VYTAUTO DIDŽIOJO UNIVERSITETAS SOCIALINIŲ MOKSLŲ FAKULTETAS SOCIOLOGIJOS KATEDRA

Dalia Markevičiūtė

INTERNAL LINKAGES AND EXTERNAL ADJUSTMENT OF MUSLIM PEOPLE IN LITHUANIA (LIETUVOS MUSULMONŲ TARPUSAVIO RYŠIAI IR IŠORINIS PRISITAIKYMAS)

Magistro baigiamasis darbas

Socialinės antropologijos studijų programa, valstybinis kodas 62605S103 Sociologijos studijų kryptis

Vadovas _prof. Victor de Munck______(Parašas) (Data) Apginta ______(Fakulteto/studijų instituto dekanas/direktorius) (Parašas) (Data)

Kaunas, 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I.INTRODUCTION ...... 3

II.METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL BACKGRUOND...... 6

III.THE FIELD ...... 10

IV.INTERNAL LINKAGES: CONGREGATION, COMMUNITY OR RANDAM PEOPLE?...... 13

1. The importance of the collective prayer...... 14

2. Pushing and pulling factors inside the congregation...... 16

a. Ethnic differences...... 17

b. The variety of languages ...... 22

c. Social status...... 23

d. Sexual segregation ...... 24

3. Tatars...... 27

4. The differentiation among Sunni and Shi’a ...... 29

V.EXTERNAL ADJUSTMENT: DIFFERENT PIETY, DIFFERENT ADJUSTMENT ...... 31

1. Different definition of a Muslim ...... 32

a. Middle Easterners… ...... 34

b. Lithuanian convert women ...... 37

2. Common mundane discomfort ...... 43

VI.CONCLUSIONS ...... 49

VII.SUMMARY...... 51

VIII.SANTRAUKA...... 52

IX.REFERENCES ...... 57

2 INTRODUCTION

Because of increasing number of immigrants into Europe, studies of Muslim communities are a significant topic in Western European social sciences, especially in countries containing large Muslim minorities – e.g., France, Germany, UK, and the Netherlands. Compared with Western countries Muslims in Lithuania are a very small group; possibly this is why they do not attract too much interest from the representatives of the social sciences, including anthropology. However, the existence of Muslims and the increasing number of them not so far from us in Western Europe attracts great attention from ordinary Lithuanians and raises mostly a negative, jingoistic, even racist reaction. This shows that the proximity of Muslims is relevant for Lithuanians but statements about Muslims are usually at the global, rhetorical level, and not very connected to the actual situation in Lithuania, as the situation of Muslims in Lithuania is still practically unknown. Besides, the striving for economic development in Lithuania also attracts and will continue to attract more and more immigrants from African and Asian countries1, including Muslim people so it is important to investigate what social environment those people may find here. The presence of Muslims in Lithuania is not a new thing. The first Muslims – Tatars from Crimea - came here 6 centuries ago. The new wave of Muslims came after the independence of Lithuania in 1990, i.e. students from Islamic countries, refugees from Islamic regions or countries, ethnic Lithuanians who change their religion to Islam. The number of nominally Muslims in Lithuania is about 3000 or more, but the community of religious practitioners is much less. This community consists of many small subgroups of different ethnic origin. Hence, the prime purpose of my research was to investigate how those small groups interconnect under the attribute which is common for all of them, i.e. Islam, and whether it helps to eliminate ethnic differences and to create a tight Islamic unity in Lithuania. Currently there are only 4 mosques in Lithuania and the mosque of Kaunas is the largest in size and worshipers in the country attracting believers from all over Lithuania, so it was one of main sites for my observations. The purpose of my research was to see what kind of Muslim community exists in Lithuania, what it consists of, how it functions and how it manages to adapt to the Lithuanian social, cultural

1 This statement I extracted from general prevalent attitude of Lithuanians which I observed during last years from personal discussions and reading comments of articles in internet about immigration trends into Europe.

3 economic, political, and economic environment. This research takes a holistic perspective; viewing Muslims as a minority, even a double minority: religious and often also ethnic. As a consequence of their minority status emerge other related issues such as individual and group articulation with other minorities and the majority Lithuanian Catholic population. The Lithuanian Muslim community is still very little explored, so without knowledge of the general context putting a strict focus on one aspect of their life would be too difficult and even slightly inappropriate. Lithuanian Muslims were being studied a bit only by E. Račius (2000, 2002, 2005) from the perspective of political science and religiosity. But he does not touch at all on the question of secular Muslims or on their everyday life, a central theme in anthropological studies. The main aim of my anthropological research was to indicate what kind of Muslim congregation we currently have in Lithuania, to investigate how the Muslims of Lithuania cope with their minority status, whether they aggregate into one solid community or stay segregated by the social differences among them and if they are isolated from the majority of society. The core topics of the research were the internal structure and dynamics as well as social external adjustments of this community. The topic is multidimensional because not many qualitative researches on Lithuanian Muslims were done and this research shows the process of aggregation and adjustment as a whole and requires the contribution of studies of ethnicity, gender studies, linguistic and religion, social geography, but these are only supporting texts and the anthropological theory is basic. I focused on two main issues: the internal structure of Muslim congregation and the level of external adjustment to broad Lithuanian society. The main questions of the research were the following:

• What is their personal definition of being a Muslim? How do they perceive the “not proper” Muslims who do not live according to Islamic rules? • What are their major difficulties while living in Lithuania as a Muslim? • With whom do they mostly interact – local Lithuanians or other foreigners – and how are these interactions are built and supported?

Additional, minor questions were different according to the particular interlocutor’s background.

4 The topics of internal linkages and external adjustment to the Lithuanian environment overlap since the level of adaptation is a potential indicator of how much they will stay united in order to avoid religious, cultural or other kind of isolation and vice versa. So the level of adaptation reflects how they are integrated into and accepted by the majority and indicates how porous or hard are national/ethnic/religious boundaries and how they are made. Since by saying “Muslim community” I mean both: 1) believers, no matter what their ethnic origin is; 2) people from Islamic predominant countries, no matter whether they are pious or not. I investigated whether a mechanical community proceeds to become an organic community, how this process is happening or why it does not happen, what kinds of linkages connect these groups of people into one Muslim aggregate. What sort of statuses is working as those social linkages creating/keeping relations among pious and secular people of Muslim origin: ethnicity, current place of residence, occupation, studies, age, gender, refugee status, etc. The study used the following qualitative ethnographic methods: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, thick description, informal conversations and analysis of printed publications. Some excerpts from the sermons when they were connected to the behaviour of that particular congregation where also included. The use of a particular method depended on the topic and context.

5 METHODOLOGY AND THEORETICAL BACKGRUOND

I did observations for my anthropological research project in the mosque of Kaunas and in The Red Cross Day Center for refugees; and I also visited The Refugees Reception Center in Rukla. I observed Friday prayers in the Mosque of Kaunas for 4 months– a total of 15 observations; I was watching communal prayers and people’s behaviour before and after it. I was visiting The Red Cross Day Center for refugees in random times for more than a month in order to meet different people. Overall I talked to 25 people: 13 men and 12 women; got 8 semi-structured interviews and the rest of the interlocutors were questioned during informal conversations. Almost all the interlocutors fall in the age group of 20-40; only four were older. Some of the interviews were collected in the mosque and its surroundings, others in the refugee center and some during personally appointed meetings in informal public places. Some of the interlocutors whom I interviewed I just met once, so their talks are not extremely valuable as I cannot expect them to be very honest and open when talking to some person whom they see for the first time. All the names of the interlocutors are changed to secure their anonymity and only the quotations of the mosque Imam are not anonymous because he wanted to speak as an official representative of the congregation. Only a few interviews were voice recorded. All interviews and conversations were done in the Lithuanian, Russian or English languages. Their own conversations were conducted in Arabic, Turkish, Farsi and many other languages which I cannot understand, so I could not observe what topics they where discussing amongst themselves. I also used the data from the registered internet forum on Lithuanian Islam since it was established by some of my interlocutors and many of the Lithuanian speaking Muslims are registered there. Many of Lithuanian Muslim women who are married to Muslim men from Middle East are currently living abroad and this internet forum is a way for them to exchange information and knowledge, request for advice or simply to tell their life story and to read life stories of other women how they met their husbands, converted to Islam, how their families managed to cope with these changes, etc. Due to ethical principles I do not quote their posts in my text since I could not ask permission from each of them.

6 I also used the data of the Department of Statistics to know the ethnic and religious composition of the population of Lithuania. The study used the following qualitative ethnographic methods: semi-structured interviews, participant observation, thick description, informal conversations and analysis of printed publications. I also included some excerpts from the sermons when they were connected to the behaviour of that particular congregation. The use of a particular method depended on the topic and context. There is a sharp segregation by gender during religious practices what was a big obstacle for me to get into contact with men who are dominate in the congregation both by quantity and power. Much of the time my research was being done through real physical boundaries determined by my gender, i.e. observing my interlocutors through a handhold of the balcony or through a little barred window. Thick description was a very useful method under these conditions for analyzing internal linkages of the community, because it paints a rich picture of the situation with colours, scents, sounds, and all the contextual details; it is especially useful for a research with lingual limitations because it lets undercover some disguised details which cannot be heard, but can be seen. External adjustment was extracted mostly from interviews since I did not have chances to observe the real interaction between my interlocutors and the rest of society. While gathering ethnographic data I faced the problem of the language barrier because the majority of those people are foreigners and although some of them speak some Lithuanian, but not all; and among themselves they speak their native languages. This restricted interview data to only those people who can speak the languages that I can understand. i.e. the majority of informants were questioned in Lithuanian, 3 interlocutors in Russian and 4 in English, collective conversations were bilingual, Lithuanian – Russian or Lithuanian – English.

Theoretical study of this research is based not only on the texts of social anthropology, but also using some supporting data from other social sciences sociology, social geography, sociolinguistic, and international relations research works. I used two types of theoretical literature: descriptive studies of Muslim communities in the West (Abusharaf, Maussen, Peach, Yükleyen, Jensen); and general anthropological texts (Asad, Cohen, Kertzer). Comparative theoretical materials contain a lot of texts on Muslim communities in the West (Denmark, Germany, UK and USA). This was used for the purpose of comparing the Lithuanian case with cases of other countries and to detect in what ways the Lithuanian case is specific.

7 The main theoretical frame is based on Anthony Cohen’s work “Symbolic Construction of Community” (2003). A. Cohen argues that “the community exists in the minds of its members. … the distinctiveness of communities and, thus, the reality of their boundaries, similarly lies in the mind.” (Cohen 2003: 98) According to him, the making of community depends on the mental perception of one’s self and the surrounding people: “Community is largely in the mind. As a mental construct it condenses symbolically, and adeptly, its bearers’ social theories of similarity and difference. It becomes an eloquent and collective emblem of their social selves.” (ibid. 114) Following Evans- Pritchard’s notion of complementarity and segmentation, A. Cohen argues that the boundaries marking similarity and difference are not necessarily graduated, but may be drawn with regard to distinct referents. (ibid. 116) His theory helps to analyze both the internal and external relations since he speaks about social processes within the community and between communities. “[…] the community may behave in quite different ways with respect to different “significant other”. […] it may even behave differently to the same “other” on different occasions.” (ibid.) This emphasis on social processes within and between is suitable for the analysis of the whole research of mine since it explains both internal and external processes. The research in New York Muslim congregation made by American anthropologist R. M. Abusharaf is very suitable for comparison because it explains the internal dynamics and the external adaptation of Muslim community in USA and changing authority together with changing ethnic constitution. R. M. Abusharaf extremely emphasizes the importance of ummah (community of faith). She gives historical background up to the times of first Islamic congregation in Mecca, Saudi Arabia claiming that congregations always used to be extremely significant for their members. Participation in one congregation gives a sense of common identity and allegiance. She argues, that throughout Islamic history of jami (congregation) has assumed considerable significance for Muslims’ religious practice as well as their social worlds. (Abusharaf 1998: 238) Similarly as the case of R. M. Abusharaf, the research of Heiko Henkel done among the Turkish Muslims in Germany and Turkey explains the importance of salat – the prayer - not only as a religious act, but as a much more meaningful social communal act. “By affirming and defining the practitioner’s “belief”, the salat establishes a web of social relations mediated by commitment to a shared discursive framework.” (Henkel 2005: 500) Sociolinguist theories are used to explain the role of the language differences which are very obvious in this congregation. “In recent years sociolinguistics has been increasingly interested in the language user’s work with creation and maintenance of social relations by means of language”. (Jørgensen 2003: 1) Norman Jørgensen argues that language and language code switching is a tool “in the status of hierarchy” (Jørgensen 2004: 19) The theoretical contemplations of Talal Asad are used to discuss the second part of the research – the patterns of external adjustment. T. Asad explains why Muslims are not welcomed in Western societies and why they are perceived as not belonging here. He argues, that the presence of Islam in the West “threatens to undermine the very foundation of modern values that are said to be exemplified in Europe.” (Asad 1997: 184) The second reason according to him is “a long European tradition of finding reasons for excluding religious minorities from the essential nation. Theological tracts proving that Catholics (in Protestant countries) and Protestants (in Catholic countries) are not to be trusted abound in modern European history.” (ibid. 193) Third major reason is “the dismal story of European anti-Semitism. (ibid.) So he talks about Muslims-Arabs and this attitude is not complete, because not all the Muslims are Arabs as well as not all the Arabs are Muslims. But if assumed that accepting the religion all other nationalities also gained the “Semitic tail” and now they have to accept the same hostility as Arabs. Though this is only speculative argument and its plausibility is doubtful. Theoretical explanation of the situation of converts is based on Danish converts case by Gudrun Jensen.

