Over the past decades, research on mosque communities has shown that mosques have become not only focal points of public debates concerning Islam's place in European societies but also important sites where belonging, gender relations, and religious authority are actively negotiated. In light of this vast body of research, we believe it is essential to pause and critically reflect on mosque research itself. How is research on mosques influenced by political, societal, and disciplinary contexts? Who studies mosques and for what reasons? What theoretical and methodological approaches are used? And how is research on mosques complicit in constructing an image of Muslims and Islam in Europe? The contributions in this volume interrogate the epistemic foundations of a field long shaped by suspicion, security politics, and integration debates. They show how positionality, methodological choices, and infrastructural lenses (from architecture to governmental dispositifs) shape knowledge production about mosques, and trace transnational flows of religious education, governance, and identity. By conceptualizing mosques as relational spaces and researchers as active participants in the production of knowledge, this volume opens up new opportunities for reflexive mosque research.

Offers a reflexive approach to mosque research in Europe Integrates perspectives from various academic fields and countries Will open up new avenues for future research on mosques

Autorentext

Rauf Ceylan is Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at Osnabrück University.

Simon Freise , M.A., is research assistant and Ph.D. candidate in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Osnabrück University.

Marvin Mücke-Choudhury , M.A., is research assistant and Ph.D. candidate in Contemporary Islamic Studies at Osnabrück University.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction: Reflexive Mosque Research in Europe (Rauf Ceylan, Simon Freise, Marvin Mücke-Choudhury).- Part I: Reflecting on the Positionality of Researchers and Their Methodology.- Chapter 2: Conducting ethnographic research with mosque communities and Muslims in minoritized contexts: Methodological reflections from the Netherlands (Semiha Bekir).- Chapter 3: Embedded in the Field: Reflexivity in Ethnographic Mosque Research (C. Yasemin Okay).- Chapter 4: Muslim Communities in Germany - Epistemology and Methodology of Qualitative Mosque Studies (Emre Ucar).- Part II: Reflecting on Socio-Material Infrastructures.- Chapter 5: From contentious building to prayer room: depoliticizing the contemporary European mosque (Oskar Verkaaik).- Chapter 6: Constructing the Many Sides of the Mosque in an Immigrant Society: A Reflection on the Multiple Positionalities in Ethnographic Research (Chantal Munsch & Kathrin Herz).- Chapter 7: Religious Infrastructure as a Dispositif of symbolic order: On the Production of Migration in the Diasporic Context of Muslims of Turkish Origin, with Particular Reference to Reflexive Migration Research (Rauf Ceylan and Simon Freise).- Part III: Reflecting on Governance and Governmentality.- Chapter 8: Islamic and Turkish national affiliations in DITIB mosques: A content analysis of the construction of a Turkish-Muslim community in the context of the 2015 refugee crisis in Germany and the 2016 coup attempt in Turkey (Rauf Ceylan).- Chapter 9: The structure of mosque debates in the Danish parliament between 19982023 (Jesper Petersen).- Chapter 10: Public Discourse on Islam and Mosque Research in Germany Existing Entanglements and New Avenues for Future Research (Marvin Mücke-Choudhury).- Chapter 11: 'This is not what I expected from the research'. Mosque research and governmental policy development: a case. (Thijl Sunier).- Chapter 12: Confessing the Future: Temporality and Muslim Subjectivation (Simon Freise).- Part IV: Reflecting on Transnational Religious Education.- Chapter 13: The Uluslararas lahiyat Program (UIP) Religious Professionalization and the Training of Institutional Role Profiles in the Context of Transnational Religious Policy (Yilmaz Gümüs).- Chapter 14: Mosque 3.0: Shifting the Analytical Paradigm from Containers to Transnational Educational Spaces (Betül Karakoç-Kafkas).- Chapter 15: Fragility as an Epistemic Condition: Toward a Reflexive Praxeology of Mosque Research (Fatih Bahadir Kaya).