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Situating Islam in Norway: Ethnographic Context and Theoretical Perspectives

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Situating Islam in Norway: Ethnographic Context and Theoretical Perspectives CHAPTER ONE SITUATING ISLAM IN NORWAY: ETHNOGRAPHIC CONTEXT AND THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES Muslims in Norway Th ere is no offi cial statistics registering religious faith or belonging in Norway. Based on immigration statistics, 2008 fi gures from Statistics Norway estimated the population of immigrants from Muslim coun- tries and their descendants to be 163,000. 84,000 were registered as members of Muslim faith-communities.1 Most Muslims in Norway are either migrants (this category including labour migrants, asylum seek- ers and refugees) or descendants of migrants. Although migration to Norway from Muslim countries started comparatively late, it followed a pattern similar to the ‘Muslim migration cycle’ described for other West European countries (Alwall 1998; Cesari 1994; Kepel 1987; Leveau and Kepel 1988; Leveau 1990; Nielsen 1992; 1999; Opsal 1994). From the late 1960s male migrant workers (for the main part) started to arrive from Pakistan, Morocco and Turkey. A majority of the largest Muslim group, the Pakistanis, came from the rural Punjab area although some came from urban areas in Punjab and elsewhere. Of the Moroccans approximately 80 per cent were Berbers from the rural areas of north- ern Morocco in the vicinity of Al-Hoceima and Nador (Vogt 2000). A majority of the Turkish labour migrants came from the Konya area, and this migrant group also included quite a large number of Kurds. Th e labour migration to Norway from these three countries largely took the form of ‘chain migration’, in which pioneer migrant workers were joined by compatriots from the same areas as well as by spouses and children. Aft er the ban on labour migration introduced in 1975, 1 Th e most common way of estimating the number of Muslims in Norway is to look at immigration statistics in relation to the percentage of Muslims in a given country of emigration. Th ese statistics do not provide any information about how many of these people consider themselves to be Muslims, however, or the diverse ways of being Muslim that such identifi cations encompass. Furthermore, statistics relating to minor- ity religions and immigration are generally contested as they oft en form the basis of competing political arguments. 16 chapter one the Muslim population was added to mainly by means of family reuni- fi cation and refugee movements from such countries as Bosnia, Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. In addition, there are smaller groups of Muslims from other countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Africa, as well as a modest number of converts (which has been estimated at approximately 900–1,000). Oslo has attracted a larger number of Muslim immigrants than other parts of the country. Figures from 2003 show that at the time 43 per cent of those who were previously categorized as non-Western immi- grants in national statistics, this including descendants, lived in Oslo, Oslo having 11 per cent of the population of Norway as a whole (Melve et al. 2003). Th is group thus made up some 18 per cent of the city’s population. For some subgroups this concentration in Oslo was even more signifi cant with 80 per cent of the Pakistanis, for example, living in Oslo. Recent estimates indicate that approximately 6–7 per cent of Oslo’s inhabitants are members of a Muslim organization while a sur- vey conducted among pupils in Ninth, Tenth and Eleventh grade showed that 17.6 per cent of Oslo pupils stated Islam to be their reli- gion (Øia and Vestel 2007). Th e spatial distribution of immigrants in the city is closely related to existing socio-economic structuring and the bulk of Muslim immigrants, and non-Western immigrants in gen- eral, live in Oslo Centre (East) and the eastern suburbs (Blom 2002).2 Muslims have gradually become more visible in the eastern city centre with some thirty mosques and organizations concentrated here in 2007. While most mosques come in the shape of fl ats, loft s, basements, warehouses, old factories, converted schools or houses (Naguib 2001), purpose-built ones also exist. Th e fi rst purpose-built multifunctional mosque was inaugurated in 1994 and since then two more mosques have been raised in Oslo Centre (East); all three were founded by Pakistani Muslim communities. Th e Pakistani Barelwi movement,3 originating in rural Pakistan, has a strong presence for Pakistani Muslims in Norway and is repre- sented by, among others, the largest mosque in Oslo, the Jamaat-e 2 Originally, immigrants settled in the traditional working-class neighbourhoods of the eastern inner city but with the current gentrifi cation of these areas there is a ten- dency for immigrants, who may also wish to buy something of their own and who need more space, to move out to the eastern suburbs where prices are generally lower (Blom 2002; Melve et al. 2003). 3 Th e Barelwi is a Sunni Islamic Sufi movement originating in the Indian subcontinent..
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