9 THE FIELD

The exact number of Muslims in Lithuania is not known. The majority of nominal Lithuanian Muslims are Tatars, but the majority of practicing Muslims in Lithuania are foreigners from the Middle East in the broadest sense of this term. The number of nominal Muslims may be about 3000 and the number of practicing ones may number in the several hundreds. The origins of the people attending the Kaunas mosque can be roughly divided into three broad groups: 1) Tatar citizens of Lithuania, 2) ethnic Lithuanians converted to Islam, 3) visitors from foreign countries where Islam is the dominant religion. The last group can be subdivided into "old" newcomers, who came to Lithuania from the Central Asian countries of the Soviet Union times, and the "new" newcomers, who came from the Middle East after the Independence of Lithuania. The congregation is very new and its members are frequently changing so the formation of it is in process. They do not even have a common opinion if the congregation is shrinking or expanding. Although Muslims have lived in Lithuania for 6 centuries, the revival of Muslim culture and Islam started after the independence of Lithuania, when the soviet atheistic regime did not control faith anymore and after a while foreign students from foreign countries started to come to Lithuanian universities. For me as a non-Muslim it was easier to see the dimension of "other" which is so necessary for "anthropology at home". In addition, I was able to monitor what was happening in the mosque because I did not need to pray at that time. However, not only were they the "other" for me; so was I for them. I had to deal with suspicion and almost open hostility, some openly said that they do not want to talk to me and be described anyhow. I did not have any “key” informant at the beginning who could introduce me to and establish contacts with the others and neutralize the unpleasant feeling of the intrusion into the congregation. Before starting the research I got permission form the imam to participate during the prayers. Of course I had to follow the same dressing and behavior rules as Muslim women. Of course, I had to respect the Muslim women's clothing, and the mandatory rules of behavior. Constant visitors knew that the aim of my visits in the mosque was scientific research but most of them did a slight attempt to make me join them. Though one of the interlocutors noted: "Sometimes strangers come to us but only for a short time so we are not accustomed to somebody coming so often”. (Natali, 25)

10 Every time it disappointed my potential interlocutors when they knew, that I came to talk to them because of an academic interests and not a personal interest. Though I also had personal curiosity and did not hide that form them, in many cases this was not a strong enough argument to change their unpleasant feelings that they are the subjects of a research. Many of them did not understand that I came to investigate them as people and not Islam as a religion and were trying to appeal to more authoritative members. A common first reply was “I know nothing about Islam” (Hafizullah, 29) or “I am afraid to talk, because I don’t know enough and I can say something wrong”. (Natali, 25) The congregation is clearly dominated by men, and sometimes the gender disproportion was several dozen times. The amount of men each time was between thirty and fifty and there were never more than a dozen women, sometimes only one came. Because of separate spaces for men and women my own gender was a big obstacle to investigate a male predominant community. It was difficult to access the men, though contact with them was more needed as they comprise the majority of the congregation, and they also held the positions of authority. It was not even allowed for me or any woman to look openly at the men on the ground floor because "during the sermons they [men] are not allowed to see us [woman]” (Monika 73) therefore women themselves must take care to hide them from the men’s view. Hence, being a woman was a great disadvantage for the research in a highly masculine religious community. Some of the people whom I met in the mosque treated me with strong distrust and hostility, saying that they are “abused and tired of all kinds of observers and interviewers who always come and come and ask something and then write all kinds of nonsense” (Rehab, 35). Some others were much friendlier but also were quite insistently trying to convince me to convert to Islam. One very friendly and open interlocutor explained: “if you were a Muslim they would speak to you and help you because they new you do something for Islam.” (Laura, 24) Being a Muslim is very common among scholars studying Muslim communities. When the anthropologist has a similar identity to that of the interlocutors it gives extra value to the fieldwork because of a better possibility to present the emic perspective than could be expected from an absolute outsider. Also it can be assumed that a Muslim has more general knowledge about Islam. But being an outsider gives a chance for more objectivity in the observation and analysis. People from refugee centers were friendlier, though one of them also expressed the negative attitude towards researches before I told that I was a researcher too:

11 That is good if you come here to socialize with people. But so many students write their papers about us, always they come and come here to talk to us, always… people feel abused. They do not want to share their stories for somebody else’s profit and not to get anything in return. (Farid, 32)2

During informal conversations the interlocutors exposed many new and unexpected things and questions so they also shaped the research and became really active participants of it. Before I started my research, I was not going to pay much attention to the mundane side of their lives, such as food, clothing, child rearing, etc. But many of my interlocutors voluntarily emphasized the obstacles and difficulties which arise against them here in Lithuania, as a result of these issues, so I included them into my research. These issues are an important part of my interlocutors’ adjustment to their environment and important for them in deed and could not be ignored.

2 Names are changed on the attempt to keep the differentiation of the interlocutors’ origins, nevertheless due to very wide variety of nationalities the given nicknames may not always refer to exactly proper nationalities.

12 INTERNAL LINKAGES: CONGREGATION, COMMUNITY OR

RANDAM PEOPLE?

“Community is the compass of individual identity; it responds to the need to delimit the bounds of similarity.” (Cohen 2003: 110) As the Muslim community in Lithuania is very small and there is only 1 regularly open mosque so all kinds of Lithuanian Muslims come to the same one and all of them meet and have to interact somehow. The ethnographic data which I collected raises a hypothesis that although most of the interlocutors were claiming, that they are united under the umbrella of Islam, but the existence of community as a solid unit seems much more complicated. Muslims are often perceived and defined by the outsiders as a very homogeneous group, as simply Muslims. Especially it is common to consider them as a very tight and mighty demographic block when talking about the threat of spreading of Islam in the West. But the constitution of people who come to the mosque is very multiple. It is obvious from the first sight, as the participants are different by their appearance: skin and hair color, facial features, body constitution, clothing. It can be easily seen when they stand in lines for praying very tightly aligned according to skin shades. Besides they have different opinions on purely theological questions which cannot be surveyed from outside. Every time some new people come to the mosque so the congregation cannot be solid and united because its members simply do not meet the others. Even the manner of greeting is also different. Some of them just hugs and kisses on the cheeks, others just shake hands and others just slightly nod heads towards others. Many men like to touch each other when talking. Islamic community refers to a socio-religious group that produces, follows, and supports a coherent interpretation of Islam through its activities and institutions including associations, federations, foundations, schools, and mosques within civil society independent from the state.( Yükleyen 2006: 5) E. Račius argues that Lithuanian Muslims of different origin are polarized towards the questions of legal affairs. (Račius 2002). The fact, that the mosque is regularly open only on Fridays for one and a half of an hour can be pretty surprising. “Few times I came, walked around the mosque, tried to open the door but it was

13 locked”. (Khalil 20) So they must have at least some social networks to find out how to get to the prayers if they want to do that. Though the imam told that the information how to find the mosque is provided by tourist flyers and they just have to guess the time and to come on Friday as Friday is the holy day in Islam. There are some people who came from Islamic countries but they are not very pious and do not go to the mosque. Anyway, they consider themselves as Muslims.

The importance of the collective prayer

Mosques in Muslim societies reinforce not only religiosity, or God consciousness, but also community consciousness.” (Abusharaf 1998: 240) Salat – the prayer - is part of particular social projects of Muslim communities or movements and, at the same time, constitutes a central part of a much more widely recognized matrix of instituted practices that define a transnational Muslim community. (Henkel 2005: 500) Routinely, not during Ramadan or any religious holidays worship in the mosque is held only on Fridays, because Friday is the Muslim holy day. Not a single anthropologist argues that participation in religious activities not only strengthens the relationship with a believer in God, but at the same time gives a sense of community and common identity. (Kertzer,) Arabic word Salat (prayer) literally translated means "a link", and since Salat al jumaah (the Friday communal prayer) is performed collectively beside being a link with God, it also performs interconnection role inside the congregation. (Abusharaf 1998, 239) The prayer, with its intricate ritual format, provides practitioners with a formidable resource for strengthening their commitment to Islam and asserting membership in a community of believers. (Henkel 2005: 487) It also has a socializing function: “I am happy when I see a lot of people there. Besides, there I can meet somebody whom I haven’t seen for long.” (Samir, 32) Many of them gather around the building a half of an hour before the beginning of the prayer and stay about the same long after that. “The gloss of communality which it paints over its diverse components gives to each of them an additional referent for their identities.” (Cohen 2003: 109) Since the times of Kaaba in Mecca in Saudi Arabia congregations in Islamic tradition appeared to serve multiple roles that include both spiritual as well as communal dimensions. (Abusharaf 1998: 238) “In Egypt if somebody does not come to the mosque on Friday we go to see what happened to

14 him, why he didn’t come. Here we meet only to talk, “hi” and “bye”. People in Egypt are much closer” (Yasser 26). In Lithuania it is not possible physically. In Islamic countries there are mosques in each neighborhood and people can come to the same mosque at the same time they are also neighbors to each other so their relations have more reasons to be closer than here, when the members of the congregation meets only in the mosque and only on Fridays. Muslims of Lithuania who have some places to pray in other cities try to come to the mosque of Kaunas anyway. Because of long distances and travel expenses it does not happen very often. Some of the participants listen to the sermon very carefully while others look really bored or deeply thinking about something. The funny evidence that not for everybody the sermon is the main reason to come to the mosque is that once one man literary snoozed during it and was woken up by his fellows. Once the imam even included into the sermon a moral that the cell phones must be switched and the attention should be focused to the sermon. But not the sermon is a main purpose to come:

The sermon of the imam is very dry, there is no connection with people. We should go to the mosque to socialize with other people. We go to the mosque once in a month… Children go to the kindergarten, I have to work. And everybody is like that. (Farid, 32)

Though every time there was several people who simply come, pray and go out not even trying to get connected to anybody. It is not obligatory for women to go to a mosque. But Lithuanian women do go. This is probably the best way to show their Muslim identity as they cannot demonstrate it in everyday life. Besides, they did not become Muslims by incidentally by simply being born in Muslim families, they became Muslims because they wanted to do so and this act of conversion may lose its essence if it is kept in the latent stage and never shown to others, nor expressed among fellow believers. “The Muslim ritual of salat is thus important for the reproduction of a particular collective representation.” (Henkel 2005: 489) Some people come to the mosque wearing their traditional clothing. It is explained as Islamic radicalism by A. Yükleyen (Yükleyen 2006: 35) But some of them wear them only in the mosque and in mundane life they dress casually so this occasional traditional dressing helps them to keep the identity of their origin and as they are surrounded by multicultural group of people, they can feel completely comfortably wearing them while a man wearing for example a black and white scarf on his head would look pretty strange on Lithuanian streets.

15 Pushing and pulling factors inside the congregation

Although the Islamic ummah (global brotherhood) is one of the basic Islamic principles, according to a few researchers, only small ethnic minorities do tend to look for interactions with other ethnic groups. When the quantity of the same ethnics reaches particular big amount, they start to keep away from other groups. (Abusharaf 1998; Peach 2006) When the hosting surroundings are new and different Islam offers identity, solidarity. They can think about themselves as about one entity when they are against other groups of society. But their internal cohesion is very complicated as well. “Adherence to a common religion does not guarantee unity.” (Abusharaf 1998: 246) “People assert community […] when they recognize in it the most adequate medium for the expression of their whole selves.” (Cohen 2003: 107) People’s intentions of creating new relations with “others” depend of how much relations with “us” (i.e. people of the same group identity, there may be plenty of potential identities) they have. That is an inversely proportional pattern, the more relations with “us” a group members have, the less they tend to look for the relations with the outsiders or “others” and vice versa, the less internal bond a group has, the more it tends to look for outer relations. (Dorleijn, Nortier 2008: 113) Right after the foreigners enter Lithuania, they have no or very few social contacts with locals or other foreigners and the new social networks have to be built. Some of them are foreigners amongst themselves too. The students meet in the classes or live together in dormitories. Refugees live in the same refugee centers for a while. But they all have quite different backgrounds and life stories and their way and level of internal and external adjustment also vary very strongly. For example, being Arabic and speaking Arabic is a supreme linkage for many Arabic people living in Lithuania, nevertheless one of my Arabic interlocutors claimed, that he does not have any intentions at all to socialize with other Arabic people so he gives his preference to other sort of social linkage which connects him to completely different group of people. In contrast, common origin is a very strong linkage for the people from Afghanistan (although their ethic origin is different). The “ethny” is a relational entity, its definition varying according to the opposition. … A group being of “one blood”, “one house”, or a clear traceable line, which may be changed or denied when circumstances suggest that this may be political. (Cohen 2003: 104) There are symbiotic relations among “old” and “new” Lithuanian Muslims: historic presence of Tatars gives a legal religious status for new comers Sunni Muslims; arrival of new people from Islam

16 predominant countries brings Islamic knowledge for the Tatars which they had lost during the years of isolation. I investigated whether it helps Lithuanian Tatars feel some kind of symbolic connection with the historical lands of their ancestors; whether historical presence of Tatars as Muslims help new comer Muslims to adapt here more easily. Most of the interlocutors say that all people are equal, but they mostly have relations only with people of the same status. The seclusion is multidirectional. Every time they interact with each other around with the same people who is likely to have some specific social relations, which are not visible from the outsiders view. Such equivalences form a very complex structure of overlapping networks amongst those people. Analyzing other subunits I was looking for the types of structural equivalence to find out which of them are strong enough to work as cohesive factors. Culture- the community as experienced by its members – does not consist in social structure or in “the doing” of social behaviour. It inheres, rather, in “the thinking” about it. … we can speak of the community as a symbolic, rather than a structural construct. In seeking to understand the phenomenon of community we have to regard its constituent social relations as repositories of meaning for its members, not as a set of mechanical linkages. (Cohen 2003: 98) the real organic relations have to be created. In order to become a member of any subunit, one has to cross the boundary. Belonging to somewhere or having something what belongs to us is not given for nothing, everybody has to strive for a right to belong (Olwig 2002) And not everybody can gain that as it also depends on personal qualities. One equivalence does not guarantee relationship but it is at least a stimulus to turn attention to a new person and to try to create it. For example a person from Egypt feels more close to a person from e.g. Lebanon than to a Lithuanian one because being Arabic works an equivalent in this case. The lack of interaction among groups of different ages was also quite obvious, but the factor of age is common for many communities and is not specific for this congregation so did not require a specific emphasis.

