual temporality for Muslims in Norway. Young Muslims engagement in the NMU and the MSS did not, however, ‘replace’ engagement in mosques based on ethnic, linguistic and denominational identities as many remained attached to, and some also became increasingly active in, the established mosques (oft en, but not always, following their parents’ mosque affi liation) as they grew older and their engagement in the youth and student organizations came to an end.

Promoting Muslim unity Th is vision of uniting Muslims not only across ethnic and linguistic boundaries but also across theological boundaries was an explicit goal of both the NMU and the MSS. At a subjective level this was also refl ected in the ways in which many members spoke about themselves as Muslims. When I asked members whether they identifi ed with a particular ‘branch’ of Islam, they would typically give answers that stressed the unity of Islam. Some of the youngest identifi ed themselves simply as Muslim, this primarily because they had little knowledge of established principles of diff erentiation in the Islamic tradition. Others more explicitly denounced what they referred to as ‘sectarianism’. One young woman, for instance, stated in an interview in 1999 that: envisioning unity, coping with difference 71

Th ere are many Muslims in Norway and they follow many diff erent directions. It is not really supposed to be like that, it is not allowed [in Islam], but when people have diff erent opinions, they will necessarily follow dif- ferent directions. Such denunciations refl ected the widespread revivalist discourse of unity that was popular in the 1990s, this invoking the fi gure of a timeless Islamic truth to be recovered through a return to the Islamic sources. Historically, the diff erence between Shia and Sunni Islam has been the major diff erentiating line in Islam. According to Cesari (2004) dif- ferences between Sunni and Shiite Islam tend to be minimized both with respect to mosque attendance and interpersonal relationships as a consequence of the minority situation, particularly in the United States. Such a minimization of diff erence was also evident in the way some of my interlocutors spoke about themselves as Muslims. As Yaminah put it, “A Muslim is a Muslim. We all have the same Faith and the same Creator. I’m neither Shia, nor Sunni. I’m just a Muslim, that’s all. I follow the Koran. Th at’s what matters”. Th e eff ort to create unity on the basis of a common Muslim identity was also evident from the organizational structures in the NMU and the MSS. Th e statutes declared that the MSS was “open to all students who believe that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed (PBUH)38 is the Messenger of God” ( accessed 16.06.2002). Th e majority of the members were from Sunni families but there were some Shias too, Shias also being found in the working committee. Despite such attempts to reject the Shia /Sunni division as a ground for personal identifi cation and organization and despite the stress on a unitary Muslim identity founded on the Koran most of those who had a certain familiarity with the Islamic theological tradition did acknowledge the Shia /Sunni division and some also challenged the idea that religious activities could be organized across the Shia /Sunni divide. Th ough not representative of the organization’s view as such, it is suggestive that one of the MSS members stated, exaggerating to illustrate his point, that: I personally think that it should be impossible for Shias and Sunnis to work together. Because 99 per cent of the hadiths diff er, and the way of understanding the hadiths diff ers 110 per cent.

38 PBUH is an abbreviation of the blessing ‘Peace Be Upon Him’ used aft er pronouncing or writing the name of the Prophet Mohammed. 72 chapter two

In addition to the Shia /Sunni divide, the young acknowledged the diversity within the Islamic tradition through use of a broad range of categories of diff erentiation such as ‘Sufi ’, ‘Hanafi ’ etc. (the diff erent madhabs39), or occasionally the name of a particular Islamic movement (Tablighis, Salafi etc.) or a particular scholar or imam that people were said to follow. Th ey also used categories of diff erentiation central to the ordering processes of modernity such as ‘traditional’ or ‘modern’ and ‘strict’ or ‘liberal’. In the following I off er a closer look at how the relationship between unity and diversity was envisaged and tackled within the two radically internally-plural organizations. I focus here on the ways in which the young dealt with the Shia /Sunni divide within the frame of their organizations and how these negotiations of Muslim unity intersected with other principles of diff erentiation. Within the organizations, we can identify several strategies for dealing with the Shia /Sunni question, the relationship between unity and diversity in the Islamic tradition more generally and the confl icts that could potentially follow from this. In the interviews those who had been active in the organizations said that they generally sought to ‘avoid’ confl icts stemming from the internal diversity in the organizations. Avoidance was achieved by means of a number of discursive strategies. Th e fi rst consisted in invoking Islam as a unitary speaking subject through expressions such as “Islam says”, “in Islam” and “according to Islam”, thus refusing to explicitly address divergent positions within the Islamic tradition.40 On other occasions, Islam as a unitary speaking subject would be broken down into how scholars within, for example, the major Sunni schools of law reasoned on a particular matter, but this in keeping with the idea of a legitimate plurality of interpretation within a coherent Islamic tradition. Th e second discursive strategy consisted of constructing a line of diff erentiation between ‘theological matters’ and ‘social and political matters’. On the few occasions when Shia imams or scholars were invited, their talks were always on matters construed as ‘social and political’ rather than theological (non-Muslims were also invited to speak about such issues). Coping with diff erence thus seemed to involve diff erentiating between separate

39 Th e four major schools of law. 40 As Anne Sofi e Roald relates in her autobiographical introduction to Women in Islam (2001), this was also the tendency at the Islamic conferences in Europe at the time, where scholars diff ered in points of view, but nevertheless all presented their particular ideas as “what Islam says”. envisioning unity, coping with difference 73 discursive domains. Th e third strategy consisted in invoking a ‘private’ space of faith and belief. Th e private /public distinction made it possible to argue that it was up to each and every person which direction, imam etc. they chose to follow. Th e plurality within the Islamic tradition was conceptualized as a matter of ‘personal belief’ pertaining to which Islamic tradition, school of law or scholar each person had chosen to follow. As Samir, at the time the leader of the MSS, put it: It is an unwritten rule that we try to address subjects we agree upon during lectures and that we try to avoid subjects we disagree upon. In so far as it is a matter of belief, it is very personal. Managing to work together is much more important than discussing which imam people follow. It is interesting to note how Samir characterizes belief as something “very personal”. Th is is also refl ected in young Muslims’ general disapproval of coercion in religious matters and their emphasis on ‘individual choice’ rather than communal adhesion. However, it is questionable whether Samir’s insistence on belief as something personal should be read simply as reiterating a secularist separation between religious (as private) and worldly (as public) aff airs. Th e space allowed for ‘personal belief’ for individual members is premised on the notion that they exist within a framework of fundamental agreement on central aspects of the Islamic tradition.41 Th e shift ing strategies for handling internal diversity also transpire from the revisions of the statutes that have been undertaken over the years. In the original statutes of the MSS, membership was, as already mentioned, open to all those who believed in Allah and His Prophet Mohammed. In a revision of the statutes made in the mid-2000s, this formulation was added to with, “and that the Koran is the word of Allah and the sunna and hadith literature the most important and authoritative source for Islam next to the Koran”. Th is addition may be read as an attempt to secure Islamic orthodoxy in a context of radical pluralism within the organization (see chapter fi ve for a further discussion of orthodoxy). In a later revision the entire

41 One possible reading is that the distinction between personal belief and ‘what we agree upon’ refers to the idea of ‘normative pluralism’ and to the distinction between an assumed universal and unchangeable Islamic core in contrast to the dimensions in which men make their own situational and changeable laws as expressed and institutionalized in diff erent schools of law and Islamic traditions (cf. Chapter Four). Similarly, one’s choice of madhab or school of thought is considered a ‘personal choice’ by Young Muslims UK (Mandaville 2004) and the Muslim Youth of Germany (MJD, Muslimische Jugend Deutschland). 74 chapter two paragraph specifying religious belief as a criterion for membership was removed, however, while what had until then been an ‘unwritten rule’ (that since the MSS represents all Muslim students in Norway, it shall not participate in work that can lead to divisions between Muslims) was specifi ed in a new paragraph. Despite such discursive strategies for dealing with internal diff erence and eff orts to treat diverse theological positions as ‘personal’ matters, a confl ict erupted in the NMU in 2002 that was addressed as a matter of diff erences between Shia and Sunni Islam. Th e confl ict eventually led to the resignation of some members, the recomposition of the committee (which at the time included several Shias) and an alter- ing of the statutes. In 2003 an e-mail was sent out specifying that full membership in the NMU was subsequently to be reserved for Sunni Muslims: All Sunni Muslims up to the age of 26 may become members whereas others (including non-Muslims) may become associate members. Th e main diff erence between members and associate members is that members have the right to vote in General Assemblies whereas associate members do not. It is interesting to note that whereas whether people were Shia or Sunni was previously a non-issue and a matter of personal belief, the Shia / Sunni division here came to be instated as an organizational principle and formal criterion for membership that in practice accorded Shias the same membership status as non-Muslims.42 Th e fact that the confl ict was articulated around the co-presence of Shia and Sunni Muslims in the organization, and the theological diff erences between them, came somewhat as a surprise to me since talk about the diff erences between Shia and Sunni had been virtually absent during my previous fi eldwork undertaken in the late 1990s. Although the Shia /Sunni distinction had not been explicitly discussed, it had been clear to me that the Sunni tradition dominated the organization in terms of its membership, in terms of perspectives presented on theological questions and in terms of the performance of religious rituals

42 In 2007 the Islamic Youth Organization of Norway (DIN, Den Islamske Ungdomsorganisasjonen i Norge) was established by young Shias, some of whom had been affi liated to the NMU. In principle the organization is open to all although its Internet pages and seminars reveal a clear Shia profi le. envisioning unity, coping with difference 75 such as prayer and the celebration of religious feasts (these generally following the Sunni tradition). When the confl ict erupted it appeared that the presence of Shias had, in fact, been controversial among some of the Sunnis and that Sunni dominance had been challenged by some of the Shias who wanted a more ‘open’ and ‘inclusive’ organization with Shia and Sunni positions being given equal status. Th e main protagonists in the confl ict had, thus, for a time been debating the theological diff erences and virtues of Shia /Sunni without, however, making this an issue during NMU meetings. Th e confl ict in the NMU illustrates well the dilemmas and contradictions that are energized as young Muslims attempt to organize themselves on the basis of a common Muslim identity and a common identifi cation with Islam. Th ese problems are not just energized by the coming together of people who are diff erent with respect to the historically sedimented identities and forms of practices they identify with and are identifi ed with by others, though. In addition, they are energized by diff erences related to age, generation and gender and by confl icting visions of the future and goals of the organization. An immediate precursor to the confl ict came in the form of a girl’s conversion to Islam, with the issue of whether she should be taught Shia or Sunni practices arising. Th ere was also the question of whether enquiries to the organization about Islamic opinions and practices should be answered with reference to Sunni or Shia scholars. Th e way in which the religious spaces that young Muslims create for themselves continue to be embedded in wider contexts that structure their possibilities for forging new identities and practices was dramatized during the confl ict as parents and people representing mosques and Islamic organizations had a vested interest in how the problem was solved. One might also speculate that political confl icts between Shias and Sunnis in the Middle East, which at the time seemed to be escalating, infl u- enced the cooperation between Shias and Sunnis at the local level. Th e confl ict also refl ected a contest over power in the organizational leadership. Th e role of the advisory council (fadderråd) was particularly questioned. Th e organizational structure, some argued, gave too much control to the founders of the NMU and too little room for succeeding committees to develop the organization in whatever direction they found most promising. For their part, the members of the advisory council saw their role as necessary to ensure that the organization continued to respect ‘Islamic principles’ and that the young 76 chapter two elected committee members were properly guided in Islamic matters when taking decisions about the organization. Some of the members of the NMU, however, characterized the ‘advisory council’ as an anachro- nistic and undemocratic body attempting to ‘control’ the younger members of the elected committees. Th is concern was refl ected by the limiting of the number of committee members above the age of twenty- fi ve in the new statutes. Calls were also made to replace the paramount role of the ‘fadderråd’ in decision-making with general discussions and voting. Claims for a more ‘democratic’ structure that had been raised in relation to the religious arenas of the parental generation were thus repeated within the context of the young Muslims’ own organization. Th e NMU-confl ict also refl ected tensions between two diff erent conceptions of Muslim activism, one stressing internal dawa and self- education and the other stressing a more external focus and engagement in public debates. Further, it refl ected the contestation of gender and the issue of female leadership. Some of the young women who were active in the NMU enacted a type of femininity that made them controversial as representatives of a Muslim organization. Th e way they combined the hijab with the then fashionable knee-long skirts and knee-high boots, for instance, was perceived by some as objectionable on the basis of Islamic values of modesty.43 Although the confl ict was discussed in terms of diff erences between Shia and Sunni Muslims, then, it was actually manifested through a variety of intersecting diff erences relating to age, gender and generation as well as the various diff erent positions adopted on the future and profi le of the association, on internal structures of power and authority and on the aims of the organization. In the aft ermath of 9/11 images of unity and diversity had to be negotiated in new ways within Muslim communities. In an interview conducted in 2002, Umar talked about some of the eff ects that this event had had on the Muslim community in Norway: Muslims increasingly distance themselves from each other. Th e trust … I don’t know … there has been so much confl ict. Some people might think

43 Aft er an interview with one of these girls in a major newspaper, the way in which she was depicted and the part where she stated that “we [women] got the power” became a matter of debate. Similarly, the appearance of a young female spokesperson in one of the major Pakistani mosques was discussed in relation to a picture illustrating an interview with her at . Here the question was raised of whether Amber Khan had worn make-up for the picture and whether this was appropriate for a woman representing a Muslim organization. envisioning unity, coping with difference 77

that the actions taken were somehow understandable and even justifi ed, whereas others think it was pure evil. Th is tendency of Muslims to ‘distance themselves from each other’ has arguably been reinforced by the calls European governments and public debates have made on Muslims to ‘distance themselves’ from various movements defi ned as extremist and from acts of violence committed by such movements in the name of Islam. Th e post 9/11 climate indeed seems to have brought to prominence a new set of distinctions through which Muslims in Europe (and elsewhere) are categorized, a line of division that divides ‘moderate Islam’ from ‘extremist political Islam’ and ‘good Muslims’ from ‘bad Muslims’ (Mamdani 2004). While Norwegian public debate post 9/11 repeatedly called for ‘moderate Muslims’ to come forward, an eff ort at an organizational representation of self-defi ned ‘moderate’ and ‘secular’ Muslims in 2007 was aborted due to internal confl icts. Other Muslims have, however, responded to the call for ‘moderate’ Muslims to distance themselves from ‘extremism’. Th e response from and debates within the Muslim community have been varied; some have publicly declared themselves to be ‘moderate’ whereas others have problematized and redefi ned this basis for categorization. In a comment posted on (accessed 25.04.2005), Basim Ghozlan, the director of the Islamic Foundation of Norway (Rabita), challenged the common perception of ‘moderate Muslims’ as those who do not practice Islam or who reject its fundaments. Denouncing as extremist groups that legitimize violence against civilians and scholars who “know no other word than haram44” and who declare people who don’t share their views as unbe- lievers, he insisted that Islam could in itself be considered a “moderate religion” and that, for him, being a “moderate Muslim” was “to practice (or at least understand) Islam as it is without exaggerating”. Th is way of addressing the issue of extremism and moderation is shared by many young Muslims who tend to meet the call by claiming to be ‘moderate’ while simultaneously negotiating the meaning of this category. In internal debates among the young, there is no fi xed meaning attached to the array of distinctions operating in this discursive fi eld, between, for example, moderate, conservative, extremist, radical, liberal and traditionalist Muslims; rather there is a continual process of negotiation and (re)positioning. Whereas visions of Muslim unity are challenged

44 Proscribed, forbidden. 78 chapter two by the need to position oneself according to these kinds of distinctions, young Muslims still seem to consider uniting on the basis of a common Muslim identity an important issue. Th e feeling of being constructed as the Other in relation to majority society that was reinforced aft er 9/11 no doubt also energized this vision. In 2008 an initiative called “Muslim Unity” was established that, according to the founders, seeks to bring together youth of Muslim background in a common arena to throw light on and spread knowledge about important issues relating to Islam in today’s society. Th is recent initiative, more than earlier eff orts to create unity among Muslims through insti- tuting new patterns of organization and cooperation, draws importantly on a newly emerging Muslim popular youth culture and the social imaginaries and visions of Muslim unity off ered by these (see next chapter).

Being a Muslim youth

Th e category of ‘youth’ represents the dimension of time and the life cycle. In contrast to gender in particular, ‘age’ shows more clearly than other social divisions how categories and their boundaries are not fi xed and how people can move in and out of at least some of them over time (Yuval-Davis 2006). ‘Youth’ is associated with a particular period of the individual life cycle, this as it is variously defi ned within diff erent social situations, cultural traditions and historical periods. Within what is commonly referred to as modernity, youth has been defi ned as a period of self-formation, a period for the foundation of personal identities and – closely related to this – a period for experimenting with and challenging social and cultural conventions. Th is view of youth as a period of protest and rebellion is also refl ected in some of the literature on Muslim youth in Europe. Some writers have argued that in Europe (at least some) young Muslims’ turn to Islam can be understood as a ‘social rebellion’ against the majority society (Khosrokhavar 1997) and that Islam provides a language of social protest (Mandaville 2002) against exclusion. Th e thesis is that domination and rejection from the majority society can result in a reaffi rmation of that which sets young Muslims apart, Islam thus becoming a source of cultural self- affi rmation, a form of self-defence and a source of solidarity against a hostile envisioning unity, coping with difference 79

dominant culture. Discussing the radicalization of Muslim youth in Europe, Roy insists on seeing such radicalization as only one among various forms of radical protest against the social order, one that has striking parallels to, for example, Western European radicalism in the 1960s and 1970s. “Twenty years ago”, he writes, those who are now attracted by radical Islamism “would have joined a radical left ist movement, but such movements have disappeared from the spaces of social exclusion or have become more ‘bourgeois’ ” (2004: 48). In this view, rebellion, protest and radicalism are not located in ‘Islam’ but are seen as traits of youth and particular social milieus with both the social environment and social discourses being decisive for the expression of this radicalism.45 Th e social category of ‘Muslim youth’ also has a more exact historical provenance, appearing to have crystallized in Europe as the children of Muslim immigrants started to reach adulthood and to defi ne religion as central to their identities (Caeiro 2004a). Since then, the concept of ‘Muslim youth’ has come to be used as a term of self-ascription by numerous organizations across Europe (such as the Young Muslims UK, the Union des Jeunes Musulmans in France, the Muslimische Jugend Deutschland, and the European platform for Muslim youth and student organizations, FEMYSO). ‘Muslim youth’ also increasingly emerged as a category targeted in revivalist discourse, as articulated by Islamic scholars and intellectuals such as Yusuf al- Qaradawi and Tariq Ramadan. Although their writings were unfamiliar to most of my interlocutors in the late 1990s, their material addressed to ‘Muslim youth’ had a certain impact as their ideas were read, transmitted and made relevant to the Norwegian context by local fi gures of religious authority who acted as ‘brokers’ within the Muslim communities in Norway. ‘Muslim youth’ was also increasingly used as an ascriptive term by policy makers, social workers and intelligence services,46 as

45 Th e issue of Muslim youth and ‘social protest’ will be further discussed in Chapter Four where I argue that the religious identities and practices of young activist Muslims in Oslo can partly be seen as an opposition to cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect. In this respect, there is a similarity with other movements of social protest and identity politics (notably left ist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist and feminist), although not necessarily ‘radical’ in Roy’s sense. 46 In the aft ermath of several ‘terrorist actions’ carried out by European ‘Muslim youth’, this category has increasingly been singled out, in Norway too, as a security threat because of this group’s assumed vulnerability to militant rhetoric. 80 chapter two well as by researchers (cf. the seminal Muslim European Youth by Vertovec and Rogers in 1998). How then does the category of ‘Muslim youth’ operate in the constitution of a particular subject position in the discourse of the Muslim youth and student organizations? Th e terms ‘Muslim youth’ and ‘Muslim students’ cover quite a large span;47 membership in the NMU and the MSS, however, was not a lifelong involvement, being limited to particular stages of life. Entering new phases of the life cycle and gaining new social obligations through work life, marriage or becoming a parent, many gave up their engagements in the NMU and the MSS. Constituting themselves as ‘youth’ and ‘student’ organizations is a way of marking a commonality of experiences and concerns and also of marking a diff erence from the parental migrant-generation. When speaking about why they felt the need to establish a ‘youth’ organization, the founders of the NMU and the MSS articulated a concern with the continuity of Muslim identities, community and values while simultaneously marking ‘youth’ out as a category with particular experiences and needs. Th ey stressed the importance of providing an alternative for Muslim youth who did not feel ‘at home’ within the established mosques and Islamic organizations. Th is concern was shared by many mosques and other organizations which have also increasingly come to focus on the particular challenges of making young people feel ‘at home’ within the ‘Muslim community’. When asked about what his mosque had to off er young people an imam who Naguib (2001: 92) spoke to said: Not much because they leave when they are thirteen, especially the boys. Th ey hang around big shopping centres and get into trouble. We don’t know what to do. We hope they’ll come back before it’s too late. Th is picture has changed importantly in the fi ft een years since the NMU and the MSS were founded and several mosques now target youth through such activities as, for example, sports, cultural evenings and computer courses, along with seminars and debates on themes of social and political actuality. Th e idea of keeping youth ‘out of trouble’ by keeping them in the mosque, however, remains an important discourse in the youth work of the mosques.

47 Th e NMU limited full membership to Muslims between twelve and twenty-fi ve years of age (those who were older as well as non-Muslims could be members but did not have the right to vote at general assemblies). As a student association, the MSS attracted mainly people between the ages of eighteen and thirty. envisioning unity, coping with difference 81

Although the NMU and the MSS shared a concern with the continuity of Muslim identity and the transmission of religious values and practices to coming generations with the mosques and Islamic organizations, they simultaneously stressed their ‘diff erence’ from the parental generation and the need to establish independent arenas where young people and students could engage Islam from the assumed shared basis of the experiences that being ‘young’ entails. Th e idea of ‘independence’ from the parental generation, and of committing to a religious organization of their own ‘free will’, was fundamental to how they conceived of their religiosity. Noor explained:

What is a bit unusual about the NMU is that young people started it on their own initiative, you know, it is not something our parents started by saying here are our kids, please get together. We ourselves have felt the need to join together, and that is also something that made us feel more strength and to feel Islam on a diff erent level than we otherwise would have. When speaking about age, like gender, the NMU was frequently characterized as ‘untraditional’ and ‘unconventional’. Abid elaborated on this point by contrasting the NMU with youth organizations in the mosques that were presented as more traditional and conventional than the NMU:

All the mosques have youth organizations, or at least a small group of young people who are present. But these groups are mostly started on the initiative of the parents. Because their fathers or mothers go to a certain mosque and the children just come along. Very oft en – at least for those I know of – they go to meetings just because their father will know if they don’t. Like: “Where were you?” But the NMU is not like that. We don’t have that kind of contact with the parents, so people come here of their own free will. While stressing continuity and the transmission of identity and values, the members of the NMU and the MSS also strongly articulated a concern with change and the role of the youth and student organizations in bringing about this change. Both the ways of thinking of the parental generation and of the non-Muslim majority society were identifi ed as in need of being profoundly transformed. As Aesha, who had recently withdrawn from active work in the MSS at the time of the interview, explained:

When you are young you believe that you can change the world. When you are many [people together], you are kind of stronger. Th at’s when 82 chapter two

you think that: “We can do it”. But aft er a while, you realize that people do not want to change. Th ey do not want to let go of old traditions and think diff erently. Aft er a while I thought: “OK, I’ve done my share. Now I want a break”. Because it took a lot of time, and also aff ected my studies. Th e insistence on the need for change and on the NMU and the MSS as ‘untraditional’ and ‘unconventional’ positions the Islamic identities and practices of the ‘young Muslims’ as modern and liberal in contrast to the assumed ‘traditionalism’ and ‘conservatism’ of ‘the parental generation’. Young people’s references to the viewpoints of the elder generation may thus be seen as a means of marking diff erence and of authorizing one’s own practices and positions. Th e NMU’s concern with providing a ‘youthful’ alternative for those young people who did not feel ‘at home’ in the mosques was refl ected in the choice of activities (e.g. ice-skating and eid-parties), in the topics addressed during darses and seminars and in the Muslim youth magazine they published (an important part of which concerned parent– child relations, fi nding a life partner, marriage, peer pressure etc.). Darses oft en attempted to contextualize Islamic topics with reference to the everyday life of young Muslims in Norway by dealing with issues such as schooling, mixed gender swimming, and school parties. Although it sometimes remained implicit and unclear how the related Koran verses and hadiths were relevant to young Muslims’ everyday life, most appreciated the eff ort to make Islamic traditions relevant to, and practicable within, that life.48 Th e importance of such an articulation of Islam to the young was evident from the way that Saquib talked about his engagement in the youth and student organizations: Th at is why I go to places like the NMU and the MSS, because it gives me a sense of belonging and new ideas, like in the dars that Aydin just held. We communicate on the same level. Instead of the imam in a mosque – he doesn’t communicate on the same level – he speaks only about his experiences from the home country. Saquib does not primarily evaluate Aydin’s dars on the basis of his Islamic expertise, or his position within the Muslim community, but

48 Mandaville (2002: 224) similarly argues that the establishment of Muslim youth organizations in the UK off ered resources for those Muslims seeking to make Islam relevant to the particular conditions of modern life in Europe in the sense that Islam was translated into a vocabulary comprehensible to those who had grown up in a Western society. Lewis (2007) argues that there is a ‘communication crisis’ between young British Muslims and their elders and parents, resulting in inter-generational tensions. envisioning unity, coping with difference 83 emphasises the communicative relationship that is enabled by Aydin’s ability to address Islam within a framework of common ‘experiences’. Th e commonality of experiences is here established through a spatial diff erentiation from ‘experiences from the home country’. In Sadiqa’s account of how she came to join the NMU, the theme of ‘having something in common’ is marked through a focus on a temporal diff erentiation between diff erent life stages. Being Muslim and in the same life stage is seen to guarantee a commonality that transcends diff erentiations based on national background and ethnicity and therefore, like Saquib, she focuses on a similar experiential basis as constitutive of a sense of belonging and of ‘binding together’: Some friends had told us about the NMU. We went to a meeting and found it very interesting. Because we are all young Muslims living in Oslo and we all have diff erent backgrounds. It’s not all Moroccans or all Pakistanis, so we are very diff erent. But at the same time we have something in common. When we speak together – the themes that come up – I understand that there is something binding us together. We are all Muslims and we are in the same stage of life where we go through similar things. One aspect of youth as a particular life stage is the importance of ‘cool- ness’ to social validation. Trying to attract young people to the organizations meant negotiating dominant notions of what it meant to be ‘cool’. One of the active members of the NMU described how important it was to challenge the widespread idea that religion was ‘boring’ and something that only old people cared about: I try to show that you can be cool and practise Islam at the same time. During the SMUF conference in Sweden I was play fi ghting with the younger boys in the mosque. I wore a hooded sweatshirt over my ‘Muslim by Nature’ T-shirt. Oh, how cool that looks – trying to motivate them in that way. To show them that Islam is not boring. Other NMU members were critical of this way of gaining attention and felt that the NMU had become more of a youth club where people met to have fun than a ‘serious’ Islamic organization. Being a ‘serious’ arena of learning and debate was precisely part of the way the MSS presented itself and how members contrasted this organization from the NMU: I think they are more like, ‘Islam is cool’. If you look at their magazine, you see that it is very cool, and the T-shirts they sell, ‘Muslim by Nature’. Th ose kinds of things are highly esteemed in the NMU, whereas the MSS is less concerned with promoting itself. Someone holds a lecture, someone asks some questions and then there are diff erent opinions and 84 chapter two

discussions in detail on what Islam says on this and that. Th e MSS does not have the same ambitions as the NMU does. Most people are very busy with their studies. Both members of the NMU and the MSS also focused on the commonalities they felt with other Muslims and their experience of ‘being dif- ferent’ from majority youth culture. While all the young people in my study had friends from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds, such relationships became more complicated in people’s (late) teens as the need to navigate ‘Norwegian youth culture’ imposed itself. Being a part of Norwegian youth culture was seen to involve going to parties, experimenting with cigarettes and alcohol,49 and engaging intimately with the opposite sex. Because of this, some felt more comfortable hanging out with those who, as they said, ‘had the same interests’ or who like themselves were either not interested in or not allowed by their parents to undertake social activities that involved mixed gender settings, staying out late at night etc. Th e last year at secondary high, the so called ‘russetid’ (an extended period of partying before and aft er graduation), was experienced as particularly demanding.50 While some joined this rite de passage, others (and in particular girls) stayed completely outside of it (cf. Schultz 2007). While peer group pressure was experienced less forcefully by many as they grew older, the most important networks to many remained within the ethnic or religious communities (Prieur 2004; Østberg 2001). Many also appreciated the ‘taken-for-granted-ness’ and mutual recognition that social interaction within the group they identifi ed with allowed. As Salima explained: It can sometimes be diffi cult to have non-Muslims as close friends. As a Muslim I have a need to speak about Islam with my friends. And this is not entirely possible with non-Muslim friends. If we talk it is more like I have to tell them … it is not the same as talking with a Muslim.

49 According to surveys from 1996 and 2002 young people with immigrant backgrounds reported much less consumption of alcohol and drugs compared with their non-immigrant peers (Bakken 1998; Storvoll and Krange 2003). Surveys conducted by the National Institute for Research on Intoxicants (SIRUS, Statens Institutt for Rusmiddelforskning) showed that in the Tenth grade 86 per cent of the boys and 89 per cent of the girls without a Muslim background had tasted alcohol, whereas for Muslim boys and girls the numbers were 31 per cent and 18 per cent respectively (Aft enposten 07.03.2003). 50 In public discourse the so called ‘russetid’ is infamous for partying, sexual experimentation and an excess of alcohol. Th e ‘russetid’ may be read as a rite de passage in which the norms of society at large are temporarily suspended and exceeded by youth in transition from the status of childhood to adulthood. envisioning unity, coping with difference 85

So having a Muslim community is important; then you learn and are motivated all the time. As subsequent chapters show, this concern with ‘having a Muslim community’ where one ‘learns and is motivated’ is of particular importance in young Muslims’ quest for Islamic knowledge (Chapter Five) and in their ‘return to Islam’ (Chapter Six). While the solution generally suggested is not to segregate from the majority society, it does entail craft - ing a ‘secure identity’ (Chapter Four) as a base from which to engage in society and deal with the tensions of being a Muslim youth in a non- Muslim society.

A new generation

Th e young Muslims of the NMU and the MSS signifi cantly saw themselves as representing a ‘second’ or ‘new’ generation, thus distinguishing themselves from the generation of ‘the parents’, ‘the immigrants’. Th ey sometimes referred to themselves collectively as the ‘second generation’, a term that, although much criticized, was commonly used to designate them in public discourse. Th e identifi er ‘second generation’ represented an important way of locating oneself in relation (and opposition) to ‘the parental generation’, although the people included in this category when used in reference to the NMU and the MSS were referring more to an imagery of shared experiences (both in terms of family relations and in relation to the Norwegian majority) than to a strictly speaking generation of children born in Norway by Muslim migrant parents. Second generation (or fi rst generation Norwegians) is, thus, a generational identity that is imagined both in terms of parent–child relations and in terms of a particular temporality of migration that generates common experiences. Th e term is assumed to provide a specifi c location in relation to society, culture and religion. Common experiences relating to their position as a second generation were spoken of notably in relation to the sometimes problematic relationships between the young and their parents that were seen to result from the migration process and the cultural diff erences this created within families. It should be noted, however, that although generational diff erence and a diff erence in approach between the ‘fi rst’ and the ‘second’ generation were continually invoked as the raison d’être for the youth and student organizations, these usually avoided a direct confrontational approach with the parental generation choosing 86 chapter two instead to construe the diff erences between themselves and the generation before them as a matter of both continuity and a gradual process of change. In a discussion about parent–child relations in the NMU it was suggested that migrant parents oft en choose a ‘strict line’ for their children when it comes to ‘ways of being, women and hijab and stuff ’. Abid relates this to the diff erence in culture between the fi rst generation /the migrants /our parents and the second generation /the children of the migrants /us: Th ey would not be like that if they themselves hadn’t had such a diffi cult childhood. We live in a totally diff erent culture. Th ey have other ways of doing things than in the West. I mean, they grew up elsewhere and then they get here as grown ups with their children, and the children learn both this culture and the one they have from home, and then there are contradictions. Th e parents, they have their own culture. But this is going to pass in the future generations. Th e second or third generation are going to take on both the positive aspects of their culture and the positive aspects of Norwegian culture. So it’s going to end up in a nice mixture. Th e fi rst generation, our parents that is, have diffi culties accepting the Norwegian system, Norwegian culture or Western culture in general. It’s hard for them to understand. But since the second and third generation will take on positive things from both cultures, this is probably a temporary problem. Like Abid, many of the young adopted a conscious discourse of cultural ‘hybridity’ and saw their own culture, and that of future generations, as headed towards a mixture of Norwegian culture and the cultures of their parents.51 Th ey oft en spoke of themselves as ‘multicultural’ and ‘multilingual’ in order to distinguish themselves from supposedly ‘mono-cultural’ others (their parents and the Norwegian majority). Th e experience of growing up with two or several cultures was seen as constituting a particular form of competence that enabled ‘multicultural youth’ to draw upon diff erent cultural perspectives and, because of this, to be more critical, open and tolerant. Th ough allowing that this position may give rise to ‘contradictions’, the above quote nevertheless views the process of cultural hybridization in optimistic terms – the second and third generations will bring about a ‘nice mixture’ of the positive aspects of the diff erent cultures they grew up with. Th is way of

51 ‘Culture’ as used here is an ‘emic concept’. Whereas culture as an emic concept may appear, as in this case, to refer to separate and bound entities that may be ‘mixed’, ‘culture’ in other contexts is used in the sense of something more fl uid and unbound. envisioning unity, coping with difference 87 conceiving of the second generation as transgressing the cultural divides between ‘Norwegian culture’ and ‘the culture of the parents’ gives young Muslims a particular point of departure for realizing their goal to ‘build bridges between diff erent cultures’. While Abid focused on ‘generations’ produced within the temporali- ties of migration processes, another temporal frame evokes ‘young Muslims’ as a generational ‘cohort’, this understood as a group of people bound together by their experience of particular historical events (Mannheim and Kecskemeti 1952). Growing up at a specifi c historical time a generation shares a specifi c range of common experiences and potentials. At the intersection of local, national and global social and political changes, consecutive cohorts importantly relate to particular ‘critical events’ that infl uence existing, or energize new, social imaginaries and self-perceptions. For the young Muslims I worked with this included such ‘critical events’ as the Rushdie aff air, the Gulf War and, later on, 9/11 and the more recent Caricature Crisis, as well as events of a more local character that have animated Norwegian public debate on Islam. Most of these issues to do with the latter have centred on gender issues, notably so called forced marriages, honour killings and female circumcision. Nabil, a long-term member of the MSS, explicitly refl ected on the ‘critical events’ that had shaped his own and other young Muslims’ engagement with Islam: You know, I think my entire generation, those who were born in the mid- 70s, were marked by the Rushdie aff air and the Gulf War. Th ose are the two events that fi rst made us become perceived as Muslims in school, or that made us feel that we were perceived as Muslims in school. When the Gulf War erupted, my teacher took me out of the class and explained to me that what was going to happen now was that Muslims were going to come to be seen as the new enemies and that sort of thing. Th at was really okay. He told me that if we were bullied by the others we could come to the teachers and talk about it. He showed me that he was on our side. I’ve been discussing this with my friends, that I believe that much of the reason why we are Muslims, perceive ourselves as Muslims, at least when it comes to my generation, is that these things happened when we were at a certain age – I mean when you’re sort of grown up but you’re not quite there yet. So we were very much infl uenced by the Rushdie aff air. And those were the sorts of questions we started to pose ourselves. I remember reading a paragraph from Th e Satanic Verses at home with my father – I mean, we were kind of getting our arguments from home; that’s how it is. In addition there was the Gulf War, which I think made us very conscious that we were Muslims and diff erent. It was because of the society around us that we started discussing Islam. 88 chapter two

Th e importance of such critical events and socio-political changes to the social imaginaries related to immigrants in contemporary Norway and to young Muslims’ religious identities and practices will be further discussed in Chapter Four. Here, it is suffi cient to conclude that the NMU and the MSS refl ected the positions and concerns of a certain age group (within a life-cycle temporality), a particular ‘generation’ (within a migration-related temporality) and a defi ned ‘cohort’ (within a historical temporality). While I have not systematically followed the young as they have entered new stages in their life cycles, it seems that the affi nities and solidarities created in the youth and student groups are related largely to a particular stage in the life cycle. Whether generational and cohort eff ects prove to have an enduring impact on the Muslim identities and practices of those who were active in the organizations at the turn of the millennium remains to be assessed, but what seems clear is that while they continue importantly to perceive themselves as Muslims, there is great variability in how they relate to Islamic traditions, to themselves as religious subjects, and to various social imaginaries and collectivities over time.

Th e gender division

Although gender is fundamental to the construction of Muslim identities, to religious practice and to the formation of organizational structures among Muslims in Europe as well as elsewhere, this aspect has nevertheless oft en been overlooked in the literature.52 Mosques and Islamic organizations in Norway were largely male arenas up until the late 1980s. Since then women have increasingly been included in the activities in such arenas through, for example, the arrangement of better prayer facilities for women, the establishment of social and educational activities for women in the mosques and the setting up of separate women’s groups.53 Female Norwegian converts have been important

52 Th is is so not least because studies have tended to focus on mosques and Islamic organizations, which have until recently primarily been arenas for men. As is oft en the case more generally, such ‘male’ arenas have tended to be represented as Muslim tout court without gender being problematized beyond noting the absence of women. 53 One example is the Islamic Cultural Centre (ICC) which in 1990 had no activities for girls above the age of eleven but which in 1999 off ered Arabic and Koran classes both for girls and women. Another example is Rabita which actively recruited women in the 1990s and which soon aft er had a very active women’s group. In 1991 the Islamic envisioning unity, coping with difference 89 energizers in this process and have come to occupy central positions within the Muslim community in Norway (Roald 2004). Although women have increasingly been included in the activities of mosques and Islamic organizations, then, these activities have mainly continued to be structured on the basis of gender segregation, this being eff ectuated through a variety of spatial and temporal arrangements. Th e NMU and the MSS were among the fi rst to challenge gender segregation as a principle for the organization of religious activities by organizing their activities across the gender division. Th e fact that they were gender- mixed was central to the young Muslims’ perception of the religious spaces they had created as something new in the Muslim community. Abid, for instance, focused on how organizing across the gender division made the NMU ‘untraditional’:54 Another thing that is very untraditional about the NMU and the MSS is that this is not a group of boys together or a group of girls together. Both parts have equally taken initiative. Th ey are mixed organizations – and this is very untraditional – that young people take the initiative in an organization that is put together in a way that does not separate women and men. Th is untraditional way of mixing genders was a major issue when the NMU was established, Aydin affi rms: Certain people, families and fathers in particular, had their own ideas of how things should be in Islam. At the time it became a big problem that girls and boys met together, but fortunately we managed to make our decision clear: Th is is how we do it! Th ose who are interested may join us; those who are not are free to fi nd something else.55

Women’s Group of Norway (IKN) was established as a national special interest organization for Muslim women and children. In both Rabita and the IKN female converts have played a pivotal role. 54 Th e gender mixing seems to be particularly pronounced in the NMU and the MSS when compared to similar youth groups in other European countries. Both the Jeunes Musulmans de France and the Muslimische Jugend Deutschland, for instance, have separate ‘sister’ and ‘brother’ groups. In Scandinavia, mixed gender youth groups seem to be more common (see, for example, Johansen 2002 on Muslim youth groups in Denmark). 55 Partly as a consequence of this scepticism directed towards gender mixing, some members (especially girls) were not always granted permission from their parents to join in the activities of the NMU, particularly late evening events and trips abroad. Whereas Aydin refers to the scepticism of parents and fathers in particular, some also mentioned that gender mixing had also been a contested issue in relation to Rabita. 90 chapter two

Abid, who was a member of the working committee, confi rmed that the gender mix of the NMU was still an issue a few years later: I know we acquired a reputation for being a group of cool young people, but that is because we chose a somewhat untraditional way. People are not used to it. We work hard on attracting young people to our meetings and have to use methods that are a bit unconventional. Th e concept of having boys and girls in the same room is very controversial in itself. Many are not open to that. Th at is why many people stigmatize the place. It has also been the stage for quite a bit of fl irting and that kind of thing. But I feel that our intention is pure. We in the working committee always have pure intentions. Th e fact that some members strike out beyond the limits amongst themselves is not something we can control – but I know that we are rumoured to provide somewhat of a place for fl irting and meeting potential partners. While Abid focused on the continuing scepticism, it seemed that the NMU had in many ways succeeded in establishing an organization that made parents who were generally concerned that interaction between boys and girls should be ‘decent’ also accept the engagement of their daughters in such arenas. In fact, for many families, activities related to Muslim organizations seemed to give girls in particular, though also boys, more room for manoeuvre as it gave them an opportunity to participate in a variety of late evening activities and to travel abroad without their parents; this could happen not least because their parents trusted that things would proceed in a manner that conformed to Islamic norms for gender interaction. Th e MSS seemed, to a greater extent perhaps, to have avoided such scepticism altogether, not least by applying a stricter code of gender separation.56 Both within the NMU and the MSS the importance of keeping gender interaction within the frame of what was ‘Islamically correct’ or ‘allowed’ was repeatedly stressed and provisions were usually made to assure that things stayed within these ‘limits’. In MSS seminars men and women would usually sit on opposite sides of the auditorium,

56 In this respect, they sometimes contrasted themselves to the Pakistani Student Society (PSS, Pakistansk Studentsamfunn) which was established a year before the MSS and which was supposedly the fi rst Pakistani organization to have female board members. Th e PSS acquired a certain reputation for being a ‘matchmaking’ arena, partly because several couples that had met through the PSS later got married. Marriages also occurred between members who met through the NMU and the MSS and both local activities and international Islamic conferences also functioned as arenas for meeting potential life partners. Some women in the NMU and the MSS also take on active roles as marriage brokers by using their social network in the youth and student organizations to fi nd suitable partners for friends and family. envisioning unity, coping with difference 91 while discussions would most oft en take place in gender homogeneous groups. In the more informal sub-committees, men and women would work together. In the NMU the separation of a women’s side from a men’s side during meetings was less formal although during seminars girls and boys tended to cluster together in single sex groups with the groups situated either at the front and back or on diff erent sides. In between lectures and at social gatherings, however, boys and girls min- gled quite freely. Social activities like picnics and sports events were sometimes separated and sometimes mixed and occasionally reserved for either just girls or boys. Since activities mainly took place outside of mosques, where the spatial separation between men and women is materialized in the physical architecture and/or established use of physical space, the spatial segregation between men and women tended to be more fl exible, depending on the gender performance and positioning in space of the young taking part in the activities. Interaction between men and women was guided by, and evaluated on the basis of, gender norms that were authorized as ‘Islamically correct’ and ‘within the accepted limits’. Abid’s refl ections quoted above aptly convey how the negotiations related to establishing and upholding such limits worked. Th e fact that there were competing understandings of ‘Islamically correct’ gender interaction, as well as diff erent degrees of commitment to act in compliance with these gender norms, made gender a matter to be continually negotiated in social interaction. Whereas some focused on keeping a certain degree of physical segregation, others focused on the quality of the mixing and on whether the ‘intentions’ (of the organizers and the members) were in keeping with Islamic norms. Th e working committee could to some extent attempt to ensure that the framework of the activities was ‘Islamically correct’, but within this framework it was up to each individual to take responsibility for how they approached the other sex. Th e ‘fi ctive kinship’ established by addressing each other as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ to some extent worked to maintain limits by desexualizing social relations. Th is terminology served as a reminder to the young that they were in a ‘Mus- lim’ context and that they should, thus, approach each other in ways that fi tted this setting. Th e brother and sister terminology was also a way of expressing respect for a person’s piety and respectability.57

57 Th e terms ‘sister’ and ‘brother’ were most oft en used to refer to a person considered to be ‘practising’ (for women this usually meant those who wore a hijab). 92 chapter two

Teasing and ‘fl irting’ were nevertheless part of mixed gender interaction and several members of the MSS and NMU referred to the diffi - culties of negotiating the rules and limits of such interaction. Th ere were no explicit rules in the organizations but norms about what was Islamically correct were transmitted in lectures as well as more infor- mally through recommendations, looks and comments. Th ese norms were rarely openly discussed or contested; on the other hand, neither were they enforced through any clear sanctions. Th ough looks and comments occasionally functioned as sanctions and reminders, the members were most importantly expected to govern their own behaviour. With respect to dress codes related to female respectability, for instance, neither the NMU nor the MSS required female members to cover their hair. Members of the NMU considered this to be one of the reasons why youth felt more ‘at home’ there than in mosques where they were obliged to cover their hair. Although members were not obliged to cover their hair, then, and although this was to a large extent spoken of as a ‘personal choice’, covering was nevertheless presented through darses and recommendations as the ‘Islamically correct’ way of dressing for Muslim women. In the Islamic discursive tradition, religious leadership has largely been male, and institutionalized leadership positions within mosques and Muslim organizations in Norway are no exception.58 In contrast to the mainly male leadership found in mosques and Islamic organizations, both the MSS and the NMU have had an essentially equal gender representation in their working committees. In 1999 both the MSS and the NMU had male leaders but in 2000 a woman was elected as leader of the NMU and a committee with a female majority put together. MSS members that I discussed the issue of leadership with in the late 1990s and early 2000s said that the issue of whether a woman could be the head of the organization had been up for debate and that the real reason why the organization had not yet had a female leader was mainly

Th e terms were also used as a sign of respect when talking about someone in public (for instance, when introducing a speaker at a seminar). 58 According to Vogt (2000) only two mosques had women represented in their councils at the time: Rabita (two out of fi ft een) and the Bosnian mosque (three out of thirteen). In many mosques women did not have the right to vote at elections for councils. A notable exception was the national coalition of Muslim organizations, Th e Islamic Council of Norway, which was headed from 2000 by the female convert Lena Larsen who also played a vital part in the activities of Rabita and the Islamic Women’s Group of Norway and was jokingly referred to as “the iron woman of the Muslims” in Ung Muslim. envisioning unity, coping with difference 93 that no woman had so far been willing to take this position.59 Th e fi rst female leader of the MSS was elected in 2008, this along with a female- dominated working committee. As well as their role in formal leadership positions and as members, women as well as men were involved in the production and distribution of religious knowledge. Th e NMU and the MSS gave men and women access to the same kind of knowledge in that darses and seminars were open to both sexes. More importantly, women in these organizations, although more rarely than men, also gave darses and appeared as speakers in mixed congregations and not only to other women as in most other mosques and organizations.60 Some of the young women said that they were too ‘shy’ to give dars in such mixed settings, however, while Norwegian converts tended to be more assertive in this respect. Women were also active as producers of knowledge and opinions in the publications Tankevekkende and Ung Muslim as well as being central to planning and organizing meetings, seminars, conferences and social events. Th ough there are a few notable exceptions, Muslims, including the new generations, are usually represented by men in public debate. Th is situation is generally deplored by the young, however, as it is seen to reinforce stereotypes in the non- Muslim majority about Islam being inimical to women and gender equality. It should be noted, though, that there is nevertheless also a male predominance in the ‘informal leadership’ of the organizations.

59 Th e issue of female leadership is contested in the Islamic tradition (see Roald 2001 for a discussion of historic and contemporary debates), but a quite widespread view is that since the Koran (4: 34), in some interpretations, makes men the “guardi- ans” of women, these latter should not serve in signifi cant positions of leadership over men. In this respect it should be noted that although the NMU and the MSS commonly referred to the head of the working committee as the ‘leader’, this leader was formally only given equal status to the other members of the committee. It was the general assembly and not the ‘leader’ that constituted the leadership of the organizations, formally speaking. While this may have been a way of ‘circumventing’ the contested nature of female leadership, young Muslims did nevertheless have an open attitude to female leadership in general. 60 Th e dominant consensus and practice in mosques is that women are not allowed to deliver the Friday sermon or lead men in prayer although this consensus has been challenged recently, notably by American Muslim feminists. In line with this consensus the revivalist movements, which encourage individuals to engage in dawa work (see Chapter Four), commonly restrict women’s roles to preaching and giving religious lectures to other women. While remaining within this consensus with respect to leading prayer (cf. Chapter Six) the NMU and the MSS allow women to give darses in mixed congregations. As noted above the concept of ‘religious lecture’ is used in a broader sense than that indicated by dars-ul-Koran which mainly refers to the translation and explanation of the sources. Here, dars refers to lectures on a diversity of topics from ‘an Islamic point of view’. 94 chapter two

Th e NMU and the MSS both reproduce and challenge established traditions and norms concerning gender. Although the organizations challenge the salience of gender segregation as a basis for organizing religious activities, the way in which they perceive of and organize gender interaction upholds and naturalizes ideas about heterosexuality and a dual gender system. Th e internal gendering of the NMU and the MSS is transgressive in the way it mixes women and men and this gender mixing involves negotiating rules and the limits of interaction and respectability. Th e youth and student organizations have given young women new possibilities for establishing themselves as active participants within the Muslim community. While there have been pronounced changes in terms of social organization and with regard to knowledge production, transmission and consumption, as well as in gender relations within the domestic area (see Chapter Five), gender seems to be less open to contestation in the fi eld of religious rituals (cf. Chapter Six).

Th e rural /urban distinction

Ethnicity, gender, age and generation intersect with a further cluster of social diff erentiations related to education, class and social standing. In her infl uential study of Pakistani Muslims in Norway, Ahlberg (1990) argued that the most obvious dividing line among South Asian immigrant Muslims was that of urban versus rural settlement prior to migration. She argued that many other factors such as (relative) social status and level of education could be related to diff erences in religious style and leadership and that these were represented by diff erent Pakistani mosques and organizations in Oslo, this refl ecting the main division between ‘normative Muslims’ and ‘popular Muslims’. Similar distinctions between ‘popular’ and ‘normative’ Muslims, as related to rural /urban background and the level of education, have tended to be generalized to also characterize other Muslim groups in Norway. Although this scheme has, for good reasons, been criticized as too starkly dichotomizing (Vogt 2000), it is worth posing the question of to what extent the NMU and the MSS reproduce social diff erentiation related to urban /rural background and to the level of education and social status. As the majority of my interlocutors were born and/or raised in Oslo, the question of rural versus urban is, of course, quite distinct from the envisioning unity, coping with difference 95 case of the migrant generation in Ahlberg’s study. My subjects were all urban in the sense that they had lived most of their lives in Oslo and that the urban context marked their lifestyles. When the rural /urban distinction was articulated with reference to the Norwegian context, the distinction was primarily made in terms of what this entailed for constructing and coping with ‘diff erence’ related to migration. Taha, who came to Norway with his family as a refugee when he was three years old and who was initially placed in a reception centre in rural Norway, talked about his experiences of being ‘diff erent’ in a rural and an urban context: To me it is very important to be around people who do not see me as dif- ferent, but as one of them. Where I live now [Holmlia, a suburb in eastern Oslo] there are people from many diff erent countries in addition to the indigenous Norwegians. And you do not have a concentration of one particular group, like in the eastern city centre. In Holmlia people from more than 172 countries live together. And still the only language you speak with your friends is Norwegian. Everybody is diff erent there, so you don’t feel diff erent. You are never an outsider. Saleem, who grew up in Oslo and later moved to a village where there were no other immigrant families at the time, told me that moving out of Oslo had made him feel that he was ‘diff erent’ in a new way: All of a sudden I found myself in a place where no one else looked like me. In my class at school they were all ‘ethnic farmers’ [laughs]. In the city, there were people of many ethnicities. People were used to it. In the village people knew no foreigners and got all their information from the tabloids. So they had all kinds of weird ideas about Pakistanis and Muslims and kept asking me strange questions. But in some ways they were also more similar to people as I think of them in my home country. For instance, children lived with their parents and took care of them when they grew old. Saleem’s reference to the “home country” invokes the area his parents came from in Pakistan, a place that he characterized as “rural” despite the fact that the number of inhabitants in his father’s home town was equal to that of Oslo. Whereas Ahlberg refers to rural /urban as a clear- cut dichotomy, I found the rural /urban dichotomy to relate to a more fl uid and dynamic terrain. Some of those with a refugee background were from Teheran, Baghdad, Mostar and Kabul while some of those with a Pakistani background came from cities such as Lahore, Karachi or Sargodha. Among those with labour migrant backgrounds, small and larger home villages were more common, some of these having 96 chapter two been newly ‘urbanized’ and others fi nding themselves in the vicinity of some expanding urban agglomeration.61 Some of the parents were also fi rst generation migrants who had left the countryside for the towns to get an education and who had later moved to Norway in search of work. As in Saleem’s case, some also had one parent from a larger city and the other from a rural area or smaller town. In short, then, the answer to the question, “Where do your parents come from?” is not always a univocal indication of one particular place that can simply be classifi ed as rural or urban. Despite this complexity, the young Muslims themselves oft en attributed major importance to the rural /urban distinction, in particular in relation to education and to what they oft en talked about as degrees of ‘progress’ and ‘backwardness’. Th e rural areas of the ‘back home’ countries were generally seen to be more ‘backwards’ and were associated with low education and illiteracy whereas urban areas were spoken of as more ‘developed’ and associated with education and all things ‘modern’. Such a distinction was articulated in particular when it came to characterizations of diff erent ways of dealing with gender diff erence, where the countryside tended to be perceived as conservative and as particularly restrictive for women. As will be seen in later chapters, this distinction between the rural and the urban and the illiterate and the educated is important to how young Muslims establish distinctions between diff erent ways of being Muslim and approaches to Islam.

Th e importance of having an education

Education was generally highly valued by the young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS in terms of individual life opportunities and family expectations as well as in terms of improving the position of minority groups within Norwegian society and as a means for social ‘progress’.

61 In the Nador area in Morocco, for instance, urbanization is quite a recent phenomenon. Th e last few years have seen a rural exodus towards the fast-growing towns of Nador and Al-Hoceima with several smaller new urban centres also attracting people from surrounding villages. Some of those who originally emigrated from the countryside of Morocco have their relatives in what are now urban areas, then. Th ose who plan to go back aft er retirement may consider establishing themselves in one of the urban agglomerations where life is generally more comfortable than in the villages which still oft en lack electricity and tap water. envisioning unity, coping with difference 97

Alesha’s refl ections on her own and her parents’ educational trajectories illustrate the importance of education to the construction of Muslim identities and to the shaping of intergenerational, gender and minority–majority relations. Both of Alesha’s parents have a BA from Pakistan. When he came to Norway, her father got a job as a cleaner, advancing to the management of the company a few years later. Alesha’s mother worked as a teacher ‘back home’ before they came to Norway. She went to university to learn Norwegian before Alesha was born. When Alesha was born, she continued her studies for a while but when she was pregnant with her second child she “went into the family process”, as Alesha puts it. Alesha has tried to encourage her mother to get back to her studies, but with no luck: I feel that she has not had an opportunity to learn Norwegian properly and to develop her potential outside of the family. She doesn’t have enough self-confi dence, you know. My father worked twelve to thirteen hours a day and he wanted her to be at home to take care of the house. So she has been doing the typical home and children stuff . She has been happy about it herself. I’m kind of opposite to Mum. I mean, I will probably work only part-time when I have children, but I need to have something going on. When I asked her about her plans and dreams for the future, Alesha told me about her personal ambitions and her social engagement, which centred around the importance of education: I want to work in the computer industry and make loads of money. And aft er some years I want to go back to Pakistan and build schools for women. I want the mothers to be educated in an Islamic way, so that they can give their children a good education. Th ey need to learn Islamic values. And they must learn to have an opinion on things. Alesha is now in the process of fi nishing her diploma in computer sciences and has been off ered a job in a national company. Her parents have always been eager for her to get a good education, and at times they have worried about all her involvements in other organizations and activities. To Alesha the value of education is importantly related to learning to refl ect and think independently. She assumes her parents share this view and that this is one reason why they want her to pursue an education but adds that they are also concerned about social status and with getting good marriage partners for their daughters. Like Alesha, the members of the MSS were students at university or college level; most NMU members, on the other hand, were still in the 98 chapter two process of fi nishing secondary and upper secondary school.62 Some women had opted for vocational education in what are typical women’s areas in the strongly gender-segregated Norwegian labour market, areas such as health and childcare. Professional studies such as medicine, odontology, law, biochemistry, information technology, engineer- ing, economics and journalism were the most common. A small but increasing minority, however, was registering within the human and social sciences in areas such as philosophy, religious studies, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, Arabic and sociology. Others – especially from the girls – chose college studies within health, teaching and public administration. Many, but not all, of the youngsters experienced considerable expectations from their families in relation to their educational and career achievements and career plans were oft en intended to satisfy such expectations as well as ‘personal’ ambitions. Oft en not only the parents but also the extended transnational families would be monitoring the educational and career achievements of the young. Th e issue of socio- economic mobility is important to many migrant families since labour migration is oft en initially motivated by a wish to earn money so as to secure a better future for the family. While parents oft en stressed the importance of social mobility through education for both sons and

62 86.6 per cent of 16–18-year-olds born in Norway of two foreign-born parents undertook upper secondary education in 2002. Th e equivalent fi gure for all 16–18-year- olds was 89.3 per cent (Lie 2002). Whereas the percentage decreased slightly for the population as a whole, it increased for those with an immigrant background. 26.4 per cent of all persons aged 19–24 were registered as undertaking tertiary education (university or college). For people born in Norway of two foreign-born parents in this age group the proportion was 20.9 per cent. For those aged 25–29, on the contrary, the fi gures for all persons and for those born in Norway of two foreign-born parents were 13.9 per cent and 13.8 per cent respectively. Th e proportion of those born in Norway with two foreign-born parents undertaking tertiary education varies considerably with country background and the gap is more pronounced in regard to those with a non- European background. For those aged 19–24 as much as 17.3 per cent of those of Pakistani background (17 per cent of boys and 17.6 per cent of girls) undertook tertiary education, whereas for those of Moroccan background (10.3 per cent) and those of Turkish background (11.3 per cent) the proportion undertaking such education was considerably lower. Gender diff erences were also considerably more marked in the last two categories: for those of Moroccan background 4.4 per cent of the boys compared to 17.7 per cent of the girls undertook tertiary education. For those of Turkish background the fi gures were 6.2 per cent and 14.8 per cent respectively. Th ere are several possible explanations for these gender diff erences, these including diff erences in available career opportunities and in investment in diff erent social fi elds and activities as well as in gendered strategies such as the wish of some girls to postpone marriage or to escape the control of the family. envisioning unity, coping with difference 99 daughters some nevertheless had diff erent expectations as to how such mobility should be realized. A son’s education was oft en seen as a means of guaranteeing his future job prospects and his ability to provide for a family. In contrast, the education of daughters was sometimes seen more as a prerequisite for upwards social mobility through marriage. While Alesha, in the quote above, diff ers from this in seeing her own education as something guaranteeing her own job prospects and her ability to earn money, she nevertheless did also consider education important for her future marriage prospects. As the young tended to say: ‘If you want to marry an educated person then you have to be educated yourself’. To them, marrying an educated person was important not only in terms of social position but also because of the perceived association between lack of education and ‘backwardness’ and cultural conservatism. However, some of the girls also saw getting too high an education as a problem as this could lead to there being fewer men to ‘match them’ and thus fewer eligible marriage partners. As can be seen from Alesha’s account, ideas about higher education and work are also importantly gendered with respect to how women and men are tied respectively to reproductive work within the household and to salaried work outside of the home. Roughly half of the mothers had been home workers for all or most of their lives. Th e other half were, or had been, employed in (what Norwegians would regard as) traditional women’s professions in schools, kindergartens and homes for elderly people. Some also contributed to running a family business or worked as private childminders or cleaners. Alesha and the other young Muslims both reproduced and challenged norms and practices related to the productive and reproductive work of women (cf. Jacobsen 2004). As can be seen from the quotes above, Alesha stressed the importance of women developing their “potentiality outside of the family” and envisioned a working career for herself while, however, simultaneously maintaining the tie between women, the house and childcare by envisioning part-time work as a future mother and wife. Furthermore, like many of the young Muslims I spoke to, she linked the importance of women’s education to their particular role as mothers responsible for the upbringing of future generations and thus the future of the (Muslim) community (cf. Jouili and Amir-Moazami 2006). As Jouili and Amir-Moazami argue, the stress on education not only contains an individual component but also has a strong collective implication: the educated mother is in charge of serving the community through religious know-how and also through scientifi c and 100 chapter two pedagogical means. Th is way of situating education within an Islamic framework was widespread and references were oft en made to Islamic texts and commentaries that treat the importance of knowledge and education in Islam (cf. Chapter Five). Th e Koranic call to ‘seek knowledge’ was seen both to imply increasing one’s knowledge about Islam and as a call to educate oneself in a broader sense. Women, in particular, oft en referred to the duty of believers to seek knowledge to underpin arguments for, for example, the equal access of women to higher education, to legitimate the need to move away from one’s family to study in some other town or country or to travel to attend seminars and educational programs as part of a broader ‘journey’ in search of knowledge. Education was also seen as an important means of improving the position of Muslim minority groups within Norwegian society. Many saw themselves as role models and stressed the importance of showing young Muslims that economic success and status could be achieved through higher education rather than through ‘joining some gang or engaging in criminal activities’, as they put it. Whereas an ambition of the Norwegian educational system has been to reduce socio-economic diff erence, this has actually been shown to largely reproduce existing patterns. Th e young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS to some extent confi rmed this pattern of social reproduction in that their parents were on average more highly educated than the immigrant population as a whole.63 Despite this, their own education, especially in the case of girls, oft en by far exceeded that of their parents and access to higher education in the settling country may thus be seen to increase the experience of a generational gap as discussed earlier in this chapter. Most of the young Muslims in my study characterized their families as somewhere in ‘the middle’ with regard to social standing in their ‘back home’ country.64 But forms of economic, social and cultural

63 Most of the young people I talked to didn’t have much knowledge about the education and occupation of their grandparents. My general impression was one of considerable variation. Of their mothers, roughly half had no education beyond primary level while a couple of them were functional illiterates. Only a couple had a university or college education while the rest had completed either secondary or upper secondary education. In general the fathers were more educated than the mothers with only a few having only primary or secondary education. About two thirds had completed some kind of upper secondary education and about a third held higher education degrees from universities or colleges. 64 Some fathers were landowners while others belonged to families of a certain status in terms of, for example, caste, profession or descent (as in the case of those who envisioning unity, coping with difference 101 capital (Bourdieu 1984) are only to a limited extent convertible to the migrant context. Th e social position of an immigrant family may thus vary considerably between the ‘back home’ and the ‘at home’ countries. Th e intersection between ethnic and class dynamics tends to importantly constrain the life opportunities of immigrants and refugees in Norway (Grønhaug 1979; Longva 2003).65 As a consequence, many experienced a relative degradation with regard to social position in establishing themselves in the new country.66 With regard to employment and property, for instance, some fathers were manual workers in Norway when they had had far more esteemed professions in their ‘back home’ countries while some families lived in small apartments in Oslo but were landowners back home. Due not least to processes of ethnic discrimination in the labour market (Rogstad 2002a; Rogstad and Raaum 1997), gaps between formal education and actual work situations were common in the parental generation. One jurist I met worked as a taxi driver while a literature critic had started a restaurant.67

were descended from so called Sayyid families who trace their descent from the family of the Prophet Mohammed). Th e young rarely talked about themselves and their families in terms of, for example, zaat (cast), biraderi (patrilineal kinship group) status etc. so I do not have much information about their social background in this respect. 65 Th is is so both in a structural sense (diffi culties in getting one’s qualifi cations recognized, for instance, force many educated immigrants to engage in unskilled work) and in a cultural sense (ethnic minority members tend to be classifi ed as ‘lower’ in the social hierarchy because of their immigrant background). At the turn of the century unemployment rates were three to fi ve times as high among non-European immigrants and participation rates in working life were lower, although increasing over time, for each cohort (Østby 2004). Unemployment rates were lower for the so called ‘descendants’ (the ‘second generation’, i.e. those born of two immigrant parents) than for the immigrant generation but for certain groups still double that of the non-immigrant population. Factors like national background, gender and age importantly impact on these unemployment fi gures (Østby 2004). 66 Several studies have pointed out that a majority of the largest Muslim immigrant group, the Pakistanis, came from relatively good conditions, from a rural and urban middle stratum, and that those who migrated to Norway had a relatively high educational level compared to the general level in the ‘back home’ countries. Many experienced a status-drop as they acquired work in the heaviest and lowest-paid parts of industrial and service sectors (Korbøl 1974; Wist 2000). Th is picture of the labour migrants as representing a middle stratum in the ‘back home’ country is confi rmed by a larger study including Moroccans, Pakistanis, Indians and Turks (Bø 1987) and a historical account of Turkish immigrants from the 1960s to 2000 (Aaserud 1999). 67 Most fathers work in the small and medium enterprise private sector as taxi owners and drivers, restaurant owners and waiters, salesmen or manual workers. Quite a few were retired or on disablement benefi t. Only one father had a career in Norway matching his academic degree from ‘back home’. 102 chapter two

I do not have data to generalize as to whether their education has translated into the young people I worked with coming to occupy a dif- ferent stratum of the labour market to that occupied by their parents, but some trends should nevertheless be noted. While processes of ethnic discrimination continue to structure the entry of the second generation into the labour market, many of those I know of have achieved positions that match their educational level in public administration, as employees of larger and smaller fi rms within, for example, the fi eld of information technology and as economists, teachers, journalists etc. Th eir orientation towards mobility within the structures of Norwegian society seem to a large extent to have been successful, paying less attention to structures related to, for example, caste, clan etc. (which they would oft en criticize) that might be of continued importance to the parental generation and ‘back home’. Several have also managed to turn their “multicultural competence” and organizational experience into an asset in the labour market. When the complex intersection between the structuring of diff erent social fi elds is taken into account, the general picture is that the young in my study are upwardly mobile when compared to the position of their parents in Norway but not always so when compared to their family social position prior to migration. In any case, both the NMU and the MSS draw members from both rural and urban and highly and not so well-educated families. While being urban, educated and upwardly mobile themselves, and while relying upon such distinctions in formulating their Muslim identities and engagement with Islam, one might argue that they simultaneously reproduce divisions in the Muslim community along lines of education and social status.

Creating new Muslim spaces In the mid-1990s, young Muslims started creating ‘their own’ spaces for Islamic formation, ritual practice and sociability with one result of this being the establishment of the Muslim Youth of Norway and the Muslim Student Society. Th ese organizations were important sites for religious formation and education and point towards the eff orts made to both continue and reform Islamic traditions. Whereas activities were initially largely focused on ritual practice and self-formation, both organizations came to orient their activities increasingly towards broader questions related to being a ‘Muslim minority’ in Norway. Th e organizations formed by young Muslims in Oslo attest to the ways in envisioning unity, coping with difference 103 which migration, globalization and transnationalism currently aff ect the organization of Islam and the (re)construction of Muslim identities in Europe. Th e establishment of the MSS and the NMU refl ects the coming of age of a new generation of Muslims who share certain experiences of being young and having a migrant background. Th ese young people have grown up at a historical moment characterized by transnational Islamic revivalism and new forms of cooperation marking the constitution of a ‘Muslim minority’ in Norway. As a ‘cohort’ their experiences are marked by a series of events that have contributed to politi- cizing Muslim identity. Based on their common identifi cation with Islam young Muslims organize themselves in ways that refl ect both continuity and change with regard to the religious organizations established by their parents’ generation. By focusing on what ‘unites them’ as Muslims, and by defi ning diff erences between diff erent Islamic groups and traditions as a matter of ‘personal belief’, young Muslims have created spaces for Islamic formation that are in many ways particularly ‘open’ to a variety of viewpoints and in which debates and arguments regularly occur. In contrast to some Muslim youth and student organizations in other European countries, they have managed to establish themselves more independently of larger Islamic organizations, locally and internationally, although importantly cooperating with these organizations. However, even as young Muslims try to establish their common activities on the basis of a common adherence to Islam and a shared Muslim identity, diff erences relating to age, generation, gender, ethnicity, class and denomination are manifested in a number of ways. Fissions occur along already established lines in the Islamic tradition, such as that existing between Shias and Sunnis, and new organizations are established. Th is chapter thus points towards the ways in which the relationships between unity and diversity in Islam are problematized as young Muslims try to cope with how to live as Muslims in social spaces characterized by gender, class, generational, ethnic, cultural and religious diversity. In doing so, it has already pointed towards some of the other important areas of discussion and debate that will be examined in this book. While this chapter has traced the kinds of spaces that young Muslims have established for Islamic formation, ritual practice and sociability locally, the next chapter focuses on how these patterns of organization are imbricate in broader social imaginaries.

CHAPTER THREE

WHO ARE ‘WE’? SOCIAL IMAGINARIES

In the introduction I touched upon the ways in which researchers have tried to reconceptualize the spaces and identities that are created in the context of migration and globalization. Th is poses particular challenges for anthropology because of its tendency to equate a particular locality with a particular community, culture or form of Islam, somehow assuming a given correspondence between them. One attempt at such a reconceptualization is suggested by Werbner (2002a) who employs the term ‘imagined diasporas’. Refl ecting critically on the growing scholarly literature responding to the current expansion of the concept and discourse of diaspora, Werbner suggests that diasporas should be understood as transnational communities of co-responsibility and embodied performance (Werbner 2002a: 3). Building on her study of Punjabi Pakistani migrant settlers in Manchester, Werbner considers the entanglement of three quite diff erent diasporic orientations that animate the transnational subjectivities of this particular community. One of these orientations represents a ‘conventional diaspora’ in that the imaginative unity and embodied performances of Manchester Pakistanis are oriented towards a national homeland. At the same time, Werbner argues, Manchester Muslims have also redefi ned themselves as a ‘Muslim diaspora’, asserting themselves as members of a transnational moral religious community, the umma. Being a Muslim diaspo- ran, she argues, remains in tension with a third diasporic orientation directed towards a South Asian aesthetic diaspora. Th e South Asian diaspora refers to an ‘aesthetic world’ embodied by the fl ow of products of mass popular culture from the subcontinent and the aesthetic inscription of the South Asian in rituals and ceremonies. Manchester Pakistanis thus belong in a taken for granted way not to a single diaspora but to several diff erent diasporas, each with its own aesthetics and ethics. Werbner shows that within these spaces alternative identities and lifestyles are forged as Manchester Pakistanis debate and argue over moral, political and existential issues aff ecting their group. Werbner draws on Anderson’s seminal work on ‘imagined communities’, while identifying a need to “elaborate on the fundamentally dif- ferent senses in which community is imagined and, equally critically, is 106 chapter three enacted and actualised through cultural performance, or incorporated through organisational mobilisation” (Werbner 2002a: 61). Recent work on ‘social imaginaries’ has attempted to elaborate on the diff erent senses in which community is imagined. Taylor describes ‘social imaginary’ as the ways in which ordinary people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings: Th e social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy (Taylor 2002: 106). Taylor further describes social imaginaries as “the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fi t together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (Taylor 2004: 23). A conceptualization of ‘social imaginaries’ that is inspired by the work of Anderson and Taylor is suggested by the Norwegian anthropologist Gullestad who defi nes social imaginaries as “the way inhabitants imagine the categories, collectivities, and social values that they feel affi liated with or distance themselves from” (2006: 9). Th is chapter is, then, inspired by Werbner’s concept of ‘imagined diasporas’ and by the concept of ‘social imaginaries’. It investigates how young Muslims imagine the categories, collectivities and social values that they feel affi liated with and distance themselves from, and how the communities imagined are enacted and realized through religious and cultural performance and organizational mobilization. Unlike Werbner’s Manchester Pakistanis, the groups of young Muslims that I worked with did not constitute a collectivity based on national origin. As Anthias (1998) has argued, the concept of diaspora, whilst focusing on transnational processes and commonalities, tends to do so by deplo- ying a notion of ethnicity which privileges the point of ‘origin’ in constructing identity and solidarity. While Werbner clearly moves beyond such an understanding by arguing that the Manchester Pakistanis belong to several diff erent diasporas, her point of departure is nonetheless a ‘community’ constituted in relation to a ‘point of origin’. In contrast to this, I want to avoid making the point of origin the primary site of identifi cation and solidarity in order to open up the focus to include not only diasporic imaginaries, solidarities and performances, but also the trans-ethnic communities that are imagined within, rather than across, the boundaries of the nation state (cf. Anthias 1998). Th e spaces constituted in and through processes of transnational migration and globalization are characterized by the existence of social imaginaries that provide sometimes overlapping, sometimes contradictory, visions of how people fi t together with others and of social who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 107 values more generally. I explore the social imaginaries off ered to young Muslims and the diff erent principles of inclusion and exclusion, values and objectives that these entail. Furthermore, I investigate the visions of community that the social imaginaries off er and the ways in which these visions are enacted and performed. Like Taylor and Werbner, I pay attention to the normative and moral underpinnings of social imaginaries, and to how these relate to particular pasts and project particular futures. Furthermore, I discuss how gendered and generational diff erences structure the ways in which young Muslims position themselves within existing social imaginaries. More specifi cally, the chapter explores how young Muslims in Oslo relate to ‘the global Muslim community’, ‘Euro-Norwegian Muslims’ and ‘family and the ethnic diaspora’, how they seek to realize some of the values and objectives associated with these imaginaries and how their social networks and relationships reproduce and cut across the diff erent visions of community that these imaginaries off er. Sometimes uneasily, they seek to combine these imaginaries as points of orientation for social and religious practices. Although my focus is on how young Muslims actively relate to the diff erent imaginaries, I do not mean to suggest by this approach that they are free to do so in any way they like. How people imagine the categories, collectivities and social values that they feel affi liated with or distance themselves from is structured by complex power geometries and principles of inclusion and exclusion and relates to and is energized by larger socio-political events and developments. In the last part of the chapter, I discuss the ways in which diff erent imaginaries are realized as young Muslims go about living their lives and the simultaneous processes of hybridization and boundary-making that are thus energized. Th e analysis of social imaginaries questions ‘naturalized’ conceptions of space, locality and identity and allows us to consider the multiple forms of belonging that migration and globalization enable, as well as the importance of power and normativity to how young Muslims orient themselves.

A global community of Muslims

Th e global imagined umma Th e fi rst imaginary that I want to focus on is that of the ‘global imagined umma’. In many diff erent ways, the young Muslims I worked with, driven by a universalistic, border-crossing interpretation of Islam, asserted themselves as members of a global religious community. 108 chapter three

As will be seen, this orientation towards a global Muslim community was manifest in the ways in which they spoke about their religious engagement. Furthermore, they engaged in transnational patterns of solidarity, communication, organization and consumption that were framed within the imaginary of a global Muslim unity. Let me start, however, with some theoretical refl ections on how this imaginary could, then, be framed through the concept of a ‘global Islamic umma’. Th rough a focus on the transnational spaces that are created by the movement of people and communication and information technologies, research has increasingly drawn attention to processes of collective representation and individual identifi cation through which Muslims come to imagine themselves as belonging to a global community. Taking their cue from the work of Anderson (1991) on the importance of ‘print capitalism’ to the construction of ‘nations’ as imagined communities, several researchers (for example, Eickelman and Piscatori 1996; Mandaville 2004; Turner 1994a) have argued that globalizing processes have profoundly contributed to the formation of contemporary imaginaries of a ‘global Islamic community’. Mandaville (2004: 145), for instance, argues that we may talk about a “global infrastructure for the maintenance, reproduction and dissemination of Islam” that gives rise to a “transnational public sphere” within which Muslim identities and practices are contemporaneously renegotiated.1 Within this global infrastructure we may include migration, travel, mass media, the distribution of Islamic literature, CDs, audio and video recordings, the dawa activities of international Islamic revitalization movements and the Internet. Th is infrastructure is embedded in transnational economic fl ows and structures such as the remittances used by migrants to build mosques in their ‘home countries’, the investment of rich Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia in dawa abroad and the Islamic ‘consumer goods’ that are increasingly entering popular culture. Th e increasing global dimension of political confl icts, exemplifi ed by the Rushdie aff air, the various hijab aff airs and the so called ‘War on Terror’, attests to the emergence of such a transnational public sphere, one where Muslim identities and the idea of a global umma are renegotiated. According to Mandaville (and others), the emergence of a global

1 Th e notion of a ‘global infrastructure for the maintenance, reproduction and dissemination of Islam’ is complicated, however, since complex power geometries (cf. Massey 1994) aff ect diff erent people, groups and localities diff erently in respect of how these are situated within such infrastructures. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 109 infrastructure for the maintenance, reproduction and dissemination of Islam and a transnational Muslim public space allows Muslims to create a new form of imagined community or, to put it another way, to reimagine the umma. Anderson ascribes the imagined character of the modern nation to the fact that “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson 1991: 6). Anderson suggests that the concept of ‘imagined communities’ is applicable beyond the nation, since “all communities larger than primordial villages of face to face contact (and perhaps even those) are imagined” (Anderson 1991: 6). Communities are, therefore, not to be distinguished by whether they are imagined or not, but by the style in which they are imagined. Th e concept of the umma, which is usually translated as community, is a complex one within the Islamic discursive tradition. According to Asad, in the classical theological view umma was not a community on a par with a nation, waiting to be politically unifi ed, but “a theologically defi ned space enabling Muslims to practice the discipline of din2 in the world” (Asad 2003: 199). Th e crucial point about the umma is, thus, not that it is imagined, he argues, but that the way in which it is imagined predicates, and is predicated on, particular solidarities and modes of being and acting (Asad 2003). According to Asad, the classical theological vision of the umma presupposes individuals who are self-governing but not autonomous and who have the capacity to discover the rules of sharia (a system of practical reason morally binding on each ‘faithful’ individual) and to conform to these. Whereas Asad insists on the way in which this classical notion of the umma grammatically diff ers from that of the modern nation, he also acknowledges the fact that the concept of the umma is given diff erent meanings as people interpret and make use of the term in light of the contemporary world. Asad’s insistence on the classical theological view of the umma is, however, an important reminder that such interpretations may build on a notion of ‘community’ that is dif- ferently imagined, and predicated on diff erent forms of solidarity, than those which dominate contemporary imaginaries of ‘community’ such as those in the shape of modern nations.

2 Religion, way of life. 110 chapter three

In the Islamic tradition religious practices and imaginaries have a long history of uniting people across boundaries. Anderson (1991) stresses the importance of travel to the ‘reality’ of the imagined religious community in the pre-print age. Historically, local, regional and transnational pilgrimages, as well as the great learning centres in the Muslim world, were points where people from diff erent places and dif- ferent social and economic circumstances met, through which ideas and beliefs fl owed and where the idea of the Islamic umma as a ‘community’ was given form and substance (Gilsenan 1982). More recently, developments in communication technologies have provided Muslims with new modes of communication and interaction across distance, as well as new ‘public spheres’ in which the umma can be constituted and debated (cf. Mandaville 2004). Th e way in which the umma has been imagined in time and space also relates to broader developments in the political economy of the world order. Th e concept of the umma took on a particular resonance in the discourse of nineteenth and early twentieth-century anti-colonial reformers because the vast majority of the Muslim world was subject to the same Western hegemony. Th is resonance has continued to be reinforced by what is seen as the continuing dominance of ‘the West’ over ‘the rest’ in socio-economic and cultural terms, as well as by the military aggressiveness of the West (the US, in particular) towards the Muslim world. In contemporary Islamic discourse, the umma oft en appears as a central normative concept encompassing an appeal for unity across the global Muslim community (cf. Mandaville 2004). One might thus argue that both the advent of new communication technologies and developments in the political economy of the world order have made the ‘global imagined umma’ a compelling imaginary for Muslims throughout the world (see Eickelman and Piscatori 1990; Lubeck in AlSayyad and Castells 2002; Vertovec 2004). Importantly, as increasingly more people have access to both traditional meeting places (e.g. pilgrimage sites) and to new meeting places (e.g. the Internet), the global Islamic umma has turned into a collective imaginary of joint purpose in the world that ordinary people make use of in their everyday practice and self- identifi cation. In “Th e Transnational Umma – Myth or Reality?”, Schmidt (2005) argues for the need to distinguish between the transnational umma as ‘vision’ and as ‘practice’. Th e umma as vision refers to: Th e conviction to take part in a border-crossing community that includes believers worldwide and raises ambitions for what the believers ought to who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 111

be – unifi ed, innately connected, characterized by profound mutual loyalty and the practice of high moral standards. (Schmidt 2005: 577) Th e level of practice, on the other hand, refers to how people go about transforming and vitalizing imagination into transnational community practice. Schmidt’s caution is important in order not to confl ate the ‘imagined’ community with actual patterns and networks of transnational practices, as well as to discover the ‘power geometries’ that structure the direction of fl ows of ideas, people and patterns of cooperation in broader transnational networks.3 While ‘the umma’ was regularly invoked in the Islamic discourses that were transmitted to the young in diverse pedagogical settings (such as Islamic conferences), the concept was less frequently used by the young themselves in everyday conversations and in the interviewes I conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some were unfamiliar with the concept, others were weary of its association with Islamist radicalism in public discourse. It is my impression that the concept has gained increasing currency among young Muslims more recently, however, not least because of the way in which it is invoked in Islamic popular culture (such as in, for instance, the immensely popular album by Sami Yusuf entitled “My Ummah”, released in 2005), something that has come to have a greater impact on Muslim youth in Norway over the course of the last decade. Notwithstanding this variation in the use of the particular concept of ‘the umma’, the young, through a variety of vehicles, identifi ed with and oriented themselves in terms of a universalistic Islamic community, and thereby inscribed themselves into a transnational ethical, aesthetic and sometimes political community of believers. Whereas Schmidt (2005) uses the term ‘transnational’ to characterize the border-crossing dimension of the vision and practice of ‘the umma’, it should be noted that the cartography of this

3 Schmidt (2005) shows that whereas transnational religious and community practices, driven by the vision of a global umma, were signifi cant among young Swedish Muslims, they were less so for young American Muslims. On the other hand, trails of Muslim-American Islam appeared to have a notable infl uence on the Muslim communities she studied in Scandinavia. Th is latter point is confi rmed by my own study which shows the important infl uence of American Islamic scholars (such as Hamza Yusuf and Jamal Badawi) as points of reference for authoritative views on Islam as well as the importance of material produced by American Muslims reprinted in Ung Muslim and Tankevekkende. As Schmidt also notes, the impact of Muslim-American Islamic discourses is strengthened by the internationally dominant role the US plays as a super- power and the growing use of English as the lingua franca of the world today (this also increasingly among Muslims). 112 chapter three transnational Islamic community goes beyond the meaning of ‘transnationalism’ as this is oft en used in anthropology, i.e. as a process linking members of an ethnic or national community across several localities. Rather, as Schmidt argues, young Muslims in Western contexts to some extent rebel against the diasporic transnational practices of the parental generation by instead prioritizing universalistic transnational practices.

