Abstract
This introduction to the special ‘Muslim Futures’ in the Journal of Muslims in Europe expounds the new development of Muslims imagining their future in Europe. This special has selected a number of themes: AI and transhumanism, children’s literature, environment and sustainability, pedagogy and education, charity, urban spaces, sufism, and art, beauty, and ethics. These contributions are not meant to provide a conclusive insight on Muslim futures but are merely steppingstones in exploring new avenues of study and knowledge production. ‘Muslim futures’ is a new trend with global implications, and this Introduction provides background to this trend and argues that the study of this trend will constitute a much-needed academic alternative in Muslim and Islam Studies in Europe.
Imagining futures from a Muslim position is not new, but it has only recently regained traction among Muslims in general, and European Muslim youth in particular. In June 2024, a year after we had taken the initiative for this special edition of the Journal of Muslims in Europe, we participated in one of the first conferences on Muslim Futures held in mainland Europe. Under the title Muslimische Zukunfte, the Sigmund Freud Universität in Vienna had organised speakers and workshops for a large audience of mostly young Muslims to grapple with the notion of “Muslim futures” through a wide variety of approaches. The main aim was to envision utopias from a Muslim point of view. The conference and its key questions were inspired by Muslim Futures, a project initiated by Ouassima Laabich of Superrrlab Berlin that in 2023 had guided and challenged several artists with Muslim backgrounds to creatively imagine alternative futures from a Muslim perspective. The leading question was what would happen if these imaginations were to “focus on the complexity of Muslim life, allowing Muslims to draw, negotiate, and envision futures worth fighting for today”?1 Within this process, questions pertaining to power and historicity were key – for who gives, and who has been given, the space and opportunity to articulate these visions?
These are projects in which mostly young Muslims come together to rethink and reimagine their futures based on inspirations drawn, on the one hand, from their own Islamic(ate) heritages and, on the other, from their super-diverse European and virtually global environments. These developments are indicative of today’s increasingly interconnected and interdependent world. This active reshaping and reimagining of a Muslim consciousness is part of a larger global trend amongst young Muslims in both Islamic and non-Islamic countries, a trend that seems to be led mainly by artists and writers.2 This global trend is characterised by reflections that centre on ethics and moral dispositions as a cornerstone of future imaginations, thereby often critiquing contemporary global challenges such as climate change, artificial intelligence, (mental) health, imperialism, socio-political forms of oppression, hyper-capitalism and consumerism, and (cyber)warfare.
In Europe, these emerging developments have also been expressed in a variety of ways by a great diversity of artists with a Muslim background. In France, Makan Fofana, self-proclaimed “Minister of Magic”, is tackling the improvement of socio-economic conditions in the Paris banlieus. In his book Banlieus du turfu (“turfu” being “future” in Arab-French slang), he explicates that, rather than indulging fantasies in which one aims to escape the banlieus, he prefers to “develop new ways of reinventing and re-enchanting neighbourhoods generally considered as economically and socially deprived”.3 In Finland, the author Hassan Blasim imagines futures in which climate change has disastrously altered our realities and qualities of life, resulting in the lives of the inhabitants of the Middle East being converted into videogames, with everyone living in a digital paradise inspired by the mythical Gardens of Babylon. Moroccan-French artist Mounir Ayache, at the time of writing artist in residence at Villa de Medici, Rome, aims to reimagine Orientalist visions of North Africa through his art inspired by Amin Malouf’s 1986s protagonist Leo Africanus, a bibliographical story that had nourished the European imaginary for years. Taking the original manuscript that the Andalusian known as Leo Africanus wrote in 1526 at the request of the pope, Ayache reimagines him under his original name, Hasan al Wazzan, but set in the year 2500, who then in story-telling mode recounts the exchanges between Europe and Africa through imaginary geopolitical tales. In Norway, choreographer and sound artist Jassem Hindi worked together with performance artist Keith Hennesy on a project titled Future Friend(ships), in which they “borrow from the geo-traumatic chaos, the maddening world, the desperation, the hospitality to strangers … to project ourselves into a near immediate future”.4 In Germany, we find Anja Saleh, who, inspired by her Egyptian heritage, weaves intricate tapestries laced with colourful patterns and titled with Intergenerational Dreams, weaving together history, future, art and beauty onto one canvas.5 In France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, artists such as Samira Idroos, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, Omar Abdellatif and Anusheh Zia reconfigure the future of prayer by playfully and inventively grappling with the notion of a prayer mat, redesigning its purpose and aesthetic for pragmatism and celebration of heritage.6
So far, the public manifestations of this development in Europe are mainly taking place in the artistic and academic milieus, but much seems also be happening privately, with Muslims meeting each other across Europe’s borders, shaping their desires to reimagine their lived tradition as Muslims in Europe, and to reconfigure what this precisely means for whom and why.7 These developments are largely overlooked and understudied, with most academic and public attention concentrated on notions of integration and radicalisation, thereby neglecting developments that showcase the multitude of complexities intrinsic to understanding Muslim life in Europe today.
