Fourteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

Inclusive mosques, prayer circles, and spiritual collectives have been sprouting up across Europe, being and becoming spaces where marginalized Muslims congregate and re-imagine their futures both spatially and spiritually. As places of sanctity and worship, they aim to provide the ability to seek spiritual connections without being confined to normative practices of doing so. As places of congregation and community-building, they become spaces in which societal issues such as racism, hyper-capitalism, and climate change are contemplated and pursued as part of discourses on Islamic morality and ethics. Most notably however, they are a testament to the respective urban socio-political movements they are founded in (the West as superdiverse), mirroring the urban political landscapes in which they find themselves born and raised. These circumstances impact the shaping of their spirituality in a plethora of ways, ranging from the language used to discuss their religiosity to the kind of knowledge that is pursued and the ways in which their religiosity is expressed. This paper captures, illustrates, and unpacks these developments and processes through i) sharing in-depth interviews with participants, and ii) theoretically exploring the importance of reconfiguring and redefining space in the formation of religious subjectivity as contemporary Muslims living in non-Islamic countries.