Interreligious Encounters in Europe: Sites, Materialities and Practices [1 ed.] 9781003228448, 9781032121826, 9781032132808

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Sites, Materialities and Practices of Interreligious Encounters in Europe
Introduction
The Diversification and Complexification of Interreligious Encounters
Scholarly Perspectives on Interreligious Dialogue
A Three-fold Approach to Studying Interreligious Encounters
Concluding Remarks
Part I: The Sites of Interreligious Encounters
1 Spatializing Interreligious Practice: Interreligious Place-making in a German Metropolitan Area
1.1 Introduction: Towards a Spatial Approach to Interreligious Dialogue
1.2 Methods and Research Design
1.3 Case Study 1: The Gates of World Religions
1.4 Case Study 2: The Angel of Culture
1.5 Patterns of Interreligious Place-making: Comparative Conclusions
2 Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Searching for ‘Mjesto Susreta’
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Research Process
2.3 What Constitutes a Community in the BiH Context?
2.4 Interfaith Dialogue in BiH
2.5 Interreligious Dialogue and Suživot
2.6 Spatial Segregation and Interactions
2.7 Stolac – Known and Unknown Places
2.8 Kotor Varoš – Identities and Localities
2.9 Conclusion
3 Provincializing Dialogue: Post-secular Governance Networks and the Brokerage of Religious Diversity in a North German Town
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Post-secular Governance Networks
3.3 Research on Small Towns in Germany: Rural Networks and Brokers
3.4 Case Study and Methods
3.5 Fromberg’s Changing Dynamics: A Brief Timeline
3.6 Network Protagonists in Fromberg
3.7 The Benefits, Obligations and Internal Tensions of Network Governance
3.8 Secular–religious Competition
3.9 Conclusion
Part II: The Materialities of Interreligious Encounters
4 Architectures of Tolerance: Muslims, Alevis and the Impossible Promise of Berlin’s House of One
4.1 Introduction
4.2 The House of One
4.3 Interreligious Dialogues
4.4 Methodological Approach
4.5 Empirical Findings: Blind Spots
4.6 Conclusion: The Ambivalence of the Symbolic
5 The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue: The Case of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church in Poland
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Theoretical and Methodological Frame
5.3 Data and Analysis
5.4 The Poster Controversy and the Emergent Dialogue
5.5 Analysis of Textual Elements
5.6 Analysis of Visual Elements
5.7 Viewing the Poster in its Broader Context
5.8 Kraków as a Space of Dialogue
5.9 The Poster’s Reception
5.10 T he Materiality of the Poster and Negotiations of Visibility
5.11 Conclusions
6 The Affective Machines of Dialogue: Materializations of Identities/Differences in the Assemblages of an Exhibition About Everyday Muslim Life
6.1 Introduction
6.2 The Production of Identities and Differences Within Material and Dynamic Assemblages
6.3 A Diversity-political Exhibition on Local Muslim Life: Contexts, Rationalities and Conflicts
6.4 Exhibiting ‘Muslimness’: The Politics of Multicultural Intimacies and the Material Entanglements of Differentiating and Binding Forces
6.5 Relations of Difference/Identity in an Interreligious Groups’ Guided Tour through the Exhibition on Muslim Life: Analysing Shifting Affective Assemblages
6.6 Situated Becomings: Between Religious Community and the ‘Friendly Smiling Non-believer’
6.7 Synthesis and Concluding Remarks
Part III: The Practices of Interreligious Encounters
7 Dialogic Art: The Photographer Peter Sanders on Promoting Understanding
7.1 Introduction
7.2 The Journeys of a Veteran Photographer
7.3 Capturing the Spiritual
7.4 The Sufi Anthropology of Peter Sanders
7.5 (Mis)interpretations and Conversations: A Methodological Intermezzo
7.6 Light and Light
7.7 Promoting a Message of Peace and Understanding
7.8 Reaching Out
7.9 Art as Dialogue
8 Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation? Examining the British Context for Multifaith Social Action and Interfaith Dialogue from 1997 to the Present
8.1 Introduction
8.2 The Relationship Between Interfaith Dialogue and Multifaith Social Action
8.3 Interfaith, Multifaith and Government Policy
8.4 Evidence from the Case Studies
8.5 Conclusion
9 Atmospheric Encounters: Interfaith Dialogue in a Multifaith Neighbourhood of Copenhagen
9.1 Introduction
9.2 Atmosphere
9.3 The Study, Context and Methodology
9.4 The Spirit and the Body
9.5 Expectations of Transcendence
9.6 Moving Together
9.7 Conclusion
Afterword
An Afterword
The Productivity of Interreligious Encounters
Power and Inequalities in Interreligious Encounters
Looking Ahead
Index

Citation preview

Interreligious Encounters in Europe

This book examines interreligious dialogue in Europe and how interreligious encounters are framed, expressed and practised. Throughout Europe religious identities have increasingly become significant categories within debates on migration, cohesion, diversity and belonging. By focusing on the spatialities, materialities and practices of interreligious dialogues and encounters, the volume sheds light on the heterogeneous domains where the visibility and inclusion of religious and cultural differences are currently negotiated and contested. The chapters draw on social science perspectives and include a range of empirical case studies from a variety of European settings. The contributions (a) shed light on the subjectivities, relations and modes of behaviour produced, negotiated and contested in and through locally embedded interreligious encounters and dialogue-oriented practices, (b) observe the power dynamics that shape those practices and encounters and (c) discuss their implications for the place(s) of religion in the public sphere. Overall the book contributes to a better understanding of how cultural, religious and political identities are reconfigured across Europe. Jan Winkler is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute of Geography at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Laura Haddad is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute of Sociology (Cultural Sociology), at Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany. Julia Martínez-Ariño is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Religion, Culture and Society at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Giulia Mezzetti is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy.

Routledge Studies in Religion

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For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge. com/religion/series/SE0669

Interreligious Encounters in Europe Sites, Materialities and Practices

Edited by Jan Winkler, Laura Haddad, Julia Martínez-Ariño and Giulia Mezzetti

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Jan Winkler, Laura Haddad, Julia Martínez-Ariño and Giulia Mezzetti; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jan Winkler, Laura Haddad, Julia Martínez-Ariño and Giulia Mezzetti to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-12182-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-13280-8 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-22844-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures List of tables List of contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: The Sites, Materialities and Practices of Interreligious Encounters in Europe

xi xiii xv xix

1

J U L I A M A RT Í N E Z - A R I Ñ O , L AU R A H A D DA D , J A N W I N K L E R AND GIULIA MEZZETTI

Introduction 1 The Diversification and Complexification of Interreligious Encounters  4 Scholarly Perspectives on Interreligious Dialogue  5 A Three-fold Approach to Studying Interreligious Encounters  7 Concluding Remarks  16 Part I

The Sites of Interreligious Encounters

21

1 Spatializing Interreligious Practice: Interreligious Place-making in a German Metropolitan Area

23

A L E X A N D E R- K E N N E T H N AG E L

1.1 Introduction: Towards a Spatial Approach to Interreligious Dialogue  23 1.2  Methods and Research Design  26 1.3  Case Study 1: The Gates of World Religions  28 1.4  Case Study 2: The Angel of Culture  33 1.5 Patterns of Interreligious Place-making: Comparative Conclusions  37

vi Contents 2 Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Searching for ‘mjesto susreta’

43

M A R I K A DJ O L A I

2.1 Introduction  43 2.2  Research Process  45 2.3  What Constitutes a Community in the BiH Context?  47 2.4  Interfaith Dialogue in BiH  52 2.5  Interreligious Dialogue and Suživot  56 2.6  Spatial Segregation and Interactions  57 2.7  Stolac – known and unknown places  59 2.8  Kotor Varoš – identities and localities  62 2.9 Conclusion  64 3 Provincializing Dialogue: Post-secular Governance Networks and the Brokerage of Religious Diversity in a North German Town

71

A R N DT E M M ER IC H

3.1 Introduction  71 3.2  Post-secular Governance Networks  72 3.3 Research on Small Towns in Germany: Rural Networks and Brokers  74 3.4  Case Study and Methods  75 3.5  Fromberg’s Changing Dynamics: A Brief Timeline  77 3.6  Network Protagonists in Fromberg  79 3.7 The Benefits, Obligations and Internal Tensions of Network Governance  81 3.8  Secular–religious Competition  85 3.9 Conclusion  87 Part II

The Materialities of Interreligious Encounters

95

4 Architectures of Tolerance: Muslims, Alevis and the Impossible Promise of Berlin’s House of One 97 M A R I A N B U RC H A R D T A N D J O H A N N A H A E R I N G

4.1 Introduction  97 4.2  The House of One  98 4.3  Interreligious Dialogues  100 4.4  Methodological Approach  101

Contents  vii 4.5 Empirical Findings: Blind Spots 102 4.6 Conclusion: The Ambivalence of the Symbolic 113 5

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue: The Case of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church in Poland

119

D O M I N I K A M O TA K A N D J OA N N A K RO T O F I L

5.1 Introduction 119 5.2 The Theoretical and Methodological Frame 120 5.3 Data and Analysis 122 5.4 The Poster Controversy and the Emergent Dialogue 122 5.5 Analysis of Textual Elements 123 5.6 Analysis of Visual Elements 126 5.7 Viewing the Poster in its Broader Context 128 5.8 Kraków as a Space of Dialogue 134 5.9 The Poster’s Reception 135 5.10 The Materiality of the Poster and Negotiations of Visibility 136 5.11 Conclusions 140 6

The Affective Machines of Dialogue: Materializations of Identities/Differences in the Assemblages of an Exhibition About Everyday Muslim Life JA N W I N K LER

6.1 Introduction 146 6.2 The Production of Identities and Differences Within Material and Dynamic Assemblages 147 6.3 A Diversity-political Exhibition on Local Muslim Life: Contexts, Rationalities and Conflicts 151 6.4 E xhibiting ‘Muslimness’: The Politics of Multicultural Intimacies and the Material Entanglements of Differentiating and Binding Forces 161 6.5 Relations of Difference/Identity in an Interreligious Groups’ Guided Tour through the Exhibition on Muslim Life: Analysing Shifting Affective Assemblages 163 6.6 Situated Becomings: Between Religious Community and the ‘Friendly Smiling Non-believer’ 167 6.7 Synthesis and Concluding Remarks 171

146

viii Contents Part III

The Practices of Interreligious Encounters

175

7 Dialogic Art: The Photographer Peter Sanders on Promoting Understanding

177

JONAS OT T ER BECK

7.1 Introduction  177 7.2  The Journeys of a Veteran Photographer  179 7.3  Capturing the Spiritual  180 7.4  The Sufi Anthropology of Peter Sanders  182 7.5 (Mis)interpretations and Conversations: A Methodological Intermezzo  184 7.6  Light and Light 185 7.7  Promoting a Message of Peace and Understanding  187 7.8  Reaching Out  189 7.9  Art as Dialogue  190 8 Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation? Examining the British Context for Multifaith Social Action and Interfaith Dialogue from 1997 to the Present

194

M E L A N I E P R I D E AU X A N D T I M M O RT I M E R

8.1 Introduction  194 8.2 The Relationship Between Interfaith Dialogue and Multifaith Social Action  195 8.3  Interfaith, Multifaith and Government Policy  196 8.4  Evidence from the Case Studies  203 8.5 Conclusion  213 9 Atmospheric Encounters: Interfaith Dialogue in a Multifaith Neighbourhood of Copenhagen L I S E PAU L S E N G A L A L A N D K I R S T E N H V E N E G Å R D - L A S S E N

9.1 Introduction  218 9.2 Atmosphere  219 9.3  The Study, Context and Methodology  221 9.4  The Spirit and the Body  223 9.5  Expectations of Transcendence  227 9.6  Moving Together  230 9.7 Conclusion  231

218

Contents  ix Afterword

235

L AU R A H A D DA D , J A N W I N K L E R , J U L I A M A RT Í N E Z - A R I Ñ O , AND GIULIA MEZZETTI

An Afterword  235 The Productivity of Interreligious Encounters  236 Power and Inequalities in Interreligious Encounters  237 Looking Ahead  238

Index

241

Figures

1.1 Gates of World Religions 1.2 Angel of Culture (© Carmen Dietrich and Gregor Merten, www.engel-der-kulturen.de) 2.1 Segregated neighbourhood: Vidovo Polje and Old Stolac (Author’s map; Djolai 2016, 128) 2.2 Stolac: Central Town Map (Djolai 2016, 118) 2.3 Bare Kotor Varoš (Author’s map; Djolai 2016, 136) 4.1 Brüderstrasse Main Entrance. © Kuehn Malvezzi, Visualisation: Davide Abbonacci 5.1 Poster Version 1. http://www.radawspolna.pl/ index20DzIsl_lok.html, 21.09.2022 5.2 Poster Version 2. https://twitter.com/xmslyz/ status/1219701582784352257, 11.05.2022 6.1 Cover-photography of the exhibition ‘Muslims in Erlangen. S­ tadtmuseum 2015: cover 6.2 Exhibition site. Stadtmuseum 2015: 13 6.3 Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 44 6.4 Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 60 6.5 Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 39 6.6 Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 53 6.7 The Muslim woman who compared prayer to meditation. Stadtmuseum 2015: 17 6.8 The Muslim woman who compared prayer to meditation. Stadtmuseum 2015: 20 6.9 The Muslim woman who compared prayer to meditation. Stadtmuseum 2015: 19 6.10 ‘Smiling man’/the ‘non-religious Muslim’. Stadtmuseum 2015: 37

29 34 61 62 64 99 123 139 153 154 155 155 156 156 157 158 158 168

Tables

2.1 Household Survey (Djolai, Author’s Data, May 2013) 2.2 Ethnic and Religious Identity (Djolai, Author’s data, 2013)

55 58

Contributors

Marian Burchardt, University of Leipzig, Germany, is Professor of Sociology at Leipzig University. His research explores how power, diversity and subjectivity play out in public space. He is the author of Faith in the Time of AIDS (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and Regulating Difference: Religious Diversity and Nationhood in the Secular West (Rutgers University Press, 2020), and co-editor of Topographies of Faith: Religion in Urban Spaces (Brill 2013). Marika Djolai,  Independent researcher, Germany (PhD, University of Sussex), is the Team Leader/Key Expert on “Global Exchange on Religion in Society”. Previously, she was Senior Researcher and Head of Conflict and Security Cluster at the European Centre for Minority Issues. Her academic research focuses on community dynamics, post-conflict development, minority rights and securitization. Arndt Emmerich,  Universität Heidelberg, Germany, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Weber Institute of Sociology at Heidelberg University. His research interest lies around the governance of religious diversity and the study of intercultural and  interreligious encounters, generational change and institutional transformations at the local, national and transnational level. His work appeared in the Journals of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Muslims in Europe, Entangled Religions, Politics and Religion Social Compass and Asian Survey. He is also the author of Islamic Movements in India: Moderation and its Discontents (London: Routledge 2020).  Lise Paulsen Galal, Roskilde University, Denmark, is an Associate Professor in Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University, Denmark. Trained as an anthropologist, her research interests include interdisciplinary approaches to minority-majority relations, migration, and religious diversity. Galal has published widely on cultural and religious diversity including the book Organised Cultural Encounters. Practices of Transformation (co-authored with Hvenegård-Lassen and published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

xvi Contributors Laura Haddad,  Georg-August-University Göttingen, Germany, is a Postdoctoral Researcher investigating “Muslim Fashion Images in Germany” (funded by the German Research Foundation, DFG-Eigene Stelle). Her overall research interests are discourse ethnography, Muslim visual cultures, intersectionality and museums in postmigrant societies. She is a member of the Global DeCentre. Johanna Haering,  Deutsches Jugendinstitut Außenstelle Halle, Germany, studied cultural studies with a focus on cultural sociology at Leipzig University. As a research assistant, she participated in a project on poverty and unemployment and later worked at the Chair of Sociology of Transregional Processes. Until the end of 2022 she worked at the German Youth Institute where she does research on socio-spatial contexts of political socialisation of youth. Her research interests mainly focus on qualitative methods of social research, questions of norms and normalization and social inequality. Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen, Roskilde University, Denmark, is an Associate Professor in Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University, Denmark. She holds a PhD degree in Minority Studies. Her publications often experiment with methodological re-conceptualizations among other inspired by affect-theory, new feminist materialism, and black feminist thinking. She has co-authored (with Lise Paulsen Galal) the book Organised Cultural Encounters. Joanna Krotofil, Jagiellonian University, Poland (PhD), is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Studies of Religion, Jagiellonian University. Currently Joanna is a PI for the project “Religion, mothering and identity among young mothers - experiences of Catholic and Muslim women in Poland”. She has published a number of articles on the relationship between migration and religion and women in Islam and Catholicism. Julia Martínez-Ariño,  University of Groningen, The Netherlands, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology of Religion and the Director of the Centre for Religion, Conflict and Globalization, at the University of Groningen. Her research interests are secularism, the governance of religious diversity, non-religion and Jewish heritage production. She is the author of Urban Secularism: Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe (Routledge, 2020) and co-editor of Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces (Bloomsbury, 2021). Giulia Mezzetti, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy. Postdoctoral researcher at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. In her research, she explores how migration processes are interlinked with new visbilities and agencies of culturally and religiously diverse migrant groups wihin European societies.

Contributors  xvii Tim Mortimer  is an Interfaith Practitioner with a particular interest in multifaith social action and youth voice, most recently holding the role of Programmes Manager at The Faith & Belief Forum, the UK’s largest interfaith charity. He is also a Visiting Research Assistant at the Centre for Religion and Public Life, University of Leeds. Dominika Motak,  is Professor at the Center for the Religious Studies (CERES) at the Ruhr University Bochum. Her research interests include modern transformations of religion and the theoretical models in the study of religion. She currently focuses her research interests on Georg Simmel’s concept of religion. Alexander-Kenneth Nagel, University of Göttingen, Germany, is Professor for the Social Scientific Study of Religion at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen. His research interests include migration and religious pluralization in Germany as well as the intersection between interreligious activism and urban integration governance. Jonas Otterbeck, The Aga Khan University (International), Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, United Kingdom, London. Jonas Otterbeck holds the Rasul-Walker Chair in Popular Culture in Islam. His most recent research concerns Islam and creativity among Muslims in contemporary Europe. Otterbeck’s latest monograph is The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music (2021, EUP). Melanie Prideaux,  University of Leeds, United Kingdom, is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Leeds. As well as her research focus on the role of interfaith and multifaith activity in brokering the role of religion in English public life, she has a particular interest in the study of religion in locality. Jan Winkler,  Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, is a postdoctoral researcher and social and cultural geographer. His research explores how identities and differences are produced and transformed in diverse societies. More recently, Jan Winkler is also dealing with questions concerning the emotionality of climate change politics. Theoretically, Jan Winkler explores the relationship between theories of discourse and theories of practice, and he works with ­non-representational and new-materialist accounts.

Acknowledgements

The editors of this book would like to thank Andreas Pott and Georg Glasze. Both provided us with advice on many occasions and reflected together with us on conceptual perspectives on interreligious dialogues in the context of joint research projects. Robert Parkin edited the language of the whole manuscript and Matina de Waal Malefijt assisted with the formatting of the manuscript. To both of them we are extremely grateful. We would also like to thank the Wessel Ganzevoort Fonds for its financial support to make this project happen. We also gratefully thank the Zentralinstitut Anthropologie der Religion(en) (ZAR) at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg for co-funding the international workshop Governing Islam on a local level in Europe: challenges of the dialogue paradigm, which took place in Erlangen, Germany, on 16–17 February 2020. At this workshop, the editors took the decision to compile the present anthology and were able to meet some of the authors.

Introduction The Sites, Materialities and Practices of Interreligious Encounters in Europe Julia Martínez-Ariño, Laura Haddad, Jan Winkler and Giulia Mezzetti Introduction Throughout Europe, religious identities have increasingly become significant categories in debates on migration, cohesion, diversity and belonging. In particular, ‘Islam’ and ‘Muslim’ have taken centre stage as categories of difference in articulations of policies supporting integration and social cohesion. An important format in which these identities are mobilized and negotiated is interreligious dialogue. A number of studies have traced the emergence and spread of interreligious dialogue as an instrument for governing religious diversity and immigrant integration at different spatial scales and levels of governance (Amir-Moazami 2011; Tezcan 2012; Dornhof 2012; Dick and Nagel 2017; Griera 2012, 2019; Griera and Forteza 2011; Martínez-Ariño 2019; Nagel 2018; Sarli and Mezzetti 2020). This book ties in with these studies but employs a broader notion of ‘dialogue’. We understand dialogue in the Foucauldian sense of a dispositive: a ‘thing to do’, a desired relation that subjects are called to engage in and reflect upon in various ways. From this perspective, dialogue surfaced as a problematization of the dystopian imaginaries of potential ‘clashes’ of cultural and religious differences. Recalling broader discourses on recognition and tolerance (Peter 2010), interreligious dialogue manifests itself in multifarious attempts and techniques to mediate those differences. Consequently, based on this broad understanding the book does not consider only the institutionalized forms of dialogue or ‘dialoguing’, such as routinized meetings with institutional religious representatives or formalized interreligious bodies and discussion forums. Instead, it focuses on the multiplicity of articulations of interreligious dialogue that are linked to the multiple forms and modes of interreligious encounter. Our aim is to shed light on the variety of practices, interactions and discourses that bring together people of different religious (and sometimes non-religious) backgrounds and that produce some sort of exchange across religious lines. Such encounters may generate or reinforce existing conflicts and produce new subjectivities. More specifically, the book examines the dynamics of situated practices and encounters in different local contexts, where

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-1

1

2  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. cultural, religious and political identities are constantly being re-shaped. Indeed, though multi-scalar in nature, the negotiations of identities within a ‘dialogue framework’ take place mainly in diverse local (urban) settings, drawing attention to the ‘local’ when studying current negotiations of religious diversity (Saint-Blancat 2019; Zapata-Barrero et al. 2017). Therefore, we avoid grand overarching narratives such as ‘the postsecular society’ in favour of rather flexible, heuristic categories that explore questions of the embeddedness and situatedness of interreligious dialogues and encounters, their possibly ambiguous functions and effects on the actors involved, and their practical, material and spatial manifestations. While the term ‘dialogue’ as mostly used in public discourse focuses rather on verbal and linguistic forms of expression, the notion of encounters relates to embodied practices. Interreligious dialogue is often reduced to language-based exchanges and to the idea of mutual understanding as a solely intellectual process. In order to emphasize the multifaceted practices that go beyond verbal expressions, intentions and explicit reflections, we stress a notion of encounter that understands the latter as neither necessarily productive nor as an empty reference to any kind of meeting (Wilson 2017). As Wilson notes, encounters are all about difference. Historically the notion of encounter is linked to the meeting of ‘opposing forces’ (Wilson 2017: 452). However, opposition or difference are not fixed concepts, and especially in the moment of encounter, difference is constantly evolving and displays a genuine ambiguity: on the one hand, the discursively fixed understanding of difference can be questioned; on the other hand, the continuity of shaping and manifesting identities is emphasized while the encounter is happening. In this regard, the analysis of encounters is tightly connected to practice theory. Encounters are ‘potential forms of difference and transformation’, a sort of ‘contact zone’ (Pratt 1991, 34) which, in urban contexts, may be productive in terms of cohesion and societal understanding, but which ‘can also produce anxiety, resentment and violence’ (Wilson 2017, 457). Wilson uses a perspective on situated practice to illustrate the relevance of concrete encounters and of physical and emotional dynamics in the negotiation of difference, identity and tolerance in the context of institutionalized measures of dialogue (Wilson 2014a). Using the perspective of situated practices, Wilson reconstructs tolerance—discussed as a dimension of dialogue—as ‘embodied, affective, and emotive’ (Wilson 2014a, 864). In the context of her analyses of dialogue policies, the author thus marks ‘the need for more empirical work that is attentive to its practice’ [the practice of tolerance] (ibid.). Studying encounters broadens the analytical scope of world perceptions (Popke 2009; Wilson 2017). Encounters can therefore be understood as crucial moments in which people, things and differences are sensed ‘through soundscapes (De Witte 2016), taste (Slocum 2008), smell (Wise 2005) and touch (Lorimer 2015; Schuermans 2016)’ (Wilson 2017: 459). Against this background, analysing encounters primarily means studying practice

Introduction  3 and process, rather than fixed outcomes and results. However, it is also important to question the assumption that contact necessarily leads to the dissolution of conflicts and produces mutual understanding (cf. Valentine and Waite 2012). Moreover, the judging of encounters as meaningful only if they have certain effects has the potential of overlooking processes and even feeds into a neoliberal logic that only values whatever has a predictable and desirable outcome (Valentine and Sadgrove 2012; Wilson 2017). This volume studies both encounters with long-lasting and positive effects and ephemeral, unexpected or difficult encounters that may cause conflictual or few measurable results at all. The contributions in this book focus on the ambiguous and multifaceted quality of encounters by emphasizing their embeddedness into and productivity of sites and material, as well as practical relations. Conceptually, the book engages in analyses of the heterogeneous spatialities, materialities and practices of interreligious encounters while keeping an analytical interest in how these encounters interact with a ‘dialogue paradigm’ (Tezcan 2012; Dornhof 2012). On the one hand, we are interested in how the notion of dialogue provides a backdrop to multiform and contentious interreligious encounters, to the different practices that facilitate those encounters and to the corresponding conflicts and negotiations. We ask to what extent the notion of ‘dialogue’ influences how interreligious encounters are framed and arranged. On the other hand, we understand dialogue itself as an effect of these encounters and practices. This leads us to the question of how the notion of dialogue is (re)produced, expressed and experienced, but also challenged and transformed, in and through the situated practices and dynamics of encounter. Drawing on these perspectives, the book does not discuss the theoretical, theological or moral-philosophical grounds of interreligious dialogue. Nor, on a related note, do we conceive of interreligious dialogues as a solely conscious affair or an ‘intellectual project of mind’. Instead, we are interested in the spatial, material, bodily and emotional practices that are not separated from their local contexts. Studying the polyphonic and vibrant topologies of dialogue(s) is directly connected to an understanding of these encounters as spatial and political practices, and thus as both embedded within local social, political and economic fabrics, and as constantly evolving. We then ask how dialogues and encounters tie in with these broader configurations, how their contentious and not always ‘successful’ implementations work, and which differences, identities, feelings and activities of subjects arise from them. Furthermore, the book’s focus on local contexts is important not least because the notion of dialogue is in itself paradigmatically linked to questions of (interpersonal) encounter and coexistence, with dialogue-oriented programmes and practices aiming at producing relations of trust and confidence on the ground. The perspectives outlined throughout the book will foster a better understanding of how interreligious dialogues, practices and encounters shape religious, cultural and political identities and influence the im-/possibilities

4  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. Sites

Practices

Interreligious encounters

Materialities

of different actors articulating their positions within local relations of belonging and difference on the one hand, and power and inequality on the other. To examine the local topologies of power that are (re-)produced or transformed through the various manifestations of interreligious dialogues and encounters, the studies in this book shed light on the multiform spatial, material and practical dimensions of dialogue. We therefore treat the sites, materialities and practices of interreligious encounters as analytical entry points into understanding and explaining broader phenomena.

The Diversification and Complexification of Interreligious Encounters In recent decades, interreligious dialogue, in all its forms and expressions, has expanded widely across the world. We see this in the form of formal conferences, such as the ‘Annual Meeting on Interreligious Dialogue’, organized yearly by the World Council of Churches and the United Nations ‘World Interfaith Harmony Week’ since 2010. As well, more practice-oriented events take place, such as the interreligious mourning ritual organized for the victims of the 2017 terrorist attacks in Barcelona (Griera 2019), or the performative solidarity of Muslim organizations on social media, offering accompany Jewish persons to the synagogue in the face of recent antisemitic threats in several German cities (Liberal Islamischer Bund 2021). In many European contexts in particular, interreligious dialogue has been considered a suitable tool for dealing with matters of immigrant integration, social cohesion and inter-ethnic relations. Examples of municipalities that have set up local interreligious councils to tackle such issues abound and have been the object of sociological analysis (Griera 2012; Liebmann 2019; Martínez-Ariño 2019). This opens up new speaker positions for religious actors, who can acquire influence as policy ‘players’ when dedicating themselves to the interreligious dialogue agenda. Moreover, interreligious encounters materialize in other modalities, such as interreligious kindergartens, interreligious tours (Sorenssen and Martínez-Ariño forthcoming), interreligious rooms in public institutions like prisons, universities and hospitals (Christensen et  al. 2019; Clot-Garrell and Griera 2018), and new architectural projects that aim to promote coexistence, as discussed by Burchardt and Haering in this book.

Introduction  5 Hence, interreligious dialogue no longer takes place only in the form of a conversation between faith leaders in a conference room. This results from a diversification and complexification of interreligious encounters. The multiplicity of modalities, aims, actors involved and outcomes of such encounters call for novel approaches that take into account the multidimensionality of the phenomenon. This does not mean that previous theoretical proposals and perspectives are no longer suitable for understanding current developments. On the contrary, they are still helpful in allowing a better grasp of what is a rapidly changing phenomenon. Our approach, however, aims to offer conceptual tools with which to examine interreligious encounters without necessarily categorizing them a priori as either, and exclusively, a public policy instrument (Martínez-Ariño 2020), a social movement (Fahy and Bock 2020), a geopolitical configuration or effect (Giordan and Lynch 2019), a post-secular expression, an effect of globalization and the pluralization of societies (Körs et al. 2020) or a way of recognizing diversity symbolically. While such conceptualizations are useful in many ways, they may also prove limiting in others, as we argue in the next section.

Scholarly Perspectives on Interreligious Dialogue The social scientific study of interreligious dialogue has expanded significantly in recent years, as interreligious dialogue has become more widely practised. In the European context in particular, a number of edited volumes have been published recently that examine interreligious dialogue from different perspectives. While they focus on different aspects or dimensions of interreligious dialogue, all of them aim to propose conceptual frameworks allowing the complexity of the phenomenon to be grasped more effectively. In what follows, we engage with a small selection of such volumes which, according to our reading, offer insightful conceptual frameworks through which to examine interreligious dialogue. In their recently published volume The Interfaith Movement (Fahy and Bock, Routledge 2020), John Fahy and Jan-Jonathan Bock propose to analyse interreligious dialogue from a social movement perspective. However, their argument is based mostly on US and UK examples and ignores the fact that in Europe interreligious encounters often happen under the umbrella of state power. From a different perspective, Mar Griera (2012) proposes to study interreligious dialogue as a policy paradigm to deal with matters of migration and diversity. Inspired by this perspective, which examines interreligious dialogue using the conceptual tools of governance studies, the edited volume Governing Religious Diversity in Cities (Martínez-Ariño 2020, Routledge; originally published as a special issue of Religion, State and Society, 2019) conceives of interreligious dialogue as a municipal public-policy ­ instrument. The attempts to define interreligious dialogue as a social movement, a form of activism, a policy paradigm or a public-policy instrument may be

6  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. all appealing, but it can be difficult to determine whether interreligious encounters always fit within these conceptualizations. To avoid struggling to fit interreligious encounters into such categories, we do not ask whether or not they are social movements or policy paradigms but rather examine the different articulations of such encounters. We therefore argue that a certain interreligious encounter may fit within the social movement framework, while others may be better explained by a different category, like a policy paradigm, or by using multiple categories. We also argue that such classification may also change over time depending on how such encounters are framed, deployed and used in different periods. A different but also productive effort to move the research field forward conceptually is Marianne Moyaert’s edited volume Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries (Springer 2019). In an attempt to overcome the limitations of a belief-centred approach to interreligious relations, Moyaert explores the practical and material conditions of interreligious rituals and the processes of negotiating and transgressing these rituals, thus providing inspiration for our own empirical and theoretical framework. Moreover, the editor highlights the importance of considering the material and spatial dimensions of interreligious dialogues. As well, inspired by feminist and intersectional scholars, she stresses the need to examine the sociopolitical contexts in which dialogue takes place. While some of the analytical categories of our approach echo this book, the main concept Moyaert’s volume presents—interrituality—draws on a rather theological approach, which makes the volume largely different from ours. Finally, Julia Ipgrave’s edited volume Interreligious Engagement in Urban Contexts (Springer 2019) discusses the social, spatial and ideological (e.g. theological) aspects of different forms of interreligious activism. With its theoretical focus on the different modes of social capital that exist within interreligious engagement—e.g., bonding, bridging and linking capital—the volume offers a rich explanation of how interreligious activities can facilitate new forms and experiences of belonging and community. However, the question of the extent to which interreligious encounters and practices are also operating as technologies of power (i.e. of inclusion and exclusion) remains to be addressed more explicitly. As we have shown, scholars are continuing to make efforts to find an appropriate theoretical and conceptual vocabulary with which to make sense of interreligious dialogue. The social movement or policy paradigm approaches, to name just two, try to fit interreligious encounters into those categories. However, what we see is that in some cases a concrete example of an interreligious encounter may be considered a social movement, while in other cases it may be better understood as a policy paradigm or a theological discussion. For example, the work of an artist, like the one analysed by Otterbeck in this volume, cannot be understood as a socio-political movement, yet could be appropriated by political actors, for instance, to make a geopolitical claim. Similarly, nor can the project of the House of One, a

Introduction  7 planned multi-religious building in Berlin, as discussed by Burchardt and Haering in this volume, be considered a social movement as such although it may be mobilized in the form of or as part of a social movement to fight racism in a certain neighbourhood at a particular moment in time, for instance. Interreligious encounters are on the move, as encounters are in general, and we cannot rigidly fix them under any one interpretative label. Rather, we should pay attention to the different articulations and the multiplication and diversification of forms, goals and actors in interreligious dialogues. For this, we need more open analytical categories with which the diverse forms of interreligious encounters and dialogues can be investigated. In this volume, accordingly, we analyse interreligious encounters through three analytical dimensions: their sites/spatialities, materialities and practices. By doing so, our book continues earlier conceptual efforts to make sense of and understand interreligious dialogue, practices and encounters. The heterogeneity of the chapters collected in this volume allows us to challenge categorical classifications and supports our argument that it is not possible to classify interreligious encounters and dialogues using any definite framework.

A Three-fold Approach to Studying Interreligious Encounters Our volume draws insights from some of the works discussed above, but it approaches the topic differently. The novelty of our approach lies in the emphasis on the spatial, material and practical dimensions of interreligious encounters. The book is divided into three sections, which correspond with these three conceptual and analytical lenses. Under the perspective of sites, we group the contributions that either focus on processes of interreligious place-making or employ a specific spatial argument, e.g., by exploring the transnational dimension of local conflicts and negotiations, or by arguing for attention to be paid to spatial configurations that have been little studied so far. In this section, three chapters are presented. Through the prism of materialities, we bring together three contributions that explore the bodily and affective dimensions of dialogue(s) or highlight the materializations of local interreligious relations and identity-making processes. The heuristics of practices brings together contributions which, by looking at the (micro-)contexts of situated activities, trace the dynamics, fault lines and contradictions that emerge in the implementation of interreligious dialogues. The three contributions in this section examine the embedding of interreligious dialogues in local constellations of actors and institutions. As well, they explore the diversity of possible expressions of dialogue, asking how dialogue is practised in the form of, e.g., art/photography, guided exercises of self-reflection or local social action. Despite this distribution of chapters on the basis of their main analytical emphasis, most of them tackle

8  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. more than one of the three dimensions. This is not surprising, given that all three dimensions find themselves interrelated in the life of encounters, the distinction between them being mostly analytical. Spatialities The first dimension of our conceptual approach points to the spaces and sites of encounter in and through which interreligious dialogues take shape and operate. We conceive of dialogue(s) as political practices that draw on broader discourses, but that are always situated. We analyse the conditions and mechanisms through which dialogues are spatialized and inscribed in different local contexts, where specific power relations and dynamics of formal and informal encounters generate specific effects. However, we do not treat the spatial dimension of interreligious encounters as a given. Rather, broadly following an understanding of space as socially constructed (Lefebvre 1991; Knott 2008), we argue that certain places and sites are precisely produced by those encounters. In other words, interreligious encounters may create new places, be they more permanent, as Nagel shows in this book in his analysis of the ‘Gates of World Religions’ in the German city of Hamm, or be more ephemeral, like the atmospheres that interreligious meditation and encounter create in the case of Copenhagen examined by Paulsen Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen (in this volume). Or, as in the case of Bosnia and Herzegowina presented by Djolai (in this volume), mechanisms of communitarian spatial segregation and inequalities inherited from postwar arrangements, coupled with the ever-contemptuous sharing of power between different ethnic groups, may account for the violent interactions that erupt around religious symbols and buildings. Such a spatial regime as this almost prevents collaborative interreligious encounters from taking place both metaphorically and literally, meaning that the basic form of communication between different faith groups is silence, to be interpreted as a signal of tolerance rather than indifference. Moreover, we emphasize the local dimension without excluding other scales and dynamics (Massey 2005). Specifically, we take into consideration the interconnection and interdependence of different spatial scales. As some of the chapters show, interreligious encounters that happen locally are traversed by dynamics and controversies or contestations that take place at other scales. This is the case in the studies by Burchardt and Haering as well as by Emmerich in this volume, where the authors show how national and international dynamics—linked, for example, to the influence of the Turkish government in German politics—spill over into local interreligious projects and discussions. Situated though encounters may be, the space where they occur is also a ‘network of relations at scales from global to local’ and ‘space/time’ (Knott 2009, 157). While emphasizing the locales and localities of encounters, we keep in mind the role of the global flow of interconnections, and of other scales too, in shaping if and how ‘the interreligious’

Introduction  9 materializes in local contexts, if only because encounters and contexts are strongly shaped by broader discursive fields (not coincidentally a spatial metaphor). For instance, the sites considered by Djolai bear the wounds left by the heritage of war and by nationalist and interethnic clashes, while the case studies analysed by Nagel, Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen, and Emmerich are set in continental Europe, where interreligious ‘talk’ in post-secular configurations has been considered instrumental in domesticating and pacifying Islam. As Kim Knott (2008) argues from a religious studies perspective, space is dynamic, socially constructed and historically layered, and it points to the materializations of, e.g., religious ideas, practices and knowledges. Simultaneously, the formation of spaces may go hand in hand with the formation of (new) social groups and interactions. In his contribution to this volume, based on empirical work in a small town in Germany, Emmerich shows how the provincial character of this space, as opposed to big urban centres, can create specific conditions for the development of relations of trust and intimate bonds that can support (but also sometimes compromise) interreligious governance networks. In other words, different spatial scales create different conditions for interreligious cooperation and interaction. Another aspect can be emphasized by looking at the changing spatiality of religion in cities and urban environments. The Western bias in social theory posits ‘the city’ as the locality of ‘the secular’ par excellence (Casanova 2013; Burchardt and Becci 2013). This thesis is not overturned just by the simple observation of new religious ‘presences’ embodied by practicing migrants in Western immigration countries, but also by the consideration that even historical and established Western religions did not disappear from the city. The privatization and individualization of religion have made religious institutions less and less influential in regulating a community’s social life, especially in polycentric, highly diversified and globally connected conglomerates such as urban contexts; yet this does not mean that religion has been dissolved from these places altogether, if only—and precisely— because of its material and spatial dimension. As Knott et al. (2016, 129) argue, ‘the tangible remains of this process, as well as the materiality of processes of demolition and repurposing, gained too little attention’. The loss in religious authority, with declining membership and public practice, does not necessarily translate into a loss in spatial and social significance, nor does it mean that established, declining religions do not participate in the power struggles over (shrinking) political significance; at the same time, the ‘secular’ and the non-religious also take part in these struggles. Hence space is enmeshed with power relations, and ideas of encounter are also represented through space. Moreover, the notion of encounter itself, we would argue, points to the spatial imaginaries of co-presence and diversity (Massey 2005; Wilson 2017). In our case, this raises questions such as: how is space constructed through interreligious encounter? How do different spatial conditions (e.g. rural vs. urban spaces) influence the shape of interreligious encounters? How does space created through such encounters

10  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. produce and reproduce existing inequalities? How do interreligious encounters reinterpret spaces? This latter question is addressed by Nagel’s case study of interreligious art in the metropolitan Ruhr area of Germany. This art reinterprets, or as the author puts it ‘recultivates’, a post-industrial context. Overall, the chapters in this section, as well as some presented in the other sections, shed light on the centrality of the spatial dimension for a deeper understanding of interreligious encounters, their conditions and consequences. Materialities Linked to questions of spatiality, the book also focuses on the materiality of interreligious encounters, tracing the significance and effects of bodies, bodily practices, things, assemblages and affects (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Anderson and Harrison 2010; Houtman and Meyer 2012). In many variations, scholars in social and cultural studies have employed ­non-representational and (Deleuzian) new materialist theories that foreground affective relations and bodily encounters as a means of analysing how identities, subjectivities and differences are forged and constantly re-made in and through shifting configurations of diverse material elements that display diverse agencies and potentialities (Thrift 2004; Ahmed 2004; Lim 2010; Anderson et al. 2012). From the perspective of this kind of thinking about assemblages, differences and identities are manifested in contingent but powerful (historical) tendencies in distributing and organizing specifically positioned (human and non-human) bodies, tendencies that become operative within affective material assemblages. Assemblages, however, always contain a multiplicity of potential ways to be generative and productive, so that every tendency or force—or, with Deleuze and Guattari (1987), every line of articulation—will be in a relationship of tension with alternative (materially mediated) tendencies and forces (See also Dewsbury 2011). Within material assemblages, and in the processes of their becomings, elements of all kinds, things and spaces may ‘become sites of intensive difference’ (Swanton 2010, 2340), as they are affectively loaded and positioned within political and societal practices. From an assemblage perspective, racializing or culturalizing operations, which produce and make tangible certain identities, are mediated in more or less rationalized interplays of heterogeneous material elements. Racializing and culturalizing differentiations are conceptualized ‘as something that bodies do in interaction [with bodies referring to all kinds of human and non-human entities; the authors]’ (ibid., 2399), while interactive encounters between bodies and material elements are (partially) grounded in the ‘formatting of perceptions by past experience’ (ibid., 2340). So far most non-representational and new materialist works have not explored interreligious politics, practices or encounters. However, they offer impulses for making visible how interreligious encounters, practices

Introduction  11 and spaces are linked to, and grounded in, processes of the production and circulation of identity and difference. There is one exception in this regard, where Anna Hickey-Moody and Marissa Willcox use feminist and new materialist perspectives to shed light on the material dimensions of the ‘entanglements of difference’ (Hickey-Moody and Willcox 2019, 1) that are relevant in making articulations of ‘religion and gender at a community level’ (ibid., 1). The authors analyse cross-cultural and interreligious ‘feelings of “community” and “belonging”’ (ibid., 1) as something that is tied to ‘more-than-human assemblages; […] homelands, countries, wars, places of worship, orientations, attractions, aesthetics, art and objects of attachment’ (ibid., 1). In a different publication, drawing on data from a project on interfaith childhoods, Hickey-Moody and Willcox (2020, 65) ask ‘how the materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents build relationships with those from different religions’. Overall, these materialist perspectives open up questions about the situated production of relations of identity and difference and lead to a reframing of subjectivities: How do identities and differences emerge within and through interreligious encounters, and how do the latter affect different bodies (Swanton 2010)? In addition, more structural issues concerning the materiality of interreligious practice are foregrounded. How are the practices and politics of interreligious dialogue and encounter connected to material changes in local contexts such as new (temporary) (inter-)religious places, urban-planning interventions or infrastructural change? How, for example, may more or less organized interreligious encounters and dialogues be related to the infrastructuring of cultural and religious identities (Burchardt and Höhne 2015)? Finally, acknowledging the centrality of religiously or interreligiously framed material images, things and artefacts—in their experiential quality, their affectivity and in terms of their entanglement with knowledge production—is crucial to grasping the processing of interreligious activities (Houtman and Meyer 2012; Meyer 2015). As we explain further below, Motak and Krotofil’s study of a digital poster designed for the celebration of the Day of Islam organized by the Polish Catholic Church attests to this. The material turn in the study of religion redirected the attention of scholars from an exclusive focus on beliefs and the symbolic aspects of religion to the study of its objects, artefacts, bodies, buildings, digital media, etc. According to Birgit Meyer and Dick Houtman, two scholars advancing the study of material religion, ‘championing materiality signals the need to pay urgent attention to a real, material world of objects and a texture of lived, embodied experience’ (Meyer and Houtman 2012, 4). In this volume, we enquire into the ‘material life’ of interreligious encounters and their ‘pipes and cables’ (Thrift 2004, 58). How do objects and materials mediate and produce interreligious encounters? What new materialities are generated in interreligious encounters, and how do these reflect unequal power positions? Our understanding of the materialities of

