Developing a Concept of Muslim Religiosity: An Analysis of Everyday Lived Religion among Female Migrants in Austria

ABSTRACT

In this article, we generate a concept of Muslim religiosity based on narrations reflecting Muslim women’s everyday lived religion in Austria. Using Grounded Theory, we analysed 30 biographical interviews conducted in 2006 with first-generation female migrants from Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In agreement with prior studies, we emphasise that Muslim religiosity is multi-dimensional. According to our results, it consists of a belief and a behavioural dimension, with the latter dividing into ‘rituals and duties’ and ‘ethical behavioural principles’. Moreover, we pay close attention to the interrelation between religion and culture—which is particularly relevant in a migration context—and shed light on the functions of religiosity.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Bilal Barakat and the two anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion for their useful comments on earlier drafts of this article. We are also grateful to Werner Richter and Karl Thomanek for language editing. This research was partially funded by the European Commission within the project “Needs for Female Immigrants and their Integration in Ageing Societies” (FEMAGE) in the Sixth Framework Programme. The authors contributed equally to this work and are therefore listed in alphabetical order.

Notes

1. Hisham Abu-Raiya et al. are an exception as they conducted interviews with Muslims to identify domains of Islam.

2. To assure openness towards our research objective, the literature review was only prepared towards the end of our empirical phase, when our own concept was relatively stable (Glaser). For reasons of logic, however, we present these findings in this section of the article.

3. Abdel-Khalek demonstrated that the single-item measure of self-assessed religiosity is operational in survey research.

4. The crude classification of dimensions relies on our understanding of the categories which we reached through our analysis.

5. However, especially Alevis and some Shi’ites do not consider themselves (sufficiently) represented (Schmidinger).

6. ‘T’ denotes that the quotation is by a Turkish woman and ‘B’ that it is by a Bosnian woman.

7. Many interviewees had obtained Austrian citizenship, but for practical reasons, we refer to them as Turkish or Bosnian.

8. The Religionsmonitor survey of 2008, which was a quantitative study of German Muslims, confirmed that belief in God and the intellectual dimension are more important to Muslims than emotional experiences in individuals’ relationships with God.

9. The Islamic Community of Austria states on its web site that women may be indispensable due to reasons of childcare, which is why it is up to them to attend the weekly services on Friday or pray at home.

10. Prayer is far more important for German Muslims than religious practices in public, the difference being particularly large for women (Religionsmonitor).

11. In Germany, wearing the headscarf was considered to be highly important by 38% of Muslim women compared to 28% of Muslim men (Religionsmonitor).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caroline Berghammer

Caroline Berghammer is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna and in the Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Katrin Fliegenschnee is a researcher in the Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU), Vienna Institute of Demography at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and teaches qualitative methods at the University of Vienna.