‘Spiritualized Islam’: Reconfigurations of Islamic Dogma Among Young Non-Organized Muslims in Norway

ABSTRACT

This article provides examples of how some young Muslims in Norway reconfigure Islamic norms and doctrines in the direction of contemporary spirituality. These young Muslims’ beliefs include elements of ‘objective’ Islamic dogma, while simultaneously sacralizing the significance and authority of subjective life to the degree that it challenges established orthodoxy. Their interpretations of Islam may be described as a synthesis of two fundamentally different approaches to the sacred, namely ‘life-as-religion’ and ‘subjective-life spirituality’, as described in the work of Linda Woodhead and Paul Heelas. An emphasis on the symbolic, abstract and ambiguous character of religious dogma allows for not only a high degree of subjective interpretation, but also a pluralist attitude towards other religions and worldviews. Aspects of the interviewees’ life-stories suggest that spiritualization of Islam is linked to concerns with inclusion in liberal-secular and pluralistic social settings. It is argued that the tendency towards spiritualization represents a trajectory among young European Muslims that is distinct from the already well-defined tendencies of secularization and Islamic revitalization.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam in Europe
• young Muslims
• spiritualized Islam
• inner-life spirituality
• subjectivization
• subjective belief

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Over a period of sixteen months during 2017 and 2018, I conducted fifteen in-depth interviews with young Muslims in Oslo, Norway. Interviewees were recruited through my own (secondary) network and snowballing. Sample criteria where: identifying as Sunni Muslim; being in the age-group 20–30; being second-generation (or 1.5) migrant; and identifying as not active in a particular mosque or student/youth association. The interviewees roughly represent the ethnic composition of Muslims with migrant backgrounds in Norway.

2 I rely here on Talal Asad’s conceptualization of the Islamic tradition as the discursive production and organization of ‘truth and essentials’, which includes and relates itself to a set of foundational texts (the Qur’an and the Hadith) and comments made thereon. This view challenges any static understanding of tradition by situating religious identities and practices within a wide field of power relations and historical conditions; and in a dynamic interplay between past and present (Asad 1986, 16ff.; Mahmood 2005, 117).