12  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. interreligious encounters is well illustrated by the chapters in this section. Motak and Krotofil’s paper on the Day of Islam, organized by the Catholic Church in Kraków, focuses precisely on one element in its materiality, namely, a digital poster advertising the event. The image showed a digitally changed city skyline of the old city of Kraków, which incorporates symbols of Islamic belief. The authors investigate the discursive negotiation of the poster by applying a thick description of the mostly virtual comments on the poster’s artwork. The strong reactions to this picture stress how materiality connects with imagination and perception, since the poster did not represent a real material change, but rather visualized a certain societal condition—the discourse on the recognition of Islam in Poland. Similarly, Jan Winkler’s chapter using Deleuzio-Guattarian assemblage-thinking and theories of affect examines the materiality of an exhibition about Islam and Muslims in the German city of Erlangen and shows how, through the exhibition, its photos and the stories it tells, interreligious encounters are framed and negotiated. More specifically, the chapter draws our attention to the power that a physical setting like an exhibition can have in defining an ‘appropriate’ Islamic subjectivity that is able to engage in dialogue and encounters with people of other religions and the wider society. In doing so, Winkler also points to the internal negotiations within a particular religious group, in this case Islam, about what it means to be a proper Muslim. Through a fine ethnographic account of the exhibition and a tour around it, the author describes small moments and gestures that show the tensions and potentials of interreligious encounters as they emerge in and through dynamic material assemblages. From a different perspective, the chapter by Burchardt and Haering shows how materiality, which in their case is reflected in the projection of a future architectural intervention in the city of Berlin, does not necessarily produce the envisaged effects in terms of promoting conviviality. Their analysis of the discussions around the project of the still-to-be-built interreligious building House of One reveals two main aspects: on the one hand, the prominence of the cultural hierarchies in which diverse urban actors are positioned, and on the other hand, the extent to which materiality may reflect criticism and social struggle rather than the much-aspired peaceful interreligious coexistence. Interestingly, their contribution also proves how materiality, even when it is not yet there, i.e. when it still needs to be laid down, has the power to affect public discussions around religious diversity and interreligiosity. Practices In this volume, we also focus on the configurations of encounters and (bodily) practices that make dialogues intelligible and tangible in the first place. For some time now, a perspective on practices has established itself in the cultural and social sciences which consistently describes the social from the point

Introduction  13 of view of situated and corporeal activities. In addition to the well-known perspective of Pierre Bourdieu (1977), who explored the internalization of social structures in the form of embodied actions, the ontological approaches of, among others, Theodore Schatzki (Knorr-Cetina et al. 2001; also, Hui et al. 2017) have gained attention in recent years (cf. Simonsen 2010; Reckwitz 2017). These approaches conceive of practices as bodily and material nexuses of linguistic and non-linguistic activities and, at the same time, as the smallest units of the social. Social dynamics are then analysed as effects of different interwoven practices. Examining practices also means avoiding reducing social reality to discourses, symbols or explicit knowledge production. It means instead analysing how social (or discursive) relations are created, that is, how they are always in the making in the course of practical action. Though to some extent the concept of practice connotes more or less structured social activities, discussions in practice theory have explored the relationship between stability and instability/change, as well as the ways in which this tension may manifest itself within or between practices and their performative enfoldings. Thus, discussions in practice theory also try to capture the changing meaning of practices through variations to original practices (Butler 1991, 213; Schäfer 2016). Moreover, looking at practices is often tied to an interest in encounters. The reconstruction of practical activities sheds light on the (micro-)contexts and local constellations in and through which specific encounters take place. Beyond a narrow idea of practices as organized and structured activities, many authors (see the discussions below) use the notion of practice more broadly to look at the situatedness, embeddedness and complexity of (local) everyday activities, that is, of activities that are always marked by both stability/routine and change/rupture, and that therefore display both the structuring effects of socio-political rationalities and discourses and the open dynamics of contingent encounters (Schäfer 2016; Wilson 2017). While the authors cited below do not necessarily refer explicitly to the theories outlined above, they all adopt a view of situated practices that helps them understand the conditions and effects of cross-difference dialogues and encounters. A perspective on practices is then reflected, for example, in those works that examine how religious and cultural identities, as well as interreligious and intercultural relationships, are made or become meaningful and are lived and negotiated in everyday activities in urban contexts (Amin 2002; Wilson 2011, 2014b; Kuppinger 2014; Mayblin et al. 2016; Dwyer 2016; Ipgrave 2019). Recent research generally shows a great interest in the importance of situated and practised encounters for the dynamics of living together in circumstances of difference and diversity (Valentine 2008; Wilson 2017). In some cases, institutionalized measures and policies aimed at intercultural or interreligious dialogue are also examined and their effects on the negotiation of identity and difference, as well as on living together in diversity, are questioned (Wilson 2014a; Mayblin et al. 2016). With regard to the concrete practice of an interreligious project, Mayblin

14  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. et al. (2016) show that, even in the context of institutionalized attempts to strengthen cross-difference relationships, supposedly banal practices (e.g. joint sports activities) can play a major role in overcoming differences (cf. also Amin 2002). De Wilde (2015), on the other hand, combines a governmentality perspective with an ethnographic investigation of practices and thus reconstructs the concrete techniques of managing multicultural relationships in an urban quarter. She can show, among other things, how the production of a (positive) emotional atmosphere becomes an element in the governance of differences that relies on affective citizenship in a multicultural context. Konyali et al. (2019) also use an ethnographic reconstruction of practices and interactions to shed light on processes of the (re)production as well as the transformation of dominant identity positions in locally institutionalized interreligious dialogues. A perspective on practices helps us understand how interreligious encounters and dialogues are processed within concrete and situated contexts. How is dialogue practiced? Which practices can express which notions of dialogue in relation to which encounters? Which practices facilitate or hinder which kinds of encounter? A perspective on practices also leads us to an analysis of the ways in which dialogues are embedded in, and connected to, other arrangements of practices. How, for example, may interreligious activities be embedded within urban regeneration and neighbourhood renewal programmes, local social cohesion/integration policies, or city marketing and tourism? (For connections between multifaith and interreligious activities and urban social cohesion policies, see, for example, the chapter by Prideaux and Mortimer, this volume). Simultaneously, a focus on practices enables consideration of the myriad ways in which dialogue is practised, from institutionalized interreligious ‘round tables’ to fleeting encounters and local demonstrations, from interreligious bus tours and kindergartens to ‘chill-out zones’ or ‘rooms of silence’. A practice approach, however, also allows us to examine specific personal experiences and interrelated practices of perceiving. The example of a photographer who converted to Islam and who seeks to make visible the universal humanity of being a Muslim in particular can be analysed as a specific practice of interreligious encounter, as Otterbeck’s study in this section does. Meanwhile, although situated in the section focused on sites, Emmerich’s chapter shows how specific figures can play the role of a broker both among religious communities and between religious communities and (local) state actors. Therefore, the practice of interreligious encounter and dialogue can be a matter of local interpersonal relations, trust and close bonds. The practices of interreligious encounter can take many shapes. Sometimes they result from intentional interfaith initiatives. In other cases, however, these encounters result from practices that did not start out from settings where different religious communities would meet to discuss or work around issues of faith. Put differently, interreligious encounters may result from intentional interreligious practices, whereas others may be the

Introduction  15 side effects of other types of actions and practices. In their study of the relationship between public policy and multifaith social action in the UK, Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer (this volume) show that interreligious encounters may be the starting point for social action projects conducted by various religious communities in deprived neighbourhoods and localities, or they may be the end result of social action initiatives implemented by actors in different religious communities. In their empirical study, the authors identify two types of the practise of interreligious encounters, one starting out from interreligious interactions, the other resulting in them. Moreover, their study also shows how public policies aimed at funding local social-action initiatives may impact on the connections and interactions between different actors in the field, who strategically mobilize or hide their religious identities for the sake of accessing public funds. While situated in the section on materiality, Burchardt and Haering’s paper also reveals an interesting distinction concerning practices of interreligious dialogue and encounter. On the one hand, the official project of the House of One—a planned multi-religious building in Berlin that stands at the centre of the authors’ study—is appreciated for its symbolic power and its capacity to promote particular discourses on diversity. On the other hand, religious representatives, especially those in marginalized communities, highlight the importance and efficacy of everyday grassroots interreligious practices, which receive much less attention and public support than a prestigious major project. In other words, practices of interreligious encounter can take many shapes, from very formal and/or spectacular to rather informal and/or mundane encounters, which may lead to very different outcomes precisely because of their different natures. The study of interreligious encounters through the perspective of practices enables an examination of how power relations are put into practice and how unequal relations are reproduced through practices. Simultaneously, by using a practice lens, we are better equipped to look into everyday practices and interactions and their messiness on the micro-level (Reckwitz 2003, 298). Although situated in the spatialities section, Emmerich’s chapter very clearly shows how ‘interreligiosity’ is done on a daily basis through apparently routine and seemingly banal practices. As interreligious encounters take place through practices that vary according to the context, what at some point may be considered exceptional can turn into a regular form of encounter. This is also reflected in the chapters in this book. In his study of the distinguished Muslim photographer Peter Sanders, Otterbeck shows how the artist repeats a certain cultural practice (portraying Muslims in photographs) and creates—variation by variation—a recognizable aesthetic that conveys an interreligious message. Motak and Krotofil, in their chapter on the dissemination of a poster concerning the Day of Islam in Kraków, analyse how the practices of receiving and perceiving a digitally changed image of this city, and of re-posting it via social media, provoked a controversial debate in local society. This debate reflected a kind of interreligious

16  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. dialogue that is more dispersed, informal, unstructured and spontaneous, though a spontaneity into which problematic and exclusionary voices could also inscribe themselves. Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen illustrate the genealogy of atmospheres by analysing the ephemeral, embodied and intersubjective practices of an interfaith initiative in Copenhagen. The authors ask how atmospheres tune encounters, and which embodied attunements emerge in relation to which practices among the participants.

Concluding Remarks By focusing on spatialities, materialities and practices, this book mobilizes analytical categories that enable examination of the multifaceted local power effects of different interreligious encounters, thereby grasping contentious modes of implementation, as well as current transformations of interreligious dialogue(s). This investigation is all the more relevant as the ‘dialogue paradigm’ is currently undergoing several changes. First, due to the growing importance of interreligious initiatives as a means of governing religious diversity, new actors and programmes are emerging. Dialogues gained political importance primarily with regard to the problematizations of ‘Islam’, yet many other groups besides Muslims are increasingly navigating the dialogue paradigm (cf. Ipgrave 2019). As a consequence, the emancipation of heterogeneous (post-)migrant groups is challenging existing approaches to dialogue and their identity-political settlements. Second, the political mobilization of interreligious initiatives has prompted re-negotiations of the local relationships between religion and the state that require further scholarly examination. Third, the strengthening of right-wing populist and extreme right-wing positions in many European countries might transform, or contest altogether, existing dialogue agendas. Several questions for future research arise: how are interreligious encounters and practices, and the attempts to arrange them as dialogues, reconfiguring the position of religion in secular political publics? How do they promote ‘appropriate’ ways of living together in diverse contexts and articulate new modes of (local or national, formal or informal) citizenship and belonging (Ayata 2019)? Overall, our volume seeks to sharpen the focus on the production, reproduction and contestation of identities, subjectivities and power. Thus, we approach the question of how identities and differences are re-configured and negotiated in and through the local practice of more or less organized interreligious encounters and dialogues. We ask how interreligious relations are articulated and made tangible and understandable through certain practices and encounters, and to what extent these practices and encounters are embedded in power relations and linked to processes of identity formation and subjectivation. Finally, this also means questioning constellations of interreligious encounter as interventions, that is, as practices that seek to establish certain forms of desired relations of identity, difference and belonging. Interreligious practices and encounters shape the fields of possibility for specific subjects and groups inside and outside these practices

Introduction  17 and encounters; they make it possible or impossible, easier or harder, to problematize specific socio-political issues, to express oneself or to speak to others in certain ways. Ultimately, by turning to the spatialities, materialities and practices of interreligious dialogues and encounters, the book and its rich and diverse contributions shed light on the heterogeneous domains where the visibility and inclusion of religious and cultural differences are currently negotiated and contested. In doing so, it contributes a better understanding of how cultural, religious and political identities are reconfigured across Europe.

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18  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. De Witte, Marleen. 2016. “Encountering Religion Through Accra’s Urban ­Soundscape.” In Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York, edited by J. Darling, H. F. and Wilson. London: Routledge. Dick, Eva, and Alexander-Kenneth Nagel. 2017. “Local Interfaith Networks in Urban Integration Politics: Religious Communities between Innovation and Cooptation.” In Spiritualizing the City: Agency and Resilience of the Urban and Urbanesque Habitat, edited by Victoria Hegner, and Peter J. Margry, 27–45. New York: Routledge. Dornhof, Sarah. 2012. “Rationalities of Dialogue.” Current Sociology 60: (3): 382–398. Dwyer, Claire. 2016. “Everyday Negotiations: Religion in Urban Life.” In ­Negotiating Religion. Routledge. Fahy, John, and Jan-Jonathan Bock. 2020. The Interfaith Movement: Mobilising Religious Diversity in the 21st Century. Routledge. Giordan, Giuseppe, and Andrew P. Lynch. 2019. Interreligious Dialogue: from religion to geopolitics. Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion. Volume 10. Brill. Griera, Mar. 2012. “Public Policies, Interfaith Associations and Religious ­M inorities: A New Policy Paradigm? Evidence from the Case of Barcelona.” Social Compass, 59(4): 570–587. Griera, Mar. 2019. “Interreligious Events in the Public Space: Performing ­Togetherness in Times of Religious Pluralism.” In Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries, 35–55. Springer. Griera, Mar, and Maria Forteza. 2011. “New Actors in the Governance of ­Religious Diversity in European Cities: The Role of Interfaith Platforms.” In Religious Actors in the Public Sphere - Means, Objectives, and Effects, edited by J Haynes and A Hennig. New York: Routledge. Hickey-Moody, Anna, and Marrisa Willcox. 2019. “Entanglements of Difference as Community Togetherness: Faith, Art and Feminism.” Social Sciences 8 (9) 264: 1–21. Hickey-Moody, Anna, and Marrisa Willcox. 2020. “Material Expressions of ­Religious Culture.” In Religion, Hypermobility and Digital Media in Global Asia, edited by Catherine Gomes, Lily Kong, and Orlando Woods, 65–95. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Houtman, Dick, and Birgit Meyer. 2012. Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality. Fordham University Press. Hui, Allison, Theodore Schatzki, and Elisabeth Shove (ed). 2017. The Nexus of Practices – Connections, Constellations, Practitioners. London/New York: Routledge. Ipgrave, Julia. 2019. Interreligious Engagement in Urban Spaces: Social, Material and Ideological Dimensions. Springer. Knorr Cetina, Karin, Theodore R. Schatzki, and Eike von Savigny (eds.). 2001. The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. London: Routledge. Knott, Kim. 2008. “Spatial Theory and the Study of Religion.” Religion Compass, 2(6): 1102–1116. Knott, Kim. 2009. “From Locality to Location and Back Again: A Spatial Journey in the Study of Religion.” Religion, 39(2): 154–160. Knott, Kim, Volkhard Krech, and Birgit Meyer B. 2016. “Iconic Religion in Urban Space.” Material Religion, 12(2): 123–136. Konyali, Ali, Laura Haddad, and Andreas Pott. 2019. “Pacifying Muslims in ­G ermany’s ‘City of Peace’: Inter-religious Dialogue as a Tool of Governance in Osnabrück.” Religion, State and Society 47 (4, 5): 440–455.

Introduction  19 Körs, Anna, Wolfram Weisse, and Jean-Paul Willaime (ed.). 2020. Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue. Cham: Springer. Kuppinger, Petra. 2014. “Flexible Topographies: Muslim Spaces in a German ­Cityscape”, Social and Cultural Geography 15 (6): 627–644. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. [Originally published in 1974]. Liebmann, Louise Lund. 2019. “Islam and Muslims as Elephants in the Interfaith Room.” Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 9 (3): 383–400. Liberal-Islamischer Bund. 2021. Post on Instagram 16.05.2021. Lim, Jason. 2010. “Immanent Politics: Thinking Race and Ethnicity through Affect and Machinism.” Environment and Planning A 42 (10): 2393–2409. Lorimer, Jamie. 2015. Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation After Nature. University of Minnesota Press. Martínez-Ariño, Julia. 2019. “Governing Islam in French Cities: Defining ‘Acceptable’ Public Religiosity Through Municipal Consultative Bodies.” Religion, State & Society, 47(4, 5), 423–439. Martínez-Ariño, Julia, (ed.) 2020. Governing Religious Diversity in Cities: Critical Perspectives. Religion, State & Society, (47): 4, 5. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Mayblin, Lucy, Gill Valentine, and Johan Andersson. 2016. “In the Contact Zone: Engineering Meaningful Encounters Across Difference Through an Interfaith Project.” The Geographical Journal 182 (2): 213–222. Meyer, Birgit. 2015. “How Pictures Matter”. In Objects and Imagination: Perspectives on Materialization and Meaning, edited by Ø. Fuglerud, and L. Wainwright,pp. 160–183. Berghahn Books. Meyer, Birgit, and Dick Houtman, D. 2012. “Introduction: Material Religion— How Things Matter.” In Things. Fordham University Press. Moyaert, Marianne. 2019. Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries: Explorations in Interrituality. Springer. Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth. 2018. “Dialogical Practice in Urban Spaces: Comments from a Sociological Perspective.” In Religion and Dialogue in the City: Case Studies on Interreligious Encounter in Urban Community and Education, edited by Julia Ipgrave, Thorsten Knauth, Anna Körs, Dörthe Vieregge, and Marie von der Lippe, 317–22. Münster and New York: Waxmann Verlag. Peter, Frank. 2010.“Welcoming Muslims into the Nation: Tolerance, Politics and Integration in Germany.” In: Muslims in the West after 9/11: Religion, Politics and Law, edited by Jocelyn Cesari, 119–144. London/New York: Routledge. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession, 33–40. Popke, Jeff. 2009. “Geography and Ethics: Non-Representational Encounters, Collective Responsibility and Economic Difference.” Progress in Human Geography 33 (1): 81–90. Reckwitz, Andreas. 2003. “Grundelemente einer Theorie sozialer Praktiken. Eine sozial-theoretische Perspektive. ” Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 32 (4): 282–-301. Reckwitz, Andreas. 2017. “Practices and Their Affects. ” In The nexus of practices – Connections, constellations, practitioners, edited by Hui Allison, Schatzki Theodore, and Shove Elisabeth, 114–126. London/New York: Routledge. Saint-Blancat, Chantal. 2019. “Introduction.” Social Compass, 66(1): 3–23. Sarli, Annavittoria, and Giulia Mezzetti. 2020. “Migrants and Religion: Paths, Issues, and Lenses.” In Religion and Integration: Issues from International Literature, 433–63. Brill.

20  Julia Martínez-Ariño et al. Schäfer, Hilmar. 2016. “Praxis als Wiederholung. Das Denken der Iterabilität und seine Konsequenzen für die Methodologie praxeologischer Forschung.” In Praxistheorie. Ein soziologisches Forschungsprogramm, edited by Schäfer Hilmar, 137–159. Bielefeld: Transcript. Schuermans, Nick. 2016. “On the Politics of Vision and Touch: Encountering Fearful and Fearsome Bodies in Cape Town, South Africa.” In Encountering the City: Urban Encounters from Accra to New York, edited by Darling Jonathan, and Wilson Helen F. London: Routledge. Simonsen, Kirsten. 2010. “Encountering O/other Bodies: Practice, Emotion and Ethics.” In Taking Place – Non-Representational Theories and Geography, edited by Anderson Ben, and Harrison Paul, 221–241. Burlington: Ashgate. Slocum, Rachel. 2008. “Thinking Race Through Corporeal Feminist Theory: Divisions and Intimacies at the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market.” Social & ­Cultural Geography 9: 849–869. Sorenssen, Víctor, and Martínez-Ariño, Julia (forthcoming). “‘Routes of Dialogue’: Interreligious Tours in Barcelona as Bottom-up Heritage Practices.” In Religion and Heritage: Scholarship and Practice in Contemporary Europe, edited by Weir Todd, Wijnia Lieke, and Gelderloos Jacqueline. Bloomsbury. Swanton, Dan. 2010. “Sorting Bodies: Race, Affect, and Everyday Multiculture in a Mill Town in Northern England.” Environment and Planning A 42 : 2332-2350. Tezcan, Levent. 2012. Das muslimische Subjekt: Verfangen im Dialog der Deutschen Islam Konferenz. Konstanz: University Press. Thrift, Nigel. 2004. “Intensities of Feeling. Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect.” Geografiska Annaler 86 (1): 57–78. Valentine, Gill. 2008. “Living with Difference: Reflections on Geographies of Encounter.” Progress in Human Geography 32(3): 323–337. Valentine, Gill, and Joanna Sadgrove. 2012. “Lived Difference: A Narrative Account of Spatiotemporal Processes of Social Differentiation.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 44 (9): 2049–2063. Valentine, Gill, and Louise Waite. 2012. “Negotiating Difference Through Everyday Encounters: The Case of Sexual Orientation and Religion and Belief.” Antipode, (44): 474–492. Wilson, Helen F. 2011. “Passing Propinquities in the Multicultural City: The Everyday Encounters of Bus Passengering.” Environment and Planning A, (43): 634–649. Wilson, Helen F. 2014a. “The Possibilities of Tolerance: Intercultural Dialogue in a Multicultural Europe.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32 (5): 852–868. Wilson, Helen F. 2014b, “Multicultural Learning: Parent Encounters with Difference in a Birmingham Primary School”. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series 39: 102–114. Wilson, Helen F. 2017. “On Geography and Encounter: Bodies, Borders, and ­Difference.” Progress in Human Geography, 41(4): 451–471. Wise, Amanda. 2005. “Hope and Belonging in a Multicultural Suburb.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 26: 171–186. Zapata-Barrero, Ricard, Tiziana Caponio, and Peter Scholten. 2017. “Theorizing the ‘Local Turn’ in a Multi-Level Governance Framework of Analysis: A Case Study in Immigrant Policies.” International Review of Administrative Sciences 83 (2): 241–246.

Part I

The Sites of Interreligious Encounters

1

Spatializing Interreligious Practice Interreligious Place-making in a German Metropolitan Area Alexander-Kenneth Nagel

1.1 Introduction: Towards a Spatial Approach to Interreligious Dialogue In this chapter, I will investigate interreligious place-making in a German urban area. My analysis is based on the assumption that interreligious place-making is a co-productive process that involves interreligious activists, urban administrators and artists. Proceeding from a wide understanding of place-making, which I will outline in due course, I look at various forms of interreligious art, which manifest and engrain themselves in the urban public. These include solid metal sculptures, intarsia in the ground and public performances. The focal point of this study is the city of Hamm, a medium-sized town in western Germany at the border of the metropolitan Ruhr area, which is marked historically by a high degree of religious and confessional diversity. I will use the first section to outline my understanding of interreligious place-making and to embed it in the academic literature on interreligious dialogue. In line with the overall intention of this volume, I seek to promote a spatial and material approach to interreligious activism. In the second section, I will briefly elaborate on my methodological approach and offer some contextual information on the city of Hamm. In the subsequent sections, I discuss two cases of interreligious place-making in Hamm, namely the so-called ‘Gates of the World Religions’, a monumental open-air installation (see Section 1.3), and the ‘Angel of Culture’, an iron intarsia which is set into the ground and accompanied by a public performance (see Section 1.4). I will use Section 1.5 to draw some comparative conclusions across the cases and reflect on the general insights they offer for interreligious place-making. Scholarly debates on interreligious dialogues have long been a domain of systematic or practical theology. However, in recent years we have seen the emergence of a new strand of discussion from the vantage points of sociology and social anthropology. Whereas earlier contributions explored the theological content and foundations of interreligious understanding or aimed at a more comprehensive theology of religions (Hick 2002; Knitter et  al. 2013), studies in the social sciences have placed the empirical

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-3

23

24  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel focus on the more formal aspects of interreligious activism. While some authors have sought to categorize different interreligious shapes and formats (Griera 2020; Nagel 2015), others have explored interreligious dialogues as part of a global social movement (Fahy and Bock 2020; Halafoff 2013). The last five years in particular have brought about an acceleration and diversification of empirical research, including perspectives on interreligious dialogues as an instrument of local governance (Griera and Nagel 2018; Konyali et al. 2019; Martínez-Ariño 2019), new forms of the mediatization of interreligious practice (Neumaier and Klinkhammer 2020) and studies of the ritualized nature of interreligious interaction (Moyaert 2017; Nagel 2019). Most of these social-scientific contributions share an awareness of power imbalances and the inherent asymmetries of organized interreligious encounters, which are often associated with challenges of religious representation and their repercussions on religious fields and communities. I restrict myself to a brief sketch of these debates, as they only provide the wider framework for my investigation of interreligious place-making in this chapter. So far, empirical research on interreligious dialogue has mainly focused on matters of institutional formation, interaction patterns and motivations. Although the perspectives of media and ritual practice lend themselves to material approaches, these avenues have rarely been pursued. There are, however, some exceptions, which provide a narrower frame of research for the purposes of this chapter. First, the documentation and analysis of multifaith spaces has become a branch of research in its own right in the sociology and anthropology of religion. In particular, many studies have been conducted on rooms of silence in various institutional and national contexts, such as hospitals or universities (Christensen et al. 2019; Crompton 2013). In many cases, these studies do not situate themselves in discussions of interreligious activism, but relate to debates on the interreligious and intercultural opening up of public institutions. A notable exception is the work of Mehmet Kalender, who has explored ‘in what way space is expressed in interfaith activities and how it correlates with the interaction of the participants’ (Kalender 2016, 429). In order to find answers to this question, Kalender combines relational concepts of space with perspectives from symbolic interactionism and underlines the significance of interaction for interreligious placemaking. Whereas Kalender focuses on the constitution of space in a given situation of interreligious practice, I seek to elucidate the structural conditions of interreligious place-making, including political negotiations and opportunity structures. Hence, I will concentrate on the interactions between actors involved in the planning of interreligious spaces, namely urban planners, religious or interreligious representatives, and artists. A second vantage point for my analysis is what Marian Burchardt has called ‘infrastructuring religion’, i.e. ‘the ways in which religious life is premised upon the production, maintenance and working of mundane materials that link spaces into networks of provision and make possible the circulation of energy, goods, coded meanings and bodies’ (Burchardt 2019, 627).

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  25 While Kalender has emphasized the role of agency in the establishment of interreligious spaces, Burchardt points to the given physical space as either a constraint on or opportunity structure for (inter-)religious practice. In an earlier contribution, Burchardt and Höhne underlined that these infrastructures are by no means neutral, but ‘carry highly political or normative ideas of their ideal users and their transformative power to improve cities, communities and so on’ (Burchardt and Höhne 2016, 3). In line with these considerations, I will take into account the geographical conditions of interreligious place-making, such as central and peripheral locations or the urban imprints of post-industrial transformation, as well as the material dimension of place-making itself. The latter extends from solid and durable installations of interreligious art to more ephemeral forms of temporary interreligious impregnations of public space. Finally, the third important inspiration for my analysis comes from debates on material religion. Drawing on Kim Knott, I will take into account the ‘configuration’ of interreligious spaces in terms of their extension, i.e. the ‘way in which “stratified places” reveal the traces of earlier times and different ethnic and religious regimes’ in a given space and simultaneity, i.e. their ‘synchronic interconnections with other sites’, as well as sites of power struggles (Knott 2008, 1109, 1110). Another relevant facet of material analysis is the aesthetic formations of interreligious spaces. According to Birgit Meyer, the concept of aesthetic formation refers to ‘[…] the formative impact of a shared aesthetics [through] which subjects are shaped by tuning their senses, inducing experiences, moulding their bodies, and making sense, and which materialises in things’ (Meyer 2009, 7). In operational terms, I will use Knott’s spatial approach to shed light on the multi-layered nature of interreligious place-making, whereas I will draw on Meyer’s notion of aesthetic formations to analyse the ‘religious emissions’ of an interreligious installation or practice into the public sphere. In my understanding, religious emissions ‘are sensual expressions of religious objects or practices which impose themselves on actors to a certain degree’ (Nagel 2021, 233). All in all, I translate these conceptual debates into four operational dimensions to guide my analysis of the two cases presented in this chapter. The dimension of Configuration relates to the internal composition of the installation, as well as to its interplay with its environment. The dimension of Aesthetic Formations refers to the capacity of interreligious place-making to speak to the senses and induce religious experiences. The dimension of Interaction refers to the negotiation and collective action that is associated with interreligious place-making. The dimension of Infrastructuration refers to the geographical and material constraints and opportunity structures for interreligious place-making. In line with my earlier work on interreligious activism, I will concentrate on organized forms of interreligious place-making that involve at least two religious traditions (either by personal representation or symbolic reference) and that are based on a programmatic understanding of religious difference

26  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel (Galal 2020; Nagel 2019). In doing so, I exclude all sorts of spontaneous place-making, e.g. through accidental encounters, and organized measures that invoke a spirit of urban unity without an explicit reference to religious or cultural diversity. This focus will allow me to address the role of interreligious place-making as part of a political project of governance through diversity (Burchardt and Höhne 2016, 9). In the following section, I will outline my methodological approach and introduce some contextual background information on the city of Hamm, which provides the focal point of this study.

1.2 Methods and Research Design As outlined above, my primary unit of analysis in this chapter will be interreligious place-making in the urban public involving durable or temporary art installations or performances. In the following, I will briefly elaborate on my methods of data-gathering and data-analysis, my selected examples and the specific context of my focal city, Hamm. For purposes of data-gathering, I draw mainly on a database of 23 semi-structured interviews with interreligious stakeholders and urban officials in Hamm, conducted in 2012 as part of a research project on interreligious governance.1 As these interviews primarily concentrated on cooperation between local interreligious initiatives and state actors, they also produced several vignettes of how the specific interreligious spirit of the city is materialized (see below). For the purposes of this chapter, I have complemented the existing interviews with an analysis of the homepages and local media coverage of the interreligious art projects involved and conducted another extensive interview with the two artists who created a project called ‘Angel of Culture’. While it would have been desirable to pursue in-depth participant observation in the surroundings of public interreligious installations and, in particular, at a public interreligious art performance, this turned out to be impossible due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In terms of data-analysis, I base this on the results of a qualitative content analysis of the interviews revealing various instances of interreligious place-making. For the purpose of this chapter, I revisited these instances based on a hermeneutic approach in the tradition of the sociology of knowledge (Reichertz 2000). Even though the approach works best for non-reactive data, it also allows a better understanding of the social location of the interview partners and their subjective sense of action (ibid., 521, 522). Building on these insights, I looked for complementary material, such as self-descriptions or media coverage, in order to compile more comprehensive vignettes of artistic approaches to interreligious place-making. Below are descriptions of the two cases I will feature in this chapter and how they are covered by my data: 1 The ‘Gates of World Religions’ is a huge open-air installation of five iron gates representing the five world religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism). The installation was jointly

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  27 developed by an interreligious initiative and the municipal department of urban planning, and is widely covered in the interviews from various perspectives. In addition, I have drawn on the official project brochure and local media coverage of the inauguration in 2012. 2 The ‘Angel of Culture’ is an iron intarsia by Carmen Dietrich and Gregor Merten, which includes the symbols of the three Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) in a circular frame, and thus creates the image of an angel. The intarsia has been implemented in a variety of cities in Germany and beyond. In Hamm, it was installed in 2018 and therefore was not covered in the initial interviews. I therefore decided to conduct another interview with the artists for the purposes of this chapter and to draw on their own extensive documentation. Apart from these major cases, the city of Hamm has hosted some much more fluid forms of interreligious place-making. One example was the ‘Peace Light of Religions’, a light installation, which was put on display in Hamm in 2011, in the course of the annual Interreligious Peace Prayer. Just like the Angel of Culture, the Peace Light gained additional momentum through the Cultural Capitals campaign. Another example was the so-called ‘Miteinander-Fahrten’ (‘Togetherness Tours’), guided tours of different sacred sites in Hamm. Both examples point to mechanisms of interreligious place-making that are more ephemeral and underline the importance of in-depth ethnographic research for future research. The focal point of my study will be Hamm, a city of 180,000 residents on the northern edge of the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area. The whole region has undergone a significant transformation from a major centre of the German coal and steel industry to a fragile post-industrial setting. Like the metropolitan area itself, Hamm was strongly influenced by labour (‘guest-worker’) immigration and exhibits a high degree of religious diversity (Krech 2008). Apart from several mosque communities, Hamm has become an important hub for the German and continental European Hindu community. It is home to three Hindu temples, including the Sri Kamadchi Ampal Temple, the biggest Hindu temple in continental Europe. Given the city’s highly multi-religious and multicultural environment, along with the social problems related to the economic transition, it is likely that the city administration is taking measures to counter sociocultural fragmentation. Between the late 1990s and 2020, Hamm had a Christian Democratic government headed by a long-standing Roman Catholic mayor with a strong personal investment in interreligious and intercultural dialogue. In 2016, Hamm adopted a municipal integration concept, building on a 2014 resolution of the City Council. The concept begins with an emphatic statement on the ‘long tradition’ of immigration in Hamm and underlines the city’s ability to moderate and cultivate multi-religious and multicultural constellations: ‘The experiences and well-proven approaches of urban integration, which have been gathered over decades, were successful’ (Hamm 2016a, 4). Against this backdrop, participation is envisaged as the primary

28  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel means of ensuring social cohesion in the future. Whereas the integration concept emphasizes ‘intercultural’ measures, such as intercultural recruitment and qualification schemes in the public administration, the earlier resolution by the City Council was much more explicit on religious and interreligious matters: ‘Drawing on previous positive experiences in the collaboration with mainline churches and a pilot project on “Muslim communities as municipal actors”, the city of Hamm embraces the establishment of a multifaith chaplaincy structure as an important policy goal and explicitly draws on collaboration with religious communities and measures of “interreligious dialogue”’ (Hamm 2014, 9–11). The programmatic prominence of interreligious activism in Hamm resonates with a variety of collaborations between public authorities and interreligious initiatives, namely an interreligious prayer for peace and several interreligious round tables in different districts. As I have pointed out elsewhere, Hamm has adopted a specific form of post-secular administrative culture, which emphasizes the benefits of interreligious dialogue in the name of social cohesion and is rooted in dense networks and personal relations between urban officials and religious representatives (Nagel 2020, 110). A good example of this proactive approach to diversity governance was an initiative by the urban integration office to launch a new interreligious round table in a district with a high proportion of immigrants. It is important to note that this post-secular approach is in line with the national understanding that there is no strict separation between the state and religious communities, but rather a cooperative relationship, based on benevolent neutrality. At the same time, comparative case studies indicate that cities take very different avenues in adopting this understanding (ibid., 117–119). Apart from the legal implications, it may be even more important for the purposes of this chapter that Hamm’s overall post-secular culture is associated with a generous attitude towards religious symbols in public urban spaces, which is reflected in numerous vignettes of interreligious place-making. In the following, I will focus on the two cases introduced above, both lasting and monumental interventions into the public space.

1.3 Case Study 1: The Gates of World Religions 1.3.1 Configuration and Religious Emissions The ‘Gates of World Religions’ installation was publicly inaugurated in 2012 in Lippe Park, an old mining area on the outskirts of Hamm. It consists of five large iron gates, which are supposed to represent the five ‘world religions’, namely Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism. The gates are grouped in a semi-circle and are connected by a ring on the ground in order to form a space of interreligious encounter (see Figure 1.1). In front of each gate is a desk with aphorisms from different religious traditions, such as ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’.

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  29

Figure 1.1 Gates of World Religions. Source: Hamm 2016b: 4 (©Thorsten Hübner, Stadt Hamm).

Building on Knott, the stratified nature of the site is closely connected to the process of recultivation of a former mine with distinct landmarks, such as pits and heads, into a park where people can have fun and relax. While the main theme shifted from ‘work’ to ‘leisure’, the planners sought to preserve the spirit of the location, e.g. through bridges that connect the heads (instead of just levelling them as had been done in similar cases). As a result, both the park in general and the Gates in particular exhibit the simultaneity of history and a new beginning, the labour market and the life world, mundane and spiritual aspirations. Seen in this light, the iron shape of the gates provides a material reminiscence of the local steel industry. Another example of how the stratified nature of the installation is put into discursive practice is what I call the miner’s myth of conviviality. This is how it was described by an interview partner from the urban planning office: I believe that this [tolerance] originates from mining. Underground, you had to truly rely on your colleague to keep you safe. And this, I believe, leads to this community being different. If you are truly dependent on one another, you have to trust each other. And if you start classifying: “Is this a Muslim colleague or a Christian one”, you will not get very far.2 The narrative establishes a direct connection between Hamm’s industrial past and the relationship between social cohesion and religious difference in

30  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel modern times. In this framing, the Gates appear as the organic continuation and manifestation of a spirit of conviviality that is deeply engrained in the local community and has persisted over time. The mythical character is underlined by a recourse to history in order to explain and legitimize recent developments and the double usage of the phrase ‘I believe’. The myth features quite prominently in the interview as our interview partner referred to it twice, but it has not made it into the official brochure. The second dimension from the perspective of material religion refers to the aesthetic formations and religious emissions associated with the installation. Obviously, the Gates have a massive presence in both visual and haptic terms. The main visual stimuli are the structure of the gates (seen from afar) and the religious symbols (seen as you approach). The symbols include the Star of David (Judaism), a church tower with a cross (Christianity), a mosque with a minaret (Islam), the OM syllable (Hinduism) and the Dharma wheel (Buddhism). This iconic programme is quite remarkable for its mixture of more figurative (OM syllable, Dharma wheel and Star of David) and more literal symbols (church and mosques as buildings). The official brochure elaborates on each religious tradition and provides basic information and a brief explanation for the choice of symbols. These illustrations underscore the different scopes of the symbols, as they emphasize the edificial aspects of churches and mosques and are more abstract for the other religious traditions. The haptic stimuli relate to the rough iron surface of the installation and its invitation to bodily interaction: the gates extend a silent call to cross them, and the desks invite the users to lean on them. Both the selection and the arrangement of religious traditions point to the projects’ mostly implicit theology of religions. While the semi-circle avoids any form of spatial hierarchy, the Gates can be read as featuring an Abrahamic cluster (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and a ‘Dharmic’ cluster (Buddhism, Hinduism). Both our interview partners and the official brochure attempt to justify the selection of religious traditions in this case. A Christian representative reflected on the process as follows: We discussed which religious groups there are and thought: “We have to limit ourselves, because you cannot do something for each group, but have to do something more general”. And then we limited ourselves to the five world religions, knowing that this will not address everyone. The statement indicates that the project group sought to find a balance between the religions that were present in the city and a more general yet abstract understanding of world religions. Whereas Hamm has numerous churches, mosque communities and three Hindu temples, there are no substantial Jewish or Buddhist communities in the city, a fact that is also acknowledged in the official brochure. Hence, the wish to include them follows a logic of world religious completeness rather than actual religious presence locally. Likewise, the brochure discusses other religious traditions

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  31 that might be counted as world religions as well, namely the Baháʼí faith, Daoism or ‘various traditions within Islam’. It concludes that ‘the project group has agreed to limit their notion of world religions to those traditions which are being practiced in Hamm or its direct surroundings by larger communities’ (Hamm 2016b, 4). Once again, this statement highlights the double bind between universalization and localization. As far as the composition of the local religious field is concerned, the Alevi community is both larger and more visible than either the Buddhists or the Jews. This tension emphasizes the traction of the world religious model and points to matters of interaction and infrastructuration in the planning process itself. 1.3.2 Interaction and Infrastructuration At the very beginning, the official brochure notes that the process of planning involved ‘many discussions and struggles in order to assemble the different faiths and world views under a common roof’ (ibid., 3). Our interviews with urban and religious stakeholders help to shed more light on the dynamics of this process. The city’s first idea was to pursue the recultivation project in the framework of a State Horticultural Show (‘Landesgartenschau’), which would have brought along substantial visibility and financial assistance. During the application process, a citizen forum was created in order to enhance civic participation. Even after the application had failed, the forum persisted and collected ideas. In this context, a local interreligious working group came up with the proposal for a place of interreligious encounter. The interviews are quite explicit on both the interplay of state and civic actors and its repercussions on the actual shape of the project. Our interview partner from the department of urban planning was eager to underline the bottom-up nature of the process and characterizes her own role as ‘moderation’. In addition to technical assistance, such as coordination with the local building authorities, she was also responsible for the religious capacity-building and networking. The interviews suggest that she played a major role in extending the religious boundaries of the project from a model of Christian-Muslim understanding to a model of world religions. Given the formal nature of her responsibilities, she commissioned an artist ‘who had administered many interreligious projects’ and hence acted as an intermediary between the religious initiators and urban officials. In our interviews, religious representatives and state actors both emphasized the significance of the artist for the final outcome. A religious representative reflects on how the planning process and the intervention of the artist changed the course of their original idea: So, the original ideal has changed indeed, as it involved gates leading to a common fountain or something like that. This is different now, but we developed the (new) design together in this working group. And there were other aspects which played a role, too: […] What can be

32  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel technically realized, what is possible in logistical terms, what expresses our intention, right? And we exchanged ideas and jointly reached that decision. […] All (participants) said ‘that is an ideal implementation under the circumstances’. I quote this reflection at length because it is exemplary of the infrastructuration of interreligious place-making. The transdisciplinary working group serves as a forum to revisit the original idea in the light of practical and physical constraints. For instance, since the installation is in a public area, it must be designed to be resistant to vandalism. In a similar vein, our interview partner from the department of urban planning noted: ‘We quickly discarded the theme of a fountain, as we are in a former mining area where you cannot dig under the ground without touching things you do not want to touch’. On the one hand, these words indicate how the quite literally multi-layered nature of the site imposes physical constraints on the artistic layout. On the other hand, it illustrates the kinds of arguments state actors used to modify the interreligious design. Another good example is the earlier intention of the initiators to install the gates at a crossroads. Here, our interview partner remarked: ‘We decided early on to move the installation away from the crossroads to the edge. Thus, you do not have traffic moving across the area and can realize this contemplative and quiet (atmosphere)’. In this case, it is even more obvious how the urban planners promoted their own normative understandings of religion, as they managed to frame the Gates as a space of contemplation rather than encounter. Much in line with this notion, the official brochure mentioned the Gates as an example of ‘a quieter location with a deeper spiritual meaning’ within the overall ensemble of Lippe Park (Hamm 2016b, 1). Another important facet of infrastructuration refers to geographical proximity as a spatial opportunity structure. Our interview partner from the urban planning department pointed to the specifics of the district, which serves as ‘the scenery for the project’, namely the high proportion of immigrants and the fact that there are three mosque communities adjacent to the park. Likewise, a Christian representative stated that his community took part in the process mainly because the park was in their neighbourhood. They saw it as an opportunity ‘to set an example: we are many religious groups that live here’. Following this logic of proximity, he assumed that a particular mosque community, which is directly in front of the installation, ‘will be much more invested in terms of flyers, infrastructure, opening their toilets and things like that’. As a result, the community would feel more embedded (‘verortet’). Later he referred to another potential benefit in the form of the mosque community planning to build a larger mosque with classic elements of Islamic architecture, such as a minaret. Hence, he suggested that participating in interreligious place-making may give the community public legitimacy enabling it to pursue its own ambitious building plans.

