Global Islam between Islamist revitalization and progressive awakening

Lecture series and conferences

Responsible for the project: Prof. Dr. Susanne Schröter

Project description

On the one hand, the project deals with a currently observable trend in Islamic societies to reshape the prevailing normative orders on the basis of Islamic norms and, on the other hand, with progressive counter-movements.
Islamist revitalization movements are evident in Central, South and Southeast Asia, Islamist and sometimes even jihadist movements can be detected in the civil war regions of Central Asia, the Middle East, the Sahel and some West and East African states. In Europe, Australia and the USA, there is also evidence of a new acceptance of Islamic normativity and religiously motivated violence among young people. Security agencies in Germany have identified a record number of so-called Salafists and jihadists in 2018. The project will examine the background to this unbroken trend and invite experts to do so. In addition to aspects of violence, conflicts of norms caused by the advances of Islamist organizations that seek to enforce Islamic-based norms in public spaces will be researched in particular.
The most symbolic Islamic-based norm is probably the one that requires women to cover their bodies and heads in particular ways. An example of the changing treatment of such norms can be seen in the history of Iran. In 1936, Reza Shah Pahlevi banned the veil, which he considered a symbol of the country’s regression, while Ayatollah Khomenei made it legal in 1979, after the Islamic Revolution, along with a number of other clothing regulations. Today, young Iranian women demonstrate their opposition to the regime by publicly unveiling themselves. In Western countries, a headscarf dispute that has been raging for more than 20 years is dividing society and the feminist movement.
In the 20th century, a liberal Islam emerged as a counter-movement against any kind of Islamic-based normative order, which is largely based on hermeneutic methods of interpreting basic Islamic texts and is oriented towards the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the right to sexual self-determination. Liberal Muslims demand equal rights for non-Muslim or non-Muslim-recognized minorities, the abolition of the duality between believers and non-believers and the abolition of national blasphemy laws.

Conference
8. May 2019
The Islamic headscarf – symbol of dignity or oppression?

Conference
June 14, 2019
Secular Islam and criticism of Islamism

Lecture series
Winter semester 2019/2020
11th lecture series of the Frankfurt Research Center Global Islam

International conference
November 28 and 29, 2019
Progressive Muslims and the Challenge of Islamism

The research project is supported by the German Research Foundation DFG, the Hessian Ministry for Social Affairs and Integration, the Loewe Project “Religious Positioning”, the Kassel Foundation and the Hessian Ministry for Science and Art