Overview

The presence of Shiʿite communities in Western Europe dates to the late nineteenth century, with Britain as the primary destination for immigration, as well as notable communities developing in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Exploring selected encounters of Twelver Shiʿite Muslims with the European West, this study examines local and transnational religious organization to assess socio-political integration. Its central thesis defines European Shiʿism through peripheral engagement and religious retention. Building on a range of language sources, interviews with Shiʿite spokesmen and fieldwork in Iran, Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany, Matthijs van den Bos identifies European Shiʿism with a religious mode of engagement involving hierarchization of collective self and other identities. Shiʿite parties with greater distance to high politico-religious authorities abroad are seen more likely to engage in cultural exchange with their European milieu. On one side stand ethnically varied Shiʿite organizations with limited engagement of others in Europe. The other shows civic outreach, ritual transformation, and integrationist theology.

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9781009731102

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Matthijs van den Bos is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London. He has published widely on Iranian Sufism, European Shiʿism, and Shiʿite geopolitics. His book Mystic Regimes (2002) was the first English-language monograph on Sufism in Iran since the Islamic revolution. He has carried out extensive fieldwork research among Shiʿite communities in Iran and Europe.

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