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  33 All in all, the example of the Gates of World Religions points to the collaborative nature of interreligious place-making and the various actors and stakes that are involved: the interreligious initiative that wants to make a display of local religious diversity; the mosque community that must acquire legitimacy for its plan to build a bigger mosque; the urban planning department pushing for a more general understanding of world religions and emphasizing the ‘quiet’ role of public religion; and the artist, who finds himself in the position of an intermediary between civic religious and state actors. In terms of infrastructuration, urban officials made use of feasibility arguments in order to promote their own understandings of the project. As a result, the original concept underwent substantial changes, including the extension from a Christian-Muslim approach to a model of world religions and the omission of metaphors, such as the fountain and the crossroads, as well as the Gates’ peripheral location. Other important aspects of infrastructuration relate to the prevailing logic of relevance by proximity and the overarching political opportunity structures that foster a governance-through-diversity approach in order to ensure social cohesion in multicultural areas. In sum, the Gates are exemplary of an approach to interreligious place-making that is rooted in rationales of public–private collaboration, participation and functional differentiation. As the overall function of the former mining ground has changed from ‘work’ to ‘leisure’, the Gates fulfil both psychosocial (contemplation, retreat) and pedagogical purposes (awareness and promotion of religious pluralism). In the following section, I will turn to another case of interreligious place-making, namely the Angel of Culture, which represents a more bottom-up approach and involves a collaborative public art performance.

1.4 Case Study 2: The Angel of Culture 1.4.1 Configuration and Religious Emissions The ‘Angel of Culture’ is an interreligious project by two German artists, which involves an iron intarsia and a public performance. As noted earlier, it has been installed in various cities in Germany and beyond. While the Angel is usually installed in public places and other urban outdoor sites, it has also been put up in public indoor settings, such as the foyer of a courtroom (see below). The Angel’s internal configuration is based on the interreligious design of the intarsia itself: an iron circle with symbolic references to Judaism, Christianity and Islam (See Figure 1.2). The space within the circle and between these symbols is shaped like an angel. In our interview, the artists emphasized that they had decided to include abstract and incomplete symbols (star, cross, half-moon) in order to leave more space for creativity and religious self-identification on the part of the participants. They also stressed that, even though the angel now features prominently in the name and concept of the project, that was not their original

34  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel

Figure 1.2 Angel of Culture (© Carmen Dietrich and Gregor Merten, www. engel-der-kulturen.de).

intention, but was an idea that emerged accidentally from the arrangement of the three symbols. After they had struggled with this motive for some time, given its ‘inflationary use’ and ‘esoteric’ imprint, they decided to keep the angel as a metaphor for intercultural unity: ‘You cannot remove any of the groups without damaging all the others as well’. Like the Gates of World Religions, the Angel of Culture displays an implicit theology of religions, namely an emphasis on the ‘Abrahamic’ traditions. The artists explained that their decision to focus on Christianity, Islam and Judaism was guided by the experience of the terror attacks of 9/11 and their notion that these three religions have the ‘main lines of conflict’. They also decided to position the three symbols at maximum distances from each other in order to indicate their ‘big differences’, leaving the circle to serve as a symbol of global unity. Despite the focus on the ‘Abrahamic’ religions, the artists pointed to the inclusive capacity of their design: the allusive nature of the symbols is supposed to appeal to the creativity of the audience and to open up new spaces for self-identification, while the circle provides an encompassing pattern, also being open to a Buddhist interpretation as a dharma wheel.

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  35 Due to a lack of data on the circumstances of its installation in Hamm, I will use two examples from the project website to illustrate the Angel’s external configuration. The first example is the installation of the intarsia in the foyer of a Bavarian courtroom. A small information board explains the intention behind this installation: ‘In this building, the symbol not only stands for the religious and world-stance neutrality of the judiciary, but for its duty always to base its action and decisions on the basic values of the Grundgesetz (the Constitution) and human dignity’ (translation by author). In order to disentangle the multi-layered setting of this configuration, it is important to know that in 2018 Markus Söder, the head of the Bavarian government and a member of the centrist Christian Social Union, had issued an order to install a crucifix in all government agencies in Bavaria. This decision was faced with broad opposition and was criticized as a populist move in the politics of identity. In this light, the presence of the Angel of Culture in a courtroom represents not so much an example of separation between the subfields of religion and law, but a critical comment on the ‘Christian Occident’ as an identity container. Another good example of external configuration is the so-called ‘Abraham Caravan’, a tour of the project through the ‘Cultural Capitals of Europe’ in 2010. The tour included stopovers in various cities with a history of multi-religious conviviality and conflict, such as Augsburg, Pécs, Sarajevo and Istanbul. It became an example of a transregional configuration by connecting cities across national boundaries. On the second layer, it points to the role of political opportunity structures (here within the framework of the EU’s Cultural Capitals of Europe scheme) for interreligious place-making. The religious emissions of the Angel of Culture are closely associated with its nature as a ‘social plastic’ which turns the installation into an interactive art performance. In our interview, the artists critically engaged with the idea that interreligious dialogue is mostly limited to intellectual exchange and verbal interaction. In contrast, they sought to ‘flank dialogue with a clear symbol […] in order to add a sensual component to the whole thing’. This sensual component is realized by a ritualized collective performance: The rolling sculpture is being moved to the sites of various faith communities, memorials, schools and other public institutions and places, where a sand imprint is produced. Through their joint and active participation, representatives of faith communities, schools and the public express their willingness to collaborate and exchange. (Engel der Kulturen 2018, 6) It is important to note that this procedure takes place before the permanent installation of the intarsia. As the statement indicates, the performance is meant to create a spirit of involvement and participation. At the same time, it is obvious that such an interreligious procession constitutes a strong aesthetic formation for the urban public, one that entails a variety of sensual

36  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel experiences. These experiences include audio-visual stimuli (either associated with the procession itself or with the supporting programme at the various sites), as well as haptic stimuli, since moving the sculpture and producing the sand imprints requires a joint effort. Although the inaugural performance provides a good opportunity to create an awareness of intercultural conviviality, the artists pointed to the ongoing impact of the intarsia on its surroundings: ‘People talk about it. We often see pictures and comments posted on Instagram (…). And in most of the cities there are regular events, such as prayers for peace, intercultural festivals or vigils’. This statement indicates that the intarsia leaves a sustainable imprint as it frames a certain area of the public space as ‘interreligious’. This framing is based on a specific configuration of social media and collective physical performance. In the following subsection, I will turn the perspective around and explore the role of interaction and infrastructuration in the installation of the sculpture. 1.4.2 Interaction and Infrastructuration The process of installation usually starts by local civic actors taking the initiative to approach the artists. In the case of Hamm, the invitation was extended by an association of Catholic daycare institutions. A press release from the diocese emphasizes the multicultural composition of the district and the intention to ‘celebrate this colourful diversity with the “Angel of Cultures”’ (Flatken 2019). Hence, like the Gates of World Religions, local constellations of religious and cultural diversity and the challenges they may entail function as a sociocultural infrastructure for interreligious place-making. However, whereas state actors, such as the planning and building authorities, played a prominent role in the case of the Gates, the place-making around the Angel of Culture usually takes place in a bottom-up format and only involves public authorities to the extent that is required by law. In our interview, the artists mention a number of instances in which the local authorities were not supportive, but sought to obstruct the process. In the case of a large city in East Germany, local and regional politicians met the project with ignorance, and ‘the city tried with a vengeance to keep the gates closed’. In effect, although those supporting it could install the intarsia, they had to drop the public performance. This example indicates that (in contrast to the Gates of World Religions) the Angel of Culture is meant to be a civic initiative and that its supporters are willing to risk a confrontation with the public authorities. This understanding is also mirrored in the pattern of interaction during the art performance, which is a result of cooperative planning between local initiatives and the artists. At the same time, the case of Hamm shows that public authorities and highlevel religious representatives may be eager to take part in the performance. In Hamm the former mayor, who was known for his post-secular profile, played a very active role, as he assisted in the installation of the intarsia and delivered a speech to encourage conviviality and condemn racism.

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  37 Apart from these mechanisms of interaction, the Angel of Culture touches upon at least three aspects of infrastructuration. First, there is the materiality of the sculpture and intarsia itself, which needs to look monolithic in order to convey the metaphor of unity (see above). At the same time, it must be lightweight enough for a handful of people to roll it through the streets. This is why the artists decided to build it as a hollow piece. Once again, the example points to material constraints and underlines the fact that the performative aspect of the project was decisive in designing the intarsia. Second, the direct environment must suit the aims of the project. The artists mentioned two instances when they refused to install the intarsia at the location allocated to them. One was a lawn, which was used as a dog’s toilet (‘Hundeklo’), and the other was a site known for drug-dealing. In the first case, they managed to install the intarsia ‘in front of a church portal, a fantastic location’ after ‘serious conflict’ with the local authorities. The example illustrates that the environment must be suitable in the sense that it does not compromise the message of the Angel of Culture. From that perspective, these two incidents represent different forms of ‘impurity’, namely physical contamination through dog dirt (and its symbolic implications) and criminal behaviour (drug-dealing). Third, the ‘Cultural Capitals of Europe’ scheme serves as a political opportunity structure for the project, which takes form in the journey of the ‘Abraham Caravan’. What is important to note here is that the application by the city of Essen (as the representative of the metropolitan area as a whole) put a lot of emphasis on its success in accommodating religious and cultural diversity. In fact, one of the image posters contained a picture of a large-scale Hindu procession in Hamm along with the slogan: ‘Future needs origin. Here it comes from 170 nations’. Hence, like the Gates of World Religions, the political opportunity structure of the Angel of Culture is built on a strong rationale of governance through diversity.

1.5 Patterns of Interreligious Place-making: Comparative Conclusions My aim in this chapter has been to explore interreligious place-making through public art installations and performances. Whereas in the last ten years considerable empirical research has emerged on the formats, interaction patterns and motivations of interreligious activism, its spatial and material conditions have received less attention. In this regard, the analysis of interreligious art in the public space offers interesting insights into patterns of interreligious place-making in terms of their spatial figurations and aesthetic formations, as well as the underlying processes of interaction and infrastructuration. In my comparative conclusions, I will discuss my examples along the lines of these four criteria and elaborate a little more on the difference between permanent and temporary interventions.

38  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel Spatial Configurations: In line with Kim Knott, I have analysed the ‘configuration’ of interreligious place-making. This relates to the internal composition of the installation, as well as to the interplay with its environment. The composition of both examples manifested an underlying theology of religions: as its name suggests, the Gates of World Religions feature the five ‘world religions’ (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism). In doing so, they create a tension between the guiding notion of a concrete local religious presence and an abstract understanding of world religious completeness, as there are no Jewish or Buddhist communities in Hamm. In contrast, the Angel of Culture is based on an ‘Abrahamic’ design with allusions to Christianity, Judaism and Islam. At the same time, the artists stress their intention to address people of all religious and cultural backgrounds, which they sought to realize by means of incomplete and abstract symbolic references. In both cases, the designers struggle for a balance between unity and difference. In the case of the Gates, each religious tradition has its own gate and desk, but all the gates lead to the same communal ground. In the case of the Angel, the artists placed the religious symbols at maximum distances from one another in order to denote their differences, whereas the circular frame conveys a sense of unity. As far as the interplay with the environment is concerned, the configuration of the Gates is based on the multi-layered nature of the surrounding park, a former mining area which now functions as a leisure zone. The mining motifs are pervasive not only in the material design of the sculpture, but also in the miners’ myth of religious conviviality, which runs through the project. In the case of the Angel, the environment is incorporated through an art performance, while the intarsia appears to serve as a post-secular marker, as it identifies a section of the public space as interreligious ground. Aesthetic Formation and Religious Emissions: Meyer’s concept of aesthetic formations refers to the capacity of interreligious place-making to speak to the senses and to induce religious experiences. Based on this idea, I use the term ‘religious emissions’ to denote sensual expressions of interreligious objects or practices that impose themselves on actors. Both cases involve a variety of sensual stimuli: the Gates have a prominent visual presence due to their size and elevated position, whereas the Angel constitutes a visual and auditory intervention (through public lectures and music performances) during its own public inauguration. Even more interesting, however, are the haptic stimuli, which are an integral part of the overall design in both examples. In the case of the Gates, the rough iron surface alludes to the mining background of the environment, and crossing the gates may trigger an experience of liminality. In the case of the Angel, rolling the sculpture through the streets constitutes a corporeal experience of communality and collaboration. Despite their differences of size and shape (a large surface construction versus a small intarsia), both installations extend religious emissions that are hard to evade, as they materialize a collection of religious symbols in an urban public space.

Spatializing Interreligious Practice  39 Interaction: Interaction is an important aspect of interreligious placemaking. On the one hand, collective action produces interreligious space, as the performance around the Angel of Culture illustrates. On the other hand, the installation of interreligious art in urban public spaces requires preparation through intensive interaction between different kinds of actors. In this regard, the two cases exhibit some distinct differences. Even though the Gates are based on a civic initiative, the department of urban planning played an important role in terms of capacity-building (networking with religious stakeholders) and coordination (communication with the building authorities). This strong pattern of public-private collaboration resulted in a number of substantial changes to the original design, namely the dropping of some of the initial guiding metaphors (e.g. the crossroads and fountain) and extending the interreligious concept from the Christian-Muslim encounter to a model of world religions. In contrast, the Angel of Culture is rooted in a bottom-up approach in the sense that it mainly relies on the initiative and impetus of civic actors and only involves public authorities as far as is necessary. In our interview, the artists expressed a certain distance from both state actors and high-level religious representatives, embracing the idea of a broad participation from below instead. Infrastructuration: Under this rubric, I refer to the geographical and material constraints and opportunity structures of interreligious place-making. In terms of their own materiality, both cases deal with constraints that shaped the final design. The Gates must be solid enough to resist vandalism, and the former mining area does not allow any digging to install the fountain that was part of the original design. The iron frame of the Angel must be massive enough to convey the idea of interreligious unity and lightweight enough for a handful of people to move it through the streets. In terms of geography, the Gates were placed on the edge of the park in order to provide an atmosphere of contemplation (compromising the original intention of a crossroads), whereas the designers of the Angel regard a location as unfit if it is physically or morally contaminated. Last but not least, both examples were embedded in a political opportunity structure of governance through diversity: the Gates are a follow-up to an application for a horticultural show, and the Angel gained additional momentum in the framework of the Cultural Capitals of Europe campaign of 2010. Both installations are meant to create awareness of cultural and religious diversity and to advertise the city’s capacity to accommodate it in a fruitful way. What general lessons do the two case studies teach us about the modes and conditions of interreligious place-making? Both examples illustrate how interreligious installations and performances ‘sacralize’ a given area of the urban public and create legitimate spaces of visible and collective religious performance. At the same time, they point to various challenges and tensions. The first tension is in the balance between localization and interreligious modelling. Both installations are rooted in distinct local settings

40  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel with a particular pattern of cultural and religious diversity. At the same time, they transcend these settings by bringing in religious traditions that are not present in the locality, but are nonetheless considered relevant in the light of a given interreligious model (‘World’ or ‘Abrahamic’ Religions). This balancing act between a concrete local presence and abstract global relevance is pervasive in all sorts of interreligious activism. The second tension is in the balance between religious difference and unity and hence involves the interreligious design in itself. Both cases involve strong spatial metaphors of distinction (mainly through spatial distance) and commonality (five gates leading to a common ground, the circular iron frame, the emerging figure of an angel). Even though both examples draw on a discourse of conviviality and social cohesion, they adopt different rationales that can be found in other forms of interreligious practice as well, namely a rationale of tolerance (differences exist, but do not matter) in the case of the Gates of World Religions, and a rationale of pluralism (each element is a crucial prerequisite for the others) in the case of the Angel of Culture. In the framework of this chapter, the two examples represent different approaches to interreligious place-making: the Gates stand for a lasting and monumental intervention in the public sphere, whereas the Angel combines permanent and temporary strategies of place-making.

Notes 1 The project ‘Interreligious Activities and Urban Governance in the Ruhr-Area’ was funded by the Mercator Research Centre Ruhr (MERCUR) and jointly conducted by the University of Bochum and Dortmund. I am grateful to my colleagues Eva Dick, Tobias Meier and Ariana Fürst for their valuable input. 2 All translations by author.

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42  Alexander-Kenneth Nagel Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth. 2019. “Enacting Diversity: Boundary Work and Performative Dynamics in Interreligious Activities.” In Volume 10: Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Giuseppe Giordan, and Andrew P. Lynch, 111–127. Brill. Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth. 2020. “Empowerment or Oligarchisation? Interfaith Governance of Religious Diversity in Two German Cities.” In The Interfaith Movement: Mobilising Religious Diversity in the 21st Century, edited by Fahy, J., and Bock, J.-J., 104–121. Abingdon, New York (N.Y.): Routledge. Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth. 2021. “Accommodating Religious Diversity: MicroPolitics of Spatial Separation in German Refugee Accommodation Centers.” In Refugees and Religion: Ethnographic Studies of Global Trajectories, edited by Birgit Meyer, and Peter van der Veer, 217–238. London: Bloomsbury. Neumaier, Anna, and Gritt Klinkhammer. 2020. “Interreligious Contact and Media: Introduction.” Religion 50 (3): 321–335. Reichertz, Jo. 2000. “Objektive Hermeneutik und hermeneutische Wissenssoziologie”. In Qualitative Forschung: Ein Handbuch, edited by Uwe Flick, Ernst von Kardorff, and Ines Steinke, 514–524. Hamburg: Rowohlt.

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Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina Searching for ‘mjesto susreta’ Marika Djolai

2.1 Introduction Religion is neither an all-or-nothing category nor a phenomenon that is confined to a single institutional sphere. Understanding the multilayered nature of everyday reality and the permeability of all social boundaries makes a more nuanced study of religion possible. Ammerman (2014) This paper explores the emergence of and necessity for interfaith dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) following the brutal civil war that ended in 1995. Like the rest of the Balkans, BiH is endowed with unique economic, social, geographical, and historical attributes that make it distinct and complex. It is home to a rich ethnic and religious diversity that often becomes contested due to a lack of willingness to create dialogue or of approaches to engagement, resulting in a long-term negative outcomes. The country is also deeply affected by a complex historical and socio-cultural legacy, not only from the time of the former Yugoslavia, but also from the region’s conflictual past stretching back centuries. More often than not through history, BiH faced violent power struggles, which challenged particular aspects of its multi-ethnic and multi-religious community (Alibašić 2020, Kostresevic 2016). Despite the challenges, even after the last war BiH society maintained its multi-ethnic character, formalised through consociationalism that defines power-sharing arrangements between three main ethnic groups and has a strong influence on social dynamics today. The system faced criticism as a model for the management of diversity in deeply divided societies long before it was implemented in BiH (Lustick 1979), where it has failed to produce a stable system of governance. Deeply affected by the experience of ethno-political violence, and with a collective trauma profoundly influencing its social fabric, the country is also struggling to come to terms with its multi-faith character and changing religious landscape. The chapter analyses the context in which interfaith dialogue emerged amidst the lingering circumstances of this war’s disastrous and devastating

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-4

43

44  Marika Djolai impact. It demonstrates the existence of a dialogue, both interfaith and other, and the ways in which the BiH state and its citizens deal with the diversity that is deeply rooted in the communities that have shared the country in previous centuries. This question of the interfaith became pertinent given that the number of declared believers increased significantly since 1995, while corresponding religious institutions started playing a more significant role in public and political life, at least in citizens’ own perceptions (Pew Research Centre 2017).1 According to the same research, most citizens would prefer to keep BiH as a secular state, which does not make religion any less critical. In BiH there is a significant difference between believers (vjernici), many of whom are not familiar with basic religious principles, and those who are dedicated to practicing religion (regular attendance of prayers and services and adherence to religious customs and practices in everyday life according to interviewees in my research). In this constellation, interfaith dialogue is viewed as necessary for the country’s stability, but a question arises about its forms and locations. Institutionalised dialogue among the main faith leaders in BiH (Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish) was established 25 years ago, as the Interreligious Council (IRC) of BiH, but it does not appear to be reflected sufficiently in other political and social processes. Conveying the dialogue from the faith leaders to ordinary citizens, members of each religious community, is problematic for their lack of will or commitment to the dialogue and its importance. The coexistence of different ethnic and religious communities is an important aspect of daily life in BiH that also brings into the discussion a complex marriage of identities at distinct levels of social organisation. First, ethnic and religious identities almost overlap, 2 making cultural differences linked to both ethnicity and religious norms (Bringa 1995). Second, these identities are strongly intertwined with local identities attached to geographical communities that represent a hub of diversity and with the motivations of their members in navigating the challenges of living together while establishing some form of interfaith and intercultural normalisation. In line with the intention of this edited volume, the paper investigates the everyday encounters of community members from different religious and ethnic backgrounds in BiH and the emergence of interfaith dialogue as an outcome of their uneasy coexistence. Before the last war, the geographical region of Bosnia was a blend of predominantly Serb and Muslim populations, while Herzegovina was ethno-geographically organised as East Herzegovina, with a predominantly Serbian Orthodox population, and West Herzegovina, with its Catholic Croats. Today, these three ethno-religious groups have become the constitutive peoples of BiH in 1995, namely Serbs, Croats, and Bosniaks (Bošnjaci) alongside a category of ‘Others’. The category Bosniaks is in use interchangeably with that of Muslims, although not in formal legal terms, with which they were officially referred to until 1992. In Stolac and Kotor

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  45 Varoš, where I did my early research in 2012, the people’s own preference was often self-identification as Muslims rather than Bosniaks (Bošnjaci) when it came to their ethnicity. One motive for their rejection of Bosniak ethnicity comes from the reluctance to accept the new categorisation that was assigned to Bosnian Muslim citizens under the Dayton Constitution in 1995, and it remains a topic of debate, particularly among intellectual elites, to determine the Muslim-Bosniak national identity (Dimitrovova 2001). In the conversation about how interfaith dialogue is built and preserved in BiH, we have to delve into these contested concepts that accompany ethnic and religious identities. A broader question arising out of these circumstances is whether the same conceptualisation of interfaith dialogue can be used for a post-war country and a country that lacks recent experience of a civil war. On a mundaine level, is it expecting too much from a society and communities to be capable of engaging in complex interfaith dialogue in still volatile post-war circumstances? If we use the definition of dialogue from the Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity (King 2011, 101), namely an ‘…[i]ntentional encounter and interaction among members of different religions’, then the analytical focus should be on coexistence and the practices that emerge from it. The absence of violence in post-war communities and peaceful coexistence, however uneasy, should, I argue, also be treated as a form of a dialogue. My investigation thus also suggests the necessity of focusing on lived religion and practices in local communities that do not necessarily overlap with the mechanisms of more institutionalised forms of dialogue.

2.2 Research Process This paper is built on research that began with my doctoral thesis, which explored the emergence of a post-war community, and which I argued was new in terms of social structures such as new residents, new identities and norms, and new materialities. My analysis started from the point of community destruction and the resulting collective trauma that led to a loss of communality, a term developed by Erikson (1976) in the analysis of Buffalo Creek catastrophe. This approach considers that the space, materialities, and the social being of a community all should be considered for the analysis of a loss, applied to the outcomes of the four-year war in BiH for many local communities. The chapter’s argument is anchored in the sociology of community studies and the philosophical work of Henry Lefebvre on the modelling of everyday life around space and the social production of space (Lefebvre 1991). In this chapter, I am not so much considering the the main Marxist thrust of his work, but in his thinking around the process and mechanisms of space production, which is immensely important for the production of a material meeting place in a community that has been destroyed. The production of space and place through interactions with the social represents the formation of a new, post-war community. It is

46  Marika Djolai under these circumstances that we should seek to interpret the existence and nature of interfaith dialogue in BiH. In 2011, I started interviewing key stakeholders in Sarajevo about the complexity and challenges of the consociational political system that had been introduced to BiH following the war, from where I moved to observe quotidian life and everyday interactions in two small towns, Stolac and Kotor Varoš. My first fieldwork step was ethnographic observation combined with group interviews with town residents, followed by primary data analysis, which I used to develop a household survey with nine sections. This was implemented in both towns in 2013, about six months after the ethnographic fieldwork was completed. The investigation focused on understanding the emergence of a post-war community as the local violence abated, and I soon realised that the reality of communal life is indelibly intertwined with faith and new spiritual ascendancy. The ideas about interfaith dialogue in this chapter have emerged from both original aggregate analysis in my previous research and observations collected during the EU project that I have been leading since 2020, ‘Global Exchange on Religion in Society’. This project involves civil-society actors from religious and secular backgrounds, including practitioners and experts from 55 countries interested in the role of religion in society. In the project, we are working to build a network of participants to initiate a global conversation about the role that religion plays in the society and how it contributes to social inclusion. One of the six countries in the project is BiH, which was an opportunity to discuss the state of play of interfaith dialogue, the conditions for its emergence and its sustainability at length with BiH participants and local stakeholders. In this chapter, while not engaging in a theological discussion, the approach to religion departs from the assumption that it is not a matter of a static or firmly defined concept, but rather of religious practices and expressions of religious identities. There is a stronger emphasis on the nature and ways in which religion is expressed in everyday life and on observing how spaces for interfaith dialogue are established, navigated, and preserved in BiH. This is in line with Silvestri and Mayall’s (2015) call to broaden the definition of religion, while recognising that it plays an important role in conflict prevention and resolution, as well as in peace-making in any post-war environment. This trend towards understanding the multifaceted nature of religion has in the past decade encouraged different disciplines to collaborate in this pursuit and to soften their empirical approaches in investigating religious expression in everyday practices and the governing of religious diversity. In short, this chapter connects two theoretical approaches to explore how interfaith dialogue is influenced by key sociological debates on community of place and of social relations, particularly community studies of urban neighbourhood and spatiality, and everyday interactions within specific social structures. The chapter investigates interfaith dialogue through the

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  47 lens of everyday life and explores the ways in which the creation of space and place produces a community, which becomes a place where individuals can seek a common understanding of their socio-political context. To establish a dialogue, people need mjesto susreta, which has often proved difficult to create in post-war communities, especially in small towns and villages, where the war destroyed communality, displaced the pre-war residents, and brought in new settlers. Issues of collective trauma and destroyed materialities, combined with spatial segregation in the two towns that were the analytical focus of my research, highlight this problematic. It analyses challenges when it comes to creating a place where residents of different faiths can come together to engage in meaningful interfaith dialogue. By focusing on two geographical communities, Stolac and Kotor Varoš, and their emergence after the war ended, I try to clarify what constitutes a dialogue and what types of social and material conditions are likely to lead to it.

2.3 What Constitutes a Community in the BiH Context? In this constellation, it is necessary to frame a geographical community or location theoretically in order to situate interfaith dialogue in BiH. A community is as much a physical place as it is a social one, and both dimensions can be significant for an individual’s sense of community that emerges through interactions between place and the social. My understanding of place is as a space ‘…that has been given meaning through personal, group, or cultural processes’ (Altman and Low 1992, 5). As a result of the war, both towns that are the subject of this research, Stolac in particular, became ‘wounded cities’ (Till 2012, 6), whereby they are defined as ‘… densely settled locales that have been harmed and structured by particular histories of physical destruction, displacement, and individual and social trauma resulting from state-perpetrated violence’. Although Till’s seminal paper investigates the fate of larger cities, I apply her discussion about the nature of harm against place, which connects with Erikson’s description of a loss of communality and related trauma. I investigate the relevance of building and rebuilding spaces in Stolac and Kotor Varoš, suggesting that this constitutes a healing process for the towns through which a new community emerges. I argue that this process is neither linear nor necessarily aligned with peacebuilding and state-building milestones, but dynamic and multifaceted, reflecting the logic and flow of daily life. This process entails a return to the pre-war place of residence or settlement in a new place for internally displaced people, the reconstruction of spaces and, within them, the provision of activities and institutions that make the community. ‘Community’ is a powerful element and a key unit of social organisation in our societies and in our engagement with everyday life. As such it has occupied a niche in academic enquiry for many decades. Communities vary; as our societies have changed, communities have too, and war is certainly one of the agents of change. Community studies as a discipline is

48  Marika Djolai founded in the notion that we are all embedded in a physical place, which entails the presence of members who have something in common (Frankenberg 1969). The following decades have seen the development of different community paradigms, which moved towards the study of social relations (Stacey 1969, Macfarlane 1977) and the community of interactions (Bruhn 2011) and argued that local involvement and connection to a place gradually decreased in the contemporary world. Sociological thinking on community emerged in response to modernisation and urbanisation, which prompted questions about what impact they were having on individuals and their relationships. The fathers of this enquiry were Tönnies3 and his contemporary and critic Durkheim, who observed the decline of one social order and the rise of a new one through the process of modernisation. The concept of Gemeinschaft (community) entails basic archetypes of social relations such as kinship, family, geographical bonds, and a sense of place, characterised by ‘natural will’. In contrast, the largescale market-based society termed Gesellschaft (Tonnies 2001, 95[1887]) is characterised by ‘rational will’. It is not just the nature of social relations that Tönnies was interested in; he also considered authority and power in communal life and the ‘household economy’ (2001, 48) and showed how they vary for different levels of social organisation while being permeated by religion. The main criticism of Tönnies’ work came from his contemporary Durkheim, who developed a concept of solidarity to explain the principles upon which a modern society was starting to be integrated. Durkheim drew the analytical focus on some important elements of social control such as shared beliefs and social norms that regulate communal actions, arising from his view of religion as the most important social institution that provides humankind with a collective consciousness that forms the basis for social integration. The duality approach, which tends to be a result of other ideologically charged polarities, has been criticised for being inadequate ‘as a descriptive device’ because the social world is not characterised by clear binary boundaries (Eriksen 2001) and because social relations are becoming increasingly complex. Therefore, in selecting the analytical framework for this paper, I briefly reflect on the attempts to create a typology of community. Hillery’s (1982) model, for example, understands community as both physical and social space containing five basic elements: interactions, space, activities, sentiment, and institutions. While problematising a need for definitions, his review of different concepts of community led to the conclusion that it should ultimately be interpreted in the realm of the social interactions, membership, and common ties that are most often connected to an area, a locale, where these take place (Hillery 1982, 25). A more recent typology of community has been developed by Steven Brint (2001), who attempted to resolve some long-standing differences between classical liberals and communitarians. Importantly, he draws attention to the negative side of frequent face-to-face interactions, as they can lead to

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  49 illiberalism and intolerance. He argues further that ‘…[t]he egalitarianism of communal relations emphasized by many of the same theorists is possible only where these properties do not exist’ (Brint 2001, 20, Brint’s emphasis). This criticism of a geographical locale assumes that a community of place will decline over time and will be replaced by loosely connected networks of friends, members, interests, and virtual communities. Similarly, Lee and Neby talk about the ‘loss of community’ in modern British society, reflecting a declining quality of life in the contemporary world. They also suggest an idea of community that expands the simple geographical sense of community, that of a particular territory, to incorporate a local social system or a set of social relations in a particular bounded area (Lee and Newby 2012). In my research, I found opposing evidence that aligns with earlier theorists, namely that geographical communities have a central role in post-war BiH life, with membership and common ties creating a strong community sentiment. Foreign anthropologists who conducted ethnographic fieldwork in BiH before 1990, such as Lockwood and Bringa, documented the typical structures of a rural and a small urban community in BiH. Their academic motivation was to study European ‘Moslems’, who had a special status in the former Yugoslavia, being a formally recognised ethnicity and religion. My argument about mjesto susreta in this chapter, a place with potential for an integrative role, builds on Lockwood’s observations on the municipalities of Donji and Gornji Vakuf and Bugojno in central Bosnia where the weekly market was the most important integrative mechanism. He concluded that it was a meeting point of different ethnic and religious communities that formed a cultural and social locale of the geographical communities he was investigating, alongside overarching institutions like schools. This work, followed by the proliferation of studies during and after the 1990s war, established a core understanding of the importance of the locale and place, which is given a meaning through human connection and activity, for mapping social relations and understanding ethnic boundaries in multicultural communities in BiH. Lockwood said about social structure: ‘The members of every community stand together at the various circles of affiliation, sometimes concentric, sometimes overlapping, in some context even contradictory’ (Lockwood 1975, 20). In my doctoral thesis, I found that post-war communities are structured mostly as concentric circles, with smaller community circles being characterised by ethnic and religious identity. I argued that a communal daily life is unfolding in concentric circles (Djolai 2016), where the town residents who belong to different social groups coexist, though by and large they do not interact with each other, which undermines the efforts of initiatives to facilitate a dialogue. The delineation of each community is so strong that it overrides any integrative mechanism that emerges through everyday life, like public places and events where

50  Marika Djolai interactions take place. Lockwood also noted that the inhabitants of any of these localities are often referred to ‘[b]y a term derived by the locality name’, a situation still present today.4 Rural Bosnian society, according to Lockwood, was organised on two principles: kinship and residence, with the important qualification that ‘[g]roups based on ethnicity and locality make up the structure of Bosnian society as a whole…, groups based on kinship and residence make up the structure of the individual community’ (Lockwood 1975, 57). Both and Bringa explain the categories of narodi and nacija that were in use in Yugoslavia as categorisation and identity determinants based on ethnicity, religion, or the nation state. Bringa (1995, 22) states that ‘[t]he term nacija referred specifically to what I term ethnoreligious identity and community’. She also showed that cultural differences were maintained through the rituals of daily life even though the socialist system of organisation worked towards integration through multi-ethnic models of belonging (Hromadžic 2015, Gagnon 2004b) and market socialism (Uvalić 2018). For this analysis and framing of religion Rogers Brubaker’s work raises important questions about how we understand and study social categories and groups (Brubaker 2004, 2014). He criticises the tendency to study ethnicity, race, and nationhood as individual parts of a system of bounded and closed groups, as well as conflicts based on any of these categories, or the conflicts that emerge from them. In addition to questioning ethnic diversity as a root cause of ethnic conflict, Brubaker (2004, 8) also criticises ‘groupism’, which he defines as the ‘…tendency to take discrete, sharply differentiated, internally homogeneous and externally bounded groups as basic constituents of social life, chief protagonists of social conflicts, and fundamental units of social analysis’ as a way of understanding ethnicity. Henri Tajfel’s social identity theory posits that the individual’s concept of the self is derived from membership of a group while exaggerating the negative features of an out-group, thus enhancing the self-image of the group they belong to. ‘Consideration of religion’s dual function as a social identity and a belief system may facilitate greater understanding of the variability in its importance across individuals and groups’ (Ysseldyk, Matheson, and Anisman 2010). In short, I argue that BiH life is still very much grounded in a geographically based community where people navigate complex situations through everyday life, theoretically resonating with a necessity to maintain the locale in the concept of community (Bernard 1973). People in BiH tend to introduce themselves as a resident of the town or village they come from: thus, those from Sarajevo identify as Sarajlija, while in my own research, the residents of the two towns referred to themselves as Stočani and Kotorvarošani. Premilovac (2005) also shows that the

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  51 identities of people in BiH are very much constructed as local identities and argues further that national and ethnic identification in communities affected by war fades over time. Local identity, which can be termed village ethnocentrism (Hillery 1959, 1982), and local life are of great importance in BiH today, which I use to situate the actors of interfaith dialogue. As I mentioned earlier, there are also wider geographical and cultural associations based on the two geographical regions of BiH. They were not always part of the same state, administratively or territorially; much of their official existence has only been recognised since the start of the second millennium (Malcolm 2002). They existed either as independent countries or as territories or under the administration of other states, such as the Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian empires, with different degrees of autonomy. People in BiH have a very strong sense of regional identity associated with one of the geographical areas, either Bosnia or Herzegovina, each with distinct cultural traits and clear physical boundaries. In everyday language, people refer to each other as Bosanci (Bosnians, i.e. from Bosnia) and Hercegovci (Herzegovinians, i.e. from Herzegovina). Residents of Stolac in southern Herzegovina would never refer to themselves as Bosanci, and the same, mutatis mutandis, is true of Kotor Varoš where they would never identify as Hercegovci. Like in Benedict Anderson’s (1991) concept of nations as ‘imagined communities’, there is a deep bond, a fraternity of those with identical regional identities, defined by socio-cultural and historic characteristics, both as self-categorisation and as a categorisation of ‘others’ (Andjelic 2000, Stefansson 2007, Bellamy 2003). Local embeddedness and ethnocentrism are consistently important to all social and cultural groups, which is now combined with the ties with ethno-religious communities that have become more prominent since the last war and continue to enforce boundaries. More recently, I returned to Ted Cantle’s investigation of the spatial and social relations distributions of community members, and their implications for community cohesion. He argues strongly for a community cohesion agenda as a way to overcome situations where people live ‘parallel lives’, without interacting in meaningful ways (Cantle 2005), to address problems of segregation and deeply rooted divisions. It would go beyond the scope of this paper to engage in a review of the scholarship on community cohesion, but his work aligns with my argument that the spatial distribution of neighbourhoods prevents the formation of places of integration and not only members’ ethno-religious identities. Cantle found that the physical segregation of housing estates and inner-city areas that he and the team were investigating resulted in obviously deep polarisation of towns and

52  Marika Djolai cities and of different aspect of daily lives. 5 Starting from this point, it is important to emphasise that in the two post-war communities of Stolac and Kotor Varoš the neighbourhoods of the pre-war residents and new settlers, who have been internally displaced from other rural and urban settlements, are physically segregated. While this is not only a cause of social tensions, the distribution prevents mechanisms with a potential to dissolve them from developing, with an additional obstacle of underlaying political processes related to power-sharing arrangements. Identities, sentiments, and spaces are essential elements of community, which is why I argue for incorporating a community paradigm into the analysis of interfaith dialogue.

2.4 Interfaith Dialogue in BiH The focus on interfaith dialogue in BiH has been notable since the end of the 1990s war, with practitioners and scholars being interested in its contribution to peace in BiH (Brajovic 2006, Interfaith 1996). However, scholarship still struggles to anchor the right theoretical model for the analysis of interfaith dialogue and its expression in practice. The way interfaith dialogue is conceptualised in this paper is oriented towards integrating the community paradigm. In line with conceptualisations of the community’s five elements, Orton, for example, points out that building a deeper interfaith dialogue ‘…involves recognising [the] social, psychological and structural dimensions’ (Orton 2016, 358). He further argues that hybrid organisations, identities, and spaces help to bridge differences proactively and create meaningful togetherness, which then creates possibilities for the expression of different social identities without wounding or breaking apart. The discussion clearly cannot be uncoupled from the heavy political context that is dominated by nationalistic parties and a governance system locked in the principle of ethnic segregation. The political parties that claim to represent the ethnic communities, instead of working on social cohesion, prefer to prioritise the unity of each constituent people rather than multi-ethnic coexistence. All of this makes interreligious dialogue very difficult. The Interreligious Council of BiH6 is the most prominent formal institution that actively promotes dialogue among four main religious groups in BiH, with a variety of valuable projects (Kostresevic 2016). The establishment of the IRC and the formalisation of interfaith dialogue was an important step in building peace and a new BiH state after the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement (DAP).7 At the time, it was also necessary to redefine the relationship between the state and religion in order to build a foundation for the reconstruction of destroyed religious objects8 (Alibašić 2020) and as part of the wider peacebuilding effort. The establishment of the IRC in 1997 was followed

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  53 by the adoption of a Law on the Freedom of Religion and the Legal Status of Churches and Religious Communities in January 2004,9 which ‘… [g]uarantees the right of all to freedom of conscience and religion’. Further developments led to the adoption of other legal frameworks and bilateral agreements between churches and religious communities.10 None of the official religions in BiH can be granted the status of a formal state religion (Merdjanova and Brodeur 2009). At the same time, there is no legal obstacle to citizens and religious organisations practicing and expressing their own religions, and these rights are regulated in the constitutions of BiH and each of the country’s two entities – the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska (RS). The Federation of BiH constitution prohibits discrimination on religious grounds and guarantees the right to freely practice religion in private and in public. Equality, non-discrimination, and freedom of religion are also guaranteed in the BiH Constitution.11 The RS constitution establishes the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) as ‘the Church of the Serb people and other people of the Orthodox religion’, while guaranteeing freedom of religion and prohibiting religious hatred (U.S. Department of State 2020). Recent interviews paint a different, more optimistic picture of the situation today than at the time the IRC was established and when my PhD work was conducted. Interfaith dialogue in BiH is lively and exists in different forms and with different levels of enthusiasm. In fact, it never stopped, not even during the war. The establishment of the IRC in BiH in 1997 was an attempt to institutionalise the dialogue, which led to it being recognised as a ‘place for dialogue’ that involves and incorporates all traditional religions in BiH. IRC programmes saw participation of the four traditional churches and religious communities with the occasional participation of minority churches, particularly in local communities where the members of the minority churches reside. However, these smaller communities never participated in the decision-making processes. For a long while, the dialogue was reserved exclusively for religious ministers and clerics at religious institutions. From about 2010, at the insistence of the IRC employees, a new idea was launched, namely that the dialogue needs to happen between ordinary believers, citizens in local communities. We recognised that a dialogue exists between clerics, but it seldom extends to the ordinary believers. Another issue we found problematic was that the dialogue mainly took place in urban centres and rarely in smaller local communities. At least this was our impression until we started visiting local communities and discovered a much wider spectrum of non-institutionalised dialogue, particularly of the quotidian, practical, life dialogue of ordinary people.12

54  Marika Djolai This observation about the importance of interreligious dialogue between ordinary people at the local level was echoed by all my interviewees. This dialogue is neither institutionalised nor necessarily formalised, but takes place spontaneously, often through simple interactions. Emina Frljak13 emphasises the importance of events that take place at the local level, between ordinary people, that is, those who practice their faith and live together, honour each other’s religious holidays and often celebrate them together with their friends, neighbours, and co-workers. The emerging dialogues are not theological discussions about the origins and foundations of religion, as people truly live their beliefs through practices and interactions with others. My initial research did not investigate or collect data about specific religious practices and discourses on religion, but I have witnessed deep philosophical conversations about religion and the meaning of life while living in Stolac and Kotor Varoš. Frljak refers to this as dialogue through living (dijalog života), which is part of people’s interactions. She also makes a point that such dialogue is not present in all parts of BiH but depends on where people come from and the experiences of the war, they carry with them. Based on hers and other interviews, we can conclude that the demographic structure of local communities in BiH is a significant factor in the establishment of this dialogue through everyday life, given that some communities remain ethnically and religiously rather homogenous and often closed off. However, this cannot be discussed without considering the past 30 years, which is the age of people who were born in 1992, when the war broke out. During this time, the demographic structure of BiH has changed drastically because of the war, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and half of the population being turned into refugees, with many never returning home. Forced displacement and exchanges of population initiated by the division of territories agreed in the DAP resulted in the creation of relatively homogenous geographical areas, particularly in RS and some of the cantons of the Federation of BiH, which represents a problem for minority returnees among the displaced population, as in Kotor Varoš. I will show later in my discussion of the two communities how spatial and systemic segregation prevents interaction between different residents in small towns, creating in fact parallel lives that do not interact. In contrast with the more recent experiences of my interviewees, interactions were not emerging smoothly at the local level in everyday life, partly due to a lack of integration. In my 2013 survey, one section focused on the nature of interactions between town residents amidst the diversity of Stolac and Kotor Varoš. I found that people spend most of the time during the day with their spouses, children, and neighbours, as well as their extended families (see Table 2.1). The fact that the main interactions happen in the smallest units of social organisation points out the difficulty in establishing ‘meeting places’ where interfaith dialogue can spontaneously occur.