In this special edition of the Journal of Muslims in Europe, we want to get a glimpse of these developments. We do so by using the artistic manifestations referred to above as entry points for a discussion about the kinds of knowledge and imaginaries we are capturing and analysing when we observe or interact with Muslims in Europe. This discussion is squarely set in today’s debates on the content and structure of Muslim (or “Islamic”) studies in Europe, which are subject to emerging critique pointing towards necessary reflections on the kind of topics we choose to study, which topics are given most space and attention, and what this reveals about the dynamic between knowledge production processes and the subject of inquiry.
For this special edition, we invited eight scholars to work on several themes that we have found to resonate with the trend towards exploring the Muslim futures described above: AI and transhumanism (Hureyre Kam), children’s literature (Torsten Janson), environment and sustainability (Larisa Jasarevic), pedagogy and education (Dina Sijamhodzic-Nadarevic), charity (Raquel Carvalheira), urban spaces (Oscar Salguero Montano), Sufism (Oleg Yarosh), and art, beauty and ethics (Sara Bolghiran). We realise that the themes in Muslim imaginaries regarding the future are more diverse than this, but this selection serves as a first step in our venture into this new domain. In their contributions, these scholars have thus sought to explicate, think through, or sketch an image of how these topics are grappled with, expressed or given space, theorized and articulated and, at times, how potential pathways ahead are or can be imagined. These contributions are not meant to provide a conclusive insight on Muslim futures but are merely stepping stones in exploring new avenues of study and knowledge production. To channel that exploration, we have made use of three primary paradigms for the purpose of clarity and structure: futures, Muslim subjectivities, and social imaginaries. In the next sections, we elaborate on each of these.
1 Futures
One of the first contemporary Muslims to engaged in active and comprehensive thinking about Muslim futures is the Pakistani-British thinker Ziauddin Sardar (b. 1951). In his Future of Muslim Civilization (1979), Sardar argued that the task to reconstruct a dynamic and thriving Muslim civilisation is incumbent upon each Muslim.8 Since then, he has published over 40 works on the matter, with subjects ranging from the Islamisation of science and technology to writing detailed and structured plans to situate Muslims in a postmodern, or in his most recent philosophical suggestion, “post-normal” times.9 In this issue, we are less interested in debating or questioning his philosophical presuppositions, and more in his call to action, which encapsulates the idea that it is imperative to actively imagine and pursue one’s future, for if one does not, one runs the risk of becoming part and parcel of hegemonic futuristic imaginations that might inadvertently hold the same equal and equitable space for all involved.10
In addition, Sardar warns that the word “future” alone seems to suggest that what is at stake is the projection of the future, including matters like foresight and prediction.11 He deems it a technocratic misconception to assume any kind of knowledge of the future in any kind of sense. Predictions, forecasts and scenarios do not provide us with knowledge of the future but only suggest certain limited possibilities. Forecasts and visions are themselves epistemological activities – in the sense that they are based on some theory of knowledge – but they do not yield knowledge of the future itself.12 Instead, Sardar argues, “While one aspect of the study of the future is concerned with intellectual structure and organisation, with creative and imaginative processes, the other focuses on its impact and consequences on cultures and societies, and how it is realized in actuality”.13
In line with this reasoning, in this special issue, we are interested not in predicting the future or forecasting it, but in the ways in which Muslims in Europe are envisioning their livelihoods, reimagining their direct environments, (re)creating their spiritual homes and working towards realising these visions and imaginaries. Capturing these processes can reveal a great deal about the dynamics that underpin the complexities of navigating a meaningful Muslim life in non-Muslim majority spaces.