Sisters and brothers in Islam In the NMU magazine Explore of January 1999, Yama Wolasmal, who was at the time a long-time member of the NMU, wrote an essay entitled “My journey to Afghanistan” that was illustrative of how young Muslims in Norway imagined the categories, collectivities and social values that they felt affi liated with: Aft er fi ft een years in exile, I fi nally got the opportunity to visit my home country. […] I did not know whether I should look forward to or fear the trip. On the one hand, I was frightened by the rumours about the situation in Afghanistan, but on the other hand I was looking forward to going to a so called ‘Muslim’ country where I would hear adhan4 in the open at prayer times. I saw this as a great thing, and felt that I was lucky to get the opportunity to experience it, since I have spent most of my life in the West. I did duas5 to ensure that my family and I would be OK, since the conditions in Afghanistan were quite precarious. To be honest, I saw the journey as a challenge because I held certain prejudices and wanted to fi nd out if they were right or wrong. Th e journey fi rst took us to my father’s hometown, Jalalabad, where I spent most of the time at home and did nothing apart from complain about the heat. But when I got to the capital, Kabul, everything was pretty much better, thanks to Allah. Before the war started, Kabul was a bloom- ing city with modern residences and industrial areas. Th e streets were fi lled with small bazaars where hand-woven carpets, copper and old handicraft could be bought, but there were also new big stores with a large assortment of things. Th e city had a university where women and men had the right to study. Th e city bore clear marks of having been the centre of the war. Buildings lay in ruins and people barely managed to provide for themselves because of the high food prices. Th ey had to content themselves with the bare essentials. Anything you’d wish could be bought for money, but people

4 Th e call to prayer. 5 Supplications. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 113

didn’t have any. […] Th e most fascinating thing about the journey was seeing that there was still life in the people even aft er two decades of war and misery. War, poverty, economic diffi culties and continuous missile strikes had become a part of everyday life for the Afghan people. But this didn’t stop them from retaining their faith in Allah and hoping for a good and peaceful life in the future. Another thing I noticed was the lies about the Taliban that we hear in the Western media. Th e Taliban were not at all sadistic and oppressive towards women, as is usually portrayed. When a country is at war, the most important thing for the population is to maintain peace and quiet, and last but not least, to keep their honour intact, which was very diffi cult before the Taliban came to power. Th e previous authorities abused their power by abducting, raping and, worst of all, killing women, while men were imprisoned, tortured and killed without reason. It must remain up to each and every person to decide whether they would prefer to live in permanent fear of being abused and killed or wear a burka or grow a beard. Th ere are of course disadvantages with the Taliban, since many of them do not have any knowledge of the fundamental Islamic laws, and therefore they make mistakes. Take, for instance, the execution of Najbullah, which got a lot of attention in the Western media. He was dragged behind a car, and later hung from a lamp post and made fun of. All were agreed on executing him aft er the atrocities he had committed against the people, but this should have been done in a humane manner since, according to Islamic law, no damage should be infl icted on the body. In view of this, it may seem as if I support the Taliban. I do not. But I witnessed one thing that I would like to report to those of my sisters and brothers who, regrettably, have gotten a distorted picture of the regime in Afghanistan. My message to you all is the following: If the Afghan people do not complain, who gives the media the right to speak about the situation of the Afghans and at the same time give a distorted picture of the situation in the country? My journey to Afghanistan was very instructive and made an unforgettable impression on me. I hope this has given you some insight into the lives of our forgotten sisters and brothers. Th is makes me pray for all people who suff er. All those who are ravaged by war, hunger and misery, whether this be in Palestine, Bosnia or Kashmir; may Allah reward your endurance with Paradise, amin [amen]. (Wolasmal in Explore (1) 1999: 14–15; italics added for Islamic terms explained in footnotes) Because of the way in which he moves between diff erent subject positions, Wolasmal’s essay is a particularly interesting point of departure for exploring the spaces for identifi cation and solidarity and the diff erent values and objectives that diff erent imaginaries off er. Wolasmal’s essay is plotted around a wish to confront his own and others’ ‘prejudices’ 114 chapter three about Afghanistan, and to asses whether these are ‘right or wrong’. By sharing with the reader his own impressions of life in Afghanistan, he wishes to challenge what he sees as the distorted picture of the regime in Afghanistan presented in the media. In the fi rst part of the essay Wolasmal identifi es Afghanistan as his ‘homeland’, this being resonant of the dominant nationalist discourse on migration that attaches migrants to a ‘national home’. At the same time he identifi es the place he grew up as ‘the West’, thus inscribing his experiences in a cartography that opposes the West to the Muslim world. As we move along, Wolasmal’s ‘gaze’ assumes the position of an ‘outsider’ to Afghan society. His description of the economic and cultural vitality of Kabul in the past imitates the tourist guide genre and establishes the author as an external observer to the hardships of war and poverty suff ered by the ‘Afghan people’. It is also interesting to note how the identifi cation of Afghanistan as a ‘Muslim’ country is negotiated. Th e nostalgia for a communal expression of Islam, symbolized by adhan in the open, is coupled to a description of Afghanistan as a “so called ‘Muslim’ country” and a critique of the ‘Muslim’ rule of the Taliban. Th e Taliban are not accurately represented in the Western media, Wolasmal holds, but although they provide a certain security for the inhabitants many have insuffi cient knowledge of Islamic law and therefore fail to uphold this. What is even more interesting, however, is how a trip that is initially conceived of as going to a ‘home country’ ends up invoking another imaginary in which his (Muslim) ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’ in Norway are constructed as a ‘we’ and invited not only to identify, feel solidarity with and pray for the Afghan people, but also for “our forgotten sisters and brothers […] who are ravaged by war, hunger and misery, whether it is in Palestine, Bosnia or Kashmir”. Th e ‘I’ form of narration and the use of the personal pronouns ‘you’ and ‘our’ in the textual address col- lapse the distance between the narrator and the (implied) audience, drawing the latter into a space of internal empathy with ‘our sisters and brothers’ of the Muslim umma. Wolasmal thus invokes an imaginary that goes beyond that of migration from a home country to a new home, uniting Muslims transnationally in a global Muslim community of co-responsibility. Th e kinship terminology used by Wolasmal in his invocation of a ‘we’ of sisters and brothers who should feel solidarity with ‘our brother’s and sister’s’ elsewhere serves to establish an ethical community of Muslims. Th e young Muslims I worked with frequently addressed and referred to each other and other Muslims as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 115

By thus observing a social convention supported by various revivalist movements, they recognize each other as people who, as themselves, belong to a global Islamic community (cf. Cesari 2002). Th e terms sister and brother specifi cally evoke the global community of believers. In contrast to other kinship terminologies that are broadly used among youth with an immigrant background,6 the relationship between sisters and brothers in Islam is established independently of nationality, ethnicity, age and social status. Addressing other ‘visible Muslims’ with the Muslim greeting asalem aleikum and showing them hospitality (for instance, by hosting them when they are visiting) similarly underpins the ‘emotional fraternity’ of the global Islamic community. Wolasmal thus invokes a global community in which Muslims have particular ethical obligations towards their Muslim brothers and sisters in Islam. Like Wolasmal, many of the young Muslims in my study saw ethical and political engagement against injustice as central to their Muslim identity and practice. In a conversation I had with Ibrahim in 2002 about his religious practice he quickly shift ed the focus from my questions about rituals towards the ethical commitment that being a Muslim entailed for him: Th e most important thing for being a Muslim … a Muslim who wakes up in the morning without thinking about what’s happening around him concerning other people is not a Muslim.7 I am glad that I do that. Today when I woke up my fi rst thought was: “What can I do for Palestine?” It is interesting to note that Ibrahim’s formulation suggests that being a Muslim entails an ethical commitment to ‘other people’ in general, and not just towards fellow Muslims. However, the particular question he

6 For instance, those with a Pakistani background generally refer to, for example, women and men in the generation above them as uncles and aunties and to older women and men in their own generation as bhaji (older sister) and bhaijaan (older brother). 7 Ibrahim’s expression brings to mind a hadith that is referred to in several diff erent versions on various (in particular, Shia) English and Arabic Internet pages. A rough translation of this hadith (courtesy of Nora S. Eggen on the basis of the version found at ) goes as follows: “On the authority of Hudhayfa the Prophet said: ‘Whoever wakes up with this [earthly] life as his only concern has distanced himself from Allah, whoever doesn’t fear Allah has distanced himself from Allah, and whoever is not concerned with the Muslims, has distanced himself from them’ ”. Th e tradition is reported in several variants and with several chains of transmission, all of which are evaluated as weak by the hadith scholars, however. Usually only the last phrase appears when the hadith is referred to on English Internet pages. 116 chapter three poses himself about what he can do for Palestine indicates how this commitment oft en manifests itself as a concern for the Muslim umma. Th e importance of this ethical commitment to the global Muslim community is related to the way in which a variety of social and political issues have come to be constituted as the (problems and) causes of Muslims globally. Th e Israeli–Palestinian war, the wars in Iraq and the ban on hijab in French schools are examples of such ‘causes’ around which ‘Muslim solidarity’ is currently mobilized in diff erent localities around the world. Th e identifi cation with a global ethical Muslim community also allows confl icts at the local level (e.g. a woman being evicted from her workplace in Oslo because of her hijab) to be inscribed in broader narrative frameworks of injustice and solidarity. As Werbner (2002a: 153) puts it, “diasporas fabulate their local experiences in a global idiom”. Contemporary Islamic (and particularly Islamist) discourses thus stress commonalities in the predicament of Muslims, whether this comes in the form of a threatened minority in Israel or in some European country. Identifying with the imagined umma as an embattled community, the young Muslims in my study sometimes saw their struggle to promote Islam in Norway and to safeguard a Muslim identity for future generations as analogous to the struggles of Muslim minorities throughout the world, thus asserting their belonging to a global Muslim community. Injustices against Muslims needed to be redressed globally as well as locally and calls for action and mobilization for things as disparate as the exclusion of a worker from her job in the US because of her hijab and the situation of Muslims in Kashmir were regularly posted on the e-mail lists of MSS. Debates were held on the situation of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir while some people also talked about how they would do duas for these situations and for the people in these confl ict areas. Bonds of commitment were also established across national borders in the shape of material fl ows of goods and money raised through, for example, humanitarian projects and support committees.8 Oppressed groups and geographically

8 Both the NMU and the MSS have facilitated humanitarian aid to the Muslim world generally (for example, through various Islamic relief organizations) and in relation to natural disasters, such as the big earthquakes in Pakistan in 2005. Interest from the NMU’s bank account was also ‘washed’ (made Islamically legal) by means of dona- tions made to charitable causes. Th e MSS statutes specifi ed that in the case of the organization ceasing to exist, any remaining funds should be donated to the Swedish branch of Islamic Relief. Cf. Werbner (2002b), who shows how members of the British Pakistani Muslim diaspora mobilize politically to defend or protest against injustices and human rights abuses suff ered by co-diasporics elsewhere and how, beyond the imaginary, diasporas come to exist through material fl ows of goods and money. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 117 distant confl icts were thereby ‘given voice’ in new localities as ethical responsibility was extended beyond the boundaries of the nation state.

Global imaginaries in religious practice It is by means of many vehicles that young Muslims gain a sense of commonality and of shared purpose and interests with Muslims ‘everywhere’. Electronic media are important in this respect, but not only as a means for communication and interaction or for giving a new virtual reality to the idea of an Islamic umma; these media also provide new metaphors through which such a community may be imagined. In an article called “Jihad 2000” in Tankevekkende (1998), Tayyab Riaz uses the Internet as a metaphor for the Islamic umma: Muslims are in the lucky position of having a well-established spiritual Internet, fi nanced by the feelings, meanings and goals of individuals. Such an Internet cannot be run by economic resources, but is run by the spiritual, emotional and faith-committing resources inherent in each and every Muslim. Every Muslim has an integrated node that must be kept in good order and connected to like-minded nodes around the world. […] We must master ourselves before we can manage to connect to this worldwide web. If we haven’t done such jihad [jihad-bil-nafs],9 negative energy will be released when we come into contact with other nodes (humans). Inside of us, there is a virus that does not allow us to connect to this web. To defeat this virus, we must engage in jihad-bil-nafs. My worst enemy is not you, it is Me, myself (Socrates: “Know thyself!”). I have to defeat the evil in me to connect to this 1,400-year-old Internet. Let’s hope that you and I, together, may enter the new century with a soul free of malignant viruses. (Riaz 1998: 13–14, 16, italics added for Islamic term explained in footnote) Riaz’s metaphorical conceptualization of the Islamic umma as a spiritual Internet is based on the notion of interconnected individuals rather than groups. Th at every Muslim has an “integrated node” could be understood to refer to the theological idea of the inherent ability of human beings to discover the truth of Islam and to obey the law of God (cf. Chapter Six). Just like the Internet, Riaz argues, the spiritual Internet

9 Th e term jihad (from the Arabic) means to strive, to struggle. In the Western media jihad is most oft en used to refer to the idea of ‘Holy War’. Th is is not the use intended here, however. Th e young Muslims I worked with used the term jihad in two main senses, jihad al akhbar (the great jihad) and jihad al asghar (the little jihad.) Th e great jihad (where jihad-bil-nafs is a central concept) is an inner struggle against sin and evil thoughts, whereas the little jihad is a struggle to make the society around one just (this might possibly involve the use of weapons or war). 118 chapter three must be “maintained”, “developed” and “restructured” as it consists of individuals who are themselves dynamic. Such maintenance needs to be done by the individual through the performance of salah and the studying of the Koran, with the key to “development” lying in putting this knowledge into practice. As for “restructuring”, Riaz refers to the need for Muslims in the West to adapt to the new context. Th is requires, he argues, Muslims deciding that they will contribute to a better world for all people and not just for Muslims (thus invoking an imaginary of a global humanity). Th e ethical engagement that follows from this vision of the umma thus promotes solidarity not only with Muslims globally but also more generally in the form of solidarity strived for through a wider engagement in the ‘creating of a better world’. Th is can only be achieved through jihad-bil-nafs, ‘combating the evil in one’s soul’, lest this evil spread like a virus into the Islamic umma. In this way, Islamic practice is made central not only to the individual but also to the Islamic community as a whole and to ‘all people’. Whereas Riaz’s conceptualization of the umma as a spiritual Internet is primarily a vision of ‘spiritual’ interconnectedness, attributions of similarity and solidarity in social interaction are also important com- ponents in young Muslims’ identifi cation with a global Islamic community, whether this is conceptualized as between ‘like-minded nodes around the world’ or in the less futuristic terms of ‘sisters’ and ‘brothers’. One could argue that whereas transnational pilgrimages, as well as the great learning centres in the Muslim world, were once the privileged points where people from diff erent places and diff erent social and economic circumstances met and where the idea of the Islamic umma was given form and substance, the interaction between diff erent Muslim groups and Islamic traditions in the transnational spaces of urban and cosmopolitan areas and the emergence of trans-ethnic and transnational organizations today perform a similar role. In a certain sense, the self-conscious ‘trans-ethnic’ composition of groups such as the NMU and the MSS may be seen as a local embodiment of the global imagined Muslim community. Th e way in which Islam increasingly enters popular culture as ‘consumer goods’ within a globalizing cultural economy is important to how young Muslims imagine themselves as belonging to a global community of Muslims and to how they assume Islam as a ‘lifestyle’. In the introduction of the book I quoted from a song that was played during an NMU meeting in which the shahada was pronounced in a number of diff erent languages, stressing the universality of Islam, and where Islam was held to be a force with the potential to unite all people. Wharnsby-Ali’s who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 119

“Sing Children of the World” is an example of Islamically-oriented music that is promoted internationally, together with other cultural products and ‘consumer goods’, with the promotion of the umma also in mind. On the Internet Islamic outlets, some of which also present their goods at Islamic conferences and distribute books and audio-visual materials through local mosques, proliferate. Th e artefacts they propose include such things as books, audio-visual material (videos, CDs, cassettes), Islamic soft ware, home decoration (prayer rugs, decorated pillows, glass and ceramics, electronic prayer-time clocks and calendars, calligraphic paintings), gift s and accessories (prayer beads, aromatic oils, bookmarks, stickers, Koran holders), Islamic clothing (hijabs, T-shirts with calligraphy from the Koran, hats and caps, foot- wear and prayer clothing), children’s books, toys and games. Typically, such artefacts are presented as ‘sunna’ and thus as promoting a proper Islamic lifestyle, with diff erent ‘styles’ allowing people to identify with diff erent Islamic traditions through consumption.10 It should be noted here, however, that speaking about these ‘goods’ in terms of consumption should not be seen to indicate that they are merely ‘symbols’ or ‘styles’ by means of which people represent themselves. Rather, as will be discussed in Chapter Six, many of the items mentioned above are also pedagogical means for shaping pious selves or, to use Riaz’s vocabulary, to maintain the ‘nodes’ in the Islamic spiritual Internet. Unlike other major European cities, Oslo does not have the kind of Islamic (book) stores that sell Islamic music, literature and other consumer goods. Th e NMU and the MSS have, however, distributed books, music and T-shirts to fi ll this gap.11 Th ese, and some of the artefacts distributed at the Islamic conferences and by way of the Internet, may be found in the homes of some young Norwegian Muslims with newly established couples oft en combining a modern Norwegian style of interior decoration with discreet Islamic decor. At the NMU social events Islamic quiz games were popular as well as music CDs by Yusuf Islam (known as Cat Stevens before his conversion to Islam) and Dawud Wharnsby-Ali. Although the infl uence has so far remained limited, the impact of actors who market products designed at giving Muslims and Islam a new visibility and dignity should not be underestimated. Th is is

10 Such as the ‘sunna’ shirts (“designed and tailored in the style which Naqshbandi masters wear”) sold online by the Islamic shopping network, the jogging Dawah Wear, a brand founded by three Afro-Americans and diff used widely around the world, or the Ummawear proposed by the Muslimsche Jugend Deutschland. 11 Notably the CD Th e Little Ones by Yusuf Islam and T-shirts with the slogan ‘Muslim by Nature’ produced in the UK. 120 chapter three so notably with respect to products such as Mecca-Cola, Arab-Cola and Muslim-Up, launched as alternatives to the ‘American-imperialist’ Coca-Cola to protest against US policy on the Middle East. By way of these new brands, that have also been promoted on the MSS mailing list, the Islamic lifestyle becomes associated with an ethical and political pattern of consumption – a tendency that is reinforced by more general encouragement for Muslims to boycott Israeli and American goods in order to help bring about a more just world. We can thus see here a phenomenon in which consumption is politicized and promoted as a means of identifi cation with a global Islamic community. Th is phenomenon also helps to realize the visions of ‘engagement’ and ‘solidarity’ that young Muslims see as central to what it means to be a Muslim (cf. Boubekeur 2005). One should note that the vision of a global Muslim community is not only promoted by this genre of Islamic consumer goods, however. Popular cultural forms, particularly in the counter-culture related to hip-hop and rap music, have increasingly mobilized around an imagined Muslim community in support of a Muslim politics of recognition, this oft en being combined with a strong anti-racist vocation.12 Although, to my knowledge, there are no Norwegian artists whose lyrics explicitly convey an Islamic message or identifi cation with an Islamic community,13 several of the international artists of this type are popular among youth in Norway. Th ese artists, who pick up Muslim themes and oft en combine them somewhat uneasily with the traditional themes of hip hop and rap music (i.e. sex, drugs and violence),

12 Well-known artists are Cash Crew, Fun-Da-Mental (Great Britain), IAM, NTM (France), Public Enemy, the American convert Everlast, Ice Cube, Big Daddy Kane, Mos Def, Q-Tip Brand Nubian, and Paris (US). See Banjoko (2004), for an account of the Islamic infl uence in American hip-hop and rap music. Banjoko argues that no other religion has aff ected hip-hop like Islam, showing that Muslim references are found in the lyrics of many well-known hip-hop artists. Many diff erent Islamic tendencies are represented in this musical genre. Some hip-hop and rap artists embrace ‘mainstream’ forms of Islam, whereas many are known to support movements such as the Nation of Islam, which seems to have been particularly important as an Islamic infl uence in American rap music because of its focus (expressed in a notoriously confl ictive way) on the issues of race and racism. Public Enemy, for instance, are known to rap about their respect for the Nation of Islam. Some other rappers (for example, Rakim, Nas and members of the Wu Tang Clan) are known to be followers of the Five Percent Nation of Islam, a sectarian off shoot of the Nation of Islam (Swedenburg 1997). 13 In recent years, however, some of the Norwegian rap and hip-hop artists who deal more explicitly with themes related to being a minority youth have gained popularity. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 121 nevertheless diff er from the diff erent musical genres having a more consciously pious Islamic profi le that have lately become more popular among Muslims in the West and among the young Muslims I worked with in Oslo.14 Th ese can be seen as contributing to a ‘Muslim popular culture’ that has become increasingly important to young Muslims in Norway (and elsewhere) throughout the last decade. As well as conveying pious messages about the merits of the love of God and the importance of solidarity and unity among Muslims throughout the world, their texts oft en address social and political issues of importance to the global Muslim community.15 Th ey can thus be considered pedagogical devices that predicate particular solidarities, modes of being and acting (as when used in the context of the NMU) and not only a form of musical entertainment. Th e idea of a global Islamic community is underpinned by globalizing processes that facilitate communication and solidarity between Muslims in distant spaces. Th e religious identities and practices of young Muslims in Oslo are informed by such global imaginaries and these global imaginaries are underpinned by trans-ethnic spaces for religious practice in the local context. However, the global umma is only one of several imaginaries and, as such, must not be understood as replacing or excluding other imaginaries as points of orientation for religious identities and practices since people are situated within

For instance, the politically engaged rap group Karpe Diem launched their fi rst full album in 2006 with texts dealing with, among other things, identity questions, minority–majority relations, racism and the relationship of minority youth to their parents. Th is group has become popular among Muslims as well as among other young people in Norway. 14 Th is includes artists who mainly perform traditional Islamic hymns (nashids) with a ‘modern touch’ like, for instance, Yusuf Islam, Dawud Wharnsby-Ali, Raihan, Zain Bhikha, 786, SHAAM and Muslim hip-hop groups like Native Deen and Mecca2Medina. Texts oft en focus on the love for God and include the praising of Allah and encouragement to do good deeds and be pious. Th e Danish group Outlandish, whose success has extended beyond Muslim communities and into mainstream popular culture, sings about minority–majority relations, racism and other social and political issues, as well as about the spiritual relationship with God and Islamic practice. Th e hit Aicha, from 2002, was, in particular, immensely popular in Norway. 15 As in this excerpt from Native Deen’s “Busy Bees” that one young woman played for me: “What’s with the scarf girl, wrapped up like a mummy. / Th ey all made jokes and they said that you look funny. / You ran into the bathroom and your friends began to scoff . / Aft er that encounter you had planned to take it off . / But then you thought how much Allah likes how your dressin’. / Pleasin’ him was top priority to you no question”. 122 chapter three

diff erent, multiple and antagonistic imagined communities relating, for instance, to place, nation, diaspora and religion. As Stuart Hall (1996: 624) has suggested, “it seems unlikely that globalization will simply destroy national identities. It is more likely to produce, simultaneously, new ‘global’ and new ‘local’ identifi cations”. As will be seen in the remaining part of this chapter, belonging to a Muslim community is (re)produced simultaneously within global, regional, national and ethnic imaginaries.

Situating Islam in Europe and Norway

Euro-Islam and European Muslims Th e spatial confi guration of ‘Europe’ has become increasingly important to the ways in which Muslims living in European nation states imagine the categories, collectivities and social values that they feel affi liated with or distance themselves from. Asad (2003) has argued that Islam has been, and continues to be, excluded from representations of Europe and the narratives through which such representations are constituted (cf. Goody 2004). Th e construction of a European identity has meant constructing Muslims as ‘external’ to the ‘essence’ of Europe. Today, the ‘Muslim Other’ is an internal one and its relation to the imaginary of Europe as a non-Muslim (Christian or secular) space is hotly debated. Th e construction of the European Union, in particular, involves facing the question of how to relate to Islam in Europe, this both in relation to the signifi cant Muslim population within the EU and the enlargement of the Union to include Muslim countries such as Turkey. While the consideration of such issues goes beyond the scope of this book, it is interesting to look, albeit briefl y, into the ways in which Islam is currently ‘imagined’ in relation to ‘Europe’ and the ways in which such imaginaries infl uence Oslo’s young Muslims’ understandings of what it means to be a Muslim. It is oft en suggested that Islam is now in the process of fi nding a European expression as it articulates with the diff erent ways of life

16 I have chosen to refer to these as one rather than two separate imaginaries because the issues that arise in relation to them are very similar and because they are not clearly distinct as points of orientation and imaginaries. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 123 found in European countries. Th is was a topic raised at an international Islamic conference in Stockholm arranged by the Muslim Youth of Sweden which I attended together with a group from the Muslim Youth of Norway in 1999. Th ere, one of the speakers suggested that, “Islam in Europe will have a European taste”. Th e concept of ‘Euro- Islam’ has been introduced to indicate just such a development towards a specifi cally European expression of Islam. Th is concept is vague, however, and retains multiple meanings, oft en being used to refer to an anticipated development (that is, to the kind of Islam that will in the future be the normative foundation for Muslims in Europe). Th e term used thus projects a particular future, thereby suggesting what is good and desirable. Some authors see Europe as off ering a chance for Muslims to develop a more critical and liberal form of Islam (cf., for example, Mandaville 2003; Tibi 2002). It has also been suggested that ‘Euro-Islam’ may prove to be a major driving force in the reformation and revitalization of the Islamic tradition worldwide as critiques of traditional interpretations of Islam voiced by Muslims in the West infl uence Muslims in Muslim countries (see Metcalf 1996a). In this sense, the imaginary of Euro-Islam proposes a vision that simultaneously contributes to upholding a vision of ‘Islam’ and ‘Europe’ as historically disjunctive spaces and to suggesting a merging of these spaces. It should be noted, however, that this merging is not primarily conceived as a two-way process. Whereas it is suggested that Islam will have a European taste, it is usually not similarly suggested that Europe will have an Islamic taste. Th e stress is, thus, on the way in which Islam eventually will and needs to be transformed in and through its encounter with ‘Europe’, while the ‘identity’ of Europe is not similarly challenged. Bassam Tibi (2001, 2002), who is oft en acknowledged as the fi rst to use the concept of Euro-Islam, has argued that only a Europeanized interpretation of Islam which distinguishes between a private and a public sphere can be integrated in Western Europe. To Tibi, the concept of Euro-Islam is intended to provide a liberal variety of Islam acceptable both to Muslim migrants and to European societies and capable of accommodating European ideas of secularity and individual citizenship along the lines of modern secular democracy (Tibi 2002: 37). Th ese and other suggestions as to how Islam should adapt to and be reinterpreted in order to meet the challenges of European secular modernity have been embraced by governments, politicians and public 124 chapter three media throughout Europe. Although the Norwegian government has so far been less directly involved in the development of ‘Norwegian Islam’ than, for example, the French have been in encouraging ‘French Islam’,17 Norwegian politicians, state agents and other public fi gures have on several occasions encouraged Muslims to develop Islamic interpretations of more ‘modern’ and ‘progressive’ kinds. A case that I discuss in more detail in Chapter Five aroused much public debate in Norway when the minister in charge of immigration and integration for the Conservative Party suggested that Islam had to be ‘modernized’ in Europe.18 She claimed that “Islam in Europe must function diff erently than it does in Islamic countries” and encouraged Norwegian Muslims, whom she saw as “lagging far behind”, to look to the developments in other European countries in this respect.19 Another, and perhaps the most prominent, contemporary promoter of Euro-Islam, Tariq Ramadan (2002, 2004), argues that Muslims in Europe need to redefi ne the imaginaries that traditionally structure the worldview of Islamic jurisprudence. Th is implies a critique of the distinction made in Islamic jurisprudence between Dar-al-Islam (the Abode or House of Islam) and Dar-al-Harb (the Abode or House of War), distinguishing regions or countries which are subject to Islamic law from non-Islamic regions or countries. With this critique, a spectrum of conceptual categories such as dar-al-ahd20, dar-al-dawa21, and

17 Th rough, for example, close cooperation with Muslim countries and the state- initiated establishment of successive ‘representative’ national Islamic councils. 18 Dagladet (04.11.2003): “Solberg utfordrer norske muslimer [Solberg challenges Norwegian Muslims]”. 19 Th is construction of ‘Europe’ as more progressive than Norway may be seen to mirror a more general attitude in the Conservative Party towards the European Union which it sees as something more modern and cosmopolitan than Norway. 20 ‘House of Treaty, Truce or Covenant’, used in Islamic jurisprudence to describe the Ottoman empire’s relationship with its Christian tributary states. Today, the term refers more broadly to those non-Muslim governments which have armistice or peace agreements with Muslim governments. Muslim scholars in Europe have used the term to indicate that Muslims living in non-Muslim societies have entered an agreement that implies accepting the laws and commonly accepted order of the society they live in. 21 ‘House of Invitation’ is a term used to describe a region where Islam has recently been introduced and has been used with reference to the Meccan period during which Muslims considered themselves to be responsible for bearing witness to their faith before their peoples. Recently, the term dar al-dawa has been proposed to describe the status of Muslims in the West, notably by Tariq Ramadan, who argues that in the current world order, and in particular in industrialized societies, Muslims are facing the who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 125 dar-al-shahada22 have been employed to reformulate and reassess the relationship of Muslim migrants to the non-Muslim countries in which they live (see, for example, Vogt 1995). Th is spectrum of conceptual categories off ers ways of imagining the commitment and involvement of Muslims to Western European societies alongside their religious commitment. In order to realize this double commitment, Muslims in Europe must, according to Ramadan and others, revisit the Islamic sources so as to (re)interpret these and make them relevant to Muslims living in a European secular context. Whereas Ramadan off ers to rethink sharia in terms that make sense to modern democratic European life, other Muslim authorities in Europe, such as the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR),23 headed by Qaradawi, have sought to meet a perceived need on the part of the growing Muslim community in the West for advice and counsel based on sharia. In answer to questions put forward by Muslim believers, the ECFR issues non-binding authoritative rulings by qualifi ed Islamic scholars (fatwas). It presents itself as not in competition with the established jurisprudence bodies of the Muslim world, however, but rather as a complement “aiming to contribute to a refl ection of the fi qh24 of minorities” (Qaradawi quoted in Caeiro 2003).25 same responsibilities: “Assertive and confi dent, they have to remind the people around them of God, of spirituality and, regarding social aff airs, to work for values and ethics, justice and solidarity” (Ramadan 1999: 145). 22 ‘World of Witness’. Th is term was proposed as an extension of the term dar-al- dawa by Tariq Ramadan who argues that the current situation of Muslims in Europe should be seen as one in which the Muslim gives witness, through his behaviour and his participation in the institutions of democracy, to his faith and identity as a Muslim (Cesari 2004; Ramadan 1999). 23 Th e ECFR was founded in 1997 and presents itself as an “Islamic, specialised and independent academic entity” aiming to “issue collective fatwas that respond to the needs of Muslims in Europe, which resolve their problems in conformity with the rules and the objectives of Sharia”. Between thirty and forty sages, all of whom must be European residents and have a degree in Islamic jurisprudence, assure the decisions of the Council. Yusuf al-Qaradawi is one of today’s most infl uential Muslim scholars in the world. Like many of those who are prominent Muslims in Europe, his life history and work may be characterized as ‘transnational’. He is the chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, established by the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe in 1997, and has published exensively, notably on fi qh (Islamic jurisprudence) in the minority context. He is also very active in various diff erent media; he has a weekly programme on the Arab TV-channel Al-Jazeera and his writings and fatwas are distributed as books and pamphlets and are easily accessed on the Internet. 24 Islamic jurisprudence. 25 Th is does not necessarily mean that the ECFR is more ‘liberal’ or more responsive to the requirements of European states, a point that was illustrated when Chirac sought scholarly support for the French ban on wearing the hijab in schools from Al-Azhar 126 chapter three

Th e idea of a European Islam remains largely an ‘intellectual’ imaginary where the primary issues are how Islam should relate to the political and public arenas of modern European nation states. Young Muslims are not necessarily familiar with the juridical conceptual categories suggested by Muslim scholars and intellectuals to reassess this relationship, although a limited group of them are. Th e imaginaries off ered nevertheless impact, as will be further elaborated in the following chapters, on the way in which young Muslims in Oslo conceive of their role as citizens of a non-Muslim European state, and the way in which they attempt to create a Norwegian Muslim identity. Tariq Ramadan was already familiar to some in the late 1990s and during the last decade he has visited Norway several times, giving talks, among other things, addressing Muslim youth in particular. Although Ramadan is highly controversial among non-Muslims as well as Muslims, his ideas have become increasingly known and mediated in Norway in the last few years and in 2009 his book Being a European Muslim was published in Norwegian. Similarly, the ECFR, and notably its leader Qaradawi, were well-respected by many in the MSS and the NMU; fatwas from the ECFR relating to particular minority issues were sometimes distributed. Th e concern with developing ways of being active citizens in their ‘at home’ countries while ‘remaining within Islam’ and retaining a ‘Muslim identity’ is refl ected in the ways that the goals and orientations of the NMU and the MSS are formulated in their statutes and in their self-presentations in diverse forums (see the following chapter for a further discussion of ideas about citizenship). One particular imaginary that resonates with the young is Tariq Ramadan’s suggestion that non-Muslim governments in which Muslims are able to participate democratically are more Islamic than authoritarian governments run by Muslims (Ramadan 1999, 2004). Th is view was largely refl ected by the young Muslims I worked with. Looking at Wolasmal’s essay, he refers to Afghanistan as a “so called ‘Muslim’ country” when judged in terms of what he holds to be the universal standards of Islam. It is not uncommon, then, for Norway, when judged according to the same standards, to be viewed as ‘more Muslim’ than

in Egypt rather than from the ECFR, which has been opposed to French policies on this issue. Sheikh Tantawi of Al-Azhar defended the right of France to ban headscarves from the public sphere, referring to the fact that France as a non-Islamic country has the right to pass any law and that those Muslim women who did not wear the hijab because of the ban would be considered to be acting under coercion. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 127 some of the countries conventionally categorized as such. In a workshop on the Islamic state in the NMU, for instance, the speaker (a Norwegian convert) was challenged by the public to name the country that in her opinion was closest to the ideal of Islamic governance today. Th e speaker played the ball back to the public and a young man named Abid immediately suggested Norway. Th e speaker was somewhat caught by surprise by this response and was reluctant to accept Abid’s suggestion. Abid, however, defended his position by arguing that when viewed in terms of the rights prescribed by Islam, Norway was closer to providing these than most Muslim countries today. Zameelah supported Abid’s argument by contrasting Norway to Turkey’s fervent secularism and to the Iranian suppression of fundamental Islamic human rights. Although the issue remained contested and unresolved, the incident shows how a universalist approach to Islam opens up the possibility of viewing things that are formally Muslim as being (wit- tingly or, more oft en, unwittingly) in contradiction with Islam while things that are formally non-Muslim may been seen to embody universal Islamic values. Many young people nevertheless remained ambivalent towards the idea of Euro-Islam and a ‘European taste’ to Islam in Europe. Th is ambivalence refl ected a more general ambivalence towards issues of assimilation, adaptation and integration in general (Jacobsen 2002). Some suspected that Muslims would never be fully accepted as a part of Europe unless they were willing to ‘give up their identity’ and ‘become assimilated’. Some invocations of Euro-Islam were, in line with this, suspected of being attempts to construct a form of Islamic religiosity acceptable to Europe, rather than a religiosity true to Islamic principles. While there was a great deal of ambivalence with respect to what ‘integration’ should entail in terms of a reshaping of Muslim identity and the Islamic tradition, the NMU was a member of the Forum of Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO) with its institutionalization of European cooperation between Muslim youth organizations, its work towards and within the EU and its active promotion of a European Muslim identity.26 According to the Swedish magazine Ung Muslim ( (4) 1999):

26 Since its founding FEMYSO has been working actively with international and EU institutions such as the United Nations, the European Parliament and the Council of Europe as well as with other NGOs and organizations at the European level. (; see also Massignon 2007; Silvestri 2007). 128 chapter three

FEMYSO envisages a Europe in which Muslims take pride in their historical contribution to the development of European civilisation and their 800-year presence in Spain; to look to the future to contribute to European Society as European Muslims. Here the stress is, thus, put on changing the historical imaginaries through which Islam has been constructed as external to European identity. In a speech at the conference “European Muslim Youth – Enrichment of Society?!” (accessed at ) held in the European Parliament on Monday, 15 September 2003 the FEMYSO president at the time, Khallad Swaid, said: being European and Muslim are not two distinct identities. Th ey mutually enrich each other in the process of building a positive and creative commitment to citizenship. FEMYSO works together with other faith- based as well as secular youth organizations for greater justice and respect. We as young Muslims feel it is our duty to contribute to Europe and its societies. FEMYSO’s vision of a “multicultural, inclusive and tolerant” European future in which “all people can work hand in hand to create a peaceful and prosperous society (Ung Muslim (2) 1999) resonate importantly with the stated goals of the NMU and the MSS (with their focus on making Muslim identity a basis for ‘positive participation’ in society at large) and parallel the engagement of the NMU and the MSS in cooperating with a broad array of other organizations in the Norwegian landscape in order to counter racism and intolerance. Th e NMU was involved in the work of FEMYSO for several years and representatives from the working committee attended a number of FEMYSO meetings. Due perhaps to the fact that Norway was not a member of the EU and that the question of ‘European citizenship’ was less of an issue in Norway than in member countries, the NMU’s involvement in FEMYSO seemed to be less oriented towards ‘contributing to Europe’ than to a particular European country: Norway. While international cooperation between Muslims in diff erent (European) countries may contribute to a common European Muslim identity, it also contributes to the imaginary of a Norwegian Muslim community in that participants are made representatives of their ‘at home’ countries and in that national stereotypes serve as frames for interpreting diff erences between them. At FEMYSO meetings, the delegates represented their ‘at home’ countries. In the meeting that took place in Stockholm in 1999, for instance, fl ags planted on the table in front of the delegates served to identify their nationality. As I have argued who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 129

elsewhere (Jacobsen 2002), these European meetings serve to realize stereotypical national identities. For instance, the Norwegian delegates tended to feel ‘small’ within the context of the FEMYSO since they represented a small country that had not ‘come on as far’ as the larger countries in their work as Muslim activists. On a positive note, the Norwegian delegation was seen to be more progressive when it came to the engagement of women in organizational work and with respect to their cooperation with non-Muslim Norwegian (youth) organizations. At the 1999 meeting, the two young women from the NMU were the only female representatives at the FEMYSO gathering. According to the Norwegian women, the other countries envied them this and talked about how they needed to mobilize women in their respective ‘at home’ countries. Th e Norwegian women explained their success in mobilizing women with reference to Norway as a land of gender equality, an ideal that is central to the construction of Norwegian national identity. Th ey pointed out to the other delegations that it was traditionally Norwegian for women to be ‘frampå’ (active, outspoken, self- confi dent). Th e young women thus assumed a position as Norwegian Muslims by identifying positively with ideals of gender equality, in this context conceptualized as Norwegian, as a constituting aspect of their Muslim identity. Th is positioning importantly diff ers from the representation of Muslims in the dominant Norwegian public discourse, in which this group is usually portrayed as ‘the Other’ and as a threat to ‘Norwegian gender equality’.

Norwegian Muslims Th e discussion of how young Muslims relate to the social imaginaries of ‘Islam in Europe’ has already pointed to the importance of national imaginaries in the construction of Muslim identities. Th e future of Muslims in Norway is imagined and contested through imaginaries which envisage a common Norwegian Muslim identity and language and then recast these within Norwegian national imaginaries. Many young Muslims see the ‘unifi cation’ of Norwegian Muslims and the creation of a common identity as Norwegian Muslims as important in order to transmit Islamic traditions and Muslim identity in the migrant context. During a group interview with members of the NMU, Mohammed, one of the founders, presented Islam as something transcending national and ethnic borders and as something therefore allowing a transition from the ethnic and national identities related to 130 chapter three the countries of emigration to a Norwegian Muslim identity. He pointed to the importance of language in creating such identity: Th at is our main goal: to create a Norwegian Muslim identity, because in the long run the identity [related to where people come from] will die away. I mean, sixty years from now it’s not that big of a thing to state over a cup of coff ee that “I’m really from Morocco” or that “My grandfather was from Morocco”. So then the thing is really to say that I’m a Muslim, because Islam doesn’t have any borders. So in order to strengthen the Islamic identity of future generations we need to use the Norwegian language and to create a Norwegian Muslim identity. Mohammed, like many other young Muslims, invokes a generational temporality of migration and assumes national identity related to the country of emigration to be something that is waning over time, with the ‘future generations’. In contrast, being a Muslim is suggested to be a mobile and universal identity that can be passed on to future generations and that can also be combined with Norwegian (or any other) national identity. Mohammed draws on the image of an ‘Islam without borders’ to negotiate the relationship between being ‘Moroccan’, ‘Norwegian’ and ‘Muslim’. Th is image is also invoked as a basis for ‘uniting’ the heterogeneous and fractioned Muslim population in Norway around a common identity as Muslims, thus strengthening their position within Norwegian society. As Habib put it in the same interview: In the long run I think that organizations like the MSS and the NMU will contribute to uniting Muslims, who are now split into ethnic groups, you know. Over a longer period of time, let’s say about twenty, thirty, or even forty years, there will be Norwegian Muslims, rather than Pakistani and Moroccan Muslims. And that will make us stronger, I believe, in the long run. From this perspective, the structuring of ‘the Muslim community’ on the basis of ethnic diff erences is perceived as an obstacle to ‘unifi cation’ and the realization of a common Norwegian Muslim identity. In the process of constructing a common identity as Norwegian Muslims, individual ethnic attachments are set aside through a conceptualization of Islam as a religion that knows no boundaries (the global Muslim community). Th is loosening of Islam from ethnic identifi cation allows Muslim identity to be combined with a new identity as Norwegian Muslims. Th e contribution of young Muslims to uniting Norwegian Muslims may be exemplifi ed by the engagement of the MSS in the so called ‘calendar question’. Th e celebration of Muslim festivals and particularly the month of Ramadan are important signifi ers of Muslim community who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 131 throughout the world. However, the religious calendar is also an important site of contestation, manifesting internal divisions and questions of authority. Since their establishment in Norway, Muslim immigrants have tended to rely on authorities outside of Norway in order to determine the exact date of the eid marking the end of Ramadan. Some follow the ‘back home’ countries, others Saudi Arabia and others the Muslim country fi rst announcing the sighting of the moon. Eid has thus been celebrated on diff erent days in diff erent communities and mosques, thus accentuating internal divisions (cf. Vogt 2000). In Tankevekkende (1998), one article is devoted to this issue, criticizing the mosques for “splitting into national groups” and for not being able to cooperate. In a later issue (Spring 2001), the fact that “relatives, friends and people in the same home or town have to celebrate eid on diff erent days” is deplored and said to split the Muslim community in Norway. Just before the Ramadan of 1997/98, some members of the MSS contacted the Islamic Council of Norway in an initiative to make the mosques agree upon a common starting date for Ramadan. Among the university students who engaged this question were several who believed ‘scientifi c’ methods (i.e. astronomic calculations) to be more suitable for modern times than the ‘traditional’ methods (i.e. moon- sighting) or following Muslim authorities outside of Norway (i.e. the back home countries or Saudi Arabia). Representatives from diff erent mosques were subsequently invited to make a common decision although, in fact, agreement was not reached and diff erent groups thus again started Ramadan at diff erent times. In September 1998 the MSS and the Islamic Council took a new initiative by founding a hilal27 committee, whose task was to collect information from diff erent institutions, talk to imams in diff erent mosques and develop a suggestion for a practical solution that all could agree upon. As a result of these eff orts, a hijri28-calendar agreement was signed by twelve of the larger mosques in Oslo in November 2000. Shortly aft er, for the fi rst time, at least a majority of the Muslims in Norway started the fast on the same day. Th e agreement was welcomed by the MSS, which distributed a letter of congratulation to its members by e-mail on the occasion of eid- al-adha29 in 2001. Addressing the ‘calendar question’, in which he

27 Crescent, new or half moon. 28 Lunar calendar starting from Mohammed’s migration from Mecca to Medina. 29 Th e feast of sacrifi ce performed on the tenth day of the month of pilgrimage (Dhu l’Hijja) imitating Ibrahim’s (Abraham’s) projected sacrifi ce of Ismail (Ishmael). 132 chapter three himself had increasingly become engaged, one young man commented to me: If Muslims are to be perceived as one group, they have to be able to agree on issues as fundamental as this one. I think most people agree on that. But arriving at a consensus is not a given, it is rather something that leaders have been forced to do. Many young Muslims were fed up with the disagreements between the mosques, so they started phoning the university to fi nd out when there would be a new moon. And I think people realized that if they were to hold on to these young Muslims they would have to come to an agreement. I mean, it is hopeless to get time off from work or school if you are three Muslims in a class and you all want a leave for eid on diff erent days.30 So I think a change is forcing its way through: young Muslims are tired of the ‘gubbevelde’ [dominion ruled by older men]. Despite the hijri-calendar agreement, and the fact that the Islamic Council of Norway works out yearly calendars based on the methods defi ned in the agreement, ‘the calendar question’ continues to animate debate and Muslims have continued to celebrate eid-al-fi tr and eid-al- adha on diff erent days. During fi eldwork in 2002, Yasmina, one of the young women I had come to know, arranged a ‘girl’s evening’ at her house to celebrate eid-al-adha. In the days before the event the young women were phoning each other to try to make arrangements for celebrating together. On Wednesday Soroya phoned me to say that the Islamic Council of Norway had announced that eid would be on Saturday. We made plans to go shopping for eid clothes for Soroya’s children on Friday aft ernoon and then go to Yasmina’s party together. On Th ursday, however, Nabila called me to ask if I would bring some salad for Yasmina’s eid party on Friday. We ended up celebrating on Friday but Soroya expressed her disappointment that ‘Muslims could not even agree upon when to celebrate eid’. Nabila, for her part, was content that we had celebrated with ‘the umma’ since we had followed the rhythm of the pilgrims doing the hajj in Mecca. As can be seen from this example, young Muslims, in cooperation with other organizations, work towards the unifi cation of Norwegian Muslims (in this case through eff orts to institute a common ritual temporality). Such cooperation is important not least in terms of pursuing

30 A law of 13 June 1969 guarantees those who are not members of the Norwegian Church two days leave from work or school per year on the occasion of religious festivals. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 133 collective interests and gaining certain rights from the state. A range of issues from the practical necessities of getting and developing standards for halal meat, to the intense debates about blasphemy following the Rushdie aff air, to the adhan controversies, to debates on whether a national sharia council should be established have all energized cooperation across ethnic, linguistic and denominational boundaries. All these are moments and sites of negotiation between the various Islamic traditions of Muslims in Norway and the context in which these practices are now lived. While agreement is not necessarily reached among Muslims on such issues, one could argue that the eff orts at cooperation and unifi cation in themselves contribute to the emergence of a ‘public space of discussion and debate’ among Norwegian Muslims. While the main forums for such discussion and debate were still the mosques and Islamic organizations when the MSS and the NMU were founded in the mid-1990s, the expansion and use of the Internet in Norway has since then virtually exploded as has the emergence of Norwegian Islamic sites on the Internet. Th e most important of these is currently , which provides practical information (on prayer times etc.), information on ‘Muslim events’, information about a number of Islamic issues and a very active discussion forum. Several other mosques and organizations use the Internet more and more actively while there are also a number of private initiative blogs and info-pages about Islam such as, for instance, and . Th e use of Norwegian language in these forums and their focus on upcoming events in Norway (mainly Oslo) narrow the scope of the community to Muslims who live in Norway and speak the Norwegian language but at the same time these forums point to and make use of references from around ‘the global Muslim community’. For instance, has a section named ‘Ummah’ with information about Muslims in confl ict zones around the world (Iraq, Palestine, Bosnia, Kashmir and Afghanistan) and links to – a transnational information site providing “news from around the Muslim world”.

Th e ‘vernacularization’ of Islam Th e nationalization of languages has, of course, been important in constituting national identities in a variety of European countries and in Norway the issue of a national language has continued to energize 134 chapter three debates about national identity right up until the present. Th at immigrants should ‘learn Norwegian’ has been unequivocally supported as a measure for their integration into Norwegian society across the political spectrum. Several writers on Muslims in Europe have pointed towards a process of ‘vernacularization’ of Islam, in which Islam comes to fi nd a ‘local’ expression through the use of national languages to express and formulate Islamic identities, beliefs and practices (see, for example, Vertovec and Rogers 1998). Th is development is attested to by numerous publications on, for example, “Islam in Norwegian” (Vogt 2000) and “Islam in Swedish” (Otterbeck 2000). Th e question nevertheless remains whether the use of vernacular languages, and the ways in which Muslim discourses relate to local and national conditions, can justify claims to the emergence of, for example, ‘Norwegian Islam’, ‘Swedish Islam’, or ‘French Islam’. While I do not think that the process of vernacularization justifi es claims to the emergence of a ‘Norwegian Islam’, the process of vernacularization is important to the construction of a Norwegian Muslim community. It is the fact of speaking and writing the Islamic tradition in the Norwegian language, and interpreting it with reference to the contemporary Norwegian context, that creates a common discursive space underpinning the construction of a Norwegian Muslim community. Th e linguistic practices of young Muslims who were born and/or grew up in Norway – as well as those of Norwegian converts – contribute to the development of ‘Islamic Norwegian’. In contrast to most mosques and Islamic organizations at the time, Norwegian was from the beginning the common language spoken by all the young Muslims coming from diff erent backgrounds in the NMU and the MSS. Th e use of Norwegian in addition to Arabic, in the mosques also, was an explicit goal for many of the young Muslims in these organizations. As Mohammed, a former leader of the NMU, stressed in a group interview: A main goal is to have a mosque where we can speak both Arabic and Norwegian, and where the Friday prayer is in Norwegian, in combination with Arabic. When we achieve this, we will have come one step further, and then we will be able to create other long-term goals. Th is concern with the vernacularization of the religious language is related not least to the linguistic capabilities of young Muslims and the concern that young Muslims should be able to access and practice Islam through a language they understand. Many youngsters read and who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 135 write Norwegian more fl uently, and understand it better, than Arabic or the other languages spoken in the mosques.31 Given the status of Arabic as the language of revelation, the participants in the NMU and the MSS also generally held that every practising Muslim should strive to learn enough Arabic to at least be able to perform the prayers and preferably also to be able to read the Koran in its original form. In linguistic terms the ‘vernacularization’ of Islam is a hybridized process in which the diff erent languages involved (Arabic,32 Norwegian and a diverse set of ‘maternal languages’) are transformed. While Norwegian is increasingly used in books, darses, khutbas33 and discussions, Arabic, as the language of revelation, continues to be a constitutive aspect of religious practice as well as a privileged way of accessing the Islamic sources (as opposed to translations, that are sometimes piously referred to as ‘interpretations’ of these texts). Th e ‘vernacularization’ of Islam thus refers primarily to the area of conversation and debate about Islam, rather than to ritual practice. When speaking and writing the Islamic tradition in the Norwegian language, some central Arabic-Islamic terms are included. Th rough this process, the Arab Islamic vocabulary is fi nding a Norwegian form: words are written in the Latin alphabet and adapted to Norwegian grammars and transliteration is simplifi ed so as to fi t the sounds and spellings of the Norwegian language. Th e linguistic practices of the young Muslims I worked with varied with respect to whether they used Arabic terms, terms from their ‘mother tongues’ or translated Norwegian terms (and how they translated diff erent concepts). Whereas some words acquire an established form in Norwegian (as in the case of ‘prayer’ which is used interchangeably with salah), others remain spoken in Arabic and are incorporated as such into the Norwegian language (this is notably so for words like ‘imam’ that do not have any obvious equivalent in

31 For instance, in the Pakistani mosques Urdu is commonly used while the young have probably learned some Punjabi from their parents at home. Similarly the North African mosques tend to use Arabic when the young are likely to have learned to speak some Berber at home. However, this has lately been rapidly changing with increasingly more mosques and organizations now off ering Friday prayers and religious lectures in Norwegian. 32 Arabic, in this context, should not be seen as referring to the language of a particular group of people (Arabs) but as the language of revelation permitting Muslims (regardless of their mother tongue) to access the founding texts of Islam and to perform the Islamic rituals. 33 Sermons delivered during Friday prayer in the mosque. 136 chapter three

Norwegian).34 In addition to Arabic words, Islamic Norwegian incor- porates concepts with a variety of linguistic origins (see, for example, the discussion of ‘religious reward’ in Chapter Six). Such a linguistic change is less banal than it may appear as it involves a complex process of cultural translation in which Islamic concepts and traditions are brought into contact not only with the Norwegian language but also with the ‘mother tongues’ of each of the members. To take but one brief example: during a dars in the NMU on the notion of kadr,35 the young man giving the lecture said that he was uncertain whether this concept could in fact be translated with the word ‘skjebne’ in Norwegian.36 A discussion followed in which those present sought to grasp the meaning of this Norwegian word by explaining how they understood it. Several people also evoked the corresponding concepts from their mother tongues and the ways in which these were generally understood. Th e discussion thus realized a complex form of cultural translation in which the meaning of a theological concept had to be established at the intersection of a variety of diff erent linguistic traditions. Th e meaning of kadr was thus negotiated through the prism of several languages as those attending tried to arrive at a common understanding of what the Islamic teaching of predestination might be said to entail. Having to choose a particular Norwegian translation means that concepts are thereby related to new systems of meanings and associations. Hijab, for instance, would be referred to as veil, kerchief, scarf, shawl or Muslim headgear by diff erent persons in diff erent contexts. Such translations were contested. Scarf and shawl were acceptable to most, whereas many found ‘veil’ to be too evocative of an exotic imaginary involving harems and female seclusion. Th e kerchief alternative was used by some but was oft en seen as being too evocative of old ladies

34 New expressions such as ‘halal kjøtt’ (meat that is slaughtered according to ritual prescriptions and therefore permitted to Muslims), ‘å gjøre nikah’ (performing the Islamic marriage ceremony) and ‘å si shahada’ (pronouncing the attestation of faith), ‘God eid’ (Eid mubarak), ‘å ha rett niyyat’ (having the right intention) are established. 35 Kadr (or Qadar) is usually translated in English as ‘predestination’ and more specifi cally as referring to ‘divine predestination’ or ‘divine determination’. 36 ‘Skjebne’ in Norwegian covers what in English is expressed by the terms destiny, fate, chance and predestination (combined). In current language-use, however, it does not particularly refer to any religious idea of predestination. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 137 and the countryside. Young Muslims were, thus, aware that choosing a particular translation, or choosing not to translate, had important consequences for the resulting associations and the images that were thereby created of Islam and Muslims in public discourse. In American Medina, Schmidt (1998) notes that, as a fi rst move, American Muslims translated religious concepts into English (e.g. Allah became ‘God’ and Subhanallah became ‘God be Praised’). Th is, according to Schmidt, expressed a desire for inclusion and to underline familiarity. In the 1990s, however, during Schmidt’s fi eldwork, she noted a reverse movement as increasingly more Muslims adopted an Islamic American English vocabulary. Schmidt suggests that the large number of particularly African American converts to Islam may have accelerated this linguistic process. To many converts, the wish to signal ‘diff erence’ from mainstream Christian or secular American society was central to forging new identities as Muslims: “Diff erence produces visibility, and visibility challenges, in this case intentionally, that which the majority perceives as obvious” (1998). In the NMU and the MSS, there seems to have been a parallel development towards an increased use of Islamic Norwegian terms instead of translations. One explanation for the widespread use of Islamic Norwegian words may be that this represented an attempt to diff erentiate themselves from majority society. In Norwegian the term ‘God’ will generally be understood within a Christian framework, unless specifi ed otherwise. Th e use of ‘Allah’ thus marks one’s identity as a Muslim within a non-Muslim majority context. Following Schmidt’s interpretation, this might be seen as a sign that young Muslims have become increasingly assertive in their formulation of a Muslim minority identity and their right to be ‘diff erent’, something that will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter. Th e increased use of Islamic Norwegian terms might also be due to the fact that a growing number of young Muslims, through their ‘search for knowledge’ on Islam (discussed in Chapter Five), have become familiar with Islamic Arabic terms as they are employed in, for example, books, pedagogical material, audio-visual material and conferences.37

37 Th ough mostly used by Norwegian Muslims, non-Muslims, for example, in the media, have started to pick up on certain common Islamic Norwegian words. In August 2003, for instance, the newspaper Dagbladet produced some coverage of Islam in which they included a list of Islamic Norwegian terms. Th e Islamic Norwegian vocabulary is 138 chapter three

Islam and national symbols While language remains important as a primary vehicle for imagining and interacting within a Norwegian Muslim community, Muslims in Norway must also confront national imaginaries in which Islam and Muslim identity are not included. As Gullestad (2006) has pointed out, with the pressure put on the nation state, there has been an ethnifi cation of national identity, this being articulated around notions of blood, kinship, home and family. Within this ethnicized national imaginary, immigrants and their descendants continue to be regarded as ‘non- Norwegian’ even if they ‘assimilate’ in linguistic terms and are legally defi ned as Norwegian citizens. In the next chapter I will discuss how these confrontations are played out in young Muslims’ politics of identity. Here, I will consider some ways in which young Muslims’ discursive practices performatively connect Islam to Norwegian national symbols and markers of identity. Contemporary challenges to the nation state seem to have reinvigorated a concern not only with blood and kinship, but also with national symbols. Th e Winter Olympics held at Lillehammer in 1994 epitomized this reinvigoration and popularized a range of national symbols as ‘trademarks’ representing Norway. During the course of the same decade popular media contests were also held to select and defi ne a national cultural essence, singling out the ‘most Norwegian’ of a set of supposedly typically Norwegian ideas and artefacts. Th e importance of Constitution Day as a ritual construction and display of Norwegianness has been discussed in numerous ethnological and anthropological publications (Blehr 2000; Brottveit, Aagedal and Hovland 2004; Eriksen 1993; Klausen 1984); for our purposes here, an e-mail posted to those on the MSS mailing list on the occasion of the

thus not only changing the linguistic practices of Muslims in Norway but also those of non-Muslims. Words such as imam, halal, hijab, sharia, and ayatollah are increasingly familiar to a non-Muslim public. Lately, the terms jihad and fatwa have come into use not only in reference to Muslim politics but also as metaphors characterizing non- Muslim Norwegian politics. Here fatwa comes to mean something like a strong or dictatorial opinion censoring other opinions and jihad an uncompromising struggle against someone or something. In both cases, the words take on a highly negative meaning, as opposed to the meanings they take on within an Islamic framework. Although the Norwegian public is increasingly familiar with a range of Islamic Norwegian terms, considerable contestation arises over the correct meaning of such terms as these are used and misused, adopted and adapted to the local context. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 139

17th of May (Constitution Day) can serve to illustrate the ambivalence of young Muslims’ negotiation of national symbols and markers of national identity:

Dear Muslim Norwegian countrymen! :-) wa’salaam o doa Th ree hurrahs for the day today hip hip hurrah, hurrah, hurrah… hurrah, hurrah, hurrah… hurrah, hurrah, hurraaaaah I wish all brothers and sisters a great celebration of the national day! :-) Th e use of smileys in this e-mail was not designed only to convey a ‘happy national day’ attitude, it was also an ironic acknowledgement of the fact that the way in which readers were being addressed as Muslim Norwegian countrymen could provoke many Muslims as well as the non-Muslim majority. Th is had been particularly forcefully brought home a couple of years earlier when the appointment of the Norwegian Pakistani labour party politician Rubina Rana to lead the 17th of May Committee in Norway and precede the parade in Oslo was subject to discussion in the national papers aft er she received a racist threatening letter stating that: “Th is job is for white Norwegians. Go home to Pakistan” (cf. Gullestad 2001b; Jacobsen 2002).38 Whereas this particular episode refl ected a nationalist imaginary from which non-white, immigrants and Muslims were categorically excluded, the 17th of May has also been central in representing Norway as a ‘multicultural’ nation. Th us, the threats against Rubina Rana also engendered massive popular support for her. Th e e-mail thus plays on the ambivalences and dilemmas experienced by young Muslims in their eff orts to construct a Norwegian Muslim identity while simultaneously negotiating boundaries and discursive attempts to construct ‘Muslim’ and ‘Norwegian’ as mutually exclusive categories of identity. In an article called “Henrik Wergeland – the fi rst Norwegian Muslim?” posted on , links are established between Islam and Norwegian national identity by way of the poet Henrik Wergeland. Based on an interview in Dagbladet with

38 In 2007 a new controversy aroused a great deal of emotion and heated debate around the question of whether children with an immigrant background should be allowed to carry the fl ags of their (or more oft en their parents’) country of emigration in the 17th of May parade. 140 chapter three

Yngvar Ustvedt, 39 the moderator of the Internet site writes that Henrik Wergeland in fact died a Muslim:40 Yes, I believe you know him? Henrik Wergeland, the guy who instituted the day. Th e 17th of May, I mean, Norway’s national day. But that he died a Muslim, you didn’t know? Th e moderator explains that: Wergeland believed in the wonders of nature. Islam became to him a religion that gave God – Allah – the right place within it. It became the religion that he felt closest to, and of which he spoke with the greatest sympathy. He preferred Allah to the Christian God, and considered Mohammed a distinguished prophet. Th e moderator further related Wergeland’s embracing of Islam to his sympathies for oppressed peoples and his support for their battles for freedom, something which in the text serves to confi rm the universality of Islam and the ethical commitment of Muslims towards justice and freedom for the oppressed and embattled. He also suggested that Wergeland’s views on Islam had not become common knowledge because many people “do not want to hear about it”. Th e case of Wergeland is used, in conclusion, as an invitation to Islam addressed to Norwegians: “When Henrik Wergeland was inspired by Islam, why shouldn’t others also be? Read about Islam yourself ! As you can see, good Norwegians have already done so”.41 Here, Wergeland, as an exemplary fi gure of the ‘good Norwegian’ is held forth as someone who resolves the distinction between ‘Muslims’ and ‘Norway’ through his ethical practices. In the religious imagination of the young Muslims, nature is integrated as a sign of God’s greatness. By linking Wergeland’s sympathies for Islam with ‘the wonders of nature’ a creative link is established

39 Salem Aleikum Henrik. Dagbladet 16.05.1997. Ustvedt is a writer and journalist who wrote his PhD dissertation on Henrik Wergeland. His suggestion that Wergeland might have been a Muslim was debated aft er the interview appeared in Dagbladet and was countered, among other things, by the suggestion that although Wergeland might have found some fundamental truth in all religions, he valued Christianity most. 40 Th e moderator was active in the Muslim community and was one of the young Muslims with whom I worked. 41 Interestingly, a similar discursive move to localize Islam in Germany has been made by the Muslimische Jugend Deutschland, which has suggested that Göethe and Kant were Muslims. Th is was pointed out to me by Synnøve Bendixen (personal communication) who has done fi eldwork with youth from MJD in Berlin. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 141 between Islam and Norwegian national symbols like the 17th of May and ‘nature’, which are both important in Norwegians’ conceptualization of Norway and Norwegianness. Young Muslims also take their religious practice into ‘nature’, for example when they go hiking (å gå på tur), this being something which is highly valued as recreational and as ‘healthy for body and soul’ in the Norwegian national imaginary. Islamic rituals such as prayers are highly ‘portable’ in the sense that they require no ‘sacred place’ (cf. Metcalf 1996a). It is through the practices performed in a place that an ‘Islamic space’ comes into being. Th e way in which nature is transformed into the most beautiful ‘mosque’ through the performance of the ritual ablutions and the congregational prayer and through the sound of adhan is well illustrated in Tulay Gider’s description of the NMU’s trip to Tryvann found in Explore: We were fi nally there. Th e place was by a lake and it was beautiful. Autumn has its own particular beauty. Even though it was cold outside, we could feel the warmth of the colourful trees. […] It was time for salah al-dhuhr.42 Th ose who were going to do salah did wudhu down by the lake. Hearing adhan in the middle of the forest sounded so beautiful to me that I cannot put it into words. (Explore (1) 1999: 18; italics added for Islamic terms explained in footnotes) As was seen in Wolasmal’s essay about his journey to Afghanistan, ‘adhan in the open’ powerfully invokes and serves to constitute a Muslim space. Performing and hearing adhan in the middle of the forest thus performatively establishes Islam as a visible and audible aspect of the Norwegian landscape. Th is is all the more important when we look at the heated debates that have surrounded the question of whether or not Muslims in Norway should be allowed to perform the adhan publicly for the Friday prayer in mosques.43 Th e adhan debate dramatized nationalist imaginaries in a way that excluded Islam and Muslims from a common national ‘We’ (cf. Jacobsen 2002; Naguib

42 Midday prayer (aft er the sun’s noon). 43 Th is discussion arose aft er the World Islamic Mission, at the time the only organization having a purpose-built mosque in Oslo, applied for a permit to perform adhan for Friday prayers. Th e city council in Oslo granted permission on the condition that they did not break health regulations concerning urban noise (maximum 60 decibels). Gressgård (2005a) refers to the political treatment of such issues as adhan, halal meat and hijab taken with reference to national law pertaining to ‘health and security’ rather than as questions of ‘religious freedom’, as instances of “category mistakes” – the employment of faulty categories of description and ethnocentrism (cf. Chapter Four). 142 chapter three

2001). Th e debates were structured according to a dichotomy in which adhan represented ‘them / the foreigners’, whether or not these were constructed as a legitimate or illegitimate presence in the Norwegian landscape (this dichotomous framework will be further elaborated in the next chapter). ‘Europe’ and ‘Norway’ are imaginaries in and through which young Muslims constitute their religious identities and practices. Instead of treating these as ‘given’ and naturalized spaces that somehow automatically confer upon people who belong there a given ‘identity’, I have tried to give some glimpses of how these imaginaries shape the ways in which young Muslims refl ect on themselves as Muslims, the way they anticipate their future and look to the past, how they organize their religious practices and how these refl ections and interventions contribute to problematizing the ‘identity’ of ‘Europe’ and ‘Norway’. When attempting to forge a Norwegian Muslim identity, young Muslims do not imagine the nation state in terms of ancestry and descent, but more as a community of conversation across overlapping multiplicities of origin and identifi cation. In this process, national symbols are invoked and appropriated in ways that open them up to values and practices associated with Islam and social values are both mapped onto spatial- ized imaginaries such as ‘Norway’, ‘Europe’ and ‘the West’ and imagined as potentially transcending them in the shape of a universal religion or a universal humanity.

Family, kinship and the ‘ethnic diaspora’

So far I have focused on imaginaries that in diff erent ways transcend or challenge belonging created through reference to ‘back home’. It would be wrong, however, to ignore this latter dimension as most young Muslims continue to identify and orient themselves towards a ‘national homeland’. Such references do not point towards a fi xed and bounded community, however, but to a social matrix constituted through a multiplicity of social relations and practices that relate to family relations, kinship and country background. Th e way in which ethnicity is produced and altered in the context of migration and globalization is not the focus of this book. It is, however, nevertheless necessary to have a look at how young Muslims imagine the categories, collectivities and social values that they feel affi liated with or distance themselves from in relation to emotional ties to family and kin, as well as close social relations with people sharing their background. Although the term who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 143

‘ethnicity’ is problematic in this respect, I will refer to this imaginary as ‘the ethnic diaspora’.44 Family life is crucial for the transmission and negotiation of identities and social values and crucial as an experiential grounding for imagining the ‘ethnic community’ (cf. Gullestad 2006a). In her study of youth with an immigrant background in Norway, Prieur stresses the importance of the family for how young people come to identify with an ‘ethnic category’: Th rough the family the individual gets a name and a language, together with a series of culturally specifi c practices (food, music, clothes…), and to a certain extent also culturally specifi c ways of being and structures of feeling (show respect for parents, experience commitment towards them…). (Prieur 2002: 8) In my study, also, the attachment to family and kin and the identities conferred upon them within this context were important to how the young came to perceive of themselves in terms of where they were ‘coming from’, their ‘background’ and their ‘roots’. Some, in particular, took an interest in tracing their family history in order to get a fuller picture of ‘where they came from’. Many were also concerned with passing on such things as language, musical and literary traditions and family history to their own children. Enduring long-term social relations continue to be importantly shaped within family, kin and ethnic networks of sociality and exchange. Th e imaginaries that relate to the family, the ‘ethnic community’ and the ‘back home’ country are sustained by such long-term and oft en intimate social relationships. Such relationships continue to impact on identities and senses of self and on how young Muslims act with respect to, for example, marriage and careers. In envisaging both their past and future lives, young Muslims frequently invoked the family, kinship and ‘ethnic community’. Th e young continually stressed their ‘social obligations’ towards the (extended) family. Th ey envisaged their own lives to a large extent as part of larger family projects. Th is was particularly important when it came to the issue of marriage (cf. Bredal 2006). Most of the young Muslims in my study came from families where marriages were ‘arranged’ and, in this sense, seen as ‘family aff airs’. Th at marriage is a critical aspect of creating and maintaining collective identities across generations is, of course, at

44 In Chapter Four, the issue of ethnicity is treated more broadly by paying attention to how processes of Othering impact on young people’s identifi cation with ‘ethnic categories’. 144 chapter three the heart of much anthropological theorizing. Marriage ensures that communities and collective identities are maintained into the future. Especially with regard to the selection of a life partner, it may indicate how identity and diff erence are inscribed through contested ideas of endogamy and exogamy (cf. Raj 2003). In this respect it is interesting to look briefl y into how my interlocutors refl ected on marriage. Th e young Muslims I worked with contested widespread ideals and practices of ethnic endogamy and instead promoted religious endogamy.45 Whether a person was Muslim or not (and their degree of piety) was seen as the primary criterion for choosing a spouse. One issue of the magazine published by the NMU (Ung Muslim (1) 2000) told the story of a girl who fell in love with someone from a diff erent national background. Th e article, titled “Th ink for yourself!”, stressed young people’s right to fall in love and marry across cultural boundaries, a right that was legitimized in this context with reference to Islam. It should be noted, however, that there was a marked diff erence between normative statements and practice in this respect.46 Although ethnicity and nationality were discarded as normative principles for regulating marriage, actual identifi cation in terms of language and ‘culture’ and practical considera- tions, as well as loyalty to, expectations and/or pressure from family and kin, still assured that most marriages were endogamous in ethnic and/or national terms. Th e move from ethnic endogamy towards religious endogamy was, thus, part of the anticipated future of Muslim unity. Nisha, for instance, told me that for a long time she had only considered Kashmiri suitors since her father would only accept her marrying

45 I should hasten to add that this is not an attempt to generalize about marriage practices among young Muslims. It is only meant as an illustration of how young Muslims identify with diff erent communities. For an excellent discussion of marriage practices among South-Asian minority youth in Norway see Bredal (2006). Th e limits of religious endogamy are contested. Among the young Muslims I worked with, marrying someone who was not a Muslim was generally considered unacceptable. In line with many ulema, some argued that Muslim men could also marry “women of the Book”. Women could not do the same, as religious identity was seen to be passed on by the father. Why this was so, was debated, and references were somewhat uneasily made to a man’s position as the head of the family. More oft en, however, the young Muslims tended to explain religious endogamy with the practical diffi culties living with a person of a diff erent religion would cause, in particular in relation to raising children. 46 Figures from Statistics Norway (Lie 2002) show that most marriages consist of men and women from the same region, and that there are relatively few marriages across country background. Roy (2000) notes a similar discrepancy in the French context between discourse and practice related to marriage. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 145 within the group he saw them as belonging to. As her parents only communicated with considerable diffi culties in Norwegian and English, she also worried that they might be unable to communicate with her future husband, should she marry someone from a diff erent national background. To ‘take up that battle’ would, she thought, be too problematic in relation to her family, to which she showed aff ection and commitment, so she had been preparing to fi nd someone who her father could accept. Her mother did not care so much about origins and said that as long as the man in question was a Muslim she would be fi ne with it. Even so, the mother worried about the example Nisha would set for her younger sisters, these being ‘even more Norwegian than her’. Recently, in particular aft er he had gone on the hajj, Nisha got the impression that her father had soft ened somewhat on the issue. She saw this partly as a result of him having become more pious aft er the hajj and partly as a result of the way she and her siblings had been ‘standing up to him’ on a number of issues over the years. Th is resistance had included negotiations on a variety of issues ranging from what clothes to wear to whether or not they could travel on their own. One of her older siblings had already married a non-Kashmiri, this aft er considerable protest from the parents, however. On one occasion Nisha and her father discussed a couple of marriage proposals that her father had received. Nisha was reluctant, as on previous occasions, to accept the candidates her father presented to her, however, so her father, seemingly somewhat discouraged and impatient, asked her, “But what is it that you want, my daughter?” Nisha replied, “I don’t want to be as you taught me, Kashmiri fi rst and then a Muslim. I want to be a Muslim fi rst and then a Kashmiri”. In so reply- ing, Nisha made a powerful statement to her father about whom she wanted to be, a statement that explicitly opposed the priorities that her father attached to belonging. Nisha’s statement was not only a powerful statement about belonging, however, but also an eff ective way of challenging the standards of ethnic endogamy that she saw her father as imposing on her. Being a Muslim fi rst, rather than a Kashmiri, would mean that it would be whether a suitor was a ‘good’ Muslim or not, and not his ethnic or national background, that would become the most important criterion for determining the pool of potential partners. Indeed, when she spoke to me and to her friends about the candidates she had been presented with it was usually their piety – or lack of such – to which she accorded the highest importance, this along with other issues pertaining to education, economic status and appearance. 146 chapter three

When she married a few years later, however, it was to a well-educated pious Kashmiri who met both her own and her father’s criteria. Although most continue, like Nisha, to marry within their own ethnic community despite their normative widening of the pool of potential partners achieved by appealing to religious rather than ethnic endogamy, there are some changes to be noticed. Th ere have been several inter-ethnic marriages in the networks surrounding the NMU and MSS, a few Internet-initiated engagements and marriages and some marriages arranged by friends in the Muslim network instead of by the family. Islamic conferences and multi-ethnic organizations, as well as Muslim marriage bureaus on the Internet, are sites where Muslim spouses may be found outside of the ethnic community. It is interesting to note that those who marry across ethnic boundaries are sometimes referred to as ‘really Muslim’, since they have apparently managed to let themselves be guided by Islamic principles rather than by cultural traditions or social expectations. In a sense, these couples thus represent an anticipated future in which the Muslim community will no longer be divided by ethnic and national diff erences. Whereas this anticipated future thus provides an important imaginary for young Muslims, there are reasons to agree with Naguib (2001: 16) when she says that “at the present time in Norway, we should think in terms of several Muslim diasporas based more on nationality/ ethnicity rather than a common religion”. To most of the young Muslims I worked with, socialization into Muslim identity and practice was indissolubly linked to the area of family and kinship and the ‘ethnic diasporas’ imagined in their extension. Th e transmission of religious traditions and practices such as reading the Koran, prayer, dress codes, food etc. was part of informal socialization taking place within the family and in mosques dominated by diff erent ethnic communities. Although young Muslims made refl exive eff orts to distinguish religious from ethnic identities, and culture from religion, these points of identifi cation continued to intertwine in daily life, where references to ethnic and religious communities and to culture and religion were sometimes interchangeable. Muslim identity and practice thus remained tied to the cultural and religious values transmitted within the family, kinship networks and the (ethnically-based) mosques. Since I did not focus on any particular ‘ethnic community’ it would be impossible to trace by means of my data the various ways in which particular ethnic imaginaries and patterns of sociability interact with other imaginaries. I will, however, discuss one example of how who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 147 belonging to an ethnic community intersects with, and is partly challenged by, global Muslim imaginaries and the emergence of a Norwegian Muslim identity. In doing so, I base my discussion on an ethnographic account of a young woman moving through the city of Oslo. Th e example draws attention to how the imaginaries discussed above are realized in intersection with, and mutual diff erentiation from, each other. Th is, together with crosscutting diff erences in, for instance, gender, sexuality and age turns them into sites of control and cultural play, consent and resistance and reproduction and change.

Journeying through social imaginaries It is ten o’clock in the morning and Alesha sits with a group of other students from the MSS registering participants for the second International Islamic Conference in Oslo.47 Th e conference is taking place in a part of Oslo Centre (West) where the stream of men and women of diff erent colours dressed in a variety of Islamic dresses attracts the attention of passers by. Alesha, who normally does not cover her head, is wearing black trousers, a wide white shirt and a white hijab (the latter at the request of the conference organizers, who prefer female aids to cover their heads at the conference site). All the MSS young women have followed this recommendation except for one who is just ‘attending’ rather than ‘helping out’. In the school building that has temporarily been converted into a conference hall, numerous activities are taking place. Books, audio and video tapes and some ‘Islamic consumer goods’ (e.g. hijabs, halal make-up (khols), halal perfume (without alcohol), prayer time alarms, calligraphies and Kaaba key rings) are displayed in the entrance hall. Th e NMU and the MSS are among the organizations represented at the stands where brochures are distributed and people may approach to inquire about the work of the organizations in question. Food is served in the cafeteria during conference breaks. In the toilets and cloakrooms ritual ablutions are performed before salah, which takes place in the school’s gymnasium. Th e school site is organized by a gendered division of spaces with separate entrances, separate seating in the conference room, separate prayer

47 Th is is a biannual event, staged by the Masjid Bilal in cooperation with other Muslim organizations in Oslo, in which a range of scholars from Muslim as well as European countries and the United States are invited to lecture on and discuss a range of issues, but particularly those relating to the condition of Muslims in Europe. 148 chapter three rooms and separate lines and eating areas in the cafeteria. Well into the fi rst lecture Alesha fi nishes up the registration and joins the approximately fi ve hundred listeners in the main conference hall. Th roughout the day Alesha, who is one of the few Pakistanis attending the otherwise Arab-dominated conference,48 listens to speeches by internationally renowned scholars from around the world on, among other things, dawa, the truth of the Koran, morality and ritual worship.49 In the late aft ernoon I catch up with Alesha on the subway. We are both headed for the ‘henna-party’ of Haleema,50 a 22-year-old friend of Alesha who also has a Pakistani background. Th e henna-party is to be held in a community house in an eastern suburb of Oslo and the journey takes us from the bourgeois Centre (West) area through the city centre and on to the more immigrant-dense areas of the eastern suburbs. Alesha has kept on the hijab she was wearing at the conference and, before I get time to ask her if she has started to wear it generally, she points towards her headgear and explains that she has kept it on as an ‘experiment’. As she is considering donning the hijab, she wants to “check out how it feels to wear it”. It is the fi rst time she has worn the hijab in a public ‘Norwegian’ space and she is feeling oddly visible. “It feels like everybody is looking at me”, she says somewhat embarrassed. Upon leaving the subway station we meet another Norwegian Pakistani friend of Haleema and Alesha, also headed for the henna-party. Alesha once again rushes to explain why she is wearing Islamic headgear. Seemingly somewhat relieved upon hearing Alesha’s explanation, the other young woman admits that she had in fact started wondering

48 A majority of those who attended the conference were of North African, Middle Eastern or East African, in particular Somali and Sudanese, background. Th ere were also some Norwegian converts and smaller numbers of people from a variety of other national backgrounds. 49 Among these were a number of internationally renowned ‘diasporic’ scholars such as Shabir Ally, Abdullah Hakim Quick, Jamal Badawi and Tasneem Zaman. Th ese scholars lectured in English, whereas a number of speakers from diff erent Muslim countries lectured in Arabic. 50 Th e mehnde ritual is termed the ‘henna-party’ (henna-festen) in Norwegian. Henna is a red colouring traditionally used to beautify the bride during the wedding ceremony. It symbolizes protection and purifi cation from evil. Th e henna-party is held in connection with the wedding celebration and usually takes place on the night before the actual wedding. Haleema was marrying a man from Pakistan whom she would go and live with for a while before returning to Norway with her new husband. Since she wanted to have a mehnde ritual with her family and friends before leaving Norway, the henna-party was held some time before the wedding ceremony, which was to take place in Pakistan. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 149 whether Alesha was really “like that”. Just before we arrive at the community house Alesha excuses herself and explains that she needs to drop by her house to change for the wedding party. Half an hour later she arrives in a beautiful green and gold shalwar kameez, her long hair hanging loose over the dupatta that she has carefully draped around her shoulders. All the guests, except for a couple of girls with an Indian background and I, are Pakistanis.51 Th e women of Haleema’s family and her closest friends gather on the fl oor, playing the drums (dholak), singing and clapping their hands. Th e lyrics of the songs contain challenges and insults to the women on the groom’s side. Since the groom’s family is not present, Haleema’s friends alternately take the role of the groom’s side and tease and challenge Haleema’s family.52 Haleema, who I know as a trendy-looking and self-confi dent young woman, arrives draped in layers of yellow tissue, head lowered, her eyes turned down. Normally the groom and his closest family would be present at this moment; since they are in Pakistan, however, Haleema enters the decorated room accompanied by the closest women and men on her side and is seated on a ‘throne’ lighted by spotlights and candles. Haleema grace- fully enacts the role of a shy and modest bride to be who is sad to leave her family and friends and anxious about meeting her husband to be. Approaching the bride to be one by one, the guests participate in an elaborate ceremony, smearing henna on the bride’s hand and oil in her hair and feeding her sweet cakes made from chickpeas, sugar and ghi.53 Music, dance and masquerade go to make up the main celebration of the mehnde party. Alesha and some other friends stage a dance performance imitating the Bollywood genre, this accompanied by dancing and music varying from the more traditional tunes, through Bhangra to hip-hop. Haleema’s younger brother and three of his friends appear

51 I should note that, in this context, people were talked about as ‘Norwegians’, ‘Pakistanis’ and ‘Indians’. When I arrived, a young boy looked at me in astonishment and asked, “A Norwegian?” Th is does not mean that those who here construed themselves as ‘Pakistanis’ do not also, in other contexts, construe themselves as Norwegian Pakistanis or Norwegians, however. 52 Traditionally these songs are performed as a competition between the bride’s and the groom’s family. 53 Th e young women at the party knew how to perform the central rituals but were unable to give a discursive explanation of the diff erent ritual elements. “It is just the way we do it” was the standard response to my questions. 150 chapter three to perform a dance and a group of girls, masquerading as boys, enact a passionate love drama while miming to a popular Urdu song. Th e entertainment continues with a performance in which Haleema’s brother and some of his friends dance together with three female friends of Haleema. Th ey enact the story of a young couple courting one another, alternately begging for and resisting the advances of the other. Haleema’s brother also performs a very emotional song he has composed about how much he will miss his sister when she leaves the house. Th e public as well as Haleema are moved to tears. To cheer Haleema up again, she is brought out onto the dance fl oor. To a combination of Asian, Arabic and Western tunes, the dancing gradually gets more energetic and sensual, drawing attention to parts of the body which are normally carefully covered.

Multiple imaginaries: heterogeneous spaces Alesha’s journey through the city disrupts assumptions about a homogeneous national space and allows us to explore the complex cityscape of Oslo and the ways in which Muslim identities are constituted and reconfi gured within this locality. Th e Islamic conference temporarily transforms an ordinary Oslo school into an enactment of the global Islamic community. Th e contrast of this vision, and the spatio- temporal imaginaries that orient the event taking place in the school building, to the imaginaries that orient young Muslims’ everyday practices in this and other school buildings as pupils is worth noting. Schools are, as we know, prime arenas for the formation of people as citizens of the nation state, with the particular imaginative unity and embodied performances that this implies. Th e ‘imagined community’ of the Islamic conference is defi ned primarily by adherence to Islam and its umma of believers. Islamic symbols and performances, such as the hijab, salah and the gendered organization of space, defi ne a common Muslim space that transcends national and ethnic boundaries. Th e ritual of salah brings the umma into being through its separation of the sacred from the profane (ablutions, the pronunciation of niyyat54), its transcendence of national diff erences by means of prostration before God carried out in unison, and through its iconographic rendition of a gender system guaranteeing social order.

54 Th e declaration made by the believer before the fi ve daily prayers of the meaning and the purpose of the act. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 151

Th e performance of salah as a communal ritual is particularly forceful as an embodied performance enacting belonging to a global Islamic community. Although salah brings out the range of diff erences existing between various Islamic traditions and the ways in which praying has been institutionalized within them, it simultaneously suspends such diff erences through the act of praying together. Nerina’s account of an incident that occurred when she went to pray at the conference aptly brings this out. Together with Alesha, Nerina was one of the few attendees of Pakistani background and when she went to pray, a little late, a group of women with a Somali background were already gathered. Nerina recounted how at fi rst she felt awkward because she did not know how to pray “like the Somalis do” and because one of the women rearranged her hijab and skirt. While this made her refl ect on diff erent national variations in religious practice, she nevertheless stressed a feeling of mutuality, solidarity and unity in their joint prostration before God: “I liked the solidarity! I enjoyed the brotherhood and the sisterhood. People felt welcome wherever they came from. I felt that I fi tted in”. Th e vision of solidarity, sisterhood and brotherhood and of ‘fi t- ting in’ is nevertheless negotiated in several ways and the ‘deterritorialized’ imaginary of the Islamic umma is tempered against concerns of locally lived lives. Alesha and Nerina, in particular, deplored the fact that, while they had learned a lot about ‘their religion’, some of the scholars from abroad had addressed issues that were not relevant to Muslims in Norway and had no understanding of the situation young Muslims in Europe are in. With the speeches being given in English and Arabic as well as Somali, they felt that they were ‘in another country’. Some of the scholars were also characterized as ‘very conservative’ and as adopting oversimplistic divisions between Islam and the West. Th is type of criticism forms part of a broader trend among European Muslims, and in particular the young, towards refi guring traditional structures of authority in favour of alternative interpretations of religious knowledge perceived as more relevant to contemporary diasporic life in the West. Th e young women also positioned themselves ambivalently with respect to the particular gendered moral standards that the Islamic conference enacted. While Alesha chose to wear a hijab at the request of the conference organizers, Nerina abstained from so doing. Nerina refl ected on the ways in which not wearing a hijab made her stand out at the conference: 152 chapter three

In principle, I’m against donning the hijab to be one of them. I’m against wearing it in order not to stand out from the others, if you don’t usually wear it. But it was also a somewhat amusing experience. Usually when you walk around Oslo it is completely diff erent. If you wear a headscarf, you are the one that stands out. So it was like the total opposite of what it is usually like. It is, of course, precisely this reversal that takes place in the subway, linking west to east, when Alesha’s hijab turns into a marker of ethnic and religious diff erence between the non-Muslim majority and their Muslim ‘Others’ (cf. Chapter Four). Th e hijab accentuates her ‘visibility’ as a ‘stranger’ to majority non-Muslim Norwegians. Th e henna-party is located in a community house, used by diff erent local organizations and communities, in an eastern suburb that defi nes itself as ‘multicultural’ and off ers a range of activities for young people that are framed in the language of a ‘colourful community’ and ‘integration’. Alesha and Hameeda both grew up in this self-proclaimed multicultural neighbourhood and their networks of friends and acquaintances, as well as their linguistic and cultural competencies, refl ect the heterogeneity of the place where they spent their childhoods. Th e imaginaries of the henna-party transform the community house from its inscription as a ‘local’ meeting place for diff erent cultures into a space where the ‘Pakistani community’ comes into being through social relationships and particular ritual and sanctioned practices. Th e social imaginaries that the henna-party is constituted through, and constitutes, also diff er from the ones realized at the Islamic conference. Here, being a Muslim is a feature of the collective identity defi ning the event, but this as an aspect of what constitutes the ethnic community and their ‘common culture’ rather than with reference to a global Muslim community. Th e ritual and sanctioned practices of the henna-party are not authorized by reference to Islam but largely derive their authority by reference to ‘cultural traditions’, formulated as ‘how we do things’, and in terms of loyalty to family, kin and the wider ‘ethnic group’ (or biraderi, cast etc.). Whereas the henna-party relates to Islam as a dimension of an ethnic collectivity (but a dimension that is both integrative and potentially transgressive), the Islamic conference relates to Islam precisely as a means of transcending ethnicity by way of belonging to a global Muslim community. Despite the reproduction of ethnic borders in marriage, the henna- party in itself is a truly hybridized event, mixing, as it does, languages, music genres and food traditions. At the party, the young mix Norwegian who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 153 with Urdu and Punjabi when speaking to each other with education and future careers being discussed in terms of the Norwegian school system and labour market. A ‘global’ or Americanized consumer culture is also realized through the pizza and Coca-Cola served at the wedding. A hip-hop beat and dance style is introduced as an element in the musical performances and performed as an element of the hybridized henna-ritual. Th e henna-party also draws importantly on a common South Asian popular culture consisting of fi lm, poetry, dance and music, a culture that includes Indians as well as Pakistanis, Hindus and Sikhs as well as Muslims. In the opinion of the young Muslims present at the henna-party, its intertwining of diff erent cultural traditions makes it into an arena for the performance of ‘culture’ as a contrast to ‘Islam’ (even though it is sometimes simply taken to be Islamic). Haleema, the bride to be, thematizes this with respect to the rituals of the henna-party: Most of our traditions are adopted from Hinduism, especially those involved in weddings. Clothing, dancing, music, language and even looks are so similar. We have even adopted their rituals into Islam. Like the qawwali55, for instance – the religious songs. Hindus sing religious songs to their gods, you know. And it is almost like a competition; if they have religious songs we should have them too. (italics added for term explained in footnote) Like Haleema, many young Muslims are concerned about this intertwining of religion and cultural traditions and the ways in which this continues to inform the practices of Muslim migrant communities. Th e Islamic conferences in which Muslims from diff erent parts of the world come together, as well as trans-ethnic organizations like the NMU and the MSS, are experienced as privileged sites in which Islam and cultural traditions can be untwined. As Alesha’s friend Rabab recounts, the Islamic conference gave her new perspectives on things because the other participants were not Pakistanis. Th is allowed her to compare, to see what was the same and what was diff erent and to separate out the practices that are “just cultural traditions” and “not really Islam”, as she puts it.

55 Qawwali is the traditional form of Islamic song found in India and Pakistan. Th e development of the qawwali historically closely parallels that of the Hindu devotional songs know as bahjan. Th e Chisti school of Sufi sm has been important in propagating the qawwali in Pakistan and India, and its adepts brought this devotional practice with them to Norway. 154 chapter three

Some of those of Pakistani background particularly worry about the infl uence of South Asian popular culture on the Norwegian Pakistani Muslim community. Th is concern was also the subject of a discussion between people on the MSS e-mailing list with regard to the celebration of eid. Hamdan wrote that: In a previous eid, I remember that quite a few Muslims went to the Soria Moria movie theatre to watch an Indian movie screened as a special eid arrangement! When the eid of Muslims is celebrated with Indian fi lm at Soria Moria, I feel a deep twinge in my heart. I feel that something very pure, very beautiful, is soiled and bereft of its beauty. It would be tempting to interpret such concerns as illustrations of Eriksen’s suggestion that the young of the so called second generation are “tempted by pure identities” that “defi ne clear-cut boundaries, defi ne rules for behaviour and prohibit negotiation of values and morals” (Eriksen 1999: 19). Th e metaphors of defi lement and of being soiled, as contrasted with purity and beauty, certainly convey a particular set of values and morals related to being a Muslim that opposes Islam to ‘Indian movies’.56 However, there are several further points to be made here. Firstly, such concerns with purity and impurity were usually highly contextual. Most, not least the young women, continued to watch, listen to and enjoy South Asian music, Pakistani soaps and Indian movies. An alternative reading would suggest that in the criticism quoted above it is not Indian movies as such that are ‘impure’ and ‘defi ling’, but the fact that a religious holiday is turned into an event of entertainment and popular culture instead of being centred on its own religious signifi cance. If this is so, it is not the upholding of boundaries and the construction of ‘pure’ identities that are the primary concerns when young Muslims decry the infl uence of South Asian popular culture on the Pakistani community. Rather, it is the values and ethical orientations that this popular culture is seen to involve, and the kinds of subjectivities it shapes, that are questioned. For instance, in another debate among some MSS members, it was discussed whether the fact that young people spent their time watching Bollywood movies and soaps was a hindrance to a more active engagement in society and for

56 Th e ‘South Asian’ is also fragmented by the confl ict between India and Pakistan, in Kashmir and Gujarat in particular, a confl ict that spills over in the young Pakistanis’ attitude to the dominance of India in South Asian popular culture. Members of the PSS and MSS have made appeals to other Pakistanis to boycott Indian cultural events. Th is shows that confl ict lines from ‘back home’ still play an active part in the identity projects of young Muslims in Norway. who are ‘we’? social imaginaries 155 being active in ameliorating the condition of Muslims in Norway as well as elsewhere. In this respect, one could argue that rather than “prohibiting negotiation of values and morals” such criticism actually opens a space for debating what kinds of values and morals should guide people’s lives through trying to convince and persuade others to live more piously. Werbner (2002a) has argued that the aesthetic community constituted on the basis of a shared South Asian popular culture, in contrast to the one built around the notion of an ‘authentic Islam’, is characterized by ‘fun’ and ‘pleasure’. She identifi es a tension between “the puri- tanical intellectual sobriety of Islam” and “the sheer pleasure of South Asian food and dress, fi lms and poetry, comedy and parody, music and dance” (2002: 12) and argues that South Asian popular culture constitutes an aesthetics that transgressively interrupts pure narratives of origin and faith or over-policed boundaries (Werbner 2002b: 130). It is the source of powerful counter-narrative in the struggles of marginalized groups, in particular women and youth, to challenge the agendas and diasporic consciousness of British Muslim South Asians as predominantly defi ned by Muslim male elders (Werbner 1996b, 2002b, 1999). Comparatively, one could argue that, in so far as young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS tend to enforce a boundary between ‘Islam’ and ‘culture’ and to see South Asian popular culture as ‘polluting’ Islam, they undermine the legitimacy of an imaginary that might otherwise be transgressive and contribute to destabilizing hierarchies involving elders and youth, women and men and experts and lay people. Th is does not mean that such hierarchies – and hegemonies defi n- ing what a Norwegian (Pakistani) Muslim community should be like – are not challenged, however. As Werbner (1996a) also acknowledges, young people also fi nd support for a legitimate challenge to hierarchies involving elders and youth and women and men through the discourse distinguishing ‘cultural tradition’ from Islam. I have already touched on this with respect to the debates about ethnic versus religious endogamy and will show in later chapters how young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS challenge established hierarchies from a position ‘within Islam’ rather than by drawing on a popular culture that challenges religious norms of puritanism and sobriety.

