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Section Editors:Ines Aščerić-Todd, Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabé Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Lejla Demiri, Martha T. Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan M. Guenther, Vincenzo Lavenia, Arely Medina, Diego Melo Carrasco, Alain Messaoudi, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Cornelia Soldat, Charles Tieszen, Carsten Walbiner, Catherina Wenzel.
Section Editors:Ines Aščerić-Todd, Clinton Bennett, Luis F. Bernabé Pons, Jaco Beyers, Emanuele Colombo, Lejla Demiri, Martha T. Frederiks, David D. Grafton, Stanisław Grodź, Alan M. Guenther, Vincenzo Lavenia, Arely Medina, Diego Melo Carrasco, Alain Messaoudi, Gordon Nickel, Claire Norton, Reza Pourjavady, Douglas Pratt, Charles Ramsey, Peter Riddell, Umar Ryad, Cornelia Soldat, Charles Tieszen, Carsten Walbiner, Catherina Wenzel.
This book provides an extensive analysis of the work of Louis Massignon (1883-1962) on Muslim mysticism, based on previously unpublished historical and biographical elements. It highlights the importance for Islamic Studies of certain discoveries made by the Islamicist concerning the formative period of Sufism. More than that, this book probes Massignon’s view of mystical vocations in Islam and examines, in the light of recent work, his vision of "holiness" and the figure of al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922). This work opens, more broadly, the question of the posture of the researcher in the study of religion and the precautions to be adopted so that their subjectivity does not reconstruct reality, but illuminates and reveals it.
This book provides an extensive analysis of the work of Louis Massignon (1883-1962) on Muslim mysticism, based on previously unpublished historical and biographical elements. It highlights the importance for Islamic Studies of certain discoveries made by the Islamicist concerning the formative period of Sufism. More than that, this book probes Massignon’s view of mystical vocations in Islam and examines, in the light of recent work, his vision of "holiness" and the figure of al-Ḥallāj (d. 309/922). This work opens, more broadly, the question of the posture of the researcher in the study of religion and the precautions to be adopted so that their subjectivity does not reconstruct reality, but illuminates and reveals it.
It is the aim of the series to combine different methods within the social scientific study of religion. Contributions to the series employ an interdisciplinary and comparative approach at an international level, to describe and interpret the complexity of religious phenomena within different geopolitical situations, highlighting similarities and discontinuities. Dealing with a single theme in each volume, the series intends to tackle the relationship between the practices and the dynamics of everyday life and the different religions and spiritualities, within the framework of post-secular society. All contributions are welcome, both those studying organizational aspects and those exploring individual religiosity.
The series has published an average of one volume per year over the last five years.
Abstract
In this article, I explore how Islam is configured in two creative universes that have recently affected the cultural and political scene in Norway. I compare the enactment in Oslo (2019) of Disgraced by the American playwright Ayad Akhtar to parts of the artistic project Heisann Montebello (2015–2017) by the Norwegian rap duo Karpe. In both fictional universes, references to Islam, Muslims, xenophobia, racism, terror, and politics of integration are paramount. It is therefore significant that major cultural institutions in Norway such as The National Theater, the music hall Oslo Spektrum, the National Library, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Network (NRK) stage these works. Overall, my main argument is that both productions speak to wider audiences in a multireligious and multiethnic setting, demonstrating that Muslims and different configurations of Islam have become an integrated part of Norwegian cultural life.
Abstract
From the late 1980s, foreign—primarily American—missionaries started to travel to Ukraine in large numbers. This article is concerned with the impact of American Baptist missionaries and how their influence was perceived locally in 2016, the time of my fieldwork. When I set out to conduct my fieldwork research among Baptist believers in Lviv, I was surprised that local believers denied the impact of foreign missionaries on their communities and worship style. Moreover, many local Baptist churchgoers I met claimed they had never encountered an American missionary and insisted that foreign missionaries had not played any significant role in the development and transformation of Ukrainian Baptism. In this article, I present the data from the fieldwork and analyze the Ukrainian Baptists’ reasons for minimizing the influence through the perspective of religioscapes, and glocalization as the dialectic process between homogeneity and heterogeneity.
Abstract
In several European countries, Slovakia included, Islamophobia has been shaped by the challenges faced by Europe (an influx of refugees, terrorism, rise of the far right) since circa 2015. Anti-Muslim narratives have penetrated politics as well as the media and are shared by a significant part of the Slovak population. This article aims at contributing to the existing research on Islamophobia in Slovakia through an exploratory case study focusing on a different perspective, Muslims themselves. The main objective of the research is to identify the magnitude and character of Islamophobia experienced by Muslims in Slovakia since 2015. Data were gathered using an online survey. The findings revealed not only the extent but also the most common features of Islamophobia experienced by Muslims, including the type of incidents, the places of their occurrence, and the nexus between Islamophobic incidents and origin of respondents (Slovak or foreign), external manifestation of their faith, and sex.
Abstract
This article aims to clarify the attitude of the Italian Northern League (Lega Nord) toward the Catholic Church and Catholic faith, since its creation in 1991. The article examines the evolution of the party from the merger of the northern regionalist parties under the leadership of Umberto Bossi (1991–2012) until its current form and its reengineering by its new leader, Matteo Salvini, as a national(ist) League (Lega) aiming to win votes and mandates all over Italy and to become the dominant party of the Italian right. Be it under Bossi or Salvini, the Lega Nord/Lega has always opposed both the humanist teaching of the Catholic Church and mainstream Catholic social organizations, while pretending to defend the “Catholic identity” of the “North,” before turning to the entire country. Under Salvini’s leadership, the Lega joined forces with some rightist Catholic groups prone to complain about Pope Francis’s deemed treason of the Catholic identity, and so reinforced its conservative orientation. As I will show in this article, in the medium term, the enduring success of the Lega Nord/Lega illustrates the decline of mainstream Catholicism in Italy.