Ethnic differences

Lithuanian Muslim community is very mixed by origin. There is a great variety of different ethnic groups under the roof of the same mosque. According to the imam’s words, people coming to

17 the mosque are "from various countries: Pakistan, Lebanon, Syria, Chechens, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Turkish students were, the Lithuanians ... a wide wide range." It is also clear from their appearance - clothing and facial features, skin, hair color, body composition; many different languages, which before and after worship turn in to a full cacophony. Overall religion at some level is a unifying factor for different people. "Our religion is what unites us." says the imam of the mosque and he calls all the Muslims “a nation”. Qur’an teaches that in God's eyes all people are equal and therefore all the people of different races and nationalities have to be treated as equal. (Abdalati 2005: 54) American anthropologist R. M. Abusharaf who has studied the communities of Muslim immigrants in New York argues that small ethnic groups are likely to join in a common unit because as immigrant they experience cultural and religious exclusion from the local majority. However, large common ethnic origin immigrant communities tend not to lean to the other ethnic groups. (Abusharaf 1998: 242 - 247) The same is for example in London. The London Muslim community is called "a set of communities, rather than a community because separate congregations are formed on the base of ethnic origin (Peach 2006: 364). But depending on how many times the number of Muslims in London exceeds the number of Muslims all over Lithuania, this model is hardly appropriate for a Lithuanian case. Since in Lithuania there is no one significantly dominant ethnic group. According to the data of Department of Statistics and also the words of the Imam of Kaunas’ mosque, the largest ethnic group of Lithuanian Muslims is Tatars, but most of them are only nominal and not actively practicing believers. During the part of the ritual when they have to wish peace to each other, ethnic differences are erased. They turn to each other according to how they sit and what people happen to be around. The studies of the dynamics in a New York Muslim community by R. M. Abusharaf revealed that the dominance of one ethnic group Moroccan community which had founded the mosque gradually was taken over by another ethnic group - immigrants from Yemen. (Abusharaf 1998) If the Imam of Kaunas mosque does not participate in the worship, the sermon and the prayers are held by Arabs. The Arabic part of the sermon is preached also by Arabs even if the Imam is present. The role of muezzin is also performed by exclusively Arabic people every time. The Imam is wearing special clothes: a long brown embroidered Togo and a flat black, shiny thread embroidered cap. When he is not present and somebody holds the worship ceremony, he does not wear any special clothing. Only once the imam put his cap on one Arab’s head when the later went to hold a prayer. Such sharing of responsibilities shows the lack of strict internal hierarchy and the lack of hierarchy, according to A.

18 Yükleyen who researched Turkish congregations in Germany, this promotes personal contacts and trust. (Yükleyen 2006: 13) However, according to R. M. Abusharaf, the redistribution of duties can show the changes of power holders in the congregation. In Lithuanian case the new comers are taking the duties from Lithuanian Tatars. However the new comers respect the Imam’s authority because many of them like to say, that the imam has much more knowledge on Islam than anybody else in the congregation. R. M. Abusharaf noticed that sociocultural and religious isolation in diaspora made different ethnic groups to congregate with others. During the years while the field of hear ethnographic research was open its community consisted of Afro-Caribbeans, African Americans, Arabs, African immigrants, etc., different proportions in different times. It was the first African Muslim religious body in North America. For many former slaves with Muslim roots it was a symbolic “African space”. Islam was a tool which helped African Americans to feel the connection between Africa and America. But finally the constituency was affected by “The black power” movement which caused a wish of black Muslims to separate and create their own black communities. After this it became Yemeni predominant. R. M. Abusharaf explains these changes of ethnic constitution saying that big ethnic minorities do not tend to look for interactions with other ethnic groups. (Abusharaf 1998) The study of London Muslims made by C. Peach showed that for example African "race" is a connecting criteria (Peach 2006: 362) but three black men who regularly used to attend the mosque of Kaunas did not have any personal relations and did not even greet amongst each other. In Lithuanian case the amount of every nationality is very small so every single person of the same ethnical origin attracts attention. Several Egyptians met on the street. “I met him on the street. I saw that he is Arabic. I came and asked were he was from. Now we meet everyday.” (Yasser, 26) He explained that he always gets curious when he sees somebody of Middle Eastern look on the street. Also he has an Egyptian friend who never goes to the mosque and does not pray, but he was introduced to him by a Lebanon guy whom he met in the mosque. Islom told how he found out where the mosque is:

I was in the bus station and saw a group of men with long beards and went to talk to them. I asked where they are from. Those men were Chechen. We talked and they told me where the mosque was. From their appearance I new they were Muslim. (Islom 44)

These examples of Yasser and Islom shows that their eyes are constantly scanning the surrounding people and looking for somebody who is “more like them”.

19 Racial and ethnical homogeneity enables to preserve identity as an ethnic community rather that a religious one. (Abusharaf 1998: 247) The piety is not crucial when it comes to the people of the same nationality in Lithuanian case too. A pious 26 years old Egyptian man Yasser told that he has 2 more Egyptian friends in Kaunas though one of them is never going to the mosque though he is a Muslim and the other one is a Copt so obviously being an Egyptian is the prime and the main linkage among them. “The salat gains particular significance as it offers a highly mobile body technique with which the particular social relationship between practitioners can be affirmed” (Henkel 2005: 503) While praying, the believers stand so close to each other that they touch each other with their elbows. Looking from the above every time there were lines according to skin shades which illustrate that the physical contact is preferred with somebody “same”. Though some ethnic groups can be perceived as hostile clans in their home countries, but being in diaspora they are considered as one nation and treat each other as one, this happened to Afghani people who belong to Pashto, Tadjik and Hazara ethnic groups, but the bonds amongst them are very tight, though the Afghanis are mixed Sunni and Shi’a Muslims and some of this little group do not even attend the mosque, they are different in age and are people of both gender – despite all this they are very united. In this case the equivalence of nationality is strong enough to overcome all the differences. The study of British social geographer C. Peach about the London Muslim ethnic seclusion illustrates how they share the geographical space: immigrants from different countries reside in different neighborhoods. (Peach 2006: 364). Lithuania Muslim community is too small and too geographically dispersed and no similar tendencies can be seen. The Muslims visiting the mosque of Kaunas come from different cities of Lithuania, since it is the only regularly operating mosque in Lithuania so they simply do not have any other options and their place of residence is caused by other circumstances, for example work, education, marriage, rather than ethnic identification. A significant part of this Muslim congregation is ethnic Lithuanian converts. Together with the status of a convert goes ethnic difference. Though officially they are perceived as equal:

We rate the converts well. Islam is an open religion and whoever wants to join it, welcome, no problem. […] he becomes one of our brothers. When a person grows up and can understand his acts and is self dependent, he makes a decision. If a child was baptized but decides to convert to Islam he cannot be a Muslim of any lower level. Everybody is equal against God. (The imam of the Mosque of Kaunas)

20

Although they are considered no different for Islam, but the difference from “born” Muslims remains because of the lack “of ambience and social networks for converts; they perceive themselves as a separate group. This appears to confirm similar findings among Scandinavian converts to Islam.” (Jensen 2006: 647) The researcher of Danish converts noted that converts have few social networks since they are not born into Muslim families; they are perceived as different and liminal due to their outsider position as “ethnic” Danes (ibid. 656), the same ethnic Lithuanians in Lithuanian case. So it is hard to believe when foreign Muslims in Lithuania claim that they do not see any difference between them and converts, because immigrants in Denmark and in Lithuania come form the same backgrounds. One Lebanese was frank: “Muslims Lithuanians don’t have a right opinion. Don’t ask them” (Amid, 24) so he admits that they, i.e. people from Islamic countries, are “more real” Muslims than the converts. “The internal composition of religious authority in each Islamic community is created through the inter-dependence of religious assertions, social organization, and media of representation.” (Yükleyen 2006: 6) The internet website www.islamas.lt where established by Pakistani students cooperating with Lithuanians and provides a lot of information about Islam in the Lithuanian language, hens it was created for Lithuanians. “With regard to interaction with born Muslims, converts often experience conflicts that relate to what they call “culture differences,” often articulated as born Muslims’ inability to distinguish “Islam” from “culture” and “tradition.” (Jensen 2006: 647) the born Muslim like to call the differences cultural and traditional rather than religious so it does not depend upon converts that they cannot cross this boundary. Many converts feel excluded by “born” Muslims and accused of not being “genuine” Muslims. There are also phenotypical issues, such as skin and eye color.(ibid. 646) G. Jensen argues, that converts’ belonging to Muslim community is expressed by inventing a symbolic ethnicity, e.g., a preoccupation with taking on the entire Islamic dress code — in the case of women, by wearing the hijab, the jilbab , and the niqab. (ibid.) The style of Hijab differs in different countries but there is no Lithuanian hijab style, so Lithuanian women are free to choose which country’s tradition to follow. Married women dresses the style of the country from which her husband is, so according to the G. Jensen’s symbolic ethnicity they symbolically gain another ethnicity of being simply Lithuanian. And those who dress up inside the mosque and dress off before they go outside gain a temporary ethnicity for the prayer and are back to Lithuanianess. This dressing up as a Muslim is also a dressing up for Muslims. (ibid.) But since their husbands are from different countries so their gained temporary ethnicities are also different among each other.

21

The variety of languages

The issue of ethnic boundaries is very closely related to languages. The number of different ethnicities in the congregation is huge, so the variety of languages is also quite wide. But the main languages are Arabic, Lithuanian and Russian. English is also widely used for international communication, but not as a mother tongue of anybody. Lithuanians and Tatars do not have any lingual boundary because Tatars do not have their own language anymore. The prayer is performed in Arabic as it is obligatory for all the Muslims all over the world in spite of what the local language is. The sermon can be preached in any language, because the believers listening to it have to understand what it is about. The sermon is usually preached optionally in Russian or Lithuanian with few Arabic insertions and always in Arabic. When the imam does not participate the whole sermon is preached only in Arabic. Language differences play a very important role in international communities as it is a tool for interactions or an obstacle leading to not having it. The function of language is wider than the prime general mean whether several people or groups of people can understand each other or whether they cannot. It is also a tool for linking into a community. The language works as a linking tool and as a separating one as well. Which language they choose shows to what people they want to interact and whom to exclude. If one speaks somebody’s language he is suppressed by the authority and involuntarily takes a lower status, he obeys the rules and dictate. And in the contrary situation, one can gain some authority for himself if he is able to choose a suitable language code in particular situation. (Keim 2004: 82) Languaging works as a mean to support the identity and determines to which group a person prescribes himself. Sociolinguistic approach investigates how people’s verbal habits depend upon interactions with members of different “other” communities and are expressed by code-switching. The code gains a position or even hierarchical status by “sing the linguistic means […] to achieve […] goals” (Jørgensen 2004: 21) J. N. Jørgensen admits that “code-switching is a pragmatic feature of the interaction. […] they contribute to the language play as well as the social negotiations, both in in-group marking and in the struggle for status in a hierarchy.” (Jørgensen 2004: 19) Many of the Arabic men can speak Lithuanian, but they usually form little groups of themselves and speak Arabic. This automatically

22 excludes all the other men who do not speak Arabic and also draws a thick line between Arabic Muslims and the others. Though Arabic people come from several different Arabic countries, the particular nationality does not make difference among them and they like to hang around together in their spare time as long as they all speak Arabic: “It’s the same. I am from one country, they are from another, but we speak the same language. It’s very easy then…” (Samir, 32) “Behaviour of bilinguals in specific situations can be related to a societal pattern of power distribution and resources”. (Jørgensen 2004: 10) Mixing language always includes the languages of “others” and entering to somebody else’s language is already an act of border crossing. J. N. Jørgensen calls societal minority language a “we – code”, and societal majority language a “they - code”. (Jørgensen 2003: 2) so multilingual speakers are continually crossing the boundary between “we” and “they”. Even the Imam who is a Lithuanian Tatar and whose native language is Lithuanian speaks Arabic with Arabs, even with those who live in Lithuania for long and can speak fluent Lithuanian. During our conversations Lithuanian Muslim women used to insert Arabic phrases into their speech although they cannot speak Arabic and know only few words, while Arabic men did not do that at all. And according to sociolinguists “the first function of Arabic insertions in a [local] base is to express a Muslim identity” (Dorleijn, Nortier 2008: 118). Arabic men did not use any Arabic words while speaking Lithuanian or English, probably because they do not reflect their Muslim status and do not feel that they have to artificially express it anyhow. Some of the convert Lithuanian women even have officially changed their Lithuanian first names into Arabic ones. Although there are many non Arabic Muslim countries in the world and of course not all Muslim women have Arabic names.

Social status

The boundaries of social status are hard to detect, because the social status is not seen from the point of view of a complete outsider. Asad is a young Arabic refugee. He and Arabic students have many equivalencies such as same language, status of a foreigner, they all are men and even are almost the same age, but in spite of all these they do not have any relations. He could not explain why he does not try to create relations with them, but his friend from the same refugee center answered for him: “They come from somewhere. Walk here. All so very… why do we need them? We don’t need them” (Khalil, 20) He mimicked them

23 raising his nose and chin up, trying to show that they look very arrogant and proud of themselves. His voice and intonation showed that he feels different from them, because they come here as students and he came as a refugee, which is a lower status than a status of a student at least as he perceives it that the students held themselves in upper status. According to van den Berghe quoted by A. Cohen, “ethnicity is more primordial than class. Blood runs thicker than money”. (Cohen 2003: 105) But the latter example negates this argument. Two men who used to come to the Refugee Center as well as to the mosque never talked to each other, did not even great. Thus one can assume that a status of refugee does not give emotional affinity. While it may also be due to language barriers, because one speaks Russian, and the other, a refugee from Somalia speaks broken Lithuanian. Performing the communal prayer may not altogether quell suspicions but it introduces an objective criterion for assessing virtue as it marks the dividing line between believers and others. (Henkel 2005: 492) But a man from one Central Asian country who came to Lithuania as a political refugee emphasized that he is always trying to avoid interactions with other people from his country and every time when he hears somebody speaking his language in the mosque, i.e. his co-nationals working as car traders, he pretends that he does not speak or understand their language. He is afraid that despite of their religiosity they may have some evil intentions anyway and it could be risky for him to show his nationality against them. A famous athlete from Senegal was very desirable person to shake hands, to hug and to chat after prayers every time.

