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The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin offers an in-depth ethnographic account of Muslim youth's religious identity formation and their engagement with Islam in everyday life. Focusing on Muslim women in the organisation MJD in Germany, it provides a deeper understanding of processes related to immigration, transnationalism, the transformation of identifications and the reconstruction of selfhood. The book deals with the collective content of religious identity formation and processes of differentiation, engaging with the changing role of religion in an urban European setting, restructuring of religious authority and the formation of gender identity through religion. Synnøve K.N. Bendixsen examines how the participants seek and debate what it means to be a good Muslim, and discusses the religious movement as individual engagement in a collective project.
List of contents
Acknowledgements
A Note on Language and Sources
Introduction
Situating the Field and Methodological Reflections
Making Sense of the City: The Religious Spaces of Young Muslim Women in Berlin
Negotiating, Resisting and (Re)Constructing Othering
Crafting the Religious Individual in a Faith Community
Trajectories of Religious Acts and Desires: Bargaining with Religious Norms and Ideals
Making a Religious Gender Order
The Meanings of and Incentives for a Religious Identification
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Situating the Movements Studied within the Wider Islamic Field in Germany
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Synnøve K.N. Bendixsen, PhD. (2010) is a postdoctoral researcher at IMER Uni Rokkansenteret, Norway. She received a PhD in Social Anthropology from Humboldt University and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Bendixsen's research interests include Muslim minority communities, youth, refugees, irregular migrants, and urban communities.
Report
"At last, a richly-textured, ethnographic study which takes religiosity seriously. This fine study of young women's involvement in a particular, Islamic movement in Berlin illuminates the reasons for 'the turn to Islam' of a new generation in Europe. [...] Marked throughout by methodological and analytical sophistication, it challenges many easy generalisations about how Muslims born and educated in Europe appropriate Islam." Philip Lewis, University of Bradford.