(Re)imagining Muslim identity Inspired by Werbner’s concept of ‘imagined diasporas’ and by the concept of ‘social imaginaries’ this chapter has explored the way young 156 chapter three

Muslims imagine the categories, collectivities and social values that they feel affi liated with and distance themselves from and how the communities imagined are enacted and realized through religious and cultural performance and through organizational mobilization. It has highlighted processes of boundary-making and hybridization, continuity and change and normative suggestions as to what is good, just and desirable. Th e chapter attests to the importance of developing analytical concepts that do not essentialize communities, cultures and identities. Rather than discussing the realities of young Muslims’ lives in Norway as exemplifying an existential suspension between two ‘communities’ or ‘cultures’, I have tried to paint a more complex picture of the social imaginaries in terms of which young Muslims orient themselves and to show how the subjectivities of young Muslims are constituted in relation to the diff erent visions of community, the normative suggestions as to what is good, just and desirable and to the diff erent visions of the future and the past that these imaginaries off er. Processes of globalization engender ‘global imaginaries’ of the Islamic umma but such global belonging does not replace imaginaries related to other spatial confi gurations such as Europe, Norway or ‘back home’. Th e imaginaries in terms of which young Muslims orient their lives and create solidarities and linkages to the past and the future are multiple, internally diff erentiated, heterogeneous and contested. I have tried to show how this multiplicity articulates in the discussions and performances of young Muslims in Oslo and how this simultaneously energizes processes of hybridization and boundary-making. Th e social imaginaries that young Muslims in Oslo interpret their belonging in terms of provide sometimes overlapping, sometimes contradictory visions of the world and scripts for how people should live and act. Far from being simple acts of bricolage or hybridization, the identity constructions taking place within these imaginaries are sometimes painful and confl ictive. Th e contemporary mobilization of Muslim identity in the political space of European nation states, as well as the apparent increase in (cultural) racism and discriminatory practices towards ‘immigrants’ and ‘Muslims’, demonstrates that migration and globalization also energize a focus on identity and borders. Th is ‘reactive’ moment of globalizing processes, expressed within the dynamics of a so called identity politics and ‘politics of recognition’, is the subject of the next chapter. CHAPTER FOUR

THE POLITICS OF RECOGNITION: (RE)CONSTRUCTING IDENTITY/DIFFERENCE

Th is chapter focuses on the emergence of new political subjects in Norwegian public space and investigates the Muslim youth and student organizations as arenas for the creation and expression of a Muslim political subject position. A main lens for analysing the political engagement of young Muslims is provided by theories on ‘identity politics’ and the ‘politics of recognition’ (Calhoun 1994; Fraser 1998a; Taylor 1994). Th is lens allows me to investigate how young Muslims, within the frame of the NMU and the MSS, challenge dominant social imaginaries on Otherness and Islam, articulate claims for recognition, justice and equal rights and negotiate and forge modes of engagement and participation within Norwegian society. In his infl uential essays on Th e Politics of Recognition (1994)1 and Th e Ethics of Authenticity (1992), Taylor seeks, among other things, to account for the modern preoccupation with identity and recognition, which is expressed in the contemporary prevalence of identity-based claims for recognition on the political scene.2 Th e foundation of Taylor’s perspective is a philosophical anthropology which sees human existence as fundamentally dia- logical. For Taylor, this implies that identity must always be defi ned through languages and in dialogue with, and sometimes in struggle

1 Since it was fi rst published in 1992, Taylor’s essay has been at the centre of important and complex debates on contemporary politics (see, for example, Barry 2001; Baumann 1999; Benhabib 2002; Fraser 1997, 1998, 2000, 2003; Taylor, Gutmann and Appiah 1994). 2 A criticism that has frequently been made of Taylor’s account is that he seems to assume that pre-modern and non-Western social institutional arrangements off ered grounds for more immediate, perfect, not negotiated and confl ict-free recognition than it is plausible to assume (Calhoun 1994). I agree with this critique but, as Calhoun (1994) argues, although recognition may never have followed immediately on from socially derived and/or sanctioned identities, the social basis for recognition seems to have come under particular challenge in the contemporary situation. In addition to the broader changes in modern understandings of honour, dignity and identity that Taylor describes, Calhoun relates this, among other things, to the emergence of “enormous nation states, international diasporas, wide realms of personal choice, unstable and heterogeneous networks of social relations, mass media for the proliferation of cultural transmission, and the sheer multiplicity of discourses attempting to name or constitute persons” (1994: 20). 158 chapter four against, signifi cant others and their ‘recognition’. As Baumann has noted, Taylor’s use of the term ‘recognition’ is general and vague. Fraser (1998a) provides a less general and vague discussion of the concept arguing that the injustice of recognition is rooted in social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication and that this includes cultural domination (being subjected to patterns of interpretation and communication that are associated with another culture and/or are hostile to one’s own), non-recognition (being rendered invisible via the authoritative representational, communicative, and interpretative practices of one’s own culture) and disrespect (being rou- tinely maligned or displayed in stereotypical public cultural representations and/or in everyday life interaction). In contrast to Taylor and others, who see recognition as a matter of self-realization, Fraser objects that since there is “no single conception of self-realization or the good life that is universally shared, nor any that can be established as authoritative” we had better regard recognition as a question of justice (Fraser 2003: 30).3 To be misrecognized, in Fraser’s view, is not simply to be thought ill of, looked down on or devalued in others’ conscious attitudes or mental beliefs. It is, rather, to be denied the status of a full partner in social interaction and prevented from participating as a peer in social life as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value that constitute one as comparatively unworthy of respect or esteem. In contrast to Taylor, Fraser maintains that the politics of recognition cannot be equated with identity politics for the reason that recognition does not need to involve only affi rmation of a group’s specifi city but may have to include the transformation of “wholesale patterns of representation, interpretation, and communication that would change everyone’s social identity” (Fraser 1998, 2003). Th is is an important distinction to Fraser, as she sees the politics of identity as a strategy that tends to reinforce restrictive identities, rather than allowing for a multitude of crosscutting diff erences. Whereas the politics of identity may be vital in challenging cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect, it also tends to essentialize diff erences between groups in ways that simultaneously place important restrictions on the behaviour of individual group members. As has been noted by, for example,

3 Th is is an important point for my analysis as will become clear in Chapter Six where I discuss young Muslims’ religious practices in relation to diff erent forms of self-realization. the politics of recognition 159

Yuval-Davis (1997), such restrictions tend to be more forcefully imposed on women, who are oft en constructed as symbolic as well as biological guarantors for the reproduction of the identities in question (of a nation, an ethnic group, a religion). In contrast to this, Fraser talks about a ‘politics of diff erence’ that resists such (imposed) social identities as gender, ethnicity etc. in so far as these are seen as restricting and normalizing diff erence. As Calhoun (1994) notes, this distinction is not a clear-cut one, as the operations of claiming and deconstructing identities tend to coexist and inform each other. Th e identity politics of the young Muslims in this study exemplify this coexistence and its tensions as it involves both questioning and opposing restrictive identity categories and attempts to re-appropriate, reclaim and redefi ne identities and diff erences on the basis of certain visions of what it means to be a Muslim. While the lens provided by ‘identity politics’ and ‘the politics of recognition’ off ers important insights into the emergence of young Muslims as political subjects in Norwegian public space, there are also limitations to viewing the activism of Muslim youth in Europe as simply one instance of the current forms of ‘identity politics’ and ‘the politics of recognition’ in operation. While it avoids teleological and essentializing analysis of politics among Muslims as an epiphenome- non of Islam (cf. Soares and Osella 2009), many studies of Muslim identity politics remain premised on a set of liberal and secular political philosophical assumptions that oft en end up producing, to quote Salvatore, “an essentialization of Europe’s socio-political ‘normality’ ” (Salvatore 2004: 1022). In order to avoid such an essentializing of Europe’s socio-political normality this chapter starts by investigating how dominant social imaginaries in Norway form particular conditions of possibility for the creation and expression of a Muslim political subject position. I then continue by focusing on experiences of (mis) recognition and how such experiences energize collective eff orts to question and oppose restrictive identity categories and attempts to re-appropriate, reclaim and obtain ‘recognition’ for certain visions of what it means to be a Muslim. While I focus on the dynamics of identity politics and the politics of recognition, I argue, in line with Salvatore, that young Muslims’ activism can also be understood in terms of “the reform and reconstruction of Muslim traditions” (Salvatore 2004: 1013). Th e second part of the chapter thus off ers an analysis of how central concepts and practices in the Islamic discursive tradition (such as jihad, dawa and hijab) are reconstructed by young Muslims in Oslo, 160 chapter four the individual and collective goods that they seek to realize,4 and the kinds of political subjectivities that are engendered as these concepts and practices inform, and are informed by, the politics of identity and recognition. Th is analysis paves the ground for further investigations into the issues of representation and citizenship.5 Focusing on young Muslims’ discussions of the issue of ‘public representation’, I bring out some aspects of their understanding of what it entails to be a Muslim in Norway and the normative visions of Islam that are produced in contestations over who is authorized to represent Muslims and Islam in the public sphere. I furthermore discuss the normative visions of Islam that are implied in the Muslim youth and student organizations’ ideals of ‘active citizenship’ and how these may be seen to reproduce and challenge the understandings of citizenship that dominate in the Norwegian public sphere. Lastly, the chapter addresses some aspects of the complex relationship between recognition and socio-economic inequality. I argue that in the identity politics of young Muslims the quest for recognition is intimately linked to a quest for socio-economic mobility.

Th e faces and logics of misrecognition in the Norwegian context

Saturday, 17 January 2004, on the so called international day of solidarity with girls wearing the hijab,6 around three hundred Muslims gathered in the centre of Oslo under the slogans ‘Don’t touch my hijab’,7 ‘Hijab is my dignity’ and ‘Language is the key, hijab is no hindrance’.

4 MacIntyre (1985) uses the concept ‘internal goods’ to make a contrast between those goods that can be defi ned only in terms of the activity of a practice and those ‘external goods’ (such as money, power, respect or status) that can be defi ned without reference to a particular practice. 5 Drawing on Ong’s work (1999, 2003), I use the term citizenship as less a legal category than as a socio-cultural process of ‘subject-ifi cation’ involving governing technologies and a set of self-constituting practices in diff erent settings of power (2003: 16). Cf. also Jacobsen (2009). 6 In the middle of the debate on the hijab in French schools in December 2003, Yusuf al-Qaradawi and several Muslim organizations, in protest against the French law banning religious symbols in school, launched the 17th of January as an international day of support for the hijab. According to a FOSIS newsletter (Th e Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the UK and Ireland), events took place in thirty-fi ve countries around the world. As a follow up, Th e Assembly for the Protection of Hijab declared the 4th of September as a worldwide International Hijab Solidarity Day. 7 Th e literal translation of the Norwegian slogan is ‘Don’t bully my hijab’. It is a rephrasing of the expression ‘Ikke mobb kameraten min’ that was adapted by the the politics of recognition 161

Th ey expressed their opinions by means of a diversity of banners and posters: ‘Hijab is our pride and joy’, ‘Do not get blinded by my beautiful hijab’, ‘Let the children know their parents’ religious convictions’, ‘I’m intelligent and qualifi ed’, ‘My hijab hurts no-one’, ‘Media creates harassment and much ado. Th ey do not decide what we shall do’, ‘Hijab is my identity’ and ‘Stop the Islamophobia’.8 On the day of the demonstration, protest letters were sent to the Norwegian parliament and to the French embassy in Oslo. Th ey targeted both the announced ban on the hijab in French schools and the discrimination experienced by women wearing hijabs in Norway and elsewhere. In the months leading up to the event a number of public fi gures had declared support for (and others opposition to) the French ban. Suggestions by, among others, the Norwegian Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi,9 the Progress Party,10 and the Human Rights Service,11 that

Norwegian branch of SOS Racism as the translation of the French SOS Racism slogan ‘Ne touche pas a mon pote’ (‘Don’t touch my buddy’). Th e slogan was used in diff erent European countries to protest the ban on the hijab – in France ‘Touche pas à mon foulard’, in Belgium ‘Blijf van mijn hoofdoek’ etc. 8 Although contested and problematic on a number of accounts, the term ‘Islamophobia’ is increasingly used, in public debate as well as academic literature, to refer to anti-Islamic sentiments and acts that are motivated by such sentiments. In Britain the notion of ‘Islamophobia’ was introduced in the 1990s in the context of the so called race-relations policy and used not least by the Runnymede Trust report on racism and Islamophobia (“Islamophobia: a Challenge for Us All”, 1997) to defi ne “dread, hatred and hostility towards Islam and Muslims perpetuated by a series of ‘closed views’ that imply and attribute negative and derogatory stereotypes and beliefs to Muslims”. According to the Runnymede Trust, the ways in which this dread, hatred and hostility is expressed includes: negative or patronizing images and references in the media and in everyday conversations, attacks, abuse and violence on the streets, attacks on mosques and cemeteries, discrimination in employment and lack of provision, recognition and respect for Muslims in most public institutions. In Britain, the term has become a pivotal, although much contested, concept in Muslim identity politics. It has also gained a certain currency in the Norwegian debate over the last few years. Although the concept was used during the hijab mobilization that I describe here, and on some other occasions, the concept has until now not had the same mobilizing power in Norway as in the UK. 9 Al-Kubaisi has been a critical voice in Norwegian public debate with respect to Muslims and Islam. He has published Min Tro Din Myte (1996) and Halvmånens Hemmeligheter (1998). 10 Th e Progress Party is a populist right-wing party which frequently profi les itself as immigration-restrictive and opposed to multiculturalist policies. Central members of the party have repeatedly referred to Muslims and Islam as a ‘foreign’ and ‘threatening’ presence in Norwegian society. 11 Th e Human Rights Service is a controversial human rights organization whose primary activities are directed towards securing the individual rights of young women with Muslim immigrant backgrounds with respect to their families and communities. 162 chapter four a similar ban should be introduced in Norway contributed further to bring the hijab debate to centre stage in terms of media attention. Over the same period of time Norway, in fact, had its own hijab aff air, this involving a young woman named Ambreen Pervez whose employer refused to let her wear a hijab as a sales manager in a furniture store. Th e employer argued that the hijab was not in line with the clothing regulations of the store, which also did not allow other headgear (Dagsavisen 30.12.2003). Pervez contacted the Centre against Ethnic Discrimination (SMED, Senter mot Etnisk Diskriminering),12 which again took the case to the Ombudsman for Gender Equality (Likes- tillingsombudet). Aft er considerable media attention and negotiations with the employer, Pervez was able to continue in her job, without relinquishing the hijab. Th e MSS and the NMU were among the main organizers of the hijab demonstration, together with a number of mosques and Muslim-led organizations, the National Association of Immigrants (INLO, Innvan- drernes Landsorganisasjon) and the Centre against Ethnic Discrimina- tion. An imraa (women’s) committee had been working for months to coordinate the demonstration and mobilize the Muslim community. Th e young women in the committee had been making web pages, hanging up posters, distributing fl yers, writing slogans, copying material for distribution, spreading the word in the mosques, encouraging imams to include information about the demonstration in the Friday khutba13 and writing articles for the newspapers. In addition, they had been busy participating in political meetings and media debates; the MSS was also planning the publication of an informative booklet on Islam that could rectify what was seen as widespread misunderstandings about the hijab. While defending the right to practice what the participants saw as a part of their ‘religious conviction’, the banners used at this hijab demonstration refl ect the language of anti-racism, of human rights and of personal freedom. In various ways they also speak of perceived

12 SMED was a state organ assigned to map discrimination and give free legal aid to individuals who experienced discrimination on the basis of faith, race, skin colour or national or ethnic background. It was established in 1998. In 2005 some of its functions were taken over by the Equality and Anti-discrimination Ombudsman (previously the Ombudsman for Gender Equality). SMED was active in documenting labour market discrimination of women wearing the hijab and in 2001 they published a report on labour market discrimination and religious headgear. 13 Sermon delivered during Friday prayer in the mosque. the politics of recognition 163 misrecognition that relates to social patterns of representation, interpretation and communication. Th ey evoke the experience of being made invisible, of being discriminated against and of being subject to stereotyping and disrespect and – in opposing this – off er the hijab as a source of identity, pride and joy. A thorough analysis of the social imaginaries and structures underpinning the discourses that this hijab demonstration reacted to would require a genealogical inquiry into a range of institutions, processes and historical ideas that is beyond the scope of this book. As a framework for understanding the identity politics of young Muslims, however, some aspects of the contemporary social imaginaries and structures within and in response to which these politics are developed must be addressed.14 Th e focus here will be on how these imaginaries are expressed on the level of public discourse. Th e conversations I had with young Muslims indicated that day to day social encounters were indeed signifi cantly structured by these imaginaries (cf. Andersson 2005; Jacobsen 2002). Young Muslims’ identity politics thus not only respond to representations of Islam and Muslims in public discourse but also to experiences of misrecognition in daily interaction with others. I should also note that the following discussion of the social imaginaries in Norwegian public debate remains sketchy and generalized as it is the response to such social imaginaries that I want to investigate and not the imaginaries in themselves. It may also be objected that I focus only on negative representations of Islam and Muslims and the way Otherness is constructed, not considering the representations that in diff erent ways oppose and challenge these. Th is bias is partly a consequence of the fact that it is to a certain kind of imaginaries that young Muslims respond in their politics of recognition. Furthermore, I also believe that the imaginaries I discuss below are fundamental in structuring public debates so that alternative representations remain embedded in the logic of Othering.

Culturalism and neo-realism in contemporary social imaginaries Post-Second World War immigration, and the ensuing growing ethnic, linguistic and religious heterogeneity in the Norwegian population,

14 My description of these social imaginaries is based on analysis of media and policy documents, on secondary literature and on the narrated experiences of the young Muslims I worked with. 164 chapter four has challenged Norwegian national imaginaries of sameness and new discourses and means of celebrating and governing diff erence have been envisaged throughout the last decades. Th e labour migrants who came in the late 1960s were mainly represented as ‘foreign workers’ and then, increasingly, as ‘immigrants’. ‘Immigrants’ were in part represented as a group with specifi c needs and in part in terms of their national background (Brochmann and Kjeldstadli 2008: 232). In the 1970s, research as well as public debate focused signifi cantly on socio- economic issues, like integration in the labour market and housing and welfare provision. Th e predominant policy framework established from the mid-1970s on combined strict entry-regulation with a commitment to equal social rights and socio-economic integration policies. In this period, it was strongly emphasized that immigrants should choose their preferred form of adjustment themselves (Brochmann and Kjelstadli 2008: 232). Towards the end of the 1980s, however, the authorities were increasingly emphasizing that immigrants had a duty to participate in the majority society, with more importance also being given to the immigrants’ adherence to law and order and to the fundamental values that applied in Norwegian society (Brochmann and Kjelstadli 2008). ‘Culture’ and ‘identity’ emerged as increasingly problematic dimensions in integration policy and public debate during this period. Th e emergence and great popularity of a populist right-wing party in the late 1980s signalled a shift in the cultural climate, parallel- ing developments in a number of other European countries. New concepts of foreignness focusing on ‘culture’ rather than on immigrant worker status were introduced (for example, ‘fremmedkulturell’ meaning ‘culturally alien’ and ‘fj ernkulturell’ meaning ‘culturally distant’) and these gained increasing popularity throughout the 1990s. Several interrelated trends are of importance to the shift s occurring from the late 1980s onwards in the social imaginaries through which post-war immigration was perceived and governed. Th e fi rst thing to note is the ethnifi cation of immigrants which was based on and continued to reproduce an overarching discursive dichotomization of ‘Us’ (the Norwegians) and ‘Th em’ (the immigrants) (Andersson 2005; Gressgård 2005a; Gullestad 2002; Jacobsen 2002). Although public discourses on immigration and integration in this period rested on a complex conglomerate of partly contradictory values, ideas and imaginaries, they tended to merge in an overall discursive framework creating ‘self’ and Other as mutually exclusive poles: ‘immigrant’ equalled ‘non- Norwegian’ and ‘Norwegian’ equalled ‘non-immigrant’ (Gullestad 2002). the politics of recognition 165

In the early 2000s Gullestad (2002) argued that this discursive framework constituted a hegemony, although an unstable one, that constructed ‘Norwegianness’ as an unthematized and undefi ned normative centre and ‘immigrant’ as that which is diff erent. In this way, the categories became part of an exclusionary interpretative framework in which the poles mutually constituted and excluded each other. A related trend that was central to the discursive dichotomization of Us /Th em was the way in which immigrants were increasingly ‘culturalized’. From the 1990s on, thematizations of social diff erentiation, inequality and social deviance in relation to ‘immigrants’ focused increasingly on ‘culture’ as an explanation (Andersson 2005; Fuglerud 2001; Gressgård 2005a; Gullestad 2004; Jacobsen 2002; Ålund 1991). On the basis of such culturalized interpretations, solutions as to how problems to do with immigrants should be handled tended to be iso- lated from the social power and status hierarchies in society; so that dealing with, for example, ‘Pakistani gangs’ and ‘family violence’ became a question of knowing ‘the Pakistani code of honour’. Norwegian integration policies in the 1990s and early 2000s were articulated in terms of a multiculturalist ideal but this multiculturalism was defi ned by the polarization of Norwegian versus Other cultures and Norwegian history, tradition and everyday life was defi ned as the overall ‘frame’ of cultural pluralism (Gressgård 2005a; Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003)15. Gullestad (2002, 2006) locates the ethnifi cation and culturalization of the Other within the revitalization of ethno-national identity in Norway in the 1990s.16 According to Gullestad (2002, 2006a), this

15 According to Gressgård, this implies a duality in the relation to the Other consisting of simultaneous assimilation and culturalization /subordination (Gressgård 2010). Assimilation here refers to a subsuming of the Other under one’s own standards of judgement while culturalization refers to constructing the Other as particular in opposition to the neutral majority. Th is inevitably leads to a hierarchy stratifying Us and the Other, Gressgård argues. 16 Th e dynamics of culturalization overlap signifi cantly with what has been discussed as neo-racism or cultural racism. ‘Cultural racism’ is characterized by the construction of Otherness, and resulting practices of exclusion and discrimination, on the basis of ‘cultural’ rather than ‘bio-racial’ diff erence. Barker (1981) introduced the term ‘neo-racism’ while Taguieff (1988) has termed the phenomenon ‘diff erential racism’. Stolcke (1993, 1995) speaks about ‘cultural fundamentalism’ and Ålund and Schierup (1991; Schierup 1995) about ‘cultural racism’. Grillo (2005) discusses what he sees as a broader ‘backlash against diversity’ in Europe. Th e analytical validity and utility of the terms neo-racism and ‘cultural racism’, and issues pertaining to their newness and relationship to biological racism, has been a matter of intense debate in Norway as well as abroad (see, for example, Andersson 2005; Brottveit 1996; Brox 1991; Gilroy 1992; Grillo 1998; Gullestad 2004, 2002; Kjelstadli 1999; Lien 1997; Wikan 1995). 166 chapter four period was marked by an increase in ethnic nationalism in which the focus on a common culture, descent and origin was reinvigorated at the cost of the civil and political aspects of national citizenship. In the revitalization of Norwegian national identity, she argues, the concept of ‘culture’ is central in maintaining the distinction between Us and Th em and, thus, of constituting a national identity. Th is reinvigoration of national identity has involved a stress in public discourse on the need to reassert the ‘core values’ of Norwegian society. As Gullestad argues, these values are seldom defi ned, except for being loosely connected to democracy and gender equality and variously associated with the Christian, Western, modern, European and liberal. Th e ‘basic Nor- wegian values’ that immigrants are expected to adopt are simultaneously conceived to be both Norwegian and universally good and are typically opposed to practices thought to be representative of Islam: segregation and the suppression of women, veiling, forced or arranged marriages, female circumcision, (religious) intolerance and authori- tarianism. Th e ethnifi cation and culturalization of the immigrant Other and the revitalization of ethno-national identity in Norway has been coupled to a ‘neo-realism’ in the representation and administration of immigration-related issues,17 increasingly regarded as ‘problems’, which must be governed and supervised (Andersson 2005; Fuglerud 2001; Gullestad 2002; Ålund 1991; Ålund and Schierup 1991).18 With respect to the Swedish context, Ålund (1991) argues that scientifi c and institutional practices together constituted and supported the ‘neo-realist’ shift from “the right to one’s own culture”, that dominated in the early 1980s, to a focus on “integration problems” (still voiced in terms of cultural diff erence) in the early 1990s. Neo-realist politics are still articulated in terms of integration into a pluralist society but behind the

17 Neo-realism refers to the shift in parts of the public administration, among certain left -wing politicians who previously supported ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘tolerance’ and certain researchers. A main feature of this neo- realism is that ‘diff erence’ is regarded as a problem (Fuglerud 2001). Rather than being conceived as a basis for collective participation, ‘immigrant culture’ is increasingly depicted as a problem for individual integration and ‘freedom’. Neo-realism is usually underpinned by claims to depict ‘reality’ in contrast to what is seen as the political correctness and ideological nature of multiculturalist positions. 18 I do not mean to indicate that there are no legitimate problems of governance to be addressed. However, neo-realist approaches tend to reduce issues related to immigration solely to this dimension and to assume that policies and government practices are simply responses to ‘problems’ that ‘exist’ and can be identifi ed independently of their discursive production. the politics of recognition 167 rhetoric of equality, Ålund argues, there is a complex and contradictory immigrant policy directed towards a ‘planned pluralism’ – a techno- cratic, rational and scientifi cally controlled form of integration, in other words. Th is ‘planned pluralism’ is governed by a polarization of two ethnicities – a Swedish institutionalized ethnicity is normativized and the particularisms of immigrant ethnicities are constituted as a deviant contrast to this norm. In Norway, as in Sweden, scientifi c and institutional practices together constituted and supported a ‘neo-realist’ turn in the 1990s. Fuglerud (2001) argues that several of the most high profi le researchers dealing with immigration issues have “seen it as their role to deliver arguments to a growing ‘neo-realism’ in public administration”, arguing for limiting cultural pluralism and downplaying the importance of racism. In this line of research, he argues, the cultural specifi cities of the majority are made invisible while cultural diff erence is considered as deviance.19 Neo-realism as it manifests itself more broadly in public debate is hallmarked by rhetorical urges to ‘call a spade a spade’ and to ‘face reality’. In general, it advocates the position that ‘integration has failed’, a view that has become increasingly accepted in the Norwegian public debate, and warns of the dangers of ‘ghettoization’, the formation of a new underclass and of potential clashes between ethnic and cultural groups and their incommensurable values. Neo-realism calls for an end to previous ‘naivety’, ‘political correctness’ and ‘snillisme’ (a Norwegian neologism that is used to criticize ‘excessive goodness’ which purportedly undermines individual responsibility and leads to a situation where demands are no longer made on individuals) towards the immigrants. A fi nal trend to be considered here, closely interrelated with the former, is the growing importance of what we may term a ‘(neo-)liberal’ social imaginary that sees individual rights and the free choice of individuals as in opposition to, and threatened by, group identities and cultures. With the impact of this (neo-)liberal imaginary, integration has, thus, increasingly come to be conceived of largely as a matter of ‘defending the individual’ against the abuse of the minority groups (Brochmann 2003; Eriksen 2002). Th e argument is that values such as personal autonomy and individual freedom must form the basis for all

19 Fuglerud discusses works of three researchers in particular: Unni Wikan, Sigurd Skirbekk and Inger Lise Lien. See, also, Gullestad (2002, 2006) for a similar discussion. 168 chapter four citizens. Minorities cherishing value systems that restrict their members’ freedom to make their own choices and which emphasize the collective at the expense of the individual are not acceptable (Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003). Th is neo-liberal valuation of the individual as against the group is coupled to a universalization of ‘Norwegian values’. Th e cultural specifi cities of the majority are made invisible and ‘Norwegian national identity’ and ‘Norwegian culture’ are not regarded as restrictive in the same way as the identities and ‘cultures’ of immigrants. ‘We’ become the defenders of individual rights and the free choice of individuals (modernity) while ‘Th ey’ become the culturalized, subject to group restrictions and power abuse (tradition) (Gressgård 2005a; Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003).

Th e emergence of Muslims as the Other Perhaps the most signifi cant shift in the social imaginaries through which post-war immigration and the ensuing pluralization of society have been perceived is the increasingly important position which Islam has come to occupy within the overarching discursive dichotomization of Us (the Norwegians) and Th em (the immigrants).20 Th e representation of Muslims as the Other is not a homogeneous one; rather it is a complex conglomerate of discourses produced in sites with their own representational logics (for example the media and policy documents). One site for the production and circulation of particularly hostile representations of Muslims as the Other has been within right-wing and racist so called ‘extremist’ movements. In some radical expressions of Norwegian racist discourse, as studied by Bjørgo in the 1990s, migrants and asylum seekers were represented as: ‘pioneers’ in a Muslim army of conquest. According to this theory, the ‘so-called refugees’ have come to establish ‘bridge-heads’ for Islam in Norway. Th is is part of an evil Muslim conspiracy to establish global Islamic rule. (Bjørgo 1997: 60)

20 Th e shift from race and ethnicity towards Islam in contemporary rhetoric and practices of exclusion and discrimination is oft en discussed under the heading ‘Islamophobia’ (Allen and Nielsen 2002). For a discussion of Islamophobia in Norway, see Roald (2004), who argues that in Scandinavia Islamophobia is, fi rst and foremost, expressed through the media. In the context of this book I have decided to view the construction of Muslims as Others not through the prism of ‘Islamophobia’ in particular but in the light of more general theories on social imaginaries, racism and Orientalism that can capture both the specifi cities of the Norwegian context and its signifi cant similarities with other European countries. the politics of recognition 169

Since 9/11 such ‘conspiracy theories’ have proliferated not least on a variety of Internet pages dedicated to warning against a Muslim ‘takeo- ver’ of Norwegian society. Although importantly diff ering from the discourse of the extreme right, the more mainstream political parties have also contributed to the construction of Muslim Otherness. During the local elections in 1987, the Progress Party warned against immigrants who wanted to turn Norway into a ‘Muslim state’. Th roughout the 1990s the Progress Party’s mobilization of anti-immigration sentiment focused importantly on Islam and Muslims as a menace to Norwegian society and to ‘national values’ drawn from a Christian Western tradition. In an infamous speech given by the leader of the Progress Party at a gathering of the Christian charismatic movement Levende Ord in 2004, where he was profi led as a ‘friend of Israel’, he criticized the Prophet Mohammed and Islam in harsh words. Hagen’s appeal to recognize an ‘Islamic dan- ger’ was matched by the head of the Progress Party and the Progress Party representative in the town council of Kristiansand in an interview in Dagbladet (18.07.2004) in which they compared Islam to Nazi ideology, arguing that it should be made illegal. Th is rhetoric reached a new peak during the national elections of 2009 when representatives from the Progress Party warned against the ‘snik-islamisering’ [subtle Islamifi cation] of Norwegian society. But it was not only the ‘extreme-right’, the conservative Christians and the populist right who contributed to giving Islam and Muslims an increasingly prominent place in the immigration debates. Norwegian discourse on immigration in the 1990s increasingly came to focus on religion, and Islam in particular, as a challenge in the integration process. Th is shift is attested to by a whitepaper “On Integration and Multicultural Norway” presented in 1997 where religion was for the fi rst time devoted its own section. Muslim religiosity and Islam were particularly mentioned with the need for the government to initiate and support contact with Muslim communities and to stimulate inter- faith dialogue being stressed. While integration failures were not explicitly attributed to religious factors in this whitepaper, such attributions were increasingly being made in the media and public debate in this period. Issues such as forced marriages, female circumcision and female subordination increasingly came to be associated with Islam and Muslim culture. Th e role of the media is particularly important in the constructing of social imaginaries about Us and Th em and several writers have 170 chapter four pointed to the largely negative representations of Muslims and Islam in Norwegian media where Islam is oft en presented as static and monolithic and Muslims as a homogeneous Other (Andersson 2005; Dessau 2003; Lindstad and Fjeldstad 1997; Næss 2003; Sultan 2006). A succes- sion of highly mediated ‘aff airs’ and events – some of them of local origin, others arising elsewhere – fed into the discursive construction of identity and diff erence in the Norwegian setting, thus privileging Islam as a negative Other of Norwegianness and of so called Western values in general. Th e resonance that such views had in the larger population and the importance of ‘critical events’ in constructing Muslims as the Other can be illustrated by a television debate held in November 2004 where 97 per cent of the approximately fi ft y thousand callers responded affi rmatively to the question that was being discussed, ‘Are Muslims a threat to Western values?’ Th e immediate backdrop to the debate was the killing of the Dutch fi lm-maker Th eo van Gogh on 2 November of the same year. Although the polls of such TV-shows are by no means statistically representative of the population as such, they do both illustrate and contribute to the making of broad categories that construct Us in opposition to the Others in contemporary public discourse. Th e resonance of this perspective in the Norwegian majority population was also brought out in a more recent questionnaire in which more than half of the respondents found Islam to be entirely or partly incompatible with ‘fundamental Norwegian values’. Although this dubious expression is not directly specifi ed in the questionnaire, the report lists “democracy, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and gender equality” as “Norwegian values that most people will recognize and embrace” (Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi) Report (7) 2007: 68). In the last few years, there has also been an increasing focus on the number of Muslims in Norway with some public debaters and politicians ‘worrying’ that Muslims will in the close future come to outnumber ‘Norwegians’. Th rough these processes national censuses have become increasingly politicized. Religious diff erence has, of course, been central to the constitution of ethnic and national identities in historically and geographically disparate spaces, but what characterizes the contemporary situation is that ‘Muslim’ increasingly tends to be seen to encompass other diff erences (ethnic, national, cast etc.) and to denominate a collectivity of people who supposedly share a ‘Muslim culture’. Th is group and culture is not constituted mainly in contrast to ‘Christian’ or other ‘religiously based categories’, though, but to ethno-national and the politics of recognition 171 politico-geographical categories such as ‘Norwegian’, ‘European’ and ‘Western’ (cf. Bloul 1996; Roy 2004; Saint-Blancat 1997; Schmidt 2002). I do not believe that the emergence of Muslims as the Other can be given a simple ‘explanation’. Rather, it seems to be the eff ect of a complex conglomeration of historical, geopolitical and socio-economic processes. One way of contextualizing the importance that Muslims and Islam have come to occupy in Norwegian social imaginaries from the 1990s on is to look at this phenomenon in light of the post-Cold War developments in world politics through which Islam was arguably singled out as an ‘enemy’ of Western civilization, an enemy at the same time ‘outside’ (in the Muslim world) and ‘within’ (in the form of Muslim immigrants) (Esposito 1994). On this basis, it has been argued that in Norway, as elsewhere in the West, there has appeared a generalized ‘enemy picture’ of Islam, according to which there is an unbridgeable cultural gulf between Muslims and the West (Eriksen 2001, 1995). While this geopolitical shift is signifi cant, another dynamic that needs to be addressed is the way in which representations of the Muslim Other serve to bolster national identities. Th e representation of Muslims as the Others of Europe and of particular European nation states has complex historical antecedents but also seems to be propelled by the challenges to the nation state posed by accelerating processes of globalization. At the level of European nation states, Muslims have been constructed as the ultimate Others of national communities and Western democracy in general, with Islam increasingly being essentialized and portrayed as an immutable and homogeneous cultural system that invariably dictates the behaviour of its followers. Th us constructed, the Muslim Other serves to constitute the national identity of European nation states (Lithman 1993). Th is has been particularly so with regard to discourses on immigration, in which Islam (or at least some versions of it, usually those branded as ‘traditionalist’ or ‘fundamentalist’) is frequently seen as the main obstacle to successful integration and as being in contradiction with ‘liberal-democratic values’. Th e present day Othering of immigrants and Muslims is also deeply rooted in history as a longue durée in which representations of the ‘East’ as the Other were intrinsically linked to European expansion and colonization (Said 1979). One could, of course, argue that one cannot read the present day Othering of Muslims in Norway as simply a continuation of Orientalist discourses. Norwegians, as Razack (2008) notes, are oft en pleased to consider themselves as people without a 172 chapter four colonial past. What is elided from such self-representations, however, is Norway’s participation in imperialist projects through its union with Denmark and, later on, through its affi liation with Great Britain, as well as its part in Europe’s ‘taking care of the Other’ through missionary activities and development projects in the ‘Th ird World’ (Eide 2002; Gullestad 2007; Razack 2008). Th ere is certainly a complex genealogy to be traced here, one that is beyond the scope of this book, but it seems to me that pointing to some of those things that seem to represent continuities between Orientalist discourse and contemporary representations of Muslims as the Other may be helpful for getting a better grasp of the latter. As feminist readings of Orientalism have shown, the construction of the East as Europe’s Other was heavily gendered and sexualized. In continuity with Orientalist discourses from the colonial era, then, contemporary representations of Muslim immigrants as troublesome Others are similarly gendered and sexualized. Media representations of Muslim men oft en present them as oppressors and victimizers of women and children and as potentially criminal (e.g. gang members) or dangerous (e.g. Islamists, terrorists). In contrast, Muslim women occupy the position of the oppressed and the victimized (in relation to male Muslim victimizers) (cf. Gullestad 2006; Th orbjørnsrud 2003). Th e culturalist and neo-realist framing of these representations has also implied that Muslim women, and the cultural practices that are thought to secure their oppression, become the ‘targets’ of state policies (for example, of policies aimed at combating forced marriages or female circumcision). In line with the (neo-)liberal paradigm that constructs individual rights and the free choice of individuals as in opposition to, and threatened by, group identities and cultures, Muslim women are thus oft en constructed as passive victims in need of ‘help’ in order to proceed towards greater autonomy. Gendered ethnic and religious stereotypes are central to marking off Us from Th em and assumptions about the traditional and oppressive gender systems of the Others have contributed to making gender questions the most contested area of Muslim Otherness in contemporary Norway.21

21 I stress the word ‘contributed’ because the importance of gender questions is not only due to gendered ethnic and religious stereotypes. Debates about gender arrangements are important not only with respect to Muslims and immigrants. My argument here is, nevertheless, that gender arrangements in many ways have come to symbolize the boundaries between Us and Th em. the politics of recognition 173

Th e Otherness of Muslims and Islam is constructed both as representing a spatial and temporal diff erence to Us. Islam and Muslims are seen as ‘foreign’ to Norwegian society, as belonging somewhere else. In a way similar to that identifi ed by Fabian (1983) as operating in the achievement of Western hegemony over the ‘non-West’ in the colonial era, Otherness is also constructed in temporal terms. In the Orientalist imagination and its culturalist successor, distancing in time has been most successfully achieved in modernization theory, where Muslims or Orientals are constructed as the traditional Others of modernity. Th is imaginary is structuring contemporary discourse on Muslims in Europe which constructs Islam not only as spatially ‘external’ to Europe, and potentially in confl ict with its most fundamental values (cf. Asad 2003), but also as somehow representing ‘the past’ of a linear model of development. Such a temporal distancing of Muslim immigrants is also found in the anthropological literature, for example in the writings of the social anthropologist Wikan (1995) on Muslims in Norway, in which she constructs them as “reactionary” (“bakstreverske” literally means ‘striving backwards’) and as “living in the past”.22 What emerges through Wikan’s argument is that “going backwards into the future” is the same as thinking collectively and prioritizing the collective over the individual (Wikan 1995: 183, 190). “Any acknowledgement of identity that emphasises the collective at the expense of the individual,” Wikan writes, “undermines the uniqueness and dignity of the human being” (Wikan 1995: 94). Another way in which such temporal distancing is achieved is through historicizing cultural diff erences, by constructing ‘their’ social practices as somehow similar to ‘our own past’ (Larsen 2005). A common way of attempting to ‘explain’ social practices associated with immigrants is that Th ey are not that diff erent aft er all since We used to practice arranged marriages just like Th ey do and We used to be more collectively oriented just like Th ey are now. Diff erence is, thus, assimilated through the construction of a historically continuous national We that Th ey, on the basis of a temporal asymmetry, may be likened to. Th e problem with such temporal constructions of diff erence, as I see it, is that they understand diff erence in relationship to a unilinear model of development, though, a model that is fi rmly rooted in Western

22 It should, however, be noted that these characteristics are used by Wikan to speak specifi cally about Muslims in Norway and that she argues that Muslims she has studied in the Muslim world are less ‘reactionary’. 174 chapter four modernity. Th ese constructions imply a certain kind of historicity, a temporal movement of social life in which ‘the future’ pulls us forward, where, in some measure: “ ‘the future’ represents something that can be anticipated and should be desired, and that at least the direction of that desirable future is known” (Asad and Mahmood 1996: 2, italics original). In this view, all actions that are geared towards conserving daily life or maintaining the status quo come to appear as somehow ‘reactionary’. An important but nevertheless largely overlooked question is how the particular dynamics of these symbolic and structural confi gurations develop as they are thrown into ‘modernity at large’. Using Appadurai’s (1996) terminology, one could perhaps conceptualize contemporary representations of the Muslim Other as transnational ideo- scapes that move through diff erent scapes. Processes of globalization allow historical events like the Rushdie aff air,23 the French headscarf aff airs, the Gulf War and 9/11 to become transnational in the sense that they have eff ects on Muslims in particular localities around the world and on the construction of solidarity and affi nity across national boundaries, as well as on the majority populations in countries where Muslim immigrants live, and their understandings of Muslim Other- ness. From this perspective, confl icts energized by such symbolic and structural confi gurations are not primarily local but ‘implode’ in local contexts,24 fi nding local expressions akin to the hijab demonstration in

23 Th ese are ‘critical events’ or ‘historical events’ in the Ricoeurian sense (Ricoeur 1981). As Werbner (2002a: 108) notes with reference to Ricoeur, Th e Satanic Verses “ ‘imprinted’ its mark on time and history and went ‘beyond’ its original situation of aesthetic production, becoming ‘detached’ from its author’s expectations or intentions during the process of its production. It opened up unexpected new ‘worlds’ of reference, and came to be the subject of multiple readings”. 24 I take this expression from Appadurai’s (1996) discussion of ‘ethnic implosions’ as a more useful approach to ethnic confrontations than the primordialist model. Drawing on Rosenau’s (1990) concept of ‘cascades’ and Tambiah’s (1990) discussion of focaliza- tion and transvaluation, Appadurai suggests that macro-events (or cascades) “work their way into highly localized structures of feeling by being drawn into the discourse and narrative of the locality” (1996: 153). Appadurai uses ‘implosion’ in a structural as well as a historical sense; it relates to the ways in which pressures and ripples from increasingly wider political arenas are folded into local politics and to the ways in which the local political imagination is increasingly subject to the fl ow of large events (cascades) over time, events that infl uence the interpretation of mundane occurrences and gradually create a repertoire of adversarial (ethnic) sentiment (1996: 156). Although Appadurai uses this theoretical model to understand outbursts of ethnic violence, I believe that it is also enlightening on the issue of contemporary processes of Othering. the politics of recognition 175

Oslo that was referred to earlier. Such local expressions may in turn be recast into transnational imaginaries. Such ‘implosions’ have decisive consequences for the identity management of young Muslims in Oslo. Consecutive age groups relate to particular ‘events’, be these on a local, national or global level, that in diff erent ways intensify and make manifest the experience of misrecognition. For the older ones among my interlocutors, the Rushdie aff air, the Gulf war and the war in Bosnia were important moments of Othering and identity-formation (cf. Chapter Th ree). Ten years later 9/11 and the so called ‘War against Terror’ came to constitute such van- tage points. As was argued in Chapter Th ree, young Muslims thus relate to transnational social imaginaries linking their experiences of misrecognition and discrimination locally to the global cause of Muslims worldwide. Such alignments tend to reinforce the basic dichotomization between Us (Muslims /immigrants) and Th em (Westerners / Norwegians) but may also disrupt it by constructing other oppositions as happened in the case of the Iraq war (where young Muslims aligned with a broader trans-cultural and trans-religious opposition to the war and the arrogance of the United States) and for the mobilization for the Palestinian cause (which has long been an important issue for the political left in Norway). 9/11 requires a special mention here, as it seems to have had a signifi cant impact on the construction of Muslims as Others. Rather than bringing about a fundamental break in such representations, however, 9/11 seems to have brought together and consolidated discourses of antagonism that had been in play since at least the mid-1990s. Th e association between Islam and terrorism was already present in the image of the ‘Muslim suicide bomber’, this being particularly associated with Palestine. However, in the aft ermath of 9/11 this association became much more forceful and in the interviews I conducted in 2002 several of the young people I spoke to talked about a shift in how Muslims were perceived by majority society.25 Again, the representations were heavily gendered with young men being the ones who most strongly felt the association of Islam with terrorism. Rizwan, for instance, explained that:

25 On 12 September the NMU received two hate e-mails in their ‘guest book’ on the Internet: “Carpet bomb all Muslim areas in the world”, was the message from ‘Uzi’ and then “I got that damned Koran from the library in town and burned it together with other garbage – to the great cheering of friends and people I know. Next Ramadan my little private plane will be loaded with pig’s blood and crashed into Mecca”. 176 chapter four

I really feel that people now see me as a potential terrorist, until the opposite is proven. I am not innocent until proven guilty; rather, all Muslims are guilty unless the opposite is proven. Rizwan’s implicit reference to the legal principle of ‘presumption of innocence’ brings out the feeling of being collectively blamed and held accountable that many Muslims had aft er 9/11. As will be discussed later in this chapter, such experiences of being collectively blamed and held accountable as Muslims importantly shape the forms that young Muslims’ quest for recognition have come to take.

Constructing and contesting ourselves as the Other In critical dialogue with Taylor’s perspective on recognition, Andersson (2005) argues that experiences of being constructed as Others in the dominant discourse spur diff erent kinds of identity work among “youth of immigrant background”.26 She analyses the ways in which youth’s identity work in diff erent contexts (e.g. the Pakistani Student Society, a multi-ethnic sporting club and a ‘street gang’) is conditioned by what she refers to as the categorical identity of ethnicity, opposing Us (the natives) to Th em (the immigrants). According to Andersson ‘ethnic identity’ may, from this perspective, be defi ned as a categorical identity that, in the case of immigrants and refugees, points to large aggregates of people sharing one specifi c characteristic, that is their assumed difference from the natives. Whether this diff erence is referred to in terms of ethnic background, race or culture, the crucial point is that it designates an “Other-identity” (Andersson 2005). Andersson argues that the attribution of Otherness, as supplied from majority–minority interaction, both in direct and indirect forms, provides a potential for solidarity and identifi cation between those making up the youth. Th is potential for common identifi cation, she argues, does not rest on internalized patterns of ethnic values but on the common experience of being treated, seen and talked about as the Other. Th e experience of being treated, seen and talked about as the Other was central also to the identity work of young Muslims in my study. Such experiences energized a variety of eff orts made both to question

26 Andersson (2005) understands identity work as a fl uid and ongoing process of self-interpretation conditioned by the interpretational frames that fellow actors and contemporaries (such as politicians, journalists and others) use for judgements of ‘who’ one is, ‘why’ one acts in a specifi c way and ‘how’ one’s conduct can be explained by a specifi c identity category. the politics of recognition 177 and refuse imposed or prescribed identities related to immigrant status, ethnicity and race, on the one hand, and to ‘claim’ certain identities, on the other hand. Researchers on multi-ethnic neighbourhoods and youth groups in Oslo have noted that youths with an immigrant background oft en refer to themselves as ‘foreigners’, thus locating themselves within the dominant discourse (Andersson 2005; Jacobsen 2002; Vestel 2003). Th is label is not associated with formal citizenship but with identifi cation and with experiences of Otherness within Norwegian society. In Andersson’s (2005) study, ‘the city strollers’ were those who most commonly used this term to position themselves, with students and athletes less commonly referring to themselves by the term ‘foreigner’. Th e young Muslims in my study used the terms ‘foreigners’ and ‘immigrants’ as self-categorizations in some contexts. Sometime the terms marked not only a common Other position but also a collective identity that was contrasted to being Norwegian and that related to a ‘common culture’ contrasted to ‘Norwegian culture’. For instance, the young would speak of themselves as, for example, ‘Us immigrant youth’, ‘I was the only foreigner in my class’ or make statements such as ‘We foreigners respect elderly people’ or ‘We foreigners don’t drink alcohol’. Because ‘we’ are not Norwegian, ‘we’ are ‘us’. Th e way in which young Muslims identifi ed with a ‘we’ that was defi ned in contrast to the Norwegian majority also refl ects the overlapping and multiple groups they identify with. ‘We’ may thus be ‘the foreigners’, ‘the immigrants’, ‘the Somalis’, ‘the Muslims’ etc. in diff erent contexts. While such positionings tend to reproduce the dominant discourse opposing Us (the natives) to Th em (the immigrants, foreigners), the generational account of migration locates the so called second generation somewhat ambivalently within this scheme, creating a series of ‘intermediate’ positions, that expose young people to a set of oft en contradictory discourses about how they – as a category – are and how they should be. Th is was refl ected in how my interlocutors negotiated the ethno-national identities they were ascribed. Sometimes, the young understood being a Norwegian and, for example, a Pakistani as mutually exclusive, thus describing themselves as mostly, for instance, Moroccan or Norwegian or in terms of percentages (as 90 per cent of this and 10 per cent of that). At other times, the in-between-ness was recombined in the form of hyphenations (e.g. Norwegian-Moroccan) and as a basis for a ‘multicultural identity’. Within the overall dichotomy, marking out Us from Th em, social life includes a host of concepts and practices marking the border, attesting 178 chapter four its salience in structuring the perception of diff erence but also its potential porosity. Th ese practices of categorization are more fl exible than the overall Us /Th em dichotomy in the sense that it is behaviour, rather than persons, that is allocated to the diff erent categories. Marking boundaries and categorizing certain ways of thinking and acting in particular situations, these practices of categorization are situationally defi ned. Th e categorization of individuals within this system depends partly on who participates in the interaction and partly on the codes that diff erent social contexts entail in terms of, for instance, behaviour and appearances. Among Muslim youth, concepts like ‘over-integrated’, ‘potato’ and ‘whitey’ were used to describe and refer to the ethnic Norwegian majority and also to those among the minority youth who were considered to have become ‘too Norwegian’, ‘Wanna-Be-Norwegians’ or to not express pride in their own background or the fact of their belonging to a minority group. ‘Potato’ refers to what is typically Norwegian, usually in a negative sense, and is analogous to derogatory terms such as ‘Paki’.27 Both majority Norwegians and minority Norwegians were categorized as potatoes when they behaved in a manner associated with the typically Norwegian (e.g. ate their packed lunch without proposing to share,28 had multiple romantic or sexual partners or got drunk). An example is provided by Sarah, who was oft en talked about as a ‘potato’, ‘over-integrated’ or ‘too Norwegian’ when she voiced her opinion on Muslim men and their lack of respect for gender equality (likestilling). Concepts like ‘over-integrated’, ‘potato’ or ‘whitey’ thus serve not only to reproduce boundaries between Us and Th em but also to patrol the borders of acceptable behaviour and boundaries towards becoming ‘too Norwegian’. References to colour and racialized terms appeared alongside those having to do with ‘ethnicity’ and ‘cultural diff erence’. Th at the construction of the immigrant and Muslim Others is racialized is well exemplifi ed by a comment made by Alesha (who is herself of Pakistani background) who, when giving me directions for how to fi nd the site of an MSS event, laughingly said that, “You will see where all the niggers

27 As Døving (2003:188) notes, the potato is a staple food carrying Norwegian ethnic identity, shown in expressions such as ‘pottitland’ and ‘Ola Pottit’. 28 Th e lunch packet is central to Norwegian national imaginaries (cf. Døving 2003: 89 ff .) and oft en an issue of contestation between minority families and public institutions such as schools and kindergartens. the politics of recognition 179 fl ock in”. While South Asians were sometimes included in the category of ‘coloured’ or ‘black’, then, the term ‘Paki’ had greater currency among the young. ‘Paki’ was used both as a derogatory designation by people with a non-Pakistani background and as an individual or collective self-designation by youth with a Pakistani background; derivative terms such as ‘Paki problems’ and ‘Paki mentality’ were in common use. Th e use of this general term was subject to contestation, however. While some of the young resisted the use of such a derogatory term, which they saw as an expression of self-hatred, others pointed out a parallel to the ways in which black people had reclaimed the term ‘nig- ger’, suggesting that the word ‘Paki’ had lost its eff ect as an abusive term among whites since Pakistanis themselves had started using it. Although aware of the possibilities of the above mentioned strategy, youth of Pakistani background in my study tended to use ‘Paki’ in a less subversive way. It usually referred to those who were ‘typical Pakistani’ in a negative sense, to people from whom they distanced themselves (cf. Andersson 2005). ‘Paki’ was also used more generally as synonymous with ‘foreigner’ or ‘immigrant’ as when Sarah, who is of Turkish origin herself, aff ectionately addressed and referred to her son as “my little Paki”. In addition to this kind of more or less subversive reclamation of the language of Otherness, joking was a common way in which stereotypes were brought to the fore, shared and subverted. During fi eldwork I heard an amazing number of ‘ethnic jokes’, participated in imitating diff erent immigrant ways of speaking Norwegian with a funny accent and joined in ‘theatrical’ enactments of stereotypes in public space, playing with the assumed fears and prejudices of the majority population. On one such occasion, a woman wearing a hijab held forth a picnic knife in a threatening manner while we were waiting for the ferry to take us home from an NMU picnic. Th is was a direct response to a newspaper article problematizing the issue of the integration of immigrants. On other occasions, young Muslims would call me and introduce themselves as the Norwegian security services (or Hamaz), thus alluding to the construction of Muslims as a threat to national security. Such joking usually referred to and commented upon assumed stereotypes and racism in the majority population and served to make these appear less humiliating or threatening to the youth. With the shift towards a focus on Islam as the culturalized Other par excellence, we can ask whether Muslim identity now functions, in a 180 chapter four manner parallel to that described for ethnic identity by Andersson, as a categorical identity constituted on the basis of assumed diff erence from the natives. Indeed, ‘Muslims’ have increasingly come to be constituted as a ‘quasi-ethnic’ group marked out by their ‘foreign origin’. Such processes of ethnifi cation constitute a point of identifi cation for youth with a Muslim immigrant background. As they were categorized together on the basis of their religious ‘diff erence’, Muslim identity was claimed in new ways by minority youth with a Muslim background. We may thus say that the dominant representations of Otherness, as a basic distinction between Us and Th em, and the culturalizations such constructions of Otherness entail are partly confi rmed and integrated into the self-understandings of the young Muslims I worked with. It is in this sense that we may speak of Muslim identity in Norway as a process of ethnogenesis or the constitution of a ‘new’ or ‘symbolic’ ethnicity based on reference to a common religious heritage (cf. Naguib 2001). It is this construction that allows us to understand why young Muslims speak of ‘Norwegians’ as something in direct contrast with ‘Muslims’ (as in an article in the NMU magazine where a conversion story is entitled “Was Norwegian, Became a Muslim” or as when the young speak of having had a ‘Norwegian period’ before having ‘come back’ to Islam (see Chapter Six) ) and that allows young people with an immigrant background to identify as Muslims and ‘defend Islam’ regardless of their religious beliefs and practices. While it is important to note this process of ethnogenesis, the analogy with ‘ethnicity’ should not be pushed too far. Discussing ethnicity as an ‘Other identity’, Andersson argues that the potential for common identifi cation does not rest on internalized patterns of ethnic values but on the common experience of being treated, seen and talked about as the Other. In contrast, the mobilization of a Muslim identity politics that I discuss in the following section seems to draw importantly on patterns of religious values and sensibilities transmitted to and subjectivized by the young in diverse pedagogical settings. Furthermore, this mobilization is energized not only by an ascribed ‘Other identity’ within the immigration context, but just as much by broader transnational processes of Islamic revival and reform which fi nd ‘new’ grounds in a European postcolonial context (cf. Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003: 68). Here, Muslim identity is premised on individual identifi cation with a ‘universal’ religious tradition and opposition towards reducing being Muslim simply to (an aspect of) ethnic identity; from this perspective, then, Islam is being presented as a ‘way of life’. the politics of recognition 181

Th e NMU, the MSS and the politics of recognition

In light of the above discussion, I suggest viewing the NMU and the MSS as a context in which youth mobilize a politics of identity on the basis of the experience of being treated, seen and talked about as the Other. An important aspect of the activities and goals of both the NMU and the MSS is directed towards changing the cultural patterns of representation, interpretation and communication of Muslims in the Norwegian public debate. Th ese organizations share the basic premises that Taylor identifi es as the central thesis underlying the ‘politics of recognition’,29 namely that recognition (or the lack of such) is central to identity-formation and has consequences for people’s self- image and self-realization. Both the NMU and the MSS saw it as part of their task to ‘rectify’ the ‘negative images’ of Muslims that they saw mirrored back to them by society that could, in their view, lead to negative self-images among individual Muslims. Negative representations of Muslims in the media and experiences of discrimination and racism in everyday life were seen as making young Muslims ‘insecure’ and ‘ashamed’ of themselves. A common narrative illustrating these assumptions of a close relationship between (mis)recognition and self- image was that of young people (sometimes referring to themselves, sometimes to someone they knew or to young Muslims in general) who tried to ‘pass’ as Norwegians, disavowing their religious and cultural heritage and identity until they fi nally came to realize that they were not, in fact, accepted as ‘the same’. Th e realization that one’s diff erence prevented one from being perceived as equal (and similar) to the Norwegian majority was seen to have a variety of results, including ‘falling out’ of society and becoming a confused and ‘maladapted’ youth. Th e in-between position of the so called second generation was thus interpreted as one that could potentially become a position of neither /nor, creating a state of ‘normlessness’, confusion and non- belonging. It is important to note that most of the young Muslims in my study saw themselves as ‘special’ in this respect. Although oft en

29 In his seminal essay Taylor writes that: “our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, oft en by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or group of people can suff er real damage, real distortion, if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confi ning or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. Nonrecognition or misrecognition can infl ict harm, can be a form of repression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted, and reduced mode of being” (Taylor 1994: 25). 182 chapter four attesting to the diffi culties of this task, they usually saw themselves as having managed to turn their ‘in-betweenness’ into a positive resource. Instead of letting misrecognition lead to lack of self-confi dence, they had been strengthened by opposing it, they argued. Many young Muslims thus viewed their own Islamic activism as a way of assuming diff erence rather than attempting to erase it and as a form of ‘resistance’ to cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect towards Muslims locally, nationally and globally.30 Th e NMU, in particular, focused on providing a ‘secure’ identity for Muslim youth. Within the organizations, ‘secure identity’ was assumed to be vital not only for individuals but also as a necessary basis for participating and integrating in society at large. Multicultural and multi- religious dialogue was oft en said to be dependent on a ‘rooting’, the provision of a fi rm and basic identity from where to engage others.31 Th e ways in which such an identity was sought and provided for is in many ways reminiscent of consciousness-raising in other groups working against oppression (notably the women’s movement and the black movement). Th is is particularly so in the sense that individual experiences of misrecognition were located within patterns of power and oppression structuring these experiences. Individual experiences of being treated, seen and talked about as the Other were located and interpreted within larger structural schemes within a national and global order where Muslims had become the new villains. Furthermore, social ills and intergenerational confl icts experienced by the young were mapped onto a certain understanding of the world, in which the loss of Islamic morals and identity was seen as a structuring root cause. Th e infamousness of immigrant youth was explained by reference to ‘identity problems’ and anti-social behaviours which were seen partly as consequences of the fact that these youth were trying to deny ‘who they really were’ and trying to conform to Norwegian norms without ever being really accepted.

30 Historically, Islam has of course been at the core of various movements of resistance (for instance, to colonialism and in black American opposition to the racial dominance of white Christians in the form of movements such as the Nation of Islam). For a discussion of ‘Islam as a vehicle of protest’, see Waardenburg 1985. 31 Th is idea refl ects the dominant notion in the multicultural policies of the state according to which a fi rm knowledge of ‘our common cultural heritage’, including notably ‘our Christian-humanistic heritage’, is seen as fundamental to the enhancement of an ‘open’ multicultural society, implying that lack of such knowledge will lead towards a more ‘closed’ non-tolerant society. the politics of recognition 183

As Young (1990) notes, ‘consciousness-raising’ and the affi rmation of a positive group identity are central to the politicization of identities. Both the NMU and the MSS engaged in the construction and affi rmation of a positive group identity, as was exemplifi ed by slogans such as ‘We are Muslims, and proud of it’ and ‘Hijab is our pride and joy’. Th e negativity of the social categorizations and group identities that mark them in majority discourse is countered by a reversal of the value attached to being a Muslim and to symbols of Muslim identity. Similar to other groups who engage in various forms of identity politics, young Muslims “fi nd themselves defi ned from the outside, positioned, placed, by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere” (Young 1990: 59). In this respect their identity politics may be seen as an active response to the experience of being marked out as diff erent and as an eff ort to ‘rename’ diff erence (cf. Raj 2000: 538). By asserting a positive meaning for their own identity, groups like the NMU and the MSS: seek to seize the power of naming diff erence itself, and explode the implicit defi nition of diff erence as deviance in relation to a norm, which freezes some groups into a self-enclosed nature. (Young 1990: 171) Just as black activists once stated that ‘Black is beautiful’, the Muslim youth of Norway expressed how they were Muslim and proud of it.32 Th e literature on young Muslims in Europe proposes diff erent readings of Muslim identity politics. As Fadil (2008) suggests, there are both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ readings of communitarian mobilizations and socio-political religious tendencies. Th ese debates have been particularly pronounced in the French context. On the one hand, authors, exemplifi ed notably by Gilles Kepel (1994), have warned that Muslim communitarian mobilization contradicts the Republican liberal- secular model of integration. As a response, other authors have argued that communitarian mobilization is only a minority phenomenon among Muslim youth in Europe and that most indicators point towards processes of religious individualization and secularization and that the majority of Muslims are largely adapting to the European structures and societies (Babès 1997; Cesari 1994; Saint-Blancat 1997). As Fadil (2008) notes, these approaches seem to share some liberal-secular assumptions about communitarian mobilization and identity politics

32 In the magazine Ung Muslim ( (1) 2000), the ‘Muslim Youth of Norway’ logo is followed by the phrase: “…and we are proud of it”. 184 chapter four as contrary to integration. In the following I will suggest a somewhat diff erent reading, thereby questioning some of the assumptions underlying these debates. My argument is that the mobilizing of an identity politics based on Islam among young Norwegian Muslims may be seen as a mode of political action that allows youth with an immigrant background to recalibrate the ethnic and cultural dilemmas of the migrant context and to participate more fully in Norwegian society (cf. Cesari 1998; Fadil 2005; Khosrokhavar 1997; Roy 2004; Vertovec and Rogers 1998). Th is does not mean that I see such mobilization as allowing the frictionless ‘integration’ of the second generation into the dominant concepts and practices of membership in the nation state or that I overlook the (gendered) power eff ects that are produced in the political mobilization of Muslim identity. Rather, I argue that the production of young Muslims as political subjects entails a series of negotiations and contestations fi rmly located and shaped within the normative modes of discourse of the Norwegian public sphere. Th ese negotiations and contestations are ‘productive’ in the sense that they engender questions that may also produce new social imaginaries or propel changes in the structure of the public sphere and in dominant notions of national membership and of the good citizen.

Identity politics and the problem of essentialism If we assume, as many theories of identity do, that identity always implies some kinds of boundaries against the other (whether as abjection in the psychoanalytical postmodern jargon or as boundary-maintenance in Barthian ethnicity theories), the problem arises of how positive elements of group affi nity can be articulated without essentializing ‘them’ and without creating boundaries (Baumann 1999; Werbner 1997; Young 1990). It has been rightly noted that identity politics may entail a pressure towards homogenization and a suppression of internal diff erence (Fraser 1998a; Yuval-Davis 1997). Such pressure towards homogenization and strategies for coping with internal diff erence also arise in identity politics mobilized around Islam and sometimes intertwine with theological discourses that seek to defi ne the limits of the correct and legitimate form of Islamic practice. In this process, relations of power and patterns of exclusions are simultaneously (re)produced and challenged. Some Islamic (and particularly Islamist) organizations have, thus, tended to produce a kind of ‘reversed Orientalizing’ discourse in which the Occident (positive) /Orient (negative) dichotomy is reversed, with ‘the West’ emerging as the negative the politics of recognition 185 mirror-image of Islamic virtues (cf. Schmidt 1998). Th is was sometimes refl ected in the ways in which young Muslims spoke of themselves in contrast to a representation of, for example, ‘the West’ (as materialistic and egoistic) or ‘the Western woman’ (as over-sexualized and objectifi ed). Just as the dominant majority discourse, such discourses, when articulated in the immigrant context, produce their own identity in a negative relationship to the Other and thus defi ne diff erence as exclusion and opposition (Immigrant vs. Norwegian, Muslim vs. Christian /Norwegian /Western). ‘Muslim’ oft en takes on an ethnic aspect in this context as an antonym of ‘Norwegian’, rather than ‘Christian’, and sometimes as a synonym of ‘immigrant’.33 However, it should be noted that these processes cannot be seen as a symmetrical reversal since they are played out in a public sphere structured by the hegemonic discourse of Otherness (as previously discussed). Although both ‘Muslim identity’ and ‘Islam’ may sometimes appear as homogenous and given categories in the identity politics of the NMU and the MSS, the politicized identities that manifest themselves in identity politics are results of complex negotiations of identity /diff erence (cf. Werbner 1997). Th ey are essentializations situated in a particular time and space and may in diff erent ways and situations (and to diff erent people at diff erent times of life) come to serve as a basis for identity politics.34 Firstly, the focus on Islam does not mean that young Muslims do not engage in identity politics related to, for example, gender, ethnicity or other forms of politics outside the organizations. Secondly, the discourse on misrecognition within the NMU and the MSS brings together various struggles over identity /diff erence that relate not only to being Muslim but also to being an immigrant, a woman, black etc. Identities related to various diff erences are, thus, mobilized partly in relation to particular contexts and what people feel they need to react to. Th is intersection and multiplicity of identities

33 Th e oscillation between an understanding of diff erence as opposing two bounded, homogeneous blocs and understandings that privilege overlap, variation and heterogeneity is signifi cantly related to the impact of mediated discourses and events (both local and transnational) that regularly reinforce the former understanding of diff erence and only more rarely the latter. 34 Th ere are obvious parallels here to what is spoken about as ‘strategic essentialism’ in that young Muslims consciously focus on what they have in common and, as we saw in Chapter Th ree, claim that ‘working together’ is more important than ‘which imam people follow’. However, as will become clear, I argue that this also needs to be seen in relation to the production of ‘truth’ and ‘essentials’ in Islam and to the process of internal reform. 186 chapter four within the identity politics of young Muslims defi es any simplifi ed concept of ‘recognition’ as the self-realization or self-affi rmation of a homogeneous and static group identity. Critics have argued that much of the contemporary debate on recognition and multiculturalism pays too little attention to the way in which individuals are constituted at the intersection of diff erences and to how this complexity impacts on experiences of misrecognition. Th e situational and multiple character of identity /diff erence must be taken into consideration, even when groups (re)present themselves in terms of fi xed boundaries and a given culture or religion. Th is touches on a core diffi culty in Taylor’s theorizing of the politics of recognition and in particular on the way in which it has come to be used to underpin ‘multiculturalism’ as a normative ideal and a political strategy. Th e way in which the concept of culture tends to merge with that of ethnic identity (e.g. in Taylor’s use of the concept of ‘ethno-cultural groups’) ignores a fundamental insight of Barthian theories of ethnicity (Barth 1969): that ethnic groups, rather than being predefi ned collectivities who share a given culture, are constructed in a process of cultural boundary- making. Th e way in which some theories of recognition picture people as somehow in an unambivalent way belonging to a given group that shares a given culture or religion risks, to quote Turner on the matter: essentializing the idea of culture as a property of an ethnic group or race; it risks reifying cultures as separate entities by overemphasizing their boundedness and mutual distinctness; it risks overemphasizing the internal homogeneity of cultures that potentially legitimize repressive demands for communal conformity; it tends to fetishize them in ways that put them beyond the reach of critical analysis – and thus of anthropology. (Turner 1994b: 407) Th is is important when it comes to understanding the identity politics of Muslim youth because the question of what it is that should be recognized is inherently contested and continually negotiated. According recognition will, thus, always depend upon by whom and how ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim identity’ is defi ned and represented. Th e politics of recognition of the young Muslims I worked with may, from this perspective, be seen as a process of mediation between such contradictory defi nitions. For the case of the young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS, they did not want recognition for a variety of traditions that their parents and other Muslims groups deemed to be constitutive of Islam and Muslim identity. On the contrary, they used (as will be discussed more carefully in the next chapter) Islam and Muslim identity to challenge a range of the politics of recognition 187 such practices, while at the same time promoting a unitary Muslim identity. In this, they had to struggle with actors representing other claims about which Muslim identities and practices should be recognized and about what Islam really is. It was within these dynamics that the ‘Muslim identities’ for which ‘recognition’ was sought were constituted.

Religious practice in identity politics

Th e analysis presented so far in this chapter should not be read as implying that young Muslims’ identifi cation with Islam is simply a ‘reactive’ identity, determined by its opposition to current negative representations of Islam and Muslims. Th at young Muslims turn to Islam in European societies could be understood primarily in terms of a reaction to discrimination and racism as has been suggested by, among others, Khosrokhavar (1997). Th e above analysis has confi rmed the importance of Othering processes to the shaping of young Muslims as political subjects. Th e NMU and the MSS were established at a time when Islam had come to occupy centre stage in the construction of Otherness, a process that no doubt contributed to centring young Muslims’ identity politics on Islam rather than, for instance, ethnicity or ‘race’. Th e fact that developments in the Muslim world in the aft ermath of colonialism had already established Islam as a particularly powerful idiom for opposition and resistance towards domination certainly stimulated such a development. We cannot assume, however, that some kind of misrecognition or oppression focusing on a particular trait (skin colour, culture, religion, gender etc.) automatically generates a mobilization of identity politics around that trait or that such politics will take the same form regardless of what one mobilizes around (although there are certainly some identifi able social logics as shown by the discussion of essentialization above). In order to understand the particular form that young Muslims’ identity politics comes to take, we must examine not only the imposed or prescribed identities they refuse but also the identities that they claim and the kind of persons that they aspire to be on the basis of such identities. Th e identity politics of the young Muslims I worked with was inscribed in a wider framework of religious references and religious duties and obligations where religious practices and symbols were not only, or even primarily, defi ned in terms of identity politics. Th rough this inscription, Muslim identity 188 chapter four politics became part of a wider engagement with religious revitalization, which aimed at realizing certain goods that were deemed important to individuals as well as to society. Th e religious practices that became central to identity politics (see below) were, thus, not only ‘functional’ in countering misrecognition but went together with the construction and regulation of an Islamic ethical and moral subject (cf. Mahmood 2001, 2003, 2005) (see Chapter Five and Chapter Six). In the following, I will pursue the subject of how certain religious practices come to be mobilized in identity politics and how identity politics thus comes to be represented not just as a quest for recognition but also as a religious duty and obligation central to what it means to be a good Muslim.

Jihad and dawa in identity politics When questioned about their religious practice, the young Muslims I worked with tended to talk about ‘defending Islam’, ‘trying to present a better picture of Islam’ or ‘working to counter stereotypes’, along with respecting the fi ve daily prayers and fasting in Ramadan. Countering negative images of Islam found in the media, politics, the classroom or the streets – by writing, speaking or providing a good example through one’s acts – has, thus, come to be seen as a fundamental aspect of a person’s religious practice. ‘Defending Islam’, in the sense of countering negative representations, was sometimes referred to as a form of jihad.35 To defend Islam, to promote a good image through participation in media and debates, to learn and teach others about Islam and to strive towards being a good role model and an active participant in society are all central to this understanding representing the ‘defending of Islam’ as a kind of jihad. In an interview with Abid, he told me about the aspects of religious practice that were most important to him. Apart from salah, the ‘pillars of Islam’ were of little relevance to him. As he had no income he could pay no zakat36 and the pilgrimage to Mecca was still years ahead. He did observe the fast during Ramadan but Ramadan only comes once a year, aft er all. What he stressed, however, was the importance of defending Islam:

35 Th is use of jihad as a concept covering any productive activity that Muslims undertake, on their own initiative, to improve the well-being of the Islamic community importantly resonates with the understanding of jihad in contemporary revivalist movements such as, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood. 36 Obligatory alms tax, the Th ird Pillar of Islam. the politics of recognition 189

I feel that I have a huge responsibility in defending Islam. Especially aft er all the shit that happened lately.37 And I do feel that I’m doing a decent job. Because it is my job, I feel, to get rid of the misunderstandings that arise, and there are certainly a number of these. It is my responsibility to show another side to Islam. In half an hour I can get rid of a lot of those misunderstandings and get people to become more open […]. In the magazine we publish, I do this through symbolism. For instance, I take pictures of women who are somewhat liberated to illustrate that our girls are not really that oppressed. For the next issue we were planning an article on Islam and knowledge using four students. I suggested they should all be girls, so that we could show that there are aft er all lots of girls who get an education and choose untraditional professions. But the others on the board disagreed – it was too extreme – it had to be two boys and two girls. I use a lot of energy, trying to show a diff erent picture of Islam. We have to, since there are so many misunderstandings. To defend Islam is kind of like my jihad. But then again I oft en feel somewhat hypo- critical when I do things that are against my religion while at the same time defending it. But I’ve heard that God shows quite a bit of understanding for us growing up here: things are less strict, although we shouldn’t take advantage of it as I feel that I do sometimes. You think that you’re so smart, and you forget about the fact that God is actually watching. And then you think that He shows understanding again and again. ‘Defending Islam’ is generally seen to depend on individual and collective eff orts to acquire and spread ‘correct’ knowledge about Islam. It is important to note, however, that many of the young I worked with worried that having to defend Islam against misrepresentations prevented them from realizing a broader engagement with society. Th is role forced them to concentrate on issues that were defi ned as problematic by the majority society rather than on broader concerns with how, for instance, environmental issues, education, ethics and community life could be addressed from an Islamic point of view. Th e defensive position thus reinforces a more general dynamic in the Norwegian public sphere in which people from the immigrant population are given public voice primarily on ‘immigrant-related issues’ and less so on issues that relate to envisaging a ‘good society’ more broadly speaking (cf. Rogstad 2002b). Dawa work is one particular activity through which young Muslims seek to acquire and spread ‘correct’ knowledge of Islam. Th e term dawa (call, invitation and appeal) has historically encompassed a wide range

37 “Th e shit” Abid refers to includes 9/11 and a series of ‘aff airs’ related to forced marriages, so called honour killings and female circumcision. 190 chapter four of meanings in diff erent Islamic traditions. As it has come to be used in contemporary Islamic revivalism, it carries the meaning of the duty of some or all members of the Islamic community to convey Allah’s message to humanity, encompassing a wide range of activities directed at fulfi lling this duty. Some recent interpretations of dawa in Islamic revivalist movements have increasingly come to stress that dawa is the obligation of every individual (fard al-ain), a ‘civic duty’ so to speak (Hirschkind 2001; Mahmood 2005). Dawa may be conceived primarily in terms of encouraging fellow Muslims in the pursuit of greater piety in their lives or as also including conveying the message to non- Muslims. Th is distinction is of particular importance in non-Muslim societies and sometimes, as in the Norwegian context, implies that internal and external dawa take diff erent forms. With reference to Poston (1992), Otterbeck (2003) distinguishes between dawa activities that are face to face and mediated. He makes a further distinction between passive and active dawa. Passive dawa simply refers to the act of being visibly Muslim and providing a good example, showing Muslims as ‘good people’. Active dawa may be both face to face (e.g. giving dars, door to door calling or talking to friends and colleagues) and mediated (writing or publishing other mediated materials on Islamic issues). Although pointing to some important modalities of dawa work, the distinction between active and passive dawa is somewhat misleading in so far as ‘being visibly Muslim’ and ‘providing a good example’ are far from ‘passive’ undertakings. Th e young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS have increasingly come to see Muslims in Europe as having a particularly important role in doing dawa. A key relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims and, usually more importantly, between those who are nominal Muslims and those who are practising Muslims is thus one of ‘calling’ to Islam. Th e focus on education is important in this respect, both in terms of passing Islam on to future generations and in terms of countering misrepresentations of Islam. Th e increasing importance of the concept of dawa among young Muslims in Oslo refl ects the theological development by means of which certain Islamic scholars have sought to solve the problem of Muslims living outside the abode of Islam which consists of characterizing Europe as dar-al-dawa38 and

38 Th e abode or house of invitation. the politics of recognition 191

Muslim minorities as engaged in the work of spreading Islam (cf. Chapter Th ree). As Nabil puts it: Muslims need to realize that they have a task here in Norway; to do dawa. […] A Muslim leader told us the same thing at a seminar: ‘You have a job to do in Norway! You are to be exemplary models!’ What he meant was that we should be such models both to Norwegian society and to the Muslim community. Dawa is, then, dependent on both self-education and the education of others. In order to provide a good example through one’s acts, one has to know what it takes to be a good Muslim and to cultivate the virtues that are thus learned. As Abid’s refl ections on the matter indicate, failure to live up to religious standards while at the same time encouraging others to follow them, or defending Islam in light of these religious standards to non-Muslims, may be experienced as a form of hypocrisy. Th is is related not least to the ways in which dawa is premised not only on the ability to speak to people about Islam but on having cultivated certain virtues that allow one to do dawa by being an exemplary model for others. In order to do dawa properly, one must cultivate certain virtues both when it comes to being able to realize Islam in one’s own daily life and in terms of learning to invite people to the way of God in the right manner (e.g. by being prepared to answer the most common questions about Islam, by using certain forms of, for instance, rational argumentation, by ‘advertising’, by comparing the advantages of Islam to the disadvantages of Christianity etc.). Two ongoing concerns among MSS and NMU members were refl ected in the dawa courses that were arranged. Th e fi rst was the notion that young people of Muslim background were ‘far away’ from their religion and needed to be called back to Islam. Th ere was, thus, an element of internal Islamizing activity. Secondly, the dawa courses addressed a concern with how Islam was presented to, and understood by, the Norwegian non-Muslim majority. Acquiring knowledge of “How to present Islam to non-Muslims” (the title of a dawa course held by the MSS) was a way of increasing individual capacities to defend and ameliorate images of Islam and to refute the negative ideas about Islam found in the non-Muslim majority society (cf. Jouili and Amir- Moazami 2006). To Nabil, dawa work had become especially important because of the current situation: Many Muslim scholars have said that now is the time for dawa. Because very many people regard Islam as a threat and it is important to show 192 chapter four

that it is not, that Islam is not about terror-bombings. Like the girls who are so oft en portrayed as pitiful; it is important that they come forward and show that they are not. And the same for boys, we are all presented as terrorists. In his own dawa work, Nabil was thus concerned with presenting a positive image of Islam to non-Muslims: Last week a group of old people who were activists against racism came to our mosque to attend a lecture on Islam. Th ey commented upon the fact that Africans, Pakistanis and others were gathered together in the mosque. Since they asked me, and one of the national newspapers was present, I said: ‘Th ere is no racism in Islam’. I was very conscious about not saying ‘Muslims’ [laughs dryly] – because there are of course racist Muslims – and that’s what I said. So I referred to a citation from the Koran that I had learned by heart,39 you know. But on such occasions I am playing a role, as an advertisement for Islam in a way. Especially when I’m doing dawa work, it is a bit like an advertisement. Such ‘advertisements’ are not uncommon when young Muslims represent Islam to non-Muslims. As in this case, they are oft en based on distinguishing ‘real Islam’ from the actual practices of Muslims, these tending to be categorized either as ‘extreme variations’ or as ‘cultural Islam’. Another strategy that is frequently used is that of confronting negative stereotypes of Islam by attaching them to ethnic communities and ‘cultures’, rather than to the religious community and Islam: Pakistanis may be racists, so the argument goes, but there is no racism in Islam; Pakistanis may not let their daughters decide whom to marry, but there is no coercion in Islam. A range of ‘problems’ can thus be ascribed the label ‘cultural tradition’ in contrast to ‘Islam’. By means of this strategy, Nabil and other young Muslims represent Islam as a transcendent and coherent truth. In so doing they contribute to establishing a norm for what being a good Muslim should entail (not being a racist, not forcing your children into unwanted marriages etc.). In dawa work, representations of an ‘ideal’ Islam are oft en contrasted to ‘real others’ (whether this be the West, Christianity, Norwegian

39 Nabil refers to the Koran (49: 13): “People, We created you all from a single man and a single woman, and made you into races and tribes so that you should recognize one another. In God’s eyes, the most honoured of you are the ones most mindful of Him: God is all knowing, all aware”. Oft en, only the fi rst line of this verse is cited when the argument is made that there is no racism in Islam. the politics of recognition 193 society or, for example, the Pakistani community). Whereas Islam refers to an ideal, ‘the others’ are not depicted as similarly possessing alternative ideals. Such a ‘slip in comparison’ confronts a comparable slip in comparison found in the Norwegian majority discourse in which an ideal (‘we the Norwegians /we the Christians’) representing gender equality, individual freedom and human rights is compared to ‘their reality’. In social situations where young Muslims confront this idealized representation of Norwegian society, the picture of Islam and Muslims tends to be more idealized than in ‘closed’ forums, where such idealized representations are more frequently subject to debate and contestation.40 Dawa work, as a means through which young Muslims invite Muslims or non-Muslim colleagues or friends to discuss Islam with them, to some extent encourages debate and dialogue. On the other hand, the practice of dawa is structured by the context of identity politics in such a way that the content of such debate and dialogue remains importantly determined by the logic of idealized representation and counter-representation. In this context of making dawa to non-Muslims as a means of changing dominant representations of Islam, dawa activities thus tend to limit the aspect of discussion and deliberation that Hirschkind (2001), for example, has shown to be a vital part of dawa as a political practice in Egypt,41 therefore taking the shape of a politics of ‘representation’ within a logic of identity politics.

Th e hijab in identity politics Although Muslim women also engage in dawa work and work directed at representing Islam in public debate, they are particularly called upon

40 Th e mailing list of the MSS was a ‘semi-closed’ forum. Whenever a discussion became somehow diffi cult to continue publicly, smaller circles of people who knew each other more intimately would continue the discussion in lesser fora (e.g. by sending e-mails only to a group of friends) where they could express themselves more freely. Although I have not done extensive work on chat groups on the Internet, those I have visited seem to allow for contestation and negotiation, not solely providing a simple idealization as the more informative Islamic netpages tend to do. Chat rooms may be more ‘intimate’ because of the anonymity they provide and because of the oft en highly heterogeneous perspectives and views of those partcipating in them. 41 Hirschkind (2001: 13) writes that in its contemporary elaboration dawa defi nes a kind of practice involving the public use of a mode of reasoning whereby the correctness of action is argued and justifi ed in the face of error, doubt, indiff erence or counterargument. 194 chapter four to counter ideas about Islam being a religion that is inimical to women. In the MSS and the NMU Muslim women who could publicly counter the dominant representations of Islam by showing that they were neither oppressed nor passive were repeatedly called on. From the 1990s on, the hijab has increasingly come to occupy centre stage in public struggles over representations of a gendered Muslim Otherness /identity. Several European countries have struggled their way through scarf aff airs, of these most notably France with its seemingly never-ending aff aires du foulard islamique.42 Although the controversies surrounding the hijab have been much less virulent in Norway than in, for example, France, the hijab still holds a signifi cant symbolic position as a marker of Muslim diff erence and as emblematic of Muslim women’s subjugation and lack of freedom. Th e media have focused a number of times on the assumed oppressive character of the hijab and suggestions concerning the restriction of its use (particularly in schools) have been advanced several times in public debate. It is a widespread assumption that Muslim women are made to wear hijabs by male relatives who want to control them and the hijab is oft en represented as ‘backwards’ and in confl ict with modern values (those of, for instance, gender equality or individual autonomy). Representations of the hijab in public debate are thus central to (re)producing a series of dichotomies upon which modern European self-conceptions rest – between the modern and the traditional, the rational and the irrational, autonomy and obedience. Within this framework, the ‘reclaimed hijab’ of educated young Muslim women who claim to have chosen to wear it themselves, threatens the ordering process of modernity since it resists classifi cation within these dichotomies (Gressgård 2005b). While it is quite widespread to believe that the claim to have ‘chosen’ the hijab represents a form of false consciousness, counter-images within the Norwegian public discourse (as elsewhere) that focus on Muslim women’s choices (e.g. to wear the hijab) are also produced, arguing as they do that the hijab is not always a sign of oppression or that it can, in some contexts, be a means of liberation from oppression. While these

42 Th e original aff air in 1989 revolved around three girls of Maghrebi origin who were expelled from a school in Creil because of their hijab. Th ese and subsequent events of the same kind, and the debates they elicited in French society, are commonly referred to as les aff aires du foulard islamique. Th ere is a large body of literature dealing with the original aff air and the subsequent developments (see, for example, Amir- Moazami 2006; Bowen 2004b, 2007; Cesari 1997; Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 1995; Grillo 2005; Helvig 2004; Jacobsen 1999; Ramadan 1994). the politics of recognition 195 representations counter the image of the passive and oppressed Muslim woman, they continue to evaluate Others on the basis of liberal secular notions of women’s freedom and autonomy. Counter-representations of women choosing the hijab tend to shift these women from the position of the traditional, irrational and obedient towards the modern, rational and autonomous thus confi rming, rather than challenging, the ‘ordering process of modernity’ which opposes tradition to modernity, religion to secularism, the collective to the individual and force to choice. Th e struggles over the representation of Muslim women and the visual embodiment of this in the form of the hijab must be understood in relation to the many political eff orts to control women’s clothing, whether by enforcing or prohibiting particular dress codes, in the history of European colonialism in the Muslim world and the subsequent construction of modern nation states in which governments have sought to transform ‘the people’ into modern (secular) citizens. Th e hijab thus came to symbolize, on the one hand, backwardness and tradition and, on the other hand, cultural authenticity and resistance to Western domination. In continuity with this established historical polysemy, the hijab in Europe has been inscribed in the context of minority–majority relations and debates about integration, racism, discrimination and multiculturalism. In the process, the hijab’s capacity to symbolize anti-colonialism has come to embody an oppositional quality in relation to non-Muslim majority populations and many Muslims have come to regard hijabi women as courageous defenders of Islam and the Muslim community in the migrant context. Th e meaning of the hijab is hotly contested as diff erent actors try to defi ne it as a symbol of the oppression of women, of rebellion, of religious piety, an Islamic obligation or a cultural tradition. In the arguments of the young women, as also expressed in the slogans during the hijab demonstration, eff orts were made both to deconstruct and oppose the meanings that were attributed to the hijab in public discourse, to inscribe it with a new meaning of ‘pride and joy’, and to establish the right to wear the hijab as an inviolable human right. Whereas opponents argued that the hijab obstructed recognition of the equal dignity of women and men, the supporters argued that a ban obstructed the recognition of the equal dignity of (members of) diff erent religious traditions. Th e informative leafl et on the hijab that was planned by the MSS during the heat of the hijab debates in 2004 aimed at ‘rectifying misunderstandings about the hijab’ and at clarifying what the hijab 196 chapter four really represents in Islam. It is interesting to note that one interpretation of the hijab that some of the Muslim women referred to as a misunderstanding was that primarily linking the hijab to the upholding of women’s chastity and the moral order of society, an interpretation that is usually implied in Norwegian public discourse and by those who oppose or seek to restrict its use through legal measures.43 Th e hijab was, rather, according to the women, to be regarded as a question of an individual’s choice to submit to the prescriptions of Allah. As such, it was a matter between each and every woman and Allah, and a question of ‘individual rights’ rather than of ‘collective rights’ to maintain a particular cultural or religious tradition. Eff orts to defend women’s right to wear the hijab represent not only a struggle over ‘representations’ but also one about the consequences such representations are seen to have in various socio-political fi elds. Experiences of not being ‘heard’, whether in the classroom or in public debates, because the hijab renders the individual invisible and makes a person appear only in terms of generalized stereotypical representations, are oft en invoked by hijabi women. As is illustrated by the case of Ambreen Pervez, one of the immediate precursors to the hijab demonstration referred to at the beginning of this chapter, the hijab is also an issue with respect to Muslim women’s access to the labour market. Th e right of employees to wear religious headgear is not explicitly regulated by Norwegian law but nevertheless follows from the dominant interpretation of the Working Environment Act and the Gender Equality Act. Despite the fact that the Gender Equality Ombudsman made several resolutions affi rming that workplaces which prevent their employees from wearing a hijab are violating the Gender Equality Act in 2000 and 2001, studies have shown that women who wear religious headgear have fewer opportunities in the Norwegian labour market than those who do not (Ghosh, Flesland and Ramin-Osmundsen 2001).