Sexual segregation

Strict sexual segregation remains the same as in their society of origin. (Abusharaf 1998: 248) The sexual segregation exists among the Muslims of Lithuania too as it is a rule for Islamic societies. The mosque of Kaunas has two stories and the upper storey is women’s space. Even an approximately seven year old girl who came to the mosque only with her father has to go to the women’s section and stay with women whom she probably does not even know. But this space looks more like an office than a sacral place, because such things as computer, Xerox, many chairs, tables, cupboards, stacks of old newspapers, etc. are placed there and it does not show too much respect for women in the congregation. But the carpet outstretched on the upper floor is the same as on the ground floor and it gives some features of a worship room rather than simply an

24 office, because the carpet pattern has a specific purpose, its ornament is made of many small arches which mean specially demarcated places one for each praying person. The behavior of women is a lot different from men’s. They are talking very silently as if they are trying to stay invisible while men are shouting loudly. Women develop and consolidate their own alternative congregations. (Abusharaf 1998: 250) Those women, who are married to Muslim men and currently are living abroad, come to the mosque of Kaunas only when they come to Lithuania for holidays. This means that some of them come here for the first time. If they find some other Lithuanian women inside, they try to find out if they “know” each other from internet forums and chats, if not – they exchange their contact information. They often contact each other and agree on when they will come to the mosque so they can also meet. Sometimes there are about 10 young Lithuanian women in the mosque, especially during national Lithuanian holidays which are free from work for most of Lithuanians. Going to a mosque is not mandatory for women and they all know that but they still choose to come sometimes. And their visits to the mosque are more for socialization than for praying. They like to gather and to chat, mostly about their babies, households, elderly about health and nobody pays much attention to the sermon even if it is in the Lithuanian language. They chat about amongst each other, play with there children. It happened several times, that some man came to knock the stairs as a sign for women to keep silent. One time one man even climbed upstairs to the women’s section to tell them keep quietly, although it is strictly not allowed for men to come to women’s section during the prayer. A few women, who live in Western European countries told, that it was the first time for them to come to any mosque, because they always used to pray at home and only came to a mosque here, in Lithuania. Newly converted Lithuanian Muslim women follow the Islamic rules very strictly, for example they consider chatting with men as an inappropriate act, while most of Muslim men do not see anything inappropriate in such behavior, only in and near the mosque they also keep this rule and do not talk to women. These women are trying to avoid meeting men in or near the mosque, so they always try to come earlier before the prayer and to leave only when most of the men are already gone after the prayer:

I feel somehow embarrassed and shy to walk in front of other men. When I am with my husband I can talk to them. But when I am alone, I just want to go away as quickly as I can. (Agnė, 28)

25 Many women who live in Western countries come to the mosque with there husbands though Amina came alone, her husband did not come to Lithuania. Some men go to chat with the other men in front of the mosque before the prayer leaving there wives standing alone in a very embarrassing manner, especially if it is the first time for them to come to the mosque and they still know nobody in their and do not have any clue where to go and what to do. Though it happens not to everyone, some men do not leave their wives in an uncomfortable situation and stay with them further from the main group of men. Nobody would talk to somebody else’s wife. R. M. Abusharaf concludes that although Islam adapts to American conditions but the situation of women stays almost the same as in the countries of their origin. For the case of women she emphasizes ethnoreligious impacts. Because the situation of women in The Mission was changing according to which ethnic group was predominant in the mosque at that time, e.g. during the time of Yemeni domination women were totally excluded same way as they are excluded from the mosque in Yemen. Although in other Islamic communities of New York women were perceived as transmitters of cultural inheritance because they teach children languages and cultural attributes in Sunday schools. If this model works for Lithuanian case it remains unclear which country’s tradition shapes Lithuanian women community, local Lithuanian newly created tradition or any Middle Eastern country (than which?) Although Monika - one of the oldest members of the congregation by age and by the time of participation in this congregation is happy, that being a Muslim builds connections with people from many various countries and she can know about the distant places of the world by speaking with them and listening to their stories. But she is the one who has a kind of special status in that congregation probably because of her solid age, she is in her 70ties and everybody in the congregation who frequently come to the mosque and can speak Lithuanian or Russian are willing or at least feel obligated to talk to her. All other women’s internal congregational contacts are limited to their husbands and other women. Besides, they get excluded from the outer non Muslim Lithuanian society, so they are the ones who experience the greatest exclusion and intolerance. The internal ties of this subunit look very close and tight. They often kiss each other on the cheeks for greeting and for goodbye which is not so common among Lithuanian women in general. They also try to keep contacts when they go back to different Western European countries. “While women are aware that other congregations have active female members, they do not associate their own absence with a subordinated or inferior position.” (Abusharaf 1998: 250)

26 Lithuanian women know a lot of nice stories about good life of Muslim women in Islamic countries and use them to defend their position. While in Western countries with large Muslim communities Sunday religious classes are taught by women (ibid. 249), Lithuanian women themselves are learning, so there is no their contribution to the community and hens no power resource since they are not necessary anyhow for the congregation.

Tatars

Though Tatars are one of the variety of ethnic groups, they have a special status among Lithuanian Muslims. Tatars were the first Muslims in Lithuania and gave Sunni Islam a status of official state religion and symbolic legacy. All the mosques belong to them. The mosque of Kaunas is open for the Muslims of any background, though officially it is Tatars’. But during the Soviet times Islamic faith was restricted together with all other religions, the mosques were closed and this led Lithuanian Tatars to drift from true Islamic knowledge. Now elderly Tatar women come to the mosque dressed inappropriately, e.g. wearing short sleeved shirts or a hat on the head which does not hide the hair instead of a headscarf. If one wears a headscarf so it is usually tied in a knot under the chin which is not good in Islam. This causes the twits with them that they are not „real” Muslims as they have forgotten many of the Islamic rules and traditions during Soviet atheistic regime. The imam of the mosque is also a Tatar but even he is not satisfied with the behavior of the Tatar majority: “Tatars is not a good example. They drink and eat everything. And do many things...”. According to the imam, it was a great uprising of religiosity after the declaration of independence in 1990, but now it declined again. The young Tatars whether do not pay any attention to religion as the majority of Lithuanians youth currently do or try to follow it stricter then the elderly. Like in Germany “the younger generation demonstrating its superior knowledge was the more virtuous” (Henkel 2005: 493) the young Lithuanians also have better access to information resources hens more knowledge and the elderly. At the religious level there are symbiotic contacts between local Muslims and the newcomers. According to E. Racius Lithuanian Tatars have lost a lot of Islamic knowledge and traditions during the Soviet ban of religions and have created a lot of new ones instead.

27 For example under the teaching of the Quran, prayer is excluded if it is performed not following the requirements laid down in Quran. Covering of some body parts is one of the obligatory conditions. At the mosque rarely visiting the old Tatar women's clothes often do not meet the requirements: their kerchiefs are tied up same as all old Lithuanian rural women do, by tying the kerchiefs angles to the knot under the chin. Part of their hair remains uncovered, one woman dressed in shirt with short sleeves, while Muslim women allowed disclose only the hands. Another one is wearing a simple hat with the flaps on the head. As some devout Lithuanians believe, all this violates the rules of worship and the prayer is meaningless. Young Muslim women who converted to Islam mostly after they got married to Muslim foreign men know clothing code better because they learned the rules from their husbands and they follow those rules more carefully because their husbands can supervise them and think that they are more appropriate Muslims than the Tatars of elder generation because of their lack of knowledge and than the young Tatars, who do not care about religion at all. Although the imam claims that being a Muslim unites all these different people, but E. Račius referring to the administrative acts of Republic of Lithuania writes that the legal Islamic religious community in Lithuania is recognized only for one particular ethnicity - Tatars. They have officially registered organizations and are receiving some support from the state. Muslim foreigners do not have such organizations and do not have any "right of expression" in official matters. And that according to E. Račius makes Lithuania Muslim community not heterogeneous, because there is no longer clear when the support belongs to Tatars and when to Muslims in general. (Račius 2002) Thus, according to rehashed theory of A. Cohen’s "complimentary opposition" (Cohen 2003: 115) and the conclusions of E. Račius Lithuanian Muslim community looks united only in the outsider’s eyes. They are quite uncongenial amongst each other as well. The Muslim foreigners in Lithuania were kind of lucky to find a mosque built buy the Tatars, meanwhile Muslims in some Western European countries do not have real mosques and go to pray to abandoned factories or similar places. The Lithuanian convert woman was really angry: “The government had given money and a plot for a new mosque but those crappy Tatars took all the money”. (Alma, 32) E. Račius also has made a note that there is a tension among Lithuanian Muslims because of financial issues. (Račius 2002) In other European countries Islamic communities also compete for state recognition to acquire subsidies and legitimization from the state. Islamic communities compete for these resources when they develop their projects. (Yükleyen 2006: 6) And the foreigners do not make differentiation between Tatars and Lithuanians, they probably do not see any significant differences between Lithuanian Tatars and ethnic Lithuanians, because non of my interlocutors were talking about them.

28

The differentiation among Sunni and Shi’a

There is a theological distinction in Islam between the Sunni and the Shi’a and only 15 per cent of the whole world’s Muslim population is Shi’a so there are only few Shi’as in Lithuania as well. The official religion in Lithuania is only Sunni Islam, but not Shi’a. Lithuanian converts also become mostly Sunni. And according to one of the converts, “it depends upon how they find a path to Islam”. (Laura, 24) Another one from Lithuanian converts expressed her clear and strong opinion about the difference: “here [in the mosque] are only Sunni Muslims. There are no Shi’as in here. Shi’as are those, who just sit anywhere, drink [alcohol], play with girls and don’t come to pray”. (Alma 32) This statement of hers which is absolutely not true shows not only the lack of Islamic knowledge, but also a very high level of the biased hostility towards other religions, even though Shi’a Muslims are not too far from them. But only Alma was so angry and hostile. Other Lithuanian Sunnis who probably have more knowledge, also have much more modest opinions:

The basic principles do not match. In Islam you can believe only in one God and nobody else. And the Shias adore twelve imams. There shouldn’t be mediators between God and the people. And nobody who wants to come to Islam will start from Shiism. And they shouldn’t. But I know one Muslim girl… why do people become Shi’as? In Most of the cases people whom they know make influence. I don’t know what she will do. Besides, they have contemporary marriages. This is a total nonsense. There is no logic. This shows that this religion is false. (Laura, 24)

Since Shi’a Islam is not recognized by the state as an official religion, Shi’a Muslims do not have any official place for prayers. The imam confirmed that Shia’s rarely come to this mosque:

There are very few of Shi’as in Lithuania, some Azeri from Azerbaijan, some Iranian students… sometimes they come to us. We communicate with them, but not deeply. Because there are big differences. Besides, it is not an official confession in Lithuania. If they need something they can come and apply for that, we would not expel them out, but they are different

29 in many ways. Of course they believe in the same Qu’ran, prophets, everything, but there are many differences after that in their beliefs… the prayers look different, the performance of the prayer… azan is different. A lot of things there… (The imam of the mosque of Kaunas)

This is a good ilustration for A. Cohen’s argument that “the finer the differences between people the stronger is the commitment people have to them.” (Cohen 2003: 110) Sunni and Shi’a Muslims are just two branches of the same Islam but it their minds the differences are crucial. However, among foreigners the differentiation is not so sharp. Once I saw one guy in the Sunni mosque, who as I knew was Shi’a. So probably until it is not declared loudly, it makes no difference for anybody. And not all the Sunnis are so hostile and pay much attention to this difference. A foreign Sunni Muslim Farid was claiming, that “there shouldn’t be any differentiation among Sunni and Shi’a. It is not a question of religion. This was only made by authorities just to make people fight. We believe the same God.” This man is the same nationality3 as the Shi’a guy, who dared to come to Sunni mosque and they are fellows outside the congregation.

3 The number of people of some nationalities is very small, in some cases only one or two, so I do not emphasize the exact nationality of the rare ones when it is not necessary in order to retain the anonymity of the informants.