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  55 I will return to discuss this issue later in the chapter when I analyse the main obstacles to interactions and a lack of integrative mechanisms. The survey also asked the respondents if they visit their neighbours on religious holidays, which has been mentioned as a form of dialogue in some recent interviews. Only 2.7% of interviewees in Stolac said they do visit, while this figure was higher in Kotor Varoš, where 20.4% reported visiting their neighbours on religious holidays. In contrast, 18.2% of the respondents in Stolac and 27.2% in Kotor Varoš reported visiting their neighbours for personal celebrations such as birthdays and weddings. These findings indicate that religious dialogue in local communities in BiH is not readily established through daily life like some other social engagements, while religious practices seem to remain deeply personal and secluded in private spaces. This observation resonates with the findings of other researchers regarding the private and public spheres: thus there is ‘…[d]istance between the public and the private, while the everyday has been limited in its ability to penetrate an externalized public sphere’ (Kappler 2013, 24). It seems that, due to the experience of war, people do not readily show religious beliefs in public and instead opt for subtle expressions of their faith in family circles, particularly to those who come across as religious Others. Given that the public domain is dominated by nationalist rhetoric and the political pressure of dominant, long-term political leaders like Dodik, Izetbegović, and Čović, it is difficult for a local-level dialogue to have a visible impact on public discourse or to attract media attention. Segregation on the political level, in education, and in the history books is used to stigmatise the other, especially for the younger generations who did not even live through the war. They do not think about coexistence in harmony. Table 2.1 Household Survey (Djolai, Author’s Data, May 2013) Municipality Stolac

$S9_Q4 During the day, who do you spend most time with?

Spouse Children Family Extended family Friends Neighbours Work colleagues Spend time alone

Kotor Varoš

N

%

N

%

74 64 40 2 46 75 17 4

49.3 42.7 26.7 1.3 30.7 50.0 11.3 2.7

76 87 58 12 21 58 23 9

50.3 57.6 38.4 7.9 13.9 38.4 15.2 6.0

56  Marika Djolai Different religions were always present, particularly those of Abrahamic and Ishmael origin, meaning that they all come from one spiritual source. Unfortunately, we had those experiences which upset the relationships between members of different religions, those who attempted to damage the concept of coexistence in BiH. That narrative, that discourse from the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s is still present, is a nationalistic narrative, namely that BiH can’t survive as a unified state, that some nations and peoples are endangered. It also led to ethnic cleansing and genocide.14 The IRC is aware of these challenges, and they direct a lot of their effort to organisations and the support of local committees, which are entirely run by volunteers. In the interview, IRC representatives made the point that ‘Interreligious dialogue exists on the everyday level, but there is a lack of information about it in the media. It doesn’t make it to news and communication because it spoils someone’s plans (the politicians)’. In the effort to overcome this challenge, the IRC has established 15 local committees so far, some self-initiated locally through citizens’ initiatives such as that in Zenica, which was proactive in reaching out to the IRC, mainly through personal contacts and from learning about them through public actions.

2.5 Interreligious Dialogue and Suživot Interreligious dialogue in BiH is still viewed by interviewees as a peacebuilding project oriented towards developing peaceful coexistence which in B/H/S language is referred to as suživot. Šuško makes the point that suživot continues to evolve in post-war BiH ‘…[w]here people try to rebuild a “normal” society “together”’ (Šuško 2019, 151). Part of creating a conducive environment for suživot is also supported by the IRC and their project of joint visits to places of suffering and trauma. Other numerous initiatives of local civil-society organisations also continuously promote inter-religious dialogue. The Centar za Izgradnju Mira (CIM), run by Vahidin Omanović, is a Muslim (faith-based) civil-society organisation from Sanski Most, which runs annual peace camps, where participants engage in dialogue and openly discuss taboo topics related to war experiences.15 Importantly, CIM16 works with young people, as those who were born after the war face many challenges without formal support.17 They listen to their parents’ stories and learn, but do not know how to deal with those experiences and memories, while being curious and eager for knowledge. Other interviewees agreed with the importance of working with young people because it can act as an enabler of coexistence and initiate mjesto susreta. Association ‘Dignitet’ in Mostar also recognises the importance of working with young people and creating opportunities for facilitated engagement.

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  57 ‘With young people, the nature of their existence is more exposed to meeting, and it is easier for them to encounter other people. The young are not malicious and quickly express their opinions if given the opportunity’.18 Organisations such as Nahla also teach people dialogue skills. ‘Work at the grassroots level is much more beneficial for the people, encouraging people to engage with pain and difficult topics, such as nationalism and politics’.19 Interfaith initiatives also recognise the gender dimension of dialogue. Several interviewees emphasised the importance of working with women believers, who are much easier to connect to because they suffer from multiple discriminations in BiH, and their needs are multi-­ dimensional. ‘Men always have priority when it comes to religious service. BiH is still a patriarchal society, women are neglected’. 20 While all interviewees agreed that meetings of the faith leaders are important, such as the IRC, and that they set a good example to ordinary people, it was also felt that leaders of religious communities and churches should be much more vocal about these problems and the importance of dividing religion and the nation. ‘Interreligious dialogue leads to better understanding of the meaning and values embedded in the holy scripts like mercy and non-violence. Its purpose is to remind each other of these values’. 21 Problematising the role and position of the religious institutions comes from their open connection with formal politics, which can lead to abuse by the same politicians 22 (i.e. political parties), who fail to do enough work to improve coexistence and people’s lives. ‘Religion is equivalent to peace, reconciliation, and welfare, and as such should be helping coexistence’. 23 From my in-depth discussions, it became clear that most of the interreligious engagement takes place at the local level, only with a support of activists and civil society organisations. While their approaches differ, their aims and aspirations are largely aligned and oriented towards improving conditions for suživot alongside recognising the importance of interfaith dialogue. We can also observe that the political sphere to which the leaders of the dominant religious institutions are connected is detached from the dynamics of the local, in contributing to both meaningful coexistence and the production of dialogue in the public and private spheres. Nationalist narratives compete in the public discourse with positive examples of faithbased dialogue, which, however, results in the alienation and isolation of those who normalise inter-religious and ethnic coexistence in their actions and practices.

2.6  Spatial Segregation and Interactions With so much emphasis on local interfaith dialogue between ordinary people, I return to the study of two small towns where I did ethnographic research and a survey for my PhD with the aim of understanding the process of post-war community formation. My findings emphasise the changes

58  Marika Djolai these places underwent because of the war: changes in residents, the loss of materialities, and changes in local institutions, all of which have a profound impact on social relations. The analytical optic of community is conceptualised in Hillery’s terms as a physical and social space containing five basic elements: interactions, space, activities, sentiment, and institutions. Before the war, both Kotor Varoš and Stolac were ethnically diverse24 and, as a result, experienced the highest level of conflict and fighting, particularly in Stolac and southern Herzegovina. The towns were selected using the ACLED25 database, documenting incidents of war violence, and the following criteria: forced displacement of population, extensive material destruction of public and private property, and protracted post-war violence. Most importantly for this research, both towns retained their ethnically heterogeneous compositions after the war. The survey results in Stolac and Kotor Varoš show that religious and ethnic affiliations overlap for Orthodox and Serb, and for Catholic and Croat ethnic identities (see Table 2.2). Notably, out of 86 respondents in Stolac who declared their religious beliefs as Muslim, 13 declared this to be their ethnic affiliations too (15%), while the rest called themselves Bošnjak (85%), apart from one person who chose ‘mixed’. In Kotor Varoš this difference was even more significant. Out of 49 individuals who declared their religious beliefs as Muslim, 17 declared their ethnic affiliation to be Muslim as well (34.7%), while the rest identified as Bošnjak apart from one person who was ‘mixed’. The fact that the Bošnjak population is religiously homogenous but heterogeneous by declared ethnic affiliation is important for the analysis of interfaith dialogue because people consciously shift between two identities, Muslim and Bošnjak. This is not just a matter of establishing a collective Muslim-Bosniak identity (Dimitrovova 2001), but a search of individual orientation and spiritual Table 2.2  Ethnic and Religious Identity (Djolai, Author’s data, 2013) Municipality

What best describes your religious beliefs?

What best describes your ethnicity?

Muslim Catholic Orthodox Atheist Other Prefer not to say Muslim Bosniak (Bošnjak) Serb Croat Other Mixed Prefer not to say

Stolac

Kotor Varoš

86 54 7 0 3 0 13 72 7 54 3 1 0

49 2 94 3 3 0 17 31 92 2 6 3 0

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  59 identification that many members of this community felt a need to do following terrible war experiences. Before the war, there was a difference between religious and secular Muslims, who used to describe themselves as civic Muslims;26 but this category became marginalised in the public discourse after the war. The discussions with recent interviewees about intrareligious dialogue between BiH Muslims indicate that they are not an internally homogenous and clearly delineated religious group as is often assumed, but rather a heterogenous community that needs to be approached more carefully analytically.

2.7 Stolac – known and unknown places Stolac is the main urban centre of the Stolac municipality that borders on Republic Srpska. Despite being a small town with three main streets, it has many neighbourhoods that are not defined administratively or formally, though their inhabitants and other town residents know where their physical boundaries lie. Each neighbourhood has a name, such as Luka (where I lived during my fieldwork) and Poplašići at the eastern entrance to the town from the direction of Bileća, with Sara Kašiković Bridge across the river leading to the old and now demolished complex of Begovina. Coming back towards the town centre one passes through the neighbourhoods of Kukavac, Podgledje, Ćuprija, and Behmenluk. A long street in the southern part of the town, following the road to Trebinje and Dubrovnik, constitutes the neighbourhood of Uzinovići. The centre of the town and the older neighbourhoods were a mix of old historical buildings and mosques with newer, modern-looking houses that still retained some of the traditional house design. Stolac suffered some of the highest levels of material damage in BiH, 80% of the town being completely destroyed, and many of the buildings still bore the marks of the war or poorly performed, basic reconstruction. Before the war, the dominant population in this central part of the town were Muslims, with a long tradition in the place and a small percentage Catholic Croats (Djolai, 2016). To the other side of the town centre is Zagrad, on the road to Neum, which is home to the Catholic Church and the local football pitch. The last big street along the river leads to the former Orthopaedic Hospital and ends in the abandoned industrial complexes that lie along the road at the north-west entrance to the town, following the main road to Mostar. Some of these neighbourhoods consist of ten to twenty houses, while others have clusters of three- or four-storey buildings, mainly dating from the 1970s, when the town was fully blooming economically, and newly built factories started employing from a few hundred people to over a thousand workers who needed accommodation. As a result, the factories started investing in property development and built blocks of flats in what used to be common agricultural land, 27 while this urbanisation process also initiated communal cohesion, reinforced by shared workplaces (Djolai, 2016).

60  Marika Djolai I lived in a flat in one of the buildings that used to belong to the ‘Željezara’ (Steel) Factory, the name by which everyone in the town knows it, located in the neighbourhood called Ćuprija. When explaining where someone lives, people would refer to a specific neighbourhood. ‘Did you talk to so and so?’ they would ask me, and continue explaining that ‘he lives in Luka’. This familiarity with the place, and particularly their knowledge of everyone’s place of residence and, presumably, details of peoples’ personal lives, shows a strong sense of awareness and a bond between the residents of Stolac, a tightly knit community. In the interviews, people always mentioned in which neighbourhood they grew up and where they were living at present. In the local language, there are two words for neighbourhood: komšiluk (Serbian) and mahala (Bosnian). Socially, the neighbourhoods are regarded as having the same private and intimate level as kin and family, and people commonly refer to them as their primary place of attachment. ‘Uzinovići is my mahala. That is where I grew up’ (Djolai, 2016). Among others, Bringa (1991, 1995), Sorabji (2008) and Neuffer (2002) have outlined the cultural and social significance of komšiluk in BiH, a point I will return to later in the chapter, where I discuss interfaith dialogue. Bruhn (2011, 80) points out that ‘[t]he concept of neighbourhood is fundamentally bound by a sense of place’. Stolac ethnic heterogeneity comes from new settlers who ‘colonised’ the town during the war, namely Catholic Croats from central Bosnia, from where they were exiled. To house them in the town a new neighbourhood, called Vidovo Polje, was created as a territorially bounded and remote unit (see Figure 2.2). By creating territorially remote new neighbourhoods, the local authorities segregated the new settlers from the rest of the town and the pre-war residents. This spatial and ethnic segregation is an obstacle to interactions and activities: the space is not shared, and the new settlers lack the sentiment that comes from having a familiarity with the town, as well as perpetuating local ethnocentrism, which remains tied to their previous place of residence and community, from which they were displaced. The construction of the new neighbourhood became a source of bitterness owing to the perceived injustice that the new settlers were given their houses almost for free (even though this perception was incorrect), while the returning pre-war population had to struggle to restore their houses with very little or no help from the authorities. Because of the spatial disposition of this neighbourhood, those who live there are not oriented towards building relationships with the ‘town folk’, their constant interaction being directed towards those in their own neighbourhoods or, more commonly, in the street on which they live. I heard many times that the choice of location of Vidovo Polje was politically motivated, as it was built with the intention of creating a cohesive factor for its inhabitants, while at the same time it created an ‘outgroup’ of those who are not part of the neighbourhood (Djolai, 2016). It is significant here that religious objects, several mosques, and a Catholic church follow the lines of territorial segregation. As seen in Figure 2.1, all the mosques, both destroyed and rebuilt, are in the old part

Figure 2 .1 S egregated neighbourhood: Vidovo Polje and Old Stolac (Author’s map; Djolai 2016, 128).

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  61

62  Marika Djolai

Figure 2.2 Stolac: Central Town Map (Djolai 2016, 118).

of the town. The only pre-war Catholic church, that of St. Ilija Prorok, 28 is located at the end of the old town, towards Vidovo Polje, which is also where the pre-war Catholic population of Stolac was located.

2.8 Kotor Varoš – identities and localities Kotor Varoš is a peri-urban town and municipality located in northern Bosnia, not far from Banja Luka, in RS. It is a typical mountainous Bosnian town, which looks very different to my previous fieldwork location at first glance. Its architecture consists of a combination of houses and buildings with flats that are quite modern in appearance. Unlike in Stolac, I did not see many damaged buildings in the town, or rather none that were immediately observable. The town has a significant Muslim returnee population, and according to the international organisations I spoke to earlier in Sarajevo, including UNICEF, UNDP, and the delegation of the European

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  63 Commission, all of which had projects in Kotor Varoš, it is often used a positive example of good inter-ethnic relations and successful post-war recovery (Djolai, 2016). It also has a significant number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) who arrived mainly from western Bosnian municipalities and were predominantly Serbs. The town centre is a mixture of houses and flats in small two- or three-storey buildings spread across two main streets. The first street is the main road from the town’s entrance to its further end called Cara Dušana (King Dušan), and all the shops, local institutions, and cafés are located along it, as is the main mosque in Kotor Varoš, the Catholic church of the ‘Birth of the Virgin Mary’ and the Orthodox church the ‘Birth of the blessed Virgin Mary’. Coincidentally or not, both churches carry the name of the Virgin. The town has two mosques, both of which were destroyed and rebuilt after the war, one in the Donja Varoš neighbourhood and the other in the neighbourhood called Kotor (ibid.). Like Stolac, Kotor Varoš has a new neighbourhood built specifically for refugees and IDPs, with two names: ‘Bare’ (swamp) and ‘Novo Naselje’ (New Settlement). One of the settlers told me it was mainly an area of reed and swamp, covered in grass and bushes over two metres high when it was allocated to them as building land. The new site consists of around 600 households with over 1,000 inhabitants. Like in Stolac, this neighbourhood was also built on the outskirts of the town, isolating it spatially. There is no public transport, and the neighbourhood is only easily accessible for those with cars or those young, fit, and healthy enough to undertake a half-hour walk on a daily basis. The main road connecting the town and the neighbourhood, together with one of the main streets, was built in 2010. Some of the streets still have macadam surfaces, while others had asphalt laid down during my fieldwork. Owing to the distance of this neighbourhood from the town, an entirely new infrastructure for sewage, water supply, and electricity had to be built, as well as internet access, phone lines, and streetlights.29 As a major and costly undertaking on municipal land, it had to be included in the municipal budget as a capital investment30 but it caused grievances among the pre-war resident who believed the town had other priorities (Djolai, 2016). On the map below, the shaded area to the right is the new neighbourhood, while the shaded area to the left is Kotor, which used to have a predominantly Muslim population and where a massacre took place in June 1992 (Figure 2.3). In both Kotor Varoš and Stolac, I documented both structural and social segregation, which led to parallel lives of the residents and manifested itself in separate social, cultural and, in the case of Stolac, 31 educational patterns that seldom cross paths. A strong degree of polarisation still occurred between new settlers and the native, pre-war residents in Kotor Varoš because of the lack of acceptance of someone from a different locale, which was only emphasised by belonging to different ethno-religious communities in Stolac. In neither case the planners took social cohesion into account in instituting these new neighbourhoods, nor the impact of the spatial

64  Marika Djolai

Figure 2.3 Bare Kotor Varoš (Author’s map; Djolai 2016, 136).

segregation on everyday interactions and cohesion on the possibility to become ‘good neighbours and friends’ naturally with the pre-war residents. Without integrative mechanisms, it proved very difficult to create mjesto susrteta. Both situations are unfavourable for naturally occurring dialogue among ordinary people. In Stolac, the divide is between Muslims/Bosniaks (Bošnjak), who are old settlers, and new residents, Catholic Croats, not just for identity reasons but because of the lack of cohesive mechanisms. In Kotor Varoš, Orthodox Serbs despite the lack of bonding stemming from a local community attachment, the religious bond, and the church did act as integrative mechanisms. However, these dynamics resulted in an almost total lack of interactions with the returning Muslim-Bosniak population, pre-war town residents who were put in a situation of living the parallel life with their old as well as their new neighbours.

2.9 Conclusion This chapter has drawn attention to the necessity for a better conceptualisation of interreligious dialogue in BiH, as well as the systematic documentation of the conditions under which it emerges. The findings are based on the analysis of spatial and social dynamics in two small towns Stolac and Kotor Varoš, both of which were largely affected by the latest war in BiH. In this chapter, which is part of a larger piece of research, I specifically

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  65 focus on two of the five elements of community postulated on Hillery’s model: interactions and space. I have settled on a concept of community that extends beyond the simple geographical sense of community, that of a particular territory, to incorporate a local social system or a set of social relations in a particular locale. The data show that two elements, deemed essential for a community, are also necessary for interfaith dialogues. The concrete ways in which this process happens require an examination of the conditions under which the interreligious dialogue emerges and contributes to meaningful coexistence, and how the activities of organisations that promote and support it enable human agency in their turn. This chapter has argued that the empirical and theoretical frameworks of the sociology of community should be integrated in the investigation of religious expressions in everyday practices and interreligious dialogue, in contribution to the approaches to the diversity of religious practices and traditions (Körs, Weiße, and Willaime 2020). The chapter applies the sociology of community and social identity theories to the analysis in contribution to the sociological engagement with interfaith dialogue32 . Many communities in BiH, both place-based and ethno-religious, live with varying degrees of diversity but also segregation resulting from the consociational system and war trauma and loss. Local communities, villages, towns, and settlements, including the two that were the subject of this research, vary widely across BiH, depending on their trajectory in the post-war recovery and the degree of social and spatial change that took place. When it comes to situating interreligious dialogue, my field experience and recent interviews lead me to agree that the emphasis should be on ordinary people, their ties, and interactions in everyday life. The problem, as I have shown, is that the communities in which residents live parallel lives but fail to create integrative mechanisms, defined by interviewees as mjesto susreta, but not necessarily as malevolent actions, are characterised by spatial segregation combined with exclusionary ethnic power-sharing. Following the war, particularly in small towns and villages with high number of returnees and significant number of new settlers, coexistence was marred by numerous incidents of violence. This, in turn, impeded the creation of places with potential integrative mechanisms for residents’ engagement from diverse backgrounds, and for interfaith dialogue. Some interviewees pointed out that religion and politics are too closely intertwined in BiH, with religious leaders often seen publicly supporting the discourses of the nationalist politicians in their claims for power. These actions are failing believers of all faiths and religious communities, as they lead to harmful behaviour, practices, and discourses in the political arena, while betraying their responsibility to the positions they hold and the trust placed in them. In this climate of confusion around religion, its values, and interpretations, interreligious dialogue struggles to assume a more encompassing role in BiH. However, my research showed that at the local level differences can be managed through practices of everyday life,

66  Marika Djolai which allow people to navigate the complexity of ethnic power sharing at the institutional level dominated by nationalist politics which are against integration and cohesion. The scope of the dialogue remains questionable for those who simply declare themselves to be believers, as well as for others who practice religion with deep commitment and for those from religious and non-religious backgrounds. In the situation such as that in BiH, where ethnic and religious identities are so closely intertwined, it is important to broaden the scope of how we understand interfaith dialogue for reasons of better conceptual engagement, but also to make sure that certain social groups and their relations are not left out of the analysis. This needs to be linked with the process of broadening the definition of religion, considering its multifaceted nature, while recognising the role it plays in society, or in any post-war environment. How religious diversity is managed is also part of the story, which is receiving increasing attention in the emerging scholarly work.33 Finally, we need to observe how the dialogue should be defined, particularly in such complex circumstances. Institutionalised dialogue exists in BiH, formalised through the IRC of BiH and through grassroot initiatives and civic activism, and is becoming increasingly important (Lehmann 2021). This was clear when I compared my data from 10 years ago and recent interviews. It also exists among ordinary people in the form of suživot, a form of peaceful, meaningful coexistence in local community of sharing everyday life, even if interactions are not frequent and dominant, through sharing spaces. In the examples of Stolac and Kotor Varoš local violence abated and has been replaced by uneasy coexistence. In such circumstances, I argue that we should observe the absence of violence between different social groups, particularly in local communities, and the possibility of non-violent interactions or peaceful coexistence as a ‘silent interfaith dialogue’.

Notes

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Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  67



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68  Marika Djolai

References Alibašić, Ahmet. 2020. “History of Inter-Religious Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina: From Force-Feeding to Sustainability?” Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 6 (2): 343–364. Altman, Irwin, and Setha M. Low. 1992. Place Attachment. Edited by Irwin Altman and SethaM Low. Vol. 12, Place Attachment: Springer US. Ammerman, Nancy T. 2014. “Finding Religion in Everyday Life.” Sociology of Religion 75 (2):189–207. doi: 10.1093/socrel/sru013. Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. and extended ed. London: Verso. Andjelic, Neven. 2000. “Bosnia-Herzegovina: politics at the end of Yugoslavia. [electronic resource].” University of Sussex. Bellamy, Alex J. 2003. The Formation of Croatian National Identity: A Centuries-old Dream?: Manchester University Press. Bernard, Jessie. 1973. The Sociology of Community: Scott. Brajovic, Zoran. 2006. “The Potential of Inter-religious Dialogue.” Peacebuilding and Civil Society in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ten Years After Dayton: 185–214. Bringa, Tone Rand. 1991. Gender, Religion and the Person: the ‘Negotiation’ of Muslim Identity in Rural Bosnia. [Electronic Resource]. University of London. Bringa, Tone. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village. Princeton, N.J.; Chichester: Princeton University Press. Brint, Steven. 2001. “Gemeinschaft Revisited: A Critique and Reconstruction of the Community Concept.” Sociological Theory 19 (1):1–23. Brubaker, Rogers. 2004. Ethnicity Without Groups. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press. Brubaker, Rogers. 2014. “Beyond Ethnicity.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37 (5):804–808. Bruhn, John G. 2011. The Sociology of Community Connections. 2nd ed. Dordrecht; London: Springer. Cantle, Ted. 2005. Community Cohesion: A New Framework for Race and ­Diversity. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Caspersen, Nina. 2006. Intra-ethnic Competition and Inter-ethnic Conflict: Serb Elites in Croatia and Bosnia, 1990–1995. London: University of London. 1 v.; 31 cm. Dimitrovova, Bohdana. 2001. “Bosniak or Muslim? Dilemma of one Nation with Two Names.” Southeast European Politics 2 (2): 94–108. Djolai, Marija. 2016. “When the rooftops became red again: post-war community dynamics in Bosnia and Herzegovina.” PhD Dissertation. University of Sussex. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2001. Small places, large issues: an introduction to social and cultural anthropology. 2nd ed, Anthropology, Culture and Society. London: Pluto Press. Erikson, Kai. 1976. Everything in its Path : Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. New York: Simon and Schuster. Frankenberg, R. 1969. Communities in Britain, Social Life in Town and Country. Rev. ed. ed. [S.l.]: Penguin. Gagnon, V. P. 2004a. The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s. Ithaca, N.Y.; London: Cornell University Press.

Community and Interfaith Dialogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina  69 Giordan, Giuseppe, and Andrew P. Lynch. 2019. Volume 10: Interreligious Dialogue: From Religion to Geopolitics: Brill. Hillery, George A. 1959. “A Critique of Selected Community Concepts.” Social Forces 37 (3):237–242. doi: 10.2307/2572969. Hillery, George A. 1982. A Research Odyssey: Developing and Testing a ­Community Theory: Transaction Publishers. Hromadžic, Azra. 2015. Citizens of an Empty Nation: Youth and State-Making in Postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina: University of Pennsylvania Press. Interfaith, Appeal. 1996. Interfaith Appeal: Support Peace in Bosnia. In Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe. Jenkins, Richard. 2008. Rethinking Ethnicity. 2nd ed. London: SAGE. Kappler, Stefanie. 2013. “Everyday Legitimacy in Post-Conflict Spaces: The Creation of Social Legitimacy in Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Cultural Arenas.” Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 7 (1):11–28. King, Sallie B. 2011. “Interreligious Dialogue.” In The Oxford Handbook of ­Religious Diversity. Körs, Anna, Wolfram Weiße, and Jean-Paul Willaime, eds. 2020. Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue: Springer. Kostresevic, Milan. 2016. “Interreligious Dialogue in Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 26 (2):203–214. Lee, David, and Howard Newby. 2012. The Problem of Sociology: Routledge. Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The Production of Space. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lehmann, Karsten. 2021. Talking Dialogue Eleven Episodes in the History of the Modern Interreligious Dialogue Movement: De Gruyter. Lockwood, William G. 1975. European Moslems: Economy and Ethnicity in Western Bosnia. New York; London: Academic Press. Lustick, Ian. 1979. “Stability in Deeply Divided Societies: Consociationalism Versus Control.” World Politics 31 (3):325–344. Macfarlane, Alan. 1977. “History, Anthropology and the Study of Communities.” Social History 2 (5):631–652. Malcolm, Noel. 2002. Bosnia: A Short History. London: Pan. Martínez-Ariño, Julia. 2019. “Governing Religious Diversity in Cities: Critical ­Perspectives.” Religion, State and Society 47 (4, 5):364–373. Merdjanova, Ina, and Patrice Brodeur. 2009. Religion as a Conversation Starter: Interreligious Dialogue for Peacebuilding in the Balkans. Vol. 9: A&C Black. Neuffer, Elizabeth. 2002. The Key to My Neighbour’s House: Seeking Justice in Bosnia and Rwanda. London: Bloomsbury. Orton, Andrew. 2016. “Interfaith Dialogue: Seven Key Questions for Theory, Policy and Practice.” Religion, State and Society 44 (4):349–365. Premilovac, Aida. 2005. “The Discourse of Local Identity in Postwar BosniaHerzegovina.” Language in Use: 202. Silvestri, Sara, and James Mayall. 2015. “The role of religion in conflict and peacebuilding.” Sorabji, Cornelia 2008. “Bosnian Neighborhoods Revisited: Tolerance, Comitment and Komsiluk in Sarajevo” In On the Margins of Religion edited by Frances Pine and João de Pina-Cabral. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books. Stacey, Margaret. 1969. “The Myth of Community Studies.” The British Journal of Sociology 20 (2):134–147. doi: 10.2307/588525.

70  Marika Djolai Stefansson, Anders. 2007. “Urban Exile: Locals, Newcomers and the Cultural Transformation of Sarajevo.” In The new Bosnian Mosaic: Identities, Memories and Moral Claims in a Post-war Society, edited by Xavier Bougarel, Elissa Helms and Gerlachlus Duijzings, xv, 332 p. Aldershot: Ashgate. Šuško, Dževada. 2019. Both Muslim and European: Diasporic and Migrant Identities of Bosniaks: Brill. Till, Karen E. 2012. “Wounded Cities: Memory-work and a Place-based Ethics of Care.” Political Geography 31 (1):3–14. Tonnies, Ferdinand. 2001. Community and Civil Society, Cambridge Texts in the Histroy of Political Thought Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. U.S. Department of State. 2020. 2020 Report on International Religious Freedom: Bosnia and Herzegovina. Uvalić, Milica. 2018. “The rise and fall of market socialism in Yugoslavia.” DOC Research Institute. Ysseldyk, Renate, Kimberly Matheson, and Hymie Anisman. 2010. “Religiosity as Identity: Toward an Understanding of Religion From a Social Identity ­Perspective.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 14 (1): 60–71.

3

Provincializing Dialogue Post-secular Governance Networks and the Brokerage of Religious Diversity in a North German Town1 Arndt Emmerich

3.1 Introduction The chapter investigates the emergence and role of a post-secular governance network that focuses on migrant integration and the management of religious diversity in Fromberg, 2 a small town in northern Germany. Dominated by a Catholic minority leader in what is a majority Protestant region, the empirical analysis shows how a local cross-party, civil society, media and faith network, which has influenced the public discourse on interreligious relations, refugees and Islam for over ten years, operates and is perceived by its supporters and opponents. In particular, I describe how Fromberg’s city council was the main broker for religious and ethnic minorities between 1990 and 2010, before it was partially replaced by this post-secular governance network. Theoretically, the chapter draws on insights from the literature on multi-level governance, interreligious dialogue and post-secularity, which assumes ‘the continued existence of religious communities in an increasingly secularised environment’ in Western Europe (Habermas 2001, 13). In doing so, the analysis goes beyond the description and explanations of the efficiency of governance networks in implementing social policy and draws attention to their inherent fragility, contradictions and internal tensions. Special consideration is given to the emerging academic discussion of religious diversity in rural areas and small towns in Germany, which, compared to research on major urban centres, assumes a different modality regarding the strength of networks, the roles of traditional actors and the interplay between secular and religious factors. In doing so, the chapter engages with the notion of the ‘broker’ in political anthropology and scholarship on networks in organizational sociology in order to guide the empirical analysis. Assuming that increasing diversity and high levels of mobility can reduce trust and ‘the willingness to enter into long-term collaborations’ (Powell 1990, 326), this study asks whether a provincial location with tightly knit bonds, regular and informal face-to-face interactions among local actors and mutual oversight through meta-governance may produce more robust post-secular networks than large metropolitan centres.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-5

71

72  Arndt Emmerich By showing the contested nature of the brokerage of religious diversity in Fromberg, I demonstrate how a post-secular governance network may be challenged by religious actors and political secularists within the local administration, as well as by structural and political changes beyond the local context. The findings inform the wider debate on religious and post-secular governance in the public sphere and question the assumption in studies of post-secularity that local municipalities welcome religious and interfaith brokers for integration-related policies. Moreover, the example of Fromberg, with its governance of religious diversity and Islam in particular, enhances our understanding of how public and mainline church actors deal with religious minorities in a provincial location in Germany.

3.2 Post-secular Governance Networks The emergence of multi-level governance networks over the last 20 years has been described as a response to increased migration, religious and ethnic diversity and security-related concerns. The new constellations of state and non-state actors, operating in a horizontal manner, differ from previously dominant forms of top-down, state-led and market-driven initiatives and state-church contractual partnerships, being, it is argued, better equipped to deal with complex societies (Sørensen and Torfing 2005; Bader 2007). The temporary, ad-hoc or permanent networks include diverse and at times ideologically dissimilar partners in the local, national and international arenas. Their legitimacy stems from a common narrative of promoting public purpose and social cohesion, while internal decision-making relies on mutual trust, negotiations and self-regulation within a given structural context. These network constellations are seen to be more effective in gathering information, devising pragmatic grassroots solutions and providing expert knowledge through diverse memberships of a sort that are not always available in local governments (Martikainen 2013). Hence, an analysis of networks governing religious diversity needs to focus on state as well as non-state actors, including religious and interfaith leaders, and on the plethora of public–private partnerships (Duemmler and Nagel 2013; Martikainen 2013) to ‘identify the actor constellations that intervene in specific contexts and governance processes’ (Martínez-Ariño 2019). The debate around multi-level governance is closely related to the notion of post-secularity and the post-secular city, in which religious actors enter the public sphere of secularizing or secularized societies by following secular rules and adopting the language of the ‘common good’ (Habermas 2006; Cloke and Beaumont 2013; Griera and Nagel 2018).3 As state actors seem increasingly unable to cope with the post-secular constellation of multifaith migrant societies, they have started looking for trusted faith partners as ‘new policy entrepreneurs’, allowing them to compensate for their own religious illiteracy (Griera and Forteza 2011, 114). Driving forces in postsecular governance networks are often individuals and groups working

Provincializing Dialogue  73 ‘across, or at least problematising, previous divides involving inter-religious, anti-religious or anti-secular sentiment’ (Cloke and Beaumont 2013, 33). The emergence of post-secular networks has also been understood as indicating resistance to the relegation of religion to the private sphere, prompted by the political secularism of Europe from the 1980s onwards (Berger 2006; Thomas 2005). Known as ‘religious de-privatisation’ (Casanova 2011), faith actors are increasingly expressing their identities in public (Davie 2004; Nagel 2019). Moreover, the incentives for religious actors to replace state services have contributed to the de-centralization of the mainline churches, thus providing local congregations with greater autonomy and responsibility to be financially sustainable and cooperate with other religious groups and local state bodies (Beckford 2014). Williams, Cloke and Thomas (2012) pointed to the unique characteristics of faith actors, with their local awareness and expertise, as well as an explicit normative disposition to care for vulnerable groups, which can put pressure on the state authorities. Hence, government officials may align with religious causes, while faith actors may moderate or adapt their language to gain access to government channels or funding schemes. Moreover, in the form of neo-corporatism, post-secular governance networks started to play an important role in the institutionalization of Islam in Europe after 9/11.4 In particular, the creation of national and local pan-Islamic umbrella platforms, which serve as reliable partners at various Islam-related round tables such as the German Islam Conference, is seen as a domesticating influence on European Muslims and the reduction of interreligious tensions. While selected Muslim partners can claim no monopoly in representing Islam in Europe, the inclusion of such networks provides advisory power with privileged access to governments, policy-makers and other influential stakeholders (Laurence 2011, 166, 167). As this chapter will show, these macro-level developments strongly resonate at the local level and within the small-town context. Due to Germany’s federal structure of sixteen autonomous states or Länder and related cultural policies, the governance of religious diversity is often negotiated at the regional and municipal levels (Körs and Nagel 2018), which provides religious minorities with further incentives to enter coalitions with established communities and civil-society groups. Furthermore, the emergence of provincial governance networks mirrors Germany’s national policy of institutionalizing Islam through local and national treaties and dialogue cooperation (Spielhaus and Herzog 2015; Körs 2019), as well as the recent introduction of state-level branches of Muslim associations to advance regional integration and strengthen interreligious partnerships. However, policy narratives about interreligious dialogue and post-secular alliances as panaceas productive of local harmony can cover up unequal power relations, undemocratic consensus formations and structural deficits, and may exclude dissenting voices and unwanted partners (Davies 2011; Martikainen 2013). Moreover, post-secular constellations within the

74  Arndt Emmerich public sphere are often contested by inward-looking constituencies, religious authorities and local municipalities, as has been highlighted in scholarship on the ‘competition between political secularists and religious political actors to influence government policy’ (Fox 2019, 524). Although local politicians and policy-makers may have private religious beliefs, the opponents of the post-secular alliance who were interviewed for this research were highly sceptical of the supposedly constructive role of religious themes and identities in the public domain, a matter I explore further in the empirical discussion below. Informed by research insights into governance networks, post-secular constellations and the perspective of religious–secular competition, this chapter focuses on these complex dynamics between secular and religious actors within a post-secular network to contribute to a better understanding of the governance of religious diversity in provincial locations beyond major urban centres.

3.3 Research on Small Towns in Germany: Rural Networks and Brokers Although a consensus exists within migration and diversity studies on the importance of the local level (Zapata-Barrero, Caponio and Scholten 2017; Martínez-Ariño 2019), the so-called ‘local turn’ has mainly been applied to metropolitan areas (Ipgrave 2019), underscored by an implicit conviction that dialogue and ‘bridging differences’ occur in superdiverse urban environments (Ammerman 2005, 130; See also Giordan 2014; Vertovec 2014; Körs 2018). Cloke and Beaumont (2013, 32) argued that the ‘scale and availability of interconnecting social networks’ for post-secular constellations are more likely to emerge in urban centres than in rural or small-town contexts. More recently, a growing body of literature stresses the need for further research on religious diversity elsewhere than in urban centres (Thielmann 2010; Aumüller and Gesemann 2016; Reimann et al. 2018; Nagel and Kalender 2021), which is supported by the geographical location of migrant populations. For instance, around 55% of German residents with a migrant background live in small and medium-sized towns with a population of less than 100,000 (Aumüller and Gesemann 2016). This is partially due to the policy of the decentralized dissemination of labour migrants, family networks and the lower cost of accommodation in the provinces (Gesemann and Roth 2016). The provincial context has become even more salient in the wake of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ and the allocation of new migrant groups to small towns. Since 2015, Germany has witnessed an influx of more than 1.5 million predominately Muslim asylum-seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. Recent studies have pointed to the role of small-town governance networks in integrating immigrants and managing religious diversity, given their often resource-poor municipalities (Aumüller and Gesemann 2016; Gesemann and Roth 2016). These networks are shaped by social bonds, frequent interactions, a more traditionally structured civil society, the greater

Provincializing Dialogue  75 legitimacy of religious actors and the importance of local community leaders, traditional associations and clubs (Alisch and May 2011; Nagel and Kalender 2021).5 The importance of networks in small towns has already been studied by the political anthropologist Jeremy Boissevain ([1968] 2013, 122). Being embedded in a village or small town may result in ‘more intimate links’ with networks that are ‘more connected than […] in areas of high residential mobility’. This echoes Georg Simmel’s ([1903] 2014) urban sociology, where he stressed that intimate relations in the province may produce different and potentially more robust networks. To understand such micro-dynamics better, Boissevain focused extensively on networks and brokerage in villages and small towns in Malta.6 Central to his inquiry were informal organizations of friends, colleagues or co-religionists, demonstrating that ‘social interaction systems centre on one person [such as political, economic, religious or academic leaders] or a coalition of persons [dominant group]’. For him, these intricate personal relations were important in understanding social change, particularly in a provincial context. The driver of change is the broker, a network specialist with unique persuasive skills, ‘who controls second order resources [e.g. information, contacts] and manipulates these for his own profit’ (Boissevain [1969] 2021, 148). For Boissevain ([1968] 2013, 123, 124), the broker is able to ‘bridge the distance, sometimes narrow, sometimes immense, between different value systems… [and thereby] create[s] more intense and specialised patterns of interaction’. Subsequent scholarship on networks by organizational sociologists has continued to stress the efficacies of ‘horizontal patterns of exchange, interdependent flows of resources’ and ‘reciprocal lines of communication’ (Powell 1990, 296–305). Network participants, who trust each other and are concerned for their reputations, may abstain from the quid pro quo bargaining that prevails in the market place and eschew the formalized exchanges and administrative procedures of hierarchical organizations and governments. Through such informality, networks can create indebtedness and reliance over a long period of time and disseminate the benefits and burdens of cooperation among different partners. Hence, the emphasis on intimate, face-to-face relations and local trust for network brokerage resonates with the literature on post-secular governance networks, while rural and small-town administrators in Germany have recently been advised to consider multi-level approaches to governance for integration-related purposes (Reimann et al. 2018). The next section will look more closely at the role of network governance in a small-town context.

3.4 Case Study and Methods The German town of Fromberg in Lower Saxony is relatively isolated, far from any of the major urban centres, including Hanover, the state capital. The Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas in Brunswick, which publishes the Thünen-Landatlas,7 classifies Fromberg as ‘very rural’ (‘sehr

76  Arndt Emmerich ländlich’), but relatively affluent, due to its proximity to a large industrial manufacturer and several small and medium-sized businesses. The Institute measures different degrees of rurality, such as population density, distance from urban centres, the size of the agricultural sector or the number of single detached houses within different regions and districts across Germany. After WWII, Fromberg attracted a steady influx of migrants, including workers from Turkey and the former Soviet Union, growing from a small village in the 1920s with a population of approximately 5,000 into a town of 38,000 in 2020. According to estimates from the city council and local experts, Fromberg has around 3,300 Muslims. In addition, more than a thousand predominantly Muslim refugees have arrived since 2015. The city has three mosques (ethnically dominated, respectively, by the Turkish, Kurdish or Bosnian communities) and a few informal prayer groups, including Alevis and Arabic-speaking Muslims. The district has approximately 80,000 Protestants, 11,000 Catholics and several thousand independent Baptist, Adventist and Pentecostal community members, who have arrived as migrants from the former Soviet Union since the 1990s. Given this brief demographic overview, Fromberg constitutes an interesting vantage point for the analysis of post-secular governance networks within a provincial location in Lower Saxony, with its rural and comparatively low population density, preceded only by the five states in eastern Germany that have lower population densities). Lacking any exceptional characteristics, Fromberg can be seen as a typical German small town, including its mono-congregational heritage and church dominance, the power of the local mayor, its normal distribution of migrants in comparison with the national average in Germany and ethnic tensions through its increasing diversity and political polarization. It therefore constitutes an example of typical experiences caused by different local and extra-local developments and provides insights into the governance of religious diversity in small-town Germany. Qualitative research was carried out with different religious communities, political parties, civil-society and welfare organizations and the city council in Fromberg between 2017 and 2020. I also engaged with national and state-level religious authorities and policy-makers in Lower Saxony. Research participants were involved in the governance of religious diversity, interfaith projects and other topics concerning migration and integration in Fromberg. I also conducted expert and time-witness interviews, as well as extensive archival and chronological research of local interreligious events, advisory councils, local newspapers, municipal, church and mosque websites, social-media accounts and other documents. Regarding the relatively diverse Muslim community in Fromberg, my research mainly focuses on the local DITIB (Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs) mosque, 8 since the other mosques did not play an active role or were excluded from taking part in the post-secular network,

Provincializing Dialogue  77 as will be described in the empirical discussion. From 2016 onwards, relations with and between the DITIB and German state governments rapidly deteriorated, due to the increasing tension between Germany and Turkey after the attempted coup in the latter country in July 2016 and allegations against Turkish imams being used to spy on the Turkish regime’s political opponents in Germany. In January 2017, the state of Lower Saxony ended its negotiations with its Muslim partners, including the DITIB. These developments in Lower Saxony reverberated at the local level in Fromberg and mirrored the situation of Muslims in Germany regarding regional dialogue and subsequent network responses. Fromberg thus constitutes a relevant case study for an inquiry into how macro-level changes influence post-secular network governance in a small-town context.