43 Ziba Mir-Hosseini (2007) argues that in classical fi qh texts there is an implicit notion of hijab as ‘confi nement’ based on the juristic constructs of a woman’s body as awrah [a source of shame, that must be covered both during prayers (before God) and in public (before men)] and on women’s presence in the public as a source of fi tna [chaos]. She shows how these constructs have been defended, challenged and redefi ned in the Iranian context, and argues that new ways of conceptualizing the hijab off er diff erent justifi cations and rationales, some of which focus on women’s ‘rights’ and ‘choice’ rather than on ‘confi nement’. Th e reconceptualization of hijab in terms of ‘rights’ and ‘choice’, as is also shown in numerous other studies, is thus not particular to Muslims in Norway or the West, but has evolved in response to local and global socio- political factors as they articulate in particular social contexts. the politics of recognition 197

Th ese fi ndings were confi rmed by the young women in my study, several of whom had been confronted with this problem during their own eff orts to enter working life (relatives and friends of these women reported similar problems). Many also experienced being ‘stared at’, being approached by curious questioners asking if ‘they had to wear that thing’ and being verbally abused by strangers. Such experiences were oft en discussed in contexts where hijabi women were gathered and although the situations did not always explicitly involve the hijab, this was generally assumed to have played an important role in most of the cases reported. For many young Muslim women, the hijab has thus become a vehicle to talk about racism and social discrimination in, for example, the labour market as well as about the ‘recognition’ of the equal dignity and rights of Muslims within Norwegian society at large.44 As a vehicle for speaking about misrecognition, the hijab does not only gain its centrality from experiences of misrecognition locally, however. Young Muslims in Oslo related their own struggle for the right to wear the hijab to struggles over the hijab in other localities and historical contexts (be these the American wish to unveil Afghan women, the exclusion of girls wearing the hijab from schools in France or the exclusion of hijabi women from political life in Turkey). As was discussed in the previous chapter, the identifi cation of hijabi women’s

44 In 2009 a new major round of hijab debates emerged in relation to a request from a Muslim woman to wear the hijab in her role as a police offi cer. Th ese debates revolved around a series of related themes. As in the debates of the fi rst half of the decade, the question of women’s rights and freedom of choice fi gured as prominent arguments both among those who defended and those who opposed the suggestion to allow hijabs (a position taken notably by the Police Directorate), with eff orts being made by various actors to defi ne the ‘meaning’ of the hijab. Many young Muslims, including some from the newly-started youth organization in Rabita, engaged themselves in these debates arguing for women’s right to wear the hijab and denouncing the exclusionary eff ects of banning Muslim women from full participation in all areas of majority society, an argument that was also prominent among non-Muslims who approved the suggestion to allow the use of hijab in the police force. Some other Muslim voices stressed instead the importance of the state’s ‘neutrality’ in religious matters and, in line with a prominent ‘secularist’ position in the debates, argued that the hijab would corrupt such neutrality. Th e debate also invoked and played on existing scenarios suggesting an ongoing ‘subtle Islamifi cation’ of Norwegian society, a polemic development that was high on the agenda of issues to be dealt with at the time, especially that of the populist Progress Party. As with previous hijab debates, this one invoked the idea of a national culture and values defi ned as Norwegian and/or Western threatened by Muslims’ quests for what were marked out as ‘special rights’. In contrast to this conceptualization of the right to wear the hijab as a ‘special minority right’, young Muslims tended to conceive this as a question of assuring equal dignity and equal rights. 198 chapter four plight in Norway with their plight elsewhere is facilitated by the way in which young Muslims have come to orient themselves towards and show solidarity with a global Islamic community and by the construction of an ethical and political commitment to oppose injustices committed against Muslims everywhere. Struggles from other localities feed into the local discourse and contribute to the constitution of the hijab as a primary marker of identity /diff erence. Th rough this process, then, girls and women wearing the hijab are perceived to be striving for the recognition of the Muslim community and its legitimate presence in non-Muslim surroundings everywhere, and not just locally. Th rough the hijab, the visibility of Islamic identity /diff erence is, thus, inscribed on female bodies.

Gender and generation in the quest for recognition As Calhoun (1994: 20) argues, the struggles occasioned by identity politics need to be understood not only as struggles between those who claim diff erent identities, or about the representation of such identities in public space, but also as struggles “within each subject as the multiple and contending discourse of our era challenge any of our eff orts to attain stable self-recognition or coherent subjectivity”. Th e way in which the hijab, and clothing more generally, is inscribed in contending discourses of identity and diff erence (and piety and modesty) is well brought out in Abid’s account of the way in which his younger sister Latifa fought her way through adolescence. According to Abid, Latifa had recently been having recurrent confl icts with her mother. She was short-tempered and angry about the fact that her mother did not let her hang out with her friends aft er school or allow her to wear the kind of clothes she wanted to. Abid said that his sister struggled to be seen by her peers as ‘cool’. She was embarrassed by her family, by her house and by her clothes. Abid, himself, had taken on some responsibility as his parents seemed unable to guide their daughter on this issue. Th ey are, he said, from “another time and place” and have scant understanding of what it is like to be a Norwegian youth. Th e fact that Abid took on such a responsibility points to the importance of power in structuring the brother–sister relationship. Abid’s gender (and age) allowed him to exert an authority over his sister as he took on the responsibility of ‘guiding’ her with regard to her behaviour and appearance. While one may certainly read this as refl ecting a patriarchal structure where brothers exert authority over sisters in order to maintain family honour Abid, as we will see, did not himself authorize his the politics of recognition 199 intervention in the socialization of his sister with reference to shame and honour or the family but rather through reference to a complex negotiation of Islamic normativity, identity and diff erence, individual authenticity and autonomy. I do not mean to suggest that gendered power was not at play here; it surely was. What I do want to suggest, however, is a more complex reading that brings out the intersection of several power relations that together shape people’s relationship to each other, their subjectivities and their capacities to act. One day Abid took his sister to a clothing store and tried to convince her to buy clothes that were less transparent and tight-fi tting but Latifa started crying, upset about the ‘old-woman look’ that she saw her brother trying to enforce on her. Abid argued that in so far as she had chosen to wear a hijab, there were certain things that she needed to respect in order not to ‘contradict herself’. He told her: Hijab doesn’t only mean a veil; it means that you should be decently dressed. But I’m not saying that you should look like an old lady. Th ere are a lot of Muslim women at the university who are smartly dressed in stylish coats and trousers and cool skirts. Th e saleswomen, who was a friend of Abid, intervened and explained to him that his sister would be poked fun at in school if she wore clothes any bigger than size 34. Abid did not contest the existence of peer- pressure among youth and within the framework suggested by the saleswomen he interpreted his sister’s refusal to wear baggy clothes as the result of ‘shame’ and ‘fear’ of being diff erent. He opposed this fear of being diff erent to his older sister’s decision to wear hijab and long skirts at the same age, though, as well as to the fact that, rather than dressing in cool hooded sweaters and skater shoes like his peers, Abid wore suit pants and patent leather shoes in secondary school. He understood these dressing practices as a consequence of his need to ‘stand out’ and ‘be diff erent’, adding that ‘the attention was there anyway’: I mean, the heck, in my family it has never been a problem. If someone bullied me for my clothes, I would tell them to go to hell. We always followed our own trend. For God’s sake, my big sister started wearing the hijab and long skirts when the others were punking it up, with ripped jeans and stuff . It’s extreme how Latifa has to bow to the rules out there. Although Abid described Latifa as not conforming to the rules of hijab (in the sense of dressing modestly), he realized that wearing a scarf in itself marked her out as diff erent, the hijab characterizing her as a ‘nun’ compared to her friends who wore low-cuts, exposed their bellies and dressed in mini-skirts at school Christmas balls. Th e negotiations 200 chapter four between Abid and his sister when it came to what represented proper attire also refl ected the variety of clothing practices and controversies surrounding ‘decency’ and ‘modesty’ encountered among young Muslims. Th e young Muslim women were by no means unanimous about their ways of using the headscarf. Some young women combined the hijab with fashionable tight and revealing clothes, high heels and make-up. By thus embracing aesthetic aspects of sexuality, they sof- tened the distinction between the ‘pure’ covered and the ‘impure’ uncovered woman, so much so that in some instances the headscarf could even become a vehicle for attraction in itself (cf. Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003). Some, like Abid, were more critical of this blur- ring as this way of combining the hijab with aesthetics associated with the West and sexuality was seen as fundamentally contradicting the meaning of the hijab. Wearing a hijab is, thus, associated with (contested) norms of how a proper hijabi woman should dress and behave. In Abid’s, and many other young Muslims’, opinion if you wear a hijab, you should not also go to pubs, hang out with boys or wear tight clothes. Th e fact that wearing a hijab makes one’s religious identity more ‘visible’ to others also places a certain responsibility on hijabi women as representatives of Islam and the Muslim community; being visible they have to be ‘exemplary models’ both for other Muslims and for non- Muslims. By emphasizing the importance of dressing Islamically correctly, while at the same time insisting that it was his sister who had chosen to wear the hijab and that this could be combined with modern stylish clothes, Abid put himself in a mediatory position between his parents and his sister. But at the same time he reproduced the distinction between ‘the proper way of being a Muslim woman’ and a less proper way that blurred the distinction between a covered and an uncovered body. Abid presented the need to respect these norms as a matter of being ‘consistent’ rather than as a religiously defi ned duty. It was the fact that Latifa herself had chosen to wear a hijab that made the norms of dressing ‘Islamically correctly’ binding for her. Th is model of ‘choice’, however, contrasted with Latifa’s own account of why she wore the hijab. In this account the hijab was intimately bound up with her eff orts to achieve greater independence from her family and to avoid pressure being put on her to, for example, dress more modestly or to stop hanging out with her friends. In this respect, Latifa’s use of the hijab was the politics of recognition 201 similar to one that has been pointed out in other studies, where it is argued that some girls instrumentalize the hijab in order to counter the restrictions concerning their movements in public space put on them by parents and/or the ‘ethnic community’ (see, for example, Gaspard and Khosrokhavar 1995). Like many parents, Latifa’s mother worried about becoming estranged from her children; she saw Latifa’s behaviour as diff erent from her own and as expressing diff erent values. She expressed concern about the fact that Latifa was not properly deferen- tial towards her parents. Latifa would speak to them angrily and loudly, sometimes even swearing at them. Th e way Latifa dressed, and the fact that she spoke a language her mother could barely understand, made her mother worry that she would ‘lose’ her and that the family would be viewed negatively by the extended family and the ‘ethnic community’ that she identifi ed with. Since the family was a central value for Latifa’s mother, she worried that her own family would eventually dis- integrate if her children became ‘too Norwegian’. By wearing the hijab, Latifa signalled to her parents that she had not become ‘too Norwegian’ and that she was taking responsibility for her own respectability. She signalled that she could be trusted not to become ‘entirely Norwegian’ – that she would at least hold on to some of the values her parents held dear. In likening his own ‘oppositional clothes’ to his sister’s hijab, Abid’s account ignores the fact that whereas the hijab is linked to particular norms of chastity and respectability, Abid’s own clothes do not perform a similar role. To Abid, clothing appeared as a way of marking diff erence and of constructing a sense of individuality vis-à-vis his peers. It signalled personal integrity and the will to assume a diff erence that ‘was already there’ in terms of, for example, skin colour and name. In contrast to himself and his older sister, he saw his younger sister as ‘trying to pass as’ and be accepted by the Norwegian majority by submitting to the ‘rules out there’. In his account the hijab is seen as a refusal to submit to peer-pressure and as daring to be diff erent. Th is refusal should be seen as related to a religiously motivated understanding that obeying the laws of God is more important than obeying human conventions. At the same time, and without this being necessarily experienced as a contradiction, the refusal should be seen as being related to ethical ideals of authenticity and autonomy according to which it is important to ‘be who you are’ and ‘decide for yourself’. Th e relationship between these diff erent understandings of religious 202 chapter four practice (as subjection to God’s will and as expressions of authenticity and autonomy) will be further developed in Chapter Six. Th is latter case illustrates well the need to place abstract theoriza- tions of the politics of recognition within concrete social contexts and to distinguish between individuals and collectives when speaking about recognition. An important critique of Taylor’s perspective on recognition, stressed most notably by many feminists, is that he moves from the individual’s need for recognition by signifi cant others to the claim that groups pursuing politics of identity would accommodate such individual needs (Benhabib 2002; Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003). Th is confl ation hides the internal diff erences, contradictions and antagonisms found within groups that mobilize around a certain identity which I have pointed towards by discussing the way in which gender, age, generation and ethnicity intersect in the attempts of young Muslims to organize themselves on the basis of adherence to ‘Islam’ and the ways in which these attempts are envisaged in relation to social imaginaries. In negotiating what to wear, Latifa had to face multiple and contending discourses of femininity. Th ese discourses made confl icting demands on her. In order to be a respectable Muslim girl she had to wear loose and decent clothes. In order to be a popular and ‘cool’ adolescent among her peers, she had to wear tight and daring clothes. Th is was not a situation where, as some participants in debates about multiculturalism would perhaps have it, the group hindered an individual from ‘being herself’ or making an individual choice. Latifa’s desire to dress as her peers was, of course, no less structured and socially embedded than her decision to wear the hijab. Her decision re-inscribed forms of power related to consumerism and the sexualization of women’s bodies.45 Latifa’s resistance to wearing the clothes that her parents and her brother would consider properly decent reveals an eagerness to be a part of ‘normality’, as defi ned by the dominant youth culture in her surroundings at school. Th e recognition she seeks here is related not to

45 My argument here is similar to the one made by Abu-Lughod (1990) when she gives the example of a young Bedouin woman who wears sexy lingerie to challenge parental authority and dominant social mores. She suggests that instead of simply reading such acts as moments of opposition to, and escape from, dominant relations of power, these acts should also be understood as re-inscribing alternative forms of power that are rooted in practices of capitalist consumerism and urban bourgeois values and aesthetics (1990: 50). the politics of recognition 203 her ‘diff erence’ as a Muslim, but to her social identities as a ‘youth’, ‘friend’ or a ‘pupil’ (these suggesting that a teenage girl should not dress like an old woman). Th e example shows how Abid and Latifa must orient themselves amid contending discourses and social imaginaries. In this respect, the struggles occasioned by identity politics need to be understood not simply as struggles between those who claim diff erent identities but as struggles within each subject’s eff orts to cope with the multiple and contending discourses it is inserted into. Th e above case also raises important issues with respect to the gendered dynamics of identity politics. It has been argued that misrecognition /group marginality and the reactive identity politics they boost create and reinforce internal gender hierarchies within the group (see, for example, Cohen et al. 1999; Yuval-Davis 1997). Th e hijab of young Muslim women is oft en interpreted within such a perspective as an example of how, in Appadurai’s words, “the honour of women becomes not just an armature of stable systems of cultural reproduction” but also increasingly “a surrogate for the identity of embattled communities of males” (Appadurai 1990: 19). Th e Islamic discourses in contemporary Muslim identity politics place women, in diff erent ways, at the heart of religious, cultural and political identity. Women are not just seen as guaranteeing the biological reproduction of the group, but also as being vital to cultural and religious reproduction (Jacobsen 2002, 2004; Yuval-Davis 1997). Th e centrality of women in biological, social and cultural reproduction intensifi es the visual, spatial and temporal regulation of women’s bodies and sexualities in a diversity of ways. Th is is expressed in the regulation of female clothing as well as in the codifi cation of Islamic principles relating to family life and conjugal relations and in the negative value attributed to ‘Western family life’ which is associated with broken marriages and the break up of family life in general. Th e focus on the hijab and (female) sexuality as the marker par excellence of diff erence no doubt puts a particular weight on women as bearers of Muslim group identity and authenticity.46 In some ways the

46 Th is does not mean that ‘clothing’ is not an aspect of young men’s eff orts at handling Otherness’ at a more individual level. In some Muslim groups, men’s ways of dressing and the beards that they grow make them, like women, visible bearers of Muslim identity. In the NMU and the MSS, however, most of the boys and men wore no visible sign of their engagement with Islam. 204 chapter four

‘defensive position’ of organizations like the NMU and the MSS, and their concern with representation, thus creates certain rules and regulations for the performance of gendered and sexualized identities. As I have shown elsewhere (Jacobsen 2004), however, and as will be clear from the analysis in subsequent chapters, the active participation of women in the struggle for recognition in associations like the NMU and the MSS also provides them with an important collective arena for challenging ‘traditional’ gendered norms and hierarchies on the basis of ‘Islamic authenticity’. As will be shown, the hijab is also central to young women’s self fashioning as pious selves.

Engaging the Norwegian public sphere

“Th ey do not speak for me” As has already been mentioned, the issue of ‘representation’ in public space is central to the politics of identity and recognition. As Asad (2006, 2003) notes, the public sphere is a fi eld governed by power relations which mediates what can be said and not said and draws on particular assumptions and sensibilities. Th e issue is, thus, not only about the question of a group’s ability to mobilize but also about the capacity to be heard, which is linked to the structure of public space. In the last decade the gallery of diff erently positioned people speaking publicly about, or in the name of, Muslims and Islam (such as imams, mosque spokespersons, community leaders, leaders of diff erent organizations, politicians, journalists, academics and artists) has become increasingly diversifi ed. State institutions as well as organizations in civil society play an important role in shaping public space and in authorizing diff erent voices particularly in terms of choosing interlocutors when addressing matters involving Muslims, participating in mosque activities and inviting people to join in government initiated community and dialogue projects such as the so called Value Commission.47 In addition, mass media are central due to the way in which they

47 Th e Value Commission was initiated by the Christian Democrat government in 1998 in what was presented as an attempt to raise the ethical consciousness of the Norwegian population and focus on communal societal values. Th is undertaking became one of the most controversial in recent Norwegian cultural debate. Two prominent Muslims were on the committee (Kebba Secka, at the time the head of the Islamic the politics of recognition 205 picture diff erent groups of people, the political agendas they set and the people they give voice to and silence.48 By framing cases in particular ways, they work both to authorize (e.g. by referring to someone as an important Islamic scholar) and de-authorize (e.g. by referring to someone as a fundamentalist) representatives and points of view. Academics participating in the public debate have also contributed to legitimizing and de-legitimizing diff erent voices as representative of the immigrant and Muslim population and in giving support to various interpretations of Islam.49 Muslim participation in public debate during the 1990s was, to a considerable extent, structured through the opposing subject positions of the ‘imams’ (most oft en male and of the immigrant generation) and their critics (most oft en female and from the second generation). Contests over representation thus had a clear generational and gendered dimension that served to mark the line between the traditional / modern, backwards /progressive and collectivist /individualist. Young Muslims oft en complained that neither of these two types of public fi gure spoke for them. Regarding the imams, they deplored both their lack of suffi cient mastery of the Norwegian language and the

Council of Norway (IRN), and Nasim Riaz, a member of the Contact Group between Immigrants and the Government and the Women’s Group of the IRN). Th e Value Commission Committee also initiated a broader dialogue project in the period 1999– 2000 in which some NMU and MSS members participated. 48 For instance, aft er the covert recording of imams made by Hege Storhaug and Kadra Noor on the issue of female circumcision the imam Kebba Secka had to resign from the Value Commission. 49 One debate that pertinently illustrated this originated in a dispute between the anthropologist Marianne Gullestad and the stand-up comedian Shabana Rehman. Gullestad and Hylland-Eriksen, another Norwegian anthropologist who participated in the debate, argued that Shabana Rehman was not ‘representative’ of immigrant women. It is unclear whether this was meant to indicate that others would be more ‘representative’ of this category as a whole or whether they were arguing for a more pluralist representation that would include a multitude of voices. Another such debate, this time concerning representations of Islam, involved a professor in religious studies and two young Muslims who had written an article on what they saw as the misrepre- sentation of jihad as ‘holy war’ rather than ‘a struggle’ more broadly (Aft enposten 08.04.2006 “Fanatikere må marginaliseres”) Th e professor argued that: “It is wrong when one’s own opinions are presented as information about what Islam ‘really’ stands for”, asserting that the central meaning of jihad in traditional fi qh was, in fact, military war (Aft enposten 14.03.2006 “Misvisende om jihad”). Several Muslims responded to this article, presenting counterarguments and alternative understandings of jihad and arguing that it was strange that the professor denied the believers the right to interpret their own religion (see, for example, Dagbladet 16.03.2006 “Feil om Islam og Jihad”). 206 chapter four

Norwegian social and cultural context and their lack of suffi cient knowledge of Islam (cf. Chapter Five). Regarding the outspoken female critics, many shared their concerns with the traditionalism, backwardness and collectivism of the imams and ‘the immigrant generation’ but simultaneously rejected the way in which criticism was oft en framed as a secularist critique of Islam and as a rejection of the values of the religious community and its traditions. A new subject position appeared in the 1990s in the guise of the so called ‘mosque spokespersons’ who were appointed to serve as ‘public relations managers’ in the larger mosques. Th e position of spokesperson allowed some young Muslims (and, in particular, Abid Raja, who later published the book Talsmannen (2008) ) to enter public debate with some authority but did not secure them authority with regard to religious questions within the community. Norwegian converts have also played an important role in ‘representing’ Islam and Muslims in the public debate, most notably Lena Larsen in her role as the head of the Islamic Council of Norway (cf. Roald 2004). Leaders and individual members of the NMU and the MSS also increasingly came to have a voice in the public debate on matters involving Islam and the Muslim community as well as questions related to immigration and integration. Th ese concerns with representation intersect importantly with concerns with religious authority (see Chapter Five) and contestations over the proper role of Muslims as Norwegian citizens. In the aft ermath of the so called ‘Nadia aff air’ concerning ‘forced marriage’,50 Aydin held a

50 Th e so called Nadia aff air concerned a young woman of Moroccan origin who was allegedly abducted by her parents to be married against her own will. Th e aff air was widely covered by Norwegian media from September/October 1997 onwards (see Næss 2003 for an extensive discussion). Many of my interlocutors were preoccupied by the aff air, some because they knew Nadia and her family, others because they saw the issues of ‘forced marriage’ as a serious matter for the Muslim community to deal with and yet others because of the media coverage and the reactions this generated among their friends, classmates etc. Th e Nadia aff air was an important background event infl uencing the politicization of ‘forced marriages’ in Norway and the action plan against ‘forced marriages’ that the Government presented in 1998 (although this plan was also the result of a broader process initiated by the Ministry of Children and Equality that included contributions from several aff ected parties). Nadia’s parents were taken to court by the Norwegian state on the charge of ‘having forcibly held someone against her will’ ( frihetsberøvelse) (noteworthy here is that although the media spoke of it as a case of ‘forced marriage’ this was not refl ected in the charges made against the parents). Both parents were found guilty and given suspended sentences of one year and three months (the father) and one year (the mother). Social anthropologist Unni Wikan was called upon as an expert witness in the trial against Nadia’s parents. She also participated actively in the media debates and later discussed the Nadia the politics of recognition 207 dars in the NMU on “Home and Family” where he spoke, among other things, about the Islamic obligation of “commanding good and prohibiting evil” (al-amr bil-maruf wa al-nahy an al-munkar). During his intervention Aydin deplored the fact that there was no approved Muslim authority that could come forth in the public debate on ‘forced marriages’ to make clear what Islam says on marriage and the issue of consent.51 Aydin’s comments on the Nadia aff air expressed two related concerns. Th e fi rst was a concern with the lack of Islamic scholars who could authoritatively exercise the Islamic duty of ‘commanding good and prohibiting evil’. Such an authority could have made the correct procedures with respect to marriage from an Islamic point of view known to Muslim thus prohibiting ‘forced marriages’ and encouraging respect and communication between parents and children – an Islamic value Aydin oft en stressed in his darses. Th e second concern was with how such an authority could have been eff ective in challenging the many claims to speak of, and in the name of, Islam in public so that the misconceptions about Islam could be rectifi ed. In the same dars Aydin addressed what he saw as the consequences of this obligation to ‘command good and prohibit evil’ for young Muslims’ participation in the wider society: “If you want to live up to Allah’s commands, it is of no use to isolate yourself in a mountain cot- tage”. In line with this thinking, the NMU and the MSS encouraged their members to participate actively in the political and social life of Norwegian society. Th ere were mobilizations around a range of issues, some of these related to securing the rights of Muslims to practice their religion within the Norwegian context (e.g. guaranteeing access to halal meat in public cafeterias, prayer spaces in universities and colleges, case in several publications (Wikan 2000, 2002). Most of the young Muslims in my study agreed that it was important to protect young people from ‘forced marriages’, but they were simultaneously worried about the eff ects of the Nadia aff air on public opinion and integration policies as well as about the way in which ‘forced marriage’ had come to be associated with Muslims and Islam. 51 Th e Islamic Council of Norway has partly functioned as such an organ and has publicly condemned ‘forced marriages’, ‘honour killings’ and terrorism when these issues have been raised in the public debate. Nevertheless, the Islamic Council does not carry any authority in terms of Islamic scholarship. What Aydin calls for is, thus, an organism made up of scholars who could rule on the issues from the point of view of Islamic law, rather than from the point of view of the diff erent mosques and imams represented in the Council. In 2003 a country-wide association called the Jamiat Ulama Norway was established but the origin of this association and the degree to which it is representative remains unclear; so far the association has only issued statements on a few issues (e.g. halal meat and the determination of the proper day to celebrate eid). 208 chapter four exemption rights from Christian and religious education in schools,52 the right to have Muslim private schools,53 and the right to wear the hijab in working life). Th e NMU and the MSS also engaged in a broader range of social and political issues. Th e MSS, for instance, had a project which involved visiting refugees and asylum seekers living in refugee reception centres. According to Fatima, who was one of those who took the initiative for this project, this was partly inspired by the wish to provide a ‘Muslim alternative’ to the support off ered by various Chris- tian organizations so that Muslim refugees could feel that “there are Muslims here who take care of them – that they have their own people helping them”. Th e NMU and the MSS have also cooperated widely with other religious and non-religious organizations in wider civil society in campaigns against, for instance, racism, violence and war.54 Th e ways in which members in the NMU and the MSS made Muslim identity relevant to what it meant to be an active citizen challenge the ideal typical model of citizenship as a “unity of residency, administrative subjection, democratic participation, and cultural membership” (Benhabib 2002: 180, italics original). As Benhabib rightly notes, the hold of this model upon political and institutional imagination in Western democracies is nowhere more evident than in practices governing immigration, asylum and refugee rights.55 Th e ways in which migrants and their social practices tend to exceed this ideal typical model of citizenship (because of practices such as constructing houses ‘back home’, being involved in politics ‘back home’, marrying ‘back

52 Opinions were divided on the issue of whether Muslim children ought to attend classes in ‘Knowledge of Christianity with Information about Religion and Life-stances’. Many had positive experiences of attending classes on ‘life-stances’ from their own schooling and thought it a good opportunity for young people to get to know and respect each others’ religious traditions. What most seemed to agree about, however, was that the right to exemption should be granted so that individual Muslims could decided for themselves whether they wanted their children to attend or not. Many also saw the confessional basis of the subject as problematic and wanted a more ‘neutral’ and comparative religious education. 53 Independently of whether they would want to send their own children to a Muslim private school or not, most considered that not allowing Muslim private schools when there are other faith-based schools in Norway was discriminatory and counter to the right to religious freedom. 54 Compared to similar youth and student organizations in other European countries, the NMU and the MSS seem well-integrated into the wider Norwegian landscape of organizations, in particular through the Norwegian Children and Youth Council (LNU). 55 For a discussion of citizenship ideals in the Norwegian context see, for example, Brochmann 2003, Gullestad 2002, Sicakkan 2005. the politics of recognition 209 home’) has become an issue in Norwegian politics. From this perspective, what was described in the preceding chapter as the imagined Islamic umma appears as a threat that needs to be controlled rather than as a positive source for identifi cation and solidarity, as it does from the perspective of young Muslims. Th e challenge that Islamic transnationalism poses to the nation state and conventional conceptions of citizenship energizes invocations of a ‘core of common values’ in policy documents and public discourse on immigrant and minority politics in Norway as well as other European countries. National unity appears to need to be restated and legitimized in the face of transnationalism, something which has led some politicians and public debaters to re-launch assimilation as the only viable possibility for achieving societal cohesion and integration in the future.56 Th e way in which young Muslims simultaneously identify with national citizenship and a global umma is not without problems within ‘the national order of things’.57 According to Asad (1993: 266): Th e politicization of religious traditions by Muslim immigrants […] serves to question the inevitability of the absolute nation-state – of its demands to exclusive loyalty and its totalizing cultural projects. Th e question of ‘loyalty’ has been repeatedly raised with respect to Muslims in European nation states. As Van der Veer (2002: 97) writes: Where in the nineteenth century Roman Catholics in Protestant Countries like Britain or Holland were oft en accused of being loyal

56 Th is discourse no doubt presupposes a relation of power between the majority population and the minority populations. Th is relation of power was aptly brought out in a speech Shabana Rehman (a Norwegian Pakistani stand-up comedian) gave to the Norwegian community in Spain (where quite a few, especially elderly, people have settled) on 17 May. In this speech she applied the host /guest script and nationalist arguments for assimilation to Norwegians in Spain whom she jokingly described as living in ghettos, being disinclined to learn the language of the host country and being unwill- ing to integrate into Spanish society and to assimilate Spanish cultural practices and values. She also, in an explicitly rhetorical way, referred to Ustvedt’s article about Henrik Wergeland having died as a Muslim (see Chapter Th ree). Rehman’s speech on tolerance was later referred to as ‘the scandalous speech’ by the Norwegian media, both because of its use of Wergeland and its rhetorical comparison of Norwegians in Spain to immigrants in Norway. 57 Th e expression is taken from Lisa Malkki (1992, 1995), who argues that the ‘metaphysics of sedentarism’ of nationalist ideologies links people to place and nation to territory so that the rootedness of peoples and cultures in ‘their own territories’ comes to be accepted as the normal state of aff airs. 210 chapter four

to ‘the pope in Rome’, Muslims today are either accused of being loyal to Mecca (and receive money from the Saudis) or to their nation-states of origin. Th is is also the case in Norway, as is expressed not least in debates about whether Muslims in the army pose a problem since they are presumed to have loyalties other than to the Norwegian nation state that could be activated in a situation of military confl ict or war. Furthermore, in public debates Muslims and their ‘spokesmen’ are frequently asked to show their allegiance to Norwegian norms and values, and to national law, by condemning acts committed by Muslims in Norway or elsewhere that are in contradiction with these. Th e loyalty of Muslim citizens was also questioned by the Deputy Mayor of Oslo, representing the Progress Party, who proposed a series of measures to enhance integration in 2002, these including the introduction of a so called vow of fi delity upon the acquisition of citizenship and a ten year ‘trial period’. Some of the measures were particularly directed at Muslims since the Deputy Mayor claimed that many Muslims in Norway were loyal primarily to Islam and Muslims and contributed to weakening Norwegian values (Dagsavisen 16.09.2002). Th e suggested measures were controversial and subject to considerable debate in the media and met a reaction from Norwegian Muslims who publicly affi rmed their loyalty to Norway and from others who criticized the Deputy Mayor for contributing to stigmatizing Muslims and to entrenching racist sentiments in the majority population. Th e NMU and the MSS have been regarded largely as a positive development in this respect, representing a more ‘Norwegian’ and ‘progressive’ form of religiosity than that of their parents’ generation and being less tied to particular Muslim ‘back home’ countries. Attention has not only been positive, however. In the aft ermath of 9/11, newspaper articles inquiring into the potential ‘terrorist threat’ in Norway mentioned the student milieu as a potential location for recruitment to extremist organizations and the spread of extremist ideas several times. As one member explained: A lot of us have been frustrated since 9/11. When the newspaper VG writes about the Muhadjirun we just want to knock our heads against the wall,58 because it is so far from the truth. We are all students and have a

58 Al Muhadjirun (‘the immigrants’) is a front group for the radical Islamist group Hizb-ut-tahir, led from Great Britain by the Syrian exile Omar Bakri. Th e movement is the politics of recognition 211

lot to do, and we’re trying to run an organization. We don’t want to spend all our time defending ourselves. Negative attention was also drawn to the MSS when they invited Qazi Hussain Ahmed to give a speech “On the purpose of life” at the university. Th e university newspaper Universitas (01.06.2005) argued that the MSS was furthering intolerance and xenophobia since they chose not to take a stand on Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s political utterances. Th e MSS, for their part, argued that inviting him was not problematic in so far as he was there to speak about religious and not political issues.59 Th e article in Universitas further speculated about whether the refusal of the MSS to position themselves with regard to religious freedom and the death penalty signalled that they had “something to hide” or whether it was based on some “essential misunderstanding” (of what kind is not specifi ed although one might suspect that this refers to a basic misunderstanding of such principles as democracy and the freedom of speech). Qazi Hussain Ahmed’s speech caused much debate among MSS members both before and aft er the event, debates that did not reach the Norwegian public, however. Opinions varied as to whether he had been able to provide ‘good answers’ to political and religious questions or not but many were concerned that the quoting of controversial statements by the media had had a negative impact on the way in which Muslims and Islam were seen by Norwegian society. Transnational migration and the establishment of Muslim minorities in the West do not only challenge Western nation states, however, they also challenge Islamic jurisprudence and the ways in which this has traditionally theorized the issue of Muslims living as minorities in non-Muslim societies (cf. Chapter Th ree). At another and less abstract level, though, young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS have been engaged in refl ecting upon and defi ning the status, duties and responsibilities of Muslim citizenship in Norway. Th e dominant position has known to have branches in Great Britain, the United States, France, Germany and Pakistan, is active on college campuses and promotes its message through educational groups and professional associations (Cesari 2004). In VG 24.04.2002, the leader of Hizb-ut-tahir in Great Britain is cited as saying that his group recruits members in Islamic study circles at the University of Oslo. Th e MSS was the only registered Muslim student organization at the University of Oslo at the time and was subsequently contacted by several national newspapers to comment on these charges. In Aft enposten 24.05.2003, it was indicated that so called ‘sleeping cells’ may be hidden in Muslim student milieus. 59 Interestingly, here a clear-cut distinction is made between the religious and the political, whereas elsewhere the political is said to be encompassed by Islam as a din. 212 chapter four been the one that encourages Muslim youth to participate actively in exerting their rights and duties as citizens by participating in political life, by serving military duty, by conforming to national laws and regulations and by contributing ‘positively to society’. Th e participation of Muslims in a non-Muslim political community has occasionally been presented as a problem,60 and sometimes the possibility of establishing partly autonomous legal arrangements for Muslims was suggested at conferences and seminars. Young Muslims mostly regarded such suggestions as problematic because of the diffi culties involved in guaranteeing that such arrangements would not just institutionalize particular cultural interpretations of Islam or serve the interests of particular groups (men, elders).61 Refl ecting on the issue of Muslim citizenship in a non-Muslim context, Aydin, one of the founders of the NMU, suggested in a dars that Norwegian Muslims should apply, in a positive way, the Islamic principle of integrating all that did not contradict the prohibitions of the Koran. Addressing the issue of ‘what Allah likes and dislikes’, he distinguished between the universal and unchangeable and the particularis- tic and changeable in Islamic law. Based on the distinction between fard (what is prescribed), haram (what is proscribed) and mubah (what is allowed),62 Aydin explained that the proscribed and the prescribed

60 Whether Muslims can be members of political parties was discussed in many Muslim communities but mainly before 1999 when Al-Qaradawi, the then president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, expressed this, and the expressing of their voting power, as a duty of Muslims in the West living in modern times (Roald 2001a). Both the NMU and the MSS consistently encouraged democratic participation through voting at elections and generally viewed membership in existing political parties, in which a few were also active members, in positive terms. 61 In Britain, for example, the Union of Muslim Organizations, representing a small fraction of British Muslims, has argued for full communal autonomy in matters of personal law. Th ey base their claims on the recognition in Islamic law of the right to autonomy of strangers or sojourners (dhimmis) in Muslim territories. In Britain there is also a self-appointed sharia council which acts as mediator between couples and interprets Islamic disputes (as do many other ulema (religious scholars) ) (Bano 1999). In Norway the advantages and disadvantages of such councils have been discussed in relation to the issue of Muslim women’s access to religiously valid divorces. Whereas some have argued that a Norwegian sharia council would make it easier to obtain divorce for women from ‘conservative’ Muslim countries, others have argued against the idea that Islamic law should be given legitimacy even if incorporated within the frames of Norwegian law in the Norwegian context. 62 As one of the other attendees at the meeting objected, acts are usually classifi ed according to fi ve diff erent principles: prescribed (fard), forbidden (haram), recommended (sunna, mandub), indiff erent or permissible (mubah, halal) and reprehensible (makruh). Aydin’s response was that this division into fi ve was at a less general level and the politics of recognition 213 only make up about 10 per cent of the sharia, meaning that a vast area remained open for men to make their own situational and changeable laws. Th e traditional schools of law diff er with regard to mubah, but fard and haram are universal and unchangeable. Aydin concluded that as a consequence of this the Sharia could in a way be said to be something created by humans, thus allowing for the possibility that certain aspects of it could be erroneous, but simultaneously added that this was a controversial position on which there were diff erent opinions.63 To Aydin and the other young Muslims, however, the relationship between Islamic law and national law was of less concern than the question of how they could live their lives religiously in a non-Muslim society. In so far as questions of fi qh were addressed, this was most oft en in terms of guidelines for everyday practices. What are the situations for wearing a hijab in non-Muslim societies? How should Muslims relate to the gender mixed nature of Norwegian society? Is it alright to go to school parties if one does not drink alcohol? Are women entitled to work within male-dominated professions? Is serving pork to non- Muslims haram? Does Islam allow plastic surgery? Can salah be post- poned if one is in the middle of a football match? What should a Muslim woman do if her parents will not let her marry a Muslim of a diff erent ethnic origin? Is chatting on the Internet haram? With respect to the position of the NMU and the MSS on such issues, Aydin asserted that it could be described as a ‘moderate fi qh’ or a ‘middle way’: “Th ere is a large spectrum of fi qh and most people pick the extremes while we try to pick things that are in the middle”.64 By ‘picking things in the middle’ young Muslims sought to envisage Islamically correct ways of living within a non-Muslim context. In so doing, they engaged in the ongoing reform of the Islamic tradition.

that a main distiction could be maintained between what is prescribed, proscribed and the larger grouping of acts of which there are no mention in the texts. 63 As Brinckley Messick notes (1992), what he calls ‘purists’ of all eras, including many contemporary ‘fundamentalists’, have made such a distinction between the divine sharia, defi ned as God’s comprehensive and perfect design for His community, and a humanly produced sharia or, more precisely, the corpus of knowledge known as fi qh (usually translated ‘jurisprudence’), a necessarily fl awed attempt to understand and implement that design. In this gap between divine plan and human understanding, Messick argues, “lay the perennially fertile space of critique, the locus of an entire politics articulated in the idiom of the shari’a” (Messick 1992: 17). 64 Th is position can be seen to refl ect the ‘middle ground’ (wasatiya) ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. 214 chapter four

Citizenship and human rights Th e hold of the ideal typical model of citizenship, understood as membership in a national, identity-based community, upon political and institutional imagination and the discursive framework it creates for young Muslims’ identity politics and claims to recognition is well brought out in a speech on integration given by Athar Akram,65 at the time the head of the NMU, at a conference held by Forum for Municipal Refugee Work (Utrop 02.12.2002). Akram starts by presenting himself as a successfully integrated immigrant. While his parents were born and raised in Pakistan, Akram himself was born and raised in Norway. Well knowing that ‘language’ is repeatedly cited by politicians, researchers and people in general as critical to integration, Akram stresses the fact that Norwegian is his primary language and that he speaks a Western Norwegian dialect.66 He further emphasizes the estrangement he feels during holidays in Pakistan, his friendship with ethnic Norwegians, his typical student life experiences in a shared fl at (‘com- mune’) and, fi nally, his successful integration into the labour market. One by one he thus challenges stereotypical pictures of ‘the immigrant’, in fact managing to demonstrate not only that is he ‘well integrated’ but also that he is successful according to general Norwegian standards of success. It is worth noting the way in which Akram accentuates that which makes him ‘like’ (lik) the ethnic majority Norwegians of his generation. Gullestad (2006) has argued that in the particular form that ‘egalitarian individualism’ takes in Norway being ‘alike’ is a precondition for being ‘equal’. Th e central value concept here is ‘likhet’, meaning ‘likeness’, ‘similarity’, ‘identity’ or ‘sameness’. ‘Likhet’ is also the most common

65 Th is understanding of citizenship as membership in a national identity-based community is also a more or less explicit assumption in some ‘immigrant research’. For instance, the Norwegian anthropologist Wikan (1995) argues that, in her opinion, people who have a Norwegian passport but who dissociate themselves from fundamental Norwegian values and do not learn Norwegian are Norwegian only in ‘name’ and not in the sense of contributing to the community. According to Wikan, those who are citizens only in name are ‘convenience-citizens’ (beleilighetsborgere) who benefi t from Norwegian welfare without being committed to the community. She furthermore argues that such ‘convenience-citizens’ contribute to xenophobia in the population. 66 In Norway, speaking a specifi c local dialect is considered an important part of a persons belonging and identity; such dialects are generally regarded as more authentically Norwegian than the standard language (Gullestad 2003: 536). the politics of recognition 215 translation for ‘equality’. According to Gullestad, the idea of ‘likhet’ implies that, “social actors must consider themselves as more or less the same in order to feel of equal value” (2006: 170). In everyday practice this oft en leads to an interactional style characterized by ‘imagined sameness’, in which commonalities are emphasized while diff erences are played down. In Gullestad’s view, this ‘imagined sameness’ is particularly eff ective in structuring the relationship between majority Norwegians and ‘immigrants’ since the failure to achieve imagined sameness, or the assumption that someone is ‘too diff erent’, oft en leads to avoidance. Equality conceived as sameness (imagined sameness) also underpins a growing ethnifi cation of national identity, Gullestad argues. Th e focus on a common culture, ancestry and origin implies an invisible barrier to the acceptance of ‘immigrants’ as unmarked citizens who ‘belong’ in Norway (2006: 190). In line with Gullestad, one could then argue that Akram attempts to establish an ‘imagined sameness’ with the listeners (or majority Norwegians) through his speech, this as a precondition for the claim to ‘equal dignity’ and ‘equal rights’ that follows: Like every adult person in this country I have my own opinions and am allowed to make my proper choices and decisions. Th ose are my fundamental rights: to freedom of expression, including freedom of religion. Th ese rights, and the rights of minorities to retain their distinctiveness, are essential to any debate on integration – an aspect I think receives too little attention. For what happens to the picture of the well- integrated Athar when I confess to being a believing Muslim? (Akram 2002: 2) Akram demands to be accepted as both a Muslim and a fully integrated Norwegian citizen at the same time. By starting his speech with the Islamic opening formula “Bismillah! In Th e Name of Allah, Th e Most Gracious, Th e Most Merciful”, pronounced in Norwegian and in front of a non-Muslim public, Akram performatively establishes himself as a Muslim Norwegian citizen. Akram is not only demanding to be recognized in terms of his particularity as a Muslim but also in terms of his universal rights as a human being and a Norwegian citizen. Underlying his claim is the principle of the universal equality of human beings that constitutes the basis for an identical basket of rights. What we are asked to simultaneously recognize, then, is the equal dignity of Muslims as individual human beings (what Taylor calls ‘the politics of equal dignity’) and their distinctiveness from everyone else, this related to their 216 chapter four unique identity as Muslims (what Taylor calls ‘the politics of diff erence’) (cf. Taylor 1994).67 While Akram consciously confronts the ‘imagined sameness’ of Norwegian national identity by claiming to be both a ‘believing Muslim’ and an integrated Norwegian citizen, the extent to which his speech really challenges this imagined sameness and the attendant notion of citizenship as a unity of residency and cultural membership is, nevertheless, contestable. Akram’s inscription of himself in a shared ‘Norwegianness’ is no doubt an eff ort to counter stereotypical representations of Muslims by showing that they, like him, can be perfectly integrated citizens. However, in so far as Akram sees Muslim beliefs and practices as a part of the distinctiveness that minorities – in the name of universal human rights – should be allowed to retain (and not a part of what makes him a ‘good Norwegian citizen’), he seems to uphold the notion of a homogeneous national community in which being Muslim is marked as ‘diff erence’ (and not part of what defi nes the national community, e.g. religious pluralism). Claiming the right to be ‘diff erent’ is thus dependent on upholding and sharing in ‘the sameness’ of the imagined Norwegian community. Th e example thus illustrates an inherent problem in countering hegemonic discourses through which dominant categories (of sameness and diff erence and of normality) are reproduced in the very act of resisting them. Akram’s speech also draws attention to the ambivalent relationship between human rights and citizenship rights. In politics, the value of ‘the national’ tends to exceed that of other imagined communities and republican sentiments; minority groups are, thus, compelled to appeal to ‘the national’ to argue for their rights (whether this be in terms of belonging to a particular nation state, as in the case of Norwegian Muslim identity, or as constituting a nation in itself, such as for the Nation of Islam or ‘Black Nationalism’ more generally) (Gilroy 1993; Parker et al. 1992).68 Th is is well brought out by the way in which Akram

67 Being a believing Muslim, marrying by arrangement and wearing the hijab are examples Akram uses of the basic right a citizen has to freedom of expression, freedom of belief and the right to ‘be diff erent’ from what is ‘common’ in Norway. 68 But this does not imply that their identifi cation as Norwegian Muslims is merely a strategic move directed towards ‘recognition’. As we have seen in earlier chapters, there are important ways in which Muslim identity is being nationalized ‘on the ground’ as a consequence of it being articulated by young Norwegian Muslims like Akram, in the Norwegian language and with references to important issues in contemporary Norwegian popular culture. the politics of recognition 217 strives to establish his legitimacy as a Norwegian citizen (a status that is formally guaranteed by his Norwegian citizenship but nevertheless somehow precarious because of the way in which he and other Muslims of immigrant background ‘exceed’ the dominant model of citizenship) before claiming his universal human rights to religious freedom and ‘diff erence’. Th is brings out the paradoxical relationship between universal human rights and the nation state. To quote Agamben (1995: 126), who refers to Arendt on the issue: In the system of the nation-state, the so-called sacred and inalienable rights of man show themselves to lack every protection and reality at the moment in which they can no longer take the form of rights belonging to citizens of a state. Agamben theorizes this ambivalence between homme and citoyen with respect to refugees analysed in terms of ‘bare life’ (homo sacer). However, his argument also illuminates the ways in which those who are ‘ambivalent citizens’ must raise their claims on the basis of their national citizenship rather than on their ‘humanity’ (cf. Asad 2003; Baumann 1996).

Identity politics and socio-economic inequality

Th e identity politics of young Muslims in Oslo, as elsewhere in Europe, centre on questions concerning the recognition of cultural and religious diversity. Th is concern is refl ected in a large body of academic literature on Islam and cultural diversity, this coming together in debates on ‘recognition’, ‘identity politics’ and ‘multiculturalism’. Some scholars, in particular those writing from a (post-)Marxist perspective, have criticized this focus on issues of cultural and religious identity and diff erence on the grounds that this blurs what is assumed to be the more fundamental question of socio-economic inequality.69 Fraser (1997, 1998a) is also critical of the one-sided focus on cultural injustice in much contemporary work on ‘recognition’ and multiculturalism.

69 According to Bourdieu and Wacquant, for instance, “the woolly and spongy debate around multiculturalism” is a form of “cultural imperialism” in which particularisms from the American academic debate are misrecognized as universals. Th e American and European debates about ‘multiculturalism’, in their view, blur the fact that what is principally at stake “is not the recognition of marginalized cultures by academic canons but access to the instruments of (re)production of the middle and upper classes” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1999: 42). 218 chapter four

Writing from the perspective of normative political philosophy, she sees the need to address both issues of redistribution and cultural recognition. A main point in her argument is that it is necessary to maintain an analytical distinction between redistribution and recognition in order to theorize the tensions and dilemmas that may occur in diff erent groups’ claims to justice. Such tensions and dilemmas are particularly poignant with respect to what Fraser calls ‘bivalent’ communities, that is those which suff er both from economic and cultural injustice in such a way that neither of these may be seen as an indirect eff ect of the other, both being fundamental and genuine (Fraser 1998a: 27). Young Muslims in Norway may be said to form a ‘bivalent’ collective in Fraser’s terms in that their position in society is shaped by cultural and socio- economic relations of power that are not directly reducible to each other but which are nevertheless intimately linked. What I want to do here is not to pursue this as a theoretical discussion, but to pay some attention to the ways in which young Muslims themselves speak about the relationship between social inequality and recognition and how these latter may be seen as intertwined with processes of social mobility. Studies from Muslim countries have argued that Islamic revivalism is oft en entangled with socio-economic inequality and processes of social mobility. Eickelman and Piscatori point to the great socio- economic and class diversity among people who are attracted to “contemporary Muslim protest movements” in the Muslim world but nevertheless argue, in a manner indebted to the so called relative- deprivation hypothesis, that they appeal to mainly young, urban and well-educated people who “sense a gap between the status quo and their aspirations” and “who feel that their upward mobility has been thwarted by economic and political policies and conditions” (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996: 110). Socio-economic marginalization has been seen as an important factor in some young Muslims’ religious engagement in Europe (Kepel 1994, 1987; Khosrokhavar 1997). In the French context, for instance, both Kepel and Khosrokhavar have seen Islamization and communitarian identity movements among Muslim youth as an answer to the numerous socio-economic problems Muslim youngsters face in the banlieues (suburbs). However, the comparative literature on Muslims in Europe seems to indicate, in line with Eickelman and Piscatori’s assessment, a great degree of socio-economic and class diversity among youths who are engaged in revivalist and/or other Muslim identity movements in Europe. A relevant question to the politics of recognition 219 pose is, then, how young Muslims’ activism in organizations like the NMU and the MSS articulates with socio-economic structurings and patterns of socio-economic mobility. I have already argued in an earlier chapter that the socio-economic integration of Muslim immigrants into low-skilled manual work, as well as the (racialized and culturalized) social organization of labour, housing and education, structures the social position and conditions of possibility of immigrants and their descendants in Norway. Th eir access to the instruments of (re)production of the middle and upper classes is more restricted than that of their non-immigrant peers (e.g. with respect to education and employment; cf. Chapter Two). I have already noted that the Muslim Youth of Norway and the Muslim Student Society mainly attracted youth who aspired to be upwardly mobile in terms of education, professional life, economic security and social standing within Norwegian society.70 Th e ambition to mobility tended to be articulated both individually and in terms of the need for ‘Muslims’ to ameliorate their social standing within Norwegian society. Th e young identifi ed the construction of Muslims as Others and the stereotypes attached to them in public discourse as one major hindrance for socio-economic mobility. On the one hand, they worried that misrecognition could cause self-hatred and low self-esteem among young Muslims, preventing them from seeking a career or pushing them towards socially unacceptable behaviour. Th e violence perpetrated by so called gangs and juvenile criminality more generally was oft en explained as a consequence of misrecognition and its material eff ects. On the other hand, young Muslims worried that misrecognition prevented youth with an immigrant background, and especially those who were ‘visible’ Muslims (e.g. those wearing the hijab, but also those marked out by their name and skin colour) from receiving equal opportunities within education and the labour and housing market. As one young woman told me aft er having been interviewed for a job in the national television organization, “If this was England I would have gotten it. Th ere they are used to reporters wearing a hijab”.

70 However, one might expect socio-economic injustice to be more acutely felt by young immigrants who were born and raised in Norway, since these are the people who most oft en see their future within this country and not in terms of an eventual ‘return’ ‘back home’. Social status is, thus, increasingly understood in relation to the Norwegian social context and not to social hierarchies ‘back home’. 220 chapter four

Although young Muslims saw misrecognition as something thwart- ing their socio-economic integration and mobility in society, such processes alone did not provide them with a satisfying explanation of what it is that more generally thwarts their social mobility. To some extent, the socio-economic position of Muslims in Norwegian society was also seen as being ‘the fault’ of Muslim immigrants themselves. Refl ecting a widespread popular discourse on immigrants, the Muslim population was oft en characterized in terms of ‘backwardness’, traditionalism, lack of education, lack of understanding of Norwegian society and poor moral standards. Some immigrant parents were, according to this understanding, perceived to be setting a bad example for their children in so far as they, despite being Muslims, owned pubs, sold haram food and drinks in their shops and consumed these at home or took advantage of the social security system. Furthermore, they were assumed to ‘stick to themselves’ and lack suffi cient knowledge of Norwegian society. Th e practices and social status of this category of Muslim immigrants were seen both as providing bad role models internally in the Muslim community and as degrading the image of Muslims in society at large.71 Distancing themselves from this category of Muslim immigrants, the young Muslims I worked with oft en saw it as their task to be ‘role models’ both for other Muslims and for society at large. Th ey wanted to show that it was possible to be both Muslim and successful in relation to education and work, both a good Muslim and a well-integrated Norwegian citizen, in other words. Th e image that the NMU and the MSS wished to convey of the good Muslim – to paraphrase Schmidt’s characterization of the image of a good Muslim among educated Muslims in the US (1998: 85) – fulfi ls the requirements of the [Norwegian] middle-class ideal: a well-defi ned family structure, honesty and cleanliness (a good Muslim does not lie, is honest in business and takes his turn cleaning the staircase in the building where he lives) and respectability (in terms of being a good worker, getting a good education, being law-abiding and caring for one’s children and contributing to their education). Th e identity politics of young Muslims thus involves defi ning diff erence not only vis-à-vis the non-Muslim majority, but also vis-à-vis

71 Schmidt (1998) makes a similar argument with respect to how a well-educated group of Arabs and Muslims living in the Chicago suburbs distanced themselves from the practices and social status of the inner city Muslims. the politics of recognition 221 those Muslims who in a sense substantiate the negative stereotyping of Muslim immigrants in the majority discourse. Th e experience of being perceived of as ‘one of them’ energizes an insistence on being ‘special’ compared to ‘other Muslim immigrants’, both as individuals and in terms of how they see their own families and close social relations. Trying to change themselves in order to change negative stereotypes is, however, a somewhat ambivalent strategy. Th eir own perception of themselves as ‘special’ in a positive sense and other Muslim immigrants as ‘typical’ in a negative sense inevitably confi rms rather than challenges the stereotypes about Muslim immigrants in general. Th eir project, then, runs the risk of essentializing and homogenizing the Muslims associated with the traditional, illiterate and rural. Seeing themselves as fulfi lling an important void with respect to the education of Muslim youth, the NMU aimed to attract youth who, as they said, ‘fall outside’ of society and have no one ‘who looks aft er them’. Th e NMU was not, however, able to reach this group to any signifi cant extent. New members were predominantly recruited from among socially well-adjusted youngsters and not from among those with a record of social or criminal deviance. As previously noted, the majority of members were also well educated and came from families who were more educated than the average for the Muslim immigrant population. Th is to a certain extent distinguishes the NMU from its counterparts in other European countries such as France where organizations like the Jeunes Musulmans de France have attracted a broader spectrum of youth, including economically and socially marginalized youth from the disfavoured banlieus around cities like Marseille and Paris (Jacobsen 1999; Khosrokhavar 1997, 2004). Following on from this discussion, I would argue that even though the identity politics engaged by the NMU and the MSS has focused on questions of recognition rather than socio-economic injustice, these concerns were intimately linked as questions of recognition and identity were seen as having real material consequences. Th e question nevertheless remains whether identity politics mobilized around Islam is eff ective in bringing about changes in the distributive area. In her discussion of recognition and distribution Fraser (1998a) argues that those who suff er both cultural and economic injustice encounter a dilemma in that they must simultaneously claim and deny their specifi - city. Th e politics of recognition oft en involves claims that call attention to, and sometimes performatively create, the putative specifi city of one group, then affi rming the value of that specifi city. As we have seen, the 222 chapter four identity politics of young Muslims exemplifi es this strategy, as they mobilize to obtain a positive revaluation of Islam and Muslim identity in the majority society. On the other hand, though, redistribution involves claims about equality and entails an eff ort to make the putative specifi city of groups irrelevant with respect to, for example, paid labour, housing and education. Longva (2003) argues that earlier political struggles for equality in the Norwegian context, notably in the gender area, have succeeded most notably by claiming ‘sameness’ rather than ‘diff erence’. It is, thus, questionable whether an identity politics based on Islam will be eff ective in reducing the socio-economic inequality existing between Muslim immigrants and their descendants and the non-immigrant population, in so far as this is formulated as part of one’s ‘right to be diff erent’. If we pay attention to the individual level, the question of whether Muslim activism may enhance social mobility is also ambivalent. As I have argued, the ‘ethos’ of reformist Islam, as it was articulated within the NMU and the MSS, was in many ways dis- tinctly middle class and as such it could stimulate individuals towards choosing mobile career paths or becoming more ‘respectable’ (middle- class) citizens. On the other hand, and in particular with respect to women, the burden of ‘representing’ a Muslim specifi city in public spaces (e.g. the hijab) may hinder individual social mobility in so far as cultural misrecognition and social mechanisms of material inequality related to housing, employment and education continue to reinforce each other.

Th e politics of recognition and the emergence of new political subjects Th e identity politics of young Muslims is energized and shaped in important ways by the contradictions inherent in Norwegian discourses on cultural diversity and state politics in this area along with the simultaneous assimilation and culturalization these entail. Expectations that the Norwegian citizen be a ‘loyal’ and ‘participating’ part of the national community, and the state’s eff orts to ‘integrate’ those who are assumed not to be such citizens, contribute to politiciz- ing religious and cultural diff erences. Integration policies, and the wider social imaginaries in and through which they are put into eff ect, notably the Othering of Muslims and the construction of an exclusionary national ‘We’, hence become the basis for the mobilization of a diverse range of identity politics of diff erent kinds. the politics of recognition 223

Th e politics of identity engaged by the NMU and the MSS implied the construction of particular kinds of political subject positions that both reproduced and challenged existing social imaginaries and power structures. Th e social imaginaries in the dominant discourse on diff erence constructed Muslims as people outside of the Norwegian imagined moral community and attributed a range of negative stereotypes to immigrants in general and Muslims in particular. Young Muslims’ experiences of being categorized on the basis of this discourse energized a politics of identity in relation to both Norwegian and Muslim Others. Th is form of identity politics is based on a modern notion of identity as something vulnerable to misrecognition from others. Challenging dominant representations of Muslims and Islam and off ering alternative representations is, thus, a way of achieving recognition and ameliorating the situation, also in socio-economic terms, of those whose lives are aff ected by cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect. As it does in the case of the NMU and the MSS, such identity politics oft en involve an essentialization of ‘Islam’ and a ‘defensive position’ which idealizes Islam and Muslim identity. Th is, I have argued, may impose particular normative scripts on individuals and in particular on women who, in the process of marking out sameness and diff erences, oft en come to represent and visually embody the borders between imagined communities. Young Muslims’ identity politics is involved in a simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of broad identity categories. Th ey raise claims both to equal dignity (a universal basket of rights) and to the recognition of their particular identity as Muslims and their right to retain their distinctiveness and live their lives religiously. Th ese claims are riddled with a set of intertwined and overlapping dynamics to do with the relationships between identity and diff erence, individual and group, national citizenship and transnationalism, recognition and distribution. Th e embedding of this politics of recognition in a fi eld tensed between diff erent social imaginaries (including transnational relationships to ‘back home’ and the ‘global community of Muslims’) creates particular challenges for citizenship models that are based on the ideal model of a unity of residency, administrative subjection, democratic participation, and cultural membership. Th e active reference to and use of an Islamic framework to oppose cultural domination, non-recognition and disrespect not only inscribes Muslim identity into a politics of recognition, though, it also means that this politics comes to be 224 chapter four framed as a religious duty and obligation central to young Muslims’ religious practice. Challenging dominant representations of Islam and Muslims is conceptualized as jihad and dawa, with the hijab becoming a vehicle for asserting ‘pride’ and speaking about the experience of misrecognition. Similarly, active participation in Norwegian society is conceptualized as a religious duty in a way that interacts with and challenges dominant models of citizenship. As a normative framework, the Islamic tradition thus has certain consequences for how young Muslims’ quest for recognition comes to be shaped. Although acknowledging the importance of experiences of misrecognition as importantly energizing the identity politics mobilized by young Muslims around Islam, this chapter has already indicated that it would be insuffi cient to see the Muslim activism of youth in the NMU and the MSS simply as a ‘reactive’ identity politics in relation to dominant social imaginaries in Norwegian society. Invoking Salvatore and Mahmood, I have argued that what I have discussed here as a politics of identity and recognition has to also be understood in relation to ‘the reform and reconstruction of Muslim traditions’ and attempts at living religiously. Th e religious identities and practices that are central to identity politics are, thus, not only ‘reactions to’ misrecognition, but go together with the construction and disciplination of an Islamic ethical and moral subject, a theme that will be further developed in Chapter Six (cf. Mahmood 2005). Before we move on to this, however, the next chapter addresses the themes of knowledge and authority and continues to elaborate on some of the issues addressed in this chapter, while preparing for the next. Producing alternative representations of Islam and Muslims in order to counter misrecognition is seen to depend on having suffi cient and correct knowledge of Islam and on transmitting this knowledge to others through, for example, dawa work and exemplary conduct. How, then, do young Muslims engage with the Islamic tradition in their eff orts to acquire and distribute such knowledge? Th e chapter discusses contestations related to defi ning what Islam is and what being a Muslim entails as well as the ways in which young Muslims re-appropriate the Islamic tradition and how, in doing so, they engage the potentials of transformation, reform and resistance within this discursive tradition. In this way it continues to focus on the intersecting similarities and diff erences (related to, for example, gender, generation and social status) that come to the fore as attempts are made to establish authorized interpretations of what Islam is and what it means to live as a Muslim within structures of authority that are currently involved in a process of transformation and negotiation. CHAPTER FIVE

THE QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE: INDIVIDUALIZATION AND RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY

Th is chapter will discuss some aspects of the social organization of religious knowledge, how such knowledge is transmitted, acquired, distributed and used in debates and contestations about a variety of issues pertaining to what Islam is and how one should live as a Muslim. Many of the activities of the NMU and the MSS were organized around acquiring and transmitting knowledge of Islam, a concern that was also refl ected in individual eff orts to acquire more knowledge of Islam by a variety of means. In (post)modern societies like Norway the transmission of Islamic traditions proceeds within a context of an ambivalently secularized society, where mass education, mass mediation and migration create certain conditions of possibility for the production, distribution, regulation and authorization of Islamic knowledge. Th ese changes are not unique to Norway. Eickelman and Piscatori (1996) have noted a more general shift aff ecting Muslim traditions worldwide, including a move from person to ‘print’, a gradual erosion of the position of the traditional ulema, the advent of new communication technologies as media of transmission for Islamic traditions and a pluralization of authorizing discourses and institutions. Th ese changes, they argue, open new spaces for religious debate and contestation and contribute to an ‘objectifi cation’ of Islam that impacts on the ways in which Muslims in contemporary societies engage with and revise religious traditions. What are the consequences of such changing conditions of possibility for the ways in which young Muslims in Oslo relate to the Islamic tradition? In the literature on Muslims in Europe, several writers have described young Muslims’ relationship to Islam in terms of broader tendencies towards ‘individualization’. What is meant by the term ‘individualization’ is sometimes unclear, though, and diff erent authors tend to use the term in various diff erent ways (cf. Peter 2006). In this chapter, I will discuss the issue of individualization in relation to processes of knowledge acquisition and structures of religious authority. I attempt to give an account of how young Muslims in Oslo acquire knowledge by, for example, listening to their parents, discussing with their friends, 226 chapter five reading books, surfi ng the Internet, listening to conference lectures, khutbas and darses and how such knowledge is distributed and contested between genders, generations, specialists and non-specialists. I also pay attention to the institutional and socio-cultural underpinnings that generate particular patterns of distribution and authorization of knowledge and to the eff ects of globalization and new communication technologies on such processes. What kinds of relationships do young Muslims establish to authorizing Islamic discourses and Islamic authorities and how do they use and authorize their knowledge of Islam when they talk about or discuss Islamic ‘truth’? In this respect attention will be paid to how hierarchies of class, gender and generation and socialization more generally infl uence readings of Islam and to the diff erent competencies and capacities that people have for asserting their view of what Islam is and should be and for making such assertions socially eff ective (cf. Hervieu-Léger 2000; Mahmood 2005). Debate and criticism have arguably been a part of the Islamic discursive tradition since its inception, meaning that confrontations are not spurred uniquely by the encounter between Muslims and non-Muslims or between diff erent Islamic discourses (cf. Asad 2003; Bowen 1993). Such processes do, however, seem to be stimulated and transformed by current processes of modernization and globalization as well as the social dynamics operating in the spaces created by transnational migration. More precisely, the space for such debate and criticism has been extended as the modern conditions of mass education and mass mediation have made an increasing number of people familiar with Islamic texts and doctrinal reasoning. On this basis young Muslims engage in debate about theological and doctrinal issues that were once the provenance of male religious scholars. My argument in this chapter will be that focusing on Islam as a discursive tradition allows for the analysing of ‘challenges’ to Islamic knowledge and authority and ‘constraints’ that continue to place restrictions on young Muslims and to produce attempts at coherence and normativity within the Islamic tradition. By considering the religiosity of young Muslims to be taking shape within a discursive tradition, an alternative perspective to individualization is off ered for understanding processes of change in Islam (cf. Amir- Moazami and Salvatore 2003). As will be shown, the production of Islamic truths and essentials emerges as an active and structured process of contestation that must be understood in relation to how people are diff erently positioned in society with respect to, for example, age, gender and cultural and religious Otherness. individualization and religious authority 227

In the fi rst part of the chapter I explore how the socio-cultural context in which Islam is transmitted to young Muslims contributes to the ‘objectifi cation’ and ‘normativization’ of ‘Islam’ and how this energizes a search for ‘Islamic knowledge’ on the part of young Muslims. Drawing on among others Hervieu-Léger’s (2005) discussion of ‘religious bricolage’ and how it is constrained by external and internal limits, I argue that this search for knowledge may be seen to proceed as a form of ‘restricted bricolage’ by means of which young Muslims (assert their right to) put together their beliefs and practices from a wide fi eld of religious discourse. Such restricted individual bricolage is contained not least by attempts at coherence and by particular procedures for the authorization of ‘truth’ within the Islamic discursive tradition. In the second part of the chapter, then, I discuss the consequences of migration, mass education and mass mediation for patterns of authority and analyse how ‘correct Islam’ is made an object of contestation and how diff erent interpretations of Islam come to be accepted as authoritative. Th e last part of the chapter investigates the relationship between knowledge and belief and discusses the challenges posed by modern science to religious belief. How is the relationship between Islamic knowledge and modern secular science negotiated and how do these discursive traditions articulate with each other as points of authorization with regard to the construction of ‘truth’?

Religious knowledge and refl exivity

Intergenerational disputes: Umar disagrees with his father Umar is eighteen years old and the oldest of six siblings. He was born into a Muslim Berber family in the Nador area of northern Morocco. When Umar was fi ve years old his father, who had been working in Norway for several years, decided to bring his wife and children to set- tle permanently in Norway. Umar’s grandfathers from both his father’s and his mother’s sides were respected men in the local community in Morocco; one was a local religious leader and the other worked in the regional administration. Umar’s father is a pious man and continues to follow the Islamic practices that were handed down to him by his parents and the local community in Morocco where he grew up. Whenever the workload in his restaurant allows, he attends Friday prayers at the Moroccan mosque and contributes actively to raising money for mosque activities. Umar himself recounts how he did not take his religion seriously until he started upper secondary school: “I knew that I was a Muslim 228 chapter five and shouldn’t eat pork and such things, but it was like I just knew, but I didn’t know why”. During his childhood he went to Koran classes led by a ‘spiritual leader’ who was a friend of his father. At the age of seven, Umar’s uncle taught him how to pray but it was not until he turned sixteen that he had what he refers to as his “religious breakthrough”. Umar underlines that the breakthrough was related to a growing concern with the contemporary situation of Muslims around the world and a growing awareness that ‘something needed to be done’. It was not an admonition from people around him that told him to start taking religion more seriously, he stresses, but an ‘inner voice’. Gradually, he started to practise the fi ve daily prayers and became concerned about living his life within the frames of what is haram and ‘halal’ and about acquiring more knowledge of Islam. Umar describes his search for Islamic knowledge as something he did ‘on his own’. He was a quick learner, and soon started to love his religion, taking it in as an encompassing part of his life. Umar explains his urge to approach Islam ‘on his own’ with reference to the ‘narrow- mindedness’ resulting from divisions within the Muslim community, invoking the ‘original’ fl exibility of fi qh: If I had gone to the Moroccans, they would have taught me their ways. In Sunni Islam the four schools of law were originally more open. Th e learned used to say that if you fi nd something in my law sources that is wrong and something in another that is right, you should choose the school of law that your conscience tells you to follow.1 Nowadays, people are more narrow-minded. A Moroccan who follows the Maliki school disapproves of a Pakistani who follows the Hanafi school, saying that they have their ways of practising and we have ours. I don’t approve of

1 Umar refers to the debate about ikhtilaf – the respect for normative pluralism – that surrounds the hadith: “Diff erence of opinion in my Community is a mercy for people”. “Th e learned used to say” refers to a saying by Imam Malik concerning diff erence of opinion among the Companions: “Among them is the one that is wrong and the one that is right: therefore you must exercise ijtihad”. Th ere is a debate about what this saying implies with respect to normative pluralism and who should exercise ijtihad in cases of disagreement. When Umar refers to the saying ijtihad is replaced by the expression “should choose the one that your conscience tells you to follow”. Th is does not necessarily imply that individuals who are not scholars can themselves exercise ijtihad, however, only that individuals have to decide for themselves which scholars to follow. It is interesting that Umar locates this decision in the individual’s conscience, a position which might indicate an individualization of the religious subject. Nonetheless, we should also recognize that ‘conscience’ is not necessarily conceived of in terms of a sovereign moral subject and that the individual’s ability to judge what is right and good is partly seen as dependent on a process of learning and developing certain moral apti- tudes and predispositions (cf. Asad 2003 and Chapter Six). individualization and religious authority 229

such narrow-mindedness, so I preferred to explore Islam myself, in all possible ways. To learn more about Islam, Umar turned to books and the Internet, in particular the ‘questions and answers sections’ of renowned scholars and preachers such as Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Abdullah Hakim Quick. He started to socialize more with people who, like himself, took a particular interest in Islam, learning much from their discussions. As his eff orts to learn about Islam started to give results, Umar put up an Islamic site on the Internet with information about Islam, a discussion forum and links to other Muslim web pages. Most of the material was translated from English into Norwegian by Umar and the other site moderator although they also wrote some articles themselves. It was in another discussion forum on the Internet that Umar was fi rst made aware of the existence and activities of the NMU, of which he soon became a member. In addition, he attended conferences, darses and Friday sermons in several of the mosques in Oslo, preferring those with an Arab or international orientation. Umar’s father is a well-educated man and since Umar’s ‘religious breakthrough’ they have oft en engaged in discussions about fi qh: Umar: My dad always regarded himself as the ‘master’ in our house, but I enjoy ‘getting’ my father. My mum loves it to, when we get into discussions. To be honest my father is a guy who ‘inherited’ Islam. My grandfather was a religious leader and my father regards him as someone who, because of this status as a religious leader, is never wrong. When I discuss things with my father he always tries to ‘get me’. I think that the mistake we Muslims make today is that of regarding some people as fl awless. But this is wrong, because humans are humans. Th ere is a Muslim expression that says that we are not angels, we are humans who have a conscience. […]2 Christine: What do you and your father discuss? Umar: It is oft en about fi qh rules that we disagree upon. Sometimes it gets quite heated, and then I just shut up. You know how it is with elders. Th ey think: ‘How can a little 18-year-old kid sit here and tell me that I’m wrong?’ […] My dad’s only reference point is the school of law they follow in Morocco but I am trying to combine the four, at least with

2 What Umar is referring to here is the fact that in the Islamic tradition, according to the Hadith literature, angels are usually considered to be the one creation that always obeys God and never transgresses or disobeys. Th at humans are not angels means that they have been given the capability to transgress and disobey and that they are bound to make mistakes. 230 chapter five

respect to some things. I mean, stick to one of the schools regarding one particular practice. Many people pick the most convenient things from each school of law to make it easier on themselves. I don’t agree with that – you’re not supposed to get out of it like that. Christine: How do you decide upon which school to follow then? Umar: One should follow the one that one recognizes oneself most in. And then one should choose one and follow it in one’s practices, while at the same time acknowledging the others. My dad and my granddad think that only one school is right. But the schools are all right since they stem from the same source, the Prophet. […] Th e problem with those who have inherited Islam is that they say that they are Malikis, but they don’t follow what he did, they don’t do things the way he did. Th ey just follow the practices they inherited, without taking their time to read. Th at way it gets all wrong, and that is how my father argues in our discussions, referring to what my grandfather used to do. One such discussion took place on the day of Arafat, the second day of rituals during the pilgrimage to Mecca,3 and concerned the correct per formance of salah. Umar and his father were in the car on their way back from communal prayer in the Moroccan mosque when Umar’s father started to complain that the imam had been mistaken in performing a three times repeated takbir4 aft er the prayer. Th is should, according to Umar’s father, only be performed on the three days of the eid-al-adha celebration and not on the day of Arafat, which is the day before the eid-al-adha. Umar objected to this, arguing that takbir should, in fact, also be repeated three times aft er prayer on the day of Arafat. His father supported his own argument by referring to his father who, as he remembered it, did not perform the three times repeated takbir when he led this particular prayer. Umar, however, did not accept the practice of his grandfather as being authoritative on this issue. To his great pleasure, he was able to cite a saying of the Prophet that supported his own view, thus “refuting” his father “on the basis of the sources”. Umar’s father was not very happy about his son’s challenge to his and his own father’s authority, however, and stayed silent for the rest of the journey.

3 Muslims all over the world observe the day of Arafat, which is thought of as a particularly blessed day, on the ninth of the Dhul-Hajj (the twelft h month of the Islamic calendar). 4 Praise, glorifi cation, the declaration or expression Allahu Akbar (God is Most Great). Th e latter is a much used part of salah. individualization and religious authority 231

Th e objectifi cation of Islam Umar’s concern with knowing why he should follow religious prescriptions, rather than just knowing how to, represented a common theme oft en brought up by the young Muslims I worked with. Th is distinction was, as in Umar’s case, usually related to a set of distinctions between the parental generation and young Muslims, inheritance and individual study, cultural tradition and Islam, and narrow-mindedness and openness. Th e Islamic knowledge of many in the parental generation and of those Muslims who were not educated was seen as insuffi cient and as representing an unrefl ective inheritance of local elaborations of Islam that had become wedded to local culture (which the young generally referred to as ‘culture’, ‘tradition’ or ‘custom’). Such ‘tradition’ was opposed to ‘Islam’ as embodied in the Koran and the sunna and the scholarly Islamic tradition. A distinction was further made between practising what one held to be Islam out of respect for authorities and tradition, and practices that were based on one’s own knowledge and refl ection. In order to be a practising Muslim, in the sense that young Muslims understood it, it was not suffi cient to follow Islamic practices on the basis of the know-how that was transmitted from one generation to the next. Rather, each individual was responsible for acquiring as much knowledge about Islam as possible, this in order to ensure the correct form of a given practice, to defend Islam, to do dawa and to ‘apply’ Islam in diff erent areas of social life. Such knowledge was seen as vital not least in the eff ort to distinguish Islam as a universal and timeless truth from its local cultural expressions. Th e young Muslims I worked with also generally deplored the fact that the knowledge that had been transmitted to them from their parents did not give any answer to the question of ‘why’ Islamic practices should be followed or to what being a Muslim ‘really meant’. Th is approach to knowledge would seem to fi t well with the claim made by some authors that there is a pervasive process occurring throughout the Muslim world which consists of a modern ‘objectifi cation of the religious imagination’. Indeed, Umar’s complaint that he only knew ‘how to’ and not ‘why’ he should follow religious prescriptions is virtually identical to the complaint of one of Oman’s fi rst generation of village schoolteachers, quoted in Eickelman (1990: 121), who observes that: “People here do not know Islam; they pray and sacrifi ce, but they do not know why”. Such a consciously critical statement would 232 chapter five have been almost incomprehensible in most of the towns and villages of Oman before the mid-1970s, according to Eickelman and Piscatori (1996: 38). Th ey use this fact to exemplify the way in which many aspects of social and political life are increasingly becoming subject to conscious refl ection, discussion and debate, a process they term ‘objectifi cation’.5 Th ey write: Objectifi cation is the process by which basic questions come to the fore in the consciousness of large numbers of believers: ‘What is my religion?’, ‘Why is it important to my life’, and ‘How do my beliefs guide my conduct?’ (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996: 38) Th ese “explicit, widely shared, and objective questions” are “modern queries that increasingly shape the discourse and practice of Muslims in all social classes” (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996: 38). As a consequence of such objectifi cation, they argue, practices that were previously embedded in a whole matrix of custom, ritual and religious symbols, and observed somewhat unrefl ectively, have become part a self-contained system (Islam) that Muslims can describe, characterize and distinguish from other belief systems. Religious practices are, then, now increasingly the focus of conscious deliberation and debate. Eickelman and Piscatori stress three diff erent facets of objectifi cation. Th e fi rst aspect they single out is the spread of mass education and mass communication in the modern world which, they argue, “change the style and scale of possible discourse” (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996: 39) since they involve people on a mass scale in debate about Muslim tradition, enable a broader dissemination of ideas and (as they make people increasingly aware of other Muslim and non-Muslim traditions) encourage debate over meaning. Eickelman and Piscatori (1996: 42) argue that mass communication, mass education and publishing transform religious belief into a conscious system. Th e second facet of objectifi cation is, thus, that religious beliefs and practices are increasingly seen as systems (minhaj) to be distinguished from non- religious ones.6 Th e third aspect that they stress is the reconfi guration of the “symbolic production of Muslim politics” in which the question of “who speaks for an objectifi ed Islam” (1996: 42) becomes central to Muslim politics.

5 Eickelman and Piscatori stress that the process of objectifi cation is not unique to Islam. Th is is also stressed by van der Veer (2004) who detects similar processes in Hinduism. 6 Although not necessarily as monolithic or uniform entities. individualization and religious authority 233

According to Roy, the ‘objectifi cation of Islam’ is a logical consequence of the end of the social authority of religion arising due to Westernization and globalization (2004: 22). On the one hand, Roy focuses on how ordinary Muslims in the West, because of political pressure and events, feel compelled (or are explicitly asked) to explain what it means to be a Muslim. Since there are so few (or no) established Muslim authorities in the West, he argues, this task falls on the shoulders of every Muslim: each Muslim is accountable for being a Muslim, then. According to Roy, the objectifi cation of Islam is also a “mechanical consequence of the delinking of religion and culture” (2004: 24), a ‘delinking’ that appears to be both product and agent of globalization. Roy (2004) also sees the objectifi cation of Islam as refl ecting a process of secularization, in which Islam is necessarily acknowledged to be “one among many” comparable systems of beliefs and practices. While Eickelman and Piscatori locate the increasing objectifi cation of Islam in the late twentieth century, and Roy more specifi cally to processes of Westernization and globalization, one could no doubt extend the genealogical roots of this process as Salvatore (1997) does with reference to Cantwell Smith (1964). Here, the twentieth-century development is situated within long-range historical processes of objectifi cation and reifi cation that have transformed the Koranic din into the named entity called ‘Islam’. Salvatore notably stresses how this objectifi cation has been embedded in transcultural dynamics. It is, thus, as Eickelman and Piscatori also rightly note, the “style and scale of possible discourse” (1996: 39), and the insertion of this into particular socio- political confi gurations, that characterizes the contemporary situation, not the objectifi cation of and conscious refl ection upon Islamic traditions and Muslim identity as such. Others have also questioned the attempt to analyse changes in contemporary religious imagination as the outcomes of a universal tendency towards the ‘objectifi cation of Islam’. Asad (1986, 1993) has argued that debates over meaning that necessarily involve some kind of ‘objectifi cation’ are intrinsic to the Islamic discursive tradition, and are, as such, not a new phenomenon. Mahmood similarly argues that any kind of skilled practice requires a certain amount of refl ection and deliberation on the specifi c mental and bodily exercises necessary for its acquisition:

Conscious deliberation is part and parcel of any pedagogical process, and contemporary discussions about it cannot be understood simply as a shift from the unconscious enactment of tradition to a critical refl ection upon tradition. (Mahmood 2005: 54) 234 chapter five

In keeping with this critique, my point is not to establish a sharp distinction between a consciously refl exive modern religious imaginary and a non-refl exive enactment of tradition, but to draw attention to the ways in which contemporary processes of objectifi cation shape the discourse and practice of young Muslims.7 I will attempt to situate these processes within the more concrete context of the everyday lives of young Muslims in Oslo, by paying attention to the practical conditions under which questions of an ‘objectifying’ kind come to the fore and how they relate to the ‘kinds’ of knowledges that are transmitted in dif- ferent contexts and the knowledge that people need or are required to possess within them. Th e modes and extent of ‘objectifi cation’ are dependent on the way in which individuals and groups are positioned with respect to particular discourses and how these discourses require or enable certain forms of self-consciousness in particular contexts and with respect to particular issues. Th e analysis will add an important dimension to Eickelman and Piscatori’s rather generalized discussion of objectifi cation by looking into how, for the case of young Muslims in Oslo, what Eickelman and Piscatori refer to as ‘modern queries’ are importantly energized by the constant need to handle their ‘diff erence’ in relation to the non-Muslim majority society as well as to other Muslims who represent a diversity of Islamic traditions. Whereas processes of ‘objectifi cation’ may thus be seen as importantly shaping Muslim imaginaries in various locations, these processes must also be seen as mediated by social relationships and institutions in particular socio-historical contexts.