30 EXTERNAL ADJUSTMENT: DIFFERENT PIETY, DIFFERENT

ADJUSTMENT

After the internal structure of community, the second direction of its function is its relation with the outside world, whether they are completely separate or are they integral part of the society. In Western countries with large Muslim minorities like Germany their social networks exist primarily within ethic groups with close boundaries. Since the Turkish migrant population has its own infrastructure in there, i.e. stores, hairdressers, medical doctors, advocates, banks, driving schools, etc. there is no need to have outer interaction. (Keim 2004: 76). Lithuanian migrants do not have anything similar and the interaction with wider society is necessary for them. People cannot strip themselves of their cultural equipment to step socially naked into neutral space. Rather, they view it, interpret it, from their own cultural perspectives. … they impute meaning to them in the light of their own experience and purposes. (Cohen 2003: 98) So how they feel emotionally integrated into society depends on this. “It is no longer adequate to regard “religion” simply as a type of private belief. In a political world where everyone is said to have the right to construct himself or herself, “religion” is now also a base for publicly contested identities. (Asad 1997: 195) According to this statement a strive for legitimacy and adaptation to wider Lithuanian society is mandatory for Lithuanian Muslims. But not only the Muslims have to find ways to adjust to a non Muslim society, the society must get accustomed to have different members inside it. “The scholarly emphasis on how Islam is adapting should be balanced with how some Muslims regard this adaptation as an integral part of Islamic tradition as simultaneously universal and flexible.” (Yükleyen 2006: 2) The boundaries are inherently oppositional, almost any matter of perceived difference between community and the outside world can be rendered symbolically as a resource of its boundary. (Cohen 2003: 117) R. M. Abusharaf quotes Anthony Richmond who defines adaptation as “the mutual interaction of individuals and collectivities and their responses to particular social and physical environments. (Abusharaf 1998: 250) Adaptive strategies are effective mechanisms for gaining legitimacy in the host society. (ibid. 251)

31 Islamic communities that are more open to feedback from the grass-roots level, to interacting with the “other,” and that have a decentralized organizational structure are more adaptive. In contrast, Islamic communities that have a top-down approach to decision-making, that are inward-oriented and avoid engagement with outsiders, and that have centralized social structure are less adaptive to local conditions. (Yükleyen 2006: 45)

As it was shown in previous chapters the structure of Lithuanian Muslim congregation have more features of the first model hens they are more likely to have easier adjustment to non Muslim society. T. Asad looks at this question from the reverse side. He argues, that now Muslims are continually denounced for patriarchal families, the ritual slaughter of animals, the legal status of women with regard to marriage and divorce, etc. (Asad 1997: 194) And all these are very tenacious traditions and cannot be changed easily or during short period of time. T. Asad notices, that it is often asked whether Muslim communities can really adjust to Europe. The question is more rarely raised as to whether the institutions and ideologies of Europe can adjust to a modern world of which culturally diverse immigrants are an integral part. Europeans were, after all, ready to change their attitudes to accommodate Jewish communities with an unprecedented respect. (Asad 1997: 194) So the process should be mutual, not only Muslims are responsible for that.

Different definition of a Muslim

C. Geertz defines religion as:

(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic. (Geertz 2005: 101)

Following his definition religiosity cannot be disconnected from mundane life. “To be pious is not to be performing something we would call an act of piety, but to be liable to perform such acts” (ibid. 100) and every person choose different level of this.

32 All the Muslims know that there are five pillars on which Islam is based: profession of faith, prayers, paying of alms, fasting during Ramadan and Pilgrimage to Mecca. And that is the prime resource for a definition of what it means to be a Muslim. The least what they have to do is to pray.

Total belief is problematic in at least two ways: firstly, as most religious Muslims are well aware, given the constrains of an imperfect world a life fully determined by Muslim piety is scarcely ever achieved; and, secondly, it is hardly possible for a large community to agree upon which shape this total commitment should take given the famously opaque aspects of the Qur’anic revelation. (Henkel 2005: 501)

Prescribed and achieved status, i.e. whether they “were born” Muslims or voluntarily converted to Islam determines how hard and without exceptions they try to fully accomplish Islamic rules. Converts have problems of authenticating themselves as “Muslims” with relation to the Muslim field because they enter the field as outsiders, and thus have to prove their identity as “Muslims.”(Jensen 2006: 645) The newly converted kind of "grow" themselves as Muslims and those who have Muslim background knows that their status will not fade itself, they will always remain Muslims regardless of their actions. There is a even a joke in social sciences that “the newly converted suffer from an illness referred to as convertitis, which is an allusion to the generally assumed pathological nature of the conversion, and also a partial affirmation of this.” ( ibid. 646) Both, new Lithuanian converts and people from Islamic countries like to compare Islam in Lithuania and in Islam predominant countries. While foreigners have empirical knowledge of that, Lithuanian converts have a blur image of it which they have built from books, other people’s stories, short tourist trips to Middle East countries or other distant resources. It is obvious that there is a difference between to know and to have information. I observed these differences and investigated how it impacts the relations with other Muslim and non Muslim people in Lithuania and the adaptation to the environment in general. I did not gather much data and the answers vary from very positive attitude and relations with outer society to very hostile ones and there are not many coinciding answers. But it seems that the levels of the adjustment of these different subgroups are also different. Lithuanian women, who converted to Islam strive to follow the Islamic rules extremely strictly and they have most difficulties to live in outer Lithuanian society. For example, music is considered not good in Islam, so Lithuanian convert Natali does not let herself listen to, although she admitted that she really used to like music before the conversion. Of course statements like this one may look weird

33 and create suspicions among people around her. Nobody from my foreign interlocutors keeps this restriction. Tatars are very much assimilated with ethnic Lithuanians so they are not much different and do not seem to have any specific differences because they are “old” Muslims in Lithuania. Though older Tatars also had painful experiences but it was more because of ethnic reasons. The converts and the foreigners are the “new” things, so their adjustment is currently in process.

Middle Easterners

T. Asad complains that Islam, presented as a “religious civilization,” is a construct not only of the media but also of intellectual discourse. That is the discourse in which the rich and diverse history of Muslim societies across three continents and one-and-a-half millennia is reduced to the essential principles of a distinctive “religious civilization”. (Asad 1997: 188) Anyhow it is not only a definition of Westerners. Immigrants from the Middle East think similarly. Many of my foreign interlocutors tended to indicate differences between Lithuania and their countries of origin as cultural. Foreign Muslims have not only a feeling of different religion, but also a common understanding of different culture, which they prescribe as Muslim thing, i.e. Muslim culture. “Here many things are different. Well, here is different culture, not like in Muslim countries”. (Khalil, 20) “Life here is different. Different culture, tradition… But we all are people.” (Amid, 24) “Whether the “outcome” of Islamic reinterpretation helps the community to adapt to the European setting or not depends on how their religious authority is constructed.” (Yükleyen 2006: 10) The majority of foreign Muslims in Lithuania know that they are here only temporarily so there is no need to recreate or reconstruct something, so it is everybody’s personal choice how much flexible they want to be in order to adjust better in the new environment. They do not even like to support the common image about very strict life in Islamic countries which many Western people have. People from Islamic countries, at least those who agreed to talk or give interview, do not seem to be very fundamental, they tend to reduce their expectations from other people and to make some exceptions in their own behavior and they were claiming to have less problems while interacting with non Muslim Lithuanian people. Religious community is not only for religion, it also can have a lot of secondary functions and meanings, especially if it is dislocated from its usual environment. Religion cannot be transmitted from

34 one place to another and kept as it used to be as mundane life impacts religious life and religiosity changes more according to mundane than vice versa.

Islam will always be the same, it will never change. And Muslims are Muslims. Many Muslims are just performing now, but it is not possible to perform against God. Many times I have seen, they just come here and the first thing what they try to do is to try alcohol. Because in there [Islamic countries] they are not allowed to do that. But not they inhibit themselves, but somebody else prohibits them. (Farid, 32)

Young Arabic Muslims admitted that after they came to Lithuania they started to do things, what they did not do in their home countries, like to have close relationships with girls although “people don’t do this in Arabic countries. And it is better there…” (Amid, 24) But the question about the paradox why they choose to follow the European style if they do not like it remained unanswered. The majority of the interlocutors thought, that it is almost no matter how many Islamic rules and norms somebody breaks, he still remains a Muslim, though “a bad Muslim”. And some of them are not afraid or ashamed to call themselves “bad Muslims”. If they do something what is forbidden, they can do sins but ask God for forgiveness.

It is not mandatory to go to the mosque. If once one has honestly admitted that there is only one God, so he is Muslim. And no matter what he does, he is a Muslim. That’s it. If I don’t go to a mosque, but I have admitted it I am a Muslim. And I can do everything what’s bad in Islam, drink alcohol, go with women, whatever… but I will still be a Muslim. Just a bad Muslim. (Khalil, 20)

“We Muslims like to say proudly that one or another thing is not allowed for us because we are Muslims. But many people do not know why that is not allowed.” (Farid, 32) So he says that not all the obstacles and complains are objective reality, some of them are caused only by a wish to show up. Alcohol consuming is forbidden in Islam, as well as making, trading or anything else related to it. Paradoxically, one man works in the alcohol section in one supermarket. But he just smiled at the fact that it is haram for him. So the social conditions dictate what he can do, and the Islamic prohibitions can easily be crossed. Even though many young Muslims start to consume alcohol when they start living in the West but most of my interlocutors still had very negative opinions about alcohol and its consumers. “If a

35 Muslim drinks alcohol, doesn’t go to the mosque he still is a Muslim, only he is a Muslim who makes mistakes”. (Amid, 24) However, more devote foreign Muslims do not want to flow with the whole western society and keeps more restrictions to themselves: “I will go back to Egypt for the Ramadan. I will loose a lot of money, but I have to do that. Here women walk dressed with little clothes. I cannot look at woman’s body during Ramadan”. (Fadi 41) They do not hide that they know the common stereotypes about Muslims which non Muslims have. “I know that many people speak bad things about us here but nobody ever told me anything to the face.” (Aban, 39). Once Islom leaned towards me and whispered to my ear:

Are you a Muslim?” After I wandered, why he asks that whispering, he explained: “I thought that maybe you are ashamed of that”. “are you ashamed” – wondered I. “No, I am not. I can tell everybody that I am a Muslim. But I though that maybe you were ashamed. I thought that this question would make you feel embarrassed. Because many people here don’t like Muslim. Think that they are terrorists, fundamentalists. (H46)

Foreign Muslims try to make the image of Muslims better. “A Lithuanian is a friend for as. We have to help him, give information”. (Amid, 24) he means to inform ethnic Lithuanians about Islam. The research of R. M. Abusharaf shows how religious life is modified because of mundane life. Extra mission of the congregation was to decrease the negative image of Muslims in North America and e.g. soup kitchen program for the poor of any religious origin in Brooklyn after Ramadan fasting was one of the ways to do it. (Abusharaf 1998) A Pakistani man told that few years ago they did something similar here in Lithuania, he together with his fellows used to do a common Islamic missionary work dawah which is invitation to Islam among Lithuanians not so much with a purpose to recruit them, but to make them familiar with Islam and so to make the image of Muslims better. Interfaith dialogue has created an outward orientation. This makes the boundaries of their community penetrable because the community seeks new followers and activists, which makes it welcoming. (Yükleyen 2006: 14) The moral conflicts and mismatch comes not from religious differences but from the behavior. Most of the Muslims can easily deal with the fact that Lithuanians are Christian, but they cannot understand and accept some of the Lithuanian habits. “Drunk people say bad words but we simply don’t say anything back to them”. (Amid, 24) It is not visible from outside if a person is a Muslim. So in this case the clash is not based on religiosity but more on racism and xenophobia.

36 Foreigners claim to have non conflicting interaction with locals but most of them do not have close relations with locals except their spouses’ family members and they perceive “not having conflicting relations” as having “good relations”. Although when speaking about their interaction with outer non Muslim Lithuanian society, they often simply mixed the relations with vast society and a tiny group of individuals, who are around them, so they described the Lithuanian society as very hospitable for them. “I have no problem here, for example my wife’s brother treats me very well” says Yasser, who have lived in Lithuania only few months before the interview. He does not pay attention that this case is very specific family linkage and not a general interaction with a random member of society and that his relations with his brother in law does not reflect the wider society. Three months after my research was finished I got an email from him saying “I still have no friends”. One of the biggest tribulations of foreigners is lonesomeness and the lack of personal relations with locals. A refugee form Central Asia Islom complained that it is boring to live in here because they do not have any friends. Coworkers do not become friends and there are not many more occasions to meet other people. The barrier of language also prevents the new foreigners from better relations with the local. Yasser, who were complaining in an e-mail that he did not find any Lithuanian friends for long time blamed inability to speak Lithuanian language as the main reason for that. These examples show that religion is not the main obstacle preventing from interaction.

Lithuanian convert women

“Contrastive marking is exactly what makes the notion of “boundary” so central to an understanding of community. Looking outwards across the boundary, people construct what they see in terms of their own stereotypes, this outward view forming a “self-reflexive portion” of their culture.” (Cohen 2003: 109) there are no ostensive boundaries between ethnic Lithuanian converts to Islam and the rest of ethnic Lithuanians but practically they exist. The majority of Lithuanian converts are young women. This tendency is not specific for Lithuania anyhow, for example in Denmark the majority of first converts were also women in their 20ties marrying immigrants with Muslim backgrounds and they still are majority of converts. (Jensen 2006: 644) These women are transiting from one status to a new one, shaping their new identity and

37 struggling with specific obstacles caused by the conversion, e.g. facing hostility from major Lithuanian society, broken linkages with old friends and family members, bureaucratic obstacles, etc. If “Islam” abroad is represented as a threat to secular liberal symbols, then Muslims living in the West must at the very least be regarded with suspicion [… to ] see the “Islamic-Arab world” as pushing its foreign religious identity into Europe through migration. (Asad 1997: 186) Newcomers bring this to European societies and the converts and their children are like proves for this. These women are also facing a hostile attitude towards them and their new families. A Lithuanian women Regina, who converted few yes after the marriage with a Pakistani man, told how difficult it was to get a residence permit for her husband in Lithuania. The migration office did not even want to validate her marriage. “We were thinking to go to live in some other country”. “they don’t want Muslims here and that’s it”. Beside the obstacles of the laws the clerk of civil registration office did not even try to hide his hostile attitude to her and her Pakistani husband: “he told me: why do you all drag them [foreign men] here? You go ant live there [foreign countries] with them. Don’t drag them here.” (Regina, 38) Besides, she lives in a small town and does not personally know any other Muslim people her in Lithuania and does not have anybody to share her tribulations with. Beside the hostility of officialdom and random society members, some of them have to endure the negative reactions of the close, which is probably much more painful for them than any negative reaction from other people. One of my interlocutors who converted to Islam after she met her current fiancé claimed that she had not told any of her friends about the conversion. Later she even got tears in her eyes, while telling about the tension between her and her family after she converted:

My family reacted very badly. I have to hide it. I am not allowed to talk about Islam to any of our relatives. They call it the worst thing that I could ever do to our family. My mother even told me: “you choose, whether us or Islam.” But in Islam there is a rule that you have to respect your parents and to listen to what they say and not to hurt them. So it is better to keep this secret. (Aisha, 22)

Even those Lithuanian girls, who do not choose to become Muslims even though they marry or have close relations to Muslim men, are also under the social pressure:

I haven’t told my family that I am dating a Muslim man. They have the same attitude as many others do here in Lithuania. They call them bad names and say that those Lithuanian women who get married to Muslim men are totally stupid and that they don’t respect and betray our nation and are spoiling it by giving birth to colored children. (Greta, 25)

38

Yet, the two cases of the social pressure of these three are caused by racist and xenophobic biases more than religion differences and only one is purely connected to religion. The complaint of Alma also shows the racist reactions: “people always stare at us because skin color cannot be hided. It is hard to get accustomed to those staring. But we have to”. (Alma, 32) Almost all the women who had Middle Eastern husbands were mentioning this problem. As T. Asad notices one of the reasons why Islam is not welcomed in Western societies is a believe about extremely suppressed women in Muslim families. So those women who are married to Muslim men are feeling this bias and negative sympathy and even offences about their marital status. They are seen as the first victims of Islamic brain wash. Whereas it is not true, that non Muslim women must convert to Islam if they want to marry Muslim men, so their conversions were their voluntary decisions. Hens, these attempts ant their consequences raise a very important question, what are the reasons why they do that: first, why they convert at all and second, why they choose to work so hard building a new identity and struggling with such huge obstacles, like hostility of major society and even the abandonment of their families? One explanation can be that marriage with Muslim men for some of them is the only way not to stay old-maids. Being an old-maid is not a desirable status in Lithuanian society but being a wife of a Muslim or “colored” man is not a good status as well. “I am at least married, even though to an Arabic man.” (Alma 32) In this statement of hers the words “at least” and “even though” does not seem as if her husband is the best option even for her. Another interlocutor’s respond to the question about her age had a quite similar meaning: “I am 28. If I had been waiting for a Lithuanian man, I would probably have turned 35 as an old-maid.” (Amina, 28) But this explanation does not apply to all of them, as not all of them chose to convert to Islam because of a marriage. Ant the fact that there are some women who have converted although they did not get married to Muslim husbands shows that the conversion is not simply a price to change a marital status. While many girls from Muslim families in the West try to rebel against traditional conception of Muslim family, Lithuanian converts obey to follow it: “When you get married your husband becomes supreme for you. And you have to listen to him and obey” (Natali, 25), at the time of this conversation she was just planning her wedding in several months. “Sometimes happens that girls don’t even see their parents anymore after they get married.” (Amina, 28) This was said in a very calm voice as if this habit or tradition does not surprised her at all and she would not mind to be separated from her family for forever.

39 They explain an excuse the lower status of Muslim women by the tradition which they read about in Qu’ran, or Hadith, or Sunna. They are satisfied with a very ancient tradition, how women are supposed to behave in general and what status they get after they get married. They admit that women have to be obedient to their men. An obvious example of man’s control over woman was an unpleasant event, when one of my interlocutors invited me as a guest to their home to get an interview, but after she spoke with her husband who was strictly against my questions and observations she changed her mind absolutely. The more strong loyalty also depends on if they have children or not. Probably because of if a woman has for example three children she is very dependent on her husband. The hostility of society may be the factor causing there obedience to their husbands because the new family becomes the only shelter from that. Though the level of obedience also depend on the way, how a woman came to Islam. Laura who is a young single woman at her early twenties has different opinion about woman’s status in Muslim families. So her Western feministic attitude is still strong and she was claiming that she would never obey the traditional rules applied for woman, because she is capable to live independently. The great majority of Lithuanian converts told that first they started to read Qu’ran or somebody told a lot about them and they believed that it is true and liked it as a religion so the main stimulus for conversion was religious, though most of the cases influenced by somebody, i.e. Muslim men. Sometimes the Muslim communities expand through their social organization, i.e. the committed followers invite new members through their personal networks of friends, neighbors, relatives, and colleagues. (Yükleyen 2006: 17) Non of my interlocutors had chosen this path because of the influence of any local friends of theirs, except of foreign men with whom they had romantic relations. “I met a boyfriend and he started to tell very nice stories about Islam. And I liked that very much. Also he doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke…” (Aisha, 22) The previous religious experiences are different. Majority of them were not devout Christians before the conversion. Amina was a desperate searcher and had tried a lot of different religious movements. Many of these women told me about occasions, when they come to the mosque on Saturdays or Sundays to meet and simply to drink tea or to chat. Men are also sometimes gathering in the mosque on weekends to read Qu’ran, but these women cannot read Arabic, so their gatherings have purely socializing purpose. American anthropologist R. M. Abusharaf who made an observation among Muslim immigrant women in New York explained that women like to gather together because such

40 gatherings help to eliminate cultural isolation in immigration. (Abusharaf 1998: 250) Almost all the women who come to the mosque are Lithuanians or Lithuanian Tatars, thus born and living in Lithuania, therefore they should have no reason to suffer discrimination and the lack of social connections. But this can also be caused by the need for common interests and similar problems, conversation topics, which arises from the fact that these women if they live in strict accordance with Islamic rules and norms and could potentially lose part of the general topics of interest and chat with the non Muslim women majority. This gives an assumption that these women are experiencing reduced relations with non Muslim society members. Laura explains how it happens:

It is even mandatory to keep relationships with other Muslim people. Other wise you will start to participate in other people’s gatherings and you may not even notice how you will start to drink alcohol, to eat everything unattentively and you will get too far from Islamic way of life. (Laura, 24)

She is claiming that too much connection with none Muslim people is a latent threat to their straight Islamic path especially while it is so new and fragile. But according to her, the separation with non Muslim people happens unwillingly as well:

If you used to have a lifestyle full of clubs and parties and now you don’t do that anymore, so you automatically fall out of that company. Sometimes it happens that other people think that you are not interested in something what they do. It’s kind of misunderstanding.” (Laura, 24)

While Laura’s separation is happening slightly, another interlocutor’s way was much more radical: .“My friends used to tell me: “I am afraid of your husband. When does he leave from home? When he leaves, then we will come.” So I told them: “You better don’t come at all”. (Alma, 32) Analyzing the London Muslims, C. Peach raises the question which factor is more unifying: ethnicity or religion; that is whether people feel more benevolence to their nationals believing in another religion or faith brothers and sisters from other nations. (Peach 2006: 366) Lithuanian case shows that not only a common religion may eliminate ethnic differences, but the reverse process is also possible when the religious aspect divide one ethnic group into separate parts. A Lithuanian woman Alma who is married to Lebanese husband says: "Oh, those Lithuanians they think up and talk a lot of nonsense. That the Arabs out there… they are wild, only walking behind camels across the deserts and

41 so on…"Although she is a Lithuanian woman she talks about other Lithuanians referring to them as “those Lithuanians” so she is separating herself from non Muslim Lithuanians as if they and her are not the same people. “Symbolic nature of the opposition means that people can think themselves into difference.” (Cohen 2003: 117) If they come from a society which is against Islam, so now they are against the same society too. She morally alienated herself form Lithuanians referring to them as “those Lithuanians”. “The motivation of community assertiveness, we may note that this stimulus may not necessarily derive from any articulate and committed sense of the inherent character of a community, but, rather, from a felt need to discriminate it from some other entity.” (Cohen 2003: 110) Because of negative reactions to her husband and the twits of some Lithuanians towards her family she feels closer to Arabic people: “when they start swearing on me, I star swearing on them too. They should better look at themselves, all drunk and degrading. It is still a long long way for them to be like Arabs.” (Alma, 32) Because of strong sexual segregation in the congregation especially regarding married women, she does not personally know other Arabic people except her husband, but she generalizes all of them as opposite to Lithuanians and much better. Being familiar to the public opinion makes them hostile towards outsiders. “It really irritates when somebody comes or calls to ask something. The community has its secrets”. (Alma 32) According to Pitt-Rivers quoted by A. Cohen, “to give away information about your affairs puts you in a weak position, for you can no longer keep the other man guessing.” (Cohen 2003: 112) It seems that they had taught themselves the rules of public discourse. They expect negative reactions from other people and act according to that causing a tension between them and non Muslim. Though the imam’s position is opposite: “We are open for everybody. We don’t have any secrets.” I hypothesize that the stronger “fundamentalism” among Lithuanian women could be explained by the tnotion of achieved and ascribed statuses, i.e. because that they do not have Islamic roots, they try to increase their Muslimity as strongly as they can probably in order not to be excluded from the community as not proper Muslims. But this makes their lives very complicated as they get involved only into the subcommunity of Muslim women of Lithuanian origin, but they still stay excluded from the whole international Muslim community of Lithuania, because there are almost no Middle Eastern women and because of the gender segregation they cannot socialize with Middle Eastern men. However, it cannot be generalized for too much, because these women who converted to Islam but did not get extremely pious did not come to the view of the research and remained unobserved. Besides, all the interviewed converts were only women and no men which makes the picture incomplete.

42

Common mundane discomfort

The self discipline and inhibition of Muslims are not the only crucial things. There are many obstacles which do not depend on them. Lithuanian Muslims suffer from some difficulties which are very specific and purely related with their religion inconveniences of everyday life. The Lithuanian Muslims’ relations with the environment and non Muslim majority are quite controversial. The imam was speaking about the whole congregation:

We as Muslims have lived in Lithuania for more than 600 years. We have a good reputation. [...] Lithuania is our country, here is our homeland. Muslims have a reputation here in Lithuania. The religious issue was not raised and everybody lived together very well. Now the global issues somehow replace other people's opinions. When they know that Islam has been in Lithuania for so many years they don’t know how to react." (The imam of the mosque of Kaunas)

Here he appeals to the romantic past, and this, according to A. Cohen, is an attempt to support the present by selectively emphasizing the good periods and it is usually not objective. “For most people […] the past is transmitted only selectively according to contemporary purposes, and recalled selectively without historiographical rigour” (Cohen 2003: 101) Symbolic expression of community refers to a putative past of tradition. (ibid. 98) In deed, Tatars are a part of the history of Lithuania, they contributed to the glorious stage of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Central Bank of Lithuania even has issued a special commemorative coin “600th anniversary of Karaites and Tatar resettlement in Lithuania”. According to the theoretical pattern of A. Cohen, the Tatar historical presence in Lithuania should facilitate the adaptation of Muslims because they have a symbolic content as a "traditional" community (ibid. 101). However, only Tatars have the historical ties with Lithuania not Turks, Syrians, Lebanese and all the rest. Thus, the symbolic legitimacy of the Lithuanian Tatars status is higher than of the new immigrants. However, non of the newcomers interlocutors have mentioned this. One of the reasons why Muslims did not have big problems being accepted in USA was because majority of the North Americans were highly religious following the faiths of Abrahamic

43 origin which Islam is as well. (Abusharaf 1998: 252) The vast majority of Lithuanian society is not highly pious in Christianity so much more pious Muslims seem to be too fundamental for most of them. And this mismatch is mutual as it was discussed in a previous chapter. Lithuania currently has 4 mosques, but only the mosque of Kaunas is active all year around. Besides, it is the only mosque in an urban area. But the fact that it was built in the interwar period prevented the Lithuanian Muslims from experiencing public hostility which can occur in case of an attempt to build a new mosque. (Maussen 2005: 4), However Lithuanian Muslims want to rebuild a mosque in Vilnius Lukiškės Square which was demolished by the Soviets. The imam of Kaunas mosque calls it "a desire to restore the historical truth." As the Lithuanian Tatars want to rebuild in the same place where it was before but because of incredible value of the land in Vilnius and other political nuances the plot in Lukiškės Square can not be recovered, so this issue is frozen. But according to the observations of M. Maussen the construction of new mosques could potentially start to change the present quite calm relations between Lithuanian Muslims and the rest of society, particularly the Vilnius government officials and ordinary residents of Vilnius. Although imam does not have any preferences for the style and appearance of the building: “we don’t care how it will look like, if it will be like the previous one or new styled, there is no difference”. M. Maussen analyzing the works of other "islamologists" notes that the Muslim communities in France and the Netherlands are encouraged to build a "new style", modern mosques, because they symbolically demonstrate a desire to integrate into local society. (ibid.) However this claim can not be automatically assigned to Lithuanian case as this kind of pliancy to architecture can be caused simply by a wish to adapt to not very favorable circumstances, such as the lack of financial resources, legal regulations of new constructions, etc. Maybe it is better to have a new mosque no matter what kind it is than not to have any at all. Although the imam tells about good relations with the outside world, but it is obvious that Lithuanian Muslims suffer from the mass media:

I have heard all kinds of dumb things about Islam on mass media. An editor says to his journalist: "I heard there is something going on, go write something." He calls... a complete dumb, who haven’t ever written, thought, spoken about that and he tries to write something on Islam. This is absurd. [...] Journalists are usually looking for cavils, for sensations. They don’t write the truth, they write what they are told to write, usually. They are not neutral. [...] They come and try to compromise with some tricky question. [...] there was a case, they picked up from somewhere as if there were some terrorists or something... interviewed me, and turned

44 everything out as they wanted. Made a sensation of a zero, of nothing… (The imam of the mosque of Kaunas)

Here the imam has in mind the local Lithuanian mass media. However, the Lithuanian media is not so independent as to be criticized for the creation of negative image of Muslims. It rather simply follows the general global information selection model. American anthropologist T. Asad reviewed articles of the international newspaper The Guardian Weekly in 1994 and revealed that the headlines show a clear bias how the mass media shapes the image of Muslims in the eyes of consumers, and assumes that this is because of the fact that politicians are afraid of Muslim immigrants disloyalty to western governments and to prevent that they need mass media to form the appropriate negative attitude towards the Muslims in general in advance. (Asad 1997: 186 - 187) Other Muslims also see this tendency and are upset by that:

