Item Details

Swedish Puritan Salafism: A Hijra Within

Issue: Vol 8 No. 1-2 (2012)

Journal: Comparative Islamic Studies

Subject Areas: Religious Studies Islamic Studies

DOI: 10.1558/cis.v8i1-2.71

Abstract:

This article focuses a Swedish puritan Salafi group that advocates a clear stance against the immorality and impurity that they perceive the surrounding Swedish (or “Western”) society to represent. “Members” advocate a puritan Islamic lifestyle, based on what they perceive to be the examples of the prophet Muhammad and the “pious predecessors”. The article analyzes issues pertaining to segregation/integration and emigration (hijra), according to the official ideology, and attempts to probe into how the group negotiates their particular minority situation being Swedish Salafis. Questions often touched upon, more or less explicit, concern whether a Salafi at all should live in Sweden and how he or she should relate to the surrounding Swedish society and to “others”, those not considered part of the in-group. The article analyses ideological and normative claims and frames this within the contemporary Swedish setting and the presumed growth of Salafism.

Author: Susanne Olsson

View Original Web Page

References :

Abu-Rabi‘, Ibrahim M. Contemporary Arab Thought: Studies in Post-1967 Arab Intellectual History. Sterling, VA: Pluto Press, 2004.
Asad, Talal. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Asad, Talal. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University, 1993.
Asad, Talal. The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam. Washington, DC: Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, 1986.
Avpixlat website: avpixlat.info. Accessed 14 February, 2014.
Caeiro, Alexandre. “The power of European fatwas: the minority fiqh project and the making of an Islamic counterpublic.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 42 (2010): 435–449. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0020743810000437
Cesari, Jocelyne. “Ethnicity, Islam, and les banlieues: Confusing the Issues.” Published November 30, 2005.
Dogan, Güney. “Moral Geographies and the Disciplining of Senses of Swedish Salafis.” Comparative Islamic Studies8(1–2), (2014): 93–112.http://hia.squarespace.com/storage/Ethnicity%20Islam%20and%20les%20banlieues%20-%20Confusing%20the%20Issues%20J.Cesari.pdf. Accessed November 2, 2012.
Cesari, Jocelyne. When Islam and Democracy Meet: Muslims in Europe and in the United States. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9781403978561
Fishman, Shammai. Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat: a Legal Theory for Muslim Minorities. Research monographs on the Muslim World. Hudson Institute, 2006.
Hirschkind, Charles. “Cassette ethics: Public piety and popular media in Egypt.” Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere, ed. Birgit Meyer, 29–51. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
Jacobsen, Christine M. Islamic Traditions and Muslim Youth in Norway. Leiden: Brill, 2011.
Jacobsen, Christine M. “The quest for authenticity: Islamization amongst Muslim youth in Norway.” European Muslims and the Secular State, edited by Jocelyne Cesari and Seán McLoughlin, 155–168. Burlington: Ashgate, 2005.
Karlsson Minganti & Ingvar Svanberg. Moskéer i Sverige: en religionsetnologisk studie av intolerans och administrativ vanmakt. (Mosques in Sweden: an ethnology of religion study of intolerance and administrative powerlessness). Uppsala: Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd, 1995.
March, Andrew F. Islam and Liberal Citizenship. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195330960.001.0001
March, Andrew F.“Sources of moral obligation to non-Muslims in the ‘jurisprudence of Muslim minorities’ (Fiqh al-aqalliyāt) discourse.” Islamic Law and Society 16 (2009): 34–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156851908X413757
Mårtensson, Ulrika. “Harakī Salafism in Norway: ‘The Saved Sect’ Hugs the Infidels.” Comparative Islamic Studies8(1–2), (2014): 113–138.
Martin, Richard C. and Abbas Barzegar. “Formations of orthodoxy: Authority, power, and networks in Muslim societies.” In Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, edited by Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, 179–202. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2010.
Martin, Richard C. and Abbas Barzegar, eds. Islamism: Contested Perspectives on Political Islam. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
McGuire, Meredith B. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195172621.001.0001
Olsson, Susanne. Preaching Islamic Revival: ‘Amr Khaled, Mass Media and Social Change in Egypt. London: I.B. Tauris, Forthcoming.
Olsson, Susanne. “Religion in public space: ‘Blue-and-Yellow Islam’ in Sweden.” Religion, State and Society 37/3 (2009): 277–290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09637490903056500
Olsson, Susanne. “Proselytizing Islam—problematizing ‘Salafism’.” The Muslim World. (2014, forthcoming).
Østebø, Terje. “Salafism, State-Politics, and the Question of‘Extremism’in Ethiopia.”Comparative Islamic Studies8(1–2), (2014): 165–184.
Pierre Vogel, website: http://www.pierrevogel.de/. Accessed 5 November 2012.
Poljarevic, Emin. “In Pursuit of Authenticity: Becoming a Salafi,” Comparative Islamic Studies8(1–2), (2014): 139–164.
Ramadan, Tariq. 1999/2002. To be a European Muslim: a Study of Islamic Sources in the European Context. Leicester: Islamic Foundation.
Roy, Olivier. 2004. Globalized Islam: the Search for a New Ummah. New York: Columbia University Press.
Salvatore,Armando. The Public Sphere: Liberal Modernity, Catholicism, Islam. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230604957
Sedgwick, Mark. “Introduction: Salafism, the Social, and the Global Resurgence of Religion,” Comparative Islamic Studies8(1–2), (2014): 57–70.
Stenberg, Leif. The Islamization of Science: Four Muslim Positions Developing an Islamic Modernity. Lund Studies in History of Religions 6. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1996.
Svensson, Jonas. Women’s Human Rights and Islam: a Study of three Attempts at Accommodation. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2000.
Svensson, Jonas.“Mind the beard! Deference, Purity and Islamisation of Everyday Life as Micro-Factors in a Salafi Cultural Epidemiology.” Comparative Islamic Studies8(1–2), (2014): 185–210.
Uppdrag granskning, “Tillbaka till moskéerna” (Back to the mosques). SVT documentary, aired January 30, 2013.
Wiktorowicz, Quintan. “Anatomy of the Salafi movement.” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 29(3), (2006): 207–239. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10576100500497004
World Value Survey. http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/. Accessed 2 April, 2014.