Centre for European Islamic Thought

Julian Rivers, professor of Jurisprudence at University of Bristol, sets out to a thorough systematic review of English law of organized religions. He does this through by arguing for the past, current and future conditions of legal protection of collective spiritual life in England on the basis of his legal observations in legislation coupled with a very extensive use of more than five hundred relevant cases from all over the world. His primary concern in the book is to give an account of the development of legal doctrine, and methodologically he does this by establishing the historical foundation, comparing to relevant law and then extracting and discussion the systematic implications. His insight in comparatively relevant law from all over the world is waste, but his returning focus is the interplay between law of the European institutions and the domestic English law as this is the crux that frames the contemporary challenges and problems faced by organized religions in England.

In a quest for the religio-organisational field, I review the existing models of church and state relations before discussing the problems with creating models in the first place. Models need both requisite variety and to factor a structuring power. To explain this, I look at three country cases, namely Denmark, Germany and Britian, and discuss Danish registration and approval of religious organisations, the German Islam Conference and the alternative dispute resolution institutions of Muslims in the UK.

Britain has been a multicultural nation for the better part of the past century, but multiculturalism has only manifested itself as a political phenomenon roughly since the Rushdie affair. Multiculturalism did not emerge as a proactive political initiative, but became a strategy for solving the problems ushered in by the multicultural society. Specifically, the challenges arose following the recent history immigration and emerged as discrimination, hate speech, reaffirmed religious identities, terrorism and radicalism. These challenges and politics of British multiculturalism have been studied first most by Joppke (1998, 1999), Modood (1994, 2005) and Parekh (2000, 2006, 2008), and in light of their research, this paper attempts to understand the British multiculturalism as an expression of governmentality applying the theories of Michel Foucault and others (Dean 1999, Rose & Miller 1992) on the art of government. From this ambition follows a series of provisional questions. Can multiculturalism be conceptualised as the raison d'État? Are the ideas of 'differentiated citizenship' (Kymlicka 1995) or 'intercultural evaluation' (Parekh 2000) so integral to the British society that they can be understood as the guiding principles of the modern British state? Is a multicultural politics, as applied by the British government, the better strategy for solving the problems and reaffirming its position as the immediately apparent governing institution of society?

"European secular social models are challenged in new ways by religions. Also in Denmark, religion and religious symbols occupy an increasing amount of space in the public sphere, tempting people to relate to religion in a more personal way. Those are the findings of a new report published today by the Centre for European Islamic Thought at the University of Copenhagen.

Ramadan dinners in the Danish Parliament, staff parties without either pork or alcohol and prayer rooms at the airport are all examples of how religion is becoming more visible in public spaces.

“Prior to the mass migration of the '60s, '70s and '80s, almost all Danes shared similar values and were members of the national Christian church, so religion was not an issue in everyday life. There was no need to discuss neither one’s own nor another person’s religious viewpoint, and secularisation was a matter of course. Today, it is difficult to be in a public place, read the newspaper, or go to school or work without encountering religious expressions and symbols,” says Niels Valdemar Vinding, a PhD student from the Centre for European Islamic Thought at University of Copenhagen and co-author of a recently published report from the European research project RELIGARE that examines religious diversity and secular models in Europe.

Secularism under pressure
“Everywhere in Europe it is clear that the concept of secularism, where religion remains a private matter, is under pressure. Everything suggests that in the future religious organisations will have more influence on schools, workplaces and the media. This means that both private and public institutions will be dealing with religion more often,” explains Vinding.

The report is one of six national reports examining the nexus between secularism and religion in a specific European country. The reports are based on interviews with a variety of religious, secular and political leaders. The reports are key contributions to the research project RELIGARE, which brings together university researchers from ten different European countries.

A contradictory relationship
The picture the report portrays of the typical Dane’s reaction to the tension between secularism and religion is a bit blurry. On the one hand, Danes cherish diversity, support the idea of having room for all and believe in giving each individual the freedom to follow their own faith and convictions. On the other hand, many would like a high degree of legal regulation when it comes to those forms of religion and religious expression that seem strange or different. An example of such regulation was seen in the amendment of the Judicial Code of 2009, which forbade judges and lay judges from wearing headscarves in courtrooms.