3.5 Fromberg’s Changing Dynamics: A Brief Timeline In the 1990s, Fromberg occasionally appeared in the national media for its rising tensions between different migrant groups and a right-wing city administration that advocated ending asylum in the city council. A national news magazine mentioned Fromberg together with other cities in an article entitled ‘Time bombs in the suburbs’, which invoked Huntington’s notion of a ‘clash of civilizations’ to describe the rising ethnic violence across Germany. A policy-maker from Hanover admitted that technocrats perceive the northern part of Lower Saxony, with its industrial, provincial and insular characteristics, as ‘uncivilized and ridden by crime and ethnic violence’. Conflicts over local hierarchies (‘Rangordnungskonflikte’) between Turkish and Russian youth occurred in several German cities in the early 1990s and urged city councils to expand their integration programmes (Kirchhoff 2018, 165). Because of the tension among the migrant groups, an annual intercultural initiative was launched by Fromberg’s city council in the late 1980s to focus on ‘common grounds and push back religious propaganda’, as an official organizer noted. In the early 1990s, the city appointed an integration officer, one of the first in Lower Saxony, to focus especially on the Turkish community. Between 1990 and 2010, the integration officer, together with other departments of the city council and the DITIB mosque, held regular intercultural events, including school visits, intercultural bakeoffs, exchanges between the church and mosque youth, a father-support group (talking about ‘puberty as an intercultural topic’) and educational programmes for female assembly-line workers that included seminars on intercultural body language, school systems and role-plays showing how to deal with racist attacks (e.g. for wearing a headscarf). Since the mid-1990s, local church actors occasionally became involved in interreligious encounters when the youth wing of the Protestant church started a short-term dialogue with Muslim teenagers in the mosque, while

78  Arndt Emmerich Catholic leaders offered interreligious seminars for kindergarten staff linked to the arrival of migrants from eastern Europe. However, discussions over sustained cooperation between the mosque and the two mainline churches throughout the 2000s were unsuccessful. One Muslim participant recalled a sense of ‘arrogance’ and ‘ignorance’ among local Protestant actors in particular in following the Church’s national agenda on dialogue with Muslims.9 Hence, until 2010, the main partner of religious minorities in Fromberg was the local government. The first recorded interreligious initiative was a joint peace prayer in April 2012, which was followed by an interfaith sermon in 2013, in which two mosque communities participated. In 2015, Fromberg’s mayor attended an iftar (the breaking of the fast ceremony during the holy month of Ramadan) in the local mosque for the first time. Subsequently, cooperation within the post-secular network intensified, focusing on interreligious education, support for a new mosque, mutual interfaith visits and the establishment of a hospital-based Muslim prayer room and cemetery section. During the ‘refugee crisis’, this church-led network was involved in creating asylums, refugee shelters and a migrant café, finding legal guardians for unaccompanied children and mentors for teenagers, family reunification, raising money for a playground, organizing information stalls and providing legal support in local deportation cases. Past research on the relations between mosque, state and church actors has pointed to a cooperation deficit with Muslims. While church actors mainly focused on sporadic dialogue encounters without long-term cooperation, resistance has arisen from politicians, local residents and the media regarding the institutional demands and expansion plans of Muslim communities (Galembert 2005; Jonker 2005). More recently, however, the emergence of post-secular networks may indicate a paradigm shift towards neo-corporatism and multi-level governance frameworks, in which local church actors in particular are actively involved in the institutionalization of Islam at the subnational level. While religious and state officials cooperated in the past, this new post-secular phase indicates a dynamic boundary shift and renegotiation regarding spirituality, faithbased symbolism and religious identity assertions and claims-making in the public sphere. In sum, from the early 2010s, local church authorities in Fromberg have assumed the leading role as brokers for religious minorities, replacing the city council in this regard. This shift was partially a result of changes in the Protestant mainline church regarding interreligious dialogue, Germany’s evolving national policy framework of institutionalizing Islam through regional cooperation and new local priorities among the main protagonists in Fromberg to enhance social cohesion and generate positive publicity through interfaith activities. The next section will introduce the key brokers and functions of the post-secular network, before I outline some critical responses.

Provincializing Dialogue  79

3.6 Network Protagonists in Fromberg 3.6.1 Klaus: Local Catholic Leader For the majority of mosque communities in Germany, the first and most frequent point of contact is the local church (Halm et al. 2012, 113). In a small town, mainline church actors who have been embedded within the local civil society for decades inherited a quasi-hegemonic position in effectively brokering religious diversity, being trusted by religious minorities for their faith-related sensibilities and accepted within local city-council structures. In 2018, Klaus was the main network specialist in Fromberg, an astute, charismatic and university-educated Catholic church leader. Over the last ten years, he has built up an effective network that includes the DITIB mosque committee, the Protestant mainline church, the conservative Christian Democratic (CDU) mayor, the party leaders of the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD), the local media, civil-society organizations and state-level Muslim, Christian and political leaders. Klaus frequently emphasized ‘religious conciliation’, where ‘churches should build social bridges’, which ‘overlapped with the “Islam debate” [regarding the integration of Muslim minorities in Germany] more than ten years ago’. For him, the previously mentioned tensions between Turkish and Russian youth occurred because ‘they turned their backs on their religions, and there was nothing that could fill that void’. He therefore developed sermons and other content with an inoffensive and mindful language concerning other faiths, which led to the first of many interreligious peace prayers in 2012. In Fromberg, Klaus was described by Protestant theologians as ‘the most important person for [both, Catholic and Protestant mainline] churches in the region and a symbol of an open, liberal and democratic civil society’. According to a local SPD politician, Klaus was the main contact for the city council and general public ‘if they want to inquire about social and interreligious topics’. A Catholic colleague compared him to ‘a juggler with six balls’ in his handling of the media, politics and church affairs. He was also perceived as ‘non-partisan’ (‘null parteipolitisch’), someone who treats all people equally ‘from the district administrator and mayor to a refugee’, as an employee of a welfare association noted. In this context, a journalist and member of the Catholic church in Fromberg highlighted Klaus’ resourcefulness: ‘In his flattering manner, he always succeeds in extracting money from people. He also has no problem with rich people [and local business elites], despite his left-wing outlook. Whatever gets the job done’. Klaus would link such external donations to Fromberg’s identity as an ‘open city’, as he put it in a newspaper article: ‘This donation [by a local bakery tycoon for a playground in front of the new refugee shelter] is an expression of a culture of hospitality and welcome in our city’. Over his long career, Klaus has won several awards at regular intervals for his commitment to refugees, the fight against neo-Nazis and inter- and intra-religious dialogue.

80  Arndt Emmerich Klaus described himself as a CEO who ‘bundles the energy’. Although critical of the personal cult that has grown up around him, he admitted that when he organizes an interreligious sermon ‘40% more people will show up, which is what matters in the end’. His pragmatic attitude was appreciated within the Protestant church leadership: ‘Klaus is not too much in his head, which is often the case among theologians. But if you try to do it [inter- and intra-religious cooperation] democratically through committees all the time, you will lose a lot of the initial momentum’. Several of Klaus’s projects had no institutional support within the wider state-level hierarchy of the Catholic church: ‘Everyone, including the Bishop, says this is crazy, or leave me alone with your silly ideas. Often all that existed was my signature on the contract. But I can deal with the pressure’. Among his people skills was his persuasiveness in translating complex community relations into vernacular and non-threatening metaphors for the city council and other faith-based partners.10 Sounding at times trivializing, Klaus’s narratives resonated with Fromberg’s local pragmatism and desire for political stability, turning him into a legitimate broker of interreligious relations. 3.6.2 Mehmet: Mosque Chairman Central to Klaus’ network was Mehmet, the local DITIB mosque chairman and a trusted partner since 2011. Mehmet became the chairman in his early thirties, surrounded by a youthful and dynamic committee team, which was seen as unusual in Fromberg, with both previous chairmen being substantially older. Although he did not attend university, Mehmet was described as ‘extremely well-integrated’ (‘überdurchschnittlich gut sozialisiert’) within the post-secular network, due to his proficiency in German and technical profession at a highly reputed regional company. Attributes such as ‘open’, ‘cooperative’, ‘accessible’ or ‘does not shield [‘abschiermen’] the community’ were used to describe him. In his relationship with Klaus, Mehmet was not the dynamic or the visionary, but more the technocrat rallying the community behind the interreligious partnership. In other words, he became the ideal middleman between the local Muslim community, the churches, civil society, the different state authorities and the media in the aftermaths of the 2007 German Islam conference and other subnational and Islam-related round tables in Lower Saxony, which focused on the question of how to incorporate Muslim minorities through treaties and local partnerships. 3.6.3 Local Media Rapport Local journalists knew Klaus and Mehmet personally, as is reflected in their frequent reporting about interreligious and separate initiatives (e.g. school visits, Ramadan-related events, articles about Quran classes and profiles of mosque members). This was complemented by interreligious interviews,

Provincializing Dialogue  81 conferences and invitations to media offices (‘Flurfest’) being recognized for their contributions to Fromberg’s civil society. Klaus and Mehmet’s interreligious initiatives were regarded by local journalists as ‘serious reporting events’ (‘seriöse Berichtanlässe’) and in one instance were described as ‘an adventure to get to know each other’. In the tight-knit, informal and provincial context of Fromberg, the local media became part of the governance network, signalling to the public that the post-secular coalition is a reliable mediator during religious and ethnic conflicts. So far, I have described the history of the post-secular alliance as well as two of its main protagonists. The next section includes additional actors such as the mayor, party politics and other social and political processes in the analysis.

3.7 The Benefits, Obligations and Internal Tensions of Network Governance According to Boissevain ([1968] 2013), small-town networks provide material benefits (e.g. jobs, money) and immaterial advantages (e.g. contacts), influence behaviour through ‘unexpected requests for support, help or information’, offer protection by providing advanced warnings and leak information to opponents to weaken the network. Through Klaus’ political standing and religious affiliations, he was able to exert an influence both within and outside the post-secular constellation in Fromberg. An aspiring politician summarized his influence admiringly: ‘Everyone here knows about his power, which also means that, if Klaus speaks up against someone or something, it can get uncomfortable’. During the refugee crisis, Klaus publicly campaigned to increase the number of refugees that Fromberg should accept and addressed the mayor in public. Other conservative CDU politicians were persuaded to support projects because of his public prestige and shared religious affiliation, which balanced out the party’s critical stance towards immigration and Islam. In addition, Klaus had to rely on the support of the Protestant mainline church, by far the largest religious institution in the region, especially when collaborating with Muslims. Without the Protestant support, he feared that his initiatives would be seen as ‘collusion’ between the two religious minorities, while local Protestant leaders welcomed the network and Klaus’ brokerage as allowing them to access the new practice of cooperating with Muslims when the topic increased in its social relevance. Regarding the mosque partnership with Mehmet, Klaus refrained from calling it a ‘friendship’, and called it instead an ‘instrumental’ and ‘winwin relationship’: Mehmet would join Klaus’ initiatives at short notice (‘often unprepared’), which strengthened Klaus’s authentic reputation as religious community broker, while Mehmet saw Klaus as an important ally who could help him realize certain mosque-related projects, such as finding a new building. Fromberg’s CDU mayor, who was occasionally part of the post-secular alliance, had become irritated by the debate of the

82  Arndt Emmerich new mosque since 2011, demanding that Muslims should unite in a central all-inclusive mosque: ‘We can’t find a location for each [ethnic] group. There is a Bauboom [‘building boom’], and many families want to build houses. So we can’t build only churches and mosques’. He also expressed his disapproval of ‘a [potentially] ten-meter tall minaret and oriental dome’, and was in favour of having a new mosque built in the industrial area in the outskirts of Fromberg instead. Given these political obstacles, Klaus provided full support to the mosque committee, offering to speak to the mayor, to accompany Mehmet to city-council meetings and to help produce an inoffensive design. In addition, Klaus publicly criticized the mayor’s plan to outsource the mosque to an industrial zone (‘you belong in the centre’) and suggested instead a landmark area, next to Fromberg’s town hall and largest church, which he envisaged marketing as ‘a symbolic space for interreligiosity’. This meta-governance through public guidance and mutual network obligations was also extended to the mosque, when in 2015 the committee was publicly reprimanded for catering insufficiently for the needs of the arriving refugees.11 Klaus asked Mehmet in a public forum, ‘when are you guys ready to take up your social responsibility?’ He also stressed in a subsequent newspaper interview that ‘most of them [refugees] are Muslims. You [the mosque committee] can give them a religious home, and they would appreciate your support’. This was echoed by another church leader, who hoped that, through sustained network cooperation, the church would teach the mosque about institutional responsibility: ‘If they want to be fully part of the society, they have to get their head around these issues: German law, legal constructs, transparent communication […] so that they also see that it is not easy to become an official partner’. Eventually, the mosque became more proactive through donation campaigns, activities during Ramadan and invitations to refugee children to attend the mosque’s youth programmes. These internal tensions and the changing roles of key protagonists and institutions show the fluid nature of post-secular network governance, in which partners, including mayors, can become internal opponents, while on other occasions becoming indispensable allies to defend a project or a minority group in public. 3.7.1 Intensifying Network Relations With intensifying network relations, the mosque committee was occasionally obliged to open its doors for interreligious events and mutual visits between the different faith communities. These in-house events were seen as ‘achievements’ (‘Errungenschaften’) by the network, especially if nonMuslim women spoke inside the mosque. Attendees recalled their impressions of a mosque-based event: ‘That was a big deal for them’, or ‘they had to jump over their own shadows’.12 Such obligations by network partners and Klaus’s CEO-like leadership, which aimed at maximizing publicity, could overwhelm and overburden the mosque and church congregations.

Provincializing Dialogue  83 A mosque member described to me the power imbalance and feeling of inferiority when dealing with someone like Klaus: ‘In theory it might be possible to sit at the same table as equal partners, but the reality is that he has a theology degree and 30 years of experience’. Most of the political and religious network partners had to decide internally whether and how to justify the cooperation, which could at times disrupt relations and jeopardize network operations. Interestingly, no demands to ‘open up’ were raised with the many Baptist and other evangelical communities in Fromberg, which were frequently described as extremely insular by policy-makers during our conversations. When a leader of the Protestant mainline church was asked in 2015 whether he was worried about the isolation of some of the smaller Christian communities, his defensive response indirectly revealed the different expectations the public imagination had for Muslims and Christians: ‘No! This is part of our liberal society. Nor would we ask the scouts to talk constantly to footballers or hunters’. In some instances, actors used the network for what Galembert (2005) called ‘personal appropriation’ to advance their own social standing, which could be met with resistance both from their partners and within their own support base. For instance, a local leader of the Green Party complained that the SPD was inviting its national leadership to Fromberg and publicly showcasing a prominent interreligious youth project, thereby ignoring an internal agreement not to involve the media. Similarly, Mehmet’s legitimacy as chairman and official representative within the mosque community was partially eroded due to his neglect of internal affairs and extensive external commitments. Mehmet also used the network’s channels of communication with local politicians, civil-society actors and journalists to promote his newly founded commercial business, including placing advertisements for his products in the social media, newspaper articles and interreligious events, which led to internal criticism. One mosque member described the envious and competitive atmosphere regarding status symbols in Fromberg: ‘Muslims are wealthier [compared to those in the larger cities]. They are more materialistic, always busy shopping, getting new furniture and cars…. But then there are all these informal small-town networks. Everyone knows everyone else and knows what others are up to’. Similarly, Klaus was criticized for his media-driven interfaith events and ‘commercialized branch of religiosity’, in which he combined sermons with calls for donations and fund-raising campaigns, which some church members perceived as disturbing. Despite this grassroots tension, the mosque committee acknowledged the importance of being protected through the network. One politician, who was asked about the DITIB mosque’s credibility during a meeting in Hanover, at a time when Turkish Imams were accused of spying on the Turkish regime’s political opponents in Germany in 2017, replied to his superior that ‘the committee is hundred percent local. They are not frauds’. Instead, the blame was deflected and passed on to the state level and national leadership

84  Arndt Emmerich of the DITIB and other Islamic associations. This was echoed by a mosque member, who said that, ‘By referring to Klaus, we could improve our image from being seen as un-cooperative to a more legitimate partner’. Through such friendship governance (Winkler 2017), which emphasizes the importance of local trust and personal relations, the local network was able to circumvent certain polarized macro-level debates. During the ‘spy affair’, the network’s protection was also enhanced by sensible and restrained reporting by local newspapers, as this headline indicates: ‘Fromberg’s Muslims are disturbed by them [external events]’. Shortly afterwards, the mayor symbolically visited the mosque for the annual remembrance of Gallipoli, and the network intensified its cooperation (e.g. a formal cooperation treaty was signed). Those in civil society and the city council who criticized the mosque were publicly rebuked for putting religious minorities generally under suspicion. Certain network partners, such as the mayor or members of the Green Party, were publicly attacked and even threatened by rightwing groups, which overlapped with the increasing influence of the far-right anti-immigration party, Alternative for Germany (AfD). For the incumbent CDU government in Fromberg, the network remained a delicate issue and raised concerns about losing vote share. The newly founded regional AfD branch frequently mobilized around the ongoing interreligious cooperation and described the post-secular network around Klaus, Mehmet and the mayor as their ‘natural opponent’, which was trying to ‘patronize normal people’. Similar views were expressed in an intercultural council debate, in which the post-secular alliance was criticized for insisting on ‘a neo-Nazi problem’ and thereby putting Fromberg in a negative light. Pätzold and Reimann (2018) have described such reactions in terms of their defence of the romantic notion of the idyllic and peaceful town, which can narrow the discourse around religious diversity and minority inclusion in provincial locations. However, the mayor benefitted politically by defending the mosque and the post-secular coalition in public and on social media, which evoked a positive appraisal from the state government in Lower Saxony. The DITIB’s state-level leadership in Hanover supported the local mosque, which applauded the committee for its interreligious efforts and in particular the relationship with Klaus (‘who does a lot of PR work for us’) and the local press. According to a DITIB state-level spokesperson, ‘[small town] local dialogue is important because it shows that the local level is still functional. We can fight at the federal and state level, but at the local level, at the grassroots, it has to work’. This is also mirrored in the current public relations strategies of the DITIB and other Islamic associations encouraging cooperation with local churches (‘bei Kirchen andocken’), and, as Nagel and Kalander (2021) have already noted, to focus specifically on small towns with ostensibly less resistance to Muslim community development. According to one interlocutor and supporter of the CDU, ‘Fromberg is a pragmatic town with many engineers and mechanics [due to the nearby industry]. You won’t find a left-wing social scientist here who’ll investigate

Provincializing Dialogue  85 [Fromberg’s] DITIB mosque–Ankara connection … In Hanover, it [churchmosque cooperation] would be polarized very quickly. Such pragmatism and the smaller intellectual environment [“keine Zeit-Leser”] has a calming influence’. The protective function of the network for the mosque community also becomes apparent when it is compared to events prior to the post-secular partnership in Fromberg. In 2006, the DITIB mosque was vandalized by anonymous attackers, and in 2003 attendees at Friday prayers were stopped and searched by the police outside the mosque due to heightened security concerns in the post-9/11 context. As no political, faith or civil-society alliance had been formed as yet, non-Muslim leaders refrained from defending the mosque in public. The lack of support was also mirrored in an angry comment by a Muslim eye-witness cited in a 2003 newspaper article: ‘Damn it. As if we are all terrorists. You won’t see such controls in front of churches on a Sunday’.

3.8 Secular–religious Competition The final section of this present account of interreligious collaboration embedded in a post-secular mode of governance concerns the competition between secular and religious (Fox 2019), highlighting the ongoing resistance to the de-privatization of religion and the post-secular alliance between state, civil society and religious actors in Fromberg. It shows that certain elements on the city council are advocating a return to a more mono-centric, ­ state-led integration policy, instead of a multi-level governance network. Referring to the recent proliferation of post-secular constellations in Fromberg, a local civil servant remarked irritably ‘What has been happening over the last ten years always existed here, but more naturally and informally, without labels and the media’. Prior to the intensified cooperation between church and mosque actors within the post-secular governance network in 2010, the city council had already established a long-standing concept of dialogue and integration. Fromberg’s integration officer, a Turkish Sunni Muslim, who was critical of religion in the public sphere, was the main broker in building effective working relations with different communities after 1993. In this context, civil servants dismissed the post-secular network as ‘cheap marketing’ and as providing ‘competition’ to their own social programmes for migrants, while French laicité or Seyran Ateş’ liberal Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque in Berlin13 were mentioned as positive examples of integration. After the emergence of the post-secular network, the city council thus continued to offer various parallel activities, such as the intercultural council – a forum in which religious and secular groups can convey concerns and needs to the local assembly leader – and the annual intercultural festival in the city centre. Religion was explicitly de-emphasized, as, according to a member of the intercultural council, ‘We call it “intercultural” and not

86  Arndt Emmerich “interreligious”, because of the secular structure of the city government. There have to be limits, especially when one religious group tries to impose on the others’. In 2015, the youth department (‘Stadtjugendförderung’) and integration officer started to organize a ‘secular’ iftar explicitly outside the mosque. The organizer noted that Fromberg’s international women’s group was interested in learning more about Ramadan and can now celebrate alongside the men, ‘which is not allowed in the mosque’. Members of the post-secular network, such as the mayor and Green Party members, attended both iftars, that held at the mosque and that organized by the city’s youth department. Recently, a female DITIB mosque member also attended the ‘secular’ iftar and held a speech, a demonstration of the blurred boundaries between these networks, but also a potential return to previous state-led brokerage, given the growing resistance from within the mosque towards the Church’s patronage under Klaus. In addition, city-council employees argued that the post-secular network has downplayed Kurdish-Muslim and other intra-Islamic tensions, which had already caused the departure of the Kurdish community from the DITIB mosque in the 1990s. The absence of other Muslim groups in the post-secular network has been justified by Church actors through the lack of resources. However, Kurdish community members complained that only DITIB is invited to the network. Past scholarship has been critical of the homogenizing tendencies of the post-secular governance and dialogue paradigm, which ignores the differences within religious categories (Tezcan 2006; Bender and Klassen 2010). Interestingly, within its own post-secular network the DITIB mosque is only included selectively and is not invited to take part in certain refugee-support or other initiatives, possibly because of its increasingly negative reputation nationally. In Fromberg, Kurds and Alevis continued to attend the city council’s programmes, such as the intercultural council, which they perceive as more accommodating to ethnic and religious diversity. This symbolic relevance of state-led advisory and intercultural councils as an expression of multi-level governance can improve relations between local governments and migrant representatives (Schiller, Martínez-Ariño and Bolíbar 2020; Moutselos and Schönwälder 2021). 3.8.1 Mosque Segregation Unlike its portrayal as a reliable dialogue partner within Fromberg’s post-secular network, civil servants associated the DITIB mosque with increasing ethno-religious segregation and as a ‘problem to be managed’, rather than a positive influence14 (Beckford 2015; Griera and Nagel 2018). In 2016, a report was published expressing grave concerns over deteriorating ‘interreligious relations’ in Fromberg, directly undermining the work of the post-secular network around Klaus. The report, which summarized the various observations of government employees, argued that vulnerable groups such as Muslim youth and women use state-led integration

Provincializing Dialogue  87 programmes less frequently, spending more time in the mosque instead. The report pressed for instant action to prevent further segregation, which resulted in the formation of a ‘Prevent’ coalition in the district. The perceived withdrawal of the mosque from the city council’s initiatives has been explained with reference to polarizing national and international developments, in particular the influence of Turkey. These observations were also taken up by a local newspaper in a neighbouring town (and thus outside the influence of the network), which linked it to youth radicalization and the increasing importance of fatwas in the mosque. Interviewees within the city council largely agreed with the report and criticized the church-led network for covering up broader structural and political tensions. One local policy-maker argued that ‘churches play an unfortunate role and lost their social compass. By desperately trying to retain their relevance, they endorse an illiberal coalition’. Similarly, current mosque partners such as the Green Party were equally concerned about the inward-looking turn of the mosque, with its possible implications for future cooperation. Correspondingly, Powell (1990, 305) argued that ‘each point of contact in a network can be a source of conflict as well as harmony’. However, the mosque committee did not withdraw entirely but in fact was an active member within the post-secular network, yielding tangible results and advancing Fromberg’s reputation as an ‘open city’. Due to limited resources, mosque officials may not have been able to commit themselves to both secular and religious brokers. Internal tensions within the post-secular network and the DITIB’s recent attendance at the ‘secular’ iftar also indicate that the mosque could become reconciled with the city council in the future.

3.9 Conclusion The chapter has scrutinized the emergence and internal workings of a post-secular governance network in the small town of Fromberg, which has dominated the public discourse on religious diversity over the past decade. The analysis showed how the network offered protection, political influence through personal relations and religious affiliation and committed partners to participate in activities in the public interest. While these findings confirm the post-secular city consensus that assumes the existence of alliances between the state and religious actors to improve social relations and assist local municipalities, the chapter also identified a significant counter-current to the post-secular consensus: first within grassroots congregations, and second among elements in the city council arguing for a return to a state-centred modality regarding the governance of diversity, one that speaks to the literature on religious–secular competition. Most of the political and religious network partners in Fromberg had to decide internally whether and how to justify their cooperation with others, which could at times disrupt relations and risk network operations. This can be seen partly

88  Arndt Emmerich as an unintended consequence of the external rewards for religious actors to become brokers in the governance of religious diversity. By focusing on a small-town context, the chapter further aimed to contribute to the emerging literature on the governance of religious diversity and interreligious dialogue beyond metropolitan areas. The analysis indicated that the self-regulated and highly interpersonal work of church and mosque brokers yielded a plethora of tangible and highly publicized outcomes, but it also contributed to a selective chain with exclusive channels to local officials deciding over access and participation. More systematic research on networks going beyond importance and efficiency is needed in studying religious diversity governance in rural and small-town locations that map out and evaluate various levels of partnerships, coalitions and community and institutional ties. A recent example of that kind is a comparative research project at the University of Göttingen that studies the ‘networking activities of religious immigrant communities in rural areas’ and ‘how these communities interact with the local environment’.15 Given the emphasis on the importance of trusted networks and intimate bonds within small-town and provincial locations, revisiting the earlier work of political anthropologists on brokerage can potentially yield new insights. Jeremy Boissevain ([1968] 2013, 120) already stressed the fluid and temporal character of network constellations, which may ‘dissolve when the central ego [broker] vanishes from the social scene or changes his [or her] mood’. Instead of focusing on a static institutional analysis, Boissevain reminds us that social relations are constantly being rearranged due to changing personal and structural factors. This could be observed in Fromberg, including the retirement of key brokers, mosque and city-council elections, the departure of trusted journalists, youth volunteers leaving for university and various changes in the national and international arena of politics. This underlines the importance of adopting a long-term research perspective on the governance of religious diversity.

Notes 1 The research leading to these results has received funding from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity as well as the European Research Council (ERC) Start-up Grant: European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement no. [337108]. I would like to thank the organizers and participants of the workshop ‘Governing “Islam” on a local level in Europe: challenges of the dialogue paradigm’ at the University of Erlangen in February 2020. I am grateful for the useful comments on my work by Stefan Beljean, Artem Galushko, Laura Haddad, Tobias Heidenreich, Matthias Koenig, Sinem Ilseven, Julia Martínez-Ariño, Giulia Mezzetti, Alexander-Kenneth Nagel, Andreas Pott, Gülay Türkman, Peter van der Veer and Jan Winkler. 2 The original name has been changed to Fromberg. To ensure confidentiality and anonymity, the names and other identifying details of respondents and locations have also been changed or omitted.

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90  Arndt Emmerich reformation process and a longing for peace and reconciliation, which is now demanded of religious minorities (especially Muslims) (Özyürek 2019). Protestant leaders stressed that churches dealt with their complicity during the Nazi regime through introspection and self-criticism. They then demanded that Muslims should follow the Christian example to start a similar reformation by renouncing violence and anti-democratic sentiments (Klinkhammer 2011). 13 The mosque inaugurated in 2017 is known for opposing gender segregation during congregations, allowing women to lead prayers, and being inclusive of LGBTQ Muslims, which attracted substantive criticism from conservative Islamic authorities around the world. 14 This was echoed by an irritated civil servant in Fromberg’s integration department: ‘The mosque is incompatible with the structure of a local administration. They always meet in the evenings, which is fine for a few times, but after a while you can’t be bothered to sit in the mosque from 8pm to 10pm […] With them, we have to build personal relations [or networks], which state structures often won’t allow’. 15 PRO*Niedersachsen funds projects on Religious Immigrant Communities in Rural Areas; See URL: https://uni-goettingen.de/en/631113.html (accessed: 20.12.2019).

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92  Arndt Emmerich Klinkhammer, Gritt. 2011. Interreligiöse und Interkulturelle Dialoge mit MuslimInnen in Deutschland: Eine Quantitative und Qualitative Studie. Bremen: Universität Bremen. Klinkthammer, Gritt. 2019. “Der Interreligiöse Dialog als Boundary Work.” Zeitschrift Für Religionswissenschaft 27 (1): 78–102. Körs, Anna. 2018. “How Religious Communities Respond to Religious Diversity: From Interreligious Dialogue to Interreligious Relations, Contacts and Networks.” In Religion and Dialogue in the City: Case Studies on Interreligious Encounter in Urban Community and Education, edited by Julia Ipgrave, Thorsten Knauth, Anna Körs, Dörthe Vieregge, and Marie von der Lippe, 23–54. Körs, Anna. 2019. “Contract Governance of Religious Diversity in a German CityState and Its Ambivalences.” Religion, State & Society 47 (4, 5): 456–473. Körs, Anna, and Alexander-Kenneth Nagel. 2018. “Local ‘Formulas of Peace’: Religious Diversity and State-Interfaith Governance in Germany.” Social ­Compass 65 (3): 346–362. Laurence, Jonathan. 2011. The Emancipation of Europe’s Muslims: The State’s Role in Minority Integration. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Martikainen, Tuomas. 2013. “Multilevel and Pluricentric Network Governance of Religion.” In Religion in the Neoliberal Age, edited by Gauthier François and Tuomas Martikainen, 129–142. Farnham: Ashgate. Martínez-Ariño, Julia. 2019. “Governing Religious Diversity in Cities: Critical ­Perspectives.” Religion, State and Society 47 (4, 5): 364–373. Moutselos, Michalis, and Karen Schönwälder. 2021. “The Immigrant Presence in Collaborative Structures of Urban Politics.” Governance 35 (1): 303–321. Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth. 2019. “Empowerment or Oligarchisation? Interfaith Governance of Religious Diversity in Two German Cities.” In The Interfaith Movement, 104–121. Routledge. Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth, and Mehmet Kalender. 2021. “Religiöse Pluralisierung in Klein-und Mittelstädten.” Forum Wohnen und Stadtentwicklung, Schwerpunkt Religion und Stadt 1: 11–14. Özyürek, Esra. 2019. “Muslim Minorities as Germany’s Past Future: Islam Critics, Holocaust Memory, and Immigrant Integration.” Memory Studies, 15 (1): 139–154. Pätzold, Ricarda, and Bettina Reimann. 2018. “Positionspapier: ‘Integration in Bewegung bringen’ – Die Handlungsfähigkeit von Klein- und Mittelstädten stärken.” In Vielfalt Gestalten: Integration und Stadtentwicklung in Klein- und Mittelstädten, edited by Bettina Reimann, Gudrun Kirchhoff, Ricarda Pätzold, and Wolf-Christian Strauss, 29–41. Berlin: Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik. Powell, Walter W. 1990. Neither Market nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of ­Organization. Research in Organizational Behaviour, 12, 295–336. Puskeppeleit, Jürgen, and Dietrich Thränhardt. 1990. Vom Betreuten Ausländer zum Gleichberechtigten Bürger. Freiburg: Lambertus. Reimann, Bettina, Gudrun Kirchhoff, Ricarda Pätzold, and Wolf-Christian Strauss. 2018. Vielfalt Gestalten: Integration und Stadtentwicklung in Kleinund Mittelstädten. Berlin: Deutsches Institut für Urbanistik. Schiller, Maria, Julia Martínez-Ariño, and Mireia Bolíbar. 2020. “A Relational Approach to Local Immigrant Policy-Making: Collaboration with Immigrant Advocacy Bodies in French and German Cities.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 43 (11): 2041–2061.

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Part II

The Materialities of Interreligious Encounters

4

Architectures of Tolerance Muslims, Alevis and the Impossible Promise of Berlin’s House of One Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering

4.1 Introduction1 In 2011, representatives of a Protestant, a Jewish and a Muslim community decided to construct a building at a prominent location in Berlin’s Mitte district that would unite a church, a synagogue and a mosque under one roof. Since then, images and visualisations of the architectural design have circulated in transnational publics. In the process, the design of the House of One has been evaluated and commented on, and often praised for its affective radiance. 2 It was exhibited at the Chicago Architecture Biennale in 2015 and at the Centquatre Cultural Centre in Paris in 2017, while in 2020 London’s prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum of Design acquired a model of it for its collection. The organisers of the initiative also showed the design in a temporary pavilion at the construction site as part of various actions directed at children under the title ‘Young House of One’ (2017), in a vernissage dedicated specifically to the presentation of the building material (fired bricks) (2020), as well as on numerous other occasions. In public debates, architectural projects such as the House of One are often credited with the ability to positively influence interreligious relations through encounters and the reduction of group-related prejudices, thus contributing to peaceful coexistence in a society marked by segregation, racism and violence. In this respect, even at the model stage, architecture contributes to popularising the idea and practice of interreligious dialogue, of which the House of One has been fashioned as a material expression. It thus holds out the promise of giving material form and aesthetic expression to the endeavour of peaceful coexistence (Burchardt and Haering 2021). Our contribution seeks to question a number of unspoken assumptions on which such attributions are based, in particular the notions that interreligious dialogues are desirable in themselves, that religious communities enter them on equal terms and, most importantly, that they are indeed capable of positively influencing mutual perceptions and cultural boundaries (Lamont and Molnár 2002) within urban populations. However, the extent to which this is indeed the case has hardly been explored sociologically. Drawing on sociological conceptualisations of the relationship between interreligious

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-7

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98  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering dialogues, power and urban spaces, our chapter uses the example of the House of One to examine how interreligious dialogues are socially perceived and how the different social positions of religious actors in the cultural hierarchies of urban spaces are articulated in their perceptions. With this chapter, we make two conceptual interventions. First, we suggest that the positionings made in conflicts over interreligious dialogues reveal such cultural hierarchies in particularly salient ways and thus also draw attention to blind spots in the dialogue paradigm. As explained in detail below, these blind spots lie primarily in the multiple, unanticipated backlashes that interreligious dialogues face as processes that are necessarily regimented and exclusionary. Like the ray of light that is refracted in a prism, the promise of architecture thus reveals the multiple fragmentations of urban society. Second, we argue that multi-religious architecture does not necessarily fixate the cultural meanings that its initiators – interfaith activists, architects, the jury – envisaged. It follows that materiality does not forestall the meaning-making processes of interreligious dialogues. On the contrary, material artefacts become surfaces for the projection of criticism and discursive struggles.

4.2 The House of One The idea for the construction of the House of One arose in the context of the reassignment of the building plot on Berlin’s Petriplatz to the local church community in the 1990s. On the square, which is considered one of the sites of the founding of Berlin, five different church buildings have existed since 1230. The last of these buildings was severely damaged during World War II, after which it was approved for demolition in 1960. The square was subsequently inserted into a multi-lane street ensemble in accordance with the guidelines of modernist urban planning and is currently surrounded by multiple urban renewal projects. Until the establishment of the foundation House of One – Bet- und Lehrhaus Berlin in 2016, the project was supported by an association of the same name, in which are represented the state of Berlin, the congregation of St. Petri from the Protestant side, the Abraham-Geiger Kolleg Potsdam from the Jewish side and the Forum für Interkulturellen Dialog from the Muslim side. The participation of this Islamic organisation, which is closely related to the movement of the controversial Turkish-American lay preacher Fethullah Gülen, has repeatedly provoked public criticism from the outset, especially, but not exclusively, on the part of Muslim umbrella organisations. In 2019, this criticism led one of the main sponsors, the Dussmann company, to resign publicly from the foundation’s board. In 2012, the foundation House of One association launched an architectural competition, from which the design of the architectural firm Kuehn und Malvezzi emerged as the winner. Kuehn and Malvezzi’s architectural model is characterised by its cuboidal form, staggered heights and large surfaces of brickwork. Constructed

Architectures of Tolerance  99 on three floors, visitors can enter the building through the three entrance doors inserted in different sides. Upon reaching the cylindrical reception area, they descend into the basement, which displays the archaeological remains of the historical churches. By making the excavation sites visible, history remains open for visitors. The walls that enclose the archaeological area exactly follow the wall of the neo-Gothic church building of 1853. As an example of public archaeology, the basement is meant to exhibit and make tangible the Christian beginnings of Berlin, while the ground floor seeks to give material shape to the idea of the city as contemporary and religiously diverse. The House of One therefore highlights both the Protestant and urban material remnants as heritage, even as it engrafts them on to the interreligious structure that supersedes them. Ascending from the archaeological basement, visitors pass through the reception area on a spiral staircase into the central space, a two-storey domed hall at the heart of the building that functions as a space of encounter and invites visitors to linger in contemplation. Making reference to the stylistic features that are common to all three religions, the domed space is punctuated through light apertures and is chiefly illuminated by natural light from above (Figure 4.1).

Figure 4.1 Brüderstrasse Main Entrance. © Kuehn Malvezzi, Visualisation: Davide Abbonacci.

100  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering Since then, these three religious organisations have engaged in a variety of activities, such as interreligious meditations, information events, interreligious city tours, joint peace prayers and mourning services, which often refer to recent events such as terrorist attacks. At the same time, they popularise the project through public discussions in places such as the stadium of the Bundesliga soccer team Union Berlin, the police headquarters and the German Theatre, where aspects specific to each target group (cohesion, violence, etc.) are addressed. While the House of One thus had an impact on urban space even before it was built, these activities are consistently framed as events and are visually documented and visualised in photos and video recordings, which are shared on the House of One’s social media channels and which increase media attention to transnational publics. In the process, the shift of events to virtual spaces forced by the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the House of One’s digital eventisation.

4.3 Interreligious Dialogues In sociological research on the relationship between religion and the city, multi-faith spaces are gradually becoming the focus of attention (Burchardt and Giorda 2022). Multireligious spaces such as the House of Religions in Bern, the Campus of Religions in Vienna, the House of Religions and Cultures in Munich and the House of One in Berlin are closely linked to the rise of interreligious dialogue as a social mode of the internal structuring of the religious field and the governance of religion. As a field-specific articulation of the dialogue paradigm that has come to be deployed as a ‘political technique’ (Tezcan 2012, 35) and that profoundly shapes processes of peace-building, the management of ethnic and interstate conflicts and collective trauma work worldwide, interreligious dialogues are sites for negotiating the boundaries between religious traditions, for the symbolic pursuit of interests and for religious lobbying (Nagel and Kalender 2014, 96, 97; Nagel 2019). Multi-faith spaces give these functions visibility, discursive prominence and an aesthetic material form. As a variety of studies have shown, the prominence of interreligious dialogues has greatly increased in recent decades, to the extent that the role of religion in social integration has gained public attention and promoted multiple interests in European societies (Körs et al. 2020). In this context, interreligious dialogues emerge both from local contacts and, in a top-down format, from state initiatives, as well as being used in local conflict resolution and mediation processes, in public political rituals aimed at representation, in peace education and in international diplomacy (Griera and Forteza 2013, Griera 2020). While state interests in interreligious dialogues are closely related to the securitisation of religion, especially Islam, in the context of the fight against terrorism, religious groups use interreligious platforms to lobby for their own interests (religious freedom, participation in political decision-making) (Griera and Nagel 2018, 30; Martikainen 2013, 141).

Architectures of Tolerance  101 In public discourses, multifaith spaces are often praised as places of encounter, symbols of interreligious harmony and solidarity, and examples of peaceful coexistence, standing for hierarchy-free ‘encounters at eye level’ and thus as counter-models to social environments that are characterised by collective prejudice, group-based discrimination and racism (see Griera et al. 2019). It is often not fully appreciated that, despite the deliberative procedures underlying the management of multi-religious spaces, the actors involved in them are positioned very differently in the cultural hierarchies of Western migration societies and their urban spaces (Burchardt 2019, 2022). These positionings have a significant impact on the way multireligious spaces are perceived in society, both by the populations that claim to represent such spaces (more or less explicitly) and those that are excluded from them. Our contribution explores the ways in which these positionings are documented in the perceptions of interreligious relations in urban spaces and how multi-religious spaces such as the House of One are perceived by residents of different religious affiliations. What cultural logics are expressed in these perceptions, and to what extent do they question dominant public understandings of interreligious dialogue (Tezcan 2012; Amir-Moazimi 2011)?

4.4 Methodological Approach In our study, we contrast and compare the perspectives of three groups of actors positioned differently in urban space: historically dominant religious actors (Protestant Christians), numerically significant but socially stigmatised groups (Sunni Muslims) and actors who are numerically significant but not represented in the House of One (Alevis). Protestant Christians, who initiated the House of One, are the historically dominant religious community in Berlin. They are particularly prominent in the urban space with their solitary church buildings and have an established network of civil-society organisations that routinely interact with state agencies. Nonetheless, Berlin’s Protestant Church has experienced a massive loss of members in recent decades, which has tended to weaken its social position. Our reconstruction of the Protestant perspective is based on interviews with a Protestant pastor, Protestant representatives of the House of One and two employees of a Protestant city tour company.3 Sunni Islam has been present in Berlin primarily since the immigration of guest workers from Turkey, which began in 1961, and it has since undergone a lengthy process of institutionalisation and regularisation. Nevertheless, Muslims are subject to considerable social restrictions, which can be seen in their continued marginal representation in the cityscape (Jonker 1997), their surveillance and partial stigmatisation in the context of anti-terror campaigns, and more widespread official distrust of Muslim actors. Sunni Muslims are formally involved in the House of One through the organisation Forum for Intercultural Dialogue, which itself, however, is highly

102  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering marginalised among Sunnis in Berlin. The empirical material used here consists of a group discussion conducted with students of Islamic theology. The presence of Alevism in Berlin also stems from the migration of guest workers from Turkey, but it was significantly strengthened by a series of antiAlevi massacres in Turkey and subsequent flights of Alevis. These massacres and the stigmatisation of Alevism in Turkey also determine the mutual perceptions of Alevi and Sunni Muslims in Berlin. While Alevis are hardly noticeable in the cityscape, Alevism in Germany has achieved a historically unique process of institutional recognition over the last 25 years (Sökefeld 2015). Alevis tend to be perceived more positively by the state’s authorities than Sunni Muslims, and they themselves have a comparatively positive image of the German state. With approximately 70,000 members in Berlin, Alevis are one of the numerically strongest ethno-religious groups, but they are not represented in the House of One. We interviewed a group of Alevi community members who are involved in the Berlin Cemevi.4 The Muslim and Alevi groups we interviewed are not themselves actively involved in the House of One. The selection was oriented towards the anchoring of religious actors in Berlin’s urban space. 5 The study is based on our interpretation of individual, problem-centred interviews and group discussions with members of these religious groups.