1.1 Euro-centred Thinking about (Muslim) Futures
In the case of Muslims in Europe today, public discussions surrounding imaginaries of futures tend to be of a dichotomous nature. For instance, notions that revolve around the reinstatement of seventh-century CE concepts related to Islamic society in today’s world receive ample attention, as well as the responses to them, which have led to discussions on how these developments can be curbed (most notably found in radicalisation or integration discourses) or how these imaginary trajectories should change to suit the more dominant liberal and secular imaginary (as manifested in discussions on a “European Islam”14 ).
The dominant mode of thinking about the future an sich has a mainly Eurocentric genealogy, with foundations in Enlightenment ideals, where a theory of progress reigns supreme.15 This Eurocentrism is self-evident as a mode of inquiry, starting from the ways in which time and space are perceived (as articulated by Hegel, with humanity evolving from one time to the next, the next always better than that which preceded it), with technology being privileged, and mastery of nature being seen as a condition for progress.16 Where, in this trajectory and in this imaginary, are places and spaces for other imaginations of the future? Native Americans of the Cherokee tribes have articulated futures in which they imagine living in complete harmony with nature and discard much of the technological advances made to improve human quality of life. Jason Edward Lewis, an American representative of Cherokee and Aboriginal Hawaiian (Kanaka Maoli) origin, argues that the aim of their future thinking is “to create a distinct future where we are not dependent on the gatekeepers to open the gate, and where we are not required, even, to storm those gates, or to go around them.”17 In short, he suggests disengaging from existing frameworks of future thinking and devising one’s own.
In this special issue, we want to contribute to this fledgling conversation regarding Muslims in Europe by attempting to carve out spaces for discussions, imaginations and visions that allow for a reimagination of Hegelian conceptions of time and space or Kantian inspired ethics. This, then, is to be done in dialogue with a multitude of visions, thereby recognising the connections and exchanges that have prevailed in the history of ideas. Through the topics chosen for the contributions to this special edition, and the notion of future as one whereby we seek to capture insightful and life-altering pathways and directions, we attempt to start a dialogue on potential limitations or possibilities that have previously been either overlooked or understudied. Does the future of Muslims in Europe move beyond integration and radicalisation, and what would such an endeavour look like? And how do we situate the idea of a Muslim subject, the primary agent in this process, without downplaying the inherent diversity and complexity that comes with its parameters? In the next section, we go deeper into the importance of such an exercise.
2 Muslim Subjectivity
If it is “Muslim futures” we are speaking of, naturally the question arises of what this precisely entails. Rather than speaking of an -ism (Muslim futurism), we choose to use Muslim “futures” as suggested by Ouassima Laabich, for the -ism connotates an ideological and prescriptive undertone, while our interest is in the process of imagination, which is free of ideological constraints. Moreover, we use futures in the plural because of the inherent multitude of possibilities or limitations that the idea of a future encompasses.
By using the term “Muslim” futures, we emphasise and highlight the disposition of the person in question to undertake the endeavour of imagination that may lead to the realisation of alternative futures that are inspired by the Islamic faith (the role of which will be discussed below). This view of Muslim futures thus emphasises the proactive disposition of the subject, that is the Muslim, who, “while focusing on the complexity of Muslim life”, seeks out to “move beyond today’s challenging experiences and the many struggles of the now to imagine a tomorrow that is more just and inclusive”, and “to draw, negotiate and envision futures that are worth fighting for today”.18 We are, in brief, interested in the ways that Muslims in Europe envision their livelihoods, direct environments, create their spiritual homes, and work towards realising these visions and imaginaries.