Coming to know Islam: the family, the mosque and the school Th e extended family and the mosque in many respects remain the most important sites for the transmission of Islamic traditions in the Norwegian context. Th e learning that takes place in the extended family is dominated by the acquisition of ‘practical knowledge’ through imitation and repetition. Children learn to be Muslims by participating in praying, fasting, the reading of the Koran and the celebration of festivities and by imitating and repeating the ritual performances of grown-ups, whether this be the fi ve daily prayers, the ritual ablutions

7 Th e way I understand refl exivity here is in line with Foucault. It suggests a particular form of relationship to oneself whose form fundamentally depends on the practices of subjectivation through which the individual is produced (Mahmood 2005: 32). individualization and religious authority 235 or wearing the hijab. Th e correction of behaviour, praise and sanctions that are legitimized by reference to religious identity and ‘Islam’ (e.g. ‘You do not eat pork because you are a Muslim’ or ‘You do not do that because it is prohibited in our religion’) are central to the acquisition of such ‘practical knowledge’. ‘Learning Islam’, in this sense, is thus a part of everyday life, acquired as a form of embodied praxis (cf. Østberg 2001). Although mainly a practical knowledge, this process of learning is not simply a passive reproduction of religious practices, devoid of conscious refl ection. As Mahmood (2005) argues, any pedagogical process involved in the transmission of skilled practices requires a certain amount of self-refl ection to be installed in the practitioner. With respect to modest clothing, for instance, young girls learn how to cover their bodies via the corrections, praises and sanctions administered by people in their surroundings (as was seen in the case of Latifa and Abid in the preceding chapter). Th is simultaneously encourages a certain level of consciousness regarding why covering is important, what it signifi es and how it makes some people diff erent from others. In some families, particularly those where the parents have a higher education or a certain educational level in Islam, transmission also takes the form of more formal teaching of Islamic prescriptions and proscriptions and of Islamic history, thus providing a body of discursive knowledge in light of which one’s own and other’s Muslim practices may be assessed and in terms of which Islam is already to a certain extent ‘objectifi ed’. Th e transmission of Islamic knowledge and practice in the context of the extended family shows that such transmission is not necessarily a linear process involving a one-sided transmission from one generation to the next (cf. Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003). Older siblings are oft en important tutors for younger ones, while cousins, uncles, aunts or grandparents may be as important as parents. Young Muslims, like Umar, who have sought out Islamic education outside of the family, oft en pass this knowledge on to other family members, including their parents, and use it to assess their family’s religious practice. Umar, for instance, did not only discuss the correct form of religious practices with his father, but also encouraged him to take more seriously the Islamic criteria pertaining to what is haram and halal by, for example, reminding him that he should not be selling alcohol in his restaurant. Others, like Rabab, made their families change their eating habits and pay more attention to what was haram and halal with respect to food as they themselves became concerned with and learned about such issues. 236 chapter five

Fatima told me about her younger sister who at the age of nineteen suddenly became “very religious”, as she put it. She started to pray fi ve times a day and to read the Koran: And she started discussing religion with my father. Th ey would have the weirdest discussions where she explained to him things about Islam, you know. My mum said that she would start wearing the hijab soon if she continued like that. My mum and dad found it amusing. I mean, here they have been trying to get their children to become religious, and all of a sudden they do it on their own. A particular instance of such reverse generational transmission is the infl uence of hijabi girls on their mothers. In some cases daughters’ encouragement has led to mothers covering themselves or starting to wear their headscarves in what the young judged to be a more ‘correct’ Islamic way. Active Muslim youth also aff ected the religious knowledge and practices of their parents more generally by engaging them in discussions about Islam, conveying to them what they had learned about Islam outside of the family and asking them to refl ect on the meanings and implications of their religious practices. Th e Koran schools in the mosques constitute another important arena for transmitting religious traditions. Learning through imitation and repetition, notably through audition, recitation and memorization of the Koran, is central within this context. Body techniques related to the physical aspects of recitation – concerning, for instance, how the body and the fi ngers move or how to sit correctly – as well as those of the ritual performance of prayers are transmitted both in the form of imitation and as formal instruction. As within families, there is great variation between diff erent mosques when it comes to the relative importance of learning through imitation and repetition and a more discursive pedagogy focusing on ‘explaining’ and ‘understanding’ Islam in addition to installing the capacities and abilities that are necessary for the skilled performance of religious practice. In recent years, the education given in at least some mosques has moved in the direction of modern pedagogy with explaining and understanding the Koran increasingly supplementing traditional techniques of memorization (cf. Johansen 2002). Some of the young Muslims in my study are now themselves teaching Koran classes, in the mosque or on a private basis, and they tend to favour this development. Th e imams in Norwegian mosques increasingly tend to have a higher education in Islamic sciences, this both as a consequence of the demand on the part of mosque attendees for such scholarly knowledge and as a consequence of individualization and religious authority 237

Norwegian immigration regulations which require that imams of a foreign nationality should have relevant education in order to be granted a residence permit (Vogt 2000). Th e mosques are also organizing an increasingly broad spectrum of Islamic educational activities for children, as well as a diverse selection of lectures, seminars and conferences for women and men. In addition to the mosques, the state school system in Norway also off ers religious education. In his discussion of “Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab Society” (1992), Eickelman argues that the establishment of ‘Islam’ as subject matter to be taught in state schools, in relation to a particular curriculum and distinguished from other subject matter, contributed to ‘objectifying’ Islam in the religious imagination in the Arab world. An unintended consequence of making Islam a part of the curriculum conforming to the style of intellectual technology introduced by modern schooling was to make it a subject which had to be ‘explained’ and ‘understood’. In Norwegian schools Islam is taught as ‘one religion’ among others in the context of a religious education which privileges Christianity as a defi ning part of Norwegian history and identity and as a basis for communal values. Although the Norwegian state church system has been going through a process of adjustment to a pluralist multi-religious reality, the main socializing institutions of the nation state, state kindergartens and schools,8 still have a Christian objectives clause (a legal obligation to provide all pupils with “a moral and Christian education”).9 Th e compulsory religious education in state schools, despite its ‘pluralist’ intent and unclear confessional basis, has its primary focus

8 About 98 per cent of all children attend state schools. 9 Many of the young in my study attended school before the introduction, in 1997, of the religious education called KRL. Until the introduction of this pupils outside of the Church of Norway could be exempted from Christian education in school. Some schools off ered ‘Life-stances’ as an alternative. KRL was initially drawn up in an eff ort to develop an objective and neutral, but obligatory, communal subject in religions and ethics and was widely supported by school representatives, politicians and representatives of minority religions and life-stances. Th e result, however, was diff erent to what had been anticipated and many saw KRL as it came to be formulated as a violation of the freedom of religion. With KRL only partial exemption can be granted, and this was a central question in a court case raised by the Islamic Council of Norway and the Norwegian Humanist Association against the State. Th e Islamic Council and the Humanist Association lost in the Norwegian court system but a subsequent UN evaluation recommended that KRL should either be changed or that minorities should be given full access to exemption. See, for instance, Borchgrevink (2002b), Gullbekk (2000) and Skeie (2007) for a broader discussion of KRL and the court hearings. 238 chapter five on Christian knowledge and only limited possibilities for exemption. In this context, Islam is presented as a system of beliefs and observ- ances (Muslims believe in Allah and that Mohammed was his last Prophet, their religion requires them to observe the Five Pillars etc.) and is contrasted to other religions and non-religious systems. Religious education classes in schools contribute to ‘objectifying’ Islam both through the standardizations required in order to teach pupils about Islam in a way that can be assessed to be correct or incorrect and through the ways in which Muslim students are called upon to contribute to the classroom dialogue by actualizing their identities and experiences as Muslims (Gullbekk 2004). Typically, they are asked to engage questions of the kind: ‘Why do you [Muslims] fast in Ramadan?’ or ‘Why do Muslim women cover their hair?’ Young Muslims’ narratives from their school years oft en focus on how they were called upon to speak as ‘Muslims’ about ‘Islam’. Th is importantly energizes ‘objectifying’ questions of the kinds discussed by Eickelman and Piscatori. In order to ‘represent’ Islam in a way that fi ts the dominant institutional language of the classroom, practical knowledge must be transformed into verbal explications and specifi c forms of rationalization. As Roy argues with respect to the French context, immigrant Muslims in France, and even more so those of the second generation who are educated within the logic of knowledge transmission in the secular school, are confronted with the necessity of ‘speaking their Islam’ in the form of a knowledge homothetic to the knowledge transmitted in various contexts (such as in school and in the mass media). Th ere is, thus, a register of possible ways of expressing lived Islam that, if not directly imposed, is at least suggested by the dominant forms of knowledge and their ways of rationalizing a practice (Roy 2000). Th e ways in which knowledge is transmitted and the various modalities of ‘objectifi cation’ that occur within the family, the mosque and the state school importantly interact with each other and are also signifi cantly shaped by the wider socio-cultural context. As descendants of immigrants, young Muslims are marked with a ‘diff erence’ that is particularly signifi cant in triggering questions of an ‘objectifying’ kind and a search for religious knowledge. For instance, in the homes of the young Muslims, gender and sexuality were among the primary terms in which ethnic and Muslim identity was inscribed. With the passage from childhood to adolescence, fundamental questions about individualization and religious authority 239 sexuality and gender relations usually arose, questions that gained a particular salience since gender relations in Norwegian society are dif- ferently organized and understood than in most Muslim migrant families. Such diff erences are oft en explained and/or authorized by parents as well as teachers and other signifi cant people in their surroundings with reference to ‘Islam’ (and/or culture). As a consequence questions arise such as: ‘Does Islam allow me to have male friends?’ and ‘Does Islam require women to obey men?’ Many young women told me that thinking about such issues spurred them to search for answers, encouraging them to learn more about ‘their religion’. Th e importance of gendered questions in young Muslims’ inquiries into what it means to be a Muslim and what Islam is also stems from the fact that ‘gender’ has been at the centre of most representations of (ethnic and) religious diff erence regarding Muslims and that the question of ‘gender equality’ in Islam (or rather the presumed lack thereof) has been signifi cantly politicized. Because of this politicization, and also because dominant understandings of gender and sexuality aff ect their own options, young men also tend to be drawn into questions regarding gender relations. Nabil, for instance, told me that aft er all the focus on the oppression of Muslim women in the Norwegian media and the ‘aff airs’ concerning the hijab, forced marriages and female circumcision he had sought out knowledge on these issues to the extent that he now knew more about women’s rights in Islam than about any other issue. And lately – aft er 9/11 – this knowledge had been extended to the fi eld of war, terrorism and jihad. Approaching such knowledge as a matter of fi nding out about ‘women’s rights in Islam’, ‘human rights in Islam’ or ‘what Islam says about terrorism’ etc. further objectifi es Islam as a system of belief and practices that can be compared and contrasted to, for example, ‘women’s rights in Christianity’ (or, more frequently, in ‘the West’). By asking such questions and attempting to fi nd answers, young Muslims contribute to the objectifi cation of Islam. Th is objectifi cation is reinforced by the pressure coming from non- Muslims to ‘account for’ the behaviour of ‘Muslims’, especially in relation to particular historical events such as, for example, the Rushdie aff air and 9/11, and also by the intensifi cation of religious ‘dialogue work’ that this generates. Th e objectifying questions that young Muslims pose about Muslim identities and practices and the areas in which they seek out more knowledge about what ‘Islam says’ and the ‘why’ of religious practice are, thus, importantly shaped not only in the 240 chapter five micro-politics of their everyday lives but also by the shift ing macro- political concerns of the wider socio-cultural contexts in which their lives are embedded. In his Refl ections on Fieldwork in Morocco Rabinow points out that objectifi cation also occurs in the interaction between anthropologists and the people we study and in the process of writing ethnography: the informant must fi rst learn to explicate his own culture, to become self-conscious about it and begin to objectify his own life-world. He must then learn to ‘present’ it to the anthropologist, to an outsider who by defi nition does not understand even the most obvious thing. (Rabinow 1977: 152) Rabinow found that people who were in some sense marginal to their own society or group oft en managed this objectifi cation more easily. Th is relationship between objectifi cation and ‘marginality’ is important with respect to immigrant youth in Europe. Th e process of gaining self-refl exivity and self-consciousness about certain aspects of life is an integral part of the everyday lives of immigrant youth and the anthropologist is only one interlocutor in relation to which such objectifi cation occurs. Th roughout life these youths have been continuously challenged and questioned by the majority population and by their coexistence with other minority groups forming part of what is referred to as ‘the immigrant community’. Furthermore, continuous discussions in the realm of politics and the media oft en create a form of hyper- refl exivity among the young in the sense that the questions that are raised about Islam and Islamic practice importantly anticipate and engage current political debates in and beyond the Norwegian context.

From person to print: new arenas of Islamic education Virtually all the young Muslims that I worked with stressed that although they had learned about Islam at home and taken Koran classes at the mosque they at some point had felt that they had too little knowledge of Islam, a feeling that triggered a further search for Islamic knowledge. Like Umar, most stressed that this was an undertaking that largely proceeded outside of the family, whether in the form of attending seminars in organizations like the NMU and the MSS, reading books, surfi ng the Internet and joining various debate forums, using CD-ROMS watching video-tapes and DVDs, or listening to diverse audio-media. Since the establishment of YouTube in 2005 this has individualization and religious authority 241 become an increasingly important avenue for the distribution of Islamic material along with social media such as Facebook. Th e way in which Islamic education increasingly proceeds outside the confi nes of face to face interaction in the family and the mosque relates to a broader transformation in traditional models of the personal transmission of Islamic knowledge, whether between, for example, parents and their children, the teacher and his student or the Sufi master and his disciple. As Eickelman proposes, modernity has seen a shift from ‘person’ towards ‘print’ as the main medium for transmitting Islamic knowledge (Eickelman 1992). Th e notion of ‘print’ is somewhat imprecise when it comes to covering later developments, however, since audio-visual as well as written material on Islam is increasingly accessible to larger groups of people in diverse localities and is becoming extremely important in particular among young people. I stress, however, that this should not be seen to imply that all Muslims are equally aff ected by such transformations. Complex power geometries regulate the ways in which people are placed diff erently in relation to fl ows of knowledge as producers, distributors and consumers. One of the implications of these transformations is that young Muslims in Oslo fi nd themselves in a situation involving increasingly multiple, overlapping and competing discourses, all of these purport- ing to transmit Islamic traditions. With the move from ‘person’ to ‘print’, and the emergence of a global infrastructure for the maintenance, reproduction and dissemination of Islam (Mandaville 2004), such discourses are increasingly disembedded from locality. Th e high educational level combined with the new technologies of communication allows young Muslims in Oslo to access both the foundational texts and the religious knowledge of the experts that is spread across conference material, books, pamphlets, audio-visual material and the Internet. Whether the author of a book is based in Lebanon, Sudan, Tunisia, Pakistan, Great Britain, the US or France, or whether a web site is hosted in any one of these (or any other country for that matter), matters little. Th e young Muslims read books, listen to audio tapes, watch videos, go to Islamic conferences and seminars and join discussion groups and consult religious experts on the Internet in ways that are largely oblivious to where the knowledge they are accessing is produced. An important part of this material is the genre of pedagogical and ethical literature which comes in the form of booklets and pamphlets (such as those produced by the MSS or those distributed at dawa 242 chapter five courses and Islamic conferences). During my fi eldwork, I came across everything from Ahmadiyya leafl ets on “Women in Islam” to Sufi pamphlets on “Th e path of love and life”. However, the main bulk of the literature and audio-visual material that was available at conferences and other public events was published and distributed by various dawa organizations related to Islamic revivalism. Despite the importance given by the young Muslims I worked with to the foundational texts of Islam, only a few embarked on the strenuous process of reading the Koran and the Hadith literature. Instead, most mainly achieved familiarity with parts of the texts through abbreviated versions of popular works or small books explaining and commenting upon the Koran and the Hadith with respect to specifi c practices (e.g. the hijab, marriage) or specifi c issues (such as terrorism or women in Islam). A number of internationally renowned preachers and religious scholars, popular among young Muslims in diff erent countries, proliferated in these texts and audio-visual materials, for instance, Jamal Badawi, Yusuf al-Qarad- awi, Ahmed Deedat, Abdullah Hakim Quick, Zakir Naik, Nuh Ha Mim Keller and Yusuf Islam. In addition to this more explicitly ‘educa- tive’ material, audio-media and the Internet were also actively used to transmit Islamic poems, nashids10 and other music with a religious message. Th e Internet is perhaps the medium that has most radically changed the style and scale of possible discourse, exposing young Muslims, as it does, to wider and sometimes non-orthodox theological discussions. Ahmed’s account of how his engagement with Islam shift ed when he went from picking up whatever book he could get at the local library to searching for knowledge of Islam online illustrates this well: When I went abroad to study, it was at the time when the Internet was really starting to kick off . So I started reading a lot on the Internet. A lot of strange things, that were not always correct. Some net sites sited verses from the Koran that did not exist. And, of course, we didn’t realize, so we would go to the imam [in an international student mosque] and ask: ‘How come this is in the Koran – what does it mean?’ And then he would show us that it was not in the Koran. So I had quite a few experiences that

10 Anthems. Nashids build on musical traditions such as the qawwali from South Asia and rhythmic chanting from the Middle East, especially as practised in the Sufi tradition. Th ey typically involve male choruses that repeat variations on standard Islamic phrases such as Ya Allah Allah, Allahu Akbar although sometimes explicitly political messages may be added. Th e choruses are oft en accompanied by drumbeats. individualization and religious authority 243

made me realize that we actually needed much more knowledge than we had. So I ordered books from several Islamic publishers and tried to learn more. At that time I also got more interested in reading about fi qh. Th e diff erent schools of fi qh, what they are all about, readings that were a bit heavier. I also watched videos by some central Muslim personalities like Ahmed Deedat and Bilal Phillips. Qaradawi, I did not encounter till I came back to Norway and started ordering lots of books. Qaradawi is perhaps one of the most solid authorities on Islam today. I like him, and also Hassan al-Banna and Maududi have had important things to say. Although the ‘globality’ of the Internet is constrained by the uneven access people have to this space throughout the world, all the young Muslims I came to know through the NMU and the MSS had access to the Internet and used it regularly for a number of activities, including e-mailing friends and relatives, shopping and school work.11 Internet- use related to Islam included both searching for knowledge on particular Islamic issues, making knowledge accessible to others through the construction of Islamic web pages, networking, contact with individuals and organizations, chatting and debating in various Muslim Internet forums and getting updated on news from around the ‘global Muslim community’. Some also consulted online ulema on Internet sites such as that of the European Council for Fatwa and Research in order to ask for advice and opinions on a diversity of issues, although most confi ned themselves to consulting the question and answer sections rather than sending in their own questions. Although it may be seen to represent a radically deterritorializing space, the Internet, understood as a particular kind of social space, nevertheless remains embedded in other social spaces (Miller and Slater 2000). Th e fl ows that reach people through the Internet, and the use people make of it, tend to follow certain regularities and paths. Such paths were created by, among other things, the homepages of the MSS and the NMU that had links to other mostly Islamic, but also non- Islamic, sites in Norway, other Scandinavian countries and elsewhere. Similarly, links to articles and Internet sites were regularly distributed by means of e-mail. Certain paths were, thus, established within the global cyberspace. Th ese paths also gained regularity in terms of use as a result of the linguistic capabilities of young Muslims. English is

11 Th ere seemed to be little gender diff erence in the use of the Internet although boys tended to be more active in putting up their own Islamic homepages and in post- ing opinions in Muslim e-mail discussion groups than girls. 244 chapter five increasingly used as the lingua franca within Islamic cyberspace along with Arabic, which only a few of the young Muslims I worked with mastered to a suffi cient degree to read theological literature or listen to speeches.12 In addition ‘maternal languages’ continued to be relevant to the establishing of paths both with regard to the production, distribution and consumption of Islamic knowledge. Paths are also created by attempts to authorize and de-authorize knowledge-claims. As Ahmed’s encounter with Islam on the Internet illustrates, it is oft en diffi cult to fi nd out where and by whom the knowledge one has access to has been produced and to ‘verify’ its correctness. In order to ‘control’ knowledge, warnings were sometimes distributed by way of e-mail informing users that some Internet sites were hosted by Christian and Jewish groups whose primary goal was to hurt Islam by spreading misinformation. Aft er 9/11 there were also warnings that pages had been taken over by ‘anti-Islamic forces’ and were being used to track down sympathizers of Al-Qaeda (cf. Halldén 2007). Th ere were also warnings against Islamic groupings that were denounced as ‘sects’ and whose theological positions were characterized as ‘innovations’ (bida). In addition, there was widespread mistrust of the information given on Muslims and Islam in the non-Muslim Western media, as exemplifi ed by the critique of Western media coverage of the Taliban in Afghanistan voiced in Chapter Th ree. Th e pattern of acquisition of Islamic knowledge that emerges in this context may be characterized as a form of ‘restricted bricolage’, in that elements from otherwise distinct (but by no means static or homogeneous) Islamic discourses are put together as part of the eff orts of individuals to gain more knowledge of Islam. Th e religious education received from parents and in local mosques at an early age remained an important backdrop for the quest for knowledge that some young Muslims undertook in adolescence and it tended to continue to guide religious practice. However, due to the increasing availability of a diversity of Islamic discourses, a process could be seen in

12 Whereas Norwegian Muslims tend to orient themselves towards English-language literature and English-speaking preachers on the Internet and elsewhere, young Muslims in France are generally less comfortable with the English language and rely more importantly on French literature and French speakers (Jacobsen 1999). Some internationally recognized Muslim scholars and intellectuals have a command of several European languages and move freely across these linguistic boundaries. individualization and religious authority 245 which the individual was increasingly called upon to refl ect on his/her practices in light of the knowledge he/she had acquired through reading, surfi ng the Internet and participating in conferences and darses and seminars arranged by various Islamic organizations. It should be noted that this use of the term ‘bricolage’ is far from the one intended by Levi-Strauss (1966) when he spoke about how the ‘bricoleur’ makes use of ‘whatever is at hand’ without being subject to a discipline or commitment to a particular way of doing things. Rather, the young Muslims were committed to learning about Islam and to reshaping their lives in accordance with this knowledge, which they did by putting together knowledge acquired in a variety of diff erent social contexts and springing from diff erent Islamic traditions of interpretation. Th e restricted bricolage of Islamic knowledge and practices is not always a product of conscious individual refl ection, however. It is important to note that diff erent Islamic traditions are mixed through the coming together of young Muslims from a variety of backgrounds who (because of an educational process that is partly undertaken individually and partly in groups like the NMU and the MSS) learn from each other what Islam ‘is’ and ‘says’ about diff erent issues. Interestingly, the origins of the diff erent elements in this restricted bricolage frequently remain implicit, unthematized or not refl ected upon in terms of where they are drawn from. As a result of globalizing processes that produce heterogeneous Muslim localities and deterritorialize knowledge, young Muslims thus increasingly combine, whether refl exively or unrefl exively, elements from diff erent Islamic traditions in their daily practice as Muslims. Th e spread of mass education and mass communication implies that an increasingly signifi cant part of young Muslims’ religious education takes place outside of the family and the mosque. Young Muslims are, therefore, involved in a range of debates about Islamic traditions that energizes questions about what it entails to be a Muslim, the meaning of diff erent Muslim practices and how the correct performance of Islamic practice is to be secured. Th eir approach to the Islamic tradition thus appears to be more ‘refl exive’ and ‘individualized’ than ‘traditional’ approaches, a distinction that young Muslims usually map on to a distinction between the parental generation and themselves and a distinction between those who are educated and those who are not educated. Th is account of the emergence of a modern and individualized Muslim religious subject has been largely reproduced within 246 chapter five

popular as well as academic discourses. What has been less explored is how this way of representing young Muslims’ religiosity produces Muslim subjects as, on the one hand, ‘modern’, ‘individual’, ‘refl exive’, ‘independent’ and ‘rational’ and, on the other hand, as ‘traditional’, ‘collective’, ‘uncritical’, ‘dependent’ and ‘superstitious’. By establishing a hierarchy between diff erent ways of knowing, diff erent forms of knowledge and, thereby, diff erent ‘knowers’, internal diff erences are produced and articulated. By positioning themselves within this dichotomous frame, young Muslims both reinforce and challenge the dominant discourse on Islam and Muslims in the Norwegian context. Th ey tend to reinforce the construction of ‘most Muslims’ as illiterate, backwards and traditional while constructing themselves as modern, educated and progressive. But at the same time, they challenge the dominant discourse by claiming that more knowledge about Islam, rather than an abandonment of the Islamic tradition, is a solution to the problems that are associated with precisely such marginalized categories of people: the illiterate, traditional and rural. Th is dichotomization refl ects not only an increased refl exivity towards the Islamic tradition but also the subjectivization of a particular modern understanding of knowledge. Young Muslims approach to Islamic knowledge seems to rests on “[the] modern idea that a practitioner cannot know how to live religiously without being able to articulate that knowledge” (Asad 1993: 36). In this understanding, being a ‘practising’ Muslim requires individuals being able to distinguish the Islamic from the un-Islamic, to evaluate diff erent claims to truth and to refl ect upon what it means to be a Muslim and what the implications of diff erent religious practices are (the reason why). Obedience to religious prescriptions must, therefore, be preceded by the acquisition of ‘correct’ Islamic knowledge which requires an active individual quest that is nevertheless shaped by authorizing discourses. While individuals are increasingly made responsible for relating actively to overlapping discourses and debates on Islam in the formation of their religious identities and practices, one might also argue that the fi xing of ‘Islam’ in textbooks, instruction manuals and the like, works to establish Islamic standards that come to be conceived of as the ‘true Islam’. Eickelman and Piscatori (1996) also stress the importance of such edi- fying literature as something both leading to and demonstrating a sys- tematization of Islamic belief and practice as distinct from other religious beliefs and practices. individualization and religious authority 247

Th e normativization of Islam

Young Muslims, as exemplifi ed in the interview with Umar quoted above, criticize their parents and those who are ‘uneducated’ for ‘superstition’, ‘veneration of saints’ and for basing their religious practice on cultural tradition rather than on knowledge of Islam. It is worth asking whether such criticism refl ects a ‘normativization’ of Islam. In the anthropology of Islam, and the anthropology of religion more broadly, a number of dualistic categorizations, such as that of ‘Great Tradition’ versus ‘Little Tradition’ (Redfi eld 1955; Marriot 1955), ‘philosophical religion’ versus ‘practical religion’, (Leach 1968), normative or orthodox versus popular, elite religion versus folk religion and high versus low, have been developed (Saler 2000). In line with these eff orts, Ahlberg (1990) distinguished between ‘normative’ and ‘popular’ Islam in her discussion of South Asian Muslim religiosity in Norway. She suggested that there was at the time a resurgence of normative Islam and saw this resurgence as threatening the fl ourishing of ‘popular Islam’ and as representing a strengthening of the religious obligations that increase conformity. Th e distinctions that Ahlberg relies on in her discussion have proven to be problematic in a number of ways.13 What I would like to call to attention here is the general objection that such dichotomizations tend to take for granted the power relations inherent in the very process of defi ning the normative and orthodox (Asad 1986; Bringa 1995; Eickelman and Piscatori 1996). Th e reference to some exegetic traditions as ‘normative’ easily turns into: “a statement about the distribution of power within society rather than a description of on-the-ground behaviour and organization” (Johnson 1980 cited in Bringa 1995: 229). In contrast to the presumption that orthodox or normative Islam is a specifi c set of doctrines represented by elites and religious experts, Asad suggests that:

13 As Vogt (2000) has pointed out, the normative /popular dichotomy also tends to overfocus on assumed systematic diff erences between popular Islam and normative Islam relating to diff erences between educated /uneducated, sharia /Sufi sm, middle class /popular classes, cities /countryside and universalist /ethnicist. Vogt argues that in the Norwegian context the Muslim landscape is much more complex than the frequent use of such dichotomies to speak about the pluralism of Islam in Norway suggests in that such diff erences cross-cut and interact in diff erent ways with regard to diff erent exegetic traditions that are usually branded ‘popular’ or ‘normative’. 248 chapter five

orthodoxy is not a mere body of opinion but a distinctive relationship – a relationship of power. Wherever Muslims have the power to regulate, uphold, require or adjust correct practices, and to condemn, exclude, undermine or replace incorrect ones, there is the domain of orthodoxy. (Asad 1986: 15) Based on this critique, I suggest that we speak of the criticisms young Muslims raise towards the religious practices of ‘uneducated’ Muslims as a process of ‘normativization’ rather than as a ‘resurgence of normative Islam’. Th e term ‘normativization’ is not meant to indicate a specifi c set of doctrines ‘at the heart of Islam’, however. Rather, it refers to attempts to secure ‘orthodoxy’ in the sense indicated by Asad in the above quote. Young Muslims’ criticism of the practices of the parent generation as ‘cultural’ rather than truly Islamic presupposes that there is a ‘correct’ form of Islamic knowledge and practice – an Islamic orthodoxy. Th is does not mean, however, that they embrace a set of fi xed doctrines that we can call ‘normative’ or ‘orthodox’ Islam. Rather they are involved in attempts to defi ne correct knowledge and practice as they argue and debate about the orthodoxy of current practices. Th is implies that they seek to (re)order the knowledges that govern the ‘correct’ form of Islamic practices as measured against other claims to knowing what the correct Islamic knowledge and practice is. Th e enormous amount of Islamic knowledge made available to people through new communication technologies, most notably the Internet, makes the process of establishing ‘Islamic truth’ more contentious and thus energizes arguments and debates about the orthodoxy of current practices. Young Muslims engage in precisely such attempts to establish ‘orthodoxy’ through an engagement with the founding texts of Islam. Such processes are located within complex fi elds of power where young Muslims confront other actors who are diff erently positioned with respect to, for example, the nation state, ethnicity, gender, class and generation. An engagement with the founding texts of Islam is, thus, not limited to scholarly commentaries alone but is embedded in the practices of Muslim youth who in various ways comment upon, strive to interpret or invoke the authority of such texts. Hierarchies of, for example, gender and generation infl uence the ways in which the foundational texts acquire their specifi c meaning in diff erent practical contexts, such as in disputes between youth and their parents, husbands and wives. What comes to be accepted as ‘true Islam’ depends not only on ‘knowledge’ of ‘religious doctrines’ but also on the ability individualization and religious authority 249 to authorize diff erent claims and the practical context of power relations within which such knowledge is asserted.

Normativization and gendered knowledge It has been argued that, because what is referred to as ‘normative Islam’ privileges a form of knowledge that is traditionally the domain of men, the increasing dominance of ‘normative Islam’ will lead to the marginalization of Muslim women (see, for example, Ahlberg 1990). Muslim men have traditionally had easier access to education than women and have also had a greater possibility of acquiring scholarly Islamic knowledge by participating in the mosques and other learning centres. Th e ulema, imams and khatibs (preachers of sermons) are almost always exclusively men in both the Sunni and Shia traditions. As a consequence, women have to a large extent been subject to men in matters of religious authority (though women in some regions have played infl u- ential roles, especially within Sufi movements) (cf. Eickelman and Piscatori 1996). With respect to Muslims in Norway, Ahlberg argued that because of this male dominance in the scholarly tradition ‘normative Islam’ was inimical to women. She argued that the mosques in Oslo associated with ‘normative Islam’ did not see women as equal to men and excluded women from activities in the mosques.14 Attempts to secure an orthodoxy based on the Koran, the Hadith and the scholarly Islamic tradition have resulted in some of the knowledges that are traditionally passed from mothers to daughters concerning, for example, saints’ cults and healing practices being conceived of as ‘superstition’ and ‘folk-religiosity’ rather than knowledge. One might speculate that the ‘privatization’ of religious socialization in the context of migration would give a new importance to the role women play in transmitting the Islamic tradition, bringing about a partial ‘feminization’ of religious socialization. Such a feminization may be central to young Muslims’ perception of the Islam of their parents as marked by superstition and irrationality, attributes that are oft en strongly associated with female religiosity. In many societies, women were the privileged bearers of non-institutionalized Islamic knowledges that gave

14 Ahlberg writes in particular about the Islamic Cultural Centre which is the second largest Pakistani mosque and which is oft en seen to represent ‘normative Islam’ as opposed to the larger ‘folk-religious’ mosque Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat. Th e ICC represents the Deobandi tradition while Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat is a Barelwi mosque. 250 chapter five voice to marginalized groups that were denied access to, and largely remained outside, the controls of scholarly Islamic institutions. Th e attempts of young Muslims to secure correct practice based on a scholarly approach to the Koran and the Hadith may thus lead to the discon- tinuation of the passing on of such traditions. However, Islamic revitalization and ‘normativization’ has also entailed a new focus on the role of mothers as the educators of coming generations of Muslims (Jouili and Amir-Moazami 2006). It is argued that because of this role women need to have a proper Islamic education in order to attend to the Islamic nurturing of children. Th is need to provide a proper Islamic education for women, in their capacity as mothers, was oft en stressed by the young Muslims I worked with. Th ey stressed that Islamic identity is maintained in the family and that this is particularly important in modern times with religion being increasingly ousted from the public sphere. Th e mother was seen as the core of the family and was given a particularly important role in preserving Muslim identity and securing the Islamic education of children. Contrary to the view that a focus on the normativity of the Islamic texts and the scholarly tradition leads to the marginalization of women, then, mass education and mass media also contribute to giving women more equal opportunities in relation to men when it comes to acquiring religious knowledge. As a consequence of this women are now fi nding new roles for themselves in the production, distribution and consumption of Islamic knowledge. Women’s access to the Islamic sources and the scholarly Islamic tradition creates a basis for debating and contesting social and cultural practices and for proposing alternative Islamic truths, notably in the area of gender relations (Jacobsen 2004). Muslim women have also become ‘new’ intellectuals and activists in contemporary Islamic movements,15 just as they have in the context of the NMU and the MSS where young women have held important positions. As mentioned in Chapter Th ree, women, quite exceptionally in a comparative perspective, gave darses to mixed congregations as invited speakers or as members of the organization. Th ey were also active in producing and transmitting knowledge in the Islamic magazines published by the organizations. In some other Islamic organizations Norwegian female converts play a particularly important role in

15 An example is the Norwegian convert Anne Sofi e Roald whose book Women in Islam: Th e Western Experience (2001b) received international attention and has been read by some of the young Muslims in my study. individualization and religious authority 251 the production and dissemination of Islamic knowledge achieved through university courses, lecturing activities and publishing (cf. Otterbeck 2000 on the role of female converts in Sweden). Th ese women were also frequently used as lecturers by the NMU and the MSS. Despite this, men continued to dominate the production and dissemination of scholarly Islamic knowledge in public spaces. At a macro-level this is even more so in that the lectures and sermons, whether given at Islamic conferences or distributed audio-visually by dawa organizations, were almost exclusively male. Th e discussion above nevertheless points towards an important emerging reshaping of gender relations in the reproduction of the Islamic discursive tradition. ‘Normativization’, then, does not simply imply that we see a shift from ‘popular’ to ‘normative’ Islam; neither does it necessarily imply a marginalization of women. Rather, it implies that young Muslims, women and men, engage in debates about what the correct form of Islamic knowledges and practices should be. Th is ‘normativization’ should be partly understood in relation to the objectifying processes discussed above in which young Muslims are confronted with increasingly multiple Muslim discourses and ways of living as a Muslim. It should also be seen as related to the way in which a secular environment encourages a distinction between diff erent religious beliefs and practices as ‘systems’ or ‘religions’ that may be compared to each other (such comparison is, for example, central to the dialogue-work that some of the young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS engage in), that defi ne the identities of groups (as exemplifi ed in the discussion of the politics of identity, for example) and between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ (articulated by the young Muslims as a distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘cultural tradition’). In the next sections, I will focus on the ways in which young Muslims invoke the authority of ‘Islam’ and the Koran in commenting upon and criticizing prevailing understandings of Muslim practices and of what Islam is. I discuss to what extent such eff orts may be seen to refl ect an ‘individualization’ of the relationship of young Muslims to the Islamic tradition and how such an individualization relates to broader changes in religious authority.

Individualization and authority

Young Muslim voices ‘speaking Islam’ Something that never ceased to surprise me during fi eldwork was the assertiveness with which the young spoke about Islam. Th ey would be 252 chapter five quick to dismiss others as ignorant and to undermine others’ viewpoints by pointing out that they were based on faulty or insuffi cient knowledge of Islam. Faced with the opinions of others on what Islam says and Muslim practice entails, they oft en wanted to ‘check for themselves’. Th is usually implied trying to fi nd out whether a certain idea or practice had its origin in the Koran and the sunna or whether it was a matter of ‘superstition’, ‘innovation’ or ‘culture’. In this respect, they tended to see the Koran and the Hadith as ‘transparent’, in the sense that ‘Islam’ could be directly derived from the holy texts. When speaking to me as a researcher about particular Islamic practices, however, many would stress that they were not sure that this was what Islam really said and that I should ask an Islamic scholar to ensure that I got the correct information on a particular issue. At other times they would stress that what they said about Islam was just a personal opinion and that others might see things diff erently. Th e assertiveness with respect to ‘what Islam says’ was, thus, contextual and dependent on the subject at hand as well as on the situation in which the assertion was put forward. An interesting case in this respect is a feature article written by a young Muslim woman of Pakistani background in one of the major Norwegian newspapers. At the time I got to know her a few years aft er the article was published, she had become a member of the MSS. Th e article deals with ‘emancipation’ as a contested issue in the relationship between youth with a Pakistani family background and their parents and discusses the discrepant views that parents and youth have of emancipation as, respectively, “moral corruption” and “getting an education and participating actively in social life”. Referring to a TV-programme in which one girl related how she had not been allowed to meet her fi ancé until they were married (only being allowed to see his picture beforehand), she writes: Th is custom is practiced to a large extent by Pakistanis. But it should be underlined that this is a custom that has become a part of life in their societies and that does not originate in the Koran as many people believe. It also happens that young girls are married against their will. Th is does not belong in Islam either. In the Koran it says that one should be allowed to see each other before marriage, and possibly also learn to know each other if one so wishes. And not least, the most important of all is that no one should be married against their will, both should give their consent. Th e author relates such practices to a lack of knowledge of Islam: individualization and religious authority 253

More or less all Pakistanis from the countryside have minimal knowledge of Islam, this having to do with their low level of education. Th e little they know that is actually correct is oft en equivalent to the average knowledge that Norwegians have of Islam (those who have some clue). Th ey learn to read the Koran in Arabic – thousands of words they do not understand. Furthermore, many are illiterate and cannot read the Urdu translation either but are obliged to blindly trust the ‘learned’. Some cus- toms and traditions they have therefore do not belong in Islam. In the Koran, each and every man and woman’s right to education is emphasized. Th ey should be equal in nearly all areas of life. It should be added, however, that in Islam it is seen as a necessity and as a matter of course that some tasks are suited to women and others to men. But, as mentioned, all should have the same opportunities. Th erefore great weight is given [in Islam] to equality between men and women. Th e example given above illustrates the way in which young women assert their opinions of what ‘Islam says’ in order to better the condition of women in their surroundings. Th e author challenges Pakistani parents and accuses them of having insuffi cient knowledge both of the social life of youth in Norway and of Islam. Th e hindrance to gender equality among Muslims is here identifi ed as the ignorance of uneducated people from the countryside. Knowledge about Islam thus becomes an asset for claiming certain rights concerning, for example, marriage. Th e example also illustrates how such personal assertions of what ‘Islam says’ are expressed and authorized by drawing on established discourses. Th e writer’s claims to gender equality are based on opposing Islam to cultural traditions and practices based on knowledge to those based on ignorance and on references to the Koran as the authoritative source of Muslim practice. References to the Koran are made in order to authorize the author’s embracement of gender equality, women’s right to education, their rights to do with marriages and more generally their rights to be given the same opportunities as men. Th is strategy of using Islamic resources as a means for empowerment has been dealt with in several other studies of Muslims in Europe (see, for example, Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003; Fadil 2005; Göle 1993; Khosrokhavar 1997). Roy has suggested that the assertiveness of young Muslims when it comes to who can “speak, enunciate the truth, say what Islam is” (2000: 76) is related to a wider process of ‘individualization’ in contemporary European Islam. Th e main factor underlying this process, according to Roy, is the loss of Islam’s social plausibility, this resulting in a heightened need for the individual to refl ect on his/her religion. 254 chapter five

Th is individualization does not necessarily give rise to a ‘critical discourse’, however. In order to explain how the content of the discourse of young Muslims can be “orthodox, or even fundamentalist” (Roy 2000: 69) and at the same time a part of an individualization process,16 Roy introduces a distinction between ‘the enunciation’ (énonciation) and ‘its content’ (énoncé). Whereas the former signals the ‘act’ of making a statement, the second signals the elements that discourse is made of. According to Roy, individualization is expressed in the way that Islam is theorized as, for example, a factor in individual development and rupture with ‘tradition’. Furthermore, the mode of enunciation of those who speak (I who speak to you tell you what Islam is), and its ‘point d’imputation’ (I’m addressing you to give a response to a concrete problem to do with your relation to society), rather than in the énoncé, indicates an ongoing process of individualization in young Muslims’ relationship to Islam (Roy 2000). Due to processes of individualization, the answers to questions like ‘What is Islam?’ and ‘What does it mean to be a Muslim?’ increasingly have to be individual, not so much in terms of elaborating new theoretical answers but in terms of the self- appropriation of the answers (Roy 2004: 38). Roy’s distinction between the ‘énonciation’ and the ‘énoncé’ is instructive. However, it does not suffi ciently explore why young Muslims, despite the individualization he observes, continue to utter what Roy refers to as ‘orthodox’ or ‘fundamentalist’ statements. Th e argument that young Muslims’ capacity to ‘speak Islam’ is an affi rmation of individuality (the apprehension of self as producer) and subjectivity (the capacity to speak Islam for oneself) also needs some qualifi cation, at least when applied to the young Muslims I worked with in Norway. Although young Muslims increasingly theorize their own Islamic engagement as individual projects, their capacity to ‘speak Islam’ remains enabled and restrained by the rules and regulations of the Islamic discursive tradition and the social relationships in which they are embedded (cf. Dassetto 2000). Th ere is a range of already existing assertions, practices and institutions and these constitute a fi eld of possibility for what may be said and accepted as true. Th is raises important questions about the kinds of rules, regulations and capacities that enable certain people to ‘speak Islam’ in particular contexts. In this

16 Roy uses ‘fundamentalist’ to refer to the insistence on a literal understanding of prescriptions drawn from the Koran and the sunna. individualization and religious authority 255 respect, I will investigate below the question of how young Muslims tie their utterances and claims to ‘speak Islam’ to authorizing discourses in the Islamic tradition. Th e argument that the assertiveness of young Muslims refl ects a generational change also needs some qualifi cation. In his study of Turkish Muslim migrant workers in Germany, Schiff auer (1990, 2002) has argued that the new understandings of Islam to be found among young Muslims are not entirely disconnected from the transformations that can be observed among the immigrant generation. Th is immigrant generation, Schiff auer points out, had already realized a conscious (re)appropriation of the Islamic tradition and this trend was to become ever more important in the following generations. Another position is voiced by Dassetto (2000) who argues that seeing the assertiveness of young Muslims, when it comes to who can ‘speak Islam’, as a generational change omits the fact that in the older generations living in Muslim countries one also similarly encounters interlocutors who articulate their own views of Islam. Similarly, Amir-Moazami and Salvatore (2003) stress the need to see the developments occurring among young Muslims as a relative continuation of the reformist discourses developed in the late nineteenth century in the Muslim world. Within such reformist discourses Islamic education and the duty to do dawa and to encourage others to do what is good and right was increasingly theorized as an individual duty; the need for a continual reinterpretation of the Islamic sources (rather than reliance on tradition) was also repeatedly invoked (cf. Mahmood 2005). Among the young Muslims I worked with in Norway, the assertiveness with which they spoke about Islam and the mode of enunciation varied considerably from person to person. Diff erent people had diff erent competences and capacities, according to, for example, their age, gender, education and socialization more generally. When speaking to the younger ones, and also to some of those who were less active in the organizations, the assertiveness regarding what ‘Islam says’ was more variable. Th e point of enunciation would just as oft en be ‘My father says that Islam is’ or ‘A friend of mine says that Islam is’, as ‘I will tell you what Islam is’. Th is variation was also present among the parents. In some families the capacity to speak with assertiveness as to what Islam was and was not was cultivated through discussions of social life and religion that were features of everyday life. In these families, much of the same critique that young Muslims directed towards the parental generation and their traditional and unrefl exive way of living Islam was 256 chapter five voiced with regard to other Muslims who they characterized as lacking knowledge of Islam. Th e discussion between Umar and his father that was quoted in the introduction to this chapter is also instructive in this respect. Umar and his father frequently engaged in such exchanges and were both able to articulate and defend their views of what was correct Islamic practice. However, the ways in which they sought to authorize such claims diff ered signifi cantly as Umar put more weight on the individual’s right and duty to compare diff erent opinions whereas his father regarded the tradition he had been brought up in as authoritative. We also saw that the ability to assert a personal voice was embedded in asymmetrical social relationships; Umar would, for example, sometimes ‘shut up’ in deference to his father even though his ‘scholarly knowledge’ might exceed that of his father on the issue being disputed. Th is respect for generational hierarchies and parental authority was widespread among the young and in many cases meant accepting the authority of parents and other elders by avoiding confronting this authority with a ‘personal voice’. Generational relationships were oft en discussed, in particular in the context of the NMU, and here the importance of respecting one’s parents was repeatedly asserted as an ideal that should only be circumvented in cases where parents were actually hindering their children from living according to Islam. In other situations, gender and generation would intersect to regulate the possibility of speaking Islam. Alesha, for instance, was scolded by her father when she wrote an article in the local newspaper criticizing the Pakistani community for gossiping. Alesha was tired of being gossiped about whenever she was seen speaking to some of her many male friends and criticized this behaviour by referring to the disapproval of gossiping found in Islam. Th e young woman’s father worried about the anger that could end up being directed at his family because of having criticized ‘their own’ in such a manner and was only partly reassured by the many positive reactions Alesha got from young women her age aft er the critique was published. While this kind of public criticism ‘from within’ was rare in the late 1990s when this event occurred, criticism of various ethno-cultural communities, ‘the Muslim community’ and ‘Islam’ more generally has become more commonplace in Norwegian public discourse since the turn of the century, this criticism being articulated by people who position themselves diff erently with relation to the communities and discourses they criticize (as an outsider /insider, as secular, cultural or moderate Muslims or, for example, as ‘practising’ or ‘believing’ Muslims). individualization and religious authority 257

Furthermore, the ability to ‘speak Islam’ also depends on certain discursive capacities that young Muslims develop through debating with their parents, their classmates, their teachers and their Koran teachers and via the media. Th e NMU and the MSS were important in this respect not only as spaces where young Muslims ‘spoke Islam’ but also as spaces in which the discursive capacities that allowed one to do so were developed in, for instance, the dawa programs, through listening to darses and through discussions with others. As we will see in the next chapter, the way in which Islam is theorized as a factor in individual development and ruptures with ‘tradition’ (as in Umar’s case) is in itself based on narrative models of an exemplary return to Islam provided to the young in the form of, for example, literature and seminars. Th e ability to ‘speak Islam’ in any given context is related to the social identities of the speakers and to the discursive capabilities that diff erent people have developed and the ways in which people were able to authorize their statements. Th e individual’s relationship to Islam thus remains fi rmly situated within social relationships and structures of authority even when people like Umar stress that they must ‘choose’ to follow the direction they ‘recognize themselves in’ or that they have pursued a ‘solitary’ search for Islamic knowledge.

Th e contestation and reassertion of authority Being capable of ‘authoring’ one’s own understanding of Islam does not necessarily imply that one’s viewpoints are authorized by others or that one can ‘speak Islam’ with authority. When young Muslims talk about and debate Islam, with their parents, their classmates or Muslim friends, they must rely on some kind of ‘authorization’ of their viewpoints. Practices and utterances gain their authority by their relation to authorizing discourses of a more general order (Asad 1993). Changes in the production and distribution of knowledge between specialists and non-specialists, the young and the old and men and women infl uence relations of authority and power within the Muslim community in important ways. ‘Th e Islamic sources’ and religious knowledge have been made accessible to new and larger groups, these including many women and youth.17 Th ese changes have led writers like Eickelman and

17 More books are now published in, or translated into, English. Th is increases the accessibility of the religious knowledge for youth in the second generation who tend not to master literary Arabic or to have high-level reading and writing skills in their 258 chapter five

Piscatori (1996: 111) to argue that mass education opens the way to ‘democratized’ access to religious texts, overcoming restrictions as to who is ‘authorized’ to interpret them. Although I agree with Eickelman and Piscatori that such restrictions are importantly challenged, I will argue that the consequences of this are nevertheless ambivalent as they simultaneously energize eff orts to reassert restrictions on interpretation. Th e result is a complex process of contestation over authority that should be assessed in terms of transformations and continuities in social identities, power and institutions. Th e dispute between Umar and his father is, once again, instructive. Th e actual issue of controversy – the correct way of performing salah – may seem trivial at fi rst but when we consider that ways of praying are important in distinguishing diff erent Muslim groups (e.g. Shia from Sunni, diff erent madhabs or traditionalists from Islamists) it appears less so. When discussing the controversy with me, Umar himself pointed out several issues on which he and his father diff ered. Umar, like most young Muslims in the MSS and the NMU, was critical of what he (and they) referred to as ‘inherited’ Islam. ‘Inherited Islam’ was seen to be characterized by an uncritical reliance on ‘tradition’ and by the veneration of ‘spiritual leaders’ and ‘holy men’ who were considered to be infallible and at times even to be invested with supernatural powers. Th is ‘traditional’ form of Islam was contrasted to a more individualized approach. Instead of unquestioningly following the opinions of one ‘spiritual leader’, in the way he imagined his father did, Umar’s approach to Islam involved ‘comparing diff erent opinions’ and ‘choosing the one that he recognized himself in’. Whereas Umar’s father invoked the authority of tradition and of the ‘spiritual leader’ he followed, Umar – using the strategy of citation – ‘returned to the Koran and the sunna’ in order to authorize his own view. Such diff erences also pertained to how they related to the madhabs. Whereas Umar’s father followed the Maliki school in his practice, the tradition transmitted to him by his father, Umar saw all the schools of law as providing diff erent but equally valu- able positions that could be combined so as to achieve more fl exible

mother tongues. Books written in the mother tongue still seem to be an important source of Islamic knowledge for at least some of the members of this generation, though. Th e translation and publication of Islamic literature in Norwegian is still in its very early stages. One example of this type of work is the translation of Syed Abu-Ala’ Maududi’s Introduction to the Koran by one of the members of the MSS, accessible on their web page. individualization and religious authority 259 solutions (although he stressed that such combinations should not interfere with the internal consistency of a given practice).18 Such openness towards doctrinal pluralism and fl exibility displayed with regard to fi delity to a particular madhab can be seen in terms of what has been glossed as the “post-madhab character of modern religiosity” (Mahmood 2005: 81), characteristic not least of much contemporary revivalist pedagogical material and many fi qh manuals. It should be noted that Umar’s conscious way of relating to the dif- ferent opinions of the schools of law was not shared by all the young Muslims I worked with. With respect to most religious practice (for example, prayer) they continued to practise in the way this had been institutionalized in particular traditions, these conforming to diff erent law schools. However, because of the coming together of Muslims in organizations like the NMU and the MSS the young Muslims increasingly drew on diff erent schools when forming an opinion of what was correct Islamic practice, what was halal and haram etc. Th e extent to which this mixture was refl ected upon and used as a basis for individual religious practice varied greatly depending, for example, on the familiarity of the young Muslims in question with the Islamic scholarly tradition. It is important to note, here, that while Umar called for more fl exibility and for the individual to compare, evaluate and choose between diff erent positions, he simultaneously stressed how this should not be abused by individuals as a means to “make life easier on themselves”. Th e same refusal to select only the aspects of the Islamic message that suit them, to relate to religion as some kind of an ‘à la carte’ system, is noted by Jouili (2006) in her study of pious Muslim women in France and Germany. Th is refusal indicates that despite the insistence on individual choice we should not see this as an example of religiosity being transformed into a postmodern free-fl oating consumption of religious goods. Th is view is supported by the fact that Umar’s challenge to his father’s religiosity is clearly circumscribed and limited to positions that are authorized by the discursive traditions of Islam. Th e positions of Umar and his father towards the authority of diff erent law schools and traditions of interpretation are also shaped by, and

18 In Islamic jurisprudence, this is known as the principle of talfi q (the Arabic literally means ‘concoction’, ‘fabrication’, ‘piecing together’) which refers to the piecing together of views from diff erent schools of law to formulate a legal principle or rule. Th e principle was principally employed and developed by Muhammed Abduh (1849– 1905) and became central to the Islamic reform movements of the twentieth century. 260 chapter five contribute to shaping, the social aspect of their religious practices. Whereas Umar’s father related more or less exclusively to a Moroccan mosque in which most people belonged to the same ‘school’ as he did, Umar moved between diff erent mosques and religious organizations, thus articulating diff erent interpretations and technical understandings of Islamic rituals. Furthermore, Umar’s approach was signifi cantly shaped by his participation in trans-ethnic Muslim youth networks and by his active use of the Internet, with its radical pluralist and deterritorializing capacity, as a means of Islamic self-education.

Th e imam as an authority fi gure, prayer leader or good shepherd In the above example, local mosques and imams are of limited importance in authorizing a particular practice as correct according to Islamic standards. Neither Umar nor his father regarded the practice of the imam in their local mosque in Oslo as authoritative. Th is contrasts with the Norwegian majority discourse on Islam where great weight is generally given to the importance of imams as Islamic authorities. As several researchers have stressed, the importance and infl uence of imams is frequently both transformed and overestimated in the diaspora (see, for example, Cesari 2000; Saint-Blancat 1997; van Bruinessen 2003). While the importance and infl uence of imams has tended to be overestimated in Norway as well, the authority of organizing committees and executive boards of mosques and larger Islamic organizations has tended to be underestimated. As was repeatedly pointed out to me, the directing committee of a mosque was oft en more important than the imam in terms of determining the activities and religious ideological profi le of the mosque. Th e ‘authority’ that an imam may claim depends not only on his formal studies and knowledge of Islam but also on his ability to operate within these frames, then, and to obtain endorsement by the mosque committee or association (van Bruinessen 2003; Vogt 2005).19

19 To the extent that young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS seek infl uence through the mosques, this is not by becoming imams – a position that is usually not regarded as being very attractive – but through getting involved in the organizational life and administrative organs of the mosques. Th us, when young Muslims in the Jamaat-e-Ahl-e-Sunnat mosques in Oslo called for changes in 2002, what they demanded was a more democratic structuring of the board that would also allow more young people to participate (cf. Chapter Two). individualization and religious authority 261

In Sunni Islam, the word ‘imam’ originally simply referred to the one who led the prayer, a function that could be performed by any grown Muslim man; the actual shaping of the imam role has varied importantly across time and locality and within diff erent Islamic traditions, however. Th e imams appointed to mosques in Europe oft en accumu- late functions that, in Muslim countries, are part of a more sophisti- cated religious apparatus including the imam (prayer leader), the alim (learned person) and the muft i (responsible for juridical opinions). In the immigrant context, imams may be expected to fulfi l all of these functions, even though some of them do not have suffi cient religious education to bear the title of alim or muft i. Such an accumulation of functions can also be seen in Norway where imams oft en do not only lead the Friday prayer but also give the Friday speech, ensure proper Koranic education for children and visit families and preside at funerals and marriages. Imams have also accumulated a number of additional new functions as a consequence of the position of Islam as a minority religion in Norwegian society and are increasingly called upon to represent the Muslim population and to speak as Islamic authorities in the Norwegian media. Th is accumulation of functions of the imam has been stimulated by the Norwegian government’s need to point out representatives of the Muslim community who can function as ‘dialogue partners’. Th e additional set of functions also relates to expectations regarding the ‘civil’ role of minority religions as a “door- way to social participation” (Report to the Storting (49) 2003/04). Th ese expectations identify imams as potential agents in the integration process, in combating attitudes and practices (such as forced and/or arranged marriages and female circumcision) that are seen to violate values construed as simultaneously Norwegian and universal and in solving problems seen to threaten the integration of society (such as youth criminality and gang violence). An action plan against forced marriages suggesting, as one of its measures, that religious leaders should be educated in Norwegian language and society well exemplifi es the current reconfi gurations of the role of the imam. Worries about how imams and other religious authorities transmit Islamic traditions, norms and values to Muslims living in secular non-Islamic societies have animated public debates across Europe and have been framed largely as a question of ‘integration’ and, more lately, also ‘radicalization’ (Birt 2006; Boender and Kanmaz 2002; van Bruinessen 2003). Furthermore, in Norwegian public and political discourse the practice of bringing religious leaders to Norway from 262 chapter five

Muslim countries is oft en commented on as a hindrance to the modernization and Europeanization of Islam and to the integration of Muslims in Norwegian society. In the motion put forward by the Conservative government minister in charge of immigration and integration, briefl y discussed in Chapter Th ree, to ‘modernize Islam in Europe’, the question of religious authority was prominent.20 A central vehicle for the ‘modernization’ Solberg called for was to restrict the infl uence of imams “who have no understanding of what it is like to be a Muslim in a country where they are a minority” (Dagbladet 04.11.2003). She asserted that ‘we’ must ‘make demands’ concerning who are to function as imams. A technique that Solberg suggested using in this respect was the restriction of labour permits. In addition, she demanded that imams should get more education and that this education should be acquired in Europe rather than in Muslim countries. Solberg’s suggestion to use the law to shape Islamic theology in Norway in a particular way was controversial but similar suggestions have since been put forward several more times. In the aft ermath of the killing of the Dutch fi lm-maker Th eo van Gogh in 2004, the Labour Party suggested making access to work and residence permits for foreigners working as religious preachers in Norway dependent on going through an ‘introductory programme’ covering basic knowledge of the Norwegian language and Norwegian society. Th e proposal was underpinned by the argument that imams and other religious preachers had a key role in the integration of many people of immigrant background in Norway. Th ese repeated suggestions to educate imams in order to ‘modernize’ Islam in Europe and to better ‘integrate’ the Muslim population into the majority society must be seen as a response to, and a reiteration of, the image of imams as generally authoritarian, traditionalist and out of touch with Norwegian realities that had been produced through a number of high profi le media-covered ‘scandals’ in the fi rst half of the 2000s (Dessau 2003).21 Dessau argues that the ‘mediatized’

20 Dagbladet 04.11.2003: “Solberg utfordrer norske muslimer [Solberg challenges Norwegian Muslims]”. 21 ‘Th e imams’ have been collectively castigated and held responsible in a variety of ‘scandals’ brought to the attention of the greater public by the Norwegian media under headlines such as: “Harlem in rage over imams”, “Imams to be investigated”, “Exposed imam wants health control” and “Why the imams lie?”. A chronology of these ‘scandals’ is provided by Dessau (2003). To a signifi cant extent the imam debates at the beginning of the 2000s were provoked by journalists who in cooperation with young women of Muslim background did covert audio-tapings of conversations where the young individualization and religious authority 263 imam scandals in this period strengthened the ongoing shift s in the representation of Muslims and Islam in the Norwegian public sphere, as discussed in the Chapter Four. Th e debates about ‘training imams’ were also infl uenced by other European countries where debates about the education of Muslim religious leaders were rife and where some eff orts had already been made to institutionalize such learning institutions.22 As already indicated, the above example of Umar disputing with his father shows that the importance accorded to mosques and imams as locations of Islamic knowledge and authority might be overstated. Th e young oft en stated that they ‘respected’ the imams in the mosques they frequented but the extent to which they regarded them as Islamic authorities varied considerably. In any case, the imam was just one among several possible authorities that one could refer to, these including both scholars and lay people, locally and globally. His practices and utterances, no less than those of young Muslims, did not simply gain authorization in themselves but only through the way in which he was able to relate them to authorizing discourses of a more general order. Th e suspicion that many imams were not properly educated, that they had insuffi cient knowledge of Norwegian society and that they were ‘speaking culture’ rather than Islam made their authority as interpret- ers of the Islamic texts and transmitters of the Islamic tradition volatile. Some imams were also seen as transmitting an ‘unrefl ected upon’ knowledge of Islam, in that they simply proclaimed what was haram and halal instead of inciting their listeners to refl ect upon the meaning and importance of Islamic practices.23 When seeking to educate themselves about matters concerning a particular Islamic practice, young Muslims would most oft en call a friend, discuss the issue with some of the ‘respected’ people in the organizations they formed part of, search out the views of some religious scholar from abroad or look for women in question pretended to seek advice on the issues of forced marriages and female circumcision. Parts of these conversations were made publicly available and interpreted within public debate as proof that imams were reactionary, that they spoke with ‘two tongues’ pretending to be more liberal when speaking in public and that they were opposed to Norwegian values and integration. 22 Th ere are a number of studies on so called imam training and the reconfi guring of the imam role in the European context (see, for example, Birt 2006; Boender and Kanmaz 2002; Johansen 2006; van Bruinessen 2003). 23 To most, the imam was not a fi gure to whom they turned if they were having personal problems and only rarely if they had inquiries about personal or other issues that related to Islam did they go to him. 264 chapter five authoritative opinions on the Internet (e.g. those provided by the European Council for Fatwa and Research). Th e young Muslims I worked with shared the general concern about the ‘traditionalist’ infl uence coming from the imams. Th ey were concerned with the need for imams as well as ‘religious scholars’ or ‘spiritual leaders’ who were familiar with what it means to live as a Muslim in a European minority context and who would therefore have a greater capacity for conveying a more correct picture of Islam to non-Muslim Norwegians. Because of this, they were generally positive about the idea of educating religious scholars and ‘spiritual leaders’ within the cadre of the Norwegian college and university system.24 Th e establishment of an imam training programme in Norway has also been put forward by several politicians with a Muslim background and has been embraced by the Islamic Council of Norway.25 However, there was a certain discrepancy between how the government (headed fi rst by the Conservatives and then the Social Democrats that followed them) and young Muslims envisaged such an education. Th e government seemed to be primarily concerned with ‘furthering integration’ by conveying to imams the language and assumed common ‘values’ of Norwegian society (such as knowledge of what it means to live in a feminist society, an example used by the minister in charge of immigration and integration).26 In contrast, other concerns were more central to religiously active young Muslims, these being related to the dynamics of revival and recognition discussed in previous chapters. For one, they argued

24 In an interview in the student newspaper Universitas in 2002 (13.03.2002), the then leader of the MSS said that the MSS would support the training of ‘spiritual leaders’ within the university system. 25 In September 2005 the Norwegian Government launched an optional leader- training programme for Muslim religious leaders in Norway in cooperation with Faith Regen UK. Th e programme was aimed at the “consciousness-raising and training of Muslim religious leaders, so as to enable them to attend to their role as counsellors and tutors in a good way in Norwegian society” (Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development: Press release (215) 23.09.2005, “Opplæringsprogram for muslimske religiøse ledere”). Starting in 2007, the Faculty of Th eology, at the assignment of the Ministry of Labour and Social Inclusion, has off ered a course on ‘How to be a religious leader within Norwegian society’, including lessons on Norwegian law in the fi eld of religion, international human rights, citizenship and ‘Norwegian values’. 26 Th is was also suggested by the Prime Minister of the Christian Democrat Party in 2002 who said that if we are to achieve a positive integration it is important that the imams “learn better the values we build on in our society” (Dagbladet 07.02.2002). In 2004, the leader of the Labour Party similarly invoked the need for, and possibility of, anchoring “values like freedom of speech and gender equality” through training programs for religious leaders. individualization and religious authority 265 that there was a need for ‘spiritual leaders’ (not necessarily imams) who could ‘reach’ the young – who could transmit the Islamic traditions using a method and style that appealed to the young who had grown up in Norway. Related to this, they were concerned with ensuring the capability of religious leaders to understand the challenges that arise in the everyday life of a young Norwegian Muslim and their ability to provide Islamically correct solutions to challenges based not on ‘inherited tradition’ but on (scholarly) knowledge of Islam. And furthermore, they were concerned, given the new role of imams as public representatives of Muslims in Norway, with having religious leaders who understood Norwegian society not only to ensure the ‘integration’ of Muslim populations but also so that they could counter negative majority opinions about Islam by knowing how to present Islamic dogma without hurting the sensibilities of the majority community. Th e debates about training imams thus raised questions about what one conceived the role of the imam to be, the kinds of skills that were deemed necessary for performing such a role and how one should go about instilling particular attitudes in imams. Whether these attitudes should be premised on the assumed common ‘values’ of Norwegian society or on the values that were assumed to inhere in the Islamic tradition, and how these sets of values related to each other, remained a matter of contestation. Debates over the role of imams thus intimately link questions of authority, governance, power and knowledge in the sense that attempts are made to ‘revive’, ‘reform’, and/or ‘modernize’ the Islamic tradition and to shape ‘Norwegian Muslims’ by means of legal regulations, educational programmes and training (Jacobsen 2009).

Interpreting Islam As already mentioned, one of the developments that has been pointed out in the context of contemporary Islam is that as larger groups of people outside the religious establishment, including youth and women, are able to engage the founding texts directly, they are also enabled to overcome the restrictions as to who is ‘authorized’ to interpret them. Debates on ‘interpretation’ and its authority regularly occurred in the context of the NMU and the MSS, in darses, face to face discussions, the magazines and through the mailing lists and diverse discussion forums found on the Internet. Whereas many young Muslims asserted their own interpretations on the basis of how they themselves understood the founding texts, there was still much 266 chapter five ambivalence with respect to whether such eff orts were legitimate and about the kind and amount of knowledge that was necessary in order to interpret the Islamic texts. Who is authorized to interpret the Koran and how does one gain such authorization? What kind of knowledge does one need to interpret and what authorizes an interpretation? Can anyone gain authorization simply by acquiring knowledge or must authorization be secured by particular social locations in terms of, for example, gender, generation, kinship or education in order to be eff ective? As already noted, one of the features of the Islamic discourses in the NMU and the MSS was the insistence on the need to return to the Koran and the sunna to recover ‘true Islam’. Th e (informal) discussions in the NMU and the MSS took place within social relationships that were not formally hierarchized and members contributed with their knowledges and opinions. Th e ability to make references to the Koran and the Hadith was the most important foundation for the contextual construction of authority in discussions and debates. Verses from the Koran and hadiths were cited to authorize diff erent positions, oft en without any discussion of the possibility of diff erent interpretations. Discussions were usually defi nitively ‘won’ by the person who could cite something from the Koran or the Hadith that pertained to the question that was being discussed. Being capable of citing the sources yielded respect, this respect going to women as well as men. But access to sources and the ability to cite them in discussions and debates was not always suffi cient to authorize a particular view as the correct interpretation of these texts was also made subject to contestation. Th e Islamic discursive tradition and its articulations and modes of institutionalization in various socio-historical contexts off er a variety of hermeneutical approaches and methodologies. My aim is not to deal with these, though, but to discuss how my interlocutors approached the issue of interpretation and religious authority. A discussion on predestination between three NMU members aft er one Sunday meeting raised some interesting questions in this respect. Mohammed said that, as he understood things, Allah had left a certain amount of room for people to make their own choices meaning that people were, thus, themselves responsible for changing their own situation; they should, in other words, not just wait for destiny to decide matters. In support of this view he referred to some ayas (verses) from the Koran, underscor- ing that although God knows what has been and what will be our individualization and religious authority 267 choices are not predetermined. Aaqil replied that, in his opinion, he and Mohammed did not have any credibility when talking about this issue. It would require much more knowledge of Islamic history, of philosophy and of the scholars than they possessed to properly discuss the matter. He was also sceptical of Mohammed’s way of citing the Koran in a way that consisted of, as it were, “pulling out some aya from the Koran and believing that you have found the answer”. Mohammed retorted that he was not at all trying to undermine the scholars and their Islamic knowledge but that he was aware that diff erent interpretations existed and that precisely because of this it was very important “to be clear as to what and who one(self) chooses to believe in”. Khalam intervened at this point, agreeing with Aaqil that Koran verses should not be used out of their context. He praised Mohammed for reading and trying to understand the Koran and for thinking for himself but warned that one can easily come to the wrong conclusions this way, especially on topics as complicated as this one. Aaqil added that Mohammed should start his inquiries by getting hold of the relevant literature rather than by trying to read and interpret the Koran for himself. In the discussion between Mohammed, Aaqil and Khalam there was agreement that the meaning of concepts such as ‘choice’ and ‘predeter- mination’, as used in the Koran, was not self-evident. What they disagreed about was whether individuals had the right to interpret the texts for themselves, or whether such interpretation should be left to those who had ‘suffi cient knowledge’. Mohammed took the existence of a multiplicity of hermeneutics within the Islamic tradition as an epistemological justifi cation for individualized hermeneutical approaches (cf. Fadil 2008). Aaqil and Khalam, on the other hand, stressed the importance of having a particular competence and complying with certain rules when engaging with the Islamic scriptures. Th e notions of competence and credibility point towards a domain of orthodoxy that is secured on the basis of a scholarly Islamic tradition. Th e question, of course, remains, though, as to what would be ‘suffi cient knowledge’ to attain the ‘credibility’ that Mohammed is seen as lacking. Th e protagonists involved here invoked ‘the scholars’ – a category oft en referred to by the young Muslims. In most cases ‘scholar’ or ‘learned’ did not refer to a fi xed category authorized by, for example, an academic or educational system, however. Th e category they referred to rather consisted of a broad and quite imprecise category of Islamic authorities which included the so called ulema as well as modern style ‘preachers’ and 268 chapter five

‘intellectuals’. Accepting someone’s position as a scholar or their status as ‘learned’ was thus subject to negotiation. An article in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet (05.02.2002) referring to the views of the Norwegian convert Anne Sofi e Roald, who has a doctorate in religious science, on the matter of marriage and Islam was subject to debate in this respect. Roald was quoted as saying that: If Muslim women want to marry Christian men, it is their own business. Th ere can be other interpretations of the Koran and the practices of the Prophet than the traditional view. Whereas the newspaper presented her as “among Europe’s prominent Islamic scholars” and as being at the forefront of a rapidly developing movement of reinterpretation of the Koran, some young Muslims objected that she did not have suffi cient Islamic education to merit the title of ‘scholar’. Others pointed to the fact that she was a ‘Western woman’ and asserted that her interpretations were inevitably based on Western culture and thought; these critics contextualized her ideas about the need for ijtihad27 as part of ‘the West’ and its patronizing attempts to tell Muslim women how to live their lives. Others, however, stressed that Islam is a universal religion and that Roald’s cultural identity as a Westerner did not undermine her right to interpret Islam. On the contrary, they argued, converts to Islam might have a clearer view as they had not been raised within any particular Muslim cultural tradition and could therefore approach the sources in a culturally less biased way. Th e assumption that interpretations of the Koran made by the traditional scholars were bound to a particular time and space and that there was a need to ‘reinterpret’ the sources was, as can be seen from the above debate about religious endogamy in marriage, a contested issue. Some of the young emphasized the mobility of interpretation in the Islamic tradition and the necessity of questioning established scholarly traditions of interpretation and of reinterpreting the sources so as to ‘adapt to changing social circumstances’. Others, like Seloua, were more sceptical of what they saw as a tendency involving ‘adapting Islam to culture’ instead of ‘adapting culture to Islam’: Reinterpretation should not move us away from, but closer to, revelation. In our society people are miles away from the sources of Islam and from

27 Th e exercise of independent judgement in interpretation. individualization and religious authority 269

the life that the Prophet lived and recommended. I support a reinterpretation that helps us discriminate between right and wrong and enables us to get closer to the initial revelation. In Seloua’s view, the problem was not primarily one of interpretation; the problem derived from the fact that Muslims were not living according to “the initial revelation”. To the extent that she viewed reinterpretation as necessary, this was not as a means to “adapt to changing social circumstances”, but as a tool for realizing more authentically “the life that the Prophet lived and recommended”. As the above examples illustrate, the ‘breaking out’ of interpretation from the domain of religious specialists has energized important debates about who is authorized to interpret the Islamic sources. In response to the critique of established authorities and the engagement of non-experts in theological debates, eff orts are made to reassert correct procedures for producing authorized interpretations.28 Th e potential negative consequences of young Muslims’ loss of respect for Islam’s scholars and philosophers, or their disembedding from the ‘ethnic group’ in terms of religious learning, is a fear that is invoked by parents, community leaders, politicians, some researchers (see, for example, Cesari 2000) and even sometimes young Muslims themselves. A particular concern has been about how marginalized youth can be attracted to decontextualized and populist interpretations of Islam which can lead them to make their own radical and ‘extremist’ interpretations in response to contexts of heightened confl ict between, for example, the majority and minority groups in the immigrant context or between ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, as perpetuated by the media. Th e question of how to secure the authority of certain interpretations is, thus, increasingly engaged because of a concern with ‘governing’ Islam and Muslim populations. Th e fragmentation and individualization of religious authority also poses important challenges when it comes to the eff orts of non- Muslims to defi ne Islamic truth. Th e contemporary democratization of access to Islamic knowledge means that not only Muslims but also non-Muslims increasingly engage in debates about what Islam is and should be and about what the Islamic sources ‘really say’. In Norway, non-Muslim politicians and activists have on several occasions used quotations from the Koran (usually about war, the status of

28 See, for instance, Malik 2001. 270 chapter five the ‘infi dels’ or about women) to legitimize their negative understandings of Islam and to argue for a more restrictive immigration policy or against the possibility of Muslims becoming integrated in Norwegian society. In an eff ort to provide a means to counter the development of such non-contextual and ‘unauthorized’ use of the Islamic sources, the director of Th e Islamic Foundation in Norway (Rabita), Basim Ghozlan, posted a guide to proper interpretation of the Koran in the Islamic tradition on the homepage of , an infl uential Norwegian Islamic web site. In order to make a proper interpretation of the Koran, he writes, one must have an intimate knowledge of the Arabic language and the Koran as a whole as well as knowledge of the context of revelation of a specifi c surah. Furthermore, specifi c verses should always be seen in relation to other verses in the Koran that speak about the same issue and in relation to the relevant Hadith literature. Ghozlan concludes: Doing ijtihad (making an eff ort to explain the text and advance new meanings and interpretations) is of course permitted if one has the academic and religious level required to do so but in any case one must nevertheless fi rst know what and perhaps why others have said what they say. To Ghozlan, making an eff ort to explain the texts is not an activity limited to traditional scholars but it is, however, limited in the sense of requiring certain forms of scholarly knowledge of the Islamic tradition. His intervention exemplifi es the various current eff orts that are being made to reinstate certain restrictions as to who is authorized to interpret Islam.

Feminist interventions

Questions concerning gender relations were central to many of the young, especially, although not exclusively women, in their (critical) engagement with Islamic traditions. Th e young Muslims in my study converged upon the idea that there was an essential and God-given difference between men and women. As seen, for example, in the newspaper feature article written by the young Muslim woman that I quoted earlier, though, many also called for gender equ(al)ity. Similar to what has been noted in other European contexts (Fadil 2008; Jacobson 1998; Jouili 2006), such claims were commonly articulated by means of arguing that gender equ(al)ity is a fundamental principle in Islam and also individualization and religious authority 271 via the distinction between culture and Islam. Some identifi ed their own critique of gender injustice with ‘feminism’ but this was quite uncommon. More oft en, the young associated the term ‘feminism’ with a paternalistic attitude towards Muslim women that represented these as passive victims of patriarchal relations and traditions. Oft en, concerns with the ‘representation’ of Muslim women were intimately linked to questions of interpretation. As Sadiqa told me: Since secondary school, I’ve always heard that Muslim women are oppressed, especially those who wear the headscarf. Men seem to be in control, they have the power. I heard this so many times that in the end I believed it myself. But aft er researching the issue myself and asking several Muslim girls who have read about and studied Islam, I found out that this was all wrong. Islam gives women a lot of freedom. It’s just that men try to twist the message and interpret it in their own ways. Sadiqa relates ‘what she always heard’ to the picture of Muslim women given in the media, for instance in the recurring debates about ‘arranged marriages’. She also heard from other Muslims, whom she characterized as not knowing very much about their religion, that Muslim women were supposed to ‘stay in the kitchen’ while men ‘should be in charge’. In her own family, she stressed, things were not like this. In order to subvert this stereotype of Muslim women, Sadiqa argued, Muslim women needed to ‘advance’ in society and acquire more knowledge about the freedom that their religion really gives them. In the above quote, Sadiqa also hints towards how issues of ‘interpretation’ play a role in this process. Several of the young women complained, like Sadiqa, that men interpreted the Koran in a certain way to serve their own interests. In a way similar to that practised in what has come to be termed ‘Islamic feminism’, they based their critique of gender injustice on a ‘return to the Koran and the sunna’. Recovering Islamic truth and separating the ‘cultural’ from the ‘Islamic’ was a common point of departure in order to further women’s rights. Sarah, a young woman of Turkish origin, was perhaps the one who went furthest in terms of this critique and other women oft en commented on her opinion regarding gender relations and Islam as a sign of her having become too Norwegian. For Sarah, a feminist critique provided the prospect of recovering the truth of the Koran: Men have been good at those things in Islam that are to their advantage. Th ey have for a long time managed to conceal the rights women have in Islam because these would, unfortunately for them, be very dangerous for men if they were brought to the fore. It has been like that throughout 272 chapter five

history. Aft er the death of the Prophet and aft er all those who knew the Prophet were dead – or the fi rst Khalifas were also pretty good at preserving women’s rights – but under the Abbasides they started concealing these and turned towards the cultural rather than the Islamic.29 And subsequently this followed Islam throughout its history. Th ere have always been small feminists like me, but they never got very far, you know. But I will go far… [laughing]. In such critiques of tradition, there are seeds of a feminist epistemology which acknowledges the gendered bias of interpretation. Such a re- reading of the sources motivated by a concern with redressing gender bias was also mentioned by several others, although usually then with reference to the work of some contemporary scholar or Muslim intellectual such as, for instance, Jamal Badawi’s “Gender Equity in Islam” (Badawi 1995). One example mentioned to me several times was the gender-biased translation and interpretation of the term that the Koran uses for the ‘virgins’ that will be the companions of believers in Paradise. In some translations, this is rendered as a promise of virgin women. But, according to other interpretations, the word that is used in the original Arabic text means ‘partner’ rather than woman. Th is latter interpretation was used by the young Muslims I worked with to confi rm the inherent gender equity in Islam that male biased translations had concealed throughout history. Although young women were generally more concerned than others with ‘women’s rights’, several young men also attested to the view that Muslim men have tended to interpret the religion in ways that benefi ted themselves. Several were also concerned that they might themselves also be promoting certain interpretations for their own benefi t (cf. Jacobsen 2004). Nabil, for instance, a young man of Pakistani descent, was of the opinion that an essential and God-endowed gender diff erence made it more ‘natural’ for his wife to take leave from work to stay home with their future children. In refl ecting upon his own opinion in this respect, he nevertheless wondered whether this understanding might be biased by his gender. He questioned his own motives with regard to this. Was he motivated by the fact that

29 Th e Abbasides represented a major Islamic dynasty which fl ourished between 750 and 1258. In her seminal work Women and Gender in Islam (1992) Ahmed argues that Abbasid society, in which Islamic doctrine developed, emphasized and institutionalized the gendered hierarchical voice and silenced the voice of equity and justice in the Koran. individualization and religious authority 273 such a gendered division of work better accommodated his personal aspirations for the future? Was this the reason why he chose to believe that Islam had prescribed such a gender arrangement when it came to work? Another example of this self-doubt was provided when Rasheed, also of Pakistani descent, questioned his own motives for invoking the Koran to criticize his wife’s manner of dressing. Was the real reason, as he had come to suspect, his own jealousy rather than a concern with a strict conformity to Islam? Th e view that being a good Muslim implies acting in the spirit of the general ethical, and fundamentally egalitarian, vision of the Koran, rather than a literal application of the rules of the Koran, was also present. Rasheed was one of those who articulated this point most clearly:

What I am saying is that according to what we Muslims teach, the life of the Prophet was the ideal life and we should strive as hard as possible to live as He did. Th at is the basic premise. Th en the question arises: “How did He live?” Yes, he was a revolutionary person. He was radical in terms of the age in which he lived. And when it comes to women, he actually gave them rights that were then unthinkable. And then I think: “If we are to be like Him, what does that mean?” Does it mean that we should follow the rights that He introduced at the time? Are we like Him then? Or are we like Him if we, in relation to our own time, are radical and revolutionary? I think that being like Him is being radical and revolutionary in terms of your own time in according rights not only to women, but also to weak groups in general. Th en you are like the Prophet. At the time of the Prophet, according women the right to education and to work outside the house was radical. Today radical affi rmative action with a view to increasing the number of women in higher positions would be appropriate. So in a way I believe that radical affi rmative action would be in the spirit of the Prophet. Just like Muslim feminists such as Leila Ahmed, Riff at Hassan and Fatima Mernissi (see, for example, Ahmed 1992; Hassan 1991a, 1991b; Mernissi 1987, 1991a, 1991b, 1992, 1993, 1996), Rasheed emphasizes the radical and egalitarian message in Islam and its positive potential as a continual basis for changes in hierarchical and oppressive relations. In this interpretation, to strive to follow the exemplary model of the Prophet Mohammed entails following the ‘spirit’ of this model, rather than just following the rights and duties that Mohammed introduced at the time. Islam is, thus, a dynamic tradition that also has a ‘radical’ and ‘revolutionary’ potential to better the condition of ‘weak groups’ in contemporary societies. 274 chapter five

Debating Islam and gender In a group discussion following a seminar in the NMU, the question arose as to whether it was legitimate, within the context of an Islamic state, to ‘force’ people to act according to Islam. Th e general opinion was that trying to ‘force’ people to do something would do no good and that each and every person had to arrive at their own conclusion as to whether they would follow Islam or not. Latifa, who was at the time thirteen years old, denounced all physical coercion by confi dently asserting that “hitting is not even allowed in Islam”. Th is statement seemed to be based on her general understanding of Islam as an ethically good and just religion that would not allow such a ‘bad thing’ as physical coercion. She continued by listing several good reasons why physical coercion was neither acceptable nor eff ective, arguing among other things that it tended to make people more rebellious. A young man, Jamal, who was around fi ve years Latifa’s senior, intervened at this point. He asserted that ‘Islam says’ that under certain conditions parents are allowed to hit their children and men their wives in order to make them act according to Islam. Latifa was at fi rst reluctant to accept this as ‘what Islam said’ but aft er a moment of hesitation she gave in and concluded, “Well, if it is Islam, I suppose it is not possible to argue against it”. Latifa’s invocation of a general ethical injunction in Islam directed towards freedom from (physical) coercion was one oft en made by the young Muslims, notably with reference to the Koranic saying: “Th ere is no compulsion in religion”.30 In this particular example this ethical

30 Koran 2: 256, “Th ere is no compulsion in religion: true guidance has become distinct from error, so whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped the fi rmest hand-hold, one that will never break. God is all hearing and all knowing”. Th is aya is oft en invoked to underpin the right to individual choice and against compulsion in various areas. Regarding marriage, for instance, it has been used to argue that if a Muslim woman wishes to marry a non-Muslim she is free to do so, since there should be no compulsion. Th is ‘individualist’ use was criticized by a member of MSS who argued that the verse refers to the choice of religion or faith and not to how Muslims should practise their religion. To support this argument he referred to the Koran 49: 14, “Th e desert Arabs say, ‘We have faith’. [Prophet], tell them. ‘You do not have faith. What you should say instead is, “We have submitted,” for faith has not yet entered your hearts.’ If you obey God and His Messenger, He will not diminish any of your deeds: He is most forgiving and most merciful”. On the basis of this verse he argues that Muslims cannot, as some have claimed, marry a non-Muslim – even if this should be their preferred choice, as this would be the same as ‘saying you believe’ but not letting faith enter your heart. Th e case is nevertheless diff erent from Latifa’s invocation of the aya in that she contests physical coercion in particular. individualization and religious authority 275 injunction was put aside because of Jamal’s reference to what ‘Islam says’ on the matter, but without the issue of diff erent interpretations coming to the fore. Had Latifa been familiar with alternative interpretations of, for example, the aya concerning men’s guardianship over women, she could have argued against Jamal’s view that Islam allows men to ‘hit’ women.31 But Latifa let the argument go.

31 Th e multiple interpretations that exist of the relevant aya (4: 34) open up a wide area for debate. Haleem off ers the following translation: “Husbands should take good care of their wives, with [the bounties] God has given to some more than others and with what they spend out of their own money. Righteous wives are devout and guard what God would have them guard in their husbands’ absence. If you fear high- handedness from your wives, remind them [of the teachings of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them. If they obey you, you have no right to act against them: God is most high and great”. Haleem specifi es that high-handedness signifi es “a situation where one partner assumes superiority to the other and behaves accordingly” and that “hit” signifi es “a single blow”. According to Yusufali, “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other, and because they support them from their means. Th erefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in (the husband’s) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct, admonish them (fi rst), (next) refuse to share their beds, (and last) beat them (lightly); but if they return to obedience, seek not against them means (of annoyance): For Allah is Most High, Great (above you all)”. According to Pickthall, “Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them, and banish them to beds apart, and scourge them. Th en if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great”. In Shakir’s translation, “Men are the maintainers of women because Allah has made some of them to excel others and because they spend out of their property; the good women are therefore obedient, guarding the unseen as Allah has guarded; and (as to) those on whose part you fear desertion, admonish them, and leave them alone in the sleeping- places and beat them; then if they obey you, do not seek a way against them; surely Allah is High, Great”. Pickthall uses the word ‘scourge’ which means to whip severely, to lash, to punish with severity etc. Yusufali, on the other hand, is of a diff erent opinion and interprets the Arabic text to mean “beat them lightly” and only as a “last” resort. Roald (2001) off ers a thorough discussion of how this aya has been understood in the Islamic debate throughout history and how it is understood by the Arab Islamists in Europe that she interviewed. Debates concern both the circumstances under which a husband can physically punish his wife and the nature of this physical punishment. According to Roald, most Islamists living in Europe have returned to an ancient understanding of these circumstances as mainly referring to ‘sexual disobedience’. Furthermore, she notes that many specify that the blow should be with a siwak, a small natural toothbrush that, according to the sunna, the Prophet Mohammed used for the purposes of personal hygiene. In a TV-debate, Lena Larsen, at the time representing the Islamic Council of Norway put forward the view that men can hit their wives on their hands with a toothpick [using the Norwegian word ‘tannpirker’ rather than siwak] to mark strong disagreement. 276 chapter five

In this case, no specifi c references were made either to the Koran or the Hadith or to diff erent interpretations within the Islamic scholarly tradition with the issue instead being debated in terms of what ‘Islam’ ‘allows’ and ‘says’. Jamal’s ability to get his point of view accepted as authoritative by the others was based on the knowledge of Islam that the others assumed him to have as well as on his status as the oldest in the group and the appointed workshop leader. Th e reason why Latifa and the other girls present accepted his argument as ‘what Islam says’ was apparently that they assumed Islam to be a single truth that ‘says’ certain things and Jamal to be more knowledgeable on this than them. Although Latifa let the argument go, there was some reluctance in the way she did this. She not only affi rmed that if this is Islam it has to be right but also alluded to the rules and regulations of a particular discursive formation that made it impossible to argue counter to what ‘Islam says’. Although age and position may be important in authorizing interpretations, these do not automatically guarantee that one’s interpretations will be authorized. In a workshop in the Islamic Conference in Oslo in 1999, a girl from the MSS asked the learned male workshop leader, of Saudi Arabian origin, whether a girl could take off her hijab in the presence of her fi ancée. He replied that a boy could rightly claim to see the girl’s hair before they got married, so that he would get a realistic picture of what she looked like. Th e alim supported his argument not by reference to the Koran or the Hadith, but by recounting the story of a friend of his who had been engaged to a girl for some time. When he saw her without the hijab, however, he discovered that she looked completely diff erent to what he had imagined and subsequently broke off the engagement. In the aft ermath of this incident, several girls expressed their disagreement about and frustration with the answer the alim had given. As one of them said to me, “We expected him to tell us what Islam says, and not his own opinions”. Th e authority of the alim was, thus, contested because of his failure to base his claim on a discourse that the girls accepted as authoritative, this showing that his position as an alim was not suffi cient in itself to establish such authority. Th e answer given by the alim and the frustrated response of the girls also illustrate ambivalence with respect to interpretations of the hijab and its functions. Th e young women oft en invoked the ability of the hijab to neutralize gender and sexuality. Such a neutralization allowed not only the perseverance of chastity and social order but, oft en more individualization and religious authority 277 importantly, it also allowed women to appear, to be treated and to be judged as individuals rather than by gender-specifi c standards of beauty and attractiveness (although such standards were important to the ways in which they used the hijab and otherwise dressed). Th e hijab was, in this respect, contrasted with the ‘Western’ tendency to turn women into sexual objects and the harassment and degradation of women that stemmed from such objectifi cation. Wearing the hijab achieved ‘respect’ from men, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, pro- tected women from the sexual harassment they saw their peers and colleagues experiencing and allowed them to appear and be judged as ‘people’ and ‘human beings’ with unique qualities and universal worth rather than in terms of gendered and sexualized categories. In relation to marriage in particular, this ideal was oft en voiced regarding the issue of a person’s Islamic virtues, rather than their looks, being decisive in the choice of partner.32 By focusing on men’s rights to see a girl’s hair before marriage, the alim was seen by the young women to undermine women’s right to be judged as individuals on the basis of ‘who they were’, rather than ‘what they looked like’. A pluralization of available interpretations may give young Muslims and women more space for manoeuvring and for opposing the dominant understandings found in their surroundings, but it may also lead to a situation where interpretation is pitted against interpretation in such a manner that the positioning of people with regard to, for instance, gender, generation and class continues to structure the power to make such interpretations socially eff ective. A young girl can argue her right to decide for herself whom to marry, basing her argument on a particular interpretation of the Koran; whether and to what extent this interpretation will be eff ective in changing established marriage practices is quite another matter, however. Th is depends not only on whether the girl manages to authorize her interpretation vis-à-vis her parents’, but also on the practical and institutional circumstances that enable certain options and disenable others. In other words, interpretations of Islam are always situated within particular social relationships and structures and the eff ectiveness they acquire in social life therefore depends on a number of factors.

