Everyday Religion and the Complexity of Islamic Space
Keywords:
Everyday religion, Shia Islam, materiality, pilgrimage, citizenshipAbstract
The turn to ‘everyday religion’ has disrupted the so-called ‘Muslim problem’, suggesting modes of multiculturalism located not in abstract principles of citizenship but grounded in the concrete practices of local communities. In this article, however, I offer two critiques of the literature on everyday religion in Australia. First, the literature has limited itself to discursive methodologies, largely ignoring material aspects of the everyday. Second, I show how studies of everyday religion assume multiculturalism’s location in a given public space. Drawing on ethnography from the Shia Muslim community of Sydney, I show how Shia practices of visual pilgrimage leverage an understanding of complex space that transforms everyday experience. I argue that allowing for diversity requires not merely an attentiveness to different discourses in the public sphere; it requires an allowance for difference at a deeper level, where everyday religion can generate complex alternative experiences of space itself.
References
Adelkhah, Fariba 2016 The Thousand and One Borders of Iran: Travel and Identity. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis.
Agrama, Hussein Ali 2012 Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Akbarzadeh, Shahram, and Joshua M. Roose 2011 Muslims, Multiculturalism and the Question of the Silent Majority. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 31(3): 309–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2011.599540
Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali 2011 The Spirituality of Shi’i Islam: Beliefs and Practices. London: I.B. Tauris; Institute of Ismaili Studies.
Ammerman, Nancy T. 2014 Sacred Stories, Spiritual Tribes: Finding Religion in Everyday Life. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Asad, Talal 2003 Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Asad, Talal 2015 Thinking about Tradition, Religion, and Politics in Egypt Today. Critical Inquiry 42: 166–214. https://doi.org/10.1086/683002
Barthes, Roland 1993 Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Vintage.
Beaman, L. 2014 Deep Equality as an Alternative to Accommodation and Tolerance. Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 27(2): 89–111. https://doi.org/10.18261/ISSN1890-7008-2014-02-01
Benjamin, Walter 2008 Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 4. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Blair, Sheila S., and Jonathan M. Bloom 2003 The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field. The Art Bulletin 85(1): 152–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2003.10787065
Dagistanli, Selda, Adam Possamai, Bryan S. Turner, Malcolm Voyce and Joshua Roose 2018 The Limits of Multiculturalism in Australia? The Shari’a Flogging Case of R v. Raad, Fayed, Cifci and Coskun. The Sociological Review 66(6): 1258–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026118768133
Deeb, Lara 2015 Thinking Piety and the Everyday Together: A Response to Fadil and Fernando. HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2): 93–96. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.007
Dessing, Nathal M. 2013 How to Study Everyday Islam. In Everyday Lived Islam in Europe, edited by Nathal M. Dessing, Nadia Jeldtoft, Jørgen S. Nielsen and Linda Woodhead, 39–52. New York; London: Routledge.
Didi-Huberman, Georges 2005 The Supposition of the Aura: The Now, the Then, and Modernity. In Walter Benjamin and History, edited by Andrew Benjamin, 3–18. London; New York: Continuum.
Ezzy, Douglas, Gary Bouma, Greg Barton, Anna Halafoff, Rebecca Banham, Robert Jackson and Lori Beaman 2020 Religious Diversity in Australia: Rethinking Social Cohesion. Religions 11(2). https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11020092
Fadil, Nadia, and Mayanthi Fernando 2015 Rediscovering the “Everyday” Muslim: Notes on an Anthropological Divide. HAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5(2): 59–88. https://doi.org/10.14318/hau5.2.005
Geertz, Clifford 1975 The Interpretation of Cultures. London: Basic Books.
Göle, Nilüfer 2015 Islam and Secularity: The Future of Europe’s Public Sphere. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Harris, Anita 2009 Shifting the Boundaries of Cultural Spaces: Young People and Everyday Multiculturalism. Social Identities 15(2): 187–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630902778602
Harris, Anita, and Joshua M. Roose 2014 DIY Citizenship amongst Young Muslims: Experiences of the ‘Ordinary’. Journal of Youth Studies 17(6): 794–813. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.844782
Hirschkind, Charles 2006 The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. Columbia: Columbia University Press.
Isin, Engin F., and Greg M. Nielsen (eds) 2008 Acts of Citizenship. London, New York: Zed Books.
