Iskandar Ahmad Abdalla
Rendering Islam Liberal: Secularism, Sexuality and the Politics of Muslim Self-appropriation in Germany
Rendering Islam Liberal: Secularism, Sexuality and the Politics of Muslim Self-appropriation in Germany
The intensive public and institutional engagement with Islam in Europe regarding notions of secularism and sexuality, not merely constructs Islam as an antithesis of liberal western values. Rather, it postulates the rendering of a “progressive” Islam that can be appropriated to secular liberal settings and co-opted in the framework of the modern European nation state. Through an ethnographic micro-perspective supported by historical inquiries into the genealogies of the liberal in relation to the religious, my project tries to investigate the modalities of embracing a “liberal Islam” in contemporary Germany as well as the processes of subject formation of organized liberal Muslims. Beyond the dichotomous paradigms of constructing Islam as reconcilable or irreconcilable to traditions of liberal thought, reasoning and practices, this project studies the politics of reconcilability narratives themselves – and the power dynamics they underpin- as expressed by Muslim subjects within a secular context and a German/European Wertegemeinschaft.
First Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Shirin Amir Moazami
Second Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stefanie Schüler-Springorum