32 Although an unusual case, the putting of such ideals into practice is illustrated by the case of one young man who preferred to get to know his fi ancée by exchanging long letters by e-mail, without seeing her picture, so that her looks would not interfere with his decision of whether or not to marry her. 278 chapter five

Exemplary models and authority in marriage Th e way in which contestations over gender are played out in daily life is well illustrated by the example of Aaqilah and Usman, in particular the arguments about the division of labour in the household that arose within their marriage. When Aaqilah met Usman through some friends she was still a student. Shortly aft er meeting, they married. Aaqilah continued her studies and Usman provided for the family, which quickly grew to include a baby girl. According to Aaqilah, however, Usman was ‘stingy’ [gjerrig] and did not fulfi l his responsibilities as a provider. She had to ask her brothers for money to make ends meet, a fact she eff ectively hid from her husband so as not to hurt his pride. Providing for the family was Usman’s responsibility as a husband, and not hers. Although she planned an active career, she felt that what she earned was hers to spend and that she had no obligation to include this in the household income. Such a division of responsibilities was the proper arrangement “according to Islam”, she explained to me. Usman, on the other hand, complained that Aaqilah was not fulfi lling her duties as a wife. She did not cook and clean properly and she spent too much time outside of the home. Aaqilah’s duty was not only to execute domestic work properly, but also to be more or less permanently available within the home. Usman was also concerned that she should carefully observe the rules of hijab. When his wife was inside the house, he oft en worried that she might be seen through the win- dows without being properly dressed. Aaqilah’s response to these criticisms was that Usman did not appreciate her work in the house and that he should share more of the household chores. As she was preoccupied with her studies and was caring for the baby at the same time, she thought this arrangement fair. She also deplored his prolonged absences from home and felt controlled by his constant comments on her clothing practices. Aaqilah understood Usman’s behaviour as impious and as the result of him following the cultural traditions he had been brought up with rather than Islam. In order to change the relationship within her marriage she therefore wanted her husband to learn more about Islam and to become more pious. On this basis, she took her husband to a meeting with a Turkish scholar who was speaking about women’s rights in Islam. When the alim said that he had never asked one single thing of his wife, Aaqilah laughingly told me, her husband broke out in such a sweat that he had to take off his glasses to wipe his face. When they individualization and religious authority 279 arrived back home, Aaqilah asked (in the cunning and feigned innocent way she imitated for me): “So, what do you think?” Her husband dismissed the whole matter, however, by saying that he did not know on what basis the alim had been speaking. “My husband was sooo good at making his own interpretations”, Aaqilah ironically concluded. Th ere are several things worth noting here. Th e fi rst is that in order to reform her husband and change their marital relationship Aaqilah appealed to a tradition of Islamic authority. Th e reason why such a pro- cedure could be considered potentially eff ective was that Usman shared with Aaqilah a commitment to the authority of Islam. Since both Aaqilah and Usman were active Muslims, the arguments that an issue was ‘counter to Islam’ or that it would be ‘more Islamic’ to do things otherwise were potentially eff ective ways of supporting claims. Certain shared orientations thus structured the way they argued about their respective rights and duties within the marriage. Aaqilah and Usman both agreed that it was a man’s duty to provide for the family and that it was a woman’s primary responsibility to take care of the children. What they disagreed about were the implications of such a divinely ordered gender system with respect to the performance of practical tasks within the household and with respect to relations of authority between the spouses. Aaqilah’s way of interpreting the arguments between herself and her husband in terms of a distinction between cultural traditions mistaken for Islam and ‘true Islam’ was widespread. Th is approach represents a way of arguing that manifests competing narratives about the Islamic tradition, interpretation and authority. References to the exemplary practices of the Prophet Mohammed are central here. Contests over the power to defi ne and authorize narratives about the Prophet thus become important to gender projects. In spelling out how she wished her husband would behave, Aaqilah referred to the Hadith tradition and its accounts of how the Prophet Mohammed mended his own socks, cooked his own food and played happily with his children – he never laid any burden of housework upon his wives. Similarly, she referred to narratives of the lives of the wives of the Prophet to show how women, in the lifetime of the Prophet, were actively involved in all aspects of social life and communal aff airs. In taking her husband to a meeting with an alim, Aaqilah sought to authorize her arguments about what Islam says about marital relations. However, this attempt at authorization was unsuccessful in so far as Usman refused to accept the alim’s authority. While sharing with her husband the view that men 280 chapter five and women have diff erent rights and duties within a marriage, their views as to what extent this complementarity should be organized as a hierarchical or as an egalitarian relationship diff ered. Whereas Usman stressed the Islamic principle of men being in charge of the family, Aaqilah accorded more weight to the Islamic principle of consultation.33 According to Usman, then, the man had to be the head of the household, since no institution could function eff ectively without a leader. Aaqilah, like many young Muslims her age, embraced the ideal of a ‘companionate marriage’, emphasizing the importance of discussion and agreement (or consultation) between husband and wife. A similar notion of consultation was invoked by several of the young Muslims I worked with to underpin the view that the respective roles of men and women in family life are to a certain extent negotiable and that they should, therefore, be determined by the spouses together. Th ese negotiations, however, were framed in a dual gender system in which some gender diff erences were seen as both natural and normative from an Islamic point of view. Th e implications of such fundamental gender diff erences for social arrangements, however, were subject to contestation. It is worth posing the question of to what extent these contestations around issues of gender and authority should be read as a form of resistance to male domination. In her analysis of an argument between a married couple in her book on the Egyptian piety movement, Mahmood (2005) argues that the main protagonist Abir’s use of religious arguments to change her husband is not captured by oppositional terms such as obedience versus rebellion, compliance versus resistance or submission versus subversion. Mahmood instead focuses on Abir’s wish to live piously and how this required the practising of a range of Islamic virtues and the creation of the optimal conditions under which they could be realized. She also points to the paradox to be found in the fact that Abir’s ability to break from the norms of what it meant to be a dutiful wife were predicated on her learning to perfect a tradition that accorded her subordinate status to her husband. In a similar vein, one

33 Th is discussion must be contextualized in terms of wider theological debates surrounding the concept of qiwama (in charge of, responsible for) that is used in the Koran (4: 34) to characterize the relationship between men and women and how this relates to the concept of shura (consultation). In the past, shura was primarily employed on a political level; in more recent years, however, this use has been expanded by some to include the idea of consultation at a family level (Roald 2001b). individualization and religious authority 281 might argue that to the extent that the young Muslims in my study challenged and broke with existing gender regimes this was not achieved by placing themselves outside the Islamic discursive tradition but by displacing themselves within it and invoking its authority. However, in the case of Aaqilah and many other young Muslims their invocation of the authority of the Islamic tradition should not only be understood in terms of their eff orts to live piously. Th eir opposition was not only to those who prevented them from living religiously, but also to the control that parents, husbands and brothers were able to exert over their actions. However, as will be discussed in the next chapter, this resistance was not to authority as such, and did not in itself presuppose a sovereign and autonomous agent. Th e examples that have been discussed above have also thematized the way in which a fragmentation and pluralization of authority structures and the individualization of young Muslims’ relationship to Islamic authority produce ambivalent eff ects when it comes to young Muslims’ use of religious arguments to legitimate and contest existing gender regimes. In so far as alternative interpretations and narratives about the exemplary history of Islam are invoked to challenge the understandings of husbands, parents, imams and scholars or citations of the Koran and the Hadith are used to de-authorize their understandings of particular practices, important spaces of contestation are opened. At the same time, however, the outcome of such contestations continues to depend on how people are positioned within socio-economic structures and on the practical and institutional circumstances that limit the social eff ectiveness of such contestations. Transformations in gender relations, for example within the organization of domestic and extra-domestic work as in the case of Aaqilah and Usman, depend on a variety of conditions of possibility including, notably, access to the labour market, transnational marriage practices, access to social benefi ts and child care facilities. Furthermore, although the aim of the Norwegian welfare state is to promote gender equality among minority as well as majority couples (Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003), the application of public welfare measures within a gendered labour market tends to reproduce women’s position as primary caretakers and men’s as the main providers (Danielsen 2002; Skilbrei 2003; Vike 2001).34

34 For instance, the relatively low payments granted to parents who stay at home with babies make it diffi cult for men – who generally earn more than women – to make use of these welfare arrangements since the family is dependent upon their higher 282 chapter five

Th is aff ects the gendering of work in Muslim minority families as well as non-Muslim majority families. Whereas young Muslims are certainly infl uenced by ideas about gender equality in Norwegian society, the impact from dominant Norwegian constructions of gender diff erence, in which mothers are assumed to be better caregivers than fathers (Danielsen 2002), contributes to leaving this area of gendered labour division unchallenged. Th us, change occurs through processes of interpretation and reinterpretation, processes intimately connected with changes in structural conditions and practice. As ‘agents’, young Muslims are empowered and constrained not only by the ability to authorize particular practices as ‘true Islam’, but also by the way in which gendered practices are shaped by wider cultural and socio- economic relationships in Norwegian society.

Knowledge and belief

In Genealogies of Religion Asad (1993) argues that a conceptual shift in the category of religion has occurred in the West, whereby religion is no longer a knowledge-producing activity in the world but a repository of beliefs. It is such a shift that he sees as underlying Geertz’s attempt at a universal defi nition of religion in which he asserts that, “Th e basic axiom underlying what we may perhaps call ‘the religious perspective’ is everywhere the same: he who would know must fi rst believe” (1973: 110). Asad argues that Geertz’s defi nition seems to be based on a particular modern and Christian understanding of religion in which a sharp line is drawn between religious knowledge and knowledge of social life and natural objects (Asad 1993: 47). In a context where knowledge is rooted either in an a-Christian everyday life or in an a-religious science, belief is not regarded as the conclusion of a knowledge process but as its precondition, Asad claims. In the following, I will discuss the relationship between belief and knowledge in the religious perspective of the young Muslims I worked with. In this section I focus on the notion of iman35 and the ways in which doubt is

wage. In addition to a single maternity payment (engangsstønad) and nine months paid maternity and paternity leave (fødselspermisjon), there is a cash benefi t for parents who stay at home with children under three years of age (kontantstøtte). Th ere is also a special transition benefi t given to single-income providers. 35 Faith, ‘knowledge’, ‘belief’. individualization and religious authority 283 discursively regulated. In the next section, I focus on how the relationship between knowledge and belief is articulated as young Muslims approach the competing knowledge claims of the Islamic tradition and modern (Western) science. In an article on education in Tankevekkende (1997: 6), Abdi Rahman Dahir Osman argues that education and knowledge are vital to individuals and to society. Drawing up a fundamental distinction between those who are educated and have knowledge and those who have no education or good reason, he cites the Koran 35: 28, “It is only those who have knowledge among His slaves that fear Allah”. He interprets this as meaning that a knowledgeable and reasonable person has a better possibility of having faith in the existence of Allah through his understanding of nature. In Osman’s account the assumption is that ‘knowledge’ and ‘reason’ facilitate faith. Iman, which is usually rendered in English as faith, literally means ‘to know’, ‘to believe’ and ‘to be convinced beyond the least shadow of doubt’. Iman can, thus, be understood as fi rm belief arising out of knowledge and conviction. It should be noted, however, that no sharp line is drawn between religious knowledge and knowledge of social life and natural objects in this respect. Acquiring knowledge is seen as a religious obligation that – rather than presupposing iman – is conducive to religious belief. Gaining knowledge of Islam, social life and natural objects and strengthening one’s iman are two sides of the same coin. But how can a ‘fi rm belief arising out of knowledge and conviction’ be secured in a context in which, as I have argued above, young Muslims subject Islamic traditions to refl exive questioning about what it means to be a Muslim and about why a certain practice should be followed and in which authority structures are increasingly fragmented and individuals made responsible for a refl exive allegiance to Islamic authorities? Among the youth many spoke about how they experienced iman as something rather unstable, as being strong or weak in diff erent phases of life (see Chapter Six). Th e question of having a strong or a weak iman did not refer primarily to doubts concerning whether the basic Islamic articles of faith were true or not, however.36 Rather, it

36 Th ese are outlined in the following way in a hadith (Sahih Al-Bukhari vol. 1, bk. 2, no. 47) “Narrated Abu-Huraira: One day while the Prophet was sitting in the company of some people, (the angel) Gabriel came and asked, ‘What is faith?’ Allah’s Apostle (PBUH) replied, ‘Faith is to believe in Allah, His angels, (the) meeting with Him, His Apostles, and to believe in Resurrection’. Th en he further asked, ‘What is 284 chapter five referred to the fi rmness of belief arising out of knowledge and conviction and the way such knowledge and conviction was translated into practice. For the young, the strength of iman was intimately linked to knowledge. Th is concern was well expressed by Rabab: Here in Norway we Muslims are challenged to the extent that it is impossible not to have doubts about one’s own faith, at least for those Muslims who do not have enough knowledge of Islam. Having ‘enough knowledge’ is presented here as a way of avoiding doubt when dealing with challenges coming from the non-Muslim Norwegian environment. Th e distinction between ‘true Islam’ and the practices of ‘Muslims who do not have enough knowledge of Islam’ serves as a frame for interpreting one’s own doubt. Farida, like many others, spoke about how she used to fi nd certain things in Islam problematic until she learned that these were in fact not Islamic but cultural traditions. When she spoke to me about the uneasiness she once felt towards some aspects of Islam regarding, for instance, the position of women, she interpreted this uneasiness as something rooted in a lack of knowledge: I do not see anything negative in Islam itself. But I do see a lot of negative things in Muslims. I did initially fi nd some negative sides to Islam, but that was before I found the answers to the questions I thought were negative. Alesha spoke in a similar way about the relationship between doubt and knowledge. When I asked her if there were things in Islam that she had diffi culties accepting, she said that she did not have enough knowledge and that to fi nd out whether something was true or not she had to investigate it on her own: “I just think that I haven’t investigated this yet, but when I do I will fi nd the answers I’m looking for”. Education and knowledge are, thus, central to cultivating one’s disposition towards iman. Th is stress on knowledge is emphasized by the many biographical narratives in the pedagogical Islamic literature that underscore how the acquisition of more Islamic knowledge reinforced

Islam?’ Allah’s Apostle replied, ‘To worship Allah Alone and none else, to off er prayers perfectly to pay the compulsory charity (Zakat) and to observe fasts during the month of Ramadan’. Th en he further asked, ‘What is Ihsan (perfection)?’ Allah’s Apostle replied, ‘To worship Allah as if you see Him, and if you cannot achieve this state of devotion then you must consider that He is looking at you’ ”. individualization and religious authority 285 people’s faith. Conversion stories, in particular, oft en attest to how people having studied the Koran and Islam for some reason end up by saying the shahada aft er having discovered the truth of Islam. In line with this understanding of knowledge as conducive to faith, many young Muslims stressed how they had come to ‘love their religion’ more as they acquired more knowledge of Islam, a feeling that made it easier for them to practise the sometimes diffi cult religious obligations, such as getting up for the Morning prayer or wearing the hijab. In a discussion I had with Janaan about iman and the question of doubt, she underlined the importance of seeking answers to her questions in the Koran: No, I have no doubt. Because when I believe in something, I kind of really do, you know. If I have questions, then – everything is sort of in the Koran – and then it is important that I go and look for answers there. But, I mean, questions like: ‘Where does God come from?’, for instance, that’s a question we Muslims say that ordinary human beings cannot answer, and therefore it is important that we do not start thinking about it. It you start thinking about it, you kind of move in the wrong direction … why this and why that. If there are questions that are diffi cult to fi nd answers to, we should just leave it at that. Janaan went on to explain that: Th ere are laws given by God, and we Muslims have to follow them whether we understand them or not. Sometimes it is diffi cult to understand why things are the way they are, but in time, as we get more knowledge and life-experience we will probably understand that it is right. Janaan underlines the fi rmness of her belief and confi rms the view that knowledge underpins belief. At the same time, Janaan is concerned with the limits of human knowledge and understanding. Iman thus also seems to require a virtue of faithfulness towards God (cf. Asad 2003: 90) – an unquestioning habit of obedience even in cases where one does not or cannot know or understand. Th is understanding of iman as a disposition of obedience might seem paradoxical when considering, as earlier in the chapter, that obeying without understanding is precisely what young Muslims criticize ‘traditional Muslims’ who have ‘inherited Islam’ of doing. Th is apparent paradox is resolved by the way in which the relationship between knowledge, iman and truth is regulated. One such regulation is the distinction, as already seen, existing between ‘true Islam’ and the practices of actual Muslims who ‘lack knowledge of Islam’. In the case of young Muslims, criticism is conceived in such a way that it is directed towards 286 chapter five the practices of Muslims who have insuffi cient knowledge of Islam rather than towards (an objectifi ed ‘authentic’) Islam, which is constructed as ultimate truth, knowledge of which is the basis for iman. Criticism of Muslim practices is thus conceptualized as an Islamic critique against un-Islamic practices. Furthermore, the relationship between knowledge, iman and truth is regulated by the way in which fi rmness of belief is seen to depend on knowledge and, conversely, doubt is seen to arise from a lack of knowledge and the limited capability of human beings to understand and answer certain questions about ultimate existence. Doubt and criticism thus energize an eff ort to educate oneself in order to acquire more knowledge of Islam; because of the limits to human beings’ capacity to knowledge, however, this must also imply continually striving towards increasing one’s knowledge. ‘Unquestioning obedience’ is necessary only at the limits of an individual’s or the collective capacities of humankind to understand. I am not suggesting that these procedures of control make it impossible for young Muslims to criticize Muslim practices. It is not questioning in itself but the limits to the kinds of questions that can be posed, the positions from where they are posed and the social imaginaries within which answers can be found that are regulated.

Th e signs of God: Islam and science In Islam Observed Geertz (1968) argues that the growth of modern science has made almost all religious beliefs harder, if not virtually impossible, to maintain. A characteristic of modern societies is that modern Western science has defi ned itself in terms of a historical rift with religion as a system of knowledge (Hervieu-Léger 2000: 17). In classical modernization and secularization theories a main hypothesis was, therefore, that scientifi c worldviews and rationality would gradually replace religious worldviews. Th e many religious revivals of our times, however, have served to question such a unilinear view of the history of knowledge and challenge the very opposition between rationality and irrationality and religion and science in modern Western science (Hervieu-Léger 2000). How do young Muslims approach the competing knowledge claims of the Islamic tradition and modern (Western) science? Has Islam become a ‘repository of belief’ that contrasts with scientifi c knowledge? In his comparison of Islam in Morocco and Indonesia, Geertz (1968) identifi es two diff erent strategies that have been embraced by those he individualization and religious authority 287 refers to as the ‘scripturalists’ (broadly understood as those Muslims who are infl uenced by a scholastic, legalistic and doctrinal Islam). Th e scripturalists, he holds, have felt the tension between the progressive secularization of thought in the modern world and the essentials of the religious perspective most keenly and have made the most rigorous responses to it. Th e fi rst response consists in an absolute separation of religious matters from scientifi c ones while the second response consists in an attempt to show that the scriptures, especially the Koran, anticipate and are fully consonant with the spirit and fi ndings of modern science. Th is latter response well captures what has come to be known as the ‘new Islamic scientism’, in which the relation between Koranic knowledge and modern scientifi c knowledge is at issue. Within the broad range of literature representing this ‘new Islamic scientism’, one main genre is made up of texts that fi nd evidence of scientifi c truth in the Koran’s treatment of issues such as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe, the expansion of the universe, the development of the embryo, the origin of sperm and the health eff ects of certain foods. Such fi ndings are oft en used as arguments to underpin the ultimate truth of the Koran. Th e accurate descriptions that the Koran provides of natural phenomena, despite the Koran having been revealed at a time when the modern sciences had not yet established what we now take to be scientifi c facts, allegedly prove that it must be a divine revelation. Th is epistemological position is associated most notably with the French convert and professor of medicine Maurice Bucaille who, in his hugely infl uential book Th e Bible, Th e Quran and Science (Bucaille 1978), argued that progress in the natural sciences demonstrably proves Islam’s position as the true religion and the Koran as a divine revelation. Ahmed Deedat and Zakir Nain have also published and delivered speeches on the compatibility of Islam and modern science and on the Koran’s anticipation of recently discovered scientifi c facts. Th e works of Harun Yahya have also contributed importantly to this genre of reasoning about the relationship between Islam and modern science.37

37 Harun Yahya’s work has been translated into several languages including Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Urdu, Malay and German. His Internet pages are available in as many languages. Th e refutation of evolutionary theory and Darwinism, as well as the defence of Islam against the challenges of materialism and Christianity, is the main concern of his writings. According to Riexinger (2002, 2008), his international reputation is due to the extensive use of the Internet, with his career exemplifying the fact that, although it has not toppled traditional authorities, the Internet has 288 chapter five

Th e new Islamic scientism is directed both towards non-Muslims, as a means of proving the correctness of Islam and its fundament, the Koran, and towards Muslims, as a means of reinforcing faith. Th e works of the above mentioned preachers are distributed throughout the world and promoted worldwide as particularly suitable for dawa work. Many have dismissed the new Islamic scientism as simply an apologetic posture adopted by certain Muslims intent on re-establishing the glory of Islam vis-à-vis the West. Although there certainly seems to be an aspect of ‘competition’ with the West and Christianity in many of these writings, there is nothing new in itself in a complementary view of Islam and science. Th roughout history the Islamic tradition has been engaging, incorporating and rejecting other traditions of knowledge. From a historical perspective, then, one might argue that the ‘newness’ of the ‘new Islamic scientism’ thus pertains more to the newness (and progressive secularization) of modern science, that has defi ned itself in terms of a historical rift with religion as a system of knowledge, than to the view that scientifi c and religious knowledge are complementary forms of knowledge. Th is complementarity is also articulated, although in a vein somewhat diff erent to that of the writers referred to above, by Tariq Ramadan. According to Ramadan, Islam does not oppose experience or reasoning to faith. On the contrary, the whole of Creation is seen as a universe of signs, a testimony of God and His qualities that reason is invited to reveal (Ramadan 1994: 61–62, 66). From this perspective, scientifi c knowledge and discoveries bring a Muslim closer to God, such discoveries being a sort of ‘proof’ (Ramadan 1994: 66). I have already noted that the young Muslims I worked with were critical of the ‘superstition’ and ‘irrationality’ of some Muslims and in particular of those categorized as illiterate, rural, and of the immigrant generation. Th ey stressed the fact that Islam is an imminently logical and reasonable religion, which does not oppose experience or reasoning to iman. A human being who grew up in total isolation from other human beings, I was sometimes told, would become a Muslim from

considerably widened the space for a new kind of ‘religious entrepreneurs’ for whom Riexinger employs the term ‘supplementary authority’. Internet was also the means by which the young Muslims in Norway came to know about Yahya and other theorists of the new Islamic scientism. Yahya’s books and fi lms are also distributed in Norway by Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., which is located in one of the internationally oriented Arab- dominated mosques. individualization and religious authority 289 reading the signs of nature and from his natural inclination (fi tra38) towards submission to God. Iman is not opposed to reason, then, but is, on the contrary, a natural capacity of reasonable human beings. Th e young Muslims I worked with oft en talked about natural phenomena as signs of God’s Greatness and Might, and interpreted such contemplation as important to iman. Looking at beautiful scenery or watching a wildlife programme on TV oft en elicited exclamations like ‘Al-Hamdulillah’ [Praise to God] and statements about the greatness of Islam were oft en introduced by expressions like ‘When I look around me…’ Furthermore, the reasonableness, explained in terms of modern science, of Islamic practices was sometimes put forward as an additional rationale for following them; abstaining from alcohol and pork, eating halal and performing the fi ve daily prayers were not only acts of obedience to God or ways of expressing one’s Muslim identity,39 they were also ways of achieving a healthier body and a healthier society. From this perspective, religious observance thus gains its ‘rationality’ not only from its anchorage in Islamic tradition but also in terms of knowing what is ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ for me, as anticipated by the Koran and later confi rmed by modern science. Th e relationship between modern scientifi c knowledge and Islamic knowledge was frequently thematized in darses and seminars in the NMU and the MSS,40 as well as in their publications. Two ways of reasoning were common. On the one hand, scientifi c fi ndings were seen to confi rm depictions of natural phenomena in the Koran, thus attesting to its divine truth; on the other hand, it was argued that scientifi c fi ndings could help to understand the actual meaning of the normative

38 Th e capacity of accepting Islam as the right faith, a naturally-given predisposition to know the truth and act according to it. Th e notion of fi tra will be discussed in Chapter Six. 39 Eating halal meat, for example, is explained as having its raison d’etre in the positive health eff ects produced by the fact that the blood transports toxic matter out of an animal’s body when its throat is cut. 40 In the spring of 1999, Maurice Bucaille’s book was read and discussed in the literature seminars of the MSS; a fi lm based on Th e Book of Signs was also screened in 2004. On the homepage of the US-based distributor Sound Vision, the fi lm is referred to as one of the best documentaries ever made on Islam and science: “Th is incredible video shows how the Quran is indeed the Book of Signs: a Book that, over 1,400 years ago, when it was fi rst revealed to the Prophet Mohammed (peace and blessings be upon him), accurately described many, many natural phenomena, before any precise equip- ment or technology existed. Th is indicates one thing very clearly: that the Quran, the Book of Signs, is also the Book of God”. In the autumn of 2003, a fi lm called Miracles of the Quran, made by Harun Yahya (see above), was screened. 290 chapter five texts. In a dars held by the NMU, for instance, Aydin explained that although we might not understand everything in the Koran we should still follow its guidelines while simultaneously striving for more knowledge. Upon closer study one discovers the agreement existing between the knowledge of the Koran and that of modern science. As an example Aydin referred to a hadith (from Sahih Muslim) with a supplication the Prophet used to recite asking Allah to purify and cleanse him of his sins and errors with cold water. Aydin had not understood why the water should be cold rather than warm, he told the listeners, until he read a scientifi c study on the cleansing eff ects of cold water on the body on a later occasion. Binding Islamic knowledge to modern science and legitimating the truth of the former by reference to the latter may, however, prove to be what Hjärpe has called “an apologetic trap” (Hjärpe 1999; Otterbeck 2000), in which the ‘knowledge of men’ is turned into a measure for the truth of the Islamic sources. In an MSS mailing list discussion forum a medical student cautioned against the epistemological implications of insisting on a fundamental concordance between the knowledge of the Koran and of modern science. Th e caution was given in response to a newspaper article that had previously been posted as a news link on the MSS list. Th e article addresses the discovery made by a group of scientists at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff of the healing eff ects of honey, including its eff ectiveness against resistant microbes.41 Th e link that was sent out was accompanied by the text, “Wow, they found out NOW, yes!!! We knew about it 1400 years ago! :)”. Th e answer from the medical student read as follows: Salam dear friends! I’m strictly against ‘proving that the Koran is right’ on the basis of recently acquired scientifi c knowledge as our brother does in his mail. I will explain why. Science is highly uncertain and unstable and changes from day to day, yes even from minute to minute. What is today considered a scientifi c truth may tomorrow be rejected as pure nonsense. Furthermore, science is ‘human knowledge’. By that I mean that it is created by humans for humans. Humans are, as we know, fallible and oft en make big mistakes. Not least within research and science. Th e Koran is the word of Allah. Th e Koran is knowledge /science created by Allah. Th e knowledge of the Koran is eternal and for all times.

41 “Honning dreper versting-bakterier” ( accessed 19.11.2002). In his speeches on medical science and dietary laws, Zakir Naik has argued that the medical benefi ts of honey were revealed in the Koran and that these eff ects were then later confi rmed by modern scientists. individualization and religious authority 291

It is perfect and infallible. Consequently it goes without saying that proving something Eternal, Perfect, Infallible, and Divine (the Koran) by reference to something uncertain, unstable and transitory (science) is impossible. Th e brother writes: ‘Oh, they found out NOW, right!! We knew 1400 years ago! :-)’ I ask you, brother: What if tomorrow there is a scientifi c report of high quality arguing that honey is exceptionally dangerous and that it in no way kills microbes. What would you answer then? Th at ‘the Koran was wrong 1400 years ago! :-(’? Unlikely. But you will undoubtedly have a problem explaining yourself. Let us therefore abstain from such presentation of evidence on the validity of the Koran. In our belief it is implicit that Allah’s word is the inerrant truth. We do not need science created by humans to strengthen our belief! Contrary to the predictions of the hypothesis put forward in classical modernization and secularization theories, according to which scientifi c worldviews and rationality would gradually replace religious worldviews, Muslims have, in fact, envisaged diff erent strategies for dealing with the relationship between Islamic knowledge and modern scientifi c knowledge. ‘Th e new Islamic scientism’ encompasses the knowledge of modern science within the abode of Islam and uses it to underpin the authority of the Koran. Th e critique of positivism in modern science poses a new challenge to this way of dealing with the challenges of modern science to religious knowledge, however. If modern science is unstable, transitory and fallible in character, it cannot eff ectively legitimize the eternal truth of the Islamic sources. Th e disbelief in the infallibility and accumulation of modern scientifi c knowledge may thus prompt a shift from an attempt to show that the scriptures anticipate and are fully consonant with the spirit and fi ndings of modern sciences towards a separation of religious matters from scientifi c ones. Th rough such a separation, the truth of the Koran (as knowledge /science created by God) can be reasserted to be, as the medical student suggests, eternal, perfect and infallible and independent of the knowledges of men. Th is, however, also means invoking a distinction between ‘belief’ and ‘science’, thus tying ‘the inerrant truth’ of the Koran to the category of ‘belief’ rather than to ‘a presentation of evidence’ on its validity.

Th e quest for knowledge: a refl exive adherence to Islamic authority In this chapter I have discussed young Muslims’ quest for Islamic knowledge in terms of the changing conditions under which such knowledge is transmitted and acquired. I have argued that their quest 292 chapter five for knowledge may in part be seen as a self-refl exive re-appropriation of the Islamic tradition that is energized by the contemporary ‘objectifi cation of the religious imagination’. Th e conditions in which Islamic knowledge is transmitted to young Muslims brings to the fore a range of questions that require them to refl ect upon their own religious practices, to explain and rationalize them and to choose between diff erent interpretations and attempts at defi ning orthodoxy. Th is requires a kind of knowledge that exceeds the practical competence to live religiously that most of the young Muslims have, to a greater or lesser extent, acquired through Islamic education within the family and the Koran schools. Young Muslims thus increasingly seek to instruct themselves in the scholarly Islamic tradition through books, the media and seminar activities and through creating their own arenas for learning such as the NMU and the MSS. Instead of seeing this objectifi cation as a clear-cut shift from the unconscious enactment of tradition to an individualized critical refl ection upon tradition, I have sought to understand how particular modes of self-refl ection are created in diff erent arenas where Islam is taught and debated. In particular, I have stressed the importance of the confrontation with one’s own diff erence (in relation to non-Muslims as well as to diff erent Muslim traditions) and the widening of the fi eld of religious discussion in which young Muslims increasingly engage. Mass education and electronic mass mediation have made young Muslims more familiar with Islamic texts and doctrinal reasoning and they increasingly engage in debates about theological and doctrinal issues that were once the province of male religious scholars. In line with these developments, I have investigated the relationship young Muslims establish with authorized forms of Islamic discourse and the religious authorities who maintain, produce and circulate Islamic knowledge. By engaging scholarship on the individualization of Islam in Europe, I have argued that the current conditions under which Islam is transmitted has enabled a growing number of people to engage in theological debate, to assert their own interpretations of what ‘Islam says’ and to suggest critical interventions directed towards particular practices that throughout history have come to be seen by groups of people as ‘Islam’. I have situated such critical interventions in their practical context and shown how they relate to the eff orts of young Muslims to contest hierarchies of gender and generation. In some cases, Islamic knowledge (and the familiarity with diff erent opinions in the Islamic scholarly tradition) is thus mobilized in daily life as an aspect of the individualization and religious authority 293 interaction and negotiations between the young and their parents, women and men etc. It is, therefore, important to assess how interpretations of Islamic texts and norms are conditioned by other practices, institutions and social conditions. While the individual is made responsible for acquiring knowledge of Islam, for refl ecting upon religious prescriptions and practices and for relating critically to multiple authorities that speak in the name of Islam, there is also a strong discourse of religious obligation. Th e authority of Islam as a system of meaning and norms largely remains undisputed. Th e relationship of young Muslims to Islamic knowledge and authorities is implicated in broader contemporary struggles to establish Islamic orthodoxy. It is, thus, not individualized in the sense of being disembedded from authorizing discourses and Islamic authorities. Rather, references to authoritative Islamic sources provide the foundation on which opposing viewpoints are articulated. In line with the Islamic revivalist tradition, young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS privilege the authority of Islamic texts over the authority of traditions and established practices. But at the same time as aspiring to refl exivity, critique and empowerment, young Muslims also aspire to remain within ‘Islam’. Young Muslims’ quest for knowledge brings them into contact with a variety of Islamic discourses from which their knowledge of ‘Islam’ must be put together and in relation to which they must increasingly refl ect on whom to listen to and to respect as authoritative. Within this fi eld of Islamic discourse, some voices come to be respected as more authoritative in defi ning what Islam ‘really is’ than others. As a consequence of this, we see a paradoxical development in which Islam is both increasingly ‘individualized’ and ‘normativized’ as it enters debates and social confrontations about the nature of ‘true Islam’. Young Muslims’ quest for Islamic knowledge thus proceeds within a context where the boundaries of what ‘Islam’ is, of defi ning and authorizing its truth, are continually subject to debate and contestation, both in relation to the great variation of Islamic discourses and in relation to other systems of knowledge and truth, such as modern sciences. Although one may observe an institutional deregulation and fragmentation of authority structures (of the family, the mosque, the imam, the ulema etc.), the result is not an autonomous appropriation of the Islamic tradition in terms of a ‘bricolage’ of ‘individual beliefs and practices’ but a complex and structured process of contestation in which authorities are simultaneously challenged and reasserted, 294 chapter five resisted and subjected to. In this respect, this chapter has sought to show how young Muslims’ subjection to religious authority does not necessarily hinder debate and deliberation. Rather, the authoritative religious discourses they relate to promote particular notions of refl exivity, criticism, individuality and self-determination which are central to argumentation and public deliberation. Transformations in the social organization and transmission of knowledge, and the increased importance of modern communication technologies, may thus be said to have both deliberative and disciplinary eff ects (cf. Chapter One). Th ey are both individualizing and ‘normativizing’. While this chapter has mainly been concerned with dimensions relating to the social organization of knowledge and relationships of authority, the next chapter focuses on an equally important dimension of young Muslims’ quest for knowledge – the importance of Islamic knowledge in the process of ethical self-formation. As the next chapter discusses, the Islamic knowledge acquired through diff erent educational activities forms the basis for work on the self for realizing a pious everyday life. CHAPTER SIX

BECOMING MUSLIM: WORKING ON THE SELF

Th is chapter explores how subjectivities are shaped in young Muslims’ engagement with Islamic traditions and their search for ‘true Islam’. Th e main question to be explored is how people come to conceive of themselves and act upon themselves on the basis of such truths. In this sense, being a Muslim is not something that is achieved once and for all; it is, rather, a process of becoming. Drawing on Foucault’s investigations into the subject and the notion of ‘subjectivation’,1 I am concerned with exploring how young Muslims turn themselves into subjects.2 In his analysis of subjectivation (in his later work on ‘ethics’) Foucault is concerned with the techniques through which the person initiates an active self-formation (McNay 1992). Such ‘techniques of self’ are: procedures suggested or prescribed to individuals in order to determine their identity, maintain it, or transform it in terms of a certain number of ends, through relations of self-mastery or self-knowledge. (Foucault 1997: 87) In this chapter I will look at some aspects of young Muslims’ engagement with the Islamic discursive tradition through the lens off ered by the questions Foucault raises about subjectivation. What kinds of conscience and self-knowledge are constructed in the process of turning oneself into a pious Muslim subject? What, according to the young Muslims, should one do with oneself ? What work should be carried out on the self and to what ends is such work directed? In order to grasp such processes, an important ethnographic point of departure is provided by young Muslims’ narratives of ‘becoming

1 Th e French terms ‘assujettissement’ is translated as ‘subjectivation’ by some authors and ‘subjectifi cation’ or ‘subjection’ by others. I have chosen to use ‘subjectivation’ consistently throughout the text. Foucault’s use of the term ‘assujettissement’ brings out the double meaning of the term ‘subject’ as constituted by a form of power which subju- gates and makes subject to: “Th ere are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge” (Foucault 1982: 781). 2 Th is is a perspective that has been thoughtfully elaborated by Mahmood (2005) in her study of the politics of piety in Egypt and by Christiansen (1999) in her study of Islamist women in Morocco. 296 chapter six

Muslim’. ‘Becoming Muslim’ is, of course, a variegated process, both with respect to, for example, individual life histories, social context and the multiplicity and internal heterogeneity of the knowledges and the discourses upon which such a process rests. As will become clear, however, there are certain key elements around which such narratives are structured. I discuss these key elements as a model of a ‘return to Islam’, a model that may be understood as part of a transnational Islamic ‘ideoscape’ (Appadurai 1996).3 ‘Narratives of return’ recount a personal process of Islamization in which Islam gains a new meaning as a framework for understanding oneself in the world and as a normative tem- plate for action. As for all narratives, such narratives are ‘constructions’ in the sense that they “must be created out of the welter of occurrences and relationships that characterize most lives” (Olwig 2003: 797). Th ey are woven together out of interpretations and judgements of personal experiences and social events into refl exive accounts of self-identity. But although they are personal accounts they are also ‘cultural constructions’ since they tend to follow certain established conventions (that make them, for example, credible and socially acceptable) and signal certain values and norms in the light of which the narrator constructs himself or herself as a (moral) subject. Narratives of becoming Muslim are, as I see it, not ‘mere narratives’ – they are to be considered as a means through which particular subjectivities are produced. Th e ways in which young Muslims speak about their return to Islam, rather than simply mirroring an individual life course, refl ect a particular narrative construction of the self.4 Identifying oneself as a Muslim who is ‘returning to Islam’ implies some changes in how an individual perceives their life, its trajectory and goals. Narratives of returning to Islam may, thus, be seen as a technique of the self in themselves, allowing the production of self-knowledge and providing a means for constructing oneself as a particular kind of moral subject. Narratives of the ‘return to Islam’ produce a self-knowledge by means

3 Th e transnational circulation of this ‘ideoscape’ produces, along with similarities in structural conditions, important discursive convergences in locations as diff erent as Indonesia (Brenner 1996), Morocco (Christiansen 1999) France (Cesari 1997; Jacobsen 1999) and Norway (Jacobsen 2002). Narratives of ‘Islamic reversion’, including narratives of veiling, circulate in the media, notably in popular Islamic publications (Abu-Lughod 1995; Rasmussen 2004), through e-mail lists and popular Islamic internet sites, and are also found in the publications of young Muslims in Norway and elsewhere. 4 I should stress here that I see the interview as an integral component of this narrative construction of the self. becoming muslim: working on the self 297 of ordering and systematizing the individual life-course according to a particular model of striving towards religious perfection. Th e narratives also produce knowledge of the self as an agent of personal development, individual decisions and conscience. As a process of subject formation, ‘becoming Muslim’ involves engaging a set of techniques of the self as instruments for personal as well as social reform. Th e process of ‘becoming Muslim’ implies an increasing concern with acquiring knowledge of Islam and with (trans)forming selves and everyday lives in accordance with this knowledge. Instead of regarding religious practice (e.g. wearing the hijab) as merely ‘symbolizing’ Muslim identity, I will explore the extent to which such practices may also be understood as ‘work on the self’. ‘Practising’ or ‘applying’ Islam thus goes beyond religious rituals as ‘symbolic acts’ and functions as a way of transforming oneself as a moral being. In this context, I thus focus on religious practices and rituals as techniques of the self aimed at shaping a particular kind of subjects. In particular, I want to explore how such work on the self is shaped by the processes of individualization and normativization discussed in the previous chapter, placing special emphasis on the value that ‘choice’ and ‘authenticity’ have come to take on in contemporary secular societies in general, and Norway more specifi cally. Th e discussions among young Muslims on what being a Muslim entails in terms of religious practice, the proper motives and intentions that should underlie such practice and the eff ects that such practice is seen to have on the kind of self one is refl ect ambivalences both in the goals that young Muslims aspire to realize through their work on the self and the way in which they relate to the norms and authority of the Islamic discursive tradition. As the discussion will show, a series of tensions emerge when attention is paid to the ways in which young Muslims engage in religious practices, and the ways in which they theorize this engagement, in terms of the relationship between ‘inner conviction’ and ‘outer behaviour’, between diff erent motives and intentions and between ‘authenticity’ and ‘inauthenticity’ in religious practice.

Who are you? Muslim by nature: returning to Islam

In one issue of Explore ( (1) 1999), the front page poses the question, “Who are you?” and then continues, “Th is is a thought that oft en haunts us. But where do we stand?” Th e picture shows four young men with diff erent backgrounds. One of these young men wears a T-shirt with 298 chapter six the slogan ‘Muslim by Nature’.5 Th e T-shirts were imported to Norway from the UK and were sold by the NMU in Oslo. Th e slogan ‘Muslim by Nature’ suggests an answer to questions that young Muslims in Oslo increasingly pose themselves about who they are and what it means to be a Muslim. It suggests that ‘knowing who you are’ is dependent on knowing what a human being is in terms of its place within Allah’s creation. In the same number of Explore, an article called “Do not forget who you are!” elaborates on the questions posed on the front page and the answer suggested by the slogan ‘Muslim by Nature’: Th e human being is God’s most beautiful creation, but it is up to us to remember who we are and our value. We can achieve a higher status than the angels who obey and remember Him incessantly and we can sink below animals in our actions and way of living. Th is is possible because Allah has given us free will and reason and He has given us guidance on what is right. (1999: 5) In the MSS magazine what it means to be ‘Muslim by nature’ is further elaborated on in an article on the issue of ‘reversion’. Here, references are made to the hadith according to which every child is born according to the fi tra.6 Fitra is explained as “the capacity of accepting Islam as the right faith”. It is explained that the responsibility for developing this capacity is incumbent upon parents and that if children’s education is insuffi cient many may remain nominal Muslims only because of cultural heritage rather than because of religious conviction. According to this model, accepting Islam as the right faith involves a ‘reversion’ in the sense of ‘going back to one’s true nature’. Th e preference for reversion,7 rather than conversion, to designate the act of ‘becoming Muslim’ expresses the idea of Islam as din-al-fi tra (the natural religion).

5 ‘Muslim by Nature’ is a clothing collection for women and men. 6 Sahih Al-Bukhari vol. 6, bk. 60, no. 298: “Narrated Abu-Huraira: Allah’s Apostle said, ‘No child is born except on Al-Fitra (Islam) and then his parents make him Jewish, Christian or Magian, as an animal produces a perfect young animal: do you see any part of its body amputated?’ ”. See, for example, the Encyclopaedia of Islam (Lewis, Pellat and Schacht 1991) for a discussion of diff erent theological understandings of fi tra. See, also, Naguib (1995) who discusses the Islamic self-conception of din-al-fi tra and its centrality in Islamic ethics in the context of religious dialogue in Norway. Fadil (2008) makes a very interesting argument about the type of agency that is presumed in the notion of fi tra as this makes God a source of belief rather than an object of questioning. 7 In French ‘reversion’ is talked about as the act of ‘rentrer dans l’islam’. ‘ Rentrer’ signifi es ‘to get back’, ‘to go back’, ‘to return’. In Norway a Norwegianized form of the English term ‘revert’ is sometimes used: ‘revertere’. becoming muslim: working on the self 299

Based on the Islamic ontology embodied in fi tra, becoming Muslim is in some sense coming back to one’s true nature. ‘Reversion’ is, thus, used both to indicate the act of submitting to Allah for the fi rst time and the process by which someone already Muslim in a nominal or cultural sense ‘reverts’ to a more authentic way of being, thus more fully realizing their human potential through Islam.8 Th e natural disposition towards accepting Islam as the true faith must be developed and perfected through religious knowledge and practice. In this respect, the capacity to accept Islam as the right faith should be developed and perfected through following Allah’s guidance on what is right. Although the young Muslims I worked with rarely discussed such abstract notions as fi tra, the above mentioned hadith was oft en para- phrased in conversations they had with their co-religionists and me.9 Similarly, the concept of ‘reversion’ was only rarely used, while other expressions signalling a change from a ‘nominal’ or ‘cultural’ way of being Muslim such as ‘I’m coming back to Islam’, ‘I had an Islamic breakthrough’, ‘I started caring more about Islam’, ‘I realized what Islam really means’ and ‘I started practising Islam’ were rife. Th ese expressions signal a variety of points of reorientation that will be discussed below. I am speaking here of ‘reversion to Islam’ as a narrative model which links individual self-conceptions and experiences to a broader theological and ethical framework. Th e point is, thus, to look at how the ‘return to Islam’ both shapes and expresses particular experiences and moral sensibilities. Contemporary revivalist Islamic discourse is characterized by a pre- ponderance of personal testimony, of narratives of individual experience and individual relationships to Islam over time.10 Such ‘narratives

8 Th e ‘return to Islam’ may be understood as a form of what Martin van Bruinessen (2003) terms ‘internal conversions’. As van Bruinessen notes, such ‘internal conversions’ have so far been little researched. 9 According to Yaminah, for instance, “We Muslims know that all people are born Muslims. But through their parents, they become Christian, Jews etc.”. Iman stated that: “all humans are born Muslim. Th at some become Christian, Jews etc. is because their parents convert them to another religion”. 10 Th ere are numerous narratives, confessions and repentances of this kind available in the pedagogic Islamic literature, on the Internet etc. Th e above cited interview in Tankevekkende is an example of this kind of narrative where a Norwegian ‘revert’ refl ects upon the process by which he found his way back to his Muslim nature, the questions about the meaning of life and death that he posed to himself during this process, the search he undertook in diff erent religious traditions, his dissatisfac- tion with the answers provided in the Bible, his studies of Arab and the Koran and the satisfaction that being a Muslim now gives him. Other examples are the articles 300 chapter six of reversion’ provide a discursive framework for understanding one’s personal life history as a movement ‘back to’ Islam and thus for interpreting one’s experiences as a continuous subject with a past, present and future. Th e trajectory of the subject forms an analogy to the history of the Islamic community (the umma) which, aft er the time of the Sahaaba (companions of the Prophet), moved away from Islam and which should now, just like the individual person, ‘return’ (re-submit) to Islam. Th e ‘return’ articulates a simultaneous concern with personal and social transformation and with realizing an authentic Muslim self- hood as well as an authentic Islamic society.11 Th is transformation operates through a return to the authentic knowledge of Islam, as unmediated by cultural tradition and as embodied in the Koran and the Hadith. Some parallels can be noted between the narratives of reversion of my young Muslim interlocutors and the narratives of conversion (or reversion) analysed by Roald (2004) in her book on ‘new Muslims’ in the European context.12 Engaging critically with Rambo’s (1993) seven stage model of conversion, Roald identifi es a three stage conversion process related to the time aft er conversion: love, disappointment and maturity. Roald describes the fi rst stage as “falling in love with Islam”, when one wants to practice every Islamic precept. Th e second stage is characterized by a series of ‘discoveries’: that it is diffi cult to practise every precept of Islam in a modern society, that there is a discrepancy between the Islamic ideal and Muslims’ practice, and that the ‘ideal Islam’ described in Islamic books is oft en diff erent from the understandings of Muslims from diff erent parts of the world. Th e third stage, Roald writes, “comes when the new Muslims realize that Muslims are human beings like everyone else, and that it is possible to understand Islam in a Scandinavian framework” (2004: 288). One of the problems with Roald’s stage model is, in my opinion, the normativity it seems to

“Choosing Islam” (Ung Muslim (1) 2002) and “Iman’s story: from Norwegian to Muslim – a true story” (Ung Muslim (1) 2000). 11 Th e modern evolutionist Western master-narrative of a global transition from tradition to modernity in which the West is up front and Islam needs to catch up is challenged by this alternative narrative that asserts an ‘ideal’ past (authentic Islam, authentic human nature) to be realized in the future. 12 It is probable that the narratives of those who were previously ‘nominal’ or ‘cultural’ Muslims are infl uenced by the conversion narratives of those who were previously non-Muslims. Roy (2000: 80) argues that conversion and ‘return to Islam’ is made on the same model of experiencing a personal, identitarian or metaphysical crisis and a ‘prise de conscience’. becoming muslim: working on the self 301 presuppose but which it does not state explicitly. While most converts, according to Roald, move towards the stage of ‘maturity’ some are said to ‘remain behind’ in the fi rst stage. Roald’s model is suggestive in its insistence on the processual and relational aspects of the process of reversion but the three stage model only partly captures the process of ‘becoming Muslim’ of my young Muslim interlocutors. Th is might be partly because of their initial socialization into a Muslim cultural context and because of their position in Norwegian majority society as an ‘ethnic’ or ‘immigrant’ minority. Some narratives nevertheless do, as Roald’s model suggests, talk about an initial religious ‘fervour’ that is ‘tempered’ aft er some time in many cases and which might even be judged as somehow ‘immature’ or possibly ‘fanatic’ in retrospect by the protagonists themselves. Some also express some kind of disappointment in this process, this related to the relationship between ideals and practice and to the diffi culties of keeping up with the demands of being a practising Muslim etc. Roald correctly points out that narratives of individual religious trajectories change according to changing interests and preoccupations, as can be seen in Noor’s shift ing emphasis on various elements of her story of religious reorientation (presented below). However, rather than modelling the ‘return to Islam’ as a series of stages, I am more interested, as has already been indicated in the introduction to this chapter, in exploring a somewhat diff erent set of questions focusing on the ‘return to Islam’ as a process of self-formation in the Foucauldian sense.

Noor’s return to Islam At the time when I fi rst met her, Noor lived in a fl at in Oslo East with her parents, her younger brother and three younger sisters. Noor was an active member of the NMU as well as being active in other parts of Muslim organizational life in Oslo. During her years of Islamic activism she had participated in a variety of Islamic conferences and summer camps in diff erent countries and consequently had a wide network of ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’, both nationally and internationally. Noor comes from a religiously observant family and as a child she was introduced into a range of religious practices such as prayer and fasting. In the conversations we had, Noor oft en came back to the theme of how, at a certain point in her life, these religious practices came to take on a new meaning as a ‘choice’ she had made following a process of self- education. In an interview Noor off ered the following account of her ‘religious career’: 302 chapter six

It was in Eighth grade that I realized what Islam was really about. My parents pray and when I was growing up they were always making sure that I prayed and fasted. Th e Five Pillars were the most central to them. It was not that we didn’t know what Islam was. But I never understood it in the way that I did in Eighth grade. Before that, during the Iraq war when I was in Sixth grade, I knew that we should stick to the right people – it was kind of like ‘Don’t come near me’, you know. My class was split in two. Some Norwegian boys were on my side and then some girls because one of the fathers was from Iraq. It was like we had ‘teams’ and I was always the one to stand up and speak my mind, even if I didn’t have any Islamic knowledge. Th en in Seventh and Eighth grade it became gradually clearer to me what Islam said. Because if you don’t have any knowledge, you just go on fi ghting and that’s not how we should act. I didn’t have much knowledge, but there was something sound in what I had to say, so people mainly respected it. Since I didn’t have much knowledge I used to ask a friend: “What does Islam say about this and that?” Especially when I started wearing the hijab and people would ask me, “Why did you start wearing the hijab?” “Are you better than your Pakistani friend who does not wear it?” And I answered, “No, it’s just a choice that I have made, and it means a lot to me”. Noor’s stress on the importance of having Islamic knowledge and understanding Islam is entrenched in social relationships and imaginaries. In particular, she underlines how questions that she was confronted with from the surroundings were important in energizing her self-education: All the time I was made responsible for what Muslims do. Th ey would say, “Yes Noor, this or that happened, what do you think of it?” So I always needed to have the answers ready. I had to be prepared to answer questions from teachers and fellow pupils. And this gave me a lot in return. It strengthened me. Because I went searching [for the answers]. Th ese refl ections were made in the context of a discussion in the NMU where the main topic was young Muslims’ experience of Otherness and how it conditioned the way in which they related to their religion; in other settings, however, Noor stressed more the importance of people close to her in her social network and how she learned about Islam and the importance of wearing the hijab from her a group of ‘religious’ women she had come to know through a relative. Noor made it her project to acquire more knowledge of Islam. She participated actively in the NMU and the MSS, listening to darses, going to conferences and seminars, reading books, watching videos and surfi ng the Internet. During this educational process, Noor’s religious practice changed signifi cantly. Th is was both expanded becoming muslim: working on the self 303

(to include new areas of ritual and social obligations) and ‘assumed’ in a new and more conscientious manner. Initially, Noor started paying more attention to clothing and conduct. Dressing properly meant wearing a hijab, little or no make up and clothes that did not reveal too much of her body shape. Praying became more central to her life, as she now attempted to get each of the fi ve daily prayers done at the right time, rather than ‘catching up’ the ones she had missed in the evening or skipping them when out of reach of parental control. To be more fl exible she would sometimes carry a prayer mat in her handbag, always fi nding a place to pray at the Mosalla (prayer room) at the university campus, in some nearby mosque, in the home of people she was visiting or in a quiet corner of a restaurant. Prayers were important not just as a religious duty, she would oft en point out to me, but also in terms of creating a balance in her life. At times she would do extra prayers and fast on recommended days. Noor increasingly relied on Islamic principles to guide her daily life and frequently invoked the halal/haram distinction to determine whether things were ‘Islamically correct’ or not. Certain cafés and restaurants were not to be visited, while certain foods as well as alcohol and all kinds of drugs were to be avoided. Although she listened to a lot of diff erent music, Noor would oft en put on a tape with some kind of Islamic music, one of her favourites being Yusuf Islam. Noor would oft en talk about the beauty of her religion. Aft er conferences and seminars we attended together, she would comment on the beauty of the message and of the voice and way of speaking and reciting of the speaker. Noor exemplifi ed well the saying that ‘iman goes up and down like in a fun fair’.13 At times she would be ‘fi lled’ with religious engagement expressed through the abundant praising of God (mashal- lah14, subhanallah) and exclamations of the Greatness of God (Allahu Akbar) as well as in her eagerness to conform to every Islamic proscription and prescription. She would also strive to ‘purify’ her intentions so as to not act simply in her own interests or to fulfi l her own desires, but so as to submit to the will of God. Occasionally she would reproach a fellow ‘sister’ or ‘brother’ who in her view was not practising their

13 Th is is an expression used by the Swedish Pakistani Pyar Durrani, a member of the working committee of the Muslim Youth of Sweden, in a speech he gave at the International Muslim Youth Conference in Stockholm in 1999. 14 Literally, ‘What Allah wishes’. Th e expression is widely used with respect to things that are considered beautiful, good and likeable. 304 chapter six

religion in a proper manner and who therefore needed to be reminded to do what is right. At other times she saw her iman as being less strong in that she found herself failing to ‘work on herself’ in order to live ‘according to Islam’.

Becoming Muslim: continuities and ruptures Narratives of ‘return to Islam’ recount a process of self-education and self-transformation. Th ey narrate the relationship to Islam over time as a ‘process’ that involves personal growth or transformation and an increasing ‘consciousness’ in relation to Islamic practice.15 Th e young Muslims in a variety of ways affi rmed that: ‘You’re never a perfect Muslim, you always have to strive’; ‘Becoming a good Muslim is a process that everyone is capable of if they want to’; and ‘A good Muslim is someone who understands the essence of refl ecting upon life and who uses this to improve herself and who seeks the guidance of Allah to follow the straight path’. Or, in Alesha’s words: I have a lot of negative sides. Since I know that Allah does not approve of these, I’m willing to try to change. Being a good Muslims is therefore a process I have to go through and to do this I must improve on myself through refl ecting upon who I am and who I want to become. ‘Returning to Islam’ implies a search for Islamic knowledge and a reorientation of practices in accordance with the religious criteria of right and wrong, clean and unclean, allowed and forbidden. In the constitution and sustenance of this change, practices involving such things as clothing, rituals, body posture and patterns of consumption, the use of time and public space and social relations are important. Of particular importance are the performance of the fi ve daily prayers, eating halal, dressing within Islamic norms and modest conduct in relation to persons of the other sex. In the following I will explore some aspects of how this work on the self is performed. What are the ‘techniques’ that allow individuals to work on themselves to refl ect on who they are and to regulate their bodies, their thoughts and their conduct? Th e way in which young Muslims account for their individual religious trajectories within the narrative structure of the ‘return to Islam’

15 Metcalf notes a similar emphasis on personal transformation with regard to South Asian Islam. She interprets this as part of a larger trend toward self-conscious, scripturally-based reform characteristic not only of South Asian Muslims but of Muslims in general in modern times (Metcalf 1984: 18). becoming muslim: working on the self 305 points to the ways in which such trajectories are shaped in and through particular social relationships and contexts. Seeking answers to fundamental existential questions and meeting with others who are practising Islam as a way of life are usually central events in the return. Th e process of return is oft en contextualized in terms of an existential wondering about ‘who one is’ and ‘about the great questions of life’ and then fi nding the answers to these questions through explorations into Islam. Such refl ections are oft en related to important events in personal biographies such as moving, getting new friends, going through the ‘confusions’ of puberty or the death of someone close. Th ey may also be related to the challenges involved in managing an identity that is being subject to racism, discrimination and/or misrecognition of some kind or to a political awareness of injustice and the need for social change generated by experiences of such things as war, gender discrimination or racism. Oft en, several of these aspects are woven together in narratives of becoming Muslim. As we saw in Ibrahim’s account in Chapter Five of what he refers to as his ‘religious breakthrough’, he underlined that it was an inner voice, related to a growing concern with the contemporary situation of Muslims around the world, that summoned him to take his religion more seriously. Noor, on the other hand, related the shift in her relationship to religion more to the experience of being continuously called upon to answer questions about Islam by people in her surroundings. Many narratives focus on ‘continuity’ and see the religious trajectory as a ‘natural development’ that goes along with ‘growing up’ to be a more ‘serious’ and ‘responsible’ person. In this respect, working to become a good Muslim implies ‘taking on’ practices and subjecting oneself to norms that have been passed on in the Muslim socialization and education achieved at home or in the mosque. Noor, for instance, had learned how to perform prayers by her parents and occasionally carried these out under their supervision; it was not, however, until a certain point that she started to practise these regularly, to become serious about it and to take responsibility for it herself. Similarly, Janaan, who we will meet below, wore her hijab at a very young age because her parents and her environment expected her to do so, only to take it off and start wearing it again ‘in a new way’ when she was older. Sometimes narratives focus on ‘rupture’ of some kind with, for example, particular social networks or the ‘Norwegian lifestyle’, a qualifi er that remained highly contextual when used in this way but which usually referred to such things as smoking, going out to discotheques, 306 chapter six experimenting with alcohol and amorous relationships. When constructed in such terms, the ‘Norwegian lifestyle’ was imagined as the opposite of, and a threat to, Islamic practice. Th e construction of the ‘return’ as a ‘rupture’ with previous lifestyles was also gendered. Men more frequently stressed that ‘coming back to Islam’ implied a rupture with a non-Islamic lifestyle with respect to alcohol, partying, dating and sexual relations. Although women also referred to the challenges posed by the centrality of such lifestyle aspects among their peers, they very rarely admitted to engaging in such lifestyles themselves. Only one young woman told me how, prior to her ‘return’, she had ‘tried it all’ and how she had then realized that this way of life did not make her happy. It appeared that she had been hanging out with a ‘youth gang’ and that ‘trying it all’ included smoking, some petty theft and bullying. Not least because most of the young remained importantly attached to the mosques and organizations associated with their ethnic communities and had virtually all undergone some kind of religious training within these, the experience of “rupture” seemed less pronounced than for example among the young Muslims I worked with in Marseille in the late 1990s (Jacobsen 1999). Whereas in particular the NMU had as an ambition to off er an alternative to Muslim youth who had ‘lost their identity’ and who lived in a ‘normless environment’, it nevertheless mostly attracted ‘well-adjusted’ youngsters from religious families. Th e degree of ‘rupture’ should, however, not be exaggerated for the case of France either since this perception, although stressed in ‘narratives of return’ and dawa literature, does not seem to correspond to the lives of the majority of those who identify as Muslims (Roy 2000: 81).

Gendering the return: hijab stories Whereas the rupture with a ‘Norwegian lifestyle’ is more central to the narratives of young men, ‘hijab stories’ are central to the narratives of many young women. Such clothing stories bring out the gendered aspect of the return to Islam, as well as its conceptualization as a process of self-education or ‘work on the self’. Th e dominant view of the hijab among the young Muslims (and the Islamic discourses they were exposed to) was that it is prescribed by Islam.16 Young Muslim women

16 Usually three diff erent verses in the Koran are mentioned in the literature on the subject of the hijab: 33: 59, “Prophet, tell your wives, your daughters, and women believers to make their outer garments hang low over them so as to be recognized and becoming muslim: working on the self 307 related to this obligation in diff erent ways. Th ere were diff erent ways of understanding what the obligation implied and diff erent ways of obeying, negotiating or resisting it. Although some young women questioned the obligatory status of the hijab, this mainly remained undisputed and seen as something one should assume in the process of ‘becoming Muslim’. Most of the young women presented their own hijab use as a voluntary achievement, an individual choice and a form of self-realization made on the basis of refl ections and awareness about who they were and who they wanted to be.17 Th e discourses and practices of young hijabi women in Norway thus parallel tendencies that have been noted in other European countries as well as in the Muslim world (for instance, Brenner 1996; Fadil 2008; Göle 1993; Roy 2004). Janaan came to Norway from the Turkish countryside at the age of eight with her migrant parents. When she fi rst arrived, she was already wearing a headscarf, since that was the common practice for girls her age in the mainly agriculturalist and pastoralist village where her family came from. Encouraged by her parents who praised her for being a ‘good girl’, Janaan continued covering her hair during the fi rst year in Norwegian primary school. But aft er that she gradually started refrain- ing from wearing it when playing at school. Aft er a while, she stopped wearing the headscarf altogether. As she explained this in retrospect, the fact that she was the only ‘foreigner’ in her class made her want to be a ‘normal girl’. When she started wearing the hijab again at the age

not insulted: God is most forgiving, most merciful.”; 24: 31, “[Prophet], tell believing men to lower their glances and guard their private parts: that is purer for them. God is well aware of everything they do. And tell believing women to lower their glances, guard their private parts, and not display their charms beyond what [it is acceptable] to reveal; they should let their headscarves fall to cover their necklines and not reveal their charms except to their husbands, their fathers, their husbands’ fathers, their sons, their husbands’ sons, their brothers, their brothers’ sons, their sisters’ sons, their wom- enfolk, their slaves, such men as attend them who have no sexual desire, or children who are not yet aware of women’s nakedness; they should not stamp their feet so as to draw attention to any hidden charms. Believers, all of you, turn to God so that you may prosper.”; 24: 60, “No blame will be attached to elderly women who are not hoping for sex, if they take off their outer garments without fl aunting their charms, but is prefer- able for them not to do this: God is all hearing, all seeing.” In addition there are several hadiths on the issue. 17 In order to avoid misunderstandings, let me stress that decisions about wearing or not wearing the hijab are, of course, not taken in a social vacuum. All choices are embedded in social and cultural processes related to socially and culturally constituted values and views of people and society that imply varying degrees of both possibilities and limitations for people in their daily lives. For a further discussion of the importance of choice, see Chapter Seven. 308 chapter six of seventeen, this act was taken in relation to a process of refl ecting upon ‘who she was’ that was prompted by her fi rst visit ‘back home’ in seven years. Janaan had expected to feel ‘at home’ in Turkey but found, instead, that she was perceived to be ‘Norwegian’, just as in Norway she was perceived to be ‘Turkish’ or ‘an immigrant’. Janaan related her decision to go back to wearing the hijab to this realization of being neither one nor the other and to the related reconfi guration in her sense of ‘who she was’. To Janaan, the hijab thus came to symbolize ‘who she was’ through an explicit dialogue with the identities that she was ascribed in diff erent contexts: I suppose I must be somewhere in between Turkish and Norwegian. But I mean, you actually need to know who you are. I want to think for myself, so I started reading books about Islam, and then I started refl ecting on what is behind all these laws and rules in Islam, what are the foundations, and where does it all come from. Aft er reading a lot I decided to start wearing a hijab. I want to express myself as I am. I don’t want to be ashamed of being a Muslim. Now I know why I am a Muslim. Now I know who I am. Now I have a thread in my life. For Janaan, wearing a hijab is intimately related to a wish to express ‘who she is’. Th e realization of ‘who I am’ is conceptualized as emerging out of a refl exive process in dialogue with others. Th e decision to wear the hijab is part of her coming to terms with who she really is – a Muslim. But Janaan also inscribes her account of why she started to wear the hijab into a wider narrative of ‘return to Islam’ in which elements of ‘growing up’, changes in the way of life and the acquisition of knowledge are central elements: When I was younger I was ignorant. Religion was far away from me. I was something completely other than what being a Muslim entails. But you grow out of it. You start thinking. I do not really regret anything, but I wish that I had had someone to guide me in that period when I was a ‘tough girl’. I don’t really know how to explain to you what happened. It seems like a lifetime since then. In secondary high I started getting to know my own religion. And I decided to wear a veil. In a sense I felt that I was ready. Or maybe I didn’t actually feel ready, I just did it. It was something that came from inside of me. It comes from faith, from Allah. In a way it is indescribable, I cannot explain it really. When I started wearing the veil, I was a grown up. I was responsible for my own education. I was afraid that my friends might react negatively to the veil. But if our Creator closes one door He opens a new one to you. So in secondary high I found another group of friends with whom I could be myself with the veil. It was a very good environment for me. We were all diff erent, but we decided to stick together. Th ere was no pressure from anyone to wear becoming muslim: working on the self 309

the veil, but I had the support of other girls who wore it, and they answered all my questions. When you get answers to all your questions you become convinced. Th is conviction gave me peace of mind. I felt that my soul was truly pure. And now I don’t have a bad conscience anymore. I found my true self. Aft er sleeping for a hundred years, you all of a sudden wake up and fi nd your true self. […] I had to learn the prayer all over again. My father could have taught me, but you know there are certain diff erences between men and women. And my mum doesn’t care about religion. Her only concern is that I should be a ‘good woman’, helping her in the house, doing the dishes and things. My parents have not learned to read the Koran; their practice is very traditional. So I borrowed a lot of books from the library and from friends, started investigating. And I started asking people, but he or she needed to be very strong and know a lot about the Koran. I don’t ask everybody. And I started reading books, the Koran of course. Th e mosques have some books and information on Islam, my father has some Turkish books at home and on the Internet there is a lot of interesting information. […] My religion is not just a part of me. It concerns all of my life. So it is not just something I have to do – no one can force me to do it. Even if my parents had been of the strict kind, no one could force me to give my soul away. It is I, no one else. […] I do not have enough knowledge of my religion yet. Th ere is so much to learn and I have only just started. Aft er secondary high I want to go to Morocco or Turkey to study the Koran at a higher level. When you learn to read the Koran in Arabic it infl uences you so much. But I want to come back to Norway, because it is in Norway that I can practise my religion freely. In Turkey I have to respect a lot of traditions and culture. And I don’t want that. Here in Norway people are free to do what they like. You can get dead drunk or you can go sleep in the mosque, no one will stop you – they might laugh at you, but they can’t do anything to stop you. […] I think it is very important to teach others about Islam, whether they are Muslims or not. I try to help younger girls around me. I tell them about women and their rights, that Allah gives a woman who is a believer the same value and dignity as a male believer. Th ere are no diff erences between women and men in front of Allah. We are all his creatures. Of course there are certain diff erences, but the main principle is equality. And that is one of the reasons why I chose Islam. Because it gave women more rights. Like many other young women, Janaan focused on the hijab as her own decision, a choice, based on ‘faith’ and on how she was feeling ‘inside’. Janaan explicitly stressed that her parents were not of the strict kind, and that her father wanted her to wait to decide about the hijab until she got older. Th is focus may partly be explained by the awareness of how the hijab is perceived in the majority discourse as something imposed by parents or the Muslim communities. In this sense it serves to challenge stereotypical constructions of Muslim women as victims 310 chapter six of a patriarchal religion and as people dominated by their male relatives. In this case this was reinforced by the way in which Janaan focused on the value and rights given to women as one of the reasons why she ‘chose Islam’. Claiming to have chosen the hijab is, thus, a way in which women claim the status of subjects responsible for their own lives and may be read as a form of resistance to the dominant constructions of Muslim women that see them as somehow lacking in autonomous agency. As a constitutive element in the wider return to Islam, the hijab may be seen as a part of growing up, or as related to some kind of existential questioning or ‘prise-de-conscience’ of one’s true self. In this respect, the hijab is also spoken of in terms of personal growth and as having to do with a process of learning and maturing. As we saw above, Janaan stressed that when she started wearing the veil she was a grown up responsible for her own education. Th e hijab formed part, then, of a process of education, a quest for knowledge that took place outside of the family. She also brought up the issue of being ‘ready’ or not to wear the hijab. Wearing a hijab is seen as a great personal responsibility and to many this meant that one had to be ‘ready’ to assume this responsibility before starting to wear one. Hayat, who did not wear the hijab ‘yet’, as she put it herself, told me that: You need to have the faith, and you need to practise the other things Islam tells you to do. And then – when you are ready to wear the hijab – when you’re ready to meet the consequences – then you can start wearing it. Being ready to meet the consequences involves both an ‘internal’ and an ‘external’ element. Th e ‘internal’ element involves, as Hayat mentions, having ‘the faith’ to live as ‘Islam tells you to’. But the hijab also entails being ready to meet the consequences of visibly representing the collective identity of the (imagined) community of Muslims. Th is relates to the potential practical consequences of racist and discriminatory structures that serve to exclude hijabi women from, for example, certain parts of the labour or housing market and also to the responsibility of displaying exemplary behaviour as a publicly visible representative of the Islamic community. As has been previously mentioned, the wish to rectify negative representations of Islam entails, particularly for women, assuming the diffi cult role of being a representative for the Muslim community and Islam. Wearing the hijab thus implies a readiness to stand up for a much disliked and persecuted community. Women refusing to unveil appear, via these symbolic means, as brave becoming muslim: working on the self 311 and courageous defenders of Islam. Th e awareness that her dress makes her a symbol of her religion may, hence, also function as a reminder to her not to do things that would bring her or her religion into disrepute. Starting to wear the hijab is also associated with developing a good character, with becoming (or continuing to be) a person who is modest, honest, trustworthy, respectable and reliable. To Janaan, the hijab ‘symbolized’ a set of qualities that she saw as expressing her ‘personality’ and ‘character’:

Primarily, it symbolizes my religion. Secondly, and this was important to me when I chose to wear the hijab, in Islam women are precious and that is why we cover ourselves. But the signifi cance of the hijab is also that you don’t lie, that you are an honest person, trustworthy and that you bestow such values upon yourself. What the hijab symbolizes, then, is very much in accordance with my personality and character. While Janaan seemed to view the hijab primarily as something that ‘symbolized’ her personality and character, that is as an exterior symbol of her interiority, others stressed how the hijab not only symbolized but also helped one to acquire the virtues that were central to being a good Muslim. Th is is so in general in so far as the hijab works as a physical reminder to behave in certain ways. As several girls pointed out to me, wearing the hijab made it more diffi cult to, for example, smoke in public, to frequent places where alcohol was served, to pick a fi ght with someone or to date because these activities would contrast with the meaning both they themselves and others who would see them attributed to wearing the hijab. Th e hijab thus makes it easier to realize other virtues that are deemed central to being a good Muslim. Whereas, for example, to decline alcohol and avoid dating are virtuous ‘abstinences’ that the hijab helps one to realize, however, the virtue of modesty is more intimately bound up with the practice of wearing the hijab itself. Janaan invoked the image of women as ‘precious’ and in need of special protection. Others put more stress on female modesty as a matter of ‘obeying Allah’ than of protecting women and the social order. Whether wearing a hijab is necessary or suffi cient in terms of guaranteeing modesty is, however, contested. Is a girl who wears a hijab together with tight jeans and make-up really being modest? And is modesty virtuous if it is just a concession to social norms and pressure and not an act of piety? Such and similar questions were oft en addressed by the young and I will return to these below. 312 chapter six

Whereas ‘choice’ and self-determination were central to most young women’s narratives of the hijab, they experienced incitements or disin- centives to wear the hijab in diff erent social contexts. Depending on a variety of issues such as national background, social status, adherence to diff erent Islamic traditions etc., the ways in which the hijab was encouraged or not in the family context varied. Some had mothers or sisters who wore it while others were the only ones in their family to do so. Some had parents who took it for granted that their children should wear a hijab; others had parents who strongly advised them not to wear a hijab since they presumed it would make it harder for them to get married or fi nd work or because they associated the hijab with a strict or fundamentalist interpretation of Islam that they opposed. Although I did not systematically investigate the diff erent usages of the hijab, it was obvious that such factors as ethnicity and family background were important in infl uencing by whom and how the hijab was worn. For instance, relatively few of the girls with a Pakistani background wore a hijab while the hijab was more frequent among those with Middle Eastern or North African origins. In the context of the religious youth and student organizations and the other educational arenas such as, for example, mosques and international Islamic conferences in which the young Muslims in my study participated, the hijab was quite consistently encouraged. Although in both the NMU and the MSS about half of the girls did not wear a hijab regularly, and the organizations stressed that it was not necessary to wear one to participate in their activities, women were incited to wear a hijab in various diff erent ways. In darses and lectures, stress would typically be put on the importance and virtues of wearing a hijab. Th is would be contrasted to the devaluation and over-sexualization of women in Western societies and to the general moral vacuum existing there. Modesty and covering oneself were also encouraged through corrections, as when women would adjust someone else’s hijab if their hair had come loose. Girls were also, rather paradoxically when considering the importance of the hijab as a means of ‘covering’ a woman’s beauty, exhorted to wear a hijab by means of compliments and com- mendations. It was not uncommon for someone putting on a hijab for the fi rst time to be told that it suited her well and that it made her look good. One occasion that illustrates well how the virtue of modesty and the importance of the hijab was communicated in the organizations is provided by the case of an outing arranged by the NMU. Younger and becoming muslim: working on the self 313 older members and their friends, siblings and relatives, some visiting foreign students and a couple of adult Norwegian converts met up for a picnic. It was a hot summer’s day and some of the girls and women had taken off their hijabs as we were walking along a trail through the woods towards the beach. Every time someone approached a little thrill would run through the group and someone would warn the others that a man was coming. Aft er a while, one of the grown up women sat down to speak seriously to those who had taken of their hijabs, though: “Th ose of you who wear the hijab are not really allowed to take it off here, because you may be seen”. She added in an equally grave tone that, “but you yourselves have to take the responsibility and choose for yourselves”. Th e woman thus ‘commanded the good’ but left the responsibility for conforming to this norm up to the girls. It is also signifi cant in regard to this that the girls who did not usually wear a hijab were not commended to put it on in the same way as those who already wore it. While the woman emphasized the importance of individual choice and the right of individual girls to exercise this choice, she simultaneously understood this choice not as a matter of following individual desires but as something one should exercise in order to realize particular virtues and achieve a particular mode of being. Th e cases that have been discussed above illustrate the centrality of the hijab in women’s ‘return to Islam’, a work on the self geared at assuming Islamic practice in a ‘personalized’ way. Making women wear a hijab against their personal will, or wearing it out of habit rather than as an expression of who one is, is constructed as cultural tradition and not ‘true Islam’. Th is individualized understanding of the hijab focuses not primarily on the importance of the hijab in upholding social order through preventing sexual promiscuity and thereby fi tna (chaos) or on signalling belonging to a particular ethnic community or cultural tradition, but on the personal relationship between the individual Muslim and God. Th is view is stressed in some of the young women’s arguments that the hijab ‘is of no use’ (i.e. it does not entail religious reward and does not have an eff ect on the person as a moral being) if the girl does not herself make the decision to wear it. However, while the hijab as a virtuous practice is theorized as an act of submission for which the individual is ultimately responsible herself, the hijab as a practice is shaped and promoted within diverse pedagogical settings ranging from the family to the Muslim organizations. While the organizations encourage young Muslims to be ‘responsible’ for themselves and to make their own choices, they are simultaneously ‘disciplining spaces’ 314 chapter six

(in a foucauldian sense) that prescribe to individuals particular forms of self-knowledge (my body may elicit desire from men if I do not cover it), ways of relating to themselves (I should take responsibility for avoiding this situation myself) and models for self-mastery (in order to take such responsibility I should wear a hijab).

On identity, exteriority and interiority Th e analysis above suggests that the hijab is understood simultaneously as a religious duty and as something that each individual is responsible for. In this respect, in particular, people refl ect on the relationship between an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’, or the relationship between emotions and states of mind, on the one hand, and acts, on the other hand. Th is relationship has a double determination with respect to young Muslims’ religious practices. On the one hand, it relates to the distinction and debates in the Islamic discursive tradition on the relationship between ‘religious practice’ and the emotions and states of mind that accompany religious practices. On the other hand, it relates to the increasing focus in modernity on the idea of personal authenticity, with the expectation and demand that one’s acts should express an authentic inside of who I am and choose to be (Taylor 1992). From this latter perspective, the act has increasingly come to depend on the authentic feeling it expresses. Let me start unpacking this complex relationship between interiority and exteriority by introducing Sarah’s hijab story. Like many other Muslim children, Sarah attended Koran school in her childhood. She learned to read the Koran and to perform the correct ablutions and the daily prayers. During Ramadan she fasted some days on and some days off like most children do. In Ninth grade Sarah wore the hijab for a couple of months. Some classmates who went to halaka (religious meetings) and who had started wearing the hijab had a major infl uence on this decision. Aft er this, Sarah didn’t wear the hijab until she returned to Oslo aft er having attended secondary school back home. Th is time she put it on as part of a personal ‘return to Islam’ during what she now terms her ‘fundamentalist’ period. For a time Sarah took a great interest in Islam and started practising the religion in new ways. In addition to wearing the hijab, she performed the fi ve daily prayers, started reading a lot about Islam, fasted twice a week and recited extra prayers in between the compulsory prayers. In this more intensely religious period, Sarah visited the NMU a couple of becoming muslim: working on the self 315 times, but the organization never quite appealed to her. About the same time she started frequenting an informal friendship-based network consisting of religiously active women who met up in order to learn more about Islam. It was through this network that she met her husband. During their honeymoon she and her husband travelled to Mecca to perform the hajj. Aft er a couple of years, however, Sarah’s religious career took yet another turn. She became critical of the ways in which many active Muslims interpreted and practised Islam and she rarely visited the mosque where people – according to her opinion – spent too much time slandering others. Aft er a while she also started feeling uncomfortable wearing the hijab. As she saw it, the hijab was no longer an adequate manifestation of who she really was. Lately, she had been too lazy to perform the daily prayers regularly; her religious observance had also slipped with respect to other areas of life. She felt the hijab to be a sort of deception, then, in so far as people took her to be something that she was not really. As a consequence of this feeling, Sarah tried leaving the house uncovered a couple of times but felt naked and uncomfortable without her hijab. Th e sudden death of someone in Sarah’s family prompted yet another turn in her religious career and clothing story. Sarah’s religious interest was redirected towards questions of life and death and heaven and hell. She started to do her fi ve daily prayers once again, read more frequently from the Koran and no longer thought about stopping wearing the hijab. In this period, Islam came to be more important to her than ever before as a guide to understanding and coping with the complexities of human existence. Th ree years passed (during which time Sarah continued her search for ‘real Islam’ in a variety of directions) before I received an SMS from her announcing that she had stopped wearing the hijab because she needed ‘a break’. While her family was “a 100 per cent OK with it”, many of her Muslims friends were initially largely negative and ‘behaved like she was no longer a Muslim’ and like ‘missionar- ies’ who wanted to bring her back to ‘the straight path’. According to Sarah herself, taking off the hijab made her no less Muslim. What the others did not seem to understand, she explained, was that: “I am trying to understand my position vis-à-vis God and to fi nd out whether I believe with my heart or whether it is just a part of my identity”. To Sarah, the hijab was no longer felt to be an expression of ‘who she was’; it was not an expression of her heartfelt belief in God, 316 chapter six which had not changed, in fact, but a convention that expressed a certain Muslim identity with which she no longer identifi ed. Choosing not to wear the hijab anymore was the fi rst of a series of changes by means of which Sarah became increasingly preoccupied with the ‘inner’ aspects of spiritual life, rather than with conforming to what was defi ned as proper Islamic conduct (which she had more and more come to identify as ‘conventions’ that people followed because of their Muslim identity, rather than because ‘they believed in their hearts’). To Sarah, then, people’s behaviour in public was not a reliable indicator of their religiosity; it was the belief in someone’s heart that made that person a good Muslim or not. One should note here that Sarah does not oppose the virtues of being a good Muslim, or of modesty, as such, but only the assumption that the hijab is a necessary means for expressing (and creating) these virtues. Sarah also felt that ‘taking a break from the hijab’ would allow her more ‘freedom’. Th is included both freedom to ‘show more of her beauty’ and freedom to speak her mind in the majority society without everything she said being interpreted in light of her hijab. Th ese latter concerns may be understood in relation to her more recent engagement in dialogue- work and local politics, where she felt the hijab to be a hindrance to full participation. Sarah’s refl ections on the hijab may also be understood in terms of the separation that is oft en made in the Islamic discursive tradition between the inner aspects of faith and its manifestation in behaviour. With respect to the hijab, this is frequently spoken of as an ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ hijab. Th e inner hijab relates to modesty, the lowering of the eyes and being conscious not to arouse the interest of the opposite sex. To most of the young Muslims I worked with, the ‘outer hijab’ was ideally seen to manifest the ‘inner hijab’. Modesty of dress both externalized and contributed to the cultivation of Islamic virtues such as decency, modesty and honesty. Th e hijab was, thus, both an end in itself, as God required women to wear it, and a means to become a more pious Muslim. To some of the girls, however, the ‘inner hijab’ seemed to be more crucial than ‘the outer’ one, to the extent that they argued that as long as they had their inner hijab there was no need to externalize this by physically wearing a piece of cloth to cover their bodies. Alesha, like Sarah, was of the opinion that the inner hijab was more crucial than the outer one, but nevertheless felt ambivalent about the way she herself dressed. In a discussion with some other young women on the virtues of the hijab, she stressed how she, although not wearing becoming muslim: working on the self 317 the hijab, always attempted to appear in a non-sexed manner and to dress in gender-neutral clothes. She described how she diff ered from the other women at her workplace who were “playing on their femininity”. In contrast to them, Alesha did not “make herself a woman” at the workplace and was, as a consequence, she claimed, seen as ‘a person’ and not a woman. One of the other young women, Safa, who, in contrast to Alesha, was wearing a hijab, objected that while Alesha might think this herself, the boys probably did not see her as ‘one of the boys’. Noor also recounted how the hijab aff orded her respect at her workplace, ensuring that others did not touch her in improper ways. Despite the diff erence between the women, one wearing a hijab, the other not, Noor’s and Alesha’s accounts of how they made themselves appear in a certain way to others so as to avoid sexual approaches were very similar. In both instances, this involved a way of dressing and behaving more generally that was intended to downplay femininity and bring to the fore appearing as a ‘person’. While Alesha defended the principle of the inner hijab in this context, she was also, in fact, contemplating starting to wear one as she had increasingly come to see this as a duty in order to refl ect her inner hijab by means of an external act. It is interesting to notice how Alesha’s refl ections on the hijab changed in this respect aft er she joined the MSS and became more concerned with being a conscientiously practising Muslim. Alesha had always been careful to cover her body properly. When going away on holidays, however, she would wear T-shirts and “dress the way she wanted to”, she explained to me. Recently, however, she had started seeing the gap between her own way of dressing in dif- ferent contexts as arising out of a wish to satisfy others, rather than to satisfy God. If she was serious about being a good Muslim, should she then not avoid T-shirts even when no one she knew saw her? To Alesha, such questions were important as she considered whether she should start wearing a hijab – which would be against the wishes of her parents – or whether modesty should remain an issue that was primarily ‘something inside’. Janaan’s, Sarah’s and Alesha’s refl ections on why they did or did not wear the hijab bring out some of the complexities associated with religious practice. On the one hand, the hijab is situated within the dynamics of identity-formation, related to a person’s relationship to diff erent social categories (such as being Norwegian or being Turkish). It marks the taking on of a new identity that is neither one nor the other but which does privilege one’s identity as a Muslim. Th e foundations of this 318 chapter six

Muslim identity are inscribed into an Islamic ontology, where the self is conceptualized in a way that gives life a determined direction. From this point of view, the hijab is a means both of expressing and becoming a pious self. Interpreted in terms of an interplay between diff erent understandings of the self, the hijab becomes a simultaneous expression of obedience and self-determination, an individual matter ‘between God and me’ and a way of expressing ‘who I am’ to others.

Th e formation of pious selves

In a dars in the NMU, about what Allah likes and dislikes, Aydin spoke about the importance of al Ihsan.18 Al Ihsan, he explained, was the highest form of belief in Allah and also one of Allah’s attributes: “Doing what is good and beautiful is what Allah likes and is the goal towards which humans should strive. For what is the purpose of Islam if it does not help us to better our character, to rise from an animal level to a human level?” To underscore his point, Aydin drew a vertical line on the blackboard, placing animals at the bottom and humans at the top, and another diagram with steps representing diff erent levels of perfection. Th e majority of Muslims today are far away from al Ihsan, he confi rmed. Mankind suff ers under the laws of the jungle and that is why Allah sent his Prophets. But aggression has now become a part of the everyday life of our umma, continued Aydin, giving an example from his ‘at home’ country of how a girl had been badly treated and abused by her husband because she didn’t have a family to protect her.19 Aydin then reminded the listeners that it is a Muslim’s duty to help others.20

18 Th e word ‘ihsan’ derives from the word ‘husn’ which designates the quality of being good and beautiful, virtue, goodness, beauty, comeliness, ‘pleasingness’, har- mony, symmetry, desirability (Murata and Chittick 1994). Th e word ‘husna’ is used both to designate the attributes of God and the ultimate goal of human beings, the felicity they experience in the next world. Th e Koran also employs the word ‘hasanat’, from the same root as husn, to mean a good or beautiful deed (for a discussion of hasanat, see below) through which humans realize husn. Ihsan is used in a variety of ways relating to doing what is good and beautiful. Th ose who worship God by doing what is good and beautiful are considered the best of human beings (Murata and Chittick 1994). 19 A young woman of Pakistani origin interrupted him at this point, saying: “Not in Pakistan”. Aydin somewhat laughingly acquiesced and aft er the dars he joked with me about never daring to say anything bad about Pakistan or Pakistanis because there were always protests from those who were of Pakistani origin if he did. 20 At this point one of the listeners interrupted in order to ask: “But surely not only Muslims?” Aydin replied that in principle one has the duty to help everyone, becoming muslim: working on the self 319

Referring to the terrible conditions in which the majority of the world’s Muslims live, he invoked the lack of respect governments in Muslim countries have for their peoples. How can people realize the highest form of belief in Allah when they live in poverty in such bad and unhy- gienic conditions and when they lack education? In conclusion, he suggested that a reform was needed in order to live in the atomic age. Aydin’s dars, like much edifi catory literature, focused on the way in which Muslims should strive towards a particular ‘telos’, a particular mode of being.21 Becoming Muslim implies striving towards the highest form of belief in Allah and doing what Allah likes, what is good and beautiful, is the way to work towards such improvement. How do young Muslims themselves speak about such improvement, though? In what ways does the telos of reaching a higher level of belief inform the ways in which they come to refl ect upon their selves? And what are the ‘techniques’ that allow individuals to work on themselves in pursuit of such a goal and with the aim of regulating their bodies, their thoughts and their conduct? In a discussion involving Noor and some of her friends, the issue of personal and social reform was talked about in a way that aptly illustrates some of the concerns involved. One of the young women shared her refl ections about how her iman (faith) was sometimes weak and the kinds of questions that she posed herself about what acting ‘as God wants us to’ actually entailed. In the discussion that ensued, the women stressed the importance of striving to better one’s character and talked about how one should go about working on oneself in what they referred to as ‘our materialistic world’. Noor explained that: “In every person there is the ego, nafs. And Islam stresses trampling on your ego. Trampling on your ego! Always seeking Allah’s protection! Always saying: Yeah Allah, control my lust, control my ego! Don’t let my ego gain the upper hand!” Aadila, inspired by her recent readings into Sufi sm, elaborated on the point: “If you study psychology you see that human beings are made up of three things: there is ego, superego and identity. From the Islamic point of view, the combining of these three elements is called the self. When you meditate by praying, when you contem- plate, the body, the spirit and the mind combine. Th en the question of regardless of their religion, but that Mohammed spoke specifi cally about inner strife and struggle between Muslims who do not help each other. 21 In Foucault’s study of ethics, telos refers to the mode of being one seeks to achieve within a historically specifi c authoritative model (Foucault 1984a; Mahmood 2005). 320 chapter six having an ego is not a problem, because it is all in unity, and instead you have the balance within yourself”. Noor continued, “Even if it is mentioned in the Koran that Islam gives you a balance in life, the faith or iman is not stable. A human being should always be eager to work with his self, you know, with his inner consciousness, to always bear in mind Allah. To always bear in mind what he should do and what he should not do according to Islam. Th is gives me happiness, and I gain a lot from it. Not only worldly things, but inshallah [If Allah wills it] I’ll gain something there [in the aft erlife]. And I also gain it here. Because Islam is not that worldly life is a disaster or that if you’re happy here you’re going to end up in hell. Some Muslims think that, but it is so stupid, you know. […] Of course God wants us to have fun in this world - in an Islamically correct way - and inshallah we will get the Janna [Paradise] as well, if we live according to Islam. Everything in Islam has a balance. We are part of nature, and everything is in balance”. Sarah referred back to what Noor had said about having fun in an Islamically correct way, stating that: “We should live for dunya [this- worldly life] as if we were never going to die, and do ibadat22 for akhira [the aft erlife] as if we were going to die tomorrow”. Alesha intervened: “Th at is very diffi cult. When you eat, work or read – everything you do is supposed to refl ect your iman. At the same time you’re not supposed to be absorbed exclusively by Allah day and night. You’re also supposed to go about your daily tasks in a proper way”. Safa objected by saying that: “Islam doesn’t tell you to do salah all day. Th at is not what Allah wants. It’s the things you do in your everyday life, when you do these in a way that is halal, like going to school to get an education. Th at is also a form of ibadat, you know”. Alesha agreed with this and so Safa asked her why she then found it so problematic that her everyday acts should refl ect iman. Alesha explained: “It is because we are not like the Prophet, we can strive to become as good as possible, to perfect ourselves – that is an eternal goal. If we don’t have that goal of perfecting ourselves all the time, we have nothing. But if we think that we are perfect, we are not humble”. Aadila objected saying that if Alesha found it so diffi cult it was because she had not properly submitted herself: “You have to think that you have submitted yourself; that is what Islam is. I’m working for God.