4.5 Empirical Findings: Blind Spots In the following analysis, we identify five ‘blind spots’ in interreligious dialogues and show how these positions, briefly outlined here, are documented in the perspectives on the House of One as a focal point of interreligious encounters. By ‘blind spots’, we mean the generally uninterrogated assumptions which underwrite the scripting of interreligious dialogues. 4.5.1 Blind Spot 1: Prominence Generates Backlash One theme that runs like a thread through the discussions surrounding the House of One is the aspect of the visibility or invisibility of religion in urban space. As we will show in the following, for Protestants visibility is connected with the aesthetic and political prominence of the House of One and with the hope that this will contribute to revitalising the social relevance of Protestantism in the context of accelerating secularisation. It is precisely this wider public prominence of the House of One that is criticised by Sunni Muslims and Alevis, though from different perspectives, as it threatens to mask the multiple social stigmatisations that actually exist for both groups in everyday life. Instead of the quality of actual interreligious relations, critics suggest, this public visibility is often about multiculturalist ‘showmanship’, that is, about staged diversity as depoliticised performance (See also Walton 2015). In our interview, a Protestant pastor, Köhler,6 used the metaphor of the lighthouse in order to pinpoint how visibility can be understood as

Architectures of Tolerance  103 representative of relevance, impact and influence. Using this metaphor, he referred to a type of building the function of which is to provide orientation in the dark, to steer people in the right direction and to highlight a prominent location. The special function of the lighthouse comes to the fore when it is in the dark. If we transfer this image back to the context of the House of One as an interreligious building project in the centre of the capital Berlin, the role and task the church is assigned become apparent: in an urban culture that is largely perceived as secular, religion should provide orientation. In a figurative sense, the religious dimension thus brings brightness to an urban space that is understood as dark and lost. At the same time, the following passage from the interview with Pastor Köhler makes it clear that the term lighthouse contains a further meaning: I believe that on the official level it [the House of One] is making quite a fuss, so the officially responsible people on the city council level and so on, of course all are co-sponsors, and I have the feeling it is making a lot of movement also beyond Berlin, in all of Germany. This is really a lighthouse project, I would say, where many people also come to ask, can we perhaps adopt this in some way for our city, this project? What experiences have you had, what would you advise us to do?7 Köhler used the term ‘lighthouse project’ here in a context that allows it to be interpreted as a synonym for ‘pilot project’ and pointed out that the House of One is a project that ‘makes a lot of fuss’, i.e., it triggers novel and controversial processes and discussions. In addition, he emphasised the pioneering role of the project, both on the regulatory level and with regard to its associated function as a role model for projects in other places. Implicit in this is also the idea that Berlin – known for its innovative and cosmopolitan reputation – is the appropriate place for such a project and that the metropolis is a step ahead of the provinces in terms of progressiveness. Visibility in this context is accordingly seen as sensational, inspiring and consistently positive. Thus, Köhler opined: As I said, this is such a symbolic place of radiation into the city. And if it works there and becomes publicly visible, then it will also work elsewhere. So, I think that’s the great hope of celebrating it so publicly and making the whole thing very public, so that you can also show and say, hey, people what otherwise often happens in the media, that many conflicts are only because we religious representatives can’t get along, we prove it at this place: it can be done differently.8 The accent in this chapter is on media attention and the urban visibility of the House of One, which is contrasted with the media presentation of religious conflicts as a negative foil and can also radiate positively into the urban space through lived interreligious cooperation. However, the

104  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering perspective focuses – one could also say narrows – this visibility on the role of religious elites. While the quotation expresses the hope that religious representatives, contrary to what the media discourse suggests, will cooperate positively here in an exemplary way, questions concerning the notions of religious difference with which people encounter each other in everyday life recede into the background. The fact that the issue of problems related to interreligious encounters in everyday life is not even touched upon in such portrayals was criticised again and again by non-Christian interview partners. As we show below, prominence and visibility, as two of the project’s main characteristics, have repeatedly become targets of criticism. 4.5.2 Blind Spot 2: Visibility Is a Contested Good and Generates Competition In our interviews, the visibility of the House of One, generated as it was by both media coverage and its spectacular architecture, was critically contrasted with the perceived visibility of one’s own religious community in everyday life. This was so because for minorities visibility also indexes the possibility of marking religious differences in urban spaces. While Protestant interviewees noted that the cultural heritage of the Protestant church is at risk of being forgotten and that Christian symbols are increasingly being ignored in urban spaces, Muslims emphasised that the visibility of houses of worship varies in conspicuousness depending on the city or district. The visibility of religion is not only related to perceptions of buildings and material symbols, but also to the presence of religious practices in urban space. In particular, Muslims emphasised that even high holidays such as Ramadan were hardly perceptible in public space. While they regretted religious celebrations taking place primarily behind closed doors, in other moments in our interviews the focus was on individual practices of prayer. While praying in the public space of a small town can be perceived as alienating and irritating, the Muslim group agreed that the anonymity of the big city ensures less disturbing attention in this regard. Nevertheless, even in cities like Berlin, the lack of prayer rooms in public institutions, such as universities, leads to problematic forms of visibility from Muslims’ perspective. For example, one interviewee said, ‘I mean, that’s just how you see people praying somewhere in some corner in the university, I always find that a bit undignified, I don’t know. […] These are then also protest prayers – I personally find something like that a bit dicey’.9 Another group member added: ‘The students themselves don’t actually like it in the corners. And others then feel disturbed because you have blocked some area’.10 The group members focused on the practical problems arising from religious uses of urban spaces, and from this perspective too the House of One appears problematic, because it systematically leads away from such problems. While it stages symbolic interreligious encounters, social interactions in which practical spatial problems need to be addressed remain largely unarticulated.

Architectures of Tolerance  105 At the same time, the interviewees blamed individualised lifestyles and the overabundance of choices as reasons for the disinterest and lack of engagement in the field of urban religiosity. But how visible religion is certainly always has to do with how visibly one perceives it to be or whether one wants to perceive it. And I think people just don’t want to perceive religion at all, at least not perceive it differently than, I don’t know, other life trends or something.11 This short excerpt from our group discussion with Muslims makes it clear that the perception of religion in public space requires not only the presence of religious buildings, practices and symbols, but also the willingness of the urban population to notice them. Visibility is accordingly not to be treated as a one-sided phenomenon, but rather as a reciprocal process of showing oneself and being seen. This criticism of the lack of interest in the religious dimension of the urban space of Berlin was also evident in our interviews with the representatives of the Protestant Church. Both Muslims and Protestants attested to the fact that Berlin is a city that fundamentally views religion with distance and scepticism. The perception of Berlin as a multicultural, but in public predominantly secular or atheistic city also ensures, in both interpretations, that religious symbols are consciously or unconsciously ignored in everyday life as people move through the urban space. This became particularly clear in the interview with representatives of a Protestant city tour company, which offers walks through Berlin with a sharpened view of religious places. Through their work, they sought to develop a more attentive perception of historically and religiously significant sites and symbols through appropriate tours of the city: And beyond that, there’s so much in Berlin that’s unbelievable, and now I’m walking or riding my bike through the city in a really completely different way, and suddenly I think “You’ve already passed it so many times, and here’s the memorial plaque for Hans Rosenthal” or Stolpersteine. Or “Oh, what kind of church is this?” or “Oh, look, here’s a really wacky religious community” or something like that.12 The abundance of religious (memorial) sites is, as they explained in another conversation, not least connected to the fact that ‘Christianity has had a very strong influence on German history, particularly in Berlin’.13 Here it becomes apparent once again that the visibility and perception of religions in urban space are connected with the social position and recognition attributed to the particular religion. Protestant Christianity, for example, has a long tradition with associated material stock, as well as cultural influence, while representatives of other religions, especially Islam, draw their relevance from their large memberships and their claims to social participation. Judaism occupies a special position in this regard. Although it has a long tradition of cultural

106  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering significance in Germany, it is visible today in materialised form, primarily through memorials and places of remembrance, due to the expulsion and extermination of Jews under National Socialism. The fact that visibility and attention can have negative effects in addition to recognition and social relevance is, again, evident in the context of the marginalisation and discrimination of religious or social minorities. In our group discussion with Alevis, it was emphasised that the perception of religious symbols and the associated assignment of religious affiliation can have very direct consequences for those affected: It is stupid for me to go for a walk wearing Alevi or Christian or Jewish or any other symbols. Because what are you saying? You are saying that I belong to a group, and apparently the affiliation to a group is of immense importance, which has the consequence that you first exclude others. And at that point the joke is over for me, right? External characteristics say I am that, and what I am is good, but you don’t belong to me, and I find that very, very difficult.14 This passage shows how the wearing of religious symbols and the selfmarking associated with them also always simultaneously involves making differences and hierarchies visible. Particularly in the case of the Alevi community, this aspect also contains an experience of discrimination that goes hand in hand with their identification. The interviewees reminded us of their stigmatisation by Sunni Muslims whenever their affiliation with Alevism becomes visible. Accordingly, the criticism of wearing religious symbols in the above excerpt can be derived from their own position within the cultural and religious landscape of Berlin. Beyond that, however, it also includes the idea that religious self-symbolisations aim at distinction and exclusion. In this context, Alevis also raised the question as to who actually gains visibility and thus power and significance through a project like the House of One. Contrary to the attitude that the wearing of religious symbols per se is to be criticised, our Alevi interview partner felt that, in the case of supporters of the Gülen movement, outward appearances can be misleading: The Gülens are the biggest sect, a very thoughtful sect, a highly intellectual sect. All Gülen followers are academics on paper. The interesting thing about the Gülen movement is that they are hardly noticeable to the outside world, especially their women, because they don’t stand out. Very few of them wear headscarves, the men are mostly really chic men, very well-groomed men, [and] don’t stand out because of a beard or because of, somehow, don’t stand out at all.15 In connection with a very fundamental criticism of the Gülen movement, in particular of its strategies of recruiting members and exerting influence,

Architectures of Tolerance  107 the group emphasised that followers of the Gülen movement are ‘hardly noticeable’. While in another moment they argued that the outward assignment to a religion always means exclusion and hierarchisation, here they pointed out the danger of an optical illusion. Due to the lack of identifying features that are typical of professing Muslims, namely women wearing headscarves women and men beards, supporters of the Gülen movement are difficult to recognise as such. According to the interviewees, it is precisely this aspect of not being recognised that poses the danger that the movement’s religious agenda will not be perceived or taken seriously and that they will thus be able to exert unnoticed influence. This perspective also harbours a concern that, when selecting suitable partner organisations for the House of One, Protestants did not look closely enough to scrutinise what views and attitudes are hidden behind what at first glance appears to be a liberal religious movement. Visibility, as became clear in the interviews, can be interpreted both positively and negatively, depending on the context. From the position of a traditionally established faith community whose influence is still in danger of declining, a ‘lighthouse project’ with ‘radiant power’ promises to maintain social relevance and can be interpreted as an element of ‘place-keeping strategies’ (Becci et al. 2017). From the perspective of a religion like Islam, which can claim high membership numbers but is not socially accepted as an equal, visibility can be understood as a factor in the process of recognition. Promoting visibility through a project like the House of One does not automatically lead to equality, but can simultaneously make already marginalised communities and less prestigious projects invisible. This is especially the case for Sunni Muslims, who are formally represented in the House of One through the Forum Intercultural Dialogue. However, since the majority of Berlin’s (mostly Turkish-born) Muslims reject this organisation due to its ties with the Gülen movement, only Gülen supporters are included. In fact, from the point of view of the Sunni Muslims, the idea of Muslim inclusion has been perverted: despite their formal inclusion, they are not represented, but – from their point of view – misrepresented. 4.5.3 Blind Spot 3: Interreligious Dialogues and Interreligious Everyday Interactions as Divergent Problem Spaces When asked how they perceived interreligious life in Berlin, interviewees mainly referred to experiences and encounters in everyday life and to social projects. They emphasised that these everyday encounters could be interpreted as exemplary instances of interreligious cooperation. Especially in the interviews with Protestants, there were many everyday anecdotes that functioned as positive examples of lived diversity. It is particularly striking in this context that the Christian interviewees seemed to be positively surprised to be encouraged in their faith or religious practices by Muslims. The

108  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering Protestant pastor we interviewed, for example, told us of an encounter with a Muslim cab driver: I had this cab ride in Hamburg where a cab driver had to take me to a wedding. He was of Turkish origin, and he hugs me at the end and says ‘Keep talking about God, that’s very important in our time.’ And I think ‘How awesome is that?’ Yes, so to be hugged by a Muslim cab driver as a pastor, so to speak, and who motivates me to talk about God.16 First of all, this is a service interaction: the Protestant pastor is a passenger, the man of Turkish origin is the cab driver. This constellation highlights typically distributed social positions here. According to Hiebert et al. (2014), service interactions of this type exert a strong influence on intercultural perceptions and relationships. Through the telling of this small everyday story, the pastor highlighted his openness to encountering people of a different faith; at the same time, the story exposed differences in relation to the cultural milieu, making the almost intimate encounter seem all the more extraordinary. Central to the fraternisation that takes place is religiosity as a unifying commonality in a predominantly secular urban society. Instead of competition between different faiths, unity was emphasised here in the face of an unbelieving environment. Through the positive surprise at the emotional encouragement of the Muslim cab driver emphasised in the narrative, it becomes clear that the Protestant pastor had not expected such a benevolent reaction. Although he indirectly emphasises his own impartiality, the encounter was initiated by the cab driver. In this example, the reinforcement and recognition were initiated by the socially less recognised towards someone in a more established position and thus also crossed conventional power relations. This passage serves as an illustration of how direct and uncomplicated interreligious life can be in everyday life. Pastor Köhler repeatedly emphasised that he was convinced that ‘interreligious encounters are quite easy at the grassroots level’. This was also the case, for example, when he reported how he once invited a Turkish kiosk owner to the open day at the Berlin Cathedral en passent while he was shopping, and the shop owner actually accepted the invitation: Then, one of the cathedral guards came and said, quite excitedly: ‘Mr. Köhler, there are thirty people standing outside saying they have an appointment with you.’ I go outside, it’s the kiosk owner with his entire family, and he says ‘We wanted to visit you, you said it’s open day, show us the Berlin Cathedral.’ All Muslims!17 As we see, Christian representatives perceive everyday interreligious encounters at the ‘grassroots level’ as positive, largely uncomplicated and a valuable contribution to peaceful coexistence between religions. While

Architectures of Tolerance  109 the interviews with Protestants largely neglected the fact that interreligious encounters in everyday life can also be less peaceful or involve experiences of discrimination, Köhler emphasised the problems of interreligious contacts at the institutional level. As an example, he cited the fraught discussions over recruiting project partners for the House of One. Instead of dwelling on dogmas, he suggested, the focus should rather be on lived togetherness and the commonality of a belief in God. Also, in the group discussion with Muslims, a distinction was made between everyday and institutionally initiated interreligious encounters. While Muslims praised social projects of lived togetherness, they also criticised projects like the House of One: One thing I also think is really strange is that it comes from the top, and an elitist group of people says ‘We are going to build a mosque, and the city needs that et cetera.’ And that it doesn’t take such a natural course, as the community notices something is missing, and we need something, and out of necessity we all tackle it together, and do something.18 Central to this passage is the contrast between a lived community, understood as an expert in the practical togetherness of people of faith, and an (inter)religious elite without sufficient understanding of the wants and needs of community members. Since projects that are initiated ‘from above’ have not grown naturally in the interviewees’ perspective, they will have little influence on lived togetherness. By contrast, they are seen to remain on the symbolic level. Our Sunni interviewees felt that the House of One was chiefly about symbolic politics, based on an ‘instrumentalisation of religion’ for the purpose of gaining prestige. Projects initiated ‘from above’ such as the House of One are thus understood as an artificial alliance that suggests closeness and identity but actually deviates strongly from the ‘real’ circumstances and might not even be desired by the community. Countering such ‘projects from above’, Muslims and Alevis talked about initiatives in which people of different faiths actually meet and get to know each other at eye level and very directly. One participant in the group discussion with the Alevis reported on the following initiative: So, we had started a project at that time called ‘Building bridges for the future’. Mr. M. wrote it down, and I was responsible for its implementation, and we said, we see ourselves as a part of a pluralistic society, we have rights, but also duties. The Cemevi was rebuilt for all the surrounding schools, so to speak, as a place of learning, yes, rebuilt as a place of learning, especially for children from educationally disadvantaged homes – whether they are Christians, atheists, Hindus or whatever, they had the opportunity to get free lessons here, the mothers had

110  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering the opportunity to do German courses here, fathers and mothers had the opportunities to get lessons here. We said, we build bridges for the future. You can only build bridges by including everyone, if everyone can have a seat at your table. In this House of One, not everyone has a seat at the table, it is limited. That’s one thing, they build a bridge to each other but not to us, not to the others.19 In contrast to elitist projects such as the House of One, according to the interviewees, everyday interreligious encounters focus on matters of mutual interest and a willingness to be open to people of different faiths. In their view, the House of One does not go far enough in allowing for real diversity, and groups such as the Alevi community are not considered for it. It was also pointed out that existing interreligious projects are often based on the (voluntary) commitment of community members and rarely receive government or financial support or recognition. The following passage from a group discussion with members of a Muslim dialogue and education centre should also be understood against this background: Ultimately, this is symbolism, it is a sign, so to speak. But the real work of interreligious dialogue, which people have done for years, will also need to continue. So, it’s not like something has been achieved just because we have a building now, or that the work will become less now. Yes, personally I think it [the House of One, MB] is good, as I said, although I’m not necessarily a big fan of it. For example, a block away from here another mosque is built, just as an example, because here there are already some mosques in the area. So why not support these mosques? So, you’re also a bit on your own there, you don’t get any refinancing, state funding, for that […]. Yes, if it’s now just purely about symbolism, that’s not enough for me personally. 20 Here too, our interviewees drew a strong contrast between the symbolic power of the House of One and everyday interreligious practice. While the symbolic character of a combined mosque, church and synagogue is indeed valued as important and good, the interviewee clearly points out that it is not enough to leave it at a sign. One should not expect a symbolic project to guarantee peaceful coexistence immediately. Rather, the longstanding work of many people (many of them volunteers) in selforganised, everyday projects and their contribution to a peaceful interreligious urban community must be recognised and promoted. In the eyes of the interviewees, the public attention that the House of One receives not only risks overlooking the achievements of lesser-known actors, it also harbours the danger of an uneven distribution of funding and the appreciation expressed through it. The criteria used here by Protestants and Muslims to evaluate interreligious encounters offer a stark contrast. For Protestants, the symbolic power

Architectures of Tolerance  111 seems to push everything into the background. For Muslims, by contrast, the needs of communities are what matter most, hence the doubts that the House of One could establish itself as a place of prayer and meeting. Overall, two fundamental interpretations are thus opposed to each other. On the one hand, the House of One is seen as an important symbol of interreligious peace that will also have a positive effect on everyday life through its publicity and radiant force. On the other hand, it is emphasised that the House of One will compete with already existing projects at the grassroots level, displacing them from public attention and thus having a negative impact on their own recognition and promotion. 4.5.4 Blind Spot 4: Interreligious Dialogues Generate Representational Claims A very different critique of large-scale and state-sponsored interreligious projects was voiced in the group discussion with Alevis: Well, I think the idea of the House of One contrasts with the diversity of Berlin. In Berlin, if I’m not mistaken, there is a tableau at the Amerika-Haus, in Hardenbergstraße, which is the State Centre for Political Education and there is a, there is such a tableau, and it says, there are 168 faith and religious communities. The House of One actually suggests to me what the monotheistic world religions want […]. Are they the only three in the world? And what are the others – are they worth nothing? If I have 168 minus three, then the remaining 165 are nothing?21 While the Muslim interviewees mainly criticised the fact that the House of One project does not take into account the reality of life of many Muslim Berliners, they did not question the triad of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Alevi interviewees, by contrast, emphasised the strong divergence between the diversity of lived religions in Berlin and the faith communities represented in the House of One. 22 This focus on the three world religions, which are already the most powerful, runs the risk of suppressing religious diversity in terms of its perception and visibility in the public sphere. Especially from the point of view of Alevism, as an officially recognised but largely ignored religious community, this aspect has additional importance. The House of One, they argued, in fact contradicts the claim to be a symbol of religious diversity. Even if the representatives of the House of One repeatedly rejected the idea that they sought to represent religious diversity, they are nonetheless permanently confronted with claims regarding representation, claims they find hard to handle because of the prominence of the project. Moreover, the massive public funding of the project also makes it difficult to refuse such claims of representation.

112  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering 4.5.5 Blind Spot 5: Interreligious Dialogue Carries Ambivalent Symbolisms of Peace Protestants often argue that projects like the House of One provide an opportunity to raise the interreligious dialogues that already take place in everyday life to a qualitatively new level, one that ensures a high degree of publicity and thus also ‘urban peace’. One Protestant pastor said: There is another great hope in this place, that religions are important for urban peace and not just for urban discord. That’s how we see ourselves as Christians very much. So, we care about urban peace. That is one of our biggest headlines that we represent here. 23 In contrast, the Muslim interviewees criticised the fact that the focus on symbolic projects such as the House of One had the opposite effect, namely that existing, less sensational projects of interreligious life were pushed into the background. Alevis, in their turn, objected to the idea that a project such as the House of One symbolises peace between religions, arguing instead that peaceful coexistence would make such a house superfluous: ‘People who are peaceful need neither a religion nor a house of prayer’. 24 From this perspective, the House of One stands, if anything, for an attempt to appease the existing conflicts between religions. The Alevi idea of the redundancy of the House of One evokes an intriguing contrast with regard to the materialities of urban religion: on the one hand, the materiality of everyday encounters, which appears as fleeting, temporary and liminal; and on the other hand, the materiality of houses of worship, including ‘multi-religious places by design’ (Burchardt 2022), whose materiality tends to be imperial and spectacular, always aiming for iconicity and affective domination. For Alevis, it is precisely through the very materiality of the House of One, and in its future durability and permanence, that the building reminds them of conflict and closure rather than peace. The building may thus reify identities and relations of power, turning them into brick and cement. The fleeting materiality of encounters, on the other hand, is more capable of affectively bringing to life and experience diversity, transgression and change. In addition, we argue that these attitudes – pride on the one hand, scepticism on the other – can be explained in terms of the social positions of the respective religious communities. While the Protestant Church in Germany can look back on a long tradition of political influence, Muslims living in Germany and other faith communities have less powerful umbrella organisations or representations. However, all interviewees, regardless of their religious affiliations, agreed that the diversity and peaceful coexistence of different faith communities should be promoted and supported. Yet, to them it still seemed problematic that projects that are primarily symbolic in nature could mask real power relations

Architectures of Tolerance  113 and tend to reproduce those relations rather than dismantle them. It is perhaps ironic that, while urban sociologists and geographers with new materialist inclinations have spent much ink insisting on the autonomous causal force of material artefacts, all of our interlocutors seemed to read the House of One through the idiom of symbolism and representation. It is possible that this has to do with the fact that, at the time of our research (2020, 2021), the building was still under construction and the material basis of their perceptions were in fact representations – models, visual renderings, discourses.

4.6  Conclusion: The Ambivalence of the Symbolic In his analysis of architectural design processes, sociologist Thomas Gieryn (2002, 42) argued: Design is both the planning of material things and the resolution of sometimes competing social interests. […] The design process is simultaneously the representation of an artifact in graphic, verbal, or numerical form, and the enrolment or enlistment of those allies necessary to move the artifact toward material form. There is no question that perceptions and evaluations of the House of One will dynamically evolve after the actual construction of the building as a material artefact and focal point of interreligious relations. And yet, the ways in which the building generates social resonance even before its construction are highly remarkable. The articulation of these resonances reveals different social interests that, we argue, are intimately related to the different social positions of different religious communities. We would like to highlight three findings in this chapter that are central in this regard. First, we have shown in what ways references to the House of One and to interreligious dialogues make cultural hierarchies visible in urban societies. These are evident not least in the value placed on interreligious dialogues and iconic buildings such as the House of One. Protestants tended to perceive everyday interreligious interactions as unproblematic, and in any case they attached a high value to ‘high-profile’ interreligious projects, highlighting their own contributions to interreligious and social ‘peacekeeping’. ­Muslims and Alevis, in different ways, see everyday interreligious encounters in a more critical light, questioning whether ‘high profile’ – as opposed to locally based – interreligious dialogues address real problems, and doubting their value and utility. Or, to be more precise, they see everyday encounters as the locus of both conflicts and their solution, while remaining sceptical of solutions ‘from above’. Thus, while the House of One is meant to express and promote equal belonging in urban space – which it surely does – it also paradoxically makes urban hierarchies, inclusions and exclusions more visible (see also Griera and Burchardt 2021).

114  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering Second, as our analysis shows, multiple and partly competing meanings are assigned to the House of One through communicative practices. On the one hand, the House of One is interpreted as a place of interreligious encounter and mutual learning, as a beacon of tolerance with a special radiant power, and as a promise of a future of peaceful interreligious coexistence. On the other hand, it is also perceived and evaluated as exclusionary, elitist and detached from everyday interreligious encounters, as well as socially ‘disembedded’. Positive evaluations show strong references to official discourses, in which the House of One is semantically fixed as a ‘multiculturalist place’ (Walton 2015, 107) and in which dialogue is addressed as per se valuable and socially consequential (See also Astor et al. 2019). Nevertheless, as we have shown, critical evaluations challenged precisely these assumptions. We therefore argue that architecture does not necessarily fixate or reify the pre-designed cultural meanings that its initiators had in mind. Materiality, one could conclude, does not close the meaning-making processes of interreligious dialogues. Rather, materialisations become surfaces for the projection of critique and discursive disputes that also address the object itself – dialogues, the supposed monumentality of their architectural form, etc. Third, we have shown that divergences in the perception of the House of One are based on different assessments of its symbolic power, which are rooted in the social positions of the different religious actors. In the perspective of the actors, the term ‘symbol’ stands for (1) a ground-breaking representation of a value (‘symbol for peace’), (2) an empty, insubstantial political gesture (‘symbol politics’) and (3) a misleading or one-sided representation. It is no coincidence that Protestant representatives in particular repeatedly emphasise the first of these meanings, since the House of One allows them to publicly flag their initiation and participation in a highly relevant political process, namely the strengthening of social cohesion. One can see here how representatives of the Protestant church see themselves in a kind of state-bearing responsibility, which also reflects the close organisational ties between church and state. Conversely, it is precisely Muslims and Alevis who are critical of such a perspective in their own way, since for them the question automatically arises as to the extent to which such projects and dialogues actually have an influence on their experiences of stigmatisation and marginalisation in everyday life. In that sense, the ambivalence of architecture’s symbolic power consists in the fact that projects like the House of One are definitely read as critical responses to the marginalisation of religious minorities, through which they are also acknowledged, while at the same time they expose themselves to the suspicion of ‘whitewashing’ and of covering up the existing conditions. And the more interreligious tolerance is evoked in interreligious rituals, peace prayers and events, the stronger the contrast appears with an everyday reality of continued perceived stigmatisation in the eyes of marginalised actors. It is this tension between on the one hand

Architectures of Tolerance  115 the symbolisation of the promise of a tolerant future, yet to be created and captured in the medium of architecture, and the symbolisation of religious differences associated with social inequalities in the present on the other, which is expressed in a pointed way in perceptions of the House of One.25 The findings we have gathered partly coincide with other studies that have drawn attention to the exclusionary tendencies of interreligious dialogue (Baumann and Tunger-Zanetti 2018), boundary-drawing (Klinkhammer 2019) and the effects of interreligious buildings on neighbourly relations (Liljestrand 2018). Liljestrand’s study in particular has pointed to the fundamental importance of embedding multi-faith buildings in webs of local relationships. Largely unanswered, on the other hand, is the question of the extent to which architectural constructions, with their aesthetic codes and material forms, develop their own potentials in dealing with religious diversity in urban space. Architecture can create affective bonds if people perceive buildings as positive points of reference and if buildings are able, through the mobilisation of emotional and cognitive resources, to reinforce ‘affective atmospheres’ (Anderson 2009) within which the presence of diverse religious symbols, practices and identities is experienced as unproblematic and capable of being addressed. Buildings such as the House of One, with its formal architectural language and its urban prominence, will provide a particular opportunity to observe such dynamics.

Notes 1 This chapter is a reworked version of an article first published in German in the journal Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik under the title ‘Das Versprechen der Architektur: Schaffen multireligiöse Räume Toleranz?’ in 2021. 2 For a more detailed analysis of the affective qualities of urban religion, See Dilger et al. (2020). 3 Except for the employees of the city tour company, all Protestant interviewees were functionaries. 4 A Cemevi is an Alevi meeting place. In both group discussions, the people we contacted decided on the composition of the groups. 5 In the course of the study, the perspectives of other participants, especially Jews, and of non-participants who are important in terms of urban space, such as Catholics, will also be considered. The aim of sampling the analysis presented here was not completeness, but the criterion of contrast defined above. 6 All names are pseudonyms, thus preserving the identities of our interview partners. 7 Excerpt from interview with Pastor Köhler, conducted on November 15, 2019. 8 Excerpt from the interview with Pastor Köhler, conducted on November 15, 2019. 9 Excerpt from the group discussion with Muslims, conducted on January 20, 2020. 10 Excerpt from the group discussion with Muslims, conducted on January 20, 2020. 11 Excerpt from the group discussion with Muslims, conducted on January 20, 2020.

116  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering 12 Excerpt from interview with Protestant city tour company, conducted on November 15, 2019. 13 Excerpt from interview with Protestant city tour company, conducted on November 15, 2019. 14 Excerpt from the group discussion with Alevis, conducted on July 18, 2020. 15 Excerpt from the group discussion with Alevis, conducted on July 18, 2020. 16 Excerpt from interview with Pastor Köhler conducted on November 15, 2019. 17 Excerpt from interview with Pastor Köhler conducted on November 15, 2019. 18 Excerpt from the group discussion with Muslims, conducted on January 20, 2020. 19 Excerpt from the group discussion with Alevis, conducted on July 18, 2020. 20 Excerpt from the group discussion with Muslims (2), conducted on June 23, 2020. 21 Excerpt from the group discussion with Alevis, conducted on July 18, 2020. 22 On the divergent inclusion in urban politics and spaces of different kinds of religious minorities, see also Griera and Burchardt (2021). 23 Excerpt from interview with Pastor Köhler conducted on November 15, 2019. 24 Excerpt from the group discussion with Alevis, conducted on July 18, 2020. 25 From the perspective of comparative urbanism see also Burchardt (2021) on this point.

References Amir-Moazami, Schirin. 2011. “Dialogue as a Governmental Technique: Managing Gendered Islam in Germany.” Feminist Review 98 (1): 9–27. Anderson, Ben. 2009. “Affective Atmospheres.” Emotion, Space and Society 2 (2): 77–81. Astor, Avi, Marian Burchardt, and Mar Griera. 2019. “Polarization and the Limits of Politicization: Cordoba’s Mosque-Cathedral and the Politics of Cultural ­Heritage.” Qualitative Sociology 42 (3): 337–360. Baumann, Martin, and Andreas Tunger-Zanetti. 2018. “Constructing and Representing the New Religious Diversity with Old Classifications: ‘World Religions’ as an Excluding Category in Interreligious Dialogue in Switzerland.” In The Critical Analysis of Religious Diversity, edited by Lene Kühle, Jørn Borup and William Hoverd, 179–207. Leiden: Brill. Becci, Irene, Marian Burchardt, and Mariachiara Giorda. 2017. “Religious Super-diversity and Spatial Strategies in Two European Cities.” Current Sociology 65 (1): 73–91. Burchardt, Marian. 2019. “Religion in Urban Assemblages: Space, Law, and Power.” Religion, State and Society 47 (4, 5): 374–389. Burchardt, Marian. 2021. “Creating Religious Spaces in Cape Town, Barcelona and Montreal: Perspectives from Cultural Theory on the re-figuration of Spaces and Cross-cultural Comparison.”  Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 22 (2). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-22.2.3716. Burchardt, Marian. 2022. “Multi-Religious Places by Design: Space, Materiality, and Media in Berlin’s House of One.” In Geographies of Encounter: The Making and Unmaking of Multireligious Spaces, edited by Marian Burchardt and Mariachiara Giorda, 231–252. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Burchardt, Marian, and Johanna Haering. 2021. “Das Versprechen der Architektur: Schaffen Multireligiöse Räume Toleranz?” Zeitschrift für Religion, Gesellschaft und Politik 5 (1): 111–139.

Architectures of Tolerance  117 Burchardt, Marian, and Mariachiara Giorda. 2022. Geographies of Encounter: The Making and Unmaking of Multireligious Spaces. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dilger, Hansjörg, Marian Burchardt, Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, and Astrid Bochow. 2020. “Introduction: Affective Trajectories in Religious African Cityscapes.” In Affective Trajectories, edited by Hansjörg Dilger, 1–26. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Gieryn, Thomas F. 2002. “What Buildings Do.” Theory and Society 31 (1): 35–74. Griera, Mar. 2020. “Governing Religious Diversity Through Interreligious Initiatives: Affinities, Ambiguities and Tensions.” In Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Anna Körs, Wolfram Weisse and Jean-Paul Willaime, 89–102. Cham: Springer. Griera, Mar, and Maria Forteza. 2013. “New Actors in the Governance of Religious Diversity in European Cities: The Role of Interfaith Platforms.” In Religious Actors in the Public Sphere: Means, Objectives, and Effects, edited by Jeffrey Haynes and Anja Hennig. New York: Routledge. Griera, Mar, and Alexander-Kenneth Nagel. 2018. “Interreligious Relations and Governance of Religion in Europe: Introduction.” Social Compass 65 (3): 301–311. Griera, Mar, and Marian Burchardt. 2021. “Urban Regimes and the Interaction Order of Religious Minority Rituals.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 44 (10): 1712–1733. Griera, Mar, Marian Burchardt, and Avi Astor. 2019. “European Identities, Heritage, and the Iconic Power of Multi-Religious Buildings: Cordoba’s Mosque Cathedral and Berlin’s House of One.” In Volume 10: Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Giuseppe Giordan and Andrew P. Lynch, 13–31. Leiden: Brill. Hiebert, Daniel, Jan Rath, and Steven Vertovec. 2015. “Urban Markets and Diversity: Towards a Research Agenda.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 38 (1): 5–21. Jonker, Gerdien. 1997. “Die islamischen Gemeinden in Berlin zwischen I ntegration und Segregation.” In Zuwanderung und Stadtentwicklung, edited by Hartmut Häußermann and Ingrid Oswald, 347–364. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Klinkhammer, Gritt. 2019. “Der interreligiöse Dialog als Boundary Work.” Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft 27 (1): 78–102. Körs, Anna, Wolfram Weisse, and Jean-Paul Willaime. 2020. Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue. Berlin: Springer. Lamont, Michèle, and Virág Molnár. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (1): 167–195. Liljestrand, Johan. 2018. “How Interreligious Buildings Influence Interreligious Neighbourhood Relations.” In Religion and Dialogue in the City: Case Studies on Interreligious Encounter in Urban Community and Education, edited by Julia Ipgrave, Thomas Knauth, Anna Körs, Dörthe Vieregge and Marie von der Lippe, 159–180. Münster/New York: Waxmann Verlag. Martikainen, Tuomas. 2013. “Multilevel and Pluricentric Network Governance of Religion.” In Religion in the Neoliberal Age: Political Economy and Modes of Governance, edited by François Gauthier and Tuomas Martikainen, 129–142. Farnham: Ashgate. Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth. 2019. “Enacting Diversity: Boundary Work and Performative Dynamics in Interreligious Activities.” In Volume 10: Interreligious Dialogue, edited by Giuseppe Giordan and Andrew P. Lynch, 111–127. Leiden: Brill.

118  Marian Burchardt and Johanna Haering Nagel, Alexander-Kenneth, and Mehmet Kalender. 2014. “The Many Faces of Dialogue: Driving Forces for Participating in Interreligious Activities.” In Religions and Dialogue, edited by Katajun Amirpur and Wolfram Weisse, 85–100. Münster: Waxmann. Sökefeld, Martin. 2015. Aleviten in Deutschland: Identitätsprozesse einer Religionsgemeinschaft in der Diaspora. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. Tezcan, Levent. 2012. Das muslimische Subjekt: Verfangen im Dialog der Deutschen Islam Konferenz. Konstanz: Konstanz University Press. Walton, Jeremy F. 2015. “Architectures of Interreligious Tolerance: The Infrastructural Politics of Place and Space in Croatia and Turkey.” New Diversities 17 (2): 103–117.

5

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue The Case of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church in Poland Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil

5.1 Introduction In this chapter, we provide a ‘thick description’ of the conditions and current state of interfaith dialogue between Catholicism and Islam in Poland, using as a case study the 2020 Kraków celebrations of the 20th Day of Islam in the Catholic Church. In particular, we focus on a digital poster advertising the event that was published on the official website of the Kraków Archdiocese and promptly taken down again, as it was deemed ‘inappropriate’. This, however, did not prevent the image being widely distributed by different media; indeed, the poster went viral and was displayed on numerous websites of different stakeholders. Local and national newspapers and social-media users reposted it and thus made it easily accessible. The widespread perception of Kraków as a Catholic city (Kubica 2009; Niedźwiedź 2017a), when confronted with the imagined heavy presence of Islam in the architectural landscape of the Old City depicted on the poster, sparked a public outcry. The picture transgressed the rules and made the familiar and ‘transparent’ (Brighenti 2007: 326) city space unrecognizable. The ‘unimaginable’ [state] depicted on the poster was condemned as violating the principles of ‘equality and fairness’, and thus compromising the principles of dialogue. This action, however, had an unexpected consequence: it stimulated a public debate about the conditions of interreligious dialogue. Some research demonstrates that actual engagement in interfaith dialogue is usually limited and rarely extends beyond small groups and individuals delegated to maintain it (Catto 2017; Smith 2007). We argue that the material representation of the official dialogical engagement in the form of the poster and the reaction of the Catholic Church, which launched the controversy, generated some interest in dialogue at the grassroots level. As Rose (2001: 19) notes, ‘[i]mages work by producing effects every time they are looked at’: in this particular case, the image worked by prompting spectators to express their views on the relationship between Catholicism and Islam in Poland. As such, the poster was an exemplification of the ‘power of images’. It generated an ‘active, outwardly markable’ response with an efficacy that

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-8

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120  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil is characteristic of images (Freedberg 1989: XXII). The comment sections of various social media and mainstream online media outlets became a platform for the expression of emotions and intense exchanges of opinions between the members of a wider public. Thus, the dialogue occurred outside and beyond the official, routine communication between the institutional bodies responsible for the interfaith dialogue, and actual engagement in dialogical interaction became more spread out among social actors. The case study presented here demonstrates the contested nature and liminality of interreligious dialogues. Dialogue is ‘a necessary relationship of intersubjectivity, when each subject is regarded as situated, embodied and located in its historical and cultural context’ (Bagshaw 2013: 108). In our analysis of this case study, we look closely at the event located at the intersection of the institutional and the grassroots articulation of the dialogical engagement that was embedded in the particular urban space of Kraków. We consider the dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam in Poland with a brief reference to the broader framing of this relationship, adopted by the Church after the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and the strong focus on local discursive and material conditions. We identify the most salient conditions shaping the dialogical engagement in Poland as they are manifested in the visual and material space of the city and in the virtual space of the media: the hegemonic position of the Catholic Church, the marginal place of Islam and the growing popularity of populist political discourses foregrounding the ethnonationalist idea of Polish identity and reviving the myth of Poland as the antemurales christianitatis (Porter-Szucs 2011).

5.2 The Theoretical and Methodological Frame In our research, we combine various approaches and follow several paradigmatic shifts in the study of religion. Religion is increasingly viewed as a product of discourses, rather than a fixed entity. It is the task of discourse analysis to examine the discursive structures in order to understand how religion is produced as a meaningful sociocultural fact, what it consists of and who are the actors participating in the discourse. On the other hand, religion cannot be reduced to terms, concepts and notions, but is also – as a matter of course, and even more emphatically in recent years – seen as a product and a source of experiences. Religion encompasses perceptions, emotions, feelings and aesthetic evaluations. This experiential dimension of religion is accentuated by the ‘aesthetics of religion’ approach (Grieser and Johnston 2017). Finally, both religious cognition and religious experience have to be stimulated as well as embodied by physical objects. The ’material religion’ approach highlights this dimension of religion (see e.g. Bräunlein 2016) and shows that ‘[t]he spiritual is inextricably entangled with the physical or material realm’ (Meyer 2012: 97). Certain physical objects function here as media of discourses of and about religion.1

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  121 Following Krech (2019, 2021), we view the aforementioned approaches not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary. Each of them accentuates different dimensions of religion: something is experienced (first dimension) via media (second dimension) as something meaningful (third dimension). Moreover, the three dimensions are embedded in discourses that constitute the fourth dimension. Discourses are ‘regimes’; they regulate how religion is constructed/constituted as a meaningful sociocultural fact (communication structure), what counts as meaningful (semantics), who participates in the discourse (ascriptions, for example, individual and collective actors; representatives who speak for others) and from which position. To sum up, analytically we distinguish four dimensions of religion: the experiential, material, cognitive and discursive dimensions. Nevertheless, all four dimensions are interrelated and ‘involved in every empirical case’ (Krech 2019: 5). Cognition provides experience and physical matter with meaning; experience equips meaning and objects with evidence through a certain aura and atmosphere; and cognition and experience are embodied in physical objects which function as their ‘material anchors’ (Hutchins 2005). Of particular relevance for our case study is the idea of an ‘agency of objects’ (see, e.g. Latour 2005: 63–86), which asserts that things have certain affordances and are thus treated in a corresponding way (Gibson 1979). For example, although images work differently than texts do (see Freedberg 1989), the former have to be analysed as ‘texts’ in order to understand their (potential) message (see Mitchell 1994). The three dimensions are framed by the discursive dimension that regulates experience, cognition and the way physical matter becomes part of the sociocultural reality (Ioannides 2016). Furthermore, our analysis is based on the conviction that social practice always mediates the specific and the general, as well as the concrete and the abstract. In line with George Herbert Mead’s (1972) distinction between the ‘specific other’ and the ‘generalised other’, a case is always a specific single case (e.g. Peter and Mary talk to each other), but at the same time also a case of something general (e.g. while Mary is a Muslim, Peter is a Roman Catholic). Similarly, the local and the translocal are spatial variations of the distinction between the concrete and the general. The local – in our case the city of Kraków – is a single, individual setting that at the same time locates translocal, deterritorialized issues. In this context, it is important to consider that in sociocultural reality the reference to physical space always has a metaphorical character. The relationship between the social and physical space constitutes metaphors; i.e. the social space ‘borrows’ some elements from the physical space, but is not identical to it (Lefebvre 1991). For instance, the distinction between those who are inside (= belong to) and those who are outside (= do not belong to) constitutes a social space that might have correspondences with physical space – e.g. with regard to the question of which religion should be represented in a city, and how – yet

122  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil the social space cannot be reduced to a mere physical space. In turn, certain physical elements (buildings, people on the street wearing religious clothing or engaging in public religious practices such as processions, etc.) in the space of a city materialize meaningful social space in general and religious space in particular. From a religious, as well as analytical perspective, a city can be seen as shaped by religious signs related to each other and thus constituting a religious space (Knott, Krech, and Meyer 2016).