2.1 Questioning Anthropocentricity and Diaspora
In our conceptualisation of Muslim futures, we interrogate two elements: the anthropocentric focus of the study of Muslims in Europe, and the idea of the diaspora that never escapes the “in-between” realm. With regards to anthropocentricity, we can draw from the work of scholars such as Amira Mittermaier and Yasmin Moll, who argue that we should “decenter the human” in our work as scholars of religion.19 In a plea to move “beyond the human horizon”, Mittermeier, for instance, aims to “question the analytical and ethnographic frameworks that seal off the visible, material, and worldly from the invisible, immaterial and otherworldly”. This dichotomous demarcation means that, in reality, God is “written out” of the observation and analysis. “Bringing God into the picture does not mean we are introducing fixed claimed truths”, Mittermaier writes. “We can make space for alterity without claiming to capture, understand, or accommodate it fully. In fact, a serious ethnographic engagement with God would do precisely that – welcome unknowability into our work”.20
Welcoming the unknown, in our understanding, is one of the key parameters of engaging with futures. In our issue, God is being “brought in” in various contributions. An example is Larisa Jasarevic, who writes beautifully and invitingly on an eschatology of bees and beekeeping in her native Bosnia. In order to do justice to the patchwork of diversity that encapsulates Muslim life in Europe, any researcher needs to address what connects the subject to space, time, nature and other beings or creations. The divine at once adds layers of complexity to the notion of Muslim subjectivities, enabling us to situate the subject in tune and in line with several aspects that speak simultaneously to their imaginaries and consciousness.
Second, we problematise the concept of the Muslim diaspora in Europe. This stands for the struggles that underpin the everlasting Muslim migrant, and so reveals a great deal about the ways in which Muslim subjectivity tends to be situated and located in time and space. We contend that this is a hindrance when addressing the process of Muslim futures. What does it mean for the future to be “diasporic”, when many Muslim youth in Western European countries envision and build their entire life in European societies, and when the languages they speak to express their faith and acquire religious knowledge are Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Finnish or English, sometimes more than Arabic or Turkish? And where, then, should we situate ancient Muslim European communities, such as the Tatars in Poland and Lithuania, or the Muslims in the Balkan countries, who are recently reconfiguring a place in the imagined social consciousness of the entity that is “Europe”?21 How should we situate this Muslim subjectivity within the modern project that is the conceptualisation and imaginary of Europe? Do the Muslims native to Europe have to engage with this imaginary in order to be validated?
The diasporic Muslim tends to be categorized as a lost soul, vagrant, in between homes, looking for identity that they can hold on to. Studies galore on belonging and identity, citizenship and accommodation. While it is certainly the case that migratory processes have great psychological impacts and many do indeed feel as though they are being pulled in different directions simultaneously, at the same time many are also intervening, shaping, challenging, questioning and subverting what it means to be Muslim in Europe.22 In doing so they are also proactive subjects, wondering, exploring, making multiple homes in multiple places at once, and feeling a multitude of things as they navigate these perilous and complex times. The complexities that shape these trajectories should therefore be included as well, rather than only studying Muslims with a migration background as those in perpetual transition, waiting to be either included or excluded.
These are the matters that we have sought to address in our special issue when engaging with the idea of futures: exploring cautiously how Muslims in Europe make sense of self, the divine, God and environment in their present, and what these processes can reveal about the ways in which they envision their futures in relation to that exact same cosmology of self, community, God and other. Overall, the concept of Muslim subjectivity in Europe should be re-evaluated and interrogated to make the process of capturing these imaginaries more intelligible and feasible, thereby continuing the conversation about who we are studying, what kinds of approaches we take, what kind of topics we choose, and what kinds of purposes this knowledge serves.23
3 Social Imaginaries
Imagination is key in the project that is Muslim futures. The fact that Islam is the main source of this imagination of course means that there is no unbridled freedom of imagination: some kind of direction is already given by the fact that Islam serves as the key vector. However, the richness of the Islamic legacy allows much leeway to explore in width and breadth and to provide new entry points for thinking about futures. The contribution by Hureyre Kam is an example of this: Islamic philosophical and theological concepts provide new tools to investigate the new, and to some disturbing, concept of transhumanism.
