Danish Muslims During COVID- 19 Religion and Pandemics in a Postsecular Society

13 Lene Kühle Temasektion Danish Muslims during COVID- 19 Religion and pandemics in a postsecular society Keywords Abstract How have Danish Muslims communicated on social media about CO- COVID-19, Muslims in Denmark, VID-19, and how have religious communities been included in the handling of the mosques, postsecular society, pandemic? Religion has become part of the public debate in new ways, because religious gathering places have been closed, owing to this crisis. Muslim leaders, and ministries and municipalities, have established religion-sensitive guidelines for how people should behave during the crisis caused by the pandemic. This article investigates the reactions of official mosque social media profiles to the pandemic, based on their public communication on social media platforms. This material is analyzed in relation to Habermas’s concept of the postsecular society. I conclude that this crisis has contributed to negotiations concerning the position of minority religions, particularly with regard to Islam in Danish society. On June 25, 2020, the London School of Economics hosted a webinar titled “Religious Communities under COVID-19: the first pandemic of the postsecular age?” The context of the webinar was explained as the identification of religious gatherings as ma- jor sites of virus transmission, and that in many countries, this had heightened tensions between the religiously observant and the secular authorities who attempt to regulate their activities.1 The first speaker, Dr. James Walters, a Senior Lecturer in Prac- tice in the Department of International Relations, London School of Economics, and an affiliated faculty member at the Depart- ment for International Development, was tasked with explain- ing the webinar’s title. He did this by emphasizing that COV- Lene Kühle is Professor with special responsibilities in Sociology of Religion at the Department of the Study of Religion, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University. Her research deals with religious diversity, the relationship between religion, politics, law and the state. In 2019, she (together with Malik Larsen) published the book [Mosques of Denmark] (Aarhus University Press). Tidsskrift for islamforskning 14 (2) · 2021 · pp. 13-39 Lene Kühle · Danish Muslims during COVID-19 14 ID-19 was the first pandemic that authorities and governments worldwide perceived as secular; that is, the pandemic was not widely considered as a sign of God’s wrath or punishment. Reli- gious leaders were not invited to advise to governments, and as the cause and cure were understood in scientific terms, medical experts took the lead as key advisors. Nonetheless, religion played a role in the pandemic. Religious communities were noticed, for better or for worse. Thus, a 2020 Editor’s Note in the journalSo - ciology of Religion included religious gatherings and rituals with regard to social distancing2, and conflicts involving religion, politics, and law, in the range of topics that COVID-19 has prompt- ed sociology to address (Baker et al. 2020). Similarly, a brief at the ISA (International Sociological Association) platform made suggestions for a post-COVID-19 sociology that specifically included a call to focus on the features of postsecular societies amidst the societal challenges created by the pandemic (Hanafi 2020: 2). In this article, I will take up these challenges, and dis- cuss the concept of a postsecular society with regard to pandemic-related public announcements made by official social media (SoMe) profiles of Danish mosque associations, and the Danish authorities’ and media reactions to these. The data is drawn pri- marily from a study of online reactions to Denmark’s lockdown in March 2020. This study (Larsen, Mauritsen, Kühle, et al. 2020) was carried out by a group of academics at the Center of Con- temporary Studies of Religion, Aarhus University. We collected SoMe material (mainly from Facebook, but in some case also from websites, Instagram, YouTube) from the official profiles of the so-called ‘recognized religious communities’3 in Denmark during the period from March 11, 2020, when the Danish gov- ernment imposed a lockdown of public institutions and all non- vital shops, to May 18, 2020, when Denmark reopened (Kühle and Vinding 2020). ‘Recognized religious communities’ have a privileged position with respect to tax exemption and the right 1 http://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?cat to perform marriages (Nielsen and Kühle 2011). In this article the egory=public+lectures+and+events SoMe material from the Muslim ‘recognized religious commu- 2 Some prefer to talk about ‘physical distancing’ instead because “it is nities’ is supplemented with SoMe material from larger mosque