22 Worship, obedience, humility, submission. becoming muslim: working on the self 321

Th at is how you do it. If you don’t understand what you have been designated to do, and feel that you are working too hard, it’s because…” Alesha was getting somewhat annoyed at Aadila’s suggestion that she had not submitted herself and tried to better explain her point of view: “What Islam wants is not always the same as what you yourself want, right, because we don’t have the knowledge Allah has. Allah knows what he says, right, but I don’t have the knowledge to understand it. Sometimes I can hardly believe that certain things could really be what God wants from me, but then I just have to force myself and say: ‘No, Allah says that I should do this’. Th at is when you achieve unity with God. Th en one sort of has to kill one’s ego. When you live in a certain society there are so many weird things cultivated in you and some of it you have to reject and some of it you have to accept and make a part of your being. But it is not easy to just integrate and reject things that are part of your personality, right”. Aadila agreed that one’s desires are not always compatible with what Allah wants and gave an example from her own everyday life: “So many times, to be honest, guys have come up to me and said: I would like to go out with you. And I have liked it; I have wanted to go out with them. But still I go: ‘No, it’s outside of my principles. I can’t date you’. […] So you have to kill the desires”. It is not my point to draw from this conversation a particular ‘Muslim ethics’ or model of the Muslim self that young Muslims seek to realize or understand themselves in terms of. Th e discourses the participants draw on in this conversation are multiple and diverse and the point is not to assess the extent to which they are expressions of diff erent Islamic traditions (for example, the extent of Sufi infl uence). Rather, what is interesting is precisely the fact that young women from a variety of backgrounds draw on diff erent discursive traditions and diff erent understandings of the self when they speak about the kind of relationship they ought to have with themselves and others as religious subjects. Th is is most explicit in Aadila’s analogy between what she refers to as the understanding of the self from ‘an Islamic point of view’ (in terms of its three dimensions ruh, nafs and ‘aql),23 the tripartite ego, superego,

23 Anthropologists have described these concepts, and the way they relate to each other, in somewhat diff erent ways. In Metcalf’s (ed.) Moral Conduct and Authority (Metcalf 1984: 10), several of the authors describe: “a theory that humans possess two important faculties: ‘aql, the faculty of moral discrimination shared with the angels, on the one hand, and nafs, the self in the sense of the will or, more typically, wilful principle, on the other. Both, generally speaking, are expected to coexist. 322 chapter six and self /identity, drawn from modern psychology, and the distinction between body, spirit and mind. Th e understanding of self produced by the girls consequently emerges as a creative combination of diff erent religious, philosophical and psychological discourses. Despite the fact that they draw on diff erent traditions to speak about their relationships to themselves and others, the young women nevertheless converge on the understanding that being Muslim implies that there is a certain mode of being one should seek to achieve and that this mode of being requires an eff ort on the part of the individual to work with herself. Whether this eff ort is seen as strenuous, or less so, diff ers. Th e ‘techniques of the self’ that the young women stress for bringing about personal reform are also numerous, including notably: meditation, contemplation, remembering Allah, prayer, living your everyday life within the limits of what is halal, love of God, the escha- tological fear of God and the Day of Judgement and trying to act with pure intentions. Th e ‘ego’, ‘lust’ and ‘desire’ are singled out as domains of the self that these practices should be directed at; the young women call upon themselves and encourage each other to recognize the moral obligation to submit to the ‘will of Allah’, to realize that ‘I’m working for God’. Th e young women also negotiate the separation of ‘faith’ from ‘everyday life’ – as in Safa’s stress on integrating faith and daily life as a modality of acting in the world (in a way that is halal).

Th e gender of desire Th e understanding of the desires that need to be combated and the virtues that should be cultivated through the great jihad are gendered, both in the sense that issues of sexuality are central in the accounts of the kinds of desires that need to be controlled and in the sense that men and women are seen as diff erently subject to such desires. Just like the young women quoted above, several of the young men attested to the fact that it was diffi cult to be a Muslim in Norway, since the gap between the Islamic ideals and those of the surrounding society were so wide and since there were so many temptations. Khalam, for instance,

Man’s realization comes through cultivation of ‘aql and the consequent disciplining of the nafs. One seeks to refi ne, not destroy, the nafs. It is the very tension, the process of discrimination, the fact that there are choices to be made and control to be exercised, that gives man’s life its value. It is this, not holy war, that is the ‘greater’ jihad: unceasing eff ort to discriminate the boundaries set forth in the Koran and relentless self-control in eschewing excess and living within them”. becoming muslim: working on the self 323 recounted how working in a store that sold trendy youth-clothes involved dealing with the temptations and desires generated by dealing with semi-naked girls trying on clothes. But whereas young men and young women were equally concerned with controlling their desires, they both simultaneously tended to construct women more as the objects of sexual desire and men as the desiring subjects.24 In contrast to Khalam, who struggled to protect himself from his own desires, the women whose discussion about internal and external hijab I referred to above were concerned both by controlling their own desires and with avoiding arousing desire in their male colleagues. Among the young women it was also quite common to ‘feel pity’ for Muslim young men who, because of the steady increase in the age at which people marry, had to ‘abstain’ from sexual relations well into adult life (this ‘pity’ was, however, not similarly extended to women who married at a late age). In an essay in Ung Muslim, a young woman wrote: Sometimes I think about how diffi cult it must be for boys at school. What are they to concentrate on? On whether hydrogen bonds are single or double, or on the girl in front of them with the tight pants, singlet and an uncovered belly? Under such circumstances it is not easy being a genuine Muslim. (Ung Muslim (1) 2000: 6) Both women and men construct men as desiring subjects and women as the objects of sexual desire and are thus more inclined to ‘understand’ the diffi culties that men have in abstaining from illicit sexual relations. However, this apparently clear-cut construction of desiring gendered subjects and objects is nonetheless challenged by some. In the Speaker’s Corner of Salam ( (1) 2004: 15) a ‘girl with a veil’

24 According to Mahmood (2005: 110), the juristic Islamic tradition assumes that women are the objects of sexual desire and men the desiring subjects. While women and men are both urged to discipline their sight, behaviour and thoughts, women bear the prime responsibility for ‘hiding their charms’ so as to not arouse men’s desire when in public. Mernissi argues that in the medieval canonical texts and historical interpretations of Islam this ‘explicit theory’ of female sexuality that depicts women as passive subjects who seek pleasure in surrender and subjugation interacts with an ‘implicit’ theory of sexual dynamics which “casts woman as the hunter and the man as the passive victim” (1987: 33). She concludes that, in contrast to Western Christian culture, in Muslim culture female sexuality is recognized as active, an acknowledgment that has threatening implications for the social order. Social order, therefore, requires the satisfaction of women’s needs as well as male control of women’s bodies and sexuality. Th is latter is because male and female, particularly in terms of sex drives, are seen as opposites; men are rational and capable of self-control and women are emotional and lacking self-control. 324 chapter six expressed an opinion that was quite common among the young women I worked with: I have long been wondering why girls are continually asked to cover up, while you never hear anything about boy’s clothing. How boys should dress is a non-issue. Girl’s clothing should, of course, also be discussed, but it seems as if we completely forgot about the boys. Boys should dress decently too.25 Why should boys wear tight pants (which are all the fashion at the moment) and short or tight tops. Believe it or not, girls can see too! I’m surprised by the development. We see increasingly more girls dressing decently, while boy’s clothes are ever more indecent. We should do something about this immediately. ‘Girl with a veil’ here inscribes women as desiring subjects who can ‘see’ and urges that men be made equally responsible for ‘covering their charms’ because of this. Her motivation for arguing in this way might primarily have to do with a wish to prevent illicit sexuality but, from what young women said in other contexts, it is reasonable to assume that she is also concerned with the issue of gender justice. Several young women pointed out to me that it was unfair that only women were prevented from going to public swimming pools or working out in gyms where genders were mixed and Islamic norms concerning decent clothing were not respected. Th ey complained, along with some men, that the Islamic principles of gender complementarity and modesty were sometimes corrupted into a double standard that worked consistently in men’s favour (this particularly so in the parental generation). Aaqilah expressed this point succinctly in her oft -repeated indignant comment directed at men: “Do they think they have a special permit from Allah?” In particular, with respect to such issues as decent clothing, gender-mixed interaction, premarital sex and/or the use of alcohol, many young Muslims in my study argued for more gender-neutral moral standards. With respect to virginity, for instance, they would argue that from an Islamic point of view adultery and premarital sex are equally as punishable for men as they are for women. Instead of denouncing the ideal of virginity, the ideal was individualized (as mainly a matter between the individual and God and not ‘any business’ of the community or the family) and subjected to ideals about

25 ‘Girl with a veil’ refers to the fact that in the Islamic tradition there are also injunc- tions for men to dress modestly. Both men and women are commanded in the Koran to lower their gaze and be modest. It is generally understood that men are not to expose the area of their body extending from the navel to the knee. becoming muslim: working on the self 325 gender-fairness and equity. Gender thus emerged as a site of negotiation in the production of moral and desiring selves.

Diff erent forms of self-realization In an article called “Finding One’s True Self. About Immigrant Youth’s Freedom, Power and Resistance”, Lien (2003) argues that ideas of the moral soul (ruh)26 inhibit immigrant youth who wish to ‘fi nd their true self’. ‘Finding one’s true self’, she argues, is central to what it means to grow up within the modern Norwegian cultural framework and involves tearing oneself loose from one’s parents, discovering one’s separate identity, ‘possessing oneself’, being responsible for one’s own behaviour, achieving the power to decide over one’s everyday life and following one’s own will. In contrast to this, Lien identifi es ideas about the moral soul as remnants of a ‘traditional’ and externally enforced worldview, representing the force of parental and male control against the individual freedom of youth and, in particular, girls. In Lien’s interpretation, the control of ruh over nafs amounts to the subjugation of the ego to the superego – the norms of society, codifi ed and understood as God’s will (Lien 2003: 212).27 Th e idea of the moral soul thus contributes to the maintaining of the patriarchal structure which cir- cumscribes Muslim women’s lives. My purpose here is not to assess Lien’s argument as such, but rather to point to a particular understanding of the self which underpins her argument. Drawing on Mahmood (2005), I will argue that in order to understand young women’s religious engagement we need to critically reassess this understanding and to explore more fully the young women in question’s motivations, desires, goals and self-understandings. Lien seems to understand ‘fi nding one’s true self’ as the capacity to realize one’s own interests and desires against the weight of custom, tradition, transcendental will or parental control. Th e (moral) self is thus pitted

26 Inger Lise Lien bases her discussion mainly on conceptualizations of the self in Punjab in Pakistan and focuses on the relationship between nafs and ruh – understood as “an incorporeal, transcendent and purely moral and spiritual intellect that aft er death ascends to God” (2003: 212). It is not my intention to dispute how these terms are understood in a Punjabi context but rather the way in which Lien interprets them in relation to the issues of freedom, power and resistance pertaining to immigrant youth. 27 It is interesting to note that Lien, like the girls quoted above, defi nes ruh as ‘superego’ and nafs as ‘ego’, in the Freudian sense, without refl ecting upon the potential trans- ference of meaning that might thus occur, however. 326 chapter six against the social. ‘Desires’ are, in this view, naturalized as expressions of an unmediated autonomous will and disciplining desire thus becomes tantamount to being prevented from realizing ‘one’s true self’. In Lien’s account, agency is attributed to those who ‘resist’ and ‘rebel’ (against imprisoning traditions); they are described as being in a process of liberation – “they want to ‘fi nd themselves’ and ‘own themselves’, realizing a ‘constructive creativity” (Lien 2003: 327). Th ose who do not ‘resist’ or ‘rebel’ appear to be controlled almost entirely from the outside and in so far as they are attributed any agency at all, it is one of self-control that secures their own oppression rather than their ‘self- realization’. Lien also constructs a dichotomy between, on the one hand, a ‘modern Norwegian cultural framework’, which allows people self-realization, and, on the other hand, a ‘traditionalist Muslim immigrant cultural framework’, which subjects the individual will to the collective will and accordingly prevents people from achieving self-realization. She identifi es ‘freedom’ and the ‘ability to fi nd one’s true self’ as central modern Norwegian values that immigrant girls are prevented from actively partaking in since traditional values are presumably controlled, and enforced on girls, by the ethnic community, parents and men. Th e ‘repressive norms’ of Islam and ethnicity (tradition) are, thus, counterposed to the ‘freedom’ of modernity and Norwegian society. A diff erent interpretation of the relationship between desire and self-fulfi lment is suggested by Mahmood (2005. 2003) in her analysis of Egyptian piety movements. Mahmood suggests that, in order to understand the ethical practices of participants in this movement, ‘self- fulfi lment’ should be dissociated from ‘autonomy’. Th e women she worked with acquired a level of self-fulfi lment not by referring to ‘autonomy discourses’ but rather by ‘subjugating themselves’ to religious prescriptions. Mahmood hence sees the link made between self- fulfi lment and autonomy as something proper to a liberal-humanist vision. Based on her research within the piety movement, Mahmood suggests that, among its participants, “individual eff orts toward self- realization are aimed not so much at discovering one’s ‘true’ desires and feelings” as at “honing one’s rational and emotional capacities so as to approximate the exemplary model of the pious self” (Mahmood 2005: 31). Here, focus is therefore drawn not towards an opposition between self-realization and subjection, but towards the ways in which diff erent ‘modes of subjectivation’ allow diff erent forms of self-realization. In my opinion, Mahmood’s understanding of the relationship between subjectivation and self-realization better enables us to grasp becoming muslim: working on the self 327 what is involved when young Muslims speak about having to work with themselves, subjecting their desires and trampling on their egos. Th e self that emerges from the conversation quoted above is a site of shift ing desires that do not express an autonomous will. As we saw above, the young women importantly saw desires for ‘un-Islamic things’ as the product of the ‘materialist’ and ‘ego-driven’ world they lived in.28 Fighting materialism and egoism was linked to achieving the right balance between this-worldly concerns and other-worldly concerns.29 Th e young women perceived fi nding such a balance to be particularly diffi cult in a (postmodern) world where, as Akhbar (1992: 48, italics original) has put it, many Muslims feel that “dunya is upsetting the balance, invading and appropriating din”. Alesha acknowledges such an invasion in her concern with how the societies we live in produce desires and lust in people and how these become a ‘part of your personality’ and thus hard to change. Changing one’s personality required vigilance and awareness of one’s acts as well as knowledge of ‘what God wants from me’. If this change was successful, piety could eventually become part of one’s ‘faith’ and ‘personality’. On the basis of this analysis, we could argue that the self that the young Muslims sought to control was not the kind of (liberal) autonomous and independent subject that Lien takes for granted. On the contrary, it was a self that had been led away from its authentic nature (din-al-fi tra) and in which socialization and the social context of materialism and egoism had produced a set of un-Islamic desires that was of hindrance to ‘being oneself’ in the sense of realizing one’s true Muslim nature. Th is attests to the importance of exploring the diff erent ways in which desire is socially constructed and how this relates to diff erent conceptualizations of self and self-fulfi lment. Disciplining nafs, in the sense that the young Muslims in my study understood this, is not about being prevented from ‘realizing one’s true self’, but about realizing a self that is truly Muslim.

28 Th e themes of materialism and egoism are not related in any straightforward manner to the ‘non-Muslim’ and the Western, however. Young Muslims oft en criticized the parental generation for being too materialistic (thinking about, for instance, the amount of the mahr (bridal gift given by the groom to the bride upon marriage) for marriages) and egoistic (in that they force their children to conform to social norms because they are afraid what people might say about them). 29 Th e concern with and transmitted importance of maintaining a balance between reason and pleasure is central to the Islamic discursive tradition. Th is is expressed in the concept of wasat that signifi es the middle way between two extremes: reason and pleasure, concern for dunya and akhira (cf. Ahmed 1992: 48; Mernissi 2001: 123). 328 chapter six

It would, however, be a mistake to see the kind of relationship that the young women I worked with had with themselves and how they constituted themselves as moral subjects as uniquely shaped and moulded within a single discursive tradition that can be ‘counterposed’ with the liberal-secular tradition. On the contrary, as is evident from the discussion between the young women and other ethnographic material discussed in this chapter, the shaping and moulding of subjectivities takes place at the intersection of several discursive traditions. Th e way in which the young women engaged the Islamic tradition and negotiated the notion of ‘submitting to Allah’ was cut across by a (liberal) ethics of personal authenticity and autonomy. Like their peers, the young Muslims were concerned with issues that are central to how self-realization is constructed in the contemporary Norwegian context and in liberal- secular discourses more generally: independence, responsibility, individual authenticity and the power to make decisions about their everyday lives. As we have seen, all these aspects are central to the ‘return to Islam’ and to hijab stories. On the basis of contemporary revivalist trends that stress how Islam allows one to be at peace, to feel good and to regain self-esteem and dignity, Roy (Roy 2004) argues that the ‘return to Islam’ is equated with a sort of worldly salvation and therefore goes hand in hand with the modern ‘culture of the self’. In line with this, my interlocutors’ narratives of return also express forms of self-realization that give prominence to how Islam provides such things as ‘balance’ and ‘happiness’, as well as self-esteem and dignity, although worldly salvation, as will be shown later in this chapter, does not replace the concern with salvation in the aft erlife.30 Narratives of return to Islam thus seem to point to a subjectivation of diff erent registers of truths and authorities and to diff erent forms of self-realization – of becoming a subject –suggested or prescribed to individuals within the framework of these truths and authorities. Th is does not imply that this is a passive subjection to the norms of the parents and the ethnic group, or to those norms that govern the liberal ethics of personal autonomy and authenticity. Rather, the return to Islam can be understood as an active engagement with the Islamic tradition aimed at realizing certain virtues and ethical capacities, where the individual eff ort to ‘fi nd one’s true self’ is bound by both a religious and a social structure. Th is engagement implies reproducing some of

30 As Fadil (2008) has noted, the notion of ‘happiness’ leads us to a liberal-utilitarian register, one which underlines the primacy of one’s own wellbeing. becoming muslim: working on the self 329 the values and norms represented by the parents and the ‘ethnic group’ (regarding modesty, for example) while opposing others (for example, in redefi ning what is authentically Islamic). It also implies opposing some of the values and norms of the majority society (in terms of peer group pressure at school and elsewhere, for instance) while reproducing others. In so far as what is ‘Islamically correct’ is a continual subject of debate and contestation, becoming a Muslim subject is not a passive reproduction of norms and values but a process of subject formation that is open to reinterpretation and re-articulation.

Ibadat as techniques of the self Now, how may the highest form of belief in Allah that Aydin spoke about be realized? Th e ‘return to Islam’ points towards such a process, a process be means of which young Muslims seek to better their character by, for example, acquiring knowledge of Islam, changing their religious practice, ‘trampling on their ego’ and working with the niyyat. All these types of eff orts may be summarized under the term ibadat (worship, devotional action). In its narrow sense ibadat refers to the domain of explicitly prescribed activities of worship, most notably the Five Pillars of shahada, salah, sawm, zakat and hajj. In a broader sense, however, that Safa makes explicit in the above quoted discussion, ibadat refers to all the aspects of everyday life that are halal and directed towards God (cf. Mahmood 2005; Murata and Chittick 1994).31 From this perspective, Safa points to going to school as an activity that forms part of ibadat since Islam requires that every pious Muslim should strive towards knowledge. Th is illustrates a conception of religion that does not limit it, as liberal-secular conceptions of religion tend to do, to a set of beliefs and ritual practices. Among the prescribed activities of worship, the ritual prayer was considered so important by the young Muslims that they would oft en distinguish between practising and non-practising (nominal) Muslims on the basis of whether they performed the salah or not. ‘Before

31 According to Asad (1993: 222), ibadat has the same root as ‘abd, which is usually rendered in English as ‘servant’. Asad suggests that ‘slave’ might be a better translation to stress the contrast with the fi gure of kinship (God as the Father) and the fi gure of contract (the Covenant with God) in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Th e concept of ‘slave’ stresses the ideal of obedience to Allah and this is what ibadat more broadly refers to. As seen from the quote below, the fi gure of ‘contract’ was, interestingly, invoked by my interlocutors to speak about their relationship to God. Th e fi gure of the servant also appeared regularly, as in the previous quote where young women talked about realizing that they were ‘working for God’. 330 chapter six

I started to practise’, though, could mean both before I started doing the prayers regularly or, for women, before I started to wear the hijab. But being a ‘practising Muslim’ is not simply a question of whether you pray or not, it is also about the frequency and regularity of such performances and about the intention with which these are performed. Given this view of salah, it might come as quite surprising that a closer look at actual practices reveals that most of the young performed the fi ve daily prayers quite irregularly.32 Some only performed their prayers from time to time while others did them every day (although many would ‘catch up on’ the prayers they had missed during the day in the evening, for example).33 Th is less than ideal performance of the religious duties is usually explained with reference to practical circumstances. School and work, plus a busy social, sports or other schedule, make it diffi cult to perform salah at the fi xed hours of prayer. Th e non- Muslim environment, where a break from school or work combined with a clean place to perform the prayer may be diffi cult to fi nd, com- plicates the matter further. In particular, waking up before sunrise to perform salah al-fajr (to be performed aft er dawn breaks but before sunrise) was considered to be demanding. Nabil told me that waking up in time for the Morning prayer was one of his big struggles to be, as he put it, a ‘good Muslim’. Like many others, his praying practices have varied considerably over time: Nabil: I learnt to pray by hanging around my parents when they prayed. And then I would go to the mosque with them in Ramadan and pray. I cannot remember when I started this ‘hobby praying’ that children do. You know, we all pray now and then: on Fridays and around exams, or when we have guests. In my family we have always tried to pray together. I think this has been really important to me, because then you automatically started praying.

32 A worshiper may add other forms of prayer towards the end of the salah. Th ese may be drawn from a stock of ‘traditional prayers’ or from prayer books (reminders, dou’as) or they may take the form of individual supplications (take care of my parents and my sister, stop the war in Palestine etc.). Dou’as are an integrated part of Muslim cultural practices, as when saying bismillah before you eat etc. When young active Muslims make use of such invocations as mashallah, subhanallah, hamdulillah, inshallah this is, thus, both conventional and an expression of personal religiosity. 33 Th e regularity with which it is performed varies with regard to lifecycle and personal and social circumstances, as well as with respect to the frames of the religious calendar. During Ramadan, the collective aspect of religious practice and rituals is foregrounded and observing salah usually becomes more frequent and regular. becoming muslim: working on the self 331

Christine: You told me you pray fi ve times a day now. When did you start doing that? Nabil: I think it was in Eighth or Ninth grade that I became more conscious that I should start praying. Strangely, I was very much inspired by a non-Muslim friend of mine who was sort of a politically left -wing radical. I mean, not by his views in themselves, but by his engagement. He once said to me: ‘You know what, if I was a Muslim I would pray fi ve times a day – it’s about principles’. Actually, I started as a result of a bet with this friend. Or not really a bet, but I told my friend that I was going to start praying fi ve times a day, and then I did it. But then I started and I quit again, and started and quit… […] You know, I think you try to be a good Muslim all the time. For instance, I have this thing with myself now that I should wake up for Morning prayer. In summer it is really hard because it is at two, three or four in the morning, you know. Every third or fourth day I set the alarm and say to myself that now I’m going to start waking up every day. Th at is the biggest struggle in my life right now, to wake up for Morning prayer. I really work hard at it. Many say that the boundary between a Muslim and a non-Muslim, the contract between you and God, is prayer. To be strong enough, or rather disci- plined enough, to do the prayer comes from your personal conviction. We who pray and go to the mosque have made a conscious choice. We could just as well have turned our backs on Islam. So I feel that I have made a choice, it is not a choice that has been made for me. Nabil, like many of the young Muslims, distinguished between the on and off praying in childhood which, just like the on and off wearing of the hijab, was seen as closely related to one’s Muslim upbringing and the ‘conscious’ decision to start praying that comes from one’s ‘personal conviction’. Interestingly, Nabil locates his decision to consciously start praying in the interpellation from a ‘left -wing radical’ friend on the basis of a (liberal) ethics (of authenticity) to ‘act according to your principles’. Th is shows the eff ect that the social surroundings, including non-Muslim peers, have on the craft ing of religious selves. While the initial ‘choice’ to start to pray fi ve times a day was, thus, an eff ort to act on the basis of who he saw himself as, it gradually became central to the relationship between himself and God (as a ‘contract’) and to his struggle to ‘be a good Muslim all the time’. Praying was, then, not only a ritual duty – it involved an eff ort, a struggle, and required ‘strength’ and ‘discipline’. Like wearing the hijab in the stories of the young women, the non-negotiability of salah was underlined by Nabil’s reference to an Islamic orthodoxy (“many say that it is the boundary between a Muslim and a non-Muslim”), while at the same time the 332 chapter six understanding of its individual performance was mediated by a liberal focus on ‘conscious choice’ and ‘personal conviction’ as the basis for religious agency. One way of interpreting the importance of salah for the young Muslims’ understanding of what it entails to be a ‘practising’ and ‘good’ Muslim would be to see this as primarily symbolizing identity boundaries. Asad’s approach to ritual, however, draws our attention more to what ritual practices do than to what they signify (Asad 1993). Th e way in which religious practice both expresses and installs religious virtue is central to the way in which young Muslims speak about salah. According to Ibrahim, for instance, who paraphrases a saying of the Prophet, performing salah prevents one from doing wrong: Th ey came to ask the Prophet: ‘How do I know if my prayer has been accepted by God?’ Th en the Prophet answered that there is an easy way to fi nd out, because God says in the Koran that prayers stop you from wrongdoing. So if you do bad things, you have not even prayed, what you did was just working out, aerobics. Th ere was no meaning behind it. When the intention of your act is so good that it stops you from wrongdoing, then God has accepted your prayer. Th at’s what it is all about. Th ere is a reason for praying, there is a meaning behind it, and if you do not get that meaning you don’t have to care about the way in which you do it. Because the meaning behind is much more important than the way in which you do it. A similar focus on what the ritual of salah does was expressed by Aadila earlier in the chapter when she stressed the eff ectiveness of prayer in bringing about a balance between ‘aql and nafs, and thus in controlling desire. Prayer, like the hijab, is thus part of the great jihad, the struggle to discipline oneself and realize a pious self. Interestingly, Ibrahim relates the eff ectiveness of prayer to the ‘reason for praying’ and the ‘meaning behind it’. One possible interpretation of this is that Ibrahim is implying that rituals should be undertaken on the basis of a ‘conscious choice’ and ‘personal conviction’, as was stressed by Nabil above, understood as diff erent from the ‘mere’ performance of ritual movements (which he condescendingly terms ‘aerobics’). His assertion that the ‘meaning behind’ prayer is more important than the ‘way in which you do it’ could be interpreted as pointing to a similar distinction as the one discussed in Chapter Five, between a self-refl exive way of being Muslim that includes refl ections over ‘why’ a certain act is performed (the reason, the meaning behind it) and a ‘traditional’ way of being Muslim, based on knowledge of ‘how’ a certain act should be becoming muslim: working on the self 333 performed.34 Th is interpretation is further strengthened by the way he characterizes, this again resembling Nabil’s argument, his childhood prayers as “just like brushing my teeth”. For him, this mode of religious practice lasted until “I started questioning it, and got answers and reasons. And it became something I really believed in and that I decided to go for”. As we will see later on in the chapter, however, Ibrahim’s concerns also resonate with the importance given to the ‘intention’ and ‘sincerity’ of religious practice. In the above examples prayer appears to be a technique of the self through which Ibrahim, Aadila, Nabil and other young Muslims come to know the ‘meaning’ of Islam and transform themselves and their relationships to God and other people. While they call upon themselves and others to scrutinize the ‘meaning’ of salah, and their intentions when performing it, less attention is paid to the particular gendered ordering of society that the choreography of collective prayer conveys. Th is is so, for instance, with respect to how the collective performance of salah presupposes and reproduces a particular representation of gender diff erence. Traditionally, the separation of male and female prayer space involves women praying behind men or in a separate room,35 while the imam in mixed congregations is always a man.36 In such situations, “women can see and hear men, but men cannot see and

34 One should note that the concern with ‘reasons’ and ‘meaning’ are not foreign to the Islamic discursive tradition. Hikmah (wisdom) and ‘illah (legal reason) are concepts of Usul ul Fiqh (the sources of jurisprudence), and there are diff erent opinions on how these relate to ibadat. 35 In the ICC, for instance, as in many other Norwegian mosques, men and women are physically separated in all ritual as well as organizational activities. Women listen to the khutba of the juma prayer via a loudspeaker transmitting the sound from the men’s fl oor. In other mosques, women pray behind the men. 36 Th e four major schools of law agree that women cannot lead a mixed congregation in prayer, but disagree as to whether women may lead an all-female congregation. Th e Hanafi s traditionally do not allow women to lead prayer, whereas the Shafi s generally do accept this (Vogt 2000). Th e Süleymanci movement educates female hodsjas (teachers, sometimes translated as imams) who function as preachers in all-female assemblies and who also travel as preachers internationally. According to Vogt (2000), there are six female hodsjas within this movement in Norway. As Elgvin (2007) shows, however, male imams nevertheless lead prayers in the Süleymanci mosque in Oslo. Bosnians have a similar tradition of female hodsjas and bulas (Bringa 1995). Women have been reported to function as imams in all-female mosques in some provinces in China. In 2005 the Indian-American Muslim feminist Amina Wadud led a mixed congregation of men and women in Friday prayers for what the media referred to as ‘the fi rst time on record in the history of Islam’. Wadud’s act was highly controversial and virtually all Muslim jurisprudents agreed that Wadud had gone ‘too far’ and that nothing in the law or the sunna allowed for this kind of worship (Haddad et al. 2006: 65). 334 chapter six hear women” (Otterbeck 2003). In the MSS and the NMU women and men usually prayed together (with the women behind or beside the men), but the choreography of salah varied depending on where the prayer was performed. For communal prayers the MSS usually made use of Mosalla, the prayer room at the university campus, where a cur- tain was drawn between men and women during salah. Just as in other Muslim assemblies, a man always led the prayer in mixed congregations; women could lead other women and children of both sexes. In general, women who led prayers stood in the middle of the front row rather than in front of the congregation, as men usually did. Explicit reasons for this gendering of ritual space were rarely provided or discussed by the young Muslims – it seemed to be accepted as something ‘naturally’ given. In a way similar to that noted by Otterbeck (2003) in his work on Muslims in Sweden, however, there seemed to be a general assumption that the eroticism of female bodies and voices represented a potential distraction to male religious activities. Women leading prayers in mixed congregations would break with the ideal of hijab and when I asked some of the girls about whether women could lead communal prayers, they giggled just at the thought of it.37 Th e way in which communal salah serves to reproduce a certain gendered ordering of society, and bodies that are diff erently marked by their genders, remains an unspoken premise of the ‘work on the self’ that is done in prayer.

Ethical formation As we have seen, the young did not only consider ritual practices as central to their work on the self, this work also including more broadly the eff ort to live their lives in a way that was ‘Islamically correct’ and ‘halal’. Pedagogical material and presentations on Islamic law focusing on what is haram and halal were among the most popular sources for guidance on Islamic ethics among the young Muslims I worked with. Such material focuses on issues such as food and drink, clothes, personal hygiene, relationships between women and men, marriage and divorce and parents and children. Acts are classifi ed according to a distinction between ‘obligatory’ (fard) and ‘forbidden’ (haram),

37 Leading salah does not only depend on gender, however. Usually factors such as age and informal leadership based on, for example, knowledge of Islam determine who leads communal prayer. Encouraging someone to lead the communal prayer signals deference and respect. becoming muslim: working on the self 335 with the intermediate categories of ‘recommended’ (sunna, mandub), ‘indiff erent /permissible’ (mubah, halal) and ‘reprehensible’ (makruh). Th e placement of diff erent acts within these categories varies in diff erent traditions and is a matter of considerable contestation.38 Th e classifi cation of acts into such categories was a continual concern of the young Muslims I worked with, although the areas of life for which such classifi cations were made relevant, and the ways in which individuals related to these over time, varied much. With respect to food, for instance, some would scrutinize all food for haram ingredients (e.g. for traces of animal fat), while others would eat all kinds of meat as long as it was not pork.39 To many, such concerns were mainly framed within a more general distinction between what was haram and what was halal. Others were more explicitly concerned with not only avoiding the forbidden, but with also realizing what was ‘recommended’ in their daily lives.40 Th e preoccupation of these young Muslims with orienting their lives in terms of what was haram and halal must be investigated along several lines. First, many of the young Muslims had learned to refl ect on, and correct, their acts in terms of these principles through primary socialization at home and in the mosque. As they embarked on a more personalized quest to live as a Muslim, however, the halal and haram distinction became more important to many as a way of working towards becoming a more pious Muslim. Living in a way that is halal, and staying clear of what is haram, is, in this sense, integral to working on the self – the formation of an ethical subject (cf. Mahmood 2005). As we saw in the discussion between the group of young women earlier in this chapter, by seeing every act as a potential act of worship, the halal /haram distinction was introduced to judge one’s own behaviour

38 Th ere is also a division within the category of fard. Fard ain refers to an obligation on every single Muslim, whereas fard kifayaah refers to an obligation on the Muslim community (dawa, for instance, has historically primarily been understood as fard kifayyah but has in recent times come to be considered by many as fard ain). 39 Such concerns have resulted, in recent years, in eff orts to make lists of haram and halal products available to Muslims in Norway (on the Internet, for example) and in eff orts directed at producers to ensure the availability of halal variants of popular products. 40 Although the life of the Prophet is seen as exemplary for what is recommended, none of the young Muslims interpreted this as implying that they should imitate his practices in a way oblivious to historical and cultural context. Th ey would, for example, dress in ‘modern’ clothes but within the limits of what they saw as being Islamically correct. 336 chapter six in every fi eld of life, whether private or public. Th e areas of life which were subject to judgement from the point of view of Islamic norms thus expanded as part of their religious reorientation or ‘return’ to Islam – an expansion that some of the young sought to make relevant not only to their own personal practices but to their families and Muslim surroundings as well (as when Umar reproached his father for selling alcohol, or when Tahira chastised a Muslim salesman at 7-Eleven for selling hot dogs). Such interventions, whether directed as criti - cism at a particular person’s practices or simply held forth as a non- negotiable yardstick in discussions about particular issues (using the logic that it is haram and therefore there is no need to discuss it from the point of view of other standards of evaluation), were found annoy- ing by some of the young – as attested to by the young woman who used the derogatory term ‘haramists’ to designate those who, in her words “conclude peremptorily that this or that is haram without paying attention to context”.41 Although the term ‘haramist’ is highly critical of a particular position, it does not necessarily imply a rejection of the centrality of the halal /haram distinction. Rather, it points to the fi eld of contestation about how, through which methods and by whom such authoritative judgements should be made. Although this classifi cation of acts is central to the Islamic discursive tradition, the socio-historical context is important for how the halal / haram distinction is interpreted and practised. Turner and Tong (2008) argue that everyday norms of pious practice are more likely to be invoked when a religious community is a minority (a situation in which such norms become especially important for defi ning religious diff erences). Piety, therefore, functions in the context of tensions and competition between social groups as a method of defi ning membership of a particular community (2008: 43). In Europe, halal meat has become a central marker of Muslim identity and a focal point for the politics of recognition. Making sure that halal meat was available in student cafeterias was one of the fi rst issues addressed by members of the MSS. Within a minority context, the distinction between haram and halal works simultaneously to distinguish Us (the Muslims) from Th em (the non-Muslim majority) and to mark diff erent degrees of ‘piety’ and ‘Islamic practice’. Piety becomes an aspect not only of personal

41 Th e term ‘haramist’ has also been used – sometimes polemically, other times more in a more humoristic manner – at the discussion forum . becoming muslim: working on the self 337 self-formation but also of boundary construction and maintenance. Th us, the areas where young Muslims invoked their eff orts to shape themselves as pious Muslims were oft en discussed in contradistinction to non-Muslims who were perceived of in terms of a ‘Norwegian’ or ‘Western’ value system rather than an Islamic one. Young Muslims thus stressed how their pious aspirations involved abstaining from certain practices that were mapped on to ‘Norwegians’ and ‘the West’ more generally (or on to those in the immigrant Muslim community who had become ‘Westernized’) such as sex outside of marriage, drinking alcohol, eating pork and meat that was not religiously slaughtered and showing intimate parts of the body to the opposite sex. While these are, of course, central concerns in the Islamic legal tradition, one might nevertheless argue that in the reconstruction of identities within a context of migration and cultural and religious pluralism, distinctions between what is halal and haram also become markers of a diff erence between Us and Th em (cf. Chapter Four). A further argument could be made that the proliferation of the halal /haram distinction is related to the commodifi cation of ‘Islamic culture’ and the increased marketing of ‘lifestyle’ products as ‘Islamic’ and ‘halal’. Although religion is oft en seen as a domain separate from economics, religious identities in modern capitalist societies seem, like other identities, to be partly shaped in the arena of consumption (cf. Navaro-Yashin 2002). Th e expanding halal industry is no longer limited to providing religiously slaughtered meat but now promotes a range of products associated with a pious lifestyle. As Boubekeur (2005) argues, an increasing number of young Muslims affi rm their ‘islamité’ through eating halal burgers and listening to halal music. In Norway, too, new products have been introduced, such as halal pizza and Qibla- cola.42 One emerging arena for the pursuit of piety in everyday life is, then, represented by individual practices of consumption (Boubekeur 2005). While the halal /haram classifi cation is energized by its commodifi cation, a perhaps more crucial energizer among my young Muslim interlocutors was the infl uence coming from Islamist and revivalist Islamic discourses which had popularized this distinction in practical guidebooks for Muslim everyday life intended to meet the changing requirements demanded of Muslims living in a contemporary society. A case in point is Qaradawi’s seminal Th e Lawful and

42 ‘Qibla’ is the direction of prayer towards the Kaaba in Mecca. 338 chapter six

Prohibited in Islam (Al-Qaradawi n.d. [Arabic original 1960]) that covers most aspects of private and daily life, social and professional relationships etc. As already shown, and as demonstrated by the scope of Qaradawi’s book, the pursuit of piety is not confi ned to the domain of ritual and devotion, but is also central in the domain of everyday practices, conduct and etiquette. In an article about “Knowledge, tolerance, intellect and progress” in the MSS magazine (Tankevekkende 1997: 9), Tayyab Riaz draws attention to the importance of ethical and moral norms in the arena of everyday social interaction, these being fundamental for the pursuit of piety and also in terms of bringing about social change. To Riaz, ethics, knowledge and progress are intimately linked. He argues that in order to promote tolerance and progress among Muslims it is necessary for Muslims to acquire a better knowledge of Islam – and for them to then let this knowledge infl uence everyday practice: “Knowledge must not only be seen in relation to Allah and a spiritual world, but also in relation to a practically oriented everyday life. Islam is aft er all a din (religion) whose purpose is to infl uence our daily lives. If it does not infl uence our daily lives there is nothing wrong with Islam, but it might be time to scrutinize ourselves in order to try and see if we missed an essential point somewhere”. Riaz goes on to argue that by “a practically oriented everyday life” he does not only mean praying fi ve times a day or reading the Koran every day, this phrase also implying “that we should be polite in the way we speak, show respect for elders, children and the opposite sex, not be aggressive either physically, men- tally or verbally, not lie, not talk behind people’s backs and the like. As mentioned, an intellect that has not understood the fundamentals is hardly able to identify these elements in a ‘practically oriented everyday life’ ”. Th e ethical vision Riaz proposes centres on ‘the individual’ and the individual’s personal ethical responsibility as the point of departure for making a better society: “It is aft er all the individual that society is based on. If each individual does their share to uphold positive ethics and morals, society will automatically change”. Riaz ends his article with a citation of the last khutba of the Prophet Mohammed, which stresses the importance of reasoning and understanding in staying on the straight path “O People, no prophet or apostle will come aft er me and no new faith will be born. Reason well, therefore, O people, and understand words which I convey to you. I leave behind me two things, the Koran and my Sunnah and if you follow these you will never go astray”. becoming muslim: working on the self 339

Th e ethical outlook that emerges from this approach is, thus, one centred on the individual and their responsibility for their own actions. Islam does not only inform ritual practice, but should ideally inform a person’s virtuous conduct in all aspects of life. Such virtuous conduct is dependent on the acquisition of knowledge and the application of this knowledge in everyday life. For instance, one of the things that Riaz mentions is that letting Islam inform one’s “practically oriented everyday life” implies “not talking behind people’s backs”. Ghiba – speaking of someone’s faults in his or her absence – is strongly condemned in Islamic moral theology. Young Muslims oft en referred to this principle in order to criticize the social control eff ectuated by ‘slandering’. Th e criticism of ‘talking behind people’s back’ also represents a forceful critique of the set of values and norms of conduct referred to by the various notions of ‘honour’ and ‘shame’ in the ‘ethnic communities’. Young women in particular identifi ed the parental generations’ preoccupation with protecting the family’s honour, and the attention they pay to what others think and say, as an unwarranted form of control over their lives. By promoting an ethics grounded in the individual’s relationship to Islam they challenged such values and norms of conduct, while simultaneously retaining values and norms related to (in particular female but also male) modesty, but bestowing the responsibility for supervis- ing this modesty primarily upon the individual rather than upon the family or kinship group. Th is, of course, does not mean that they were able to transcend values and norms of conduct related to honour and shame, but it does mean that the relationship to norms of modesty and chastity was individualized and recast as a relationship between the individual and Islamic values and norms. In his book Globalized Islam, Roy (2004) argues that the ethical approaches of young Muslims in Europe point towards a ‘privatization’ of religion and a declining interest among youth for political Islam. Th e ethical approaches discussed here, focusing importantly on the individual and casting the haram /halal distinction as a matter of Islamic norms that each Muslim was responsible for following rather than laws that should be implemented and sanctioned by a state, could be read as also pointing to such a development in the Norwegian context. However, I want to complicate this picture somewhat. Salwa Ismail (2007) argues that we must pay attention to the political implications of forms of self-fashioning associated with the ongoing processes of re-Islamization in both Muslim-majority and Muslim-minority societies. Public practices of self-reform grounded in religion and presented 340 chapter six in pietistic terms are political by virtue of being tied to projects of societal reform and because they have a bearing on the public sphere and public space, Ismail argues. My young Muslim interlocutors’ practices of self-reform were, for many, tied to ideas about societal reform in some form (in the quote above, for instance, Riaz talks about promoting tolerance and progress). Although ethics was largely centred on the individual and their responsibility for their own actions, the importance of acting ethically was also related to the consequences such ethical action was seen to have for society. Th is view of ethics challenges one particular secularist understanding of the relationship between religion and politics. Furthermore, the reshaping of self in accordance with Islamic norms of piety, when understood as something that includes not only ritual practice but that should also inform one’s ‘practically oriented everyday life’, does involve a range of practices that are also carried out in, and have a bearing on, the public sphere and public space. Th is is attested to by the many confl icts across Europe surrounding, for instance, halal food, getting time off for prayer and the use of hijabs at schools and in workplaces. Such practices challenge liberal notions about a strict division between a private and a public sphere according to which religion should be located in the former. Th e confl icts surrounding these practices have also problematized views of the public sphere as a ‘neutral space’ separated from religion, revealing the extent to which ‘the public’ in diff erent contexts is shaped by particular religious and secular historical formations (Asad 2006; Salvatore 2004). But there is a further sense in which the private /public distinction is challenged by practices of self-reform. As Ismail (2007) argues, the subjectivities inhabiting the public sphere are shaped by and, we could add, contribute to shaping power-relations. Projects of Muslim public selves are, therefore, imbricated in the material conditions of the settings in which they develop and are, as such, underpinned by dynamics of power and contestation.

Having the right intent When being a Muslim is understood as a process of becoming, closely tied to the achievement of Islamic knowledge and personal reform, the question of ‘why’ one acts as one does tends to become more pertinent. I do not intend to suggest that religious practices can be explained with reference solely to people’s intent, however. Rather, I suggest, it also has to be understood in relation to such things as the embodiment of religious sentiments, the docile body and the workings of power in the becoming muslim: working on the self 341 constitution of religious selves (cf. Asad 1986). What I aim at here is, thus, not to explain why young Muslims act as they do but to approach some of the moral structurations that appear by means of the ways in which they refl ect upon their own acts. Th e young Muslims were not content with ‘doing Islam’, they were also preoccupied with scrutiniz- ing and transforming the intent with which particular acts were performed: ‘Am I doing this for me, for God or for the people around me?’ Th e pursuit of piety thus operates not only through a desire to reform one’s comportment but also one’s interior dispositions and sentiments (Jouili 2006: 36; Mahmood 2005). Th e question of intentions, niyyat, is important in the Islamic tradition. In its specifi cally religious signifi cance, niyyat refers to the declaration made by the believer before the fi ve daily prayers and a variety of other ritual and legal acts of the meaning and the purpose of the act. Th is enunciation of proper intent, with the qualities of purity and truth, is indispensable to correct practice. As Bowen (1993) notes with respect to the Gayo people in Indonesia, religious modernism’s conception of subjectivity tends to make intent particularly salient. Th e individual who stands before God is responsible for thoughts, attitudes and intents as well as for external actions. Th e young Muslims I worked with similarly saw the individual as responsible for the attitudes and intents with which a particular act was performed, as well as for their acts. Th e way in which they spoke about intent in worship indicated a form of conscious commitment that had to be cultivated as an aspect of iman. As has been shown above, the intent, ‘meaning’ and ‘conscious commitment’ of prayer was a constant concern. Th is concern with ‘intentions’ was not restricted to the fi eld of prayer, however, it also entered more broadly into the discussions young Muslims had on ‘Islamic correctness’ and what it meant to be a good Muslim. Intent was, thus, perceived as a property that accompanies all actions and that could render them haram or halal, valid or invalid, authentic or inauthentic (as, for example, when prayer is mere aerobics). ‘Th e right intent’ was delineated through a series of criticisms of ‘wrong intents’. Of these latter, the most frequently criticized was fear of the social consequences of one’s acts, notably concern with appearing as a good Muslim or caring for one’s reputation.43 People in the parental

43 Some Islamic theologians identify the act of performing deeds that may be good in themselves but which are done for the sake of this worldly life and not for the sake of Allah as shirk. 342 chapter six generation and those called ‘cultural Muslims’ were oft en assumed to be motivated by such concerns. For instance, they were seen to protect their daughters because they were concerned with the family’s honour rather than out of ‘love for their religion’ or a sincere wish to act in accordance with God’s law. Th e intentions for carrying out one’s own acts were also scrutinized, in particular in relation to whether one’s piety was a matter of keeping up an image of oneself as a good Muslims in order to please those around one. In the discussion held between the young women referred to above, Noor refl ected upon how she had changed since she fi rst started practising: When I started practising, I had to have a good image. But Islamically correct you should not do things in order to make people say: ‘Mashallah’ ‘Oh, you’re so good’, ‘Oh look at Noor’, ‘Look at this’. Because you don’t do things in order to make people happy. Th is is about becoming more humble, subhanallah, the proper way, subhanallah. In the years since I started practising I have changed so much. I do things and my intentions are so clear, you know, so clear that it sometimes amazes me. It becomes part of your faith aft er a while. Th e concern with being Islamically correct thus incites Noor to scrutinize her own intentions, to refl ect upon the reasons for her own practices and to work on herself in order to make her intentions clearer. Note how a pure intention is not automatically assured by faith. Rather, it is something that has to be made purer through a conscious process and that only gradually becomes ‘part of your faith’. While Noor saw acting with a clear intention as having become part of her ‘faith’, she simultaneously realized that constant vigilance was needed in order to ensure that she continued to act in an ‘Islamically correct’ way. To act in an ‘Islamically correct’ way thus implies not only that she should act in a particular manner but also that such acts should be undertaken with the right motivation (with a correct intention and humility). In other regards, young Muslims also stressed that practices and emotions that in the beginning required a conscious eff ort (such as wearing the hijab, for example) eventually became an automatic way of feeling and reacting. Janaan, for instance, told me that while in the beginning she tended to take her hijab on and off on diff erent occasions now, “leaving the house without a hijab feels like leaving it without my trousers”. Such vigilance and monitoring of practice in ethical formation is in many ways akin to that described by Mahmood (2005), refl ecting an Aristotelian understanding of moral formation, which has infl uenced a number of Islamic thinkers and which continues to live on within the becoming muslim: working on the self 343 temporary dawa movement in Egypt. Mahmood (2005: 139) pertinently points out that this may be seen as a form of conscious action directed at making certain kinds of behaviours unconscious, or part of a person’s habitus. Acting in an ‘Islamically correct’ way with the right disposition of, for example, humility and modesty can become a ‘part of one’s faith’ and an embodied part of one’s way of acting in the world. Also in this respect, however, we see that the ideals of ‘personal authenticity’ and ‘autonomy’ come to aff ect the way in which young Muslims theorize ‘intention’ and the relationship between interiority and exteriority. One example of this is provided by the moment when Taliba criticizes Abid for being motivated by what people think about him in relation to his recent ‘return’ to Islam. In contrast to Noor, Taliba is not concerned that this is not an ‘Islamically correct’ intention, focusing instead on a person’s duty to ‘be him or herself’ and to adopt ‘independent reasoning’ and ‘open-mindedness’: Taliba: I was talking to Abid and he is like: “I went off the track for some years of my life and I went aft er girls, but now I’m coming back”. I’m like: “Where are you coming back from? What are you talking about?” And he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Only - he is only doing it because people don’t like what he was doing before. It’s not like he didn’t like what he was doing, it’s that people didn’t like what he was doing. And now he is coming back. Christine: Where is he coming back to? Taliba: To the religion – you know. He went just a little bit anti-religious – you know. But now he has just made it a point not to think beyond a limit – this is my limit and I’m not going to think beyond it – you know. I’m going to pray fi ve times a day and I’m just going to do it, no matter what happens. And that’s strange, I don’t like that. I disagree with that. I mean – you should see things from diff erent perspectives, how I would see it, how you would see it and how someone from across the country would see it – you know. Just like – look at a matter universally, not only through your neighbours. Taliba thus introduces an ideal that moves beyond that of Islamic correctness to include a scrutiny of one’s practices not only from an Islamic viewpoint, but also from an alleged ‘universal’ viewpoint that allows for a multiplicity of perspectives. While Taliba, just as Noor, targets the concern with ‘what people think’ for her criticism, this is from a perspective stressing individual authenticity rather than religious virtuos- ity. To Taliba, it is not the fact that Abid’s motivation for ‘coming back 344 chapter six to the religion’ does not seem to be based on Islamically correct intentions but the fact that his change does not emerge from his own desires that is identifi ed as a problem (“It’s not like he didn’t like what he was doing”). Rather than with the question of a pure religious intent, Taliba thus seems to be concerned with the ‘personal authenticity’ of Abid’s way of acting. She upholds the necessity, and even duty, of assuming a refl ective and critical attitude towards social roles as well as religious authority. Abid’s ‘return to Islam’ is thus assessed by Taliba not on the basis of whether it allows him to act in conformity with Divine prescription (living Islamically correct), but on the basis of the (liberal) ethics of authenticity (to live in accordance with one’s own desires) and autonomy (assessment from a position outside of a particular moral tradition and social context). In contrast to Taliba, Abid sees his decision to come ‘back to the religion’ as being energized by his ‘love for God’. He focuses on the ‘struggle’ that is involved in trying to live in a way that is not in confl ict with Islam. His ‘love for God’ entails a sense of obligation to ‘apply Islam’ in everyday life and makes Islam, as an objectifi ed standard of right and wrong, a primary standard for how he evaluates himself as a moral person: Abid: I have struggled a lot. But I think the reason for my struggles is that I love my religion so much, and I get a terrible conscience when I do something that confl icts with Islam. I feel a sharp pain inside of me when I act in contradiction with Islam, and this is a thing that really bothers me. For instance, when I used to go to discotheques at night – I was really practising at that time. Before I left home I would do my evening prayers – no one ever told me to, it was something I did for myself, and then I would get dressed up and go out with my friends and come back at four in the morning. I remember this so vividly: crossing paths with my father at the door. He would be on his way to the Morning prayer in the mosque, I would be coming back from town, and he would ask me: “Where have you been?” And I would answer that I was with some friends. And he would go: “OK, fi ne”. And then I’d wash and do the Morning prayer. I contradicted myself the whole time. In the prayer you say “Lead me on the straight path”, and a lot of other stuff , right. I mean: I would ask God to lead me on the straight path in my evening prayer and an hour later, look where I would be… Christine: Taking a trip on the wrong path…?

Abid: Exactly, that’s extreme double standards. I still struggle with these kinds of things, but not as much. Th ere are still some things to think about, but I’m over the worst part. As I said my problem in a way is that becoming muslim: working on the self 345

I love my religion so much, and I easily get a bad conscience. Many friends who do not practise that much – they are Muslims, but they do not feel so strongly about it – they’re fi ne about it. Th ey go from one relationship to the next without thinking about the religious consequences. But I always think: “Okay, this is what I have done” – and then I go and see Mohammed – he knows a lot – and ask him about the punishment, for instance for being with a girl. I was thinking a lot about these kinds of things, and it bothered me a lot. I’ve hurt quite a few girls because of this. I do not want to be in a relationship unless I’m serious about it. In the beginning I’ve always been serious, but then all of a sudden I’d be swept away by doubt: “What am I doing?” And then I would run away, and they would ask: “What did you promise me?” I tried to explain myself, but they didn’t understand. Abid’s interpretation of his decision to ‘come back to Islam’ contrasts with Aadila’s in that he does not see it as a consequence of social conformity, but as an attempt to bring his own acts into accordance with the love he has for his religion. It is interesting to note how the ‘love for God’ and ‘fear of punishment’, which are oft en spoken of as pious virtues in other contexts, here appear somewhat ambivalently as both a virtue and a problem. Th e aff ection and love Abid feels for God, and his fear of punishment, inspires him to lead a pious life, but at the same time gives him a bad conscience to struggle with, something that his less devout friends do not have to cope with. He characterizes his own conduct as one of double standards (of morality), incompatible with his conscience and his love for God. Consciousness of what God requires of you and loving and fearing God is disciplining in the sense that failing to live up to God’s requirements is transformed from simple negligence or forgetfulness into a conscious act of disobedience. When Abid goes to the discotheque right aft er prayer he thus perceives this act not simply as neglect but as a conscious act of disobedience. Abid thus contrasts his own concern with acting in accordance with Islam to that of his friends who ‘do not feel so strongly about it’ and are, thus, less concerned about whether their acts ‘confl ict with Islam’. He also stresses his ‘proper intent’ (in the sense of getting involved with a girl only if he is ‘serious about it’) in relation to the girls he has been dating, although the way in which he is concerned with the punishment for ‘being with a girl’ also reveals a profound ambivalence as to whether this intent makes his amorous relations acceptable by Islamic standards or not. Abid’s story illustrates a more extensive dilemma related to the relationship between intent and action and its judgement in terms of 346 chapter six good /bad, haram /halal. A frequent theme of discussion among the young Muslims I worked with was whether an act of worship could be ruined if it was not performed with the right intention and, conversely, if an act that appeared to be haram would cease to be so if it was performed with a pure intent or ‘good niyyat’. Could impure intent or bad niyyat ruin the rewards of an act that was fard or sunna, as in Abid’s case when he wonders how his Morning prayers are received when they follow a night of clubbing with his girlfriend? Or, looked at the other way around, could one go to a discotheque if one’s intentions were not to drink alcohol or to chat up a potential romantic or sexual partner? As we saw in Chapter Two, the question of intent was central in this respect when discussing gender mixing in the NMU. Here, stress was put on the ‘pure intentions’ that the leaders had in this respect even though they could not control the intentions and acts of those who came to meetings. Th is way of speaking about intentions points to a dilemma between whether the crucial aspect of acting in an ‘Islamically correct’ way lies in the intention with which a certain act is performed or whether certain acts are haram or halal regardless of the intention with which they are performed. Many were critical of what they saw as a kind of ‘relativization’ of Islamic virtues by fellow young Muslims who defended their acts with reference to their ‘good intentions’. In an article in the MSS magazine Salam ( (1) 2004), a young Muslim, writing under the pen name “Muslim with a bent back”, addresses the question of “Th e good intention” in the column called Speaker’s Corner: Oft en we hear people say that only the intention matters. One may go to discotheques and Bollywood concerts as long as one has a pure intent. Girls may be unveiled, or even wear bikinis, as long as their intentions are pure. Th at one may get senselessly drunk as long as the intentions behind this act are good will probably be the next one. Th is is pushing it to its extremes but it is actually what you think if you defend your acts by saying that there was nothing wrong with your intent. Th ese discussions bring out the ambivalence between the focus on an individualized relationship to religion, where I must choose for myself and where my intentions determine the purity, validity and authenticity of the act, and a more ritualistic and legalistic stance where correct practice is secured through its outward performance in accordance with prescribed ritual and legal standards (as in the debate between Umar and his father discussed in Chapter Five). becoming muslim: working on the self 347

Choosing what is good and the reward for this Th e debates about ‘intention’ form part of a wider framework of debate about good deeds and religious reward or merit. Th e idea of good deeds and religious reward is one of the fundamental ideas of practical ethics in Islam and is central to understanding how motivation for Islamic practice and activism is constructed in the context of young Muslims’ religious activism. In the conversations and debates of the young Muslims, references were oft en made to the importance of doing good and the reward that one gets from God for doing such good deeds. Several concepts were used in partly overlapping ways in this respect, this depending to some extent on the linguistic backgrounds of those speaking and on their familiarity with Arabic-Islamic concepts and the scholarly tradition. Concepts that were frequently used were hasanat, ajar, and sawab, while expressions such as ‘points’, ‘merit’ and ‘scores’ were also frequent. While, in the literature, hasanat is usually defi ned as ‘good deeds’ and ajar and sawab as the recompense or reward for those who do good works, the young Muslims in my study tended to use these terms, as well as translations, interchangeably. References to religious merit were made in relation to practices that were conceived as obligatory duties for all Muslims such as praying, fasting and almsgiving. For women, wearing the hijab was also an opportunity for earning religious merit. References to religious merit occurred most frequently in relation to ritual and social acts that were ‘commended’ rather than obligatory (such as fasting outside of Ramadan, giving sadaqa44, tarawih prayer during Ramadan) and in the context of encouraging someone to live more piously and to act in the best interests of the Muslim community. For instance, references to hasanat, ajar and sawab oft en accompanied encouragement to ‘help out’ with practical issues such as cooking for NMU meetings, doing the dishes or cleaning aft er meetings or engaging in dawa work and public debate. Ramadan is the most propitious time to work for ajar by performing good deeds, given that, as Sarah explained to me, “for each good thing you do during Ramadan you gain a lot more than you do normally”. When preparing for the celebration of ift ar in the NMU, an e-mail was sent out looking for helping hands: “Anyone else wants to

44 Voluntary almsgiving. 348 chapter six cook? ☺ Remember that there is plentiful reward for cooking for ift ar”. Similarly, the Literature Group in the MSS responsible for publishing Tankevekkende oft en referred to the merit (using the term ajar) involved in spreading knowledge about Islam as an important motivation for writing in the magazine. In one call for contributions for the next issue of the magazine, religious reward was presented as a ‘higher purpose’ for writing than the acknowledged need to challenge stereotypes and misrepresentations of Islam: It is a pleasure to see that many of us engage in social issues and feel that we can express our opinions and thoughts in Tankevekkende. Th e tendency is clear – we have had enough of prejudice and misunderstandings related to Islam, transmitted through today’s biased media. Today’s Muslims demand to be heard. We are aware that reaching out to people with their opinions and thoughts is a motivation to many when it comes to writing. But there is a higher purpose which in itself should be suffi - cient to take up the pen. Th is is an easy way to earn lots of ajar. Just think about it, you write something in order to serve your Allah (SWT)45 and will insha Allah be rewarded. But it does not stop there! When you write something informative in a public context, for instance in Tankevekkende, many readers acquire knowledge because of you. Ergo, more reward! But it doesn’t stop there either! When these people move on, and hopefully share what they have learned with others, the chain leads all the way back to you, and there is more ajar whose limits may be infi nite. Th e treasure of Allah has no limits. We should always strive to collect precious stones from this treasure. We go through our studies collecting credits on credits to get the academic degree we wish for. Exactly in the same way, we must collect as much ajar as possible, so that we ‘pass’ on Judgement Day as well, insha Allah. (Tankevekkende 2001) While the concern with earning reward for meritorious deeds was a common theme, young Muslims understood the relationship between good and bad deeds and between reward and punishment in various

45 ‘Subhana wa Ta’ala’ is an Arabic blessing that is used when the name of Allah is pronounced or written, meaning ‘May He be Glorifi ed and Exalted’. In writing, this expression is usually abbreviated to ‘SWT’. Th e salutations called salawāt that are used when the name of Muhammed is pronounced and written are abbreviated by some to SAW (in accordance with the Arabic words sallallahu alayhi wasallam) or PBUH (which stands for ‘Peace Be Upon Him’ in English). Th e young Muslims I worked with quite regularly used SWT, SAW and PBUH when writing, but only rarely when speaking. When the expression was used in speech, this was most oft en in explicitly religious settings when gathered with other Muslims. Th e expressions signal piety and were used more frequently when speaking with someone known to be a ‘practising’ Muslim or with a person in a position of religious authority (e.g. an imam, a lecturer etc.). becoming muslim: working on the self 349 ways. Th e way Sarah, a young woman of Turkish origin, explained it to me, every human being has an angel on each shoulder who registers her good and her bad deeds (Sarah used the terms sawab and günah). Whereas good deeds are multiplied when registered, bad deeds are written down only once. Th e angel on the right side, writing down sawab, immediately registers any good deeds. Th e angel on the left side taking care of günah, however, waits to allow time for repentance (tawba). Th ese registered ‘scores’ are the basis for whether one goes to heaven or hell and for which stratum in paradise one will be sent to, she told me. Whereas the importance of ‘collecting’ sawab or ajar was generally acknowledged, some of the young complained about the ways in which some Muslims tended to understand these issues in overly concrete and materialistic terms.46 In a discussion I had with Rasheed on the topic of religious reward, he refuted the idea that God should be dependent on angels – creatures that are ranked below humans in the Koran. He saw the whole idea of angels keeping accounts for God as a very human and mundane way of thinking: It is too offi ce-like. I don’t think that is how God is. When I was younger I imagined God more in terms of a concrete person. But I really don’t know what God is, whether it is something physical, or whether it is really possible to separate the physical from the metaphysical. I imagine it as a kind of power that knows everything, that somehow takes notice of what you do, and will judge you for it. In a similar way, Ibrahim was critical of the way many traditions have developed the notion of reward virtually into a form of accountancy, with detailed specifi cations of how many hasanat (sawab) will be gained for diff erent acts. In an interview he explained to me that it is important to be aware that you will be judged on the basis of your deeds, but that he understood the idea of religious reward more as an injunction or encouragement to do good deeds than as something that was ‘count- able’ in a concrete and material sense: Ibrahim: Hasanat is the ground on which you are judged on Judgement Day, so it is worthwhile to think a little about it. I’m not quite sure about the standards for counting hasanat, so I don’t really think a lot about it, but there are certain things that I fi nd tremendously good and motivating.

46 Th is concurs with the fi ndings of Karin van Nieuwkerk that second generation Moroccans in the Netherlands tend to “have less a bookkeepers’ conception of ajr” (Nieuwkerk 2005: 139). 350 chapter six

For instance, when you meet someone and greet him “Salam aleikum” and he answers “Aleikum salam”, the two get a hundred hasanat. Th e one who was fi rst with his greeting gets ninety-nine, and the one that answers gets one hasanat, right. Th is encourages people to greet each other more oft en, and I think that is excellent. But I don’t think God has this big computer calculating all the hasanat you gained during your life in order to judge you. Christine: So you don’t take it that literally? Ibrahim: Not at all. But I do see the point of such sayings as the one above. It is an illustration of how important it is to greet each other properly, I believe. But I know people who take this very literally, so I don’t usually mention the way I see it to them – they might be provoked. Th e way I see it … one thing that I’m absolutely sure of is that God is just, no matter what. Some people think in the following way: ‘Oh, I heard a hadith that says that if you do this or that you’re guaranteed going to heaven’. I think those people have misunderstood the religion completely. Because you cannot expect that, for instance, Hitler, if he suddenly did the same thing, he would suddenly be forgiven everything he did. No, I don’t believe that. Th ere are many hadiths and maybe some ayas in the Koran that I do believe in but that I assess as an illustration of the kinds of punishment and recompense that we might expect. God’s mercy is immense; He is more merciful than anyone else. It is easy to be granted forgiveness. An issue that I am very careful about, however, is my relationship to other people, because that is very important in Islam. God has said that I can forgive you almost anything you do, but I cannot forgive the tiniest little thing that you did to others. If you steal money from someone, it is he who will have to forgive you, not God. God cannot forgive you for something you did to others. So that’s the problem. Although the consequences are primarily in the ‘aft erlife’, the idea of a judgement based on hasanat also informs the contemporary social situation in that the recording of good and evil deeds means that injustice will not remain unpunished. Such matters of injustice were oft en related directly to ongoing or recent historical examples of, for example, war, confl ict and poverty. Just as Ibrahim is confi dent that Hitler will be judged, Rasheed sees God’s justness and judgement as an assurance that those who are responsible for the terrible injustices in the world today will not simply slip by unnoticed and go unpunished:

And then I think about all the injustice in the world today, for instance towards the Muslims, towards the Palestinians. And no one is really becoming muslim: working on the self 351

protesting, for instance, what happened in Jenin,47 I fi nd that extremely unjust. But then I think: “Okay, at least it is recorded and on judgement day it will become known”. So then I think that it is important that these people are seen. Th e Islamic framework in which life is a ‘test’ from God that forms the basis of a future judgement is also important in conferring meaning on individual life situations here and now. Nabil, for instance, here interprets his current situation of unemployment in the frame of an Islamic discourse about reward and punishment being a ‘test’ coming from God: My relationship to God is of the kind that when I do something wrong, I become frightened. Not frightened in that sense… Lately, aft er I lost my job, I’ve been thinking that the harder the test is the kinder God will be later on. On Judgement Day, the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) will stand among the poor because they had a hard life and a hard test, or the Palestinians or the Kashmiris. I have also been thinking about what I did wrong in my life and about whether God is punishing me now because deep down I’m a good person and by giving me lousy fi nances, for instance, he is punishing me so that I can be forgiven later on. I have been thinking about three things that I want to ask people forgiveness for. I’ve been thinking about it for a year, but I haven’t done anything yet – I’m not enough of a man, you know. Sometimes I think that if only I ask these people for forgiveness I will get a job the very next day. Because there are things that I know I did wrong. It’s really just those little stupid things, and it would be enough to say: ‘Hey, I’m sorry I treated you that way’. So in a way I think that I am being held responsible for my acts now. Th e notion of ajar (reward) is also central to Nabil’s account: I’m very conscious about the issue of reward. Oft en I get a bad conscience when I do something I know is wrong, or that I could have done better. For instance, the other day there was a collection of food and clothes for Afghanistan, and I gave them all my oldest clothes. I got a really bad conscience, why should I only give them things that I no longer use and that mean nothing to me. So I took my newest jacket and gave that. Th is was a couple of days aft er I heard this hadith about a man who got a castle in paradise in reward for giving something away. It’s almost like a service in return [laughing]. But that gives me a bad conscience as well; I’m not supposed to be doing it because I want a castle in return, right…

47 Rasheed refers to Israel’s military action in the occupied Palestinian territories in 2002 during the so called Operation Defensive Shield which had taken place immediately before my interview with him. 352 chapter six

Like Abid, Nabil focuses on the ‘bad conscience’ that failure to live up to what he knows is right entails. Like Ibrahim, he focuses in particular on ethics pertaining to social relationships, to how he relates to people around him. To Nabil the thought of reward and the fear of punishment, along with a ‘bad conscience’ for knowing what is right but failing to do it, are all part of the framework within which he understands and scrutinizes his own life. His struggle to fi nd a job is made meaningful by linking it to his previous failures to live as a good Muslim and to the idea of life as a ‘trial’ where God will stand among those who had ‘a hard test’. At the same time Nabil scrutinizes his intentions and refl ects ambivalence in his understanding of ‘reward’ as a pure or impure intention for action. Just as we saw Noor state earlier that ‘Islamically correct’ should not mean behaving as a good Muslim because one wants praise from others, Nabil sees ‘wanting a castle’ as a problematic motivation. Alesha is even more critical in this respect, arguing that Muslims should be motivated by the fact that “God wants us to do the right thing, to be good human beings, not because we want to go to Heaven”. Th e thought of submitting to Allah as a means of achieving Paradise for oneself seems to her basically the same as “what you do with children when you tell them: you do this and you’ll get this” and, to her, attests to a religious immaturity in which Islam has not really “touched one’s heart”. To Alesha and many of the young Muslims I worked with, religious maturity was thus achieved when good deeds were performed not because religious reward functioned as a ‘carrot’ or when accounts of punishment were used to scare people (in the way they said that some parents tended to do), but when people willingly submitted to Allah in order to be good human beings. In this view, a virtuous person is motivated to follow Islamic proscriptions and prescriptions because they know it is the right thing to do rather than because of some externally imposed sanction for failing to follow the rule. Th is view of good deeds resonates importantly with the centrality of ‘choice’ in the young Muslims’ narratives of return to Islam and their contention that forcing someone to act against their own will had the counter-eff ect of producing rebellion (on the part of the young Muslims) against their parents and religious authority rather than virtuous behaviour and ethical responsibility. It is also interesting to note how ideas about earning merit through good deeds are sometimes made relative to particular socio-historical contexts where it is (or was) more or less diffi cult to live as a good Muslim. Abid, previously quoted above, was concerned with the becoming muslim: working on the self 353

‘religious consequences’ of his acts, in particular with respect to going out to discotheques and dating. However, he found comfort in his understanding that his struggle to stay on ‘the straight path’, as a Muslim in a non-Muslim country, was harder than for someone living in a Muslim country. Because of this understanding, Abid was confi dent that staying on the straight path must give more ‘reward’ in Norway, where there were countless temptations that could lead one astray.48 In a discussion we had on the topic he told me that: I’ve heard that God shows a good deal of understanding for us who grow up here. It is less strict for us. But we shouldn’t misuse this, and I feel that’s what I do sometimes. You think you’re so smart, and you don’t really consider that God sees you. And then you think that he shows understanding again and again. Th e relationship between norms, acts and religious consequences was thus made dependent on the particularity of the social context in which he and other young Muslims found themselves. However, like other young Muslims, Abid was concerned that this might become an excuse for young people who wanted to make life easier on themselves, eventually leading them to forget God’s gaze and to rely on ‘making up’ for wrongdoings by asking forgiveness (tawba) rather than by striving to do good in their everyday lives. Abid here implicitly invoked the well-known hadith of Gabriel (Sahih Al-Bukhari vol. 1, bk. 2, no. 47) where it is reported that to the question, “What is ihsan?” Mohammed answered that, “It means that you should worship Allah (SWT) as though you see Him, for He sees you though you do not see Him”. Abid thus acknowledged the importance of reminding himself that God saw him, an attitude that was integral to ihsan and thus to pious practice. Th e importance of remembering that God sees you was also oft en conveyed in the form of short pedagogical stories that were told to children. In one such story that I heard several times, for instance, a young boy is given some sweets by his father and told to eat them somewhere where no one can see him. Th e boy hides in a cupboard and eats his sweets. When questioned by his father as to whether he has managed to eat the sweets without being seen the boy replies in the affi rmative but is corrected by his father who reminds him that Allah always sees

48 Similar arguments about increased merit because of the diffi culties of practice in a non-Muslim environment have been recorded among Muslims elsewhere (Metcalf 1996a). 354 chapter six you though you do not see Him. Such pedagogical stories conveyed the importance of learning to fear God in order to act as a pious Muslim. Th e general religious notion of earning merit by good deeds performed in this life for rewards in the hereaft er was an important motivational device for the young Muslims I worked with. Th is framework provided a means through which young Muslims were called upon, and through which young Muslims summoned themselves and others, to act in particular ways and thus to recognize their ethical obligation to realize their lives in a particular manner. Although young Muslims understood and used the concept of religious merit in diff erent ways, a common theme among them was a critique of religious reward as a means of realizing one’s own personal interest to achieve Paradise. As a result of this, emphasis was instead put on religious reward as an ethical injunction to do good because good deeds are good in themselves, both for the individual and for society. Th e tendency to understand ajar /sawab in a less concrete and literal sense, as a general ethical injunction rather than as an accounting system, reinforced this criticism and simultaneously drew attention towards individual salvation in the hereaft er and towards an ethical commitment in this world. Good deeds were thus important for the sake of earning religious reward in the hereaft er and as a vehicle for striving to become a better person in the here and now, as well as for realizing a good and just society. Th ere are two broader points to be made here. One is that there was a multiplicity of motivations, desires and goals involved in young Muslims’ religious practices. Th is included such things as ‘love for God’, ‘fear of God’, the desire for religious rewards, fear of punishment, expectations and pressure from signifi cant others, concern with being praised by others, hopes to realize a truly Islamic society, the wish to be ‘oneself’ and the wish to counter anti-Muslim racism and discrimination. Th ese motivations, desires and goals were constituted at the intersection of complex and partly overlapping discourses which, in eff orts to act as a pious Muslims, were brought together, thereby opening up a fi eld of potential inconsistencies and existential dilemmas that had to be dealt with. Th e eff orts to become a ‘good Muslim’ meant that these motivations were scrutinized from the point of view of what was considered ‘virtuous’ in Islamic practice, for example that one’s religious acts and one’s moral discernments should be motivated by ‘fear of God’ and ‘love for God’, rather than by a concern with personal interest. Th e second point to be made relates to how young Muslims were thus becoming muslim: working on the self 355

summoned to constitute themselves in accordance with Islam and how the Islamic discourses that summoned them off ered certain models: for setting up and developing relationships with the self, for self- knowledge, self-examination, for the decipherment of the self by oneself, for the transformations that one seeks to accomplish with oneself as object. (Foucault 1990 cited in Mahmood 2005: 28)

Beyond orthodoxy Th e return to Islam, as work on the self, is a diversifi ed process which may over time intensify, decrease, transform or be replaced by other narratives and techniques of the self with other concerns, motivations and moralities. Just as the ‘return to Islam’ may be experienced as a signifi cant rupture or personal transformation, moving on to other understandings of what Islam is and a Muslim should be may be similarly experienced. Looking back on their earlier ‘return to Islam’ some speak of this as ‘a fundamentalist period’ in which they were ‘obsessed with religion’. Sarah, for instance, spoke about her ‘fundamentalist period’ as something having prevented her from being open to other points of view and having limited her horizon of experience. She had recently come to stress the ‘inner’ and ‘spiritual’ aspects of Islam as more important than conforming to prescribed rules and regulations about the correct form and purpose of given practices. Th e individual relationship to God, spirituality as well as critical refl ection, here gains predominance over the need to ‘submit’ to particular rules and regulations that are authorized as Islamic within the discursive tradition of Islam. Rather than inscribing herself in a lineage of believers, a global Muslim community, Sarah’s approach reached beyond the boundaries of ‘religions’ as separate and institutionalized systems of beliefs and into the domain of ‘religiosity’ as a spiritual approach to life. Instead of seeking out absolute truths about Islam, she had come to embrace a more relativist position in which “no one can say about their truth that it is the fi nal one” and in which “there is a unity between Islam and other spiritualities at the metaphysical level”. Th e claim that no one can posit their truth as the fi nal one is an implicit challenge to the authorizing powers of established religious communities, scholars and others who claim to speak with authority about the truth according to Islam. Sarah stressed the duty of each individual to think and reason for him or herself in matters of religion and was fundamentally sceptical of the power the religious establishment had to defi ne what exactly the correct 356 chapter six

Islam was. Having read a great deal of social science literature on the issue of young Muslims, she interpreted her own relationship to Islam in terms of the ‘deliberative’ approach discussed in Chapter One and Chapter Five. Access to religious knowledge and the media allowed her to do ijtihad herself instead of relying on other authorities, she explained to me; she saw this as a positive trend that was represented by herself and a few other young Muslims. We have already seen how Sarah’s religious trajectory involved her taking off the hijab, as she came to see this as a convention that was no longer an adequate manifestation of who she really was and what she interpreted to be the ‘essential’ and fundamental truth of Islam and other spiritualities. Sarah’s view that the diff erent religions are essentially one at a metaphysical level was also manifested in practice when she married a Christian man who was, she stressed, “also a Muslim at the spiritual level”. In so doing, she married counter not only to what is commonly understood to be a fundamental proscription in Islam (women can only marry Muslim men), but also in defi ance of major parts of the Turkish and Muslim communities. Th rough her marriage Sarah transcended what Cesari (1994: 58) refers to as one of the “principle limits” (endogamy and circumcision) of an individualized Islam where the believer decides for herself which elements of Islam she considers to be binding or not. It should be noted here, however, that Sarah nevertheless perceived of her marriage as endogamous on some level because of the fundamental unity between Islam and other spiritualities at the ‘metaphysical level’. Th is idea of a spiritual unity between diff erent religious traditions was also expressed by the way in which she conceived of her marriage as the embodiment of a dialogue project that could “show the world that as long as people respect each other as individuals, inter-faith marriages are feasible”. Sarah’s religious trajectory may be seen as exemplifying a reformulation of the ‘return to Islam’ which relies on a distinction between the letter and the spirit of the law (an approach we saw embraced by Rasheed in his understanding of gender equity in Islam in Chapter Five). By putting the emphasis on Islam as a source of individual ethics and moral values Sarah increasingly came to see ‘practising Muslims’ and organizations such as the NMU and the MSS as too ‘strict’ and as too occupied with ritualism rather than with ‘emotion’ and ‘ethics’. Opting out of the discursive domain of the NMU and the MSS, she turned to Islamic preachers who brought to the fore feelings and ethics over law and increasingly took it upon herself to pursue an individual becoming muslim: working on the self 357 search for a refl exively based and critical Islamic knowledge and truth(s). Sarah’s move from paying attention to what Islam says about how to behave in diff erent contexts to a concern with the spiritual unity of Islam and other spiritual traditions pushes the individualizing trend one step further. Here, the boundaries of the Muslim community (umma) are no longer fundamental, as ethics come to be centred on the self rather than on a community of believers. Sarah’s relationship to the Koran and the Islamic tradition in many ways resembles what Fadil terms a ‘non-orthodox’ Muslim subject position. Arguing that including non-orthodox Muslim voices gives us a fuller grasp of the dynamic character of the Islamic discursive tradition, Fadil (2008: 172) identifi es as non-orthodox: voices which articulate a diff erent understanding of the Muslim sources and maintain diff erent standards in the delineation of what counts as correct Islamic knowledge. Th ese standards, Fadil suggests, refl ect the prevalence of liberal-secular epistemological premises. While the groups I have focused on in this book mainly fall into the category that Fadil terms ‘orthodox’, we have seen that diff erent understandings of Muslim sources and standards of what counts as correct Islamic knowledge also cut across the debates of the young Muslims I worked with and that, while orthodox readings continue to dominate in the Islamic discourses that prevail in the youth and student organizations, there is a continuous contest over orthodoxy. While I have discussed the importance of liberal-secular infl uences on how young Muslims relate to themselves as religious subjects of a particular kind, I have not investigated heterodox positions on their own terms, something which deserves attention in future studies.

Th e self and religious practice in young Muslims’ ‘return to Islam’ Th is chapter has sought to bring out the multiple ways in which young Muslims sought to reconstruct their own knowledges, desires, motivations and ethical disposition in accordance with models of Islamic moral personhood by adopting a number of ‘technologies of the self’. Th e majority of young Muslims I worked with stressed the importance of trying to ‘work on themselves’ in order to become ‘good Muslims’. To the extent that their own way of life was not in accordance with what they considered to be the standards for being a good Muslim, whether in terms of ritual practice or in terms of personal faith and ethics, they saw this as a ‘lack’ and strove towards realizing Islam more fully in their 358 chapter six everyday lives. On the other hand, they also stressed the importance of choosing individually whether and to what extent they practised Islam. Practice that was socially enforced, simply habitual or inherited was seen as ‘inauthentic’. Th e analysis has related this apparent duality in the way young Muslims speak of their relationship to Islam as pointing to the articulation between diff erent conceptions of the self and modes of subjectivation. On the one hand, the self is understood according to an ethics of autonomy and of authenticity (Taylor 1992) that centres on an ‘authentic self’ – the ‘who I am and as I am’. According to this ethics, religious practices are conceptualized as individual choices that should express this ‘authentic self’. To follow the path of Islam demands an individual choice: obedience to religious prescriptions and proscriptions must be preceded by individual refl ection in order to be truly religious. Here, religious practice is conceptualized as ‘expressing’ inner states of, for example, faith, conviction and love for God, as well as symbolizing identity. On the other hand, the self is understood in terms of an Islamic ontology where one must strive to ‘work on the self’ in order to become a good Muslim. Here, religious practices become a means of forging a self through submitting to particular norms and reconstructing desires, motivations and ethical dispositions in accordance with normative models of Islamic moral personhood and piety. Being Muslim is conceived of in terms of an ideal model that this individual self should conform to in order to be realized as a true Muslim. It should be noted that this latter understanding of the self is, just like the ethics of autonomy and of authenticity, profoundly individualizing in that the Islamic discourses address individuals and call upon them to eff ectuate a work on the self (e.g. disciplining desires, working on one’s intentions, doing individual dawa in one’s daily conduct). Th is understanding of what it means to be a Muslim simultaneously compels the individual subject to establish a correspondence between inner and outer aspects of faith and to engage in religious practices as a means for disciplining and transforming him/herself according to a model of Islamic moral personhood and piety. Th is duality is at the basis of the stresses and priorities (rather than the theological innovations) that were detected in the young Muslims’ understanding of what it meant to be a pious Muslim: the focus on consciousness, meaning, faith and conscience, the conceptualization of religious community as individual adherence, the stress on the correspondence between inner and outer aspects of faith and the concern with a continual disciplining of, and work on, the self. We could thus relate this apparent duality to the becoming muslim: working on the self 359

existence of several, internally heterogeneous, ‘modes of subjectivation’ according to which subjects are governed and govern themselves. In the next chapter, I off er a more thorough discussion of the liberal- secular regime of the self that has come to dominate in contemporary Norway, which has come to be perceived as both ‘natural’ and ‘good’ and to form the basis for analysis and critique of ‘other’ modes of subjectivation (as exemplifi ed by the article by Lien discussed above). Th is chapter has already touched upon how this regime of the self (which, as Foucault (1984b) argued, compels people to face the task of governing themselves) and how this ideal of autonomy is refracted and negotiated through religious practice. “Th e individual is now encouraged – in morality as well as in law – to govern himself or herself, as befi ts the citizen of a secular, liberal society” (Asad 2003: 226). I do not mean to indicate by this that modernity introduces the ‘individual’ or a subjective interiority into Islam, in the sense of phenomena that were previously absent. Rather, in line with Asad’s suggestion (Asad 2003: 225), I have wanted to highlight how the modern conception of individual authenticity and autonomy brings “a new kind of subjectivity, one that is appropriate to ethical self-determination and aesthetic self-invention (linked to a personally chosen life style)” into the fi eld of religious identity and practice and how this model of the self interacts with varied understandings of interiority /exteriority, ethics, discipline and self-perfection in the Islamic discursive tradition. Although enabled and shaped by modern power, then, ‘the return to Islam’ as a work on the self is not reducible to this. Th e concern with ‘choice’, ‘self-determination’ and ‘personal authenticity’ diff ers from the concern with autonomy as conceived in parts of the Western liberal tradition in that it forms the basis for individual conformity to a divine model of moral conduct where, however, the authority of that model is dependent on ‘internal conviction’ and ‘choice’. It allows for a break with and critique of specifi c traditions (branded cultural rather than Islamic), but simultaneously reproduces important virtues and practices that are central not only to the task of producing oneself but also to that of producing a good and virtuous society.

CHAPTER SEVEN

TRADITION, AUTHENTICITY AND AUTONOMY

Th e aim of this chapter is to identify and examine some analytical and theoretical questions arising from the eff orts to make sense of young Muslims’ religious identities and practices. Th ese have to do with what was identifi ed in the Introduction as a temporal dimension, related to continuities and discontinuities over time, and a spatial dimension, related to social, cultural and religious diversity. Th e fi rst question addressed is whether the religious engagement of young Muslim activists in Europe, who claim an individual adherence to ‘authentic Islam’ and criticize the ‘traditional Islam’ of their parents, is best seen as an ‘invention of tradition’. Th e understanding that the ‘quest for authenticity’ involves asserting the legitimacy of certain practices, and that the past is used as a reservoir of symbols, idioms and languages to authorize particular contemporary projects, is in many ways compatible with the analysis I have suggested. Nonetheless, I still fi nd that there are several problems with framing our analysis of young Muslims’ quest for authenticity as an ‘invention of tradition’. I am concerned not so much with establishing whether young Muslims’ religious identities and practices are ‘modern’ or ‘traditional’ as with how the tradition versus modernity distinction and the dichotomies mapped on to it ‘work’ in identity politics, in arguments about value and worth and in debates about the ‘individualization’ of the Islamic tradition and about young Muslims’ (and, in particular, women’s) agency. In the second part of this chapter, then, I address diff erent ways of conceptualizing ‘individualization’ as a disembedding of autonomous individuals from the structuring constraints of traditions, forms of sociality and authorities and as a mode of subjectivation which produces a particular kind of (post)modern individualized subject.