5.3 Data and Analysis Our discussion is based on a number of data sources, including the digital copy of the poster advertising the 20th Krakow Day of Islam in the Catholic Church, the statement about the poster issued by the Archdiocese of Kraków, reports concerning the event and the poster published by the leading daily newspapers and weekly magazines (which appeared within two months of the poster publication), written communications from readers published in the comments sections of the respective media and publicly available statements published in selected social media (Facebook, Twitter). We used search engines and a combination of keywords (‘day of Islam’, ‘Catholic Church’, ‘poster’, ‘Kraków’) to identify relevant material. We also conducted expert interviews with six individuals involved in different capacities in the organization of interfaith dialogue events. We interviewed organizers of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church on the local and national levels, as well as persons involved in the ‘open mosque’ activities. The latter were Polish converts to Islam, who are very often perceived as occupying a unique position enabling them to facilitate inter-faith dialogue (see e.g. Zebiri 2007). All textual data were downloaded and inserted into the project database. The visual and textual materials were analysed using the tools of multimodal discourse analysis (Machin and Mayr 2012; Rose 2001). The media sources included in this study can be located on various positions within the political spectrum, but in our analysis we do not correlate the expressed views with the political orientations of these outlets. We did this because we want to avoid essentializing different social actors, labelling or entanglement in identity politics.

5.4 The Poster Controversy and the Emergent Dialogue In line with the mediated character of the four dimensions of religion outlined above, we start our analysis by examining the poster itself. The written words and objects depicted on the poster are immediately accessible to the viewer who comes face to face with this communicative artefact: they are ‘obvious’, easily seen and understood. However, for the sake of transparency in the analytical process, we engage with ‘the obvious’ in order to make it explicit and demonstrate the most salient clues inherent in the poster which function as triggers for the discourse analysed in the subsequent

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  123

Figure 5.1 Poster Version 1. http://www.radawspolna.pl/index20DzIsl_lok.html, 21.09.2022.

steps. In this initial phase of the analysis, we aim to let the poster ‘speak for itself’ and concentrate on it without referring to the contextual knowledge. After describing and briefly analysing the different potential readings of the poster’s composition and content, we turn to the discourse that emerged as a reaction to the poster. In the analysis of the meanings actualized in the reception of the poster, we search for inter-textual references and employ background knowledge of the broader historical, social and cultural context (Figure 5.1).

5.5 Analysis of Textual Elements The poster consists of both textual and pictorial elements. The text displayed on the poster provides an anchor and allows the viewer to choose between the potentially large number of the picture’s possible denotive meanings. The most prominent textual element is the caption: ‘20th Cracow DAY of ISLAM in the CATHOLIC CHURCH’ [20. krakowski DZIEŃ ISLAMU w KOŚCIELE KATOLICKIM] visually enhanced through the type and size of the font and capital letters.

124  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil 5.5.1 ‘20. Krakowski DZIEŃ ISLAMU’ (20th Cracow Day of Islam) The ordinal number ‘20’ is an indicator of the fact that something is being repeated, rather than being an isolated event in the past, and is likely to be continued in the future. Likewise, the term ‘day’ evokes a contrast to temporal continuity. Thus, a specific event is singled out of everyday, routine time, namely the celebrations taking place on 27 January 2020, starting at 5 pm. The phrase ‘20. krakowski dzień islamu’ hence mediates between the normal course of time that is not addressed and a specific, exceptional event that is thematized and of special interest. The ordinal number ‘20’ also suggests that the highlighted event has been institutionalized: it is not simply happening, but is likely to be organized and to be following specific regulations. In addition to the temporal dimension, the text organizes the representation of physical space: through the use of the adjective ‘krakowski’ it hints at a specific location. The event does not take place just anywhere, not even just somewhere, but in Kraków. Furthermore, ‘krakowski’ is written in cursive font imitating handwriting, while ‘20. DZIEŃ ISLAMU’ is printed in upright capitals. Due to the position of ‘krakowski’ above ‘20. DZIEŃ ISLAMU’ and between ‘20.’ and ‘DZIEŃ ISLAMU’, it appears to have been interpolated. The position and the lettering might evoke the distinction between informal familiarity (personal handwriting) and the formal and official (upright capitals), as well as between a concrete occasion and a general institution. 5.5.2 ‘W KOŚCIELE KATOLICKIM’ (Within the Catholic Church) ‘Within’ is a spatial metaphor that is used to constitute the social space. The paradoxical location of social actors is expressed in this metaphor: while both Christians and Muslims should jointly and equally be engaged in universal brotherhood, The Day of Islam is announced as ‘taking place’ ‘in’ the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church (as a religious organization or as a concrete building or both – we cannot tell, since it is written in capitals) is hosting the advertised activity. As a consequence, the power positions of Muslims and Catholics become instantly asymmetric; Muslims are considered guests. The poster specifies the physical location of the activities planned for the Day of Islam. The given address (‘Uniwersytet Papieski Jana Pawła II w Krakowie, ul. Franciszkańska, s. 040’) reinforces the lack of equality between the social positions of the dialogue partners. The textual units not only specify the location of the event, they also identify the institutional stakeholders: ‘Pontifical University of John Paul II’ [Uniwersytet Papieski Jana Pawła II w Krakowie]; ‘The Council for Dialogue of the Archdiocese of Kraków’ [Rada Dialogu Archidiecezja Krakowska])

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  125 and ‘the Archdiocese of Kraków’ [Archidiecezja Krakowska]. The fact that a university is mentioned indicates that a scientific institution is also involved. However, the name of the university – ‘Papieski Jana Pawła II’ – combines the scientific claim with a certain religious position, namely with Roman Catholicism. ‘Rada’ [The Council] refers to an advisory body which usually provides specific groups of individuals with guidance on a certain issue. In this case, the issue is ‘dialogue’, and the addressees are (all of the, or some) ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’. ‘Archidiecezja Krakowska’ indicates that the ‘Council of Dialogue’ is a church-wide institution with a subbranch in Kraków. Thus, the announced event is embedded in the city of Kraków, and the latter is embedded in translocal activities. Furthermore, ‘Dialogue’ hints at an activity of mutual exchange. This, however, highlights once again the social paradox of Christians and Muslims being invited to communicate ‘at eye level’ in form of an equal partnership, whereas the activity ‘takes place’ ‘in’ the Catholic Church: i.e. the Catholic Church functions as a collective actor and at the time as a frame for the dialogue activity. Another unit of text which appears on the poster is the slogan of the event: ‘Christians and Muslims in the service of universal brotherhood’ [Chrześcijanie i Muzułmanie w służbie powszechnego braterstwa]. 5.5.3 ‘Christians and Muslims in the service of universal brotherhood’ [Chrześcijanie i Muzułmanie w służbie powszechnego braterstwa] ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ are explicitly addressed, and therefore distinguished. At the same time, their engagement is announced as being in favour of universal brotherhood as a shared goal. Brotherhood evokes the association of equality and mutual recognition. Thus, the phrase strives to reconcile the difference with the unity of ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’. However, it remains unclear what is actually meant by ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’: Christianity and Islam understood as collective entities, or each and every Christian and Muslim, or only some of them (and if so, adherents of which denomination or current of Christianity and Islam are being addressed?) Moreover, the phrase is not a complete sentence, therefore it might stand for an indicative, an imperative, an option or a wish. The term ‘universal’ indicates the evasive goal of transcending the denominational boundaries and achieving something that surpasses the particular objectives of both religions. The remaining textual unit lists activities planned for the Day of Islam: setting up the community, music of the Orient, an official address, a lecture by Dr Marcin Rzepka (identified as a scholar affiliated to the Pontifical University of John Paul II), a prayer, a reading from the Bible, a reading from the Qur’an and a meeting. The details regarding these activities are sparse. It is not specified what the setting up of the community will entail, who will be giving the address, nor how the participants will pray.

126  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil

5.6 Analysis of Visual Elements As mentioned above, the mutual references between physical and social spaces constitute metaphors. According to a common definition in linguistics, ‘a metaphor is a structural mapping from one domain of subject matter (the source domain) to another (the target domain)’ (Lakoff 1986: 294). Thus, physical space serves as a source domain in constituting metaphors of social space. However, a twofold manifestation of physical space is relevant for our case study: the physical space as depicted on the poster, and the physical space of the city of Kraków to which the poster refers. With regard to the physical space of the poster that serves as a source domain for metaphors of social space, the following distinctions are significant. 5.6.1 Foreground Versus Background The depth articulation in the image is reduced, though there is some demarcation between the first plane and the background. The first plane is occupied by a colourful base-like structure, from which the towers with crescents and dome-shaped roofs stand out. There is a silhouette of church towers in the background, but the lower parts of the churches are invisible, being obstructed by the objects on the first plane. That kind of stratification of buildings may suggest that ‘minarets are pushing church towers towards the background’. Conversely, the background constituted by the church towers might be read as providing a stable basis for the foreground (the minarets). 5.6.2 Below Versus Above The two types of buildings, which might be presumed to represent churches and mosques, are unevenly distributed on the up-down dimension. The church towers ‘stand’ solidly above the minarets, whereas the minarets ‘grow’ from the bottom, but never reach the level of the church towers. ‘Growing’ may be considered a metaphor for development, i.e. something is coming to existence and getting bigger. ‘Above’ or ‘high’ are not necessarily associated with positive evaluations, nor ‘below’ or ‘down’ with negative ones. For example, something that is considered ‘grounded’ can be an expression of stability. However, when it comes to social status, we are confronted by metaphors such as ‘HIGH STATUS IS UP; LOW STATUS IS DOWN’ (Lakoff and Johnson 1980: 16). Therefore, the placement of the church towers above the mosques might actualize different meanings related to the current social statuses of the two religions, or their historical presence and influence. Both dimensions taken together (background vs. foreground and up vs. down) might hint at the historical context. Although Catholicism shaped and dominated the religious landscape of Kraków for many centuries, in

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  127 recent years Islam has become more present. This can be interpreted either as a trend towards increasing religious diversity, or as the gradual displacement of Catholicism from its dominant, monopolistic position. 5.6.3  Small Versus Big The architectural objects depicted on the poster also vary in terms of their sizes. The church towers are bigger than the minarets and the mosque domes. ‘Big’ and ‘small’ do not automatically translate into positive and negative. However, the fact that a bigger size demands more space on a poster gives an impression of supremacy. On the other hand, the number of the (bigger) church towers (9) is smaller than the number of the (smaller) minarets/mosque dome (13), creating an impression of greater vitality of Islam and/or of the current proliferation of Muslim communities. 5.6.4  Geometrical-abstract Structure Versus Concrete Silhouette The kaleidoscopic, prismatic (broken glass or diamond-like) geometric structure occupies the bottom half of the poster, whereas the silhouettes of the church towers and minarets are placed above. The distinction between the architectural structures representing the different religions is paralleled by two ways of depicting them: the abstract and the diffuse contrast with the individual and identifiable shapes. While taken together the minarets and the church towers constitute a ‘religious skyline’, the minarets remain attached to the abstract, homogenized mass at the bottom of the picture. The church towers in the image can be unmistakably identified as specific, historical churches of Krakow. In contrast, the minarets are generic, difficult to tell apart; they only symbolize a particular type of architecture, lacking in detail or particulars. The Islamic character of these structures can also be questioned, as it is not objectively given, but constructed through the placement of crescents on the onion domes. However, the multiple colourful onion domes by themselves are commonly associated with churches belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church. 5.6.5  Grey Versus Multicoloured The use of colours in the image introduces another layer of polarization. The grey shapes of the church towers are contrasted with the kaleidoscopic, multicoloured, diamond-like structure at the bottom of the image and the towers with crescents growing out of it. This juxtaposition of colours has high emotive resonance. In Western visualities, the brightness and colours have associations of joy and transparency, whereas darkness is connected to a lack of clarity and concealment (Machin and Mayr 2012). The towers of churches depicted in monotone grey (with no tonal graduation) evoke association with

128  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil dullness, gloom and ‘shadows’. In contrast, the minarets are bright; they have saturated colours suggesting emotional intensity. The multitude of colours is enhanced through the ‘stained glass’ effect, but the reduced modulation of colours creates a sense of assurance and simplicity. However, the grey of the church towers might also have more neutral (‘grey eminence’) or positive connotations (for example, integrity, soundness, respectability).

5.7 Viewing the Poster in its Broader Context This brief analysis of the composition and content of the poster reveals incongruous depictions of Catholicism and Islam. Thus, the poster has potential for different evaluations of the ‘positions’ of both religions in Poland in general and in Kraków in particular. The physical position of the church towers and the minarets, their sizes and colours, looked at simultaneously, may suggest that although Catholicism is ‘bigger’ and ‘older’, and therefore holds (or used to hold) a dominant position within Polish society, Islam is more vital, or at least is becoming more vital (‘grows’) at the present time. Moreover, although as partners in dialogue ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ should meet on an equal footing, they are represented as disconnected, dissimilar and occupying different social positions. Their only ‘common ground’ lies in their participation in the Polish religious field in general and the religious field in Kraków in particular. In more general terms, the poster constitutes a concrete expression of a process of othering and resulting social paradoxes in the religious field. On the ‘surface’, and in its spatial structure, the poster projects the imagined religious landscape in Poland as divided between the old and native majority of Christians and the new and alien, but growing minority of Muslims. This distinction functions as a typical dyadic othering process in which ‘us’ and ‘them’ are constructed. However, as Bernhard Waldenfels argues, the distinctions between familiar and strange, as well as between native and alien, need a third: We cannot utter a word or carry out a gesture of action without a third coming into play, which can neither be reduced to the behaviour of the addressee nor to that of the addresser. The third, no matter whether it is a personal or anonymous authority, stands in for rules, orders, and laws, therefore permitting us to address and treat something as something, somebody as somebody. (Waldenfels 2011: 81) In the material realm, the third is the structured space of the poster with the front and back, up and down, colourful and grey and abstract and contoured. These qualities and features constitute the basis for a discourse about religious diversity and dialogue. However, what happens between ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ does not belong to either of them. It is rather

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  129 located in ‘a no-man’s land, a liminal landscape which simultaneously connects and separates’, 2 constituted by the composition of the poster. Three principles of the grammar of identity/alterity, namely orientalizing, segmentation and encompassment (Baumann 2004), are at work in the composition of the poster. ‘Orientalising creates self and other as negative mirror images of each other; segmentation defines self and other according to a sliding scale of inclusions/exclusions; encompassment defines the other by an act of hierarchical subsumption’ (Baumann 2004: 47). As the colourful (to the point of being ‘motley’) is the negative of the monotone grey, the poster creates ‘Christianity’ and ‘Islam’ as inverted mirror images of each other. In this respect, the poster might be seen as an instance of ‘the Orientalist gaze, which traps Muslims into a realm of Otherness’ (Fadil 2019: 121). According to the slogan, ‘Christians’ and ‘Muslims’ should be united through ‘the service in universal brotherhood’, but at the same time segmentation is enacted, as the two groups are identified and thus distinguished. Christians and Muslims are defined according to a ‘sliding scale’ of inclusion/exclusion (Baumann and Gingrich 2004: X). The respective groups are allocated different social positions represented within the physical space of the poster. Thus, the structured surface of the poster also performs encompassment by situating ‘Christianity’ and ‘Islam’ within one space of dialogue, but in different positions: ‘Christianity’ above, but in the background; ‘Islam’ in the front, but below. The minimization of otherness inherent in the encompassment on the discursive plane is realized in the rhetorical placing of Islam and Christianity as the main monotheistic religions and in the framing of Muslims and Christians as Peoples of the Book (hence the activities: readings from the Bible and Qur’an). While the interpretation discussed so far might suggest that Christianity, or more specifically the Catholic Church, is engaged in a process of othering, its twofold role also needs to be considered. The Church is the partner in the dialogue encounter and the organizer of the event. As such, it occupies the impossible position of being one of the two dialogue partners and, at the same time, the facilitator of the dialogical space – Wandelfels’ ‘third’. If we distinguish between different types of the third regarding the degree of involvement, namely between the involved third, the witnessing third and the neutral observing third (Waldenfels 2011: 81), in our case study, ‘Christianity’ occupies the place of the involved third. While on the poster the church towers passively ‘stand’ and the minarets ‘grow’, the implicated power structures are quite opposite: it is the Christians who ‘act’ and the Muslims who ‘react’. 5.7.1 The Catholic Church in Poland and its dialogue with Islam According to the official position of the Catholic Church, interfaith dialogue is a desirable activity. The dialogical stance is strongly legitimized through the figure of John Paul II, who was the first pope to enter a mosque.

130  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil In 2001, during his trip to Syria, he visited the Olmayyad Mosque and urged the Catholic and Muslim clerics and scholars to “present our two great religious communities as communities in respectful dialogue, never more as communities in conflict”3 (Boudreaux 2001). The local implementation of this Church-wide approach is mediated and shaped by specific historical, social and cultural conditions. The tension between contestation and embracement of the dialogue that is apparent in our case study reflects these specific power relations between different religious actors in Poland. The most powerful player, constituting ‘an imposing structure’ (Grodź 2010: 172), is the Catholic Church. In recent decades, Catholicism has been ‘naturalized’ as the religion of Poles. The bond between Polishness and Catholicism has acquired a normative character and led to the symbolic exclusion of non-ethnic Poles and non-Catholics from the national community (Pasieka 2013). The Catholic Church is continuously referenced as an important player in the fight against the socialist state, and its meritorious ‘service to the nation’ is emphasized. It asserts its presence and power through politics (i.e. its influence on reproductive rights), the state education system (i.e. compulsory religious instruction as part of the school curriculum), the media (i.e. television, radio, internet websites and social media) and its near-monopoly of some urban spaces. As the second largest owner of land in the country after the public treasury, in Kraków the Church ‘owns’ the city’s space as the representative of the mainstream religion and, as our case study demonstrates, protects the boundaries delineating Catholic space. The attitude of the Catholic Church in Poland towards Islam has certainly been marked by ambiguity (Krotofil and Motak 2018; Pędziwiatr 2018; Wilczyńska and Wilczyński 2020). However, its formalized engagement in dialogue has been continuously maintained by the Church for over two decades. The Common Council of Christians and Muslims [Rada Wspólna Katolików i Muzułmanów], established in 1997, initiated the celebrations of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church in Poland. The first event took place in 2001, and since then it has acquired a permanent position in the Catholic calendar (Grotek and Frejek 2003). The Church in Poland follows ‘the guidelines’ while positioning itself as a superior participant in the dialogue, as is evident in the document approved by the General Meeting of the Polish Bishops’ Conference (PBC): Through this initiative and by looking for platforms for mutual understanding and amicable coexistence, we wish to follow the guidelines contained in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council and John Paul II, even though we realise that in countries with a Muslim majority Christians are often exposed to persecution, or simply do not enjoy the same rights as Muslims. (PBC 2004: 107)

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  131 Stanisław Grodź (2010) poignantly notes that ‘the Roman Catholic Church is too big and too self-sufficient to bother with others, while Muslims operate from a marginalized position, i.e. they may be working for a cause, but may use the relations with the church as a vehicle to being noticed and recognised’ (p. 271). As a result, inter-religious interactions in Poland are not embedded in everyday life situations but have a more theatrical character. 5.7.2 Islam in Poland Muslims in Poland are a very small and diverse religious minority, with the estimated total number of Muslims ranging between 25 and 35 thousand. This number includes autochthonous Polish Muslims, the Tatars (up to 4,500); migrants from Muslim-majority countries (around twenty thousand); and Polish-born converts to Islam (between 500 and 3,000). As a group comprising less than 0.01% of the total population (Račius 2018), Muslims are largely invisible in Poland. The most established group is the Tatars, whose social position has been evolving since their settlement in Poland in the 14th century. Despite the persistently ambivalent mythical imaginary associating them with wild and fierce warriors (Stomma 1986), contemporary Tatars are commonly considered to be unthreatening and as assimilated into Polish society (Cieslik and Verkuyten 2006; Grodź 2010; Miśkiewicz 2017). It is widely acknowledged in political, academic and popular discourses that, during the long history of their settlement in Poland, the Tatars demonstrated their loyalty to the Polish state and supported the Polish armed forces. As such, they constitute the collective figure that most easily fits into the narrative on ‘interreligious cooperation of a patriotic nature’ (Sakowicz 2011: 196). Muslims of migrant origin and converts to Islam occupy a very different position in Poland. These two groups are often subjected to Islamophobia (Górak-Sosnowska 2006, 2016; Piela 2019, 2021; Pędziwiatr 2011; Bobako 2018). Immigrants from Muslim-majority countries who have settled in Poland are a very diverse group in terms of the length of their settlement, their socio-economic status and their countries of origin. The longest to have settled in Poland are Poles of Syrian, Egyptian and Turkish origin who came to the country in the 1970s as part of a Soviet-bloc scheme to promote communist ideas outside Europe. Others – mainly Chechens, Afghans and Iraqis – came as refugees and settled in Poland after 1989 (Grodź 2010). The second group is relatively small and very dispersed. Although there are no precise data on the number of Polish converts to Islam, the estimates range between 500 and 3,000 (Krotofil et al., forthcoming). The hostile discourses reproduced by political elites and media portraying Muslims as a threat to the imagined ethnically, religiously and culturally homogenous Polish nation were exacerbated in response to the large-scale influx of Muslim refugees to Europe, the so-called migration crisis (Goździak and Marton 2018; Krotofil and Motak 2018). State-controlled media

132  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil continue to portray Muslims as ‘the Other’ par excellence: backward, violent and barbaric (Piela 2021). During the election campaign of 2015, many candidates to Parliament expressed openly xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic views, used anti-immigration posters and supported the movement ‘against the Islamization of Poland and Europe’. According to opinion polls, Muslims are perceived in negative ways by the majority of Poles.4 In the survey conducted by CBOS in 2015, only 12% of Poles reported that they personally knew a Muslim, which led researchers to the conclusion that the opinions are mainly shaped by the information found in the popular media. The encounters between Muslims and non-Muslims in Poland are very limited and restricted to certain locations and events (Grodź 2010), leading to the negative attitudes towards Muslims being branded by some commentators as ‘platonic islamophobia’ (Górak-Sosnowska 2016). The relative absence of Muslims in Poland is also reflected in the limited visual presence of Islam in the public sphere. Islam is a religion recognized by the Polish state, and its adherents enjoy the rights granted in the Act of 17 May 1989 on Guarantees of Freedom of Conscience and Religion. Among other rights, Muslims in Poland have the right to construct sacred buildings guaranteed by Article 53, paragraph 2, of the Constitution of Poland 5 (Nalborczyk 2011). These buildings not only reflect the physical presence of a religious community, they are also increasingly endorsed and celebrated in official discourse as signifiers of ‘cultural diversity’ (Gale 2004). However, the opportunities guaranteed by the legislation have not been realized in the actual construction of purpose-built mosques. To date, there are only four purpose-built mosques in Poland. Two of these – the mosque in Kruszyniany and the mosque in Bohoniki – are old wooden constructions build by the Tatars in the 18th and 19th centuries. Both resemble Catholic Churches in architectural style. The other two purpose-built mosques are located in Gdańsk and Warsaw. The former was opened in 1990, the latter in 2015. The mosque in Kraków is located in an inconspicuous converted building. It is difficult to find (there is no sign at the roadside entrance to the building), and the sole indication that it could house a mosque is a small plaque by the doorbell, saying ‘Islamic Centre’. The only ‘visibly’ Islamic building in Kraków is the Turkish House, which is currently not being used by any religious community. The minarets at the top of this building’s facade were added under the instructions of the Catholic wife of the commissioner. To conclude, in the Polish sociocultural universe, Islam is ‘alien’ in the three meanings identified by Waldenfels (2011): it belongs to other people (it is not ‘our own’); it is strange (as opposed to familiar); and crucially it belongs to a different place, because ‘[t]he opposition between the own and the alien does not emerge from a mere separation, but from a process of in- and exclusion. I am where you cannot be, and vice versa’ (p. 73). Such a positioning of Muslims is evident in the discourses analysed in the next section.

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  133 In order to gauge some of the views about Muslims in Poland, we conducted expert interviews with five Polish Muslims who at some point have been involved in the interfaith dialogue initiatives in various capacities. The dominant view among our respondents was that the initiatives aimed at promoting a dialogue had a very limited reach. One of the women we spoke to, an active member of a local Muslim community, critically assessed the dominant approach to interfaith dialogue in Poland: Sometimes these meetings are organized here, for example, ‘Why Muslims love Jesus?’, so that it is known that for us Jesus, Moses or Muhammad are almost equally important. But this is too little because people do not speak about it on daily basis. These events are organized one a year, and to tell the truth the venue is not full. Perhaps three quarters of seats are taken and most often I see the same faces I had seen before. […] So, in my opinion this does not reach the wider public. (Anna) Marta, a convert actively involved in the community centred around one of the mosques in Poland, also commented on the limited engagement: I participated a few times in the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church. But this is the kind of meeting I describe as a mutual admiration society. It is quite official. OK, there are representatives of Islam and of the Church, they read out messages on a given topic. […] There are very few outsiders present in those meetings. One reason is that the meetings are not advertised. There is information on the website, but not in the parishes. […] Usually the audience is very small, limited to those who are [officially] engaged in the interfaith dialogue, or especially interested in this. (Marta) Strikingly one of our respondents mirrored those statements that demanded the organization of a Day of the Catholic Church in mosques put forward by Catholics, which they rejected, opting instead for co-existence with limited interaction: I don’t like it when Muslims get excited about the Day of Islam in the [Catholic] Church. Every stick has two ends, and soon they will say ‘can’t you do a Catholic day in a mosque?’ […] Let’s live next to each other, let’s co-exist, but let’s not force this […] I am not convinced. (Zofia) These narratives of Polish converts to Islam suggest that ‘the awareness of oneself as being visible and therefore vulnerable to the gaze of the other’

134  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil (Breyer 2015: 141) has some implications for the dialogical encounters between Muslims and the non-Muslim majority in Poland. Women in Islamic head coverings are hypervisible (Jeldtoft 2013): they easily draw attention to themselves, and in casual encounters they often strive to represent themselves in a way that challenges the dominant public gaze while at the same time being careful to conform to the idea of pious Muslims with impeccable behaviour. Reflecting on the quotidian visibility of her religious identity, Zofia, who wears a hijab on daily basis, also noted: We are supposed to stand out – it is clearly said that we are supposed to stand out, so that people see a Muslim is coming, or adherent of another religion; why should they not know? […] I think that in Poland, first of all, if Muslims want to improve their situation, they need to become public, stop hiding and start opening up to society. (Zofia) Similarly, Anna (quoted earlier) observed: ‘there are still very few of us. Everybody is surprised that there are [any] Muslims in Poland. […] We need to show that we exist; running away for me is too easy’.

5.8 Kraków as a Space of Dialogue The historical situatedness of ‘the observed’ (the religions in dialogue) and ‘the observer’ (the wider public not engaged directly in dialogue) makes an essential critical reflection on the notion of Kraków as a ‘Catholic holy city’. The visual presence of the Catholic Church in Kraków, ‘the city of a hundred churches’ (Kubica 2009: 133) and ‘the pope’s city’ (Niedwiedź 2017b), is enduring and is constantly reproduced in interpretations of the ‘religious’ aesthetics’ of the city (Magee 2017: 307). There are a number of symbol-laden places of remembrance in Kraków connecting the national with the Catholic. These include the established points on the map of Kraków, located in the historic city centre, as well as relatively new places constructed on the outskirts of the city that are undergoing a complex process of ‘heritagization’ (Niedwiedź 2017a). Kraków is associated with Catholic martyrs and saints (e.g. Saint Stanislaw (Kubik 1994) and the late pope John Paul II (Niedźwiedź 2017b). One of the churches featured on the poster is Saint Mary’s Basilica in the Main Market Square. It is of special importance here not only as one of the most important Catholic buildings and an iconic symbol of the city. The church is also a material link between Kraków’s Catholic history and the city’s encounter with Islam. From the tower of the church a sound very much associated with Kraków (Klimkiewicz 2013), the bugle-call [hejnał Mariacki], is played every hour. In the Middle Ages this short and simple melody was played at dawn and dusk to tell the gatekeepers when to open and shut the city gates, as well as when there was a fire in the city or enemy forces were observed approaching. According to the legend, during

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  135 the Tatar invasion of Poland in 1241, the bugle call was played by the city guard who was trying to warn the inhabitants about the invaders coming up to the city’s gates. The gates were closed in time, but the trumpeter was shot in his throat by one of the Tatar arrows, which explains why the melody ends oddly on a somewhat unexpected short note.6 The melody is widely known in Poland and is associated with patriotism; on occasions it was played outside the city to mark important national events (Klimkiewicz 2013). Although at that moment Tatars were not Muslims, they started converting to Islam in the following century, and in the popular imaginary they are unanimously identified with the religion. The church is therefore one of the central elements of a chronotope of Kraków as a place of violent historic encounters with Islam. The imagined relationship between the past and certain places in Kraków carries with it a particular expectation about the relationship between Catholicism and Islam in the city. As we will show, the fact that the easily recognizable silhouette of the Saint Mary’s Basilica occupies a prominent position in the poster, together with the ease with which the digital image can be cropped, is of particular importance to our case study.

5.9 The Poster’s Reception ‘At the basis of our argument lies the assumption that images are produced within dynamics of social power and ideology’ (Sturken and Cartwright 2009: 37). The important aspects of the interfaith dialogue are revealed not only in the image itself, but also in how it is seen by particular social actors who look at it in particular ways (Sturken and Cartwright 2009). Breyer (2015) notes that the normative is intertwined with the perceptual. Different ‘positions’ in the discourse about the poster actualize the different potential meanings embodied in the poster. Following the removal of the poster from the official website of the Archdiocese of Kraków, the press office of the Archdiocese issued a statement stating that it had been published without the approval of the Archbishop and condemning the way it depicts the relations between the two religions: With reference to the poster prepared by the Council for the Ecumenical and Interreligious Dialogue of the Archdiocese of Kraków, for the 20. Kraków Day of Islam in the Catholic Church, presenting on the first plane the landscape of a Muslim city dominated by crescents, and only in the background the St Mary Basilica in Krakow deprived of the cross, we express deep regret. (Pitoń 2020) In the quoted sentence, the power relations are discursively reversed; the Church presents itself as dominated and invisible and laments over the strong presence of Islam. These types of complaints are neither new nor unusual: as Topidi (2019: 2) notes, the majority religious groups often invoke

136  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil historical injustices ‘in an effort to curtail ordinary claims of freedom and equality’. Explaining the standpoint of the Archdiocese, the spokesman told the reporters: The thing is that on this poster only one religious symbol is clearly displayed. This day is organized by the Catholic Church, and if we are talking about equality and unity, this equality should be expressed in the symbolism; this has been neglected, and therefore this poster is unacceptable. (Kraków Wyborcza, January 23, 2020) These official expressions of indignation functioned as priming messages directing the attention of the poster’s other viewers to the crosses and crescents; for instance, the lead of the press article quoted above was written in sensational language, stating that the poster depicted ‘eleven crescents and not even one cross’.

5.10 The Materiality of the Poster and Negotiations of Visibility The materiality of the poster is also of great importance here, namely the fact that it was distributed in a digital form. This made cropping and zooming it easy. By enlarging the Saint Mary’s Basilica and re-centring it, its viewers were able to bring into focus what many saw as an intentional omission. A discussion broke out about the ‘missing crosses’. While some viewers referred to the missing crosses on the two towers in the poster, others pointed out that on the actual building the cross is placed at the top of the nave roof, and it is that cross that is missing in the picture. The following quote represents a frequent rhetorical question: This poster is an insolent piece of sabotage. It is all full of mosques, and in the far background is a church without the cross. The message [is]: Islam has dominated. (Comment on wPolityce) The poster was branded by many as scandalous and outrageous. The concerns over symbolic representations of the equal status of the dialogue partners (Catholicism and Islam), expressed in the statement by the Archdiocese press office, were very often reproduced and in some cases taken much further. Some commentators criticized all initiatives promoting interreligious dialogue, and the arguments used in this context were very often embedded in religious sources (the Bible, or the First Commandment). For many the poster was a reflection of the Church’s weak position. In this type of comment, the idea of a dialogue was contested by asking questions

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  137 regarding whether a ‘Day of the Catholic Church’ was ever celebrated by Muslims. Many commentators expressed a conviction that the poster had been approved by Church officials; therefore, the absence of crosses on the poster had to be intentional and demonstrated the Church’s ‘political correctness’ and cowardice: Perhaps people who say that the Church is crumbling are right. You want to integrate with the adherents of another faith so much that in order not to offend them, you are not showing the cross. Is this supposed to be integration? Am I supposed to hide the cross so that he [the Muslim] does not feel offended by any chance? If this is how you see integration, then there really is something wrong. And by the way, has anybody ever heard about Days of Catholicism in mosques? (Comment on doRzeczy.pl) These critical views were met with some attempts to defend the Church as the organizer of the Day of Islam and the very idea of dialogue: This day has been celebrated since 2001 through long-term cooperation, mainly with the Tatars, who have full rights as Polish citizens. It is worth mentioning that we, as a country, are exceptional when it comes to these celebrations. There is no such thing in the West. […] Instead of building the bridges, like John Paul II (likely the only pope who prayed with imams, rabbis and monks from India), you would prefer to run around with machetes, mimicking radical Muslims. (Comment on niezależna.pl) The author of this post is highlighting the unique character of the Day of Islam, presenting Poland as more progressive than Western countries. He is also legitimizing the presence of Islam in Poland by references to Tatars and their widely acknowledged special status in Polish history. In the discussion, many references to Kraków as a holy city were made. A journalist working in Catholic media stated: From behind the colourful or even fabulous temples of the demon looms the drab-grey, once upon a time mighty city of the kings, with its underground where holy, or less holy, but people devoted to God sleep. What kind of poster is it if the crosses have disappeared from the city of God? (Miśko 2020) The historically sanctioned presence of Catholic symbols in Kraków was also evoked by people who do not personally identify with the Church: As I am a non-believer, I should theoretically be able to get over such things more easily, but I don’t. Because if anybody, for whatever

138  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil reasons, on the image of my beloved, royal, home city of Krakow, ‘castrates’ the churches by removing the cross, which for me is a part of the thousand-year long Polish tradition and national culture, as well as an indispensable element of the landscape of this holy city, these persons automatically become troublesome to me. Dangerous to my views, native tradition, respect and love for our ancestors and many other things. This graphic and the message it sends, as far as I understand, strives to encourage Islamists [sic!] to participate in the Day of Islam, and to not “offend” the guests through the real image of Kraków. This is cynical and hypocritical behaviour. If your guests hate our culture and customs so much as to make you cheat to lure them here, it is best if you go away with them. (Comment on doRzeczy.pl) For some the alien status of the buildings on the first plane was apparent not only through their association with Islam, but also with Russia and communist symbols. The onion domes were reinterpreted as a typical feature of churches belonging to the Russian Orthodox Church and the crescents as sickles. ‘Add the orthodox crosses to these domes, and we will have a universal poster’, stated one of the commentators on the forum ‘niezależna.pl’, alluding to the general alien influence. The association with communism was expressed explicitly by the Catholic journalist Marek Miśko. ‘What kind of statement is it: “service of the universal brotherhood”? What does it refer to? Because the fact that it sounds like it has been extracted from the works of Lenin is obvious at first sight’ (Miśko 2020). ‘This is probably a preview of what is to come. Once upon a time, the crosses were dominating Anatolia, this was between II-XIII century, now the Muslim sickles dominate. A preview of what they want to do with Europe’ (comment on niezależne.pl), wrote another person in a comment section on niezależna.pl. Another commentator on Twitter stated: ‘This unfortunate poster is a picture of invasion. This postmodernist ecumenism is a one-way process: the crosses are missing, but the stained glass has been taken over and ‘renewed’ in old places’ (Nowakowski 2020). These criticisms were not exactly balanced by more positive views, though some debaters made attempts to refocus the attention on the values of peaceful coexistence and dialogue. In these actions, the poster remained the central element. The defence of dialogue was enacted through several attempts to ‘fix’ the poster, either by making physical amendments to the image or by providing alternative interpretations. An example of the first approach is the work of one of the participants in the discussion on Twitter, who downloaded the original image, amended it and republished it as a ‘corrected’ poster. In his version of the image, he replaced the crescents with crosses and changed the slogan to read: ‘All people in the service of God’ (Figure 5.2).

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  139

Figure 5.2  Poster Version 2. https://twitter.com/xmslyz/status/1219701582784352257, 11.05.2022.

The most prominent reinterpretation of the poster was provided by s­ upporters of its authors. One of the activists known for their work in promoting peaceful conversations about Islam in Poland in the social media interpreted the image in the following way: The symbol of the diversity of believers in Allah was the palette of colours used to fill in the shape of the ‘Muslim horizon’. The stained glass on the first plane was meant to indicate different shades of Islam, which we came across when travelling or which we hear about in the media. (Statement of the Archdiocese of Kraków; See Solidarność 2020) Here, the diversity is understood as resulting from ‘the experiences of the Islamic world, in the middle of which we stand, and which generates mixed feelings’ (statement of the Archdiocese of Kraków). Further in the same statement, the absence of the cross is explained as an oversight, a matter of the particular angle from which the St Mary Basilica is ­presented. In the final part of the statement, the authors repeat the invitation to dialogue: ‘We invite you all to the dialogue, not only with Christians of other denominations, the adherents of Judaism and Islam, but most of all with each other, including fellow Roman Catholics’ (Solidarność 2020). The proliferation of online debates around the poster and the number of entries placed in the comments sections of various online media outlets and social media suggests that the poster indeed stimulated some

140  Dominika Motak and Joanna Krotofil grassroots interest in the interfaith activities. This was explicitly noted by one participant, who wrote: On the next Sunday a Day of Islam is meant to be celebrated in the Catholic Church in Poland. To be honest, I wasn’t very much interested in this event, because personally I think that these types of initiative are somewhat artificial attempts to reconcile some things which are difficult or even impossible to reconcile. Despite the good intentions of the people who take on these initiatives, not much good comes out of them. Most likely I would not even notice this Day of Islam if it wasn’t for the fact that somebody noticed the strange poster advertising this event in Kraków. (Kowal 2020) Significantly, in the entries commenting on the poster, we did not find any statements by individuals or organizations representing a Muslim voice.

5.11 Conclusions The sensational poster analysed here triggered grassroots engagement in the dialogue about the ‘religious dialogue’ between Catholics and Muslims in Poland. The poster is sensational in two meanings of the word – it appeals to the senses and is spectacular (Meyer 2010: 742); and it is alarming and was broadly contested. Usually, ‘one can appreciate the characteristics of the normal as those of the invisible: the normal is unmarked, unnoticed, unthematised, untheorised’ (Brighenti 2007: 326). In the poster, the ‘normal’ religious landscape of Poland in general and of Kraków in particular was changed; it became divided, and Islam ‘came to the poster’s surface’, transforming Kraków’s ‘religious skyline’. This transformation can be evaluated differently by different actors: the ‘growing’ of religious diversity can be welcomed and acknowledged, or considered undesirable as a threat to the monopoly of Roman Catholicism. The remarkable character of the poster is also reflected in the fact that the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church in Poland has a long history over 20 years but only once has been a subject of controversy and sparked a lay debate. The visual materials used to promote previous celebrations also featured Islamic symbols, including some elements of Islamic architecture. None of these posters, however, attempted to symbolically transform the Catholic landscape of Poland. The poster reflects and reifies various social paradoxes. The first paradox stems from the idea that different religions should belong together, while at the same time having to be addressed separately and occupy different ‘discursive positions’. The second paradox is inherent in the assumption that the dialogue between Roman Catholicism and Islam and the recognition of Muslims should be the standard mode of interaction, juxtaposed with the

The Materiality and Aesthetics of the City in Dialogue  141 realities of dialogue and recognition, which are enacted only as a special event. Drawing on Waldenfels’ observations, we can argue that the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church involves ‘us’ inviting ‘them’ for one day only. The institutional practices, such as the celebrations of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church analysed in this case study, do not create new meanings or social goals. The rhetorical and material resources that the Church has at its disposal are used to preserve the historically shaped power relations that allow the dominant player to refrain from reacting to the hate speech directed at Muslims and Islam. As Anna Piela (2020) notes, ‘the RCC [Roman Catholic Church] as an institution very often ignores hate speech voiced by individual priests and bishops’. The author asserts that the passive stance of the Church regarding hostile attitudes towards Muslims makes ‘collaborative undertakings such as the celebrations of the Day of Islam [...] somewhat tokenistic’. The fundamental paradox of the poster, however, consists of the following: those who designed the poster were driven by the intention to foster recognition of Muslims as a minority, but their work was contested. The image and the discourse about it illustrate the unintended consequences of identifying different religious collectives. While dialogue strives for unity, naming the actors causes divisiveness.

Notes 1 We understand media in a broad sense, including the mass media and new media, as well as images, statues, fetishes, totems, clothes and even bodily gestures (See Krech 2021). 2 Thus Waldenfels (2011, 71): ‘What happens between us belongs neither to each of us nor to all of us. It rather constitutes a no-man’s land, a liminal landscape which simultaneously connects and separates’. 3 For an overview of the origins and development of this dialogical activity during the twentieth century with special reference to the relation of the Vatican to Islam, See Pratt (2010). 4 Only 23% of Poles hold favourable views of Islam and Muslims; 44% declare very unfavourable attitudes towards Muslims, and an additional 33% do not have an opinion (CBOS 2015). 5 ‘[…] Freedom of religion shall also include possession of sanctuaries and other places of worship for the satisfaction of the needs of believers as well as the right of individuals, wherever they may be, to benefit from religious services’. 6 For more information on Hejnał Mariacki, See Kępa 2018.