feared that in the long term, associations, which are not officially recognized. Material from forgetting this concept [social 25 SoMe profiles of Danish Muslim organizations, representing distancing] will lead to human error and social isolation” (Aminnejad and over 80 mosque associations, provides the background for the Alikhani 2020). I use ‘social distanc- analysis in this article. The material is public and represents of- ing’ because it is the social isolation ficial communications, therefore referencing this material is un- associated with being unable to meet for religious gatherings which is the problematic from a research ethics perspective (Willis 2019, key element addressed in this article. Legewie and Nassauer 2018). Tidsskrift for islamforskning 14 (2) · 2021 · pp. 13-39 Lene Kühle · Danish Muslims during COVID-19 15 I also include material from the study, Religiøs forandring i en krisetid (Larsen, Mauritsen, Sothilingam, et al. 2020). This study included interviews with 60 representatives of religious bodies in Aarhus, Denmark’s second largest city. Of the 60 religious organizations that agreed to participate, thirteen were Muslim. The survey study, with assistance from YouGov, collected responses from over 1500 respondents during May 2020 (Andersen et al 2021), when Denmark was beginning to reopen after the spring 2020 lockdown. The survey is a general population survey, and as such it establishes the general response of the Danish population to the pandemic. This was useful for establishing Danes’ gen- erally secular outlook on the pandemic. Respondents with a Muslim background were few (34 of 1538), but even if this small number does not allow for investigations of how the Danish Muslim population may or may not differ significantly from the general population on the questions involved, it does indicate diversity in the responses of Muslim respondents.(Beckford 2015) Examples of comments on official statements that health authorities published on social media are also included in this study. This material has not been systematically collected, and serves only to provide examples of reactions to official communications from the Danish Health Authority regarding advice to be considered during Ramadan. The SoMe communication I an- alyze were published in Danish, but for the purpose of this article I have translated the statements I quote into English. A postsecular society The concept of the postsecular first emerged in social theology in the 1960s. It was used to identify the hope for the emergence of a new era in which religious ideas challenged and repaired the pathology of secularity (Parmaksız 2018: 99). The concept 3 The concept if a recognized for instance the United States assessed by British sociologist Jim religious community is translated Department of State International Beckford who warns “urges sociolo- from the concept ‘anerkendt Religious Freedom Report for 2018 gists of religion “to avoid uncritically trossamfund’, which is a legal (https://www.state.gov/wp-content/ reproducing official discourses about concept regulated by Law no 1533 of uploads/2019/05/DENMARK- faith communities” (Beckford 2015). 19/12/2017. The concept of an 2018-INTERNATIONAL-RELI- I have highlighted the status of the ‘anerkendt trossamfund’ does not GIOUS-FREEDOM-REPORT.pdf). concept as an official legal concept have an official translation. The The translation faith community is by placing the concept within Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs uses also widely used (Lassen 2020). The citation marks. the translation ‘religious communi- usage of the concepts of religious or ties” and this is also the term used in faith community has been critically Tidsskrift for islamforskning 14 (2) · 2021 · pp. 13-39 Lene Kühle · Danish Muslims during COVID-19 16 migrated to political studies in the 1990s, where it enjoyed a sig- nificant revival following 9/11 attack. Thus, this concept is -an chored in two fields—in social theology and the study of politics (Parmaksız 2018: 101)—and covers a variety of researcher positions, from secularization-deniers to scholars who investi- gate, or even encourage, the re-enchantment of culture (Beck- ford 2012). The success of this concept is said to be due to its two- sided nature: It is “vague enough to attract interest, but also con- tained the right amount of polemic, ensuring that the concept would attract a wave of proponents and critics” (Fordahl 2017: 558). Although many scholars speak of the postsecular, the hon- or of popularizing the concept belongs to German philosopher and sociologist, Jürgen Habermas (Fordahl 2017). Habermas is responsible for using the specific amalgamation of “postsecular” and “society” (Habermas 2012, 2008) to describe a society in which belief in secularization theories has waned. The

Load more