Reconsidering the spatiality of religion and the state: relationality and the mosque not built

ABSTRACT

Interactions between religious groups and state actors in cities across Europe are increasingly marked by complex relations that transcend the limitations usually associated with ‘local’ context, religion, or politics. However, scholars often fail to adequately conceptualise the multiple connections between religion and the state across various spatial dimensions. This contribution addresses this lacuna by introducing a relational approach to understanding the nexus of space, religion, and state. It is argued that a relational understanding of space helps to avoid the fallacy of neglecting other spatial categories such as the translocal or the global. This contribution’s conceptual arguments are based on an investigation of the spatial implications of the puzzle of why one of the largest mosque projects in Germany, the Munich Forum for Islam, failed to materialise.

KEYWORDS:

• Space
• relationality
• Islam
• mosque
• state
• Germany

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sebastian Scholl, the editors, and two anonymous reviewers for very helpful insights on earlier versions of this contribution.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Predominantly organised in the umbrella organisations Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (Türkisch-Islamische Union der Anstalt für Religion, DITIB), Association of Islamic Cultural Centres (Verband Islamischer Kulturzentren e. V., VIKZ) and Islamic Community Milli Görüs (Islamische Gemeinschaft Milli Görüs, IGMG).

2. The reconstruction of these events is based on analysis of the two decisions by the Munich Administrative Court on 3 May 2010 and the Bavarian Administrative Court on 16 July 2010 (Az. M 22 E 09.2155), and the legal correspondence between the parties.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust.

Notes on contributors

Tobias Müller

Tobias Müller is a Junior Research Fellow at the Woolf Institute, Cambridge, and a College Research Associate at King’s College, University of Cambridge. He is principal researcher of the project ‘Strictly Observant Religion, Gender and the State’. His doctoral research investigated mutually transformative interactions of Muslims and the state in two local contexts in Germany and the UK. Tobias Müller’s recent work has been published in Political Theory, Review of Faith & International Affairs, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft and Rivista di Politica. His research interests include twentieth-century and critical political theory, feminist theory, secularism and Islam in Europe.