Authenticity, tradition and modernity

Intervening in the hijab debates discussed in Chapter Four, the Norwegian Iraqi writer Walid al-Kubaisi argued that “Th e true story of the veil and the scarf in Islam” (Aft enposten 03.02.2004) was that the 362 chapter seven hijab that Muslims in Europe demonstrated to defend was a “political uniform for the militant Islamist movement, invented in our times, and in contrast with traditional clothing for women in Muslim cultures”. He argued that the modern hijab erases all ethnic and national diff erences, accentuating only the political identity related to Islamism, an identity that should not be allowed expression in public spaces since, in his view, “political Islam” produces “intolerance, hatred, terror, disinte- gration and violence”. Al-Kubaisi used the argument that Islamist claims to tradition are in fact ‘new inventions’ to oppose the claims of those who saw a ban on the hijab as a ‘misrecognition’ of Muslim cultural and religious traditions and as in contradiction with the principle of religious freedom. Walid al-Kubaisi’s intervention raises issues about the ‘invention of tradition’, a subject that has been extensively explored in recent years, notably by Hobsbawm and Ranger (1983).1 In their infl uential book they argued that many ‘traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are oft en quite recent in origin and sometimes invented in order to serve particular ideological ends. Invented traditions are “responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983: 2). In line with the ‘invention of tradition’ thesis, claims to authenticity have been analysed as a particular modern mode of asserting the legitimacy of certain practices in which the past is used as a reservoir of symbols, idioms and languages to authorize particular (these usually understood as self-interested) political and ideological projects. According to Hobsbawm and Ranger, we should expect the invention of tradition to occur more frequently when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys older social patterns or produces new ones. Th is perspective has, as Lindholm notes, been taken on by many anthropologists in response to the misuse of romantic ethnography by, among others, racists and nationalists. As a result: Scavenging for the vestiges of a vanishing authenticity has now generally been replaced by the anthropologist’s assumption of a more loft y position,

1 Hobsbawm and Ranger defi ne ‘invented tradition’ as: “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past” (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983: 1). tradition, authenticity and autonomy 363

fl oating above local claims for transcendence or truth, demonstrating again and again that these claims actually are political and ideological representations supplied by self-interested parties pursuing domination. In this disenchanted picture of culture as a delusion, it is assumed that the struggle for power prevails over every other motivation. Any claim to authenticity is assumed to be, at best, a ‘misrecognition’ of what is in reality an unwarranted assertion of hegemony. Culture is no longer the seat of a transcendent sacred order, but is contested, construed and contradictory – a never-ending battleground for superiority among competitors who use the notion of the holy as a ploy. (Lindholm 2002: 335) As Cliff ord (2000) notes, Hobsbawm and Ranger’s distinction between ‘custom’ which was authentically lived and ‘tradition’ which, under modernizing pressures, was (non-authentically) invented quickly came under pressure. Kapferer pointed out that, Th e word invention explicitly carries the notion that some traditions are created and others are not. Ultimately, I cannot conceive of a tradition or mode of cultural action that is not invented. (Kapferer 1988: 210) Handler and Linnekin (1984) made a similar point when they argued that the debate over which traditions were to be counted as genuine and which spurious was based on a naturalist paradigm that assumed boundedness and essence. Kapferer (1988) points out two further important implications of the ‘invention of tradition’ argument. Firstly, there is the assumption that if a tradition is invented or constructed it is less real and less potent than those that are not. Th is assumption seems to underlie frequent shift s in analysis away from the tradition as such towards something that underlies it and is separate from it. Th e possibility that “the powerful as well as the weak may be internal to the culture of ideology” is, thus, overlooked (Kapferer 1988: 211). Th is brings us to Kapferer’s (1988: 211) second point, that no tradition is constructed, or invented, and discontinuous with history. Th ings may take on new form or achieve original meaning, he argues, but many of the things that human beings fashion contain aspects of the world from which they spring or to which they refer. Th e invention of tradition is, therefore, rarely arbitrary. Invented traditions are powerful precisely because they relate to practices and meanings that are integral to daily practices and to the constitution of the person. An important critique has, of course, also had to do with the consequences of the ‘invention of tradition’ approach in the fi eld of politics. Th e claim that ‘traditions’ 364 chapter seven are fi ctions of the present has in many instances been used to dismiss legal and moral claims from subaltern groups. Arguments that draw on the ‘invention of tradition’ approach have been picked up by many who work on ‘Islamism’ and ‘fundamentalism’. Al-Azmeh, for instance, asserts (with reference to Hobsbawm and Ranger) that “Th e ‘return’ to Islam is in fact to a place newly created” (2003: 35). Th e authenticity claimed in this ‘return’ “is highly inauthentic”, Al-Azmeh argues, and “in countries of the south we witness the wholesale invention of vestimentary, ethical and intellectual traditions amongst Islamist ideologues” (Al-Azmeh 1996: 32). Al-Azmeh further argues that the very notion of authenticity upon which such inventions rest is drawn from European reactionary thought and German roman- ticism that now form a ‘universal repertoire’ through which political claims are made. On a more positive note, Hardt and Negri (2000: 149) assert that “the fundamentalist ‘return to tradition’ is really a new invention”. Th ey argue that Islamic fundamentalism is a reaction to the present social order (a political refusal of the powers that are emerging in the new imperial order that they call ‘Empire’) and, thus, – unlike Al-Azmeh – focus on the ‘resistance’ involved in the fundamentalist invention of tradition. In light of Kapferer’s critique, we could argue that in Al-Azmeh’s claims that the vestimentary and ethical and intellectual traditions of Islamist ideologues are ‘highly inauthentic’ there appears to be an assumption that there are in fact some traditions that are ‘authentic’ and ‘genuine’ as opposed to the ‘inauthentic’ and ‘spurious’ practices of the Islamists. Th ese latter are, rather, presented as ‘instruments’ that, according to Al-Azmeh, Islamist ideologues use in a political struggle. In Al-Azmeh’s account, the ‘invention of tradition’ perspective thus appears to be more of a means of refuting and countering Islamist claims to authenticity than of understanding the importance and meaningfulness of those practices that some Muslims claim to be authentic and Islamically correct. Al-Kubaisi’s argument is in many ways similar to Al-Azmeh’s, although his language is more explicitly polemical. Arguing that the hijab is ‘an invention of our times’, he ignores the fact that although the hijab in terms of its current designs and uses may be a contemporary phenomenon, the importance given to the hijab occurs against the background of a living tradition of women’s modesty that cuts across the distinction between the ‘invented hijab’ and the ‘traditional clothing for women’ that he talks about (cf. Werbner 2007). Furthermore, Al-Kubaisi shift s the attention from the tradition, authenticity and autonomy 365 practices and subjectivities of hijabi women towards an argument about the political ideologies he sees as underlying these. As the analysis in this book has shown, the use of the hijab cannot be reduced to a symbol of ‘political Islam’ (in the way that Al-Kubaisi does), nor can its underlying meaning be reduced to the wish to ‘spread Islamist political ideology in the world’ (cf. Th orbjørnsrud 2004). While the interventions discussed above are concerned primarily with a critique of ‘Islamism’, the ‘invention of tradition’ thesis has tended to appear in a quite diff erent guise within studies of Muslim youth in Europe (see, for instance Amiraux 2000, Cesari 2000).2 Here, focus on the ‘reinvention of tradition’ seems to be less concerned with assessing the historical legitimacy of what young Muslims claim to be ‘authentic’ Islamic traditions than with placing young Muslims within ‘modernity’, theorizing a generational gap between the religious identities and practices of the young and of the parental generation and emphasizing the plural and changing character of Muslim forms of organization and social life in the context of secularized Western societies (cf. Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003). Due to the diffi culties of transmitting Islamic traditions in the migrant context, and the incor- poration of young Muslims into European secular modernity, they must ‘invent’, rather than inhabit in an unrefl exive manner, such traditions. Th e ‘reinvention of tradition’ sometimes retains its instrumental- ist associations in that claims to authenticity appear as a ‘strategy’ employed by young Muslims in order to individualize themselves out from the ‘ethnic communities’ or to oppose the values associated with them. As Amir-Moazami and Salvatore argue, perspectives that focus on ‘individualization’ and the ‘reinvention of tradition’ mostly substi- tute or oppose notions of tradition to concepts of modernity, emphasizing ‘how modern’ Muslims in Europe have indeed become. In this respect Amir-Moazami and Salvatore, in drawing upon Asad and MacIntyre, suggest an approach that is closer to the one I, myself, have wanted to adopt, namely that of instead focusing on: the inherent dynamic characters of living traditions, which cannot just be transplanted from one place to another without undergoing changes and creating and modifying fi elds of social power. (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003: 54)

2 Th e presentation here is necessarily sketchy and generalizing as I do not attempt to review the literature but to make a general point regarding how the concepts of tradition and modernity function in contemporary debates about Islam. 366 chapter seven

Th e discourse of authenticity and the reform of tradition in modernity

Now, let me go back over some of the arguments I have made in the book in light of the above debates. I have argued that young Muslims eff orts to distinguish ethnic from religious identities and cultural from religious traditions create a ‘space’ from where they may challenge imposed identities and norms. Th e need to recover a more authentic and correct Islamic practice was oft en put forward as a criticism of ‘cultural practices’ of the parental generation that the young associated with ‘oppression’ and ‘backwardness’. In this respect, the reference to an Islamic authenticity may be seen as a way of contesting and negotiating the norms and practices of the parental generation and the ‘ethnic communities’ they identify with. As we have seen, such contestation is particularly important in the fi eld of gender relations, where both women and men use Islam as a resource for contesting the restrictive gender models they see as dominant in their communities. In this respect it can be argued that the reference to ‘authenticity’ and ‘correctness’ can create new spaces of, and opportunities for, individual contestation and a distancing from ethnicity-based religious communities. Such an approach, that I have elsewhere referred to as young Muslims ‘quest for authenticity’ (Jacobsen 2005), may further be understood in terms of the space it off ers for challenging dominant representations of Islam and Muslims in public discourse. It appears as a creative way of handling the ambivalences that result from the hegemonic discursive structuration of diff erence as a relationship between Us (the Norwegians, Westerners) and Th em (the foreigners, immigrants, Muslims). As I have argued, the ‘quest for authenticity’ is importantly energized by, and functions as a resource within, the politics of identity of young Muslims in groups like the NMU and the MSS. Clearly diff erentiating ‘religion’ from ‘culture’ and ‘ethnicity’ is an aspect of young Muslims’ identity politics vis-à-vis the majority society, both in terms of deconstructing imposed categorical identities and constructing new ones for which they seek recognition. It is a point from which the ascription of ‘cultural Otherness’ is contested and from where a new Norwegian Muslim identity is forged and promoted. However, the reference to a more authentic and correct Islamic practice also implies that the debates and contestations that young Muslims engage in represent a mode of engagement with a discursive fi eld of statements and practices which, as Asad (1986: 14) suggests, “link practitioners across the temporal modalities of past, present tradition, authenticity and autonomy 367 and the future”. Conceptualizing Islam as a discursive tradition in Asad’s sense avoids some of the problematic assumptions of the ‘invention of tradition’ approach that have been discussed. It provides an analytical focus for raising questions apart from whether the practices that young Muslims deem to be ‘authentic’ are spurious or genuine. It further avoids the assumption of positing voluntarist subjects who relate to Islam uniquely as a matter of choice and empowerment. While eff orts to recover Islam in its ‘authentic’ form may partly be understood in terms of a politics of identity and in terms of gendered, generational and ethnicized power struggles, these eff orts should also be analysed with reference to a motivational ground that is explicitly religious. For instance, the hijab is, as I have shown, not only central to identity politics (as al-Kubaisi assumes) but also a technique for constituting oneself as a pious subject. As a practice, the hijab is embedded in micro-practices of interpersonal pedagogy as well as in historically sedimented discourses that link practitioners across the temporal modalities of past, present and future (cf. Asad 1986; Mahmood 2005). Furthermore, hijab as a practice is not outside of social and cultural processes, refl ecting as it does both continuities and important changes in the conditions for the production of Islamic discourses (such as individualization, secularization, and globalization) and in the constitution of persons that go along with such changes. Young Muslims’ reference to Islamic authenticity establishes a relationship to the past and the future through a present. Th is way of relating is continuous with an Islamic discursive tradition in the sense that there are certain limits to what is ‘sayable’, ‘doable’ and ‘recognizable’. At the same time what we have here is clearly not a continuance of an unchanging set of religious practices and meanings. In this view, the quest for authenticity is best explained not as an ‘invention of tradition’, but as particular religious interpretations and practices that are linked to and refracted through other practices, institutions and social conditions in the present (Asad 1986). Th is is a particular appropriation of the discursive tradition in which ‘authenticity’ must be regarded as an assigned meaning rather than an objective property of the phenomenon itself. Th is assigning of meaning does not imply that ‘anything goes’, however. Th e contemporary construction of Islamic authenticity relates to a history of interpretation, and is limited by rules and regularities within Islam as a discursive tradition. Furthermore, the religious interpretations and practices are linked to other practices, institutions and social conditions in the present, to, for example, the 368 chapter seven social position of young Muslims of immigrant background in Norway. Th e contemporary Islamic revival in its many forms has been variously theorized as traditionalism, re-traditionalization, modernization, an ‘alternative modernity’ (Abu-Lughod 1998; El Guindi 1981, 1999), a ‘postmodern refusal of modernity’ (Hardt and Negri 2000) and as a manifestation of, and reaction to, postmodernity (Ahmed 1992; Ahmed and Donnan 1994; Turner 1994a). Common to these perspectives is the eff ort placed on understanding the relationship of diff erent modes of ‘Islam’ to ‘modernity’. It has not been my concern in this book to argue whether the religiosities of the young Muslims in my study are traditional, modern or postmodern. Rather, I have sought to develop an approach that does not oppose ‘tradition’ and ‘modernity’ as such. As contemporary formulations of religious identities and practices, the religious activism of young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS is shaped by certain conditions and structures of modern societies. Th e religiosities of young Muslims are ‘modern’ in the sense of being conditioned by the modern nation state (i.e. by its secularism and the way in which it develops particular identity categories of insiders /outsiders with respect to citizenship and nationhood). Th ey presuppose the new kinds of social spaces that have been created by modern institutions (administrative, economic, ideological and educational), international migration and globalization. Th ey are also ‘modern’ in so far as they use all sorts of modern techniques (e.g. new communication technologies, modern scientifi c forms of knowledge) and in so far as young Muslims are subjected to particular models of the self and technologies of individualization. While young Muslims oppose (cultural) tradition in the name of Islamic authenticity, they are deeply reliant on an imagined Islamic past, as well as on the methodologies and ways of reasoning of the Islamic tradition as refracted through the structures and institutions of (post)modernity. Th e reference to ‘true Islam’ and the quest for authenticity, although inspired by complex sources of infl uence, fi nd their antecedents in the reform movements of Muslim majority societies in the colonial and postcolonial era. In both contexts the domination and intervention of other traditions stimulated the objectifi cation and reform of the Islamic tradition. Th ere is, thus, a structural similarity between these situations, as well as a direct continuity by way of the infl uence of Muslim reform movements on the Muslim populations in Europe. Th e confrontation and interaction with the non-Muslim majority has thus accelerated a process of Islamic reform, much in the tradition, authenticity and autonomy 369 same way it did in Muslim majority countries during the colonial encounter. Young Muslims’ religious identities and practices could thus be seen to indicate a continuity as much as a disruption of Muslim tradition or, more precisely, a continuity of its reform (cf. Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003).

Th e making of individualized religious subjects

Th e individualization of religion in modern societies Th e argument that young Muslims in Europe are involved in the ‘reinvention of tradition’ is oft en linked to arguments about the ‘individualization’ of contemporary European Islam. ‘Individualization’ has, of course, been one of the constitutive terms in the attempt of social theorists to theorize modernization and in the literature on Muslims in Europe the focus of young Muslims’ themselves on individual choice is oft en discussed in terms of the construction of social identity and relationships between the individual and society in modernity. Cesari, for instance, argues that in the French context there is a broad trend of individualization. Th is trend, she argues, aff ects not only what she refers to as the privatization of religion but also what she refers to as fundamentalism which “is, more oft en than not, a freely chosen identity, not something imposed by the community, tradition, or the family” (Cesari 2004: 54). Th is “triomphe de la logique individuelle” (Cesari 2000) is explained as a consequence of the inscription of Islam into a secular context, as well as of the ‘decomposition of the ethnic communities of origin’.3 Th e increase in individual autonomy is also seen as contributing to further weakening Muslim ethnic and family ties within the West (Cesari 2002). With reference to Schiff auer (1990) Al-Azmeh (1996: 7) makes a similar point, arguing that under conditions of migration to Europe religious vision and ritual observance is initially disembodied from

3 One important critique that could be voiced against those theories of individualization that relate the emergence of a ‘Muslim individual’ to the inscription of Islam in a European secular context is that these overlook the fact that parallel forms of change may well be happening in the ‘back home’ countries as well, energized by factors that may in some cases be the same as those energizing change in the immigrant situation (see, for example, Christiansen 1999). 370 chapter seven social practice. In this context, religious vision and ritual observance takes on a certain autonomy from social processes and prescribes an autonomist notion of the religious ego and a body of allied prescriptions. Roy similarly argues that the inscription of Islam in the occiden- tal context necessarily entails an individualization of practices and choices, since Islam is no longer a simple given and no longer defi nes the social relations, nationality and politics of the community.4 According to Roy (2000), four factors play a key role in the process of individualization: the crisis of the ethnic communities; the absence of religious authorities; the absence of a system of coercion (social or juridical); and the importance taken on by the concepts of choice and faith. In the following, I use Roy’s discussion of these factors as a point of departure for discussing the analyses presented in this book in a comparative perspective and in relation to arguments about the ‘individualization’ of contemporary European Islam. I argue that, while my own fi ndings importantly concur with Roy’s, his account of individualization does not suffi ciently theorize the power mechanisms in and through which processes of individualization occur or how power and government are intimately involved in the making of modern individualized subjects. Roy argues that in the immigration context ethnic communities tend to lose their language and to be decomposed and recomposed in the form of neo-ethnicities. Migration, then, casts ethnic communities into an ‘identity crisis’. Th is crisis is observable among those who identify primarily as Muslims and who dissociate themselves from their ‘cultures of origin’, instead promoting an authentic and purifi ed Islam. Th is dissociation is further made manifest in that these Muslims promote religious instead of ethnic endogamy and an orientation in terms of halal and haram directed towards the vestimentary and alimentary choices of the society they live in, rather than a continuation of practices from ‘back home’. I have shown that young Muslims in the NMU and the MSS identify in a way similar to that described by Roy and that there are similar changes in value orientations. Th ey construct trans- ethnic Muslim groups and identities, promote religious rather than ethnic endogamy, separate sharply between authentic Islam and cultural traditions and use Norwegian as their common language in

4 As Roy (2000) points out, however, an individual relationship to Islam is not a new phenomenon in itself, as all religiosity supposes some form of interiorization. tradition, authenticity and autonomy 371

religious and social activities. Similarly, they orient their religious practices in terms of what is perceived as halal and haram, rather than in terms of their parents’ religious practice. Th e young Muslims explicitly refl ect on the perceived crisis of the ethnic communities, indicating how they do not see sticking to the ethnic identities of the parental generation as being viable in the future. At the same time, however, the ‘ethnic communities’ to which young Muslims belong do not seem to be ‘actually’ decomposing in terms of ceasing to provide a nexus of social relations in which the individual is embedded and norms and habits of practice. Despite the shift towards religious endogamy at the discursive level, for instance, the great majority continue to marry someone with their own ‘back home’ country background (cf. Chapter Th ree). And despite the growth of trans-ethnic organizations based on individual adherence, young Muslims in Oslo tend to continue to be involved in religious activities based on national, ethnic or linguistic commonalities. In the Norwegian case, then, those who identify themselves primarily as Muslims and who dissociate themselves from the cultural traditions of their parents may be seen as primarily asserting independence towards the continuing importance of the ‘ethnic community’. Th is asserting of independence may in the long term entail ‘decomposition’ but is not necessarily a consequence of such decomposition. Th e observation that such communities are recomposed and that new ethnicities emerge in the context of migration is nevertheless valid for Norway as well as for France. As I have argued in this book, the construction of Muslim Otherness in the immigrant context importantly infl uences the way in which young Muslims come to perceive of themselves as primarily sharing a Muslim identity. Th e construction of a Muslim ‘We’ that transcends ethnic boundaries is thus partly energized by processes of Othering opposing broad categories of Us and Th em. Th e focus on individualization as the decomposition of the ethnic communities of origin should thus pay attention to the forms of power involved in such decomposition and the ways in which experiences of misrecognition aff ect the way in which Islam is lived, reclaimed and represented by young Muslims. Th e second aspect that Roy raises in the discussion of individualization relates to the absence of religious authorities. Th e absence of legitimate and permanent institutions of religious authorities in Western countries permits a discourse that is more autonomous, more autodi- dactic and more dispersed. According to Roy (2000: 76), a consequence 372 chapter seven of this absence of authorities is that anyone can speak, enunciate ‘the truth’ and say what Islam is. As I have argued in Chapter Five, sources of religious authority are both challenged and reproduced in the engagement of young Muslims in Oslo with the Islamic discursive tradition. Young Muslims in the MSS and the NMU increasingly put together knowledge transmitted through mass media rather than through local institutions. However, it is important to remember that mediated relations are still social. Although the increasing heterogeneity in the knowledge that is available to young Muslims allows one to ‘pick and choose’, the production, distribution, consumption and negotiation of knowledge remains embedded within social relationships and attempts are continuously made to reassert authority in one way or another. Furthermore, I have argued that it is important to recognize that although young Muslims ‘speak Islam’ and sometimes attempt to interpret the religious texts for themselves, the ability to make such reinterpretations eff ective in daily life depends on complex social structurings of relationships between, for example, generations, genders and citizens and the state. Young Muslims’ ability to ‘speak Islam’ depends not only on how the Islamic tradition is discursively regulated by religious authorities, but also on the relations of power and authority which structure the possibilities of Islamic discourse in the public sphere of European nation states. Roy’s third important point relates to the absence of juridical, social, communitarian and customary coercion. He suggests that in the context of immigration Islamic norms no longer have an exterior support whether this be in the form of a body with a directly restricting character (such as a religious police), in terms of social pressure or in terms of a social environment in which the rhythms and norms of Islam are taken for granted. Th e continuous challenges that young Muslims in Oslo are confronted with mean that they are in many ways forced to objectify Islam and to develop a refl exive approach to religion. Th is does not mean, however, that all areas are brought to the fore and questioned. Rather, there seem to be some norms and practices (for instance, those to do with marriage) that are transmitted from the parental generation that are still taken for granted to a signifi cant extent (see Bredal 2006). Roy’s argument with respect to the absence of social pressure also seems somewhat overstated when applied to the Norwegian context and, arguably, for the French case as well (see, for example, Jacobsen 1999; Khosrokhavar 1997; Lacoste-Dujardin 1992). Social control and sometimes coercion do, for instance, organize gender relations by tradition, authenticity and autonomy 373 means of rumour, marriage and the separation of gendered space. Norms related to gender, whether understood as ‘cultural’ or Islamic, are reproduced through such means, even if they are also challenged. When employed, at least in the Norwegian situation, the suggestion that Islamic norms no longer have an ‘exterior support’ under- communicates the importance of primary socialization, overestimates the rupture between the fi rst and the second generation and underestimates the importance of social pressure with respect to, for example, gender relations. Roy’s fourth point relates to the importance taken on by the concepts of choice and faith. As we have seen, the concept of choice is central to the way in which the young Muslims I worked with conceptualize their own religious careers. Normative stress is put on transforming one’s inherited Muslim identity so that this becomes a personal ‘choice’ eff ectuated by a self-determining and refl exive subject. As an individual one is responsible for choosing one’s faith and for choosing the right way of living according to that choice. Th e young Muslims repeatedly stated that they followed Islam as the result of a personal choice, this ideally having been made on rational grounds, because Islam had proven, aft er close scrutiny, to be the one true religion. Parents and others who were understood to be Muslim by tradition, just following the rules because they were told to do so, represented a traditional, and less authentic, way of being Muslim. Th e ideal way of being Muslim was thus one that realized individual freedom; Islam should be followed not out of tradition but because of an individual and free choice based on iman. Th at individuality and free choice were guaranteed by Islam was something frequently expressed by young Muslims who, to make their point, would invoke the Koranic saying: ‘Th ere is no compulsion in the religion’. Roy asserts that following the Islamic norm is increasingly perceived as a personal decision that has to be upheld by one’s will and that has to be justifi ed and rationalized. Th is is, as we have seen, highly relevant to young Muslims in Oslo although there is, nevertheless, a constant tension between choice and obedience and self-determination and submission. As we saw in Chapter Six religious practice was signifi cantly geared at working on the self so as to guarantee virtuous desire and a pious moral self. Th is work was performed by trying to achieve excellence in ritual practice and by working to interiorize the right motivations and desires in the process. In Chapter Four and Chapter Six, we saw how the ‘choice’ to wear a hijab was negotiated through a set of 374 chapter seven rules and regulations for public conduct and modesty transmitted in various social contexts. We have also seen how the individualization of religious authority is limited by a process of normativization of ‘authentic’ and ‘correct’ Islam and that the extent to which individuals should be free to form their own opinions about the religious texts is debated. Although they stressed the importance of refl ecting on and understanding the rationality of Islamic practices instead of just blindly following rules, young Muslims repeatedly talked about the ‘limits’ to what humans were capable of understanding, oft en referring to their own lack of knowledge. In such cases following the rules and regulations put forward by those who they saw as more knowledgeable than themselves (whether they were peers, parents, imams, or transnational scholars) was generally endorsed. Furthermore, while individuals to a certain extent put together Islamic knowledge and practices from a variety of sources, they simultaneously conceived Islam to have a core of unchanging rules and regulations that were non-negotiable. Th e capacity to make choices that are seen as ‘right’ and ‘good’ within this normative framework depends on knowing what these rules and regulations are, and preferably also the meanings and reasons behind them. Furthermore, while they are called upon and call upon others to critically revise these rules and regulations, young Muslims nevertheless continue to assert boundaries between what is inside and outside of Islam. From this perspective freedom is understood as freedom from oppression and for self-realization through submission to Islam rather than freedom to ‘do as you like’, a position mainly identifi ed with the West. Submitting to Islam, although conceptualized as an individual choice, thus simultaneously involves accepting external authority – the authority of ‘true Islam’. In this respect, the importance taken on by the concepts of ‘choice’ and ‘faith’ indicates an ideal of self-government rather than self-suffi ciency (cf. Asad 2003; Mahmood 2005). With respect to the four dimensions discussed above, we might conclude that migration and globalization in some important respects ‘dis- embed’ young Muslims from social structures and relationships related to ethnic communities, religious authorities and juridical, social, communitarian and customary coercion. Th e affi rmation of individual self- determination should not, however, be read as an indication that religious beliefs and practices are no longer socially embedded. Rather, this affi rmation should be understood as being embedded in social formations that are currently being reshaped to a considerable extent by modern institutions, international migration and globalization. tradition, authenticity and autonomy 375

As I have shown in my discussion of social imaginaries, the limits of such social formations cannot easily be reduced to ‘an ethnic group’ or a particular locality, as people are embedded in various socio-cultural spaces and communities through which their social relationships, identities and practices are shaped. In order for religious identities and practices to be meaningful they must at a given point be shared with others and given social confi rmation. Whereas the family and ethnic group continue importantly to provide such confi rmation for some and in some respects, we have seen that the social confi rmation of what it means to be a Muslim is sought by some youth in a diversifi ed network of sociability centred around organizations such as the NMU and the MSS but also involving larger ‘imagined communities’ such as the Islamic umma. Th e organizations emerge as important arenas of sociability where collective meaning is (re)produced and individual meaning receives social authentication. Th ese arenas are not autonomous and are signifi cantly embedded in a diversity of structuring processes. What is furthermore important is that the Islamic norms that young Muslims ‘choose’ to follow cannot be abstracted from social relations. Th e darses in the NMU and the MSS, for instance, frequently concerned the qualities of social relationships that were supposed to follow from proper Islamic conduct. Th ese included the obedience of children to their parents (as long as this did not hinder submission to God), the duty to contribute positively to society by promoting what is right and discouraging what is wrong and the duty to learn about and teach others the correct form of Islamic practices. Th ese duties were invoked as a continuity of or correction to existing social relations between, for example, individuals, parents and children, husbands and wives and majority and minority.

Th e production of self-governing individuals It is my opinion that the aspects of structural individualization discussed above are not suffi cient to understand how young Muslims come to relate to themselves as agents of ‘self-government’ and ‘refl exive choices’. In order to take this understanding one step further, I suggest we distinguish between ‘choice’ as the ethical valorization of certain features of the self (i.e. as a dimension of subjectivity) and ‘choice’ as an understanding of how people act as social persons (i.e. as a dimension of agency). Whereas the fi rst can have light shed upon it through an analysis of discourses that shape particular kinds of selves, the second 376 chapter seven must necessarily be grounded in a socio-anthropological theory of action. In other words, we need to investigate prevailing notions of individuality and subjectivity in contemporary Norwegian society and, on the other hand, how people are constituted and move within this landscape as socially embedded actors. Research focusing on ‘individualization’ as a characterizing feature of the development of Islam in Europe (and elsewhere) oft en seems to assume that such individualization allows people to realize an inherent ‘freedom’ or ‘personal authenticity’ and that this freedom is expressed in the fact that people now ‘choose’ their religious identities and practices. An alternative and more appropriate understanding of the focus on choice is, in my opinion, in line with a Foucauldian approach to subjectivity, that the ethical valorization of certain features of the person – autonomy, freedom, choice and authenticity – is better understood in terms of new rationalities of government and new technologies of the conduct of conduct (Rose 1996: 320). ‘Th e modern self’ is constituted within new forms of power and discipline based on the construction of self-regulating subjects (Foucault 1977). Th e idea of self-creating and freely choosing individuals is thus involved in ‘the making of subjects’ rather than simply being an expression of processes of individualization understood as ‘de-traditionalization’. Th is means that the ethical valorization of choice is a central aspect of the discursive processes through which human beings come to understand and act upon themselves as ‘selves’ of a certain type (Rose 1996). In order to understand how young Muslims come to understand and act upon themselves as certain kinds of selves, it is important to identify, on a general level, some aspects of the discourses of the ‘self’ that prevail in modernity and, more particularly, how such discourses are articulated in the Norwegian context. An account of the technologies that are involved in the making of individualized self-regulating subjects would take us far beyond the scope of this book and would require a diff erent form of investigation to the one that I have been applying. I will, however, briefl y elaborate on the ways in which ‘free choice’ is constructed in the Norwegian context and on how this construction locks the options of young Muslims into the modern /traditional, secular /religious and choice /force dichotomies where only those who rebel against ‘the ways of tradition’ are seen as autonomous, actively choosing and self-creating actors. Th is ‘locking into’ makes it diffi cult to perceive other means of self-realization such as the one described in Chapter Six, where submission to certain forms of tradition-based tradition, authenticity and autonomy 377 authority is a condition for the self to achieve its potentiality and where desires and the will are seen not as emanating from an autonomous individual self but as produced in practice. It is my contention that young Muslims’ ways of focusing on choice and faith in their religious practice refl ect the fact that they are increasingly coming to perceive themselves in terms of dominant notions of the self in the modern Western context and that their narratives about a ‘return to Islam’ attempt to mediate the dilemma thus created between diff erent ways of ‘relating to the self’. I do not in any way want to suggest, however, that there is only one model of the self in the modern Western context or in Norway for that matter. As Moore (1994) notes with respect to Western Europe, many alternative discourses of the person /self exist. Some of these discourses are more formalized than others and some of them are developed in explicit contra-distinction to the model that Moore (1994: 35) identifi es as dominant: the dominant model of the person/self in Western Europe could be said to be one which characterizes the individual as rational, autonomous and unitary. Th is individual is the author of their own experience and of their knowledge of the world, and their existence is enshrined in post- Enlightenment philosophy, in political theory and in legislation. Th e concept of autonomy is a complex one and tracing its genealogy and multiple determinations in the traditions and institutions that Moore mentions is beyond the scope of this book (for a discussion see, for example, Asad 2003; Lukes 1973; Rose 1996). For this reason I will only point to discursive fi elds related to independence, self- determination and self-government here. An individual is considered autonomous to the degree to which s/he subjects the pressures and norms with which s/he is confronted to conscious and critical evaluation and forms intentions and reaches practical decisions as the result of independent and rational refl ection (Lukes 1973: 55).5 As Rose (1996: 16) argues, this model of the self is bound to regimes of subjectivation where subjects are not merely ‘free to choose’ but where they are obliged to be free, to understand and enact their lives in terms of choice, this, however, under conditions that systematically limit the capacities of so many to shape their own destiny.

5 Lukes (1973) sees ‘autonomy’ as one of the basic or germinal ideas of ‘individualism’ and traces its philosophical genealogy to philosophers such as Aquinas, Luther, Spinoza and Kant. 378 chapter seven

As Borchgrevink has argued, this model, and its stress on ‘free choice’, has also come to function as a basic moral category in the European tradition of thought: Central in the European tradition is a persistent attention to the diff erence between necessity and freedom, and of choice as the fundamental moral category. Th e same tradition off ers morally esteemed justifi cations for breaking with culturally prescribed necessity. (Borchgrevink 1997: 31, my translation) Whereas this ‘modern model of the self’ grew out of the European Enlightenment, it is arguably no longer, if it ever was, restricted to European modernity. It now appears to be incorporated, negotiated and challenged in diff erent locations throughout the world as a result of the globalization of modernity (Dirlik 2003, 1999). Gullestad has, in a number of articles (1996, 2003), pointed to ‘autonomy’ as a key concept for understanding both everyday life in Norway and conceptions of Norway as a nation. With individualization, she argues, the discourse of individual rights and liberties has become hegemonic “foregrounding specifi c value concepts such as freedom, rights, choice, independence, individuality, uniqueness and achievement” (Gullestad 2003: 540). Th e idea that each person has to choose his/her own values among those available has become more accentuated since the 1960s and is especially pronounced in the new middle classes. Claiming individual autonomy to ‘be, do, and buy what you like’ is also valued as part of the process of ‘growing up’ and ‘becoming adult’ in Norway.6 As Sørhaug (1996) argues, relations between parents and youth in Norwegian society are partly confi rmed through over-communicating and legitimizing ‘breaks’ while under- communicating continuities. In everyday practices there is a continual reproduction of meaning and experiences that remains little acknowledged. Such under-communication of dependency on others is related to the value attributed to ‘individual autonomy’.7 Longva (2003: 159) has similarly suggested that autonomy is “perhaps the most critical component in the Norwegian defi nitions of the good, moral person”. While these anthropological studies seem to point clearly in the

6 But growing up can also be about taking on more responsibility within the familiy or with regard to society. 7 See Borchgrevink (1987) for a subtle account of how the idea of ‘free choice’ operates in the sphere of gendered division of labour and marriage in the Norwegian context and how it allows ‘traditional’ gender relations to be reproduced. tradition, authenticity and autonomy 379

direction of ‘individual autonomy’ as a fundamental value in Norwegian society, Holst (2002) has argued that in the political fi eld the values of ‘autonomy’ and ‘freedom’ have been primarily associated with the Conservative Party’s politics in Norway and that the lack of attention given to such values on the political Left has led immigrant women to look towards the Conservatives in their battles for gender freedom. While Holst’s objection is certainly valid to some extent, the value attached, in contemporary rationalities of government, to individual liberty, choice and freedom as the criteria by which government should be calculated and judged (Rose 1996) should not be overlooked. Th e ethics of authenticity and of autonomy are widely expressed in Norwegian White Papers and policy documents on issues on immigration and integration. In the Report to the Storting (17) 1996/97, the Norwegian Parliament, on “Immigration and the Multicultural Norway”, for instance, the primacy of the individual in relation to the group is asserted:

All, independent of their background, have the right to be assessed as individuals, not only as part of a group, culture or religious denomination. […] All children and youth, independent of their origin, must be able to create their own identity and future. (Report to the Storting (17) 1996/97: 8, my translation)

Th e citation expresses a model of self in which the individual is responsible for creating his/her own identity and future. It reiterates a common liberal critique of (cultural and religious) groups as limiting the freedom of their individual members in this respect. What this formulation occludes, of course, is how the Norwegian state and its institutions govern the identities and futures of its citizens and normalize social conduct. In Chapter Four, for instance, I argued that the migrants’ ‘diasporic’ loyalties, religious practices and links to the homeland are seen and treated as a problem and a manifestation of disloyalty to their new country of residence and that the transnational practices of migrants are therefore regulated through immigration and integration policies. I have also argued that the particular form which Norwegian integration policies take serves to establish and maintain a dichotomization between Us and Th em and that the inscription of a hegemonic set of ‘fundamental values’ serves to produce knowledge about, control and domesticate the Muslim minority. In welfare programmes and White Paper policies there has also been an emphasis on empowering women and children as individual decision 380 chapter seven makers, with the assumption that this empowerment would bring immigrant families and ethnic communities more into line with the ethos of gender equality (likestilling) found in Norwegian society. A goal has been to teach women and children ‘the right to individual freedom’, something that their patriarchal ‘culture of origin’ is presumed to have prevented them from having (cf. Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003). Th e government has run several awareness campaigns directed at immigrant women and their daughters, teaching them how they may involve the state and its diverse agents (such as schools, child welfare agencies and the courts) to support their individual rights and to protect them from their fathers or husbands and/or ethnic or religious communities. Th ose women that wore a hijab oft en experienced how state agents such as teachers and welfare workers took it upon themselves to teach them (or in some cases enforce on them) individual freedom, for instance by insisting that they should not wear the hijab if they did not wish to themselves or by demanding that they remove the hijab (in order to ‘protect their freedom’). Borchgrevink (2002a) points to something important when she argues that such reactions from teachers and welfare workers to practising Muslims, and hijabi women in particular, refl ect not just a reaction to the hijab perceived as a sign of oppression but also a secularist understanding of Muslim religiousness as something importunate and intrusive because of the way it brings ‘religion’ into the public sphere. State agents thus seem to play a non-negligible role in subjecting young Muslims to a particular model of (secularist) selfh ood based on the primacy of individual autonomy. Th e way in which the value of autonomy and free choice serves as a basis for evaluating the good moral person is evident not least in the majority discourse on Muslim minority girls and women.8 As in other Western countries, the majority discourse on Muslim girls in Norway tends to construct them as ‘victims’ of a patriarchal religious and cultural tradition by focusing on themes such as forced marriage, female circumcision, and female seclusion. As Th orbjørnsrud (2003) puts it in the title of her article, Norwegians are “Weeping for the Muslim Cinderellas”. What Muslim girls are seen to lack is precisely the possibility of autonomy, choice and self-creation. Th e Muslim identity and

8 Th is is particularly evident in the hijab debate. In a televised debate on the issue of whether the hijab should be banned in Norwegian primary schools, all the debaters seemed to share the view that ‘free choice’ was the basic moral category for evaluating whether wearing a hijab was acceptable or unacceptable. tradition, authenticity and autonomy 381 the practices of Muslim girls are seen as resulting from external pressure, conformity and the use of force – the very antithesis of the positively valued modern autonomous individual. In this discourse, however, there is also another subject position that is off ered to Muslim girls, namely that of the ‘heroic rebel’ who rebels against the power of tradition and parents. According to Gullestad, this discourse has parallels in the missionary literature where the ‘heathens’ who chose Christianity, despite being excluded by their families and local communities, were heroized (Gullestad 2001a: 35). It is evident from the treatment of Muslims, and particularly of Muslim women, who say that they choose to lead a religious life that only some choices are considered as properly free within the majority discourse on autonomy (Gressgård and Jacobsen 2003). Th e general assumption seems to be that if someone chooses to go against what is commonly conceived to be ‘freedom’, then they cannot have been suffi ciently autonomous to begin with. In other words, they are portrayed as suff ering from false consciousness as Shabana Rehman seemed to imply when she referred to Muslim women who wear hijabs as ‘cattle’ (in other words, non-autonomous creatures who cannot think or choose for themselves). As Gullestad also argues: Many Norwegians are provoked and refuse to accept that to produce oneself by adapting oneself to a religious context is a free choice. Th e modern freedom to choose thus applies only within certain confi nes and these only come clearly into view when they are transgressed. (2002: 35, my translation) Th e equation of ‘autonomy’ with some particular choices seems to rest on an essentialist vision of a ‘natural’ female subjectivity that assumes that if women were properly free they would choose to, for example, live in monogamous rather than polygamous marriages, in ‘love’ marriages rather than arranged marriages and to wear tights rather than the hijab.9 In promoting the right of individuals to ‘autonomy’ and their freedom to make individual choices the state, thus, in practice, helps to defi ne and regulate normality.

9 Sayyid (1997: 9) notes that: “It could be argued that imposing the end of the veil is not the same, in principle, as enforcing the wearing of the veil. Th e former is ‘liberating’ and, therefore, is not an exercise in control but its abandonment; the latter, conversely, is restrictive and, as such, can be considered an exercise in control. In other words, control is only exercised when it is a restriction. But why should enforced removal of the veil be considered liberating and the enforcement be considered restrictive? It is 382 chapter seven

But what happens when the hijab is in fact perceived as something that can be freely chosen by individuals? Th ere seems to be a double bind in how the hijab is inscribed into discourses about ‘free choice’. Borchgrevink (2002a) discusses the paradoxes brought out in a case where a hijabi woman was denied unemployment benefi t aft er having refused several job off ers that were made on the condition that she removed her hijab. Th e social worker argued that in so far as the woman herself had chosen to wear a hijab her unemployment was in a sense self-infl icted, this meaning that she was not entitled to benefi ts. Borchgrevink argues that, from a ‘Western’ perspective, refusing the woman unemployment benefi t could be seen as a way of treating her as a moral person with the dignity of any other choosing adult, in so far as she was made responsible for her own choices (and thus not treated as a passive oppressed non-autonomous Muslim woman). On the other hand, she argues, the welfare worker could have opted for the opposite strategy by assuming that the woman did not in fact have the possibility to choose and was, therefore, not in control of her own life. From the point of view of such an interpretation, the woman could have received her unemployment benefi t. What is interesting in this case is that the secularist logic seems to imply that either you are oppressed by some external force and not free to choose or you are properly free and can thus choose to take the hijab off . Th us no room is left for the possibility that the hijab may be a religious duty of obedience at the same time as it is a choice or that choice might be inscribed in terms other than of ‘autonomy’. Th e ethics of authenticity and autonomy that operate as structuring and guiding templates for contemporary liberal governmentality bring a new kind of subjectivity, one that is appropriate to ethical self-determination and aesthetic self-invention (linked to a personally chosen lifestyle), into the fi eld of religious identity and practice (cf. Asad 2003). As argued above, one mode of subjectivation that is central to this form of governmentality involves people being called upon to understand and enact their lives in terms of choice and to off er reasons for and refl ect upon their choices. However, the necessity to actually reason through choices seems to be more acute for those who break with the only by assuming there is a ‘natural’ female subjectivity (what Elizabeth Spelman calls an ‘essential woman’) that it is possible uncritically to equate veiling with a restriction (in other words, the ‘essential woman’ is unveiled and therefore veiling is a violation of that ‘natural’ subjectivity)”. tradition, authenticity and autonomy 383 expectations of what a reasonable choice would normally be (e.g. love marriage instead of arranged marriage). As we have seen, being capable of off ering reasons (knowing ‘why’) for religious practice is also a standard expectation that young Muslims set for themselves and each other by establishing a normative distinction between inherited and chosen Islam. Th is norm is also set for them by the surroundings (be this in the form of peers, teachers or the like) in the shape of requirements to justify their way of life and to make their own choices. To relate to oneself as the site of individual choice and of the agency to form one’s identity and forge one’s lifestyle is thus proposed, suggested and even sometimes imposed on young Muslims. Furthermore, it seems that with the imperative to ‘give reasons’ for our choices certain kinds of reasons, those that express an individual’s authenticity and autonomy, have become more acceptable than reasons involving, for instance, subjection to religious authority. As we have seen, young Muslims increasingly give reasons for religious practice that invoke the authority of modern secular science as well as that of dominant societal ideals (e.g. about what it means to be a good citizen) in addition to the ‘internal reasons’ of the Islamic tradition. As the analysis of young Muslims’ ‘return to Islam’ in Chapter Six attempted to show, young Muslims actively shape themselves as religious subjects through engagement with the Islamic discursive tradition and the models for ethical selfh ood that this off ers. But their understanding of, relations to and eff orts to work on themselves are also shaped by a liberal ethics of autonomy and authenticity. Th e way in which young Muslims construct their narratives of ‘becoming Muslim’ as an individual choice may thus be seen as a way of shaping oneself, and being recognized, according to dominant notions of the self in the modern Western context. However, in their narratives of a ‘return to Islam’ they also resist the liberal-secularist determination of self-realization as autonomy by suggesting that willing submission to certain forms of tradition-based authority is a condition for the self to achieve its potentiality and that desires and the will do not emanate solely from an autonomous individual self but are produced in practice.

Th e discourse of autonomy and the problem of agency In order to move one step further in the attempt to grasp the importance of ‘choice’ in the narratives of young Muslims, let me sketch out some of the problems that seem to result from a confl ation in public 384 chapter seven discourse, as well as in some scholarly work on Muslims in Europe, of ‘individual autonomy’ and ‘people’s capacity for agency’. Mahmood (2005: 13) suggests that liberal presuppositions about freedom and individual autonomy have become naturalized in the scholarship on gender and the way in which ‘agency’ is understood is such studies.10 Th e naturalization of such presuppositions, and its consequence for how agency and the subject are theorized is well captured by Butler: Consider that according to one view of agency, a subject is endowed with a will, a freedom, an intentionality which is then subsequently ‘expressed’ in language, in action, in the public domain. Here ‘freedom’ and ‘the will’ are treated as universal resources to which all humans qua humans have access. Th e self who is composed of such faculties or capacities is thus thwarted by relations of power which are considered external to the subject itself. And those who break through such external barriers of power are considered heroic or bearers of a universal capacity which has been subdued by oppressive circumstances. Whereas this model of agency has surely been inspiring for many subordinate people, and for women in particular, it is crucial to consider the way in which this paradigm for thinking agency has come under question in recent years. (Butler 1995: 137) Th is model of agency, and the presuppositions about freedom and individual autonomy that underpin it, seems to a large extent to have also been naturalized in the scholarship on Muslim women and youth in Europe, especially that pertaining to Muslim women’s relationship to the Islamic tradition. In the context of Muslim migration in Europe, but also in studies dealing with Muslim majority contexts, Muslim women (and youth) have oft en been constructed as passive victims of men’s (active) abuse and as people imprisoned by tradition, their ‘freedom’ and ‘will’ thus being thwarted by external relations of power. Countering the view that such relations of power deny women social agency, many studies have emerged focusing on ‘Muslim women’s choices’, these stressing that Muslim women should be seen as actors in their own lives and exploring how these women oppose and resig- nify structures of power (see, for example, Mabro and El-Solh 1994;

10 I do not mean to generate an argument about the possibility and potential value to diff erent projects, such as feminism, of a normative defi nition of agency in terms of individual autonomy and resistance, here. Th ese issues, and their consequences for the possibility of critique and ‘liberation’, have been hotly debated in feminist studies. See, for instance, Benhabib et al. 1995. tradition, authenticity and autonomy 385

Moore 1996).11 Common to many of these studies, whether based on perspectives of victimization or de-victimization, is that agency is understood as an attribute or trait inherent in individual subjects and that it is primarily circumscribed by external circumstances. In the literature on Muslim youth and women in Europe such ‘external circumstances’ are oft en connected with ‘tradition’, where people’s autonomy is circumscribed by religious traditions, ethnic groups and families. Th e argument for women’s agency has thus tended to be based on the understanding that Muslim women, as they enter modernity, are no longer, or only to a limited extent, restrained by tradition as they now ‘choose’, for example, to be Muslims, follow Islam and wear the hijab. Within such a framework, people are generally perceived to become more autonomous, thus increasing their capacities for agency, through individualization, ‘de-traditionalization’ and integration into ‘modernity’. Consider, for example, Cesari’s (2004: 54) notion that fundamentalism “is, more oft en than not, a freely chosen identity, not something imposed by the community, tradition, or the family”. Here, the community, tradition and the family seem to operate as external relations of power and when these external power relations disappear people are ‘free’ to ‘choose’ their identities and ways of life. Cesari’s way of putting it is surely eff ective in countering those who see Muslim fundamentalists as passive victims of an oppressive community, tradition or family but it is not suffi cient if we are to make sense of the agency involved in the formation of religious identities and practices. With respect to the term ‘fundamentalism’ that Cesari uses, this points precisely beyond the ability of individuals to freely choose their identities and ways of life if we consider how this category is used in contemporary political discourse to, for example, order ‘acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ forms of Islam and to police the border between religion and politics, the religious and the secular. An argument I have wanted to advance in this book is that the importance young Muslims give to ‘choice’ should be read primarily as an indication of a particular form of subjectivity and not as a sociological explanation of how young Muslims come to act as they do. Individual choices are subject to many infl uences and the high value placed on individual choices can, as argued above, in itself be seen as a result of

11 In the preface to her book on Marakwet women, Henrietta Moore writes that she “wanted to advance a theoretical position that would describe women, even in circumstances of patriarchal control, as active social agents” (Moore 1996: xvii). 386 chapter seven social infl uences and particular historical modes of subjectivation. Th is does not mean, of course, that young Muslims are not ‘agents’ in the sociological sense, only that determining agency is a lot more complicated than it is sometimes assumed to be. As I have discussed, young Muslims’ narratives of their ‘return to Islam’ are based on a particular narrative model that focuses on the transformations of an individual life course, on the individual search for knowledge and the eff orts to implement this knowledge in one’s life and on the realization of a subjective and individual relationship to Islam allowing a more ‘authentic’ Muslim identity and practice. ‘Having chosen’ is crucial to recognizing oneself and being recognized as a moral subject in terms of the fundamental values that are attached to the ‘autonomous individual’ in the contemporary Norwegian context. In a social context where Islam is dismissed as synonymous with ‘irrationality’ and said to belong in the Middle Ages, it becomes urgent for the young Muslims to show that they are neither ignorant nor old-fashioned but, on the contrary, modern, rational and self-determining individuals, capable of making their own choices. Th rough the emphasis on choice young Muslims oppose the construction of themselves as an antithesis to the dominant model of the moral person while simultaneously inhabiting and aspiring to tradition-rooted norms and categories of social and religious identity and authority. While young Muslims’ strong focus on refl exivity and choice contributes to our understanding of how people relate to themselves as selves of a particular kind (with the capacity for self-knowledge, autonomy and for making ‘free choices’) it is inadequate to account for ‘agency’ understood as a ‘capacity for action’. In this respect I agree with Asad (1993: 15) who argues that consciousness, in the everyday psychological sense of awareness, intent and the giving of meaning to experience, is inadequate to account for agency. Social actors inherit an ongoing ensemble of social practices and concepts and categories. It is, therefore, important to consider factors that form the structures of possible actions, allowing and precluding certain possibilities and choices. Th ese factors include such things as habit, education, the objective distribution of goods, the existence of specifi c institutions and relations of dominance. Asad sees agency not a metaphysical capability but as something constituted within historical regimes of power /discourse formations: tradition, authenticity and autonomy 387

‘agency’ is a complex term whose senses emerge within semantic and institutional networks that defi ne and make possible particular ways of relating to people, things and oneself. (Asad 2003: 78) Th is understanding is in line with what Foucault calls the paradox of subjectivation, indicating that the very processes and conditions that secure a subject’s subordination are also the means by which s/he becomes a self-conscious identity and agent (Foucault 1982, 1980; Mahmood 2005). As Mahmood (2005, 2001, 2003) argues, such a perspective encourages a conceptualization of agency that sees it not simply as a synonym for resistance but as a capacity for action that specifi c relations of subordination create and enable. Defi ning agency not as the capacity of autonomous individuals to ‘freely choose’ but as ‘the socio-culturally mediated capacity to act’ would enable us to better grasp the agential capacity that is entailed in, to paraphrase Mahmood (2005: 23), the variety of ways in which norms are lived and inhabited, aspired to, reached for and consummated by young Muslims in Europe. Th is book has sought to throw light on some such ways of living norms and to point to some of the consequences of making particular presuppositions about freedom, individual autonomy and agency a naturalized fundament for research on Islamic traditions and Muslim youth in Europe. Tradition-rooted categories of social and religious identity and authority are, as Amir-Moazami and Salvatore (2003) also suggest, not by default impairing social agency but are oft en its necessary condition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Abduh, Muhammed, 259 transliteration of, xi Abu-Lughod, Lila, 5, 25, 202, 296, 368 Asad, Talal, xii, 5, 7, 9, 13, 22, 24, Adhan, 24, 112, 114, 133, 141–142 25, 30–34, 37–40, 43–45, 109, 122, Afghanistan, 16, 69, 112–114, 126, 133, 173, 174, 204, 209, 217, 226, 228, 141, 244, 351 233, 246–248, 257, 282, 285, 329, Agamben, Giorgio, 217 332, 340, 341, 359, 365–367, 374, Agency, 13, 30, 45, 298, 310, 326, 332, 377, 382, 386, 387 361, 375, 383–387 Authenticity Ahlberg, Nora, 17, 47, 94, 95, 247, 249 discourse of, 6, 366–369 Ahmad, Kurshid, 54 ethics of, 46, 157, 328, 331, 344, 358, Ahmadiyya, 17, 242 379, 382, 383 Ahmed, Leila, 273 individual/personal, 199, 314, 328, Ahmed, Qazi Hussain, 211 343, 344, 359, 376, 383 Ajar, 347–349, 351, 354. See also hasanat Islamic, 204, 366, 367, 368 Akhira, 320, 327 Authority, 7, 13, 40–45, 60, 131, Akram, Athar, 214–216 151–152, 206–207, 225–227, Al-Azmeh, Aziz, 35, 36, 42, 364, 369 233, 251, 256–291 Al-Banna, Hassan, 18, 64, 243 and gender, 249–251, 270–278 Al-Ghazzali, Muhammed, 18 Autonomy Al-Jazeera, 125 discourse of, 6, 383–387 Al-Kubaisi, Walid, 161, 361, 362, 364, ethics of, 328, 358, 379, 382, 383 365, 367 Al-Qaradawi, Yusuf, 18, 64, 79, 125, 160, Badawi, Jamal, 111, 148, 242, 272 212, 213, 229, 243, 337–338 Banjoko, Adisa, 120 Alcohol, 84, 177, 213, 235, 289, 303, 306, Barelwi, 16, 65, 66, 68, 249 311, 324, 336, 337, 346 Barker, Martin, 165 Ally, Shabir, 61, 148 Barth, Fredrik, 186 AlSayyad, Nezar, 28, 29, 110 Barthian ethnicity theories, 184 Ålund, Alexandra, 27, 165–167 Baumann, Gerd, 34, 35, 157, 158, America, American, 65, 66, 93, 111, 120, 184, 217 137, 182, 197, 217, 333 Belief. See also iman and ihsan Amir-Moazami, Schirin, 4, 8–10, 99, as a criterion for membership, 73–74 180, 191, 194, 200, 226, 235, 250, 253, and knowledge, 227, 282–294 255, 365, 369, 387 belonging without believing, 18 Anderson, Benedict, 32, 108–110 privatization of, 24, 41, 73, 74, 103, Andersson, Mette, 27, 40, 59, 163, 165, 227, 374 166, 170, 176, 177, 179, 180 religion as, 24, 25, 282–283, 329 Ansar al-Islam, 17 Benhabib, Seyla, 157, 202, 208, 384 Anthias, Floya, 106 Bhabha, Homi K., 29 Anthropology of Islam, 4, 5, 25–46, 247 Bible, 19, 287, 299 Apologetic, 65, 290 Bida, 244 Appadurai, Arjun, 26, 32, 33, 174, Bjørgo, Tore, 168 203, 296 Borchgrevink, Tordis, 23, 24, 48, 237, Aql, 321, 322, 332 378, 380, 382 Arabic Borderland, 27–29 as language of revelation, 135 Bosnia, 1, 16, 17, 67, 69, 113, 114, in the mosque, 55, 134, 135 133, 175 translation of, xi, 135–136, 272 Boubekeur, Amel, 66, 120, 337 410 index

Bourdieu, Pierre, 101, 217 Converts Bowen, John R., 5, 7, 29, 37, 194, in the Muslim community, 16, 89, 134, 226, 341 137, 268 Brah, Avtar, 30, 50 in the production and dissemination Bredal, Anja, 7, 47, 143, 144, 372 of Islamic knowledge, 18, 93, 251 Brekke, Torkel, 22, 23 in the public debate, 206, 268 Bricolage, 27, 156, 227, 244, 245, 293 Cooperation Bucaille, Maurice, 287, 289 case-based, 60, 70 Butler, Judith, 45, 384 European, 56, 127 formalized, 69 Calhoun, Craig, 34, 157, 159, 198 international, 128 Caricature Crisis, 87 Muslim, 67–78 Castells, Manuel, 28, 29, 110 between Shias and Sunnis, 71, Categorization 75, 103 dualistic, 247 Critical event, 87, 88, 170, 174, 239 of Islamic trends, 64 Cultural racism, 156, 165 as situationally defi ned, 178 Cultural studies, 26 Statistics Norway on, 15, 49, 51 Centre of Contemporary Cultural Catholic, 19, 39, 209 Studies in Birmingham, 27 Centre against Ethnic Discrimination Culturalization, 165–166, 180 (SMED, Senter mot Etnisk Diskriminering), 162 Dar-al-ahd, 124 Cesari, Jocelyne, 4, 7, 8, 15, 28, Dar-al-dawa, 124, 125, 190 34, 40, 41, 69, 71, 115, 125, 183, Dar-al-harb, 124 184, 194, 211, 260, 269, 296, 356, Dar-al-Islam, 124 365, 369, 385 Dar-al-shahada, 125 Christian Democratic Party (KrF), 264 Dars, 55, 61, 82, 93, 136, 190, 207, 212, Christian nationalism, 23 290, 318, 319 Christianity, 2, 20–23, 62, 140, 191, 192, Dassetto, Felice, 254, 255 208, 237, 239, 287, 288, 381 Dawa Church of Norway, 18–20, 22, 68, 237 active and passive dawa, 190 Citizenship, 19, 22, 23, 70, 126, 128, 166, the concept of, 190 168, 209, 210, 212, 223 course, 191 and human rights, 214–217 in identity politics, 188–193 ideal typical model of, 208, 214 internal and external dawa, 76, 190 the concept of, 160 Deedat, Ahmed, 65, 242, 243, 287 Class, 1, 10, 11, 16, 36, 48, 50, 64, 67, 94, Denmark, 57, 89, 172 101–102, 103, 167, 218–220, 222, 226, Deobandi, 17, 65, 66, 249 232, 247, 248, 277 Desire, 46, 202, 307, 313, 314, 321, Cliff ord, James, 26, 30 322–327, 332, 341, 354, 373, 377, 383 Cohort, 87, 88, 101, 103 Dessau, Nina, 170, 262 Colonialism, 8, 64, 110, 172–173, 182, Deterritorialization, 8, 28, 29 187, 195, 368, 369 Detraditionalization, 376, 385 Commodifi cation of Islamic Culture, 337 Dialogue, 18, 47, 55, 56, 58, 59, Community 61, 62, 68, 69, 169, 182, 193, 204, 205, imagined, 32, 33, 105, 109, 111, 122, 238, 239, 251, 261, 298, 316, 356 150, 216, 223, 310, 375 Diaspora, 27, 28, 29, 36, 106, 116, 122 the concept of, 50, 109 aesthetic, 105 Conservative Party (Høyre), 124, 379 conventional, 105 Conversion. See also reversion diasporic communities, 12, 105, internal, 299 107, 146 narratives of, 300 ethnic, m142–147 stages of, 300–301 imagined, 32, 105, 106, 155 story/stories, 180 Muslim, 105, 115, 116, 146 index 411

Dichotomy/Dichotomization Euro-Islam, 36, 122–129 of ‘normative’ and ‘popular’ Islam, 44, European Council for Fatwa and 94, 247, 248, 251 Research (ECFR), 125–126 of Occident/Orient, 184 European identity, 122, 128 of Us /Th em, 164, 165, 168 European Union, 122, 124 Diff erence Exclusion, 19, 27, 49–51, politics of, 34, 159, 216 78, 79, 107, 116, 122, 139, Din, xi, 211, 233, 327, 338 141, 164, 165, 168, 177, 184, Din al-fi tra, 298, 327 185, 197, 209, 222, 248, Discourse 249, 310, 381 discourse-centred approach, 5, 6 Explore (magazine), 2, 57, 112, 113, Foucault on, 5 141, 297, 298 public, 40, 68, 84, 85, 111, 129, 137, 163, 166, 194–196, 209, Fabian, Johannes, 173 219, 366 Facebook, 241 Discrimination Fadil, Nadia, 4, 8, 10, 183, 184, 253, 267, ethnic, 101, 102 270, 298, 307, 328, 357 in the labour market, 101, 102, 197 Family, 40, 85, 89, 90, 95–102, 138, Discursive tradition 142–146, 149, 152, 161, 165, 178, Asad on, 5, 9, 37–39, 43 198–201, 203, 206, 207, 220, 221, Islam as, 5, 11, 13, 35–40, 43, 44, 159, 234–236, 250, 252, 255, 256, 271, 226–227, 233, 251, 254, 266, 281, 278–282, 292, 293, 306, 310, 312, 295, 297, 314, 316, 327–328, 333, 313, 318, 324, 330, 336, 339, 336, 357, 359, 367 342, 369, 375, 380, 381, 385 Diyanet, 17 Fard, 190, 212, 213, 334, 335, 346 Donnan, Hastings, 8, 368 Fasting, 2, 56, 188, 234, Dunya, 320, 327 301, 302, 314, 347 Dupatta, 1, 149 Fatwa, 41, 125, 126, 138, 212, 243, 264 Eickelman, Dale F., 29, 41, 42, 108, Federation of Islamic 110, 218, 225, 231–234, 237, 238, Organizations in 241, 246, 247, 249, 257, 258 Europe (FIOE), 56–57, 125 Eid-al-adha, 132, 230 Feminism Eid-al-fi tr, 2, 132 feminist theory, 5, 26, 45, El-Zien, Abdul H., 35 172, 384 Eriksen, Th omas Hylland, 31, 32, 38, Islamic, 270 138, 154, 167, 171, 205 Feminists Essentialism, 8, 35–37, 39, 184–187, 381 critique of Taylor, 202 anti-essentialism, 26, 28, 29, 35 Muslim, 93, 273, 333 Ethics FEMYSO, 56, 57, 79, 127–129 ethical formation, 334–340, 342 Fiqh, 333 ethical subject, 10, 11, 45, 335 Fitna, 313 Foucault and, 45, 295, 319, Fitra, 298 359, 376 Five pillars of Islam, 3, 57, 188, Islamic, 188, 224, 298, 334, 347, 352, 238, 329 356, 357, 358 Foucault, Michel, 5, 37, 39, 43, 45, 234, Mahmood on, 10, 45, 46, 188, 224, 295, 319, 355, 359, 376, 387 295, 319, 326, 335 France, 20, 21, 27, 56, 79, 89, 120, 126, Ethnicity, 29, 33, 36, 51, 83, 103, 106, 161, 194, 197, 211, 221, 238, 241, 244, 115, 142–147, 152, 159, 176–180, 184, 259, 296, 306, 371 186, 202, 248, 312, 366 Fraser, Nancy, 34, 157–159, 184, 217, ethnic nationalism, 166 218, 221 ethnifi cation, 138, 164–166, 180, 215 Front islamique du Salut (FIS), 17 ethno-national identity, 165, 166, 177 Fuglerud, Øivind, 48, 165–167 412 index

Fundamentalism Gullestad, Marianne, 32, 48, 106, cultural, 31, 165 138, 139, 143, 164–167, 172, 205, Islamic, 31, 63, 213, 254, 364, 208, 214, 215, 378, 381 369, 385 Günah, 349 neo-fundamentalism, 63 Fuss, Diana, 36 Hadith, xii, 37, 38, 71, 73, 82, 115, 228, 229, 242, 249, 250, Geertz, Cliff ord, 26, 37, 39, 252, 266, 270, 276, 279, 281, 282, 286 283, 290, 298, 299, 300, 307, Gellner, Ernest, 37 350, 351, 353 Gender Hajj, 43, 57, 132, 145, 230, in identity politics, 10, 12, 34, 156, 315, 329 159, 160, 184, 185, 187, 193, 194, Halaka, 314 198, 203, 222, 224, 366, 367 Halal, 24, 61, 69, 133, 136, mixed, 47, 82, 84, 88–94 138, 141, 147, 207, 212, oppression, 172, 187, 194, 239, 228, 235, 259, 263, 289, 303, 366, 380 304, 320, 322, 329, 334–337, relations, 3, 64, 94, 239, 250, 339–341, 346, 370, 371 251, 270, 271, 281, 366, Hall, Stuart, 122 372, 373, 378 Handler, Richard, 363 segregation, 89, 91, 94 Hannerz, Ulf, 27 Gender equality, 22, 93, 129, 162, Haram, 77, 212, 213, 220, 166, 170, 178, 193, 194, 196, 228, 235, 259, 263, 303, 239, 253, 264, 281, 282, 380 334–337, 339, 341, Gender Equality Act, 196 346, 370, 371 Gender Equality Ombudsman, 196 Hardt, Michael, 364, 368 Generation Hasanat, 318, 347, 349, 350. generational cohort, 87, 88, 101, 103 See also ajar immigrant generation, 7, 101, 205, Hassan, Riff at, 18, 243, 273 206, 255, 288 Headscarf. See hijab parental generation, 5, 76, 81, aff aires du foulard islamique, 194 82, 85, 101, 102, 112, 231, headscarf aff air, 174 245, 255, 324, 327, 339, 365, Hermeneutics, hermeneutical, 266–267 366, 371, 372 Hervieu-Léger, Danièle, 226, 227, 286 second generation, 27–29, 31, 49–51, Hezbollah, 17 69, 85–87, 101, 102, 177, 181, 184, Hijab, xi, 1, 5, 12, 24, 58, 59, 61, 205, 238, 257, 349, 373 76, 86, 91, 108, 116, 119, 125, Ghiba, 339 126, 136, 138, 141, 147, 148, Ghozlan, Basim, 77, 270 150–152, 159–163, 174, 183, Gilroy, Paul, 165, 216 193–204, 208, 213, 216, 219, Globalization, 8, 9, 23, 26–30, 222, 224, 235, 236, 239, 242, 33, 40–43, 69, 103, 105–107, 276–278, 285, 297, 302, 303, 122, 156, 171, 174, 226, 305–318, 323, 328, 330–332, 233, 367, 368, 374, 378 334, 340, 342, 347, 356, 361, Göle, Nilüfer, 253, 307 362, 364, 365, 367, 373, Great Britain, 28, 54, 82, 382, 385 116, 120, 155, 161, 172, 209, Hijri-calendar, Th e hijri-calendar 210, 211, 212, 241 agreement, 131–132 Gressgård, Randi E., 24, 32, Hilal, the Hilal Committee in 141, 164, 165, 168, 194, Norway, 131 202, 281, 380, 381 Hinduism, 62, 153, 232 Grillo, Ralph D., 5, 28, 165, 194 Hip-hop Gülen, Fetullah, 66 Islamic infl uence, 120, 121, 153 Gulf War, 87, 174, 175 Muslim, 120, 121, 153 index 413

Hirschkind, Charles, 42, 43, 190, 193 Imagined diaspora. See Diaspora Hizb al-Tahrir, 17 Imagined sameness, 215, 216 Hizb Ennahda (Renaissance Party), 17 Imam Hjärpe, Jan, 290 the role of, 5, 41, 205, 206, 230, 236, Hobsbawm, Eric J., 362–364 249, 260–263, 265, 333 Hodsja, 333 scandals, 262, 263 Hofmann, Murad, 61 training, 263–265 Holst, Cathrine, 379 Iman, 283–286, 288, 289, 303, 304, 319, Home 320, 341, 373 ‘at home,’ 49, 51, 80, 82, 87, 92, Implosion, 174, 175 97, 101, 112, 126, 128, 129, 135, Individualism 220, 240, 281, 282, 305, 308, 309, egalitarian, 214 318, 335 Individualization, 4, 6, 13, 40, 41, 44, 45, ‘back home,’ 51, 57, 96, 97, 46, 183, 297, 313, 324, 339, 346, 100–102, 131, 142, 143, 154, 356–357, 358, 365, 368, 370–375 156, 208, 210, 219, 223, 279, as a mode of subjectivation, 46, 326, 308, 314, 369–371 361, 375–383 Human Rights Service (HRS), 161 and religious authority, 13, 41, Human rights, 19, 23, 55, 127, 162, 193, 225–294, 374 214–217, 239, 264 Roy on, 4, 40, 41, 254, 371 European Convention on, 19 Integration, 9, 23, 24, 28, 31, 32, 34, 54, Hybridity 58, 61, 62, 124, 127, 134, 152, 164, 165, hybrid identities, 29, 33 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 179, 183, 184, hybridization, 12, 27–29, 86, 107, 195, 206, 209, 210, 214, 215, 219, 220, 135, 152, 153, 156 222, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265, 379, 385 Intention, 13, 46, 90, 91, 136, 297, 303, Ibadat, 320, 329–334 322, 330, 332, 333, 341, 342, 343, 346, Idara Minhaj-ul-Quran, 65 347, 352, 358, 377 Identity Interiority/exteriority, 314–318, Creole, 27, 31 343, 359 formation of, 28, 31, 157–158, Internet, 47, 57, 60, 65, 108, 110, 117, 175, 181, 317 118, 119, 133, 146, 169, 193, 229, hybrid, 27–29, 33, 156 240–245, 248, 260, 264, 287, 288 identity and diff erence, Invented tradition. See Tradition 157–224 Iran, 16, 69 identity politics, 10, 12, 31, 34, 35, Iraq, war, 61, 116, 175, 302 156–160, 163, 180, 183–204, 214, Islam 217–224, 361, 366 anthropology of, 4, 5, 25–32, 40, national identity, 21, 22, 23, 129, 130, 42, 247 134, 138, 139, 165, 166, 168, 171, as discursive tradition. See discursive 214, 215, 216 tradition pure identity, 31, 154 and science, 283, 286–294 Ihsan, 318, 353 Islam, Yusuf, 18, 119, 121, 242, 303 Ijtihad, 268, 270, 356 Islamic Council of Norway (IRN), 3, Ikhtilaf, 228 18, 21, 61, 68, 70, 92, 131, 132, 205, Ikhwān al-Muslimūn (Muslim 206, 207, 237, 264, 275 Brotherhood), 17, 63 Islamic Cultural Centre (ICC), 17, 18, post-Ikhwān, 63, 64 64, 65, 68, 88, 249, 333 Imaginary Islamic dress. See Hijab social, 11, 12, 32–35, 78, 87, 88, Islamic Federation of Student 103–156, 159, 163–169, 171, 175, Organisations (IIFSO), 18, 64 184, 202, 203, 222–224, 286, 375 Islamic Information Association (DIIF, Imagined community, 109, 111, Den Islamske Informasjonsforening), 150, 310 18, 56, 61 414 index

Islamic knowledge, 37, 41, 85, 225, 226, Khutba, 135, 162, 226, 333, 338 227, 228, 231, 234–239, 240–246, 248, Kinship, 91, 101, 114, 115, 138, 142–147, 257, 258, 263, 267, 269, 284, 291, 292, 266, 329, 339 293, 294, 302, 304, 340, 357, 374 Koran classes, 88, 228, 236, 240 and science. See science Koran and Sunna return to, 63, gendered knowledge, 249–251 64, 66, 73, 119, 231, 252, 254, 258, Islamic revival, 8–10, 17, 64, 102, 213, 266, 271, 338 224, 255, 259, 265, 297, 304, 319, KRL, Knowledge of Christianity with 339–340, 366–369 Information about Religion and and identity politics, 10, 159, 180 Life-stances [Kristendom med and socio-economic mobility, Religions og Livssynsundervisning], 218–219, 222 2, 24, 237 infl uence of 62–67, 242 the concept of, 63 Law Islamic scholar. See also ulema, 6, 41, 42, Islamic. See also Sharia, 113, 114, 124, 79, 111, 125, 190, 205, 207, 252, 259, 207, 212, 213, 334 268, 276, 292 National, 141, 196, 210, 212, Islamic Women’s Group (IKN, Islamsk 213, 264 kvinnegruppe Norge), 18, 92 Law school (madhab), 65, 66, 72, 73, Islamism, 17, 63, 66, 79 213, 228–230, 258, 259 and the invention of tradition, 362, Leadership 364, 365 female, 76, 92, 93 Islamist movements, 17, 18, 54, informal, 60, 93, 334 63, 64, 210 religious, 22, 92, 227, 229, 261, post-islamism, 66 263–265 the concept of, 63 Leirvik, Oddbjorn, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 47, Islamophobia, 161, 168 67 Ismail, Salwa, 5, 339 Lewis, Philip, 82, 298 Israel, 59, 62, 116, 120, 169, 351 Lien, Inger-Lise, 48, 165, 167, 325–327, 359 Jacobson, Jessica, 4, 28, 270 Lindholm, Charles, 21, 362, 363 Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat, 16–17, 249, 260 Linnekin, Jocelyn, 363 Jamaat-i-Islami, 63, 65, 68 Lithman, Yngve G., 27, 40, 48, 171 Jamiat Ulama Norway, 207 Longva, Anh Nga, 101, 222, 378 Jihad, 117, 138, 188, 205, 224, 239 Loyalty, 111, 144, 152, 209, 210 jihad-bil-nafs, 117, 118, 322, 332 Lukes, Steven, 377 Jouili, Jeanette, 4, 10, 99, 191, 250, 259, Lutheran State Church. See Church of 270, 341 Norway Justice (injustice), 115–116, 125, 128, 140, 157, 198, 217, 218, 219, 221, MacIntyre, Alasdair, 37, 38, 43, 44, 271, 305, 350 160, 365 Fraser on, 158, 217–218, 221 Madhab. See Law school gender, 271, 272, 324 Mahmood, Saba, 5, 10, 31, 37–39, 45, 46, 174, 188, 190, 224, 226, 233–235, Kadr (qadar), 136 255, 259, 280, 295, 319, 323, 325, 326, Kapferer, Bruce, 363, 364 329, 335, 341–343, 355, 367, 374, Kashmir, 113, 114, 116, 133, 144, 145, 384, 387 146, 154, 351 Mahr, 327 Keller, Nuah Ha Mim, 65, 66, 242 Majority discourse, majority/minority, Kepel, Gilles, 15, 27, 42, 183, 218 183, 185, 193, 221, 260, 309, 380, 381 Khalid, Amr, 66 Malkki, Lisa, 26, 27, 51, 209 Khatib, 249 Mandaville, Peter G., 5, 7, 28, 29, 41, 42, Khosrokhavar, Farhad, 36, 78, 184, 187, 73, 78, 82, 108, 110, 123, 241 194, 201, 218, 221, 253, 372 Mandub, 212, 335 index 415

Marriage Nadia aff air, 206, 207 arranged marriage, 5, 57, Nafs, 117, 118, 319, 321, 322, 325, 58, 166, 173, 261, 271, 327, 332 381, 383 Naguib, Saphinaz-Amal, 16, 47, 80, endogamy, 144–146, 268, 356 141, 146, 180, 298 gender relations in, 239, 281, 372, Naik, Zakir, 65, 242, 290 373, 378 Nashid, 121, 242 Massey, Doreen, 30, 31, 108 Nation of Islam, 120, 182, 216 Maududi, Abu al-Ala, 18, 64, 243, 258 Nation state, 9, 10, 12, 22–25, 28, Mecca, 3, 44, 120, 121, 124, 32–35, 40, 51, 64, 68–70, 106, 117, 131, 132, 175, 188, 210, 122, 126, 138, 142, 150, 157, 171, 230, 315, 337 184, 195, 209–211, 216, 217, 237, Merit, religious (reward), 313, 346, 248, 256, 368, 372 347–354 National Mernissi, Fatima, 273, 323, 327 boundaries, 26, 133, 174 Metaphysics of sedentarism, 26, 27, 209 community, 12, 51, 105, 111, 112, 171, Metcalf, Barbara D., xi, 123, 141, 304, 216, 222 321, 353 day, 139, 140, 160 Milli Görus, 17 identity, 21–23, 122, 129, Mir-Hosseini, Ziba, 196 130, 133, 134, 138, 139, Mobility 165, 166, 168, 170, 171, and power, 30, 33, 218 177, 214–216 socio-economic, 160, 219 imaginaries, 26, 129, 138, 141, 164, Modernity, 33, 78, 123, 168, 174, 241, 175, 178 300, 314, 359, 361–387 language, xi, 133, 134 ordering process of, 72, 194, 195 Norwegianness, 22, 24, 51, 138, 141, the traditional others of, 24, 168, 165, 170, 216 173–174, 195, 326 order of things, 209 Moft i, Ahmed, 61 stereotypes, 128, 179, 219, 223 Moore, Henrietta, 377, 385 symbols, 138–142 Mosque, 16, 17, 20, 54, 55, 58, unity, 24, 209 63, 67, 70, 71, 80, 81, 82, 88, National Association of Immigrants 92, 93, 131, 132, 134, 141, (INLO, Innvandrernes 162, 234, 236–237, 249, 260, Landsorganisasjon), 162 261, 263, 288, 333 Nationalism spokesperson, 76, 204, 206 black nationalism, 216 Mubah, 212, 213, 335 methodological nationalism, 48 Muft i, 261 nationalist discourse on Mullah Krekar (Najmuddin Faraj migration, 114 Ahmad), 17 in Norway, 23, 48, 139, 141, 166, Multiculturalism, 5, 34, 86, 128, 139, 209, 216 152, 161, 165, 166, 169, 177, 182, 186, Native Deen, 121 195, 202, 217, 379 Negri, Antonio, 364, 368 Muslim Defence Committee (Muslimsk Neo-Racism, 165 Forsvarskomité), 17 Neo-Realism, 163–168 Muslim Student Society (MSS, Muslimsk Niyyat, 136, 150, 329, 341, 346 Studentsamfunn), 4, 47, 59–62 Normativization, 6, 13, 39, 43, 227, Muslim Youth of Norway (NMU, Norges 247–251, 297, 374 Muslimske Ungdom), 4, 47, 54–59 Norwegian Children and Youth Council Muslim Youth of Sweden (SUM, (LNU, Landsrådet for Norges Sveriges Unga Muslimer), 2, 56, 57, barne-og ungdomsorganisasjoner), 55, 66, 123, 303 59, 208 Muslimische Jugend Deutchland (MJD), Norwegian Constitution, 19–21, 23, 139, 73, 79, 89, 140 170, 180, 198 416 index

Norwegian Humanist Association (HEF, Pluralism Human-etisk forbund), 3, 19, 20, 237 cultural, 165, 166, 167 Norwegian Islam, 36, 124, 133, 134, 270 doctrinal, 72, 73, 228, 247, 259, 277 Norwegian Reformation, 18–19 planned, 167 Norwegian State Church system, religious, 18–23, 25, 216, 237, 337 18–22, 237 Popular culture, 27, 105, 108, 118, 121, 153–155, 216 Objectifi cation Post-Ikhwān, 63, 64 Eickelman and Piscatori on, 225, Post-Islamism, 63 232–234, 238, 247 Poston, Larry, 190 of Islam, 11, 225, 231–234, 239 Power Mahmood on, 233–235, 367 and mobility, 30–31, 33 of the religious imagination, 231, 292 and organizational leadership, 75 Roy on, 233, 238 orthodoxy as relationship of, 44, 248 Salvatore on, 233 power geometry, 30, 33, 107, 108, Occidentalism, 184, 370 111, 241 Ong, Aihwa, 33, 160 relationships, xi, 7, 24, 25, 49, 52, 367 Orientalism, 35, 168, 171, 172, 173, 184 in writing ethnography, xi–xii Orthodoxy, 9, 41, 44, 73, 247–248, 249, Practice, religious 254, 267, 292, 293, 331, 355 Asad on, 332 non-orthodox, 242, 357 MacIntyre on, 37, 43, 44, 160 orthodox critique, 213, 248, practising Muslim, 135, 190, 231, 246, 256, 286, 393 301, 317, 330, 348, 356, 380 Otherness as technology of the self, 45, 297 the Other, 24, 48, 49, 78, 122, 129, Prayer. See salah 152, 164, 165, 166, 168–175, Prieur, Annick, 7, 47, 84, 143 176–180, 181, 182, 185, 195, Private-public, 12, 21, 73, 123, 203, 219, 302, 366 336, 340 Othering, 143, 163, 171, 174, 175, 187, Progress Party (FrP), 23, 161, 169, 222, 371 197, 210 Otterbeck, Jonas, 41, 63, 134, 190, 251, Public sphere 290, 334 European, 8, 34 Outlandish, 121 Global/transnational Muslim, 7, 29, 108 Pakistan, 1, 16, 69, 95, 97, 116, 139, 148, Norwegian, 12, 17, 21, 48, 160, 184, 149, 153, 154, 211, 214, 241, 318, 325 189, 204–217, 263 Pakistani representation of Muslims in, 8, 10, mosques, 17, 64, 67, 76, 94, 135, 249 34, 62, 69, 76, 77, 93, 204–206, Muslims, 16, 28, 65, 94, 116, 154, 155 261, 263, 265, 310 Palestine, 2, 62, 113–116, 133, 175, 330 Punjabi, 17, 105, 135, 153, 325 Patriarchy, 198, 271, 310, 325, 380 Peter, Frank, 8, 40, 225 Qawwali, 153, 242 Phillips, Bilal, 243 Quick, Abdullah Hakim, 61, 148, Pieterse, Jan Nederveen, 29, 36 229, 242 Piety, 4, 8, 10, 46, 67, 91, 144, 145, 190, 204, 259, 278, 281, 295, 316, 327, 337, Rabinow, Paul, 240 338, 340, 341, 342, 354, 358 Rabita (Det Islamske Forbund), 18, and religious practice, 10, 195, 198, 55, 56, 58, 64, 77, 88, 89, 92, 297, 311, 329–336, 353 197, 270 and self-formation, 10, 318, 326, 332 Race, 33, 59, 120, 161, 162, 168, 176, Egyptian piety movement, 10, 45, 46, 177, 186, 187 280, 326 Racism, 27, 48, 51, 61, 120, 121, 128, politics of, 10, 295 139, 156, 161, 162, 165, 167, 168, Piscatori, James, 42, 108, 110, 218, 225, 179, 181, 187, 192, 195, 197, 208, 232–234, 238, 246, 247, 249, 258 210, 305, 310, 354 index 417

Raja, Abid, 206 Revitalization Ramadan, 2, 56, 61, 130, 131, 175, 188, ethnic and national, 165, 166 238, 284, 314, 330, 347 religious, 32 Ramadan, Tariq, 25, 79, 124–126, Roald, Anne Sofi e, 18, 22, 63, 64, 194, 288 72, 89, 93, 168, 206, 212, 250, Rambo, Lewis, R., 300 268, 275, 280, 300, 301 Rana, Muhammad Usman, 390 Rose, Nikolas, 46, 376, 377, 379 Rana, Rubina, 139 Roy, Olivier, 4, 5, 8, 40–42, 63, Ranger, Terence, 362–364 66, 79, 144, 171, 184, 233, 238, Razack, Sherene H., 48, 171, 172 253, 254, 300, 306, 307, 328, 339, Re-Islamization, 27, 63, 339 370–373 Recognition Ruh, 321, 325 Fraser on, 158, 221 Runnymede Trust, 161 politics of, 12, 34, 120, 157–224 Rushdie aff air, 18, 87, 108, 133, 174, (mis)recognition, 160–180, 182, 175, 239 185–188, 197, 203, 217, 219, 220, 223, 224, 305, 362, 363, 371 Sadaqa, 347 and redistribution, 218, 222 Sahaaba, 63, 300 Taylor on, 157, 158, 176, 181, Sahih Al-Bukhari, 283, 298, 353 186, 202 Sahih Muslim, 290 Refl exivity, 9, 231–234, 245–246, Said, Edward, 35 291–294 Salaf, 63, 64 Foucault on, 234 Salafi , 72 Reform Salah, 43, 141, 150–151, 230, 258, 329 of tradition, 8–10, 64, 123, 159, as technique of the self, 118, 255, 366–369 322, 329–334 self-reform, 9, 297, 319, 322, 339, 340 at the university campus, 59, 61, Rehman, Shabana, 205, 209, 381 207, 334 Relativism women leading, 93, 333, 334 anti-relativism, 48 Salam (journal), 60, 323, 346 methodological relativism, 48 Saler, Benson, 39, 247 Religion Salvatore, Armando, 4, 7–9, 29, 64, and national identity, 22–23, 237 159, 180, 200, 224, 226, 233, 235, freedom of, 2, 19, 20, 22–24, 141, 170, 253, 255, 340, 365, 369, 387 208, 211, 215, 217, 237, 362 Saudi Arabia, 65, 108, 131 of the state, 19, 21, 23 Sawab, 347, 349, 354 privatization of, 41, 63, 249, Schiff auer, Werner, 40, 41, 255, 369 339, 369 Schmidt, Garbi, 4, 66, 110–112, 137, the concept of, 24–25, 36, 39, 44, 282, 171, 185, 220 286, 329, 337 Science, 24–26, 35, 66, 97, 98, Religious education, 2, 12, 21, 23, 24, 61, 227, 236, 268, 282, 283, 286–291, 208, 237, 238, 244, 245, 261 293, 356, 383 Representations, and the Koran, 289, 290 of Islam and Muslims, 160, 170–175, scientism, 287, 291 180, 181, 185, 186, 187, 189, 190, Secular, Muslim, 77 193–194, 224 Secularism/Secularization, 8, 19, 21, challenging, 163, 188, 190, 223–224, 22–25, 41, 123, 127, 183, 195, 233, 310, 348, 366 251, 286–288, 291, 340, 367, 368, Respectability, 91, 92, 94, 201, 220 369, 380 Return to Islam, 46, 85, 257, 296, Self 299–304, 306, 308, 310, 313, self-formation, 40–46, 78, 102, 294, 314, 328, 329, 336, 343, 295, 301, 337 344, 352, 355–359, 364, self-government, 374, 375, 377 377, 383, 386 self-realization, 66, 158, 181, 186, 307, Reversion, 296, 298–301 325–329, 374, 376, 383 418 index

Senter mot Etnisk Diskriminering, Sweden, 2, 17, 27, 56, 57, 61, 66, 83, SMED (Centre against Ethnic 120, 123, 167, 251, 303, 334 Discrimination), 162 September 11, 60, 61, 76, 77, 78, Tablighi Jamaat, 17, 63 87, 169, 174–176, 189, 210, 239, 244 Taguieff , Pierre-André, 165 Sexuality Taher-ul-Quadri, Muhammad, 65 female, 203, 277, 317, 323 Taliban, 113, 114, 244 gender and, 22, 238, 239, 276, Tankevekkende, 25, 60, 93, 111, 117, 323–324 131, 283, 299, 338, 348 illicit, 323, 324 Tarawih, 61, 347 Shadhiliyya order, 65 Tawba, 61, 347 Shahada, 1, 118, 125, 136, 285, 329 Taylor, Charles, 32, 34, 46, 106, 107, Shalwar kameez, 1, 149 157, 158, 176, 181, 186, 202, 215, Sharia, sharia council, 109, 125, 133, 216, 314, 358 138, 212, 213, 247 Techniques of the self, 13, 295, 297, Shia, 17, 71, 72, 74–76, 103, 115, 249, 258 322, 329–334, 355 Shura, 280 Th orkildsen, Dag, 19, 20 Skirbekk, Sigurd, 167 Tibi, Bassam, 123 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 233 Tradition Social Democrats (Ap), 22, 23, 264 Asad on, 5, 7, 9, 13, 32, 37–40, 43, Social diff erentiation, 53 109, 329 Social imaginaries, 11, 12, 32–35, 78, 87, the coherence of, 9, 39, 226, 227 88, 103, 105–157, 159, 163, 164, 168, the concept of, 37 169, 171, 175, 184, 202, 203, the invention of, 13, 361–365, 222–224, 286, 375 367, 369 South Asian MacIntyre on, 37, 43, 365 diaspora, 105 and modernity, 40, 361–369 popular culture, 153–155 Transnationalism, 28–29, 112 Space and individualization, 41 deliberative, 42 and the nation state, 33, 209, 210 heterogeneous, 150–155 and the public sphere. See public hybridized, 27 sphere and mobility/movement, 26, 31, as vision and practice, 110–112 33, 222 the concept of, 30 Muslim/religious, 75, 89, 102–103, transnational ideoscape, 174, 296 141, 150 transnational fl ow, 30, 31, 105, 108, social, 6, 26, 103, 243, 368 111, 116, 141, 243 of social exclusion, 79 ideoscape, 174, 296 third, 27, 29 Truth Subject of science, 287–291 Foucault on, 295 of the self, 309, 310, 325–328 subjectivation, 6, 11, 13, 32, 46, 234, production and authorization of, 295, 326, 328, 358, 359, 361, 377, 37–38, 43, 192, 226, 227, 248, 382, 386, 387 250, 253, 257, 263, 269, 282, subjectivity, 46, 198, 254, 341, 359, 285–286, 290–291, 293, 355, 375, 376, 381, 382, 385 372 Sufi , 16, 17, 66, 72, 241, 242, 247, Turkey, 15, 69, 122, 127, 197, 249, 321 308, 309 Sufi sm, 153, 319 Turner, Bryan S., 28 Süleymanci, 17, 333 Turner, Terence, 34, 186 Sunna, 63, 64, 66, 73, 119, 212, 231, 252, 254, 258, 266, 271, 275, 333, 335, 346 Ulema, (sing. alim). See also Islamic Sunni, 16, 65, 66, 71, 72, 74–76, 103, scholar, 144, 212, 225, 243, 228, 249, 258, 261 249, 261, 267, 276, 278–279, 293 index 419

Umma, 11, 70, 105, 107–112, 114, Wasat, wasatiyya, 213, 327 116–119, 121, 132, 150, 151, 156, 209, Werbner, Pnina, 5, 28, 32, 50, 105–107, 300, 318, 357, 375 116, 155, 174, 184, 185, 364 Ung Muslim (journal), 57, 92, 93, 111, Wergeland, Henrik, 139, 140, 209 127, 128, 144, 183, 300, 323 Women United States, 71, 147, 175, 211 and religious authority, 249–251, Unity 257–258 and diversity of Islam, 36–37, and education, 99–100, 249–251 70–73, 103 and identity politics, 159, 195, 200, of Muslims, 70–78, 108, 110, 121, 203–204, 223 144, 151 and religious leadership, 92, 93, 333 of the nation, 23, 24, 209 in the mosques, 88–89, 92 spiritual, 320, 321, 355, 356, 357 in the organizations, 94, 129, 250 Urban, rural/urban distinction, 94–96 Wudhu, 3, 141 Urdu, 135, 150, 153, 253, 287 Urtehagen Foundation, 18 Yahya, Harun, 287–289 Young Muslims UK, 54, 56, 73, 79 Van der Veer, Peter, 32, 209, 232 Young, Iris M., 34, 183, 184 Veil/veiling. See Hijab Youth Vernacularization, 133–138 in modernity, 78 Vertovec, Steven, 4, 5, 28, 29, the category of Muslim Youth, 80, 110, 134, 184 79, 80 Virtues YouTube, 240 civic, 190 Yusuf, Hamza, 66, 111 Islamic, 185, 277, 280, 316, 346 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 34, 78, 159, moral, 45, 154, 356, 359 184, 203 Vogt, Kari, 15, 17, 20, 47, 56, 63, 64, 68, 92, 94, Zakat, 284, 329 125, 131, 134, 237, Zakir, Nain, 65, 242, 287, 290 247, 260, 333 Zaytuna institute, 66