What is it about?
The Shii community in Germany is very divers according to its ethnic composition and its forms of religious conduct. Conceptualizing these different groups as communities of practice helps to describe these specific religious, social and political articulations on the one hand and likewise enables to perceive of them as parts of the wider, global Shiite constellation on the other.
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Why is it important?
The paper takes issue with processes and articulations of internal diversification within the Shii-Muslim field and thus refuses any form of essentialising or ethicising narrative, which is still widespread when speaking about Islam in Europe or Germany more specifically. Furthermore, it identifies different patterns and modes of ethnic and / or religious belonging among the Shiis in Germany and thus illustrates the need for ethnographic fieldwork within these different communities.
Perspectives
We hope the article will be fruitful for anybody working in the field of religious and Islamic studies with an interest in inner-Islamic plurality in general or in Shiism in particular. We think that both disciplines can, methodologically speaking, learn from its results.
Prof. Dr. Robert Langer
Universitat der Bundeswehr Munchen
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Shiite “Communities of Practice” in Germany, Journal of Muslims in Europe, December 2017, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/22117954-12341351.
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