Johns, Amelia, Fethi Mansouri and Michele Lobo 2015 Religiosity, Citizenship and Belonging: The Everyday Experiences of Young Australian Muslims. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 35(2): 171–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2015.1046262
Keane, Webb 2013 On Spirit Writing: Materialities of Language and the Religious Work of Transduction. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 19(1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12000
Khosronejad, Pedram 2012 Introduction. In The Art and Material Culture of Iranian Shi’ism, edited by Pedram Khosronejad, 1–22. London: IB Tauris.
Lam, Kim, and Fethi Mansouri 2020 Beyond (Mis)-recognition: Muslim Youth and Religiosity in Australia. Journal of Youth Studies 24(6): 765–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2020.1766667
Mansouri, Fethi 2020 On the Discursive and Methodological Categorisation of Islam and Muslims in the West: Ontological and Epistemological Considerations. Religions 11(10): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11100501
Mansouri, Fethi, Michele Lobo and Amelia Johns 2016 Grounding Religiosity in Urban Space: Insights from Multicultural Melbourne. Australian Geographer 47(3): 295–310. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2016.1191134
Mansouri, Fethi, and Tariq Modood 2020 The Complementarity of Multiculturalism and Interculturalism: Theory Backed by Australian Evidence. Ethnic and Racial Studies 44(16): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2020.1713391
Meyer, Birgit, and Dick Houtman 2012 Introduction. Material Religion: How Things Matter. In Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, edited by Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer, 1–23. New York: Fordham University Press.
Nasser, Noha 2015 Reconceptualising the Muslim Neighbourhood: Claims for Space, Identity and Citizenship in the West. Contemporary Islam 9(3): 241–46. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-015-0342-2
Necipoglu, Gülru 2013 Reflections on Thirty Years of Muqarnas. Muqarnas 30: 1–12.
Ortner, Sherry B. 1995 Resistance and the Problem of Ethnographic Refusal. Comparative Studies in Society and History 37(1): 173–93. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417500019587
Piscatori, James, and Dale Eickelman (eds) 1990 Muslim Travellers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Possamai, Adam, Selda Dagistanli and Malcolm Voyce 2017 Shari’a in Everyday Life in Sydney: An Analysis of Professionals and Leaders Dealing with Islamic Law. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 30(2): 109–28. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.33846
Possamai, Adam, Selda Dagistanli, Bryan S. Turner and Malcolm Voyce 2019 Shari’a in Sydney and New York: A Perspective from Professionals and Leaders Dealing with Islamic Law. Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 30(1): 69–85. https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2018.1548744
Possamai, Adam, Bryan S. Turner, Jennifer E. Cheng, Malcolm Voyce and Selda Dagistanli 2016 Shari’a and Everyday Life in Sydney. Australian Geographer 47(3): 341–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049182.2016.1191137
Possamai, Adam, Bryan S. Turner, Joshua M. Roose, Selda Dagistanli and Malcolm Voyce 2016 ‘Shari’a’ in Cyberspace: A Case Study from Australia. Sociologica (Bologna) 10: 1–22.
Rancière, Jacques 2010 Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Bloomsbury.
Roose, Joshua M., and Anita Harris 2015 Muslim Citizenship in Everyday Australian Civic Spaces. Journal of Intercultural Studies 36(4): 468–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2015.1049984
Salvatore, Armando 2007 The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Salvatore, Armando 2016 The Sociology of Islam: Knowledge, Power and Civility. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty 1993 Can the Subaltern Speak? In Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrismas, 66–111. New York: Columbia University Press.
Vergani, Matteo, Amelia Johns, Michele Lobo and Fethi Mansouri 2015 Examining Islamic Religiosity and Civic Engagement in Melbourne. Journal of Sociology 53(1): 63–78. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783315621167
Wise, Amanda 2010 Sensuous Multiculturalism: Emotional Landscapes of Inter-Ethnic Living in Australian Suburbia. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 36(6): 917–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691831003643355
Wise, Amanda, and Selvaraj Velayutham 2009 Introduction: Multiculturalism and Everyday Life. In Everyday Multiculturalism, edited by Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham, 1–17. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Woodhead, Linda M. 2013 Tactical and Strategic Religion. In Everyday Lived Islam in Europe, edited by Nathal M. Dessing, Nadia Jeldtoft, Jørgen S. Nielsen and Linda Woodhead, 9–22. London; New York: Routledge.
