Our interdisciplinary research group is international and works on four subprojects.In the project Islam in Global Modernity: The Case of the Arctic West, Dietrich Jung works with the general theoretical and methodological issues of the project. Following the methodological suggestions of the sociologist Norbert Elias, he develops a shared framework for the project’s constant moves between the macro, meso, and micro levels of the social. This theoretical framework synthesizes institutional and everyday life approaches to religion within the macro-sociological context of global modernity. Furthermore it integrates elements from theories of the geography of religion and transnational religion thus providing through the Arctic prism a new approach to the analysis of what Ira Lapidus once called the ”compound nature of Muslim identities”.

Kirstine Sinclair and Bouchra Mossmannconduct the two individual case studies under the joint working title Living Authentic Islamic Lives: Interpretation and Practice of Islamic Traditions in Arctic Norway and Canada.  These subprojects set off from the micro perspective, based on the analytical assumption of considering religion as the core variable in the believer’s construction of modern selfhood. Carrying out the most intensive data collection of the project, the studies are organized around two main questions: First, how do Muslims negotiate doctrinally diverse but socially adjacent interpretations of Islamic traditions in small but heterogeneous Arctic communities? How are transnational Islamic communications, movements, and institutions and different practices of local place making reflected in these negotiations? Both studies approach the field through the paradigm of everyday religion and draw on insights from the geography of religion, in order to grasp the significance of the local Arctic environment for the ways in which these Muslims practice Islam.

The two case studies will be based on extensive fieldwork. Sinclair’s projectcomprises several fieldwork periods in Arctic Norway. Centering on emergent and hitherto neglected communities it will be carried out in Tromsø, an economically growing university town of about 75.000 inhabitants. The data from Tromsø will be supplemented by shorter field trips to Bodø and further north to the smaller town of Alta (20.000 inhabitants) in the Finmark. Bouchra Mossmann’s project entails several months fieldwork in Northern and Arctic Canada. The core of which will take place in Yellowknife (Northern Territories), a town with nearly 20.000 inhabitants. Trips to Whitehorse (BC) and further north to Inuvik (Northwest Territories), a very small town of only 3.000 inhabitants, will complement the data from Yellowknife. These Canadian and Norwegian towns accommodate relative newly established, small but vibrant Muslim communities, which hitherto have not been subject to any academic study. They offer ideal opportunities for testing our general hypothesis regarding the emergence of novel forms of reinterpretation of Islamic traditions and educate us on religious everyday practices among Muslims in the Western North.

Under the working title Religious Governance amongst Muslims in Arctic Norway and Canada, finally Kirstine Sinclairand Jennifer Selby (Memorial University, St. Johns, Canada) join forces in applying an institutional perspective on the meso (state) level. They deal with religion as being embedded in two different national contexts. This subproject explores how Muslim communities strike a balance between the challenges of religious and political governance in achieving forms of modern Islamic authenticity. Thus, these national contexts inform us about the meso level between the local level of Arctic everyday life and the global level of “transnational Islam”.