“It is not a case of two opposite sides of opinion, it is rather a an overlap of opinions,” says Vinding. “People support personal freedom and religiosity, but not at any price. Some Danes can be perfectly comfortable with a morning hymn being sung in school, and at the same time have a problem with halal meat being served in institutional meals without seeing a clear picture of the contradiction or sense of injustice.”

Inspired by the symbolic interpretative and relational philosophy of religion, represented by amongst others Peter L. Berger, Clifford Geertz and Pierre Bourdieu, I investigate the religious organizational field in three comparative case studies, from Denmark, Germany and England.

Trossamfund i Danmark, der vælger at søge om godkendelse og bemyndigelse til at forvalte ægteskab, skal vurderes af Det Rådgivende Udvalg vedr. Trossamfund under Ankestyrelsen. Udvalget arbejder efter en række formelle og indholdsmæssige krav og kriterier, der evaluerer trossamfundenes religionsbegreb, organisationsforhold og demokratiske praksis. Denne artikel undersøger udvalgets retningslinjer og den implicitte vægtning af værdier, som folkekirken og de afvigende trossamfund indgår i. Generelt kritiseres den ministerielle godkendelsespraksis for at støde minoritetsforkyndere væk fra staten og for at risikere diskrimination ved at trække grænser i det religiøse landskab. Artiklen diskuterer, hvilke værdier, der kan gøres til genstand for interkulturel evaluering og ser folkekirkelighed som fælles værdi og fremtidig ressource.

The thesis studies the specific problems that Muslim organisations struggle with as they navigate and position themselves amongst the churches, the state institutions and the many other relevant organisational actors in the religio-organisational fields in Denmark, Germany and England.
In framing an analytical focus on the relations and environment of Muslim organisations, the thesis applies the concepts of field, doxa, capital, norms and symbolic power as theorised by Pierre Bourdieu and others. The thesis proposes the idea of the religio-organisational field as a construct informed by the spheres of religious life and of organised, institutional logics. The religio-organisational field frames the struggle for the positions of power, recognition and capital available in the structural relations of the field.
In this context, the thesis seeks to identify what Muslim organisations stand to win and loose in the pursuit of the stronger positions in the field. Also, the thesis questions how the Muslim organisation impacts and changes the existing institutions and organisations. This is done by investigating the structural norms, technologies, tactics and powers of dominations and subjection as applied by both the Muslim organisations and the governing institutions in the field.
A core assumption of the thesis is that since the introduction of Islam and Muslim organisations into the European context, Islam has been a catalyst or occasion for significant changes in the balances of power amongst states and churches.
This is investigated further by looking at the history of regulating religion, which is the structural context in which Muslim organisations must navigate and position themselves. Not only the history of churches and states is revealing, but also the specific laws and norms that frame and structure the possible field of action of Muslims are of relevance.
Within this normative and historical context, a case from each of the three countries is analysed and discussed in depth.
In Danmark, the focus is on Muslim organisations who seek recognition and approval to perform marriages with civil validity. The analysis goes into significant detail about the ministrial practices and procedures as managed by the Advisory Committee on Religious Denominations. The Bourdieuian perspective applied here is on the construction and maintenance of fundamental dividers in the religio-organisational field and the strict scrutiny to which Muslim organisations are submitted.
Next, the focus is on the German Islam Conference. This analysis looks at the struggle between the German government and the Muslim organisations who are trying to position themselves as eligible and respectable partners in the religio-organisational field. The Bourdieuian perspective applied here is on the generative structuration that transforms ‘Muslims in Germany’ to ‘German Muslims’ by analogy to the Christian institutions.
In the English case the focus is on the Shari’a councils and their position between the Muslim communities and the wider English society. The Shari’a councils are locked in a tricky game of managing expectations from both these sides. They have the difficult task of stewardship of the Islamic norms embedded in Shari’a, which is challenged in a modern context. The Bourdieuian perspective is on the symbolic resignification and reproduction of Shari’a norms as these become new resources for Muslims in the religio-organisational field.
The thesis concludes on the overall guiding questions and outlines the most important perspectives from the analyses of the religio-organisational fields. This is done by looking specifically at what Muslim organisations, on one hand, and state and governments, on the other, stand to win and loose in the struggles of the field. The conclusion, furthermore, summarises the most important and critical insights into the impositions of division in the religio-organisational field and into the Muslim positions taken in response to these impositions.

