Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state: relationality and the mosque not built (original) (raw)
Related papers
State, space and secularism: Towards a critical study of governing religion
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021
Over the last decade, cities have become key sites of investigations into the politics of religious diversity. However, the vibrant scholarship on governing urban religion frequently suffers from conceptually thin understandings of the debate's key terms. This contribution critically engages with the conceptual underpinnings of this scholarship by discussing the interdependence of the dimensions of state, space and secularism. Regarding the state, I suggest that we should reconceptualise the state as strategic terrain, effect and social relation; regarding space, I discuss the analytical purchase of the TPSN (Territory, Place, Space, Network) approach, and regarding secularism I argue that we need to investigate local secularisms as problem-spaces and vernacular practices. Focusing on Islam in Western Europe, I demonstrate the analytical benefits of these theoretical reconfigurations by discussing the case study of the failure of one of Germany's most prominent mosque projects, the Munich Forum for Islam (MFI).
Mosques and Minarets: Conflict, Participation and Visibility in German Cities
Anthropological Quarterly, 2014
The role and position of Muslims in Germany has been a controversial topic for years. This unresolved conflict manifests itself most acutely in controversies over the construction or renovation of mosques or mosque facilities. In this article, I examine two such controversies. I focus on themes of civic participation and visibility, to illustrate how mosque conflicts, regardless of their final outcomes, constitute important elements of Muslim localization. I argue that such conflicts are not isolated incidents but are embedded in larger processes of urban cultural and political negotiations and transformation. Mosque conflicts reflect the quest for visibility as expressed in the wish to construct a minaret. This quest is one step in a long journey toward recognition and participation, it symbolizes moments of arrival, and emphasizes local roots and commitment. I illustrate how mosque conflicts constitute crucial elements in the construction of future multi-ethnic and multi-religious cityscapes. Such controversies are both catalysts for further Muslim urban civic participation and results of lengthy processes of Muslim localization. Spatial presence becomes an expression of political presence, and the quest for participation, visibility, and citizenship. Opponents and municipalities' struggles for control of the built environment in such conflicts represents attempts to order cities and societies at a historical moment when dynamics of globalization undermine the
Modern urban planning, characterized by a rational, modernistic, centralistic and superimposed approaches to urban design, is becoming increasingly vulnerable (Roy and AlSayyad, 2004; Roy, 2005, 2009; Yiftachel, 2009a). Put plainly, the state through its various agencies is not the sole player that dictates current developments in the urban landscape. Rapid urban growth, widening diversity, shifting demographics, and increasing mobility are leading to the creation of new urban areas and phenomena. These are gradually transforming many cities around the world. In a continuously globalizing world and with the existence of a growing mixed urban population planning Cosmopolis becomes a task contested and challenged daily on various levels and by a multiplicity of forces from within and from without. The very idea – becoming the hallmark of postmodernist and critical urban planning under the title of ‘celebrating differences’ - is impinging on planners worldwide and amounts in many occasions to city’s strife and conflicts (Sandercock, 1998). In this socio-spatial arena, various minority groups whose voices were formerly weak or silent in urban politics are starting to build alternative landscapes, and through them to speak and to emerge as more powerful local players (Castell, 1983). These groups are voicing their claims against the power of contemporary nation-states that have planned cities based on neo-liberal logic, geared primarily to maximizing growth, cost efficiency and accumulation (Harvey, 1989). Religion has been identified as one compelling narrative that serves to mobilize such groups within cities (AlSayyad and Massoumi, 2010; Beaumont and Barker, 2011; Tong and Kong, 2000; Garbin, 2012). Religion provides a useful framework for competing narratives and spatial logic as well as for the construction of new political geographies in the city. Thus, various distinct groups weave new patterns into the urban landscape through religiously based identity politics (Hervieu-Leger, 2002, Orsi, 1985). In this chapter we ask: How does religion serve as a driver of urban transformation? We explore how religious practices, discourse and buildings are used by minorities to claim the city and to participate more fully in the urban sphere. We show that religion provides a useful framework for competing narratives and spatial logic as well as for the construction of new urban geopolitical geographies in the city. Thus, various distinct groups weave new patterns in urban space as ways of claiming the city through religiously based identity politics (Hervieu-Leger, 2002, Orsi, 1985). Following previous discussions on the spatial behaviour of religious minorities (Metcalf 1996; Dodds, 2002, among others), we critically reflect on the construction of religious buildings in urban spaces by minority groups, and their stories, constitutes a powerful strategy to reinforce identity and power. Their very presence in the city challenges the hegemonic forces there in. Further, religious buildings and discourse provide a focal point for the social integration of minority groups with other groups, and for the recognition of a minority group by the state.