When it comes to futures thinking, we find it of particular importance to explore how Muslims in Europe imagine and realise their social existence, and what the deeper normative notions and images are that govern the ways in which they do so. For that purpose, we use the concept of social imaginaries as described by Charles Taylor:
the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations […] Social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.24
While imagination may lead to unattainable fantasies (utopia), social imagination may open new possibilities that previously seemed unthinkable, introducing ideas about living in different ways that may seem impossible to us now. Social imagination has the ability to create new realities. Examples are concepts such as money, norms, nations, fundamental rights – these were all imagined once and then became realities.
Can we discern social imagination in Muslim future thinking? The contributions in this special edition of children’s literature (Torsten), charity work (Cavalheira), funerary practices (Sulguero), education (Nadarevic) and mysticism (Yarosh) are examples of the first steps in such social imaginative thinking by the Muslims involved. Bolder imaginaries may be out there, yet to be uncovered. But while these social imaginaries are observed and described by some of the scholars in this edition, others have embarked on imaginary thinking of their own. Bolghiran, Jasarevic and Kam are stretching the bandwidth of imaginary thinking by introducing Islamic concepts and weaving them into spiritual and intellectual frameworks that allow them as well as others to further advance into the unknown of Muslim futures.
4 Pathways Ahead
With the project of this special edition, we have tried to create a space whereby we could forego attempts to respond or engage with integration and radicalisation. This proved to be more difficult than expected. It is laborious to unlearn and undo dominant epistemological frameworks that have conditioned one to consistently think within narratives that seek to capture elements of “identity”, “belonging”, “freedom”, “agency”, just as it is difficult to deconstruct the main narratives from which we operate, or to resist the urges to categorise and define (which mainly serve academic essentialism and political agendas). It takes great effort to suggest alternative pathways forward that do justice to the wide array of intricate and interconnected elements that underpin the complexity of studying human life.
In this final section, we want to reflect a little more on this process and on alternative ways in which we think that scholarship on Muslims in Europe can be conducted. We want to think through contemporary debates and hopefully excavate some exciting paths forward – matters which we believe are intrinsically part of the source from which the Muslim futures project has sprung.
Academic scholarship on Muslims in Europe has undergone rigorous debates in terms of both its content and its methodological considerations.25 However, Nadia Fadil has succinctly summed up the state of Islamic Studies scholarship when diagnosing it with a “double epistemological impasse”.26 Fadil argues that contemporary scholarship is dominated by discussions on Muslims as Migrants, Muslims as Islamists, or Muslims as Ethical Subjects, who thus remain Europe’s “other” through which Europeanness is reconfigured and reproduced. Talal Asad had captured this with the motto “The Muslim Question”.27
Granted, quite a few scholars have tried to address these academic shortcomings by proposing forms of study that seek to capture “everyday life”.28 These studies have certainly yielded many useful insights, tracing processes of self-making and agency, and exploring ways in which Muslims in Europe seek to make Islam meaningful throughout their everyday lives. These studies have revealed, however, as Fadil argues, the “discomfort of social sciences with the epistemological claim-making of monotheistic religious traditions”.29 Or, in other words, they have showcased how scholars are sometimes not too comfortable with engaging normative claims within the faith itself, seemingly being afraid of “using too much religion”. This had already been observed by Mittermaier and Moll, who were discussed above. As Fadil rightly suggests, this attitude has resulted in the awkward conundrum of “the desire to account for the distinctiveness of ethical subjectivity of Muslims, while at the same time downplaying it”.30 Thus, while these domains of study have their merits, it has led to a neglect of Muslim thought and practice in Europe and a stagnated theorisation of Islam.
Understanding Muslims in Europe mainly through these two vectors of Othering, on the one hand, and “everyday Islam”, on the other, has led to a simplification of their respective subjectivities and resulted into a wide array of overlooked and understudied developments within Europe. Muslim futures as an academic project of inquiry requires that the Muslims involved are invited to reflect on what Islam precisely means for them as a source of inspiration, imagination and the pursuit of an improved tomorrow. To engage Muslim futures without engaging Islam in some form or capacity would mean to engage half-heartedly, because it neglects elements that are crucial in the formation of such imaginary action or development. An important question for scholarship on Muslims in Europe could thus be how to “write God in”31 – thereby rethinking the equilibrium between self and subject, and how to situate a divine and metaphysical relationship in a supposedly secular neoliberal environment. Sharpening the tools and instruments that enhance our ability as academics to go about our craft is paramount at all given times. Thinking through these questions can potentially lead to novel ways of thinking about Muslim life in Europe.