‘Imams of the West’ proposes a qualitative sociological interview study of between 50 and 60 imams in Europe, Australia and North America (‘the West’) in order to document how the Islamic religious institution of the imam changes in the challenging encounter with a global, multicultural and post-migration ‘Western’ world.

The social facts of globalization, transnational migration and the various interpretations of secularism have challenged the visibility of religion in the public sphere in “Western” societies. This has most importantly and urgently required religious authorities to revisit their organization, governance and internal hierarchy, which link believers and their community to God. Islamic religious authority is no exception. All over the Islamic world and Europe, Islamic religious authority is still struggling to negotiate its place among the institutions of the modern state. The imamate is one of the institutions that is experiencing a shift in roles and functions in society amidst these institutions.
 
This conference will examine the following major themes:

•        Imams in Islamic scholarship: intellectual requirements and the scope of action within religious scholarly authority
•        Muslim religious authority and their representative bodies in Western Europe
•        The Muslim community's authority over the Imam: the social stratum
•        The importation of Imams and their geographical distribution in Western Europe
•        The prospects of developing "home-grown" Imams: mosques, Islamic schools, university departments of theology, and possible partnerships
•      Imams' training and the job market
•      Imams, politics, and the media
•      Imams and civic engagement: ethics, spirituality, environment, social justice, multiculturalism, etc.
•        Comparative perspectives: best practices of religious national institutions and Imam training in Western Europe

This chapter of "Exploring the Multitude of Muslims in Europe. Essays in Honour of Jørgen S. Nielsen" (Brill 2018) explores the concept of churchification in relation to Islam in Europe. The first part of the chapter surveys the word, the phenomenon it describes and different observations of this phenomenon across a number of European contexts and by a choice of European scholars on Islam in Europe. After the initial observations and conceptualisations of churchification, follows a process of analytical distinction into four closely related but distinguishable logics of churchification. Firstly, churchification is understood as pedagogical, analogical or rhetorical usages comparing mosques to churches, or imams to priests, and so on. Secondly, churchification as normativisation is identified that maintains that mosques should or ought to function like the churches, imams should act like priests, and that for a number of politically or ideologically motivated reasons. Thirdly, churchification can be identified in terms of structural and implicit hegemony emanating from the established paradigms of church and state relations, or from the churches themselves. Here, the sheer power of the churches in Europe makes it almost impossible to avoid an influence on Islam. Fourthly and finally, churchification can be seen as a deliberate neo-institutionalist isomorphic strategy – or counter-strategy – where Muslim organisations and institutions deliberately model themselves on the church either because they are structurally forced to do so or because doing so is smart and cost-efficient. Equally, there are Muslim organisations and communities who move in the opposite direct, exactly because they want to distance and distinguish themselves from European churches. This often proves to be a more difficult strategy, but research shows that institutionalisation might not yield the hoped outcome of resource mobilisation, acceptance or recognition.

Ingvill Thorson Plesner of the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo has written a fine book on religion and politics in Norway, which is timely, substantial and a pleasure to read for people both inside and outside the field. This Norwegian language book sets out to describe, analyse and discuss the politics of religion and worldviews that Norway currently has and should have in the future, and how the Norwegian state should act in order to be as conducive as possible to this. Norwegian politicians have sought to bring about a coherent policy, and Thorson Plesner rises to the challenge to qualify, both legally and interdisciplinarily, the issues that a thoroughly thought out, coherent, principally sound and well-balanced policy must address.

Just before Christmas 2016, the Danish parliament adopted the last part of an anti-extremism package called Forkynderloven (the so-called Act on Preachers), which might conflict with the understanding of religious freedom in the Danish Constitution. The Law includes a public sanction list of religious preachers, and Denmark has been accused of singling out Islam, and applying stricter restrictions on Muslims than on other segments of the population. This situation is further elaborated on in two independent reports that look at freedom of religion and discrimination in Denmark. The first is by the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief, which criticises the politically motivated reasons for limiting freedom of religion, with the more or less explicit purpose of limiting Muslim religious practices.