Space and culture, 2023
This article critically analyses the proliferation and production of what we call "religious maps" in Europe in recent years. Religious maps have emerged as a form of monitoring, describing, and representing spatial processes of (ethno-) religious diversification. Through the comparative empirical analysis of the cases of Barcelona, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, we demonstrate that maps and the knowledge formations they (re)produce have become key tools to govern religious diversity in contemporary Europe. Counting, mapping, and categorizing places of worship provides allegedly objective and stable knowledge about increasingly complex and dynamic religious practices. Religious maps also make religion "legible" for the state through the classification of places of religious practice according to historically contingent categories of religious traditions and groups and by (re)producing what Brian Harley calls "cartographic silences". As such, the practice of mapping religions necessarily reduces the complexity of transnational and translocal social reality. This produces particular forms of intelligibility and representational hierarchy through which policy-makers and citizens in general understand religion in cities. The article shows that the analysis of the ways maps are conceived, produced, and circulated offers a distinctive lens through which to explore entanglements of knowledge, media, and power in the contemporary making of social, political, cultural, and religious landscapes.
Editorial Special Issue Public religion and urban space in Europe
Social and Cultural Geography, 2014
Conflicts related to demographic and cultural change in Europe regularly find their expression in struggles over the presence and visibility of religious buildings and groups. As this editorial argues, these conflicts can best be understood from a postsecular perspective that takes into account overlapping and diverging histories of state-formation and secularization. The papers collected for this special issue on public religion and urban space demonstrate that many of the difficulties that European societies face in accommodating religious diversity stem from historically formed relationships between national political identities and religious identities. In many European cases, secularization did not entail a fundamental separation between religion and politics but the formal establishment of one single national church or two competing ones, but territorially based national churches. One of the consequences of these types of establishments is that certain religious traditions are generally described and experienced as fitting with the nation and others are not. The contributors to this special issue show in detail that the struggles of contemporary religious movements in Europe to become present in the public domain are related to commonly accepted understandings of where and how religion should manifest itself in the urban environment, based on the public life of religious traditions that are considered part of the nation.
Islam and space in Europe: The politics of race, time, and secularism
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2021
This introduction to the Special Issue 'Rethinking Islam and Space in Europe' advocates for an analytical turn in the study of Islam in Europe by using space as a central conceptual lens. While spatial approaches are gaining traction in the study of religion, migration, ethnicity, and race, we argue that the critical potential of spatial approaches remains largely unexplored. This paper offers a threefold contribution. First, we show how combining spatial perspectives with local histories contributes to de-exceptionalising the study of Islam in urban contexts today. Second, by 'localising secularism' we can uncover concrete formations of exclusion and erasure, while also providing a more refined picture of the ways in which the agency of Muslims is negotiated. Third, we demonstrate how scrutinising the nexus of time, race and Europe reveals colonial pasts and continuities that are disrupted and transformed by the movement of bodies through public spaces.
Space-making and religious transformation: Mosque building in the Netherlands
Canadian Journal of Netherlandic Studies, 2013
The realization of mosques and other religious buildings in the Netherlands has been described and analyzed predominantly as a history of integration and emancipation of Muslims into Dutch society. The first post-war wave of labour migrants used temporal makeshift accommodations to serve as mosques. In subsequent decades they further developed and extended the religious infrastructure. The next step was to realize purpose built mosques with various designs. Most of the literature on mosque building focuses on governance, political process and the politics of identity, i.e. on how negotiations about the establishment of religious accommodation evolve, what actors participate and which positions they take in these negotiations. Although such historical accounts are informative as far as the integration trajectories of Muslims are concerned, they often pay hardly any attention to the conceptions and visions that undergird these negotiations. The development of an Islamic religious infr...