4.1 Carving Out New Spaces
In order therefore to capture and do justice to the dynamics that underpin the complexities of Muslim life in Europe, it is imperative to broaden the scope of experiences, narrations and imaginations that showcase the ways in which this subjectivity is constructed. We therefore deem it of great importance to carve out spaces to do so and comprehend developments that are disruptive and subversive to dominant modes of knowledge production. And so, we ask, ultimately, what is happening in Europe, really, beyond notions of integration and radicalisation, and how do Muslims see, imagine and live their lives and futures in that Europe? How can we have conversations that enable us to usefully and insightfully contribute to emerging bodies of knowledge that seek to explore Muslim subjectivity In European societies? What kind of pedagogies are valuable in our pursuit to do justice to all the elements that comprise Muslim subjectivity, including getting comfortable with the uncomfortable in terms of reconfiguring our relationship with divinity?
As mentioned above, this special edition was not intended to find answers to all these questions, suggestions and ideas. But it does give us pathways to move forward in the study of Muslims in Europe. “Muslim Futures” is a process that may provide the academic with a framework, a lens, or an approach through which to work outside the established academic discourses – because, for one, the imagination of futures reveals much about their lives, dreams, issues, inspirations and concerns, and opens a much wider scope of living than current studies of Islam and Muslims show. This is not something new: several academics have recently pointed out that “Islam” is much more than what Western theology and anthropology tell us, as it also encompasses literature, arts, lifestyle and the relation to nature.32 This approach may lead us out of the “epistemological impasse”, but the framework of Muslim Futures may also force the academic to move away from the traditional anthropocentric approach and focus on a process that is much more dynamic and cosmological because it moves beyond the singular relations between humans, or between humans and God, or humans and nature: Muslim Futures inform us that there are worldviews that encompass all of this at once. And there is more: one of the means to envision and live by these worldviews is imagination. This is a human capacity that has received very little attention in academia but it is the main driver behind Muslim Futures. Academics must then hasten to develop the tools to capture this. We have seen that one of the ways to do so is to resort to the arts.
The many narratives, experiences, theories and theologies of Muslims, in combination with social imaginaries that are part of mainstream Muslim discourses, are necessary to discuss and illustrate the wealth and complexity of ideas inherent to the notion of Islam as a lived tradition – one that is continuously developed, challenged, contested, reproduced, and reimagined on the European continent, especially as we venture into the future unknown.
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See, for example, Determann, Jörg, “Muslim futurisms”, in Islam, Science Fiction and Extraterrestrial Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2021), pp. 175–210; Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, “Searching for the next intifada: Exercises in queer Muslim futurism”, Meridians, 20/2 (2021): 443–65; Dazed, “Fatima Al Qadiri and Sophia Al-Maria on the starkly avant garde culture of the Middle East”, Dazed, 14 November 2012, https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/15037/1/al-qadiri-al-maria-on-gulf-futurism (accessed 30 August 2024); Balsom, Erika, “Sophia al Maria on dystopias, Gulf futurisms, and sad sacks”, Art in America, 7 April 2020, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/sophia-al-maria-erika-balsom-gulf-futurism-sad-sacks-julia-stoschek-interview-1202683264 (accessed 30 August 2024); Art in America, “Meriem Bennani on teleporting across borders”, Art in America, 19 September 2020, https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/meriem-bennani-teleporting-borders-56493 (accessed 30 August 2024); Al-Dujaili, Dalia, “Babylons of tomorrow: The architecture of Arab futures”, Azure Magazine, 14 November, 2022, https://www.azuremagazine.com/article/babylons-of-tomorrow-the-architecture-of-arab-futures/ (accessed 30 August 2024); Hossain, Rokeya Sakhawat, “Sultana’s dream”, in The Essential Rokeya, Mohammad A. Quayum (ed. and trans.) (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 159–68. Saks Afridi, “SpaceMosque”, Saks Afridi, n.d., https://www.saksafridi.com/spacemosque (accessed 30 August 2024).