Crimes are not referred to particular nation but to Islam. When somebody from those [Muslim] countries makes something wrong this is highlighted: oh, a Muslim did that, not a Tunisian, Egyptian or someone else but a Muslim. And when a Christian makes something bad it is not highlighted that a Christian did that, the nationality is written. (Monika, 73)

The life of Lithuanian Muslims is complicated not only by the media, but also by the other people, more precisely the reactions of non-Muslims. Natali complained:

It is very difficult to be a Muslim in Lithuania. Here we feel intolerance. For example, if a girl walks with some darker skinned man they always receive variety of replicas. So the visitors from the East never walk alone [...] for the security. Women don’t wear those [Islamic] clothes in public, only those who walk with there husbands. I would like to wear it always but I can’t because I work, it would create many problems. (Natali, 25)

“Even after having taken the shahada, some converts exhibit a certain hesitation to identify themselves with the term “Muslim.” This ambiguity reflects an awareness of having converted to a religion that in [local] public discourse is often defined as highly problematic.” (Jensen 2006: 645) Natali a young girl at her middle twenties, although half Lithuanian, half Tatar as a child even secretly baptized by her mother now is very committed to Islam: she tries to participate in the prayer whenever she can, reads a lot of literature about Islam, is learning Arabic, trying to live according to Islam training and rules, dos not drink alcohol, does not put on make-up, fasts during Ramadan month and in

45 the beginning of my research period was engaged with a Muslim man. Though she is really a very devout Muslim she comes to the mosque in her casual clothes and brings her beautiful sky-blue Hijab in a plastic bag. She puts it on inside of the mosque, covering her whole body except the face and palms. After the prayer she takes it off and carefully puts it back into the bag and kind of excuses herself with a deep breath: “so this is how strong my faith is. If I were stronger, I would come and leave like this [wearing Islamic clothing]”. (Natali, 25) “While some converts mask their identities as Muslims, e.g., by not wearing any outer signs of their conversion, and emphasize continuity to their “former” identities, other converts appear to be very intentional in showing off their new identities as Muslims.” (ibid. 645) So Natali would like to be one of those, but she is afraid. But not only Lithuanian converts do that. One young Turkish student also used to carry her Islamic clothes in a plastic bag. Other foreign women admitted, that people were staring at them in the beginning because of their clothing, so they moderated there appearance. Though in Western countries many Muslim women wearing there traditional clothes even Niqab can be seen and they are not ashamed or embarrassed to look like that, but there is a difference of quantity of Muslim women here and there. Those who live in Western Europe can feel morally stronger because of the larger number of them. Hijab is one of the most obvious signs of Islam in the West and it is often perceived as a proof of oppressed, silenced, obedient, women. But the converts put it on voluntarily. The imam of the mosque explained why there is such a big gap between perception of hijab between Muslims and non Muslims:

Because women in the West are oppressed and were striving to get out of it for long. And when they see the clothing of Muslim women they imagine that it is the same as in that time when they were oppressed in Europe. National Lithuanian clothing was the same as Islamic. They think that modern times emancipated them. Not at all. Only made them work like horses. Now they make asphalt and all the hard works. (The imam of the mosque of Kaunas)

Wearing a hijab gives devote Muslim women more self-esteem because some of them think that Islam is the highest level of religion so they are at the higher level of society as well. (Lau 2007) So the situation when they cannot wear Hijab on streets in Lithuania can be frustrating and emotionally harmful for them because they can no longer believe that hijab is good for them as Islam teaches. (Abu-Lughod 2006) And even if the Lithuanian Muslims are not seeking for any pride, it was most

46 frequently mentioned complaint. Besides, they cannot buy Islamic clothes in Lithuania and have to order them in internet or bring from foreign countries. Sometimes one man used to come to the mosque dressed in traditional fashion for Afghanistan or Pakistan peoples, wearing a pale yellowish dark embroidered fabric, only a covering cap, bright, dark green plant ornaments embroidered vest, in addition, he has a very long and luxuriant beard which for Lithuanian men is very unusual. He comes and leaves wearing these clothes so it is clear that he does not attempt to hide his ethnic and religious identity. As noted by some Islamic scholars investigating, long beards are one of the distinguishing features of radical Islam. (Yükleyen 2006, 35) So it may be that the appearance of this man is a way for him to show his identity. Many of the interlocutors were complaining about the mundane difficulties such as no places to buy specific goods, e. g. halal meat or clothing for women, etc. In Western European countries these goods are provided by Muslims themselves but here in Lithuania nobody wanted to start such business. Maybe it is because that they are here just temporarily, wiling to return to their countries or to reemigrate further to Western European countries. In addition to a well-known fact that pork is haram (forbidden) for Muslims there are some more food restrictions. Lithuanian Muslims do not have places to buy halal (allowed) meat produced in accordance with the rules, i.e. draining it of all its blood, mentioning the name of God during the process, and so on. (Al-Karadawi 2005: 63-66) So they either have to make a sin against their faith or to become vegetarians against their own will. The zealous Muslim Natali complained:

Since February I live without meat. But I already want to have some very much! Every time I see some I want to grab it like this [she widely spread her hands and fingers to show how]. During the wedding I will pick the biggest piece and eat for all those months and few months forward. (Natali, 25)

This problem is especially sharp when it regards children:

I wanted to put him [her 3 years old son] to a kindergarten. But then we had to take him back. He is too small [3 years] and he does not understand yet. But our people believe that if a child would eat pork, a thief or something else evil can turn of him. This is a very dire problem. I have relatives in Sweden, so they said that there are separate sections for Muslim children in their. Even in prisons they have different sections. (Ulyana, 38)

47 Some immigrant Muslim women mentioned that they were buying meet from some Arabic man who makes it halal so they need to have a very specific network, “a meat network”. A refugee from Central Asia Ulyana told, that even in the refugee center of Pabradė they used to get food made of pork, though the majority of refugees are Muslim. If it was not done on purpose for a simple disrespect of their beliefs and traditions, then this case shows the ignorance and the lack of general knowledge about Islam of Lithuanian social workers which makes them not capable to deal with Muslim people properly. The holy day in Islam is Friday and it is a labor day in Lithuania so workers not always can participate in the prayer, especially if they live in other town than Kaunas and it takes half of a day for them to come to Kaunas and to go back home. Not always they can get a free day or several hours to come. One Uzbek man who used to come every Friday did not show up even a single time after he got a new job. “In the clearly demarcated time-space of the prayer, a person becomes a Muslim practitioner and ceases to be an office clerk. […] the salat introduces a break between the flow of everyday life and a time- space ideally characterized by pure Islamic practice.” (Henkel 2005: 497) In Muslim countries people just come by to a mosque, here they had to plan, prepare, leave time for it and if they live in other cities of Lithuania, it takes almost the whole day to get to the mosque and is very uncomfortable and also looses its cosmologic meaning to do it in particular time, because the trip distorts the whole timeline of the day. However, they are capable to realize the changed conditions and are flexible according to them:

It doesn’t mean anything if someone doesn’t go to the mosque. It is not mandatory to go to the mosque. The government is not Islamic in Lithuania. And we have to listen to the local government. Friday is a working day in Lithuania and we have to obey that. (Farid, 32)

Many of Lithuanian Muslims have personal relations with Muslim people in other European countries and they like to compare the condition in Lithuania and in other countries and all of them were saying with a hope and envy, that the life of Western Muslims is better than here. Even the Mufti from Turkey encouraged “it is hard to follow the Islamic path here. But those who follow will be rewarded even more than those for whom it was easy”.

48 CONCLUSIONS

The Lithuanian Muslim community is very fragmented, consisting of many ethnic groups and the loudly declared "Islamic brotherhood" only partly eliminates those differences. The fact that only one mosque is open increases the need to create closer interactions. However, it is not simply a mechanically connected community emerging only out of particular circumstances, there are “live” linkages among its members. Immigrants from Muslim countries are the carriers of more authentic knowledge. Meanwhile, the historical presence of Muslims in Lithuania creates a friendlier environment for the newcomers to adapt here and gives the administrative legal status of their (only Sunni) religious beliefs. Islam as a religious identity does not have a strong enough gravitational force to form a cohesive group in which ethnic, linguistic, social status or other differences are erased. Muslims of Lithuania tend to cluster into small subgroups around some particular equivalent, e.g. ethnic origin, gender, social position, etc. They are together in the mosque and they pray all together, but when they go out from it and come back to their mundane lives they are separate people in their personal lives and matters. It is a place and an occasion to meet somebody and to socialize for those who have limited occasions to meet new people but it is just one in a row of such places and does not have special obligatory function for making special close relations among its visitors. Beside the obvious differences among them (e.g. ethnic) they are different in how they perceive themselves and how they define what it means to be a Muslim. This self perception impacts the relations with other Muslim and non Muslim people in Lithuania and the adaptation to the environment in general. The patterns and levels of both internal and external adjustment show that religion is only one factor and absolutely not a crucial one. Religious identity only gives a frame for the social interaction which is filled with many secondary aspects of social life. Lithuanian women, who have converted to Islam, strive to follow the Islamic rules extremely strictly and thereby they seem to have the most difficulties living in Lithuanian society. People from Islamic countries do not seem to be so fundamental. They tend to reduce their expectations from other people and to make some exceptions in their own behavior. And the foreigners were claiming to have fewer problems than the converts while interacting with non Muslim Lithuanian people.

49 The Lithuania Muslim community is very small, so researches made on them in Western countries varies so greatly in approach and quality that it often cannot be compared very well and perhaps it shows the community's peculiarity in a global context. But in spite of that Lithuanian Muslims suffer from similar problems as other Muslim in Western countries: negative images in the mass media, stereotyping and a xenophobic surrounding society, the inability to demonstrate their religious identity in public and administrative obstacles. Additional difficulty for Lithuanian case is the lack of infrastructure established and consumed by Muslim people. The Muslim community in Lithuania is a twofold minority – religious and ethnic – so almost any aspect of its existence and function are at least somewhat unusual and interesting. However, because of some specific characteristics of this community not all questions about them can be easily grasped and understood clearly by an outsider. Besides gender segregation in public also prevents researchers from observing some things, as well as linguistic limitations. This research was more panoramic including a lot of aspects of Muslim people everyday life. Every single of those aspects can be extended into more precise and deeper research.

50 SUMMARY

The theme of the anthropological research is “Internal linkages and external adjustment of Muslim people in Lithuania”. The aim of the research was to investigate, whether the Muslims of Lithuania aggregate into one solid community or stay segregated by the social differences among them and if they get isolated from the majority of society or is an integral part of it. The observations were done in the mosque of Kaunas and in The Red Cross Day Center for refugees. A total of 15 observations of Friday prayers were done during 4 months watching communal prayers and people’s behaviour before and after it. I was visiting The Red Cross Day Center for refugees in random times for more than a month. Overall I talked to 25 people: 13 men and 12 women; got 8 semi- structured interviews and the rest of the interlocutors were questioned during informal conversations. The first part of the analysis of the ethnographic data was focused on the inner structure and the pattern of community building among the members of the Muslim congregation in Lithuania. Beside the common attribute to each of the member, i.e. the statuses of a Muslim, all the members have some personal attributes which work as uniting linkages or separating boundaries. Some of the attributes work as linking equivalences with some members, but separates from others. So the construction of the community is complicated and multidimensional. The main equivalences which work both as linkages and separating boundaries are i.e. ethnicity, language and social status and gender and the members of the congregation cluster to small subunits according to one or several of those equivalences. The second part of the analysis was focused on external adjustment, i.e. the patterns and potential possibilities to adapt to new local conditions in host society. The ethnographic data showed that the level of adjustment depends on the flexibility of Muslim people and is different for foreigners from Islam predominant countries and Lithuanian converts. Because of the newly achieved status Lithuanian converts are more fundamental and due to this in many cases get excluded or self-excluded from Lithuanian society. Foreign Muslims are more flexible and have fewer difficulties with non Muslim society, but they also have less interaction with non Muslim Lithuanians in general. And mostly the clash between them and Lithuanians come because of racism and xenophobe. Common difficulties for both types of Muslims are infrastructural: difficult access to a mosque, lack of Islamic goods, a negative image of Muslims among non Muslims, bureaucratic obstacles.

Keywords: construction of community, internal linkages, equivalence, boundary, external adjustment.

51 SANTRAUKA

Antropologinio tyrimo tema yra „Lietuvos musulmonų tarpusavio ryšiai ir išorinis prisitaikymas“. Tyrimo tikslas buvo nustatyti, kaip funkcionuoja musulmonų bendruomenė Lietuvoje, ar Lietuvos musulmonai vienijasi į vieną tvirtą bendruomenę ar lieka susisegmentavę pagal kokius nors socialinius skirtumus ir kaip jie sugeba prisitaikyti prie nemusulmoniškosios Lietuvos visuomenės dalies – lieka atsiskyrę nuo daugumos ar į ją įsilieja. Palyginus su Vakarų valstybėmis, musulmonų Lietuvoje yra labai nedaug, galbūt dėl to jie nesulaukia susidomėjimo iš socialinių mokslų atstovų. Tačiau musulmonų egzistavimas ir daugėjimas nelabai toli, Vakarų Europoje – susilaukia labai daug paprastų lietuvių susidomėjimo ir dažniausiai negatyvių, šovinistinių, net rasistinių komentarų. Tai rodo, kad lietuviams musulmonai šalia jų yra aktuali tema. Tačiau tokie pasisakymai dažniausiai yra globalaus, retorinio lygio, mažai besisiejantys su realia Lietuvos situacija, nes musulmonų Lietuvoje situacija praktiškai yra nežinoma. Mano lauko tyrimo tikslas buvo pažiūrėti, kokia yra musulmonų bendruomenė Lietuvoje, iš ko ji susideda, kaip funkcionuoja ir kaip sugyvena su aplinka ir kaip prie jos prisitaiko. Pažvelgti į juos kaip į dvigubą mažumą: religinę bei dažnai kartu ir etninę, į su jų mažumos statusu susijusias iškylančias problemas ir neprobleminius reiškinius, tokius kaip bendruomenės sudėtis, tarpusavio santykiai, santykiai su išorine dauguma, bendruomenės dinamika, etc. Lietuvos musulmonų bendruomenė dar yra labai mažai ištirta, todėl nežinant bendro konteksto, griežtai koncentruotis ties kažkuriuo vienu jų gyvenimo aspektu būtų buvę sunku ir netgi netikslinga.

