Call for Papers

Date: August 21-23, 2019

Venue: Hotel Panorama, Göteborg, Sweden

Organizer: Danish Mosques & Nordic Mosques Research Network

Abstract Submission Deadline: May 1, 2019

Danish Mosques – Significance, Use and Influence together with the Nordic Mosques Research network invites papers and applications for participation. This will be the first workshop as part of the HS-NOS funding and the mid-term conference in the Danish Mosques research project.

For this workshop, we invite scholars and researchers in the Nordic countries that work in the intersection of mosques, family and Islamic law. Mosques are widely understood as Muslim institutions in the discursivity of Islam. Similarly, Islamic law is widely defined as Islamic ethics, norms and practice. In our view and in legal terms, the biggest challenge for mosques and Muslims in the Nordic countries is building authentic and responsive legal institutions that may help Muslims in their ethnic, social and legal dilemmas and problems, where Western society seems to disappoint.

The operable questions for the workshop are:

– how are Muslims in mosques (and beyond) articulating their legal, ethical and normative identities?
– What kind of institutions are being build?
– How many so-called Islamic councils are there in the Nordic countries?
– How are they seen and used by Muslims?
– What kind of Islamic law and ethics issues are seen by the courts and quasi-courts in the Nordic countries, such as family matters, divorce, mediation, inherence, honor, polygamy?
– How do the courts and the legal systems in general approach and address these issues?

This is the first in a series of three workshops on Nordic Mosques in Context – On the institutional embeddedness of Islam in the Nordic countries sponsored by a NOS-HS Workshop Grant. The second is on “Mosques, power and politics,” in Copenhagen, Denmark, in January 2020, and the third is on “Mosques, communities and finance,” in Oslo, Norway, August 2020. The purpose of the workshops is to investigate the dimensions of institutional embeddedness of Islam in the Nordic countries as mosques seek to be responsive institutions for the needs of Muslims, challenged by economic, legal and political alternatives.

Conveners

– Brian Arly Jacobsen, assoc. professor, Sociology of Religion, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
– Torkel Brekke, Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway
– Göran Larsson, Professor in Religious Studies, Göteborg University, Sweden
– Niels Valdemar Vinding, post.doc., Islamic Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

More information on: University of Copenhagen’s Website