Allianz Foundation, “Our new fellow Makan Fofana: The mastermind of Turfurism”, Allianz Foundation, 27 July 2023, https://allianzfoundation.org/our-new-fellow-makan-fofana/ (accessed 30 August 2024).
Avila, Robert, “Space for ‘speculative friendships’: Keith Hennessy and Jassem Hindi’s future friend/ships”, TDR: The Drama Review, 62/2 (2018): 136–43.
Saleh, Anja, “Work”, AnjaSaleh, https://www.anjasaleh.com/ (accessed 30 August 2024).
Padder, Sadaf, “These Muslim artists in the West are reenvisioning the prayer rug”, Artsy, 21 September 2021, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-muslim-artists-re-envisioning-prayer-rugs-address-misrepresentations-islam (accessed 30 August 2024).
Bolghiran, Sara, “The other Muslim”, PhD research project, Leiden University, publication expected in 2026.
Sardar, Ziauddin, The Future of Muslim Civilization (London: Croom Helm, 1979).
Idem, “Welcome to postnormal times”, Futures: The Journal of Policy, Planning and Futures Studies, 42/5 (2010), 435–44.
Sardar, Ziauddin, “The namesake: Futures; futures studies; futurology; futuristic; foresight: What’s in a name?”, Futures: The Journal of Policy, Planning and Futures Studies, 42/3 (2010), 177–84.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Maurits S. Berger, A Brief History of Islam in Europe: Thirteen Centuries of Creed, Conflict and Coexistence (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2014), pp. 248–50.
Dussel, Enrique D., Krauel, Javier, and Tuma, Virginia C., “Europe, modernity, and Eurocentrism”, Nepantla, 1/3 (2000), 465–78; Bhambra, Gurminder K., Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (New York: Palgrave, 2007); Bhambra, Gurminder K., and Narayan, John, European Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Histories and Postcolonial Societies (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).
Sardar, “Namesake”.
Lewis, Jason Edward, “The future imaginary”, in The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms, Taryne Jade Taylor, Isiah Lavender III, Grace L. Dillon, and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2024), pp. 11–22.
Laabich and Elaarbi, “Muslim futures”.
Moll, Yasmin, “Can there be a Godly ethnography? Islamic anthropology, epistemic decolonization, and the ethnographic stance”, American Anthropologist, 125/4 (2023), 746–60; Mittermaier, Amira, “Beyond the human horizon”, Religion and Society, 12/1 (2021), 21–38.
Mittermaier, “Beyond the human horizon”, p. 22.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Al-Azmeh, Aziz, and Fokas, Effie, Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Khader, Bichara, “Muslims in Europe or European Muslims? The construction of a problem”, Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, 83/2.330 (2016), 169–87; Sistek, Frantisek, Imagining Bosnian Muslims in Central Europe: Representations, Transfers and Exchanges (New York: Berghahn Books, 2021).
Demir, Ipek, Diaspora as Translation and Decolonisation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2022).
Moll, “Can There Be a Godly Ethnography?”.
Taylor, Charles, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 24.
See, e.g., Sunier, Thijl, “Beyond the domestication of Islam in Europe: A reflection on past and future research on Islam in European societies”, Journal of Muslims in Europe, 1/2 (2016), 189–208.
Fadil, Nadia, “The anthropology of Islam in Europe: A double epistemological impasse”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 48/1 (2019), 117–32.
Asad, Talal, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 164.
Fadil, Nadia, and Fernando, Mayathi, “Rediscovering the ‘everyday’ Muslim: Notes on an anthropological divide”, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 5/2 (2015), 59–88.
Fadil, “Anthropology of Islam”.
Ibid., 118.
Moll, “Can There Be a Godly Ethnography?”.
Ahmad, Shahab, What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017); Bauer, Thomas, A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021).