Lauko tyrimą atlikau religinėje Lietuvos musulmonų bendruomenėje Kauno mečetėje ir Lietuvos Raudonojo Kryžiaus pabėgėlių dienos centre. Iš viso kalbėjausi su 25 žmonėmis: 13 vyrais ir 12 moterų; gavau 8 pusiau struktūruotus interviu, kiti informantai buvo apklausiami neformalių pokalbių metu. Beveik visi pašnekovai pakliuvo į 20-40 metų amžiaus grupę, tik keturi buvo vyresnio amžiaus. Su kai kuriais informantais teko susitikti tik vieną karta, todėl jų pateikta informacija nėra labai vertinga, nes negalima tikėtis pasitikėjimo ir atvirumo iš žmogaus, sutikto pirmą kartą. Visi interviu ir pokalbiai vyko lietuvių, rusų arba anglų kalbomis.

52 Tyrimo metu naudojau tokius kokybinius etnografinius metodus: pusiau struktūruotą interviu, dalyvaujamąjį stebėjimą, tirštojo aprašymo metodą, laisvus pokalbius. Taip pat rėmiausi Statistikos departamento duomenimis apie etninę ir religinę gyventojų sudėtį. Tekste cituojamų ir minimų tyrimo dalyvių vardai dėl anonimiškumo yra pakeisti, atsižvelgiant į jų priklausomybę atskiroms etninės kilmės kategorijoms ir bandant tą skirtumą išlaikyti. Tik mečetės imamo interviu cituojamas ne anonimiškai, nes jis pats pageidavo būti minimas kaip oficialus asmuo. Teorinį tyrimo pagrindą sudaro ne tik socialinės antropologijos, bet ir kitų socialinių mokslų – sociologijos, socialinės geografijos, tarptautinių santykių – tyrimai ir veikalai. Naudota teorinė literatūra yra dviejų tipų: aprašanti musulmonų bendruomenių tyrimus Vakaruose (Abusharaf, Maussen, Peach, Yükleyen) bei bendro pobūdžio antropologiniai tekstai (Asad, Cohen, Kertzer). Pagrindinė teorinė medžiaga yra Anthony Cohen veikalas "Simbolinis bendruomenės kūrimas." (2003), nes jo teorija apima abi mano tyrimo analizės dalis, tiek vidinius bendruomenių barjerus, tiek išorinius. Musulmonų religinių bendruomenių religinio dalyvavimo svarbai pagrįsti pasitelkiami R. M. Abusharaf ir H. Henkel antropologiniai tekstai. Lietuvių atsivertėlių į islamą atvejui teoriškai paaiškinti pasitelktas Danijos atvejis, aprašytas danų antropologės Gudrun Jensen.

Etnografinių duomenų analizė perskirta į dvi stambias dalis. Pirmoji dalis analizuoja ir aprašo vidinius bendruomenės ryšius, o antroji – išorinio prisitaikymo lygius ir modelius.

Pirmoje dalyje analizuojant etnografinius duomenis daugiausia dėmesio skirta Lietuvos musulmonų bendrijos vidinei struktūrai ir bendruomenės kūrimo modeliams. Šalia visiems bendro bruožo, t.y. musulmono statuso, visi šie žmonės turi tam tikrus asmeninius bruožus ir statusus, kurie veikia kaip jungiantis arba kaip atribojantis veiksnys. Kai kurie iš šių veiksnių veikia kaip jungiantys vienus asmenis, bet atribojančius nuo kitų tuo pat metu. Taigi, bendruomenės kūrimo(si) procesas yra sudėtingas ir daugialypis. Pagrindiniai iš jungiančių ir atribojančių veiksnių yra etninė kilmė, kalbos skirtumai, socialinė padėtis, lytis, ir bendrijos nariai yra linkę grupuotis pagal vieną ar kelis iš šių bendrų bruožų. Lietuvos musulmonų bendruomenės yra labai nevienalytė. Po tos pačios mečetės stogu – labai daug įvairių etninių grupių. Bet Islamo deklaruojamas ir propaguojamas „islamiškos brolybės“ principas etninius skirtumus iš dalies eliminuoja, suburdamas juos į vieną bendriją. Prie būtinybės

53 jungtis į vieną bendriją dar smarkiai prisideda faktas, kad Lietuvoje kol kas reguliariai veikia tik vieni musulmonų maldos namai, taigi jie praktiškai neturi kitos išeities kaip tik tapti viena bendruomene. Ne vienas antropologas tvirtina, kad dalyvavimas religinėse apeigose ne tik stiprina tikinčiojo ryšį su Dievu, bet kartu ir suteikia bendruomeniškumo jausmą ir bendrą identitetą. (Kertzer,) Arabiškas žodis salat (malda) pažodžiui išvertus reiškia „jungtis“, o kadangi salat al džumu‘ah (penktadieninė kolektyvinė malda) atliekama bendrai, tai šalia to, kad yra jungtis su Dievu, ji dar atlieka ir bendruomenės narių tarpusavio sujungimo vaidmenį. (Abusharaf 1998, 239) Tačiau islamas kaip religinė tapatybė neturi tiek traukos jėgos, kad sukurtų vientisą darnią bendruomenę, kurioje būtų eliminuojami etniniai, kalbiniai, socialinės padėties ir kiti skirtumai. Kiekvieną kartą šie žmonės tarpusavyje bendrauja maždaug su tais pačiais žmonėmis, su kuriais turi kažkokius specifinius socialinius ryšius. Musulmonai Lietuvoje jungiasi į mažas grupeles pagal tam tikrus jiems bendrus kriterijus, pvz. etninės kilmės, bendros kalbos, lyties, socialinės padėties, etc. Tos etninės grupės, kurioms priklauso didesnis kiekis narių, nėra linkusios artimai bendrauti su kitų etninių grupių atstovais, o apsiriboja saviškiais. Tuo atveju netgi pamaldumo laipsnis nėra reikšmingas, jis yra nusveriamas etninės priklausomybės. Tik tie žmonės, kurie Lietuvoje yra vieninteliai savo šalies atstovai arba iš tos pačios šalies yra tik keli žmonės, yra linkę ieškoti artimesnių ryšių ir su kitomis etninėmis grupėmis, vengdami visiškos izoliacijos ir vienišumo. Kalbų įvairovės svarba neatsiejama nuo etninių ribų analizės. Šios bendruomenės nariai vartoja labai daug skirtingų kalbų, tačiau kalbos funkcijos nepasiriboja tik paprastu susikalbėjimu, bet taip pat yra įrankis nubrėžiant ribas tarp skirtingų grupių arba jas peržengiant. Pačią ryškiausią kalbiniu barjeru aptvertą grupę sudaro arabai, nesvarbu iš kurios arabiškos šalies jie būtų kilę. Tačiau bendruomenėje yra ir ne arabų kilmės narių, galinčių kalbėti arabiškai ir taip pakliūti į neformalias arabų gretas, bet tokių asmenų yra tik keletas. Socialinių statusų vaidmuo yra tikriausiai sunkiausiai apčiuopiamas nes jis negali būti nei vizualiai pamatytas, nei išgirstas. Aiškiausiai matomas socialinių statusų skirtumas yra tarp pabėgėlių ir kitaip į Lietuvą atvykusių. Tai vienas iš pačių aštriausių šią bendruomenę dalijančių barjerų. Islamiškas susiskirstymas pagal lytis būdingas ir Lietuvos musulmonų bendruomenei. Moterų erdvė atskirta nuo vyrų, joms skirtas antras aukštas. Didžioji dauguma čia besilankančių moterų yra lietuvės atsivertėlės arba totorės, iš musulmoniškų kraštų atvykusių moterų čia labai mažai, nors Lietuvoje jų yra daugiau bet mečetėje jos nesilanko. Moterys pačios stengiasi laikytis taisyklės, kad vyrams negalima jų matyti, todėl stengiasi ateiti anksčiau ir išeiti vėliau nei prasideda ir baigiasi pamaldos, kad išvengtų susidūrimo su vyrais. Kadangi su vyrais (išskyrus savo sutuoktinius) jos bendrauti negali, o atvykusių iš kitų kraštų moterų beveik nėra, taigi aktyvių musulmonių moterų

54 bendruomenė Lietuvoje susidaro daugiausia iš jaunų etninių lietuvių atsivertėlių ir jų vidiniai bendruomeniniai ryšiai apsiriboja kitomis lietuvėmis moterimis. Mečetėje besilankantys asmenys yra kartu kai meldžiasi, bet išėję iš jos jie grįžta į savo asmeninius gyvenimus ir vėl yra svetimi žmonės. Tai tik viena iš vietų ir progų susitikti su naujais žmonėmis ir neturi specialios asmeninius ryšius kuriančios ar palaikančios funkcijos.

Antroje dalyje daugiausia dėmesio skirta išorinio prisitaikymo analizei, t.y. modeliams ir galimybėms prisitaikyti prie aplinkos ir vietinės visuomenės svečioje šalyje. Etnografiniai duomenys parodė, kad prisitaikymo lygis priklauso nuo pačių musulmonų lankstumo ir yra skirtingas lyginant lietuvius atsivertėlius ir atvykėlius iš musulmoniškų užsienio šalių. Be akivaizdžių tarpusavio skirtumų, pvz. etninės kilmės, jie skiriasi ir pagal tai, kaip jie suvokia save ir tai, koks turi būti musulmonas. Šis suvokimas taip pat įtakoja tai, kaip jie prisitaiko prie aplinkos ir nemusulmoniškos Lietuvos visuomenės dalies. Dėl to, kad atsivertėliams jų kaip musulmonų statusas yra naujas ir ką tik pasiektas, jie stengiasi griežčiau laikytis islamo taisyklių, dėl to atrodo radikalesni ir patiria daugiau konfrontacijos su nemusulmoniška lietuvių visuomenės dalimi. Lietuvės į islamą atsivertusios moterys stengiasi ypač griežtai laikytis islamo reikalavimų ir taisyklių, dėl to jos yra skaudžiausiai atsiskyrusios nuo nemusulmoniškos Lietuvos visuomenės dalies, netgi nuo savo artimųjų. Tuo pat metu, dėl griežto susiskirstymo pagal lytis bendruomenės viduje jos taip pat turi ir mažai vidinių bendruomeninių ryšių. Taigi moterys atsivertėlės yra labiausiai kenčianti Lietuvos musulmonų bendrijos dalis. Užsieniečiai musulmonai yra lankstesni, labiau linkę taikytis prie naujo gyvenimo būdo ir taisyklių svečioje šalyje. Jie daro daugiau išimčių savo elgesyje, todėl patys tvirtino turintys nedaug problemų ar nesusipratimų su lietuviais ne musulmonais. Kita vertus, jie apskritai turi mažiau kontaktų su lietuviais. Tačiau juos lydi specifinė jiems problema – ksenofobija ar rasizmas. Be to, jų asmeniniai ryšiai su ne musulmonais lietuviais yra labai riboti.

Tiek išorinių, tiek vidinių ryšių kūrimo ir palaikymo modeliai rodo, kad religija yra tik vienas iš veiksnių, nulemiantis sąveikas. Religinė tapatybė tik suteikia socialinės sąveikos rėmą, kuris vėliau yra užpildomas daugybe kitų socialinio gyvenimo aspektų. Lietuvos musulmonų bendruomenė yra labai maža, todėl moksliniai tyrimai atlikti Vakarų šalyse ne visada yra tinkami palyginimui ir rodo Lietuvos musulmonų bendruomenės specifiškumą bendrame pasauliniame konteskte.

55 Tačiau nepaisant to, Lietuvos musulmonai kenčia nuo panašių problemų, kaip ir kiti musulmonai: nuo Vakarų šalių žiniasklaidos kuriamo neigiamo jų įvaizdžio, supančios visuomenės ksenofobijos ir stereotipų, negalėjimo demonstruoti savo religinės tapatybės norimu lygiu ar būdu, administracinių kliūčių. Vienas labai svarbus sunkumas lyginant su Vakarų Europos musulmonų bendruomenėmis yra specifiškas tik Lietuvos atvejui, - tai specifinių prekių Lietuvoje nebuvimas, nes valstybėse su didelėmis musulmonų mažumomis jie patys išplėtoja nuosavą atskirą intrasftruktūrą ir šios problemos nebelieka. Musulmonų bendruomenė Lietuvoje yra dviguba – religinė ir etninė - mažuma, todėl beveik bet kuris iš jos gyvavimo ir veiklos aspektų yra bent šiek tiek neįprastas ir įdomus. Tačiau dėl šios bendruomenės specifiškumo, ne visi klausimai gali būti pašalinių apčiuopti arba teisingai suprantami, be to, dėl lyčių segregacijos ir kalbinių barjerų ne visi klausimai gali būti sėkmingai tyrinėjami. Šis tyrimas buvo apimantis daug atskirų musulmonų Lietuvoje gyvenimo aspektų, atskleidžiantis bendrą ir mažai žinomą jų gyvenimo vaizdą. Beveik kiekvienas iš šių aspektų gali būti išplėtotas į gilesnius ir detalesnius tyrimus.

Raktiniai žodžiai: bendruomenės kūrimas, vidiniai ryšiai, atitikmenys, ribos, išorinis prisitaikymas.

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