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6

The Affective Machines of Dialogue Materializations of Identities/Differences in the Assemblages of an Exhibition About Everyday Muslim Life Jan Winkler

6.1 Introduction This chapter examines the politics, practices and power effects of an exhibition of local Muslim life held at a museum in the city of Erlangen, Germany, in 2015. This exhibition was embedded in the city’s ongoing efforts to facilitate an interreligious dialogue as a means of regulating issues of social cohesion. Conceptually, the chapter draws on a body of writings that utilize the Deleuzian concepts of assemblage and machinism, together with New Materialist accounts of social relations, to rethink difference and identity. The chapter uses these perspectives to explore how, in the context of intercultural and interreligious dialogue, differences and identities emerge in and through an affective and material interplay of bodies, practices, emotions and things. The chapter shows how culturalized and religionized differences surface in affective assemblages of dialogue that are imbued with different kinds of forces (Grosz 2005). Some of these forces strive for differentiation, materialize differences and give space to culturalist hierarchies, while others induce a movement of bodies towards each other, transforming or dissolving differences. These perspectives will be explored by outlining a museum exhibition that attempted to make everyday Muslim life tangible and to foster interreligious exchange through various material techniques (e.g., biography stations, photography, audio recordings). Erlangen’s municipal policy has long relied on the paradigm of interreligious dialogue as a means of addressing and mobilizing local Muslim communities and organizations to take part in integration-related issues (Griera and Nagel 2018; Konyali et al. 2019). Interreligious dialogue has been specifically institutionalized since the establishment of the Christian-Islamic Working Group (CIWG) in 1996. The formation of this forum was based on the initiatives of municipal stakeholders. From the beginning, representatives of local Christian and Muslim communities, as well as municipal and civil-society actors, have actively participated in the CIWG. During the period of research relevant to this paper, from 2015 to 2018, the CIWG had met several times a year and has been supported by the municipality as an element of local diversity and social cohesion policies. The CIWG

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-9

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   147 had been moderated by a Christian and a Muslim speaker, the Christian speaker serving as a representative of local government. In addition, there was another municipality-led dialogue forum in Erlangen during this time, which was also specifically aimed at integrating the Muslim population. Furthermore, numerous other measures and events could be observed during the research period that embodied the notion of interreligious dialogue. The exhibition ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ analysed in this chapter was part of these efforts. It presented—and normalized—local Muslim life as an attempt to strengthen the dialogue between Muslims and the rest of local society and to facilitate interreligious exchange. Promoted by local municipal policy, the exhibition was co-organized and co-curated by the Muslim spokesperson of the CIWG, a Muslim convert who tended to represent a ‘liberal Islam’. In contrast, the local mosque communities, the primary addressees of the city’s dialogue policy and forums, were hardly involved in the design of the exhibition, which they perceived ambivalently and indeed criticized. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the chapter examines the contentious political practices of exhibiting Muslim life. It explores the impacts of these practices on relations of identity and difference. In addition to the exhibition itself, the chapter examines the event of a guided tour through the exhibition, which was attended by several members of the CIWG and by representatives of the local Muslim communities. The chapter captures both the exhibition itself and the activities associated with it as material assemblages of heterogeneous elements—entangled in power relations— through which religious identities and differences became tangible and operative in specific ways. It argues that an attunement to the material and affective dimensions of dialogue can enhance understanding of the many registers through which the production of identity and difference works and through which relations of inclusion and exclusion are becoming experienceable. Before outlining the case study, the next section provides an account of the conceptual perspective.

6.2 The Production of Identities and Differences Within Material and Dynamic Assemblages This chapter investigates the materiality of interreligious dialogues and encounters, and the importance of things, bodies and embodied practices (Anderson and Harrison 2010a). It draws on assemblage-theoretical thinking as found prominently in the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), for whom the entire material world—and thus also the social world—is in the process of becoming: in a continuous actualization of matter. The specificity of current relations then arises from how heterogeneous material elements temporarily relate to, influence and co-constitute each other, and in this sense form assemblages. The latter are affective entanglements between bodies of all kinds, in which something new emerges from their interplay.

148  Jan Winkler As a result, the properties, capacities and qualities of this ‘new whole’ can no longer be derived from its individual elements. Assemblages are permeated by both stabilizing and destabilizing movements and potentials. They allow something (new) to take effect over a certain duration, but they are simultaneously always in flux and processual in character. Assemblages further reflect two interwoven domains: ‘a machinic assemblage of bodies, of actions and passions, an intermingling of bodies reacting to one another’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 88), and ‘a collective assemblage of enunciation, of acts and statements’ (ibid.), referring to any intelligible practices (see also: Dewsbury 2011, 150). Assemblages are machinic to the extent that they temporally embody generating capacities to do something (Müller and Schurr 2016; Kleinherenbrink 2020). Scholars have increasingly explored (Deleuzian) New Materialist and Non-Representational perspectives on assemblages, affective relations and bodily encounters to offer an understanding of how social relations and the conditions for subjectivity are produced and transformed in and through shifting constellations of heterogeneous material elements (Thrift 2004; Anderson and Harrison 2010a; Lim 2010; Ahmed 2014). A focus on assemblages (Dewsbury 2011; Anderson et al. 2012) has helped to reconstruct the generating effects of dynamic constellations of bodies of different kinds. Within an assemblage, bodies are mutually interconnected by affect: material forces that connect or repel in many ways and that propel the becoming of matter. It is within this affective interplay of different bodies that subjectivities and experiences are produced and forms of agency are shaped. Here, the foregrounding of affect can be understood as a problematization of the social as being not only a symbolic affair, but rather a conjunction of interwoven bodies whose specific, shifting and modifiable capacities to affect/influence (others) and to be affected/influenced (by others) are constantly produced from within the relational whole. Difference/identity, then, appears as a tendency towards distributing and sorting specifically marked bodies in an otherwise contingent field of material articulations. New Materialist perspectives highlight dynamic materiality, open processes and creative becomings (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Grosz 2005; Braidotti 2011), while at the same time being concerned with the question of how this process may express historically contingent but powerful structures (of affect) (Lim 2010; Saldanha 2005; Dewsbury 2011). The latter may refer to replayed patterns of feeling and experiencing, repeated ways of being attracted or repelled (by things or bodies) and experience-based memories of socio-material relations. Thus, a perspective on affect makes it clear that everything (becoming) is, at the same time, loaded with excess—the potential to be otherwise—and with the durability and aftermath of past experiences and relations (Lim 2010, 2393). Linked to theorizations of affect, within these strands of thinking a focus on emotions has also become important (Simonsen 2010). Emotions appear as personalized intensities that result from affective relations between bodies (Ahmed 2014). Overall,

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   149 to understand difference/identity means to trace the crystallizations of materially dispersed experiences, emotional-affective intensities and bodily relations by which individual or collectivized senses of belonging and not-belonging, self and other, are brought into place, into play and into power (Swanton 2008, 2010a; Lim 2010; Anderson et al. 2012). Assemblage thinking has been used to understand diverse lines of social differentiation. For example, as Anderson et al. state, it has been mobilized to rethink how race operates ‘as a social formation and category of identity and difference’ (2012, 175). The authors quote from Arun Saldanha’s (2007) work on white psychedelic ravers in Goa, which, in the words of Anderson et al., aims to grasp the ‘emergence of race on the ground in interaction’ (ibid.). In his New Materialist account, Saldanha highlights the material viscosity of race (whiteness) as a result of different elements repeatedly coming together—practices, the beach, sun-bathed bodies, music, drugs, bars, nature, nightfall (Saldanha 2005, 2007). Here, racial differentiations are the effect of the generating capacitates of such assemblages, ‘force fields of flesh and other objects, producing a continually changing distribution of intensities which prefigure encounters, which set up encounters, and which have to be worked on in these encounters’ (Thrift 2000, 219, cited in Swanton 2010a: 2340; also Anderson and Harrison 2010b: 18). Emerging from (re-)assembled entities, race is becoming operative as a technology of differentiation (Swanton 2010a, 2010b), affecting bodies in the ways they relate to each other. Resembling Ahmed’s (2014) concept of emotional ‘stickiness’, Saldanha, in his research on rave in Goa, discusses a racializing viscosity to denote a ‘becoming-sticky of bodies relative to each other and certain spaces through certain behaviours and physical and cultural conditions’ (2005, 173, 174). Saldanha even explores how a specific tan of (white) skin from prolonged sunbathing can become a marker of inclusion and exclusion: ‘There is on the beach a very sharp differential between whites who tan, and Indians who don’t’ (ibid., 182). In sum, Saldanha is showing the multiplicity of meanings and affects with which racial differentiations can be imbued (Anderson et al. 2012, 175). Similarly, the work of Dan Swanton is very sensitive to the material registers whereby racialized and culturalized differences work. For Swanton, racializing or culturalizing operations are ‘constituted through diverse […] connections between material and conceptual elements’ (2010a, 2338) and the ‘diverse ways in which [different] elements might be plugged into processes of differentiation in any given encounter’ (ibid.). As a result, racialized and culturalized differentiations are ‘performed not only through human interaction, but also through encounters with all kinds of things and spatial arrangements’ (ibid., 2339) like, for example, ‘rucksacks, cars, park gates, veils, minarets—all of which have the capacity to affect as terrorism, segregation, cultural difference […]’ (ibid.). Things or spaces ‘become sites of intensive difference’ (ibid., 2340) as they are positioned and affectively loaded within discursive, political and everyday

150  Jan Winkler practices. Racializing or culturalizing differentiations is seen ‘as something that bodies do in interaction’ (ibid., 2399), while interactions are prefigured by a ‘formatting of perceptions by past experience’ (ibid., 2340). Finally, the ‘affective charging of raced [or: culturalized, religionized] bodies circumscribes what a body is capable of at particular times and places’ (ibid.). Jason Lim explores the latter issue when trying (with Deleuze and Guattari) to think about race and ethnicity ‘through affect and machinism’ (2010, 2393). He also conceives of race and ethnicity ‘in terms of historically specific sociomaterial assemblages that are at once practised and productive’ (ibid.). Lim describes a scene in a bar in which a woman, who allegedly belongs to the ‘South Asian’ community, dances with men from outside this community. The woman is then stared at for some time by another man who arrives and appears to be in a negative mood— presumably also from the ‘South Asian’ community. Lim discusses the scene in great detail, reflecting on the question of the extent to which the male gaze might represent an ethnicizing control practice, attempting to remind the dancing woman of an ‘appropriate’ community-oriented Asian feminine behaviour (2010, 2399). Lim posits that ethnic or cultural differences continually (re-)surface from the convergence of bodies and material elements. Those elements are both held together and reconfigured by shifting affective relations that are at the heart of machinic assemblages potentially working as ‘racialising and ethnicising machines’ (ibid., 2403). However, racializing and ethnicizing machines ‘necessarily connect into other desiring machines such as one that flings together a man and a woman in a bar, and that animates their relation with music, alcohol, dancing, a crowd, etc.’ (ibid.). Lim assumes that the situation is one of a complex of many interwoven assemblages/machines, each with its own specific subjectivizing effects. If the woman being stared at just keeps dancing and devotes herself to the machinic assemblage of ‘bar/music/dance’, the ethnicizing force (Swanton 2008)—‘memories suggesting how bodies should properly relate to other bodies’ (Lim 2010, 2399)—may momentarily stop affecting her body and working on her identity. For Lim, ‘thinking about ethnicity in this manner is […] to acknowledge the capacity—one potential among many others— for ethnicity to happen that arises out of the material and practical dynamics of the situation’ (2010, 2399; my emphasis). An assemblage perspective on difference/identity has also been explored in fully different contexts—for example, to analyse the operations of racial and sexual differences within practices of assisted reproduction and surrogacy (Kroløkke 2013; Schurr 2014). Very few studies, however, used assemblage thinking to investigate interreligious practices. An exception is the work of Anna Hickey-Moody and Marissa Willcox, who use New Materialist perspectives—Deleuzio-Guattarian assemblage thinking and Karen Barads notion of intra-action—‘to activate ethico-political research exploring religion and gender at a community level’ (2019, 1). They aim to grasp the materiality of the ‘entanglements of difference’ (ibid.) and to

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   151 understand cross-cultural and interreligious ‘feelings of “community” and “belonging”’ (ibid.) as something that relies on ‘more-than-human assemblages; […] places of worship, orientations, attractions, aesthetics, art and objects of attachment’ (ibid.). In another publication, the authors analyse ‘how the materiality of religion can shape the ways young people and their parents build relationships with those from different religions’ (2020, 65). In sum, all the perspectives presented so far open up questions about the material life of interreligious dialogues and encounters and the materialaffective registers of the relations of difference and identity: How do differences and identities surface within and through those material assemblages that constitute interreligious dialogues and encounters, and how does this affect bodies? The next sections illustrate the practices and politics of an exhibition of Muslim life shown in the city of Erlangen, Germany, which was promoted as part of an agenda for interreligious dialogue. Materialist perspectives will then help to make visible the circulations of differences that were at work in this case.

6.3 A Diversity-political Exhibition on Local Muslim Life: Contexts, Rationalities and Conflicts The findings of this chapter are based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in the German city of Erlangen between 2015 and 2018. The aim was to reconstruct the political nature and power effects of local practices of interreligious dialogue. For this purpose, multiple qualitative interviews and participatory observation of dialogue-related events were conducted, and many informal conversations were held. For the purposes of this chapter, the following research activities were particularly important: an analysis of documents related to the exhibition (a documentation book, newspaper reports, etc.); observation of the vernissage of the exhibition in February 2015; participant observation of a guided tour through the exhibition given by the Muslim curator to members of the CIWG (March 2015); my own visits to the exhibition; an interview with the Muslim curator conducted beforehand (2015) and informal conversations with her afterwards (2016, 2017); and interviews and informal conversations with municipal representatives and with members of the local mosque communities, some of whom took part in the guided tour (2015–2018). From 1 February to 26 April 2015, the Erlangen City Museum (Stadtmuseum) presented the exhibition ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ as a counterpart to the travelling exhibition ‘Muslims in Germany’ (organized by the Foundation ‘House of History of the Federal Republic of Germany’), which was also on display. The exhibition ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ was jointly conceived by the Muslim spokesperson of the local dialogue forum CIWG. It is significant that this Muslim CIWG spokesperson embodied a specific subject position: a young, female, well-educated, politically engaged convert to Islam who had grown up in Germany and who was barely involved in the

152  Jan Winkler religious and communal activities of the local mosque communities, despite representing the latter as a CIWG spokesperson. She maintained constructive relationships with the mosque communities, but in some respects found herself in a relationship of difference with them. She embodied a liberal and progressive Islam that not all members of the mosque communities identified with. She promoted critical re-interpretations of religious knowledge, an opening up of traditional Islamic perspectives to society and discussions of sensitive topics (such as religion and homosexuality). Instead of investing in the cultivation of religious community life, she developed Islamic perspectives on social issues, which allowed her to plug into political debates about integration. At the same time, in wearing the hijab she embodied a self-confident expression of Islamic identity. Given her attitudes, this Muslim CIWG spokesperson harmonized with the positions of many dialogue-involved municipal and Christian representatives (Interviews 2015–2017), who tended to perceive the Muslim communities as too conservative. She also emphasized her distance from the mosque communities, ‘because I’m not so close to the base there due to being German’ (interview 2015). ‘For [the communities], I am the Christian from the city’ (interview 2016), she said with a laugh, but also in a thoughtful manner. For her, the mosque communities displayed a religious-cultural normativity that would partially work as an obstacle to social integration. She saw herself as an interreligious bridge-builder who introduces Islam to society and guides Muslims towards more social openness. In this way, it was possible for her to become an encouraged ‘agent’ of the dialogue technology (AmirMoazami 2011; Malik 2013). The travelling exhibition ‘Muslims in Germany’ attempted to show ‘people in their everyday lives, on the street, at work, at school or in their free time’ and thus to ‘paint [a] diverse picture of the everyday lives and lifeworld of Muslims in Germany’.1 In addition, photography projects by Muslim artists were shown. The exhibition ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ had similar objectives. By presenting actual local individuals (in contrast to the anonymous presentations of ‘Muslims in Germany’), it was intended to show that people of Islamic faith are active in all areas of local society and are not only marked by their religious identity, but also by numerous other social identities (interview with the Muslim curator, 2015). At the vernissage of ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ in 2015, which was attended by around 250 people, the Muslim co-curator, as well as a city representative active in local interreligious dialogue, gave speeches. The latter explicitly reflected on the exhibition’s political strategy of portraying Muslims in their multiple and not only religious identities. All speakers emphasized the importance of the exhibition for strengthening local co-existence and highlighted local Muslims as integrated and engaged subjects who are not only defined by religion (Figure 6.1). Biographical stations showed photographs of Muslim individuals engaged in their everyday and private activities. Moreover, the stations displayed printed quotations from interviews conducted with the individuals shown, fixed headphones for listening to the interviews and personal objects selected

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Figure 6.1 Cover-photography of the Stadtmuseum 2015: cover.

exhibition

‘Muslims

in

Erlangen’.

by the Muslim participants. Some of the objects were religious in nature (e.g. a Koran, a pilgrim’s belt), but the majority were not (e.g. a water pipe, coffee tableware, family photos, children’s books). Furthermore, brief information on Islam and Muslims in Germany and Erlangen was provided. In 2015, some printed documentation was published (Stadtmuseum 2015), which included the audio recordings of the interviews on CD. The exhibition presented the family, leisure and working lives of eight local Muslim residents. A report on a regional TV channel (09.02.2015) framed the exhibition as an emotional exploration of the personal life of Muslims and as a contribution to understanding.2 The insights into local Muslim life would be ‘moving’ (quote from the report): ‘Through the personal stories and photo series, visitors get a deep insight into the lives of the eight Muslims’ (ibid.). The Muslim co-organizer explained in an interview conducted for the report: ‘The great thing is that the protagonists really let us into their lives, that is, into family life, as you see it here’ (ibid.). In her speech at the vernissage, a city representative supported this focus on the inner life of subjects with emotional statements: ‘A special thank you goes to the Muslims of Erlangen who have opened their lives to us’ (Figure 6.2).

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Figure 6.2 Exhibition site. Stadtmuseum 2015: 13, © Erich Malter.

‘Muslims in Erlangen’ featured large photographs of people of Islamic faith predominantly in the context of non-religious, everyday and private activities and settings that reflected little of the importance of Islamic religious traditions or norms. People were seen playing basketball and soccer, smoking shisha, carrying briefcases on their way to work, using laptops and smart phones and eating breakfast. Some photos showed a woman (without religious headwear) relaxing in a hammock or working out in a fitness centre, while others showed people doing yoga or nordic walking (only a few photographs showed people with Islamic headwear, and only one showed a mosque). Pictures and texts referred to the civic engagement of the portrayed Muslims, for example, in neighbourhood initiatives or integration projects. The Muslim individuals were presented as social bridge-builders and as socially engaged citizens who reflect on their civic participation and who help shape local society. The individuals depicted in the images and texts often emphasized, both explicitly and implicitly, the similarities between religions, between religious and non-religious practices and between Muslims and the majority society. One person was quoted saying: ‘A human being is a human being, and for me there are only good and bad people. There is no difference whether someone is Muslim, Catholic or Protestant’ (Stadtmuseum 2015, 47) ­(Figures 6.3–6.6). The persons depicted embodied a Muslim identity that did not require special places, practices or efforts, that could be lived privately and that did

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Figure 6.3  Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 44.

Figure 6.4  Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 60.

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Figure 6.5  Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 39.

Figure 6.6  Displays of everyday activities. Stadtmuseum 2015: 53.

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   157 not display religious boundaries. By making the law-like, ritual ­components of religious identity invisible, the exhibition propagated secular religious subjects (Mahmoud 2006; Amir-Moazami 2011). A Muslim woman from Indonesia, for example, compared prayer to meditation and yoga. She translated prayer into a more profane language (given that yoga is often perceived rather as an element of life-style) and articulated it as a technique of relaxation and meditation. She was quoted saying: ‘It’s a little bit like yoga. Some people do yoga, do meditation, to just go into themselves. […] I have my prayer times and [there] you can […] just switch off […]. The concept is actually similar. Everybody just wants to come to rest sometimes a day’ (Stadtmuseum 2015, 22). Such statements emphasized commonalities and similarities and were aimed at producing proximity and interpersonal bonds. This was underpinned by the materiality of the exhibition: visitors could see large-format photographs of friendly smiling people inviting them into their lives (Figures 6.7–6.9). Particularly controversial was a display of a Muslim who described himself as non-religious. The following statement can be read in the documentation, which also featured at the biography station: ‘I personally am not a believer. I know that there is a God, and it is good to have a God […]. I personally have closed this topic of religion for me’ (Stadtmuseum 2015, 36). In quotations, he also criticized intolerance in some Islamic countries (ibid., 41). This person was included to show that not all individuals who had formerly been socialized into Islamic contexts were religious and that some Muslims also abandon religiosity. However, the paradox of showing someone who abandoned religiosity as a Muslim remains. The exhibition thus presented Muslim individuals as ‘normal’ citizens who do not make their religious identity the dominant issue of their

Figure 6.7 The Muslim woman who compared prayer to meditation. Stadtmuseum 2015: 17.

158  Jan Winkler

Figure 6.8 The Muslim woman who compared prayer to meditation. Stadtmuseum 2015: 20.

Figure 6.9 The Muslim woman who compared prayer to meditation. Stadtmuseum 2015: 19.

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   159 lives, but live it in an unspectacular way as one identity among many. Accordingly, the exhibition mostly presented individuals who were not part of the organized mosque communities, although so far the local political dialogue had primarily addressed the latter. In any case, the lack of references to religion in the images and texts was striking. This ‘dissolution’ of Muslim identity was an intentional response to an overheated Islam-asproblem discourse that overemphasized the religiosity of Muslims. On the one hand, the exhibition addressed urban society, to which Muslims were presented as normal subjects, already integrated and not generating any special challenges. In so far as the exhibition tied the presence of Muslims to well-known local sites, Muslims were normalized as a local reality. On the other hand, the exhibition was directed at Muslims in Erlangen. As an empowerment technology, it was meant to convey a message to local Muslims that they were being recognized. The leading role of the Muslim co-curator generated authenticity. She argued: ‘That’s an incredibly positive sign […] that the museum is doing an exhibition about Muslims in Erlangen and that this is actually co- created by a Muslim’ (2015). Simultaneously, the exhibition aimed to convey to Muslims the local diversity of Muslim identities and thereby encourage them to reflect on Muslim ways of life in Germany and on their own position in society. Thus, the exhibition embodied the political rationality of (interreligious) dialogue (Peter 2010; Winkler 2017): integration through encounter with difference and self-reflection. In my conversations with the Muslim co-curator and CIWG spokesperson, as well as with a municipal representative, it became apparent that the exhibition was also intended to encourage those Muslims who were organized along religious-traditional or national-cultural lines to engage more with other Muslim perspectives. The Muslim CIWG speaker and a Christian CIWG speaker and municipal representative later also expressed disappointment to some degree that some Muslim community members did not accept the practices on view as Islamic (see below). The attempt precisely not to highlight Muslims as subjects with particular religious lives, linked to the goal of normalizing conflictual relationships, ultimately represented a normalization of what it means to be Muslim. Implicitly, the exhibition suggested that ‘acknowledgable’ Muslims should not overemphasize their religion. The combination of the de-religionized depictions and the still existing claim to portray a religious group constituted a (re-)configuration of Muslim identities. The exhibition produced the assumption that traditional religious practices and normativities were not that important for everyday Muslimness. By celebrating the Muslim individuals presented as particularly well integrated and engaged, the practice of rendering the traditional-collective aspects of religious identity irrelevant became even more effective. In any case, the imagery of the exhibition was in tension with normativetraditional notions of Islam. On the websites of the local Muslim communities, for example, Islam is regarded as a ‘comprehensive set of rules for

160  Jan Winkler everyday life’3 (including prayer, Koranic study and clothing regulations; cf. also interview with local Imam, 2015). The contested nature of the exhibition expressed itself in multiple ways. One of the Muslims represented spoke in a local newspaper of initial doubts about being shown because some Muslims might be displeased that he was serving alcohol in his restaurant, which was also featured.4 In a later municipal dialogue event, in turn, a Muslim participant noted that, during the exhibition, both Muslim and non-Muslim visitors wondered ‘where the orthodox Muslims with beards had gone’ (approximately captured quote, observation 2017). On the part of the Muslim mosque communities, the exhibition was perceived ambivalently. Some community members considered the portrayals of Muslims in the context of nonIslamic activities to be meaningful in terms of integration policy (statements in a CIWG session, 2017). Others, however, articulated criticism. In an informal conversation during an iftar event (in 2017, thus already two years after the exhibition), a member of a local mosque criticized the dual exhibition for having left out the positive achievements of proper Islam and Muslim culture, instead merely having shown ordinary people. ‘Where were the mosque buildings, the works of art and Islamic architecture? You could take something from other countries, from Turkey, or so’ (approximately captured quote). The community member perceived the exhibition’s political rationale of presenting Muslim identity as just one of many as a politically intentional attempt to weaken Muslim identity. The materiality of the exhibition, characterized by photographs of friendly smiling people and the (relative) absence of Islamic symbols, seemed to generate affective feelings of exclusion in this interview partner. Another member of a mosque association, who was also present during a guided tour through the exhibition, discussed below, criticized ‘Muslims in Germany’ for showing photographs that, without commentary, linked Islam with elements that could be associated with socio-economically deprived milieus (Interview 2016). Photographs of high-rise housing estates (Plattenbauten), he said, were not representations of Muslim life: ‘That upset me terribly […], who were these pictures taken by? Are they really Muslims?’ He added: ‘Women […] in the hallway of a barracks, smoking […], that’s not Muslim’. Regarding ‘Muslims in Erlangen’, he commented more positively, but not with much more enthusiasm: ‘That was acceptable, the portraits downstairs, I could identify with them to some extent’. However, he sharply criticized the decision to present a person as Muslim who rejects (institutionalized) religion. Presenting this ‘under the banner of “Muslims in Erlangen” is simply bullshit’ (ibid.). He continued: ‘You get the impression that one wants to bring in forces among Muslims, according to the principle that to be a Muslim does not require one to be a believer’ (ibid.). And furthermore: ‘Always these attempts to create an Islam different than the Islam that is really lived’.

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   161

6.4 Exhibiting ‘Muslimness’: The Politics of Multicultural Intimacies and the Material Entanglements of Differentiating and Binding Forces Having illustrated the contentious rationalities and practices of the exhibition, and the conflicts that came along with it, this section highlights how the exhibition displayed precisely an entanglement of binding and separating forces. On the one hand, conceiving of the exhibition as a material assemblage directs attention to how this assemblage produced an affective realm of similarity/resemblance/ affinity in which the circulation of binding affects could take place. As a technology of similarity/affinity, the exhibition aimed at bridging differences using specific material-affective registers and facilitated an affective pull towards connection (with others). The presented Muslim woman who compared prayer to relaxation, for example, could emerge as a subject with the capacity to connect (with others) and to be connected, especially with the majority society whose everyday experiences of relaxing practices were mobilized to create a realm in which it could come closer to the presented Muslim subject. This ‘coming-closer’ was affectively channelled also by the visualities of the photographs, which depicted the Muslim woman as a sympathetic and friendly person. By displaying similarity, she came to embody a desire to connect with others; but this affective capacity was closely tied to the identity-political act of stripping her religious identity of any strong normativity. The circulating affects of similarity/resemblance were thus normalizing and norming Muslim identities. Muslims would be and should be like anyone else, with their religious identity being just one among many. The affects of similarity were part of a production of difference/identity through the exclusion of the non-visible, that is, the normative traditional Islamic subject. Within this affective context, Muslim community members could not criticize the secular representations of Muslim life (as downplaying and displacing collective Islamic religiosity) without having to break through this affective force of similarity—that is, without having to reject ‘smiling bodies’ presented as friendly, sympathetic, engaged and integrated citizens. In a way, the depicted individuals came to embody a ‘“feel good” […] fantasy of the nation’ (Hunter 2017, 168; see also: Ahmed 2008) and of good interreligious coexistence. Any criticism of this exhibition had to enter into a relationship of tension with the dialogical desire for bonding with others. Any criticism also had to challenge the positive affective imaginary of good coexistence, in which, of course, all participants in local dialogue, including the Muslim communities, had constantly been investing. The exhibition presented Muslim individuals as embodiments of a desired society and of an Islam that was already integrated. Criticism of the exhibition proved difficult, as it would risk undermining these positive dynamics. This made it difficult for Muslim community members to play out their religious differences in relation to the secularized imaginary. Nonetheless, the exhibition indeed helped the majority society come closer to local Muslim life, as it

162  Jan Winkler was able to find common ground. The visitors’ reactions published in the documentation (2015, 66) reflect these movements: ‘It’s lovely to learn what sympathetic and engaged fellow citizens of Muslim faith we have […]. One would like to meet one or the other personally’ (statement 1); ‘I did not realize what exciting people of Muslim faith live here’ (statement 2); ‘I have the feeling I know Muslims better now’ (statement 3). Moreover, both the presented Muslim individuals who were directly involved in the exhibition and Muslim visitors to the exhibition in general could experience the pleasure of being acknowledged as a part of society—of being elements of interest who enriched society. Such experiences could potentially foster becoming as more self-confident subjects. On the other hand, however, the whole material composition of the exhibition—the museal setting—put something between the non-Muslim majority subject as ‘observer’, ‘learner’ and ‘visitor’, and the presented Muslim individuals as simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary ‘objects of interest’. Thus, a differentiating machine could arise from the assemblage of the exhibition. The materialities of exhibiting ‘Muslimness’—a mediatization and eventalization of ‘Muslimness’—became effective as a technical mediation of Muslim difference. Tied to this, the whole material apparatus implicitly presented itself as necessary to explain and to lead into ‘Muslimness’, as something to be found behind the headphone installations, audio recordings and photographs. In order to generate dialogue and understanding, the exhibition facilitated a ‘musealization’ and thus objectification of Muslim identity. Moreover, practices of visiting a museum generally foster a confrontational mode in the materialized separation of viewer and object. Such tensions also echoed in the act of listening to the audio recordings of Muslim individuals talking. Some of these recordings contained emotional stories about hard experiences, for example, stories about not feeling at home anywhere, or about being forced to flee one’s home country. Active listening to these very personal reports was intended to generate empathy and compassion as a basis for the production of cross-differential bonds. Referring to a Muslim man who describes his family’s escape from the war in Bosnia, the Muslim co-curator said in a television report: ‘What particularly touched me is simply the way he tells it. And our visitors can then also listen to that on audio stations, so they can really hear the tone of voice as he tells this story’ (Source: Endnote 2). Other audio recordings contained more general reflections and feelings about topics like family, friendship, living in the city and belonging, or mundane statements, for example, about working life or about a personal love of gardening: ‘I would be happy if one day I had a little house with a garden, so that I can simply spend time with the garden, with plants […]. I get a lot of pleasure from that’ (Stadtmuseum 2015, 41). The recorded Muslim individuals expressed their feelings in various ways, partly in relation to issues such as migration and religion and partly to aspects of their personal biography. For example, one person talked about being a conscientious objector: ‘Why should I make my mother cry?’ (recordings, 2015).

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   163 The biographical stations in general and the audio stations in particular aimed to create emotional access to Muslim subjects. The exhibition displayed an attempt to regulate the relations between ‘different’ subjects (Muslim and non-Muslim) on the level of emotions and intimate experiences. Such a technology can be interpreted as part of an overarching governmentality, which, with Ann-Marie Fortier, can be described as the ‘management of multicultural intimacies’ (2007, 104). The majority/‘observer’ subject who hears these voices may find in them evidence of shared practices and interests. He/she experiences Muslims as individuals who are similar to others and with whom emotional and other experiences can be shared. In the documentation, one visitor is quoted as saying (Stadtmuseum 2015, 66): ‘Impressive the audio testimonies, close to life and also just so normal’. And yet, in terms of the materiality of the assemblage, the ‘observer’ subject finds him- or herself in a museum, headphones on ears, attention (technically) focused on something special. The Muslim’s voices became affectively charged in two ways: they came to embody something familiar, but also something special to be explored by listening. Hence, while the exhibition—more precisely the specific machinic assemblage that the exhibition partially came to be— created a realm for the affects of similarity/affinity to circulate, its materialities simultaneously formed entry or docking points for the ‘affective refrains’ (Lim 2010, 2407) of Muslim otherness, which exist as ‘virtual memories’ (ibid., 2402) within the hegemonic discourses about Islam in Europe. The distance in the encounters produced by the technical and material arrangements had the potential to make those discourses of Muslim difference resonate.

6.5 Relations of Difference/Identity in an Interreligious Groups’ Guided Tour through the Exhibition on Muslim Life: Analysing Shifting Affective Assemblages Prior to a meeting of the CIWG, the Muslim CIWG spokesperson and co-curator of the exhibition ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ gave a guided tour through both exhibitions to several members of the CIWG—representatives of the local mosque communities and the Christian churches, as well as a representative of the city who is involved in integration policy. Whereas the previous section reflected on a line of difference between local urban society and local Muslim residents in general, the guided tour highlighted another line of difference: that between the more traditionally organized Muslim community members and secularized and non-normative representations of Islam. Here, the very fact that the Muslim co-curator led the tour already constituted a special constellation: under the presence of municipal representatives, a Muslim convert active in local dialogue policies and embodying a liberal form of Islam was leading members of the traditional mosque communities through ‘her’ Islam exhibition.

164  Jan Winkler The Muslim CIWG speaker acted performatively in the role of lecturer and expert. She walked with the interreligious group from station to station and explained the depictions. In the process, conflicts and expressions of criticism emerged. While viewing a photo artwork that ironically and critically showed a woman wearing a hijab and unexpected accessories (including a water gun held to her temples, a soother in her mouth, a cigarette and a moustache), a member of a mosque community complained that ‘this can’t have been created from a Muslim perspective’. In response, the Muslim co-curator tried to turn this criticism into a joint reflection. At the end of the tour, a member of a mosque community critically (and in fact accurately) summed up that the entire exhibition was ‘an exhibition about cultural diversity and not about Islam’ (approximately captured quote). However, in a subsequent interview with a (Christian) municipal representative who was present during the tour (2015), statements of this kind—or moments like the criticism of the artwork—were taken as indications that the mosque communities had too narrow a conception of religion and would not accept Muslims from ‘outside the communities’. This could be seen during the tour (ibid.). Muslim community members were thus observed by representatives of local government during the tour. The former seem to have been expected to embrace representations of Muslim life that, for the sake of the goals of integration policy, had been cleared of religious normativity as nonetheless appropriate forms of ‘living out Islam’ and ‘being Muslim’. A particularly heated discussion emerged at the biography station of the non-religious Muslim, which the Muslim community members criticized. A non-religious person could not be presented as a Muslim. For the Muslim curator, the non-religious Muslim should make it clear that not all Muslims practise their religion and that some abandon religiosity entirely. Such a person could thus also offer a specific perspective on Muslim self-understanding, a view that also seemed to be supported by municipal representatives involved in interreligious dialogue. During the tour, different machines, and thus different organizing technologies of power, could become operative from within the assemblages of the exhibition and the guided tour. One technology—of the same type as that discussed in the previous section—aimed at producing bonds of affinity, in this case between subjects that may have different perspectives on Islam and on ‘being a Muslim’. This technology of affinity generated affective pulls towards a connection with divergence. The assemblage of the exhibition (within which this technology could unfold) potentially channelled forms of meaningful exchange between the Muslim communities and the presented (secularized) Muslim individuals who were mostly from outside the communities (hence also between traditionally practising Muslims and those living out more individual forms of religiosity). However, this channelling seemed to work specifically on the subjectivities of the Muslim community members. Thus, there was also another machine at work, one that created lines of differentiation and that addressed Muslim

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   165 community members as being different from the people portrayed—with the latter simultaneously being articulated as particularly well integrated and engaged, and thus as desired subjects. Muslim community members were implicitly positioned as those ‘others’ who would still have to show that they accepted the secular depictions of Muslim life. As several statements of Muslim community members indicated (both during the visit and in later interviews), the exhibition seemed to establish a realm in which the latter did not experience themselves as fully included. During the tour, Muslim community members were surely articulated as part of a local Muslim life that had been made an object of recognition and celebration. However, they were also placed on the outside through the dominance of the secular imagery. To leave this position, Muslim community members would have to embrace secular depictions of Muslim life. Hence, during the guided tour a differentiating machine was at work, differentiating between the presented ‘secular Muslims’—being positioned as somewhat closer to majority society and as harmonizing better with society’s plurality—and the present Muslims from the communities. The latter pointed critically to the lack of Islamic religious symbols in the exhibition, while later being criticized for it by, for example, a city representative for not being tolerant and open enough. Thus, the difference produced was also one between the Muslim community members and the others, that is, Christian and municipal participants in dialogue and the Muslim curator. The following sections will explore further how different processes of inclusion and exclusion, different technologies of differentiation and affinity, were operating in many ways at the same time. During the tour, the female Muslim curator addressed all those present with visible enthusiasm and articulated the exhibition as a hopeful impulse for the strengthening of a diverse and dialogue-oriented urban society within which all Muslims could find their place. The whole tour took the form of a testimony of cohesion and dialogue, linked to celebratory presentations of Muslim life in the city. The Muslims from the communities who could not fully recognize themselves in the images were nevertheless made the addressees of these enthusiastic actualizations of a positive intercultural imaginary. The Muslim curator showed them the perspective of belonging that the exhibition would stand for, an imagination materialized in her own enthusiastic bodily performances. The Muslims from the communities were thus integrated and welcomed to the positive narratives about a plural and cohesive society, but they were also pushed to acknowledge specific and contentious representations of ‘normal’ Muslim life. The celebration of the portrayed Muslim persons (as integrated, engaged, diverse) facilitated the expectation to embrace them as ‘good local Muslims’. Ultimately, Muslim community members were caught between forces of inclusion and exclusion. Indeed, the bodily enthusiasm for the exhibition was unevenly distributed. While the Muslim curator expressed excitement, some members of the mosque communities tended to be more reserved. The

166  Jan Winkler unequal distributions of enthusiasm and scepticism materialized within the constellations of bodies and thus became visible and observable—for example, for city representatives who later criticized Muslim community members for their reserved reactions to the presented aspects of Muslim life. As briefly indicated above, interviews retrospectively revealed that some city representatives had observed the Muslim community members during the tour, in particular how the latter were affected by the secular depictions of Muslims’ everyday lives. With ‘dialogical curiosity’, (Christian) municipal representatives and the Muslim co-curator observed the Muslim subject’s reactions—the sentiments Muslim community members expressed, and how they related or could relate to the depictions. They observed this uneven and differentiated distribution of bodily expressed joy or resentment about the exhibition. Here, a differentiating machine became effective in and through specific patterns of feeling/behaving—and then also in and through specific regimes of attention and corresponding bodily practices of observing, interpreting, sorting and judging other proximate bodies (Swanton 2010a; Lim 2010; Simonsen 2010; Ahmed 2014). However, despite these mobilizations of difference, the practice of visiting the exhibition together in itself simultaneously operated as an affective machine of conviviality that produced binding affects (interfering with the differentiating forces) (Lim 2010). Representatives of the city and of Muslim and Christian communities came together, walked together through the exhibition and formed a group of bodies relatively close to one another. After the guided tour, the group took a walk together through the city to the premises of a Christian educational institution, where a meeting of the interreligious dialogue group was scheduled for later that day. During this walk, every day, private and jovial conversations took place. In sum, a bodily togetherness—bodies moving towards each other—had always been at work, potentially (re-)activating all the positive experiences of conviviality of an interreligious dialogue that had been practiced at local level for years. Intermingling with differentiating mechanisms, one could always observe diverse situated events of ‘togetherness’. One of the stations, for example, showed a converted Muslim woman dancing. Here, the female Muslim curator laughed and cheerfully said: ‘Well, there you see the variety of things Muslim women are doing’ (approximately captured quote). Laughter then spread throughout the group. The reproduction of gender stereotypes aside, we can see here how bodily activities can give rise to new machines that are different from the dominant operations, here a machine that produces commonality through the circulating affects of joke-making. Her cheerful remark had the potential to disconnect those present temporally from the differentiating machine that promoted secular Muslims and excluded traditionally organized Muslims that live out religious difference. The joke and the spreading laughter affectively charged the bodies in such a way that the differentiating and norming forces of the exhibition’s visual representations were temporally weakened in positioning and sorting bodily subjects (cf. Lim 2010).

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   167

6.6 Situated Becomings: Between Religious Community and the ‘Friendly Smiling Non-believer’ In the course of the debate that took place in front of the photograph of the non-religious Muslim, a Muslim community member suddenly opened up to the decision to show a non-religious Muslim. Interestingly, he mobilized an Islamic theological viewpoint to do so, noting that only God himself— not even the Prophet—could tell people’s faith. He referred analogously to the Islamic scriptures: ‘Someone said: He is not a Muslim. But the Prophet answered him, Have you looked into his heart?’ (approximately captured quote). Thus, even a person who breaks with religion cannot be denied being a Muslim or living morally. The Muslim curator ‘gratefully’ took up these thoughts as fruitful reflections, suggesting that being Muslim is difficult to define anyway. Christian and municipal participants also seemed happy with this religiously derived declaration of tolerance. Consequently, the time spent together at the biography station induced a brief theological reflection on tolerance and religious tradition, which grew out of the material event and contained a negotiation of religious identities. Finally, all the participants at least seemed to agree that such reflections can be constructive. The situation illustrates the powerful effects of the technology of dialogue, which always aims to create spaces in which subjects engage with difference. While the exhibition made this dialogical openness its programme from the start, here the Muslim ‘critics’ approached this openness from an Islamic perspective. The affective assemblage of the exhibition generally facilitated an embrace of the not-religiously-normative Muslim, at first simply by invoking the realm of general interpersonal empathy. Getting to know the non-religious Muslim was framed as an enriching and positive experience. Looking at the material assemblage of bodies and things, the expectation that the non-practising Muslim would be acknowledged was realized within an intimate engagement with a particular person whom one might meet in the museum and who had—photographically, and thus tangibly—opened up his or her life. The negotiations of identity, difference and tolerance did not emerge through text-based discussions: they unfolded while all participants had their eyes turned to a photographically mediated friendly and smiling person from their own city. The same technology of an intimate representation of others that aimed to produce emotional bonds between society and the Muslim population was operating here as an attempt to create bonds between non-practising and practising Muslims (Figure 6.10). Through his statements, the Muslim community member who had started the reflections about the (im-) possibilities of a judgement of faith transformed his position within the assemblage, and thus his capacities for connecting with others. He initially criticized the exhibitions: it had been he who had stated that the exhibitions were more about cultural diversity than about Muslim life, and who had criticized the artistic images of the veiled

168  Jan Winkler

Figure 6.10 ‘Smiling man’/the ‘non-religious Muslim’. Stadtmuseum 2015: 37.

woman as non-Islamic. However, through his reflections on tolerance, he was now able to engage again in the movement of approaching difference that the exhibition was trying to channel. In the moments of criticism outlined above, the Muslim representative seemed to be sure of what true Islam was. In the face of the non-religious Muslim, however, he expressed a more complex understanding of faith and truth. Thus, in different constellations, different lines of subjectivation can be actualized. Furthermore, through his statements, the Muslim speaker reintroduced Islamic knowledge to the assemblage of the exhibition, which had hardly emphasized religious knowledge before. He testified that approaching difference not only can take place through empathy but can also be grounded in Islamic tradition. He thus broadened the registers of potential connections and altered the assemblage’s affective relations. Generally, an assemblage never constitutes only one power effect, but can potentially generate different paths whose actualizations are not fully determined (Lim 2010). In principle, the assemblage of the exhibition displaced normative Islamic-religious identities. However, the presence of Muslim community members also provoked new engagements with questions of religious identity. Different events of religious reflection could emerge. Besides moments of a dissociation of the mosque’s members from the contents of the exhibition (closures of Islamic identity), some reflections strengthened the movements of embracing difference, while placing them in a more religious light. By approaching the non-religious Muslim, the mosque representative activated new binding forces and unlocked multiple affective (re-)connections, potentially ‘transforming negative into positive relations, encounters, and

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   169 passions […]’ (Braidotti 2011, 31). The attitude of tolerance he articulated, though not uncontested, as the existing Muslim criticism shows, enabled him to recognize the non-religious Muslim as someone who potentially also has something to say about Islam, and to integrate the latter’s perspectives into his own religious becoming. The Muslim community member allowed himself to be affected by the non-religious Muslim in such a way that he could recall or actualize an Islamic attitude of tolerance. On the basis of this kind of being affected, the Muslim speaker then affected the Muslim co-curator and the Christian and municipal actors, who seemed to embrace the openness towards the ‘secular Muslim’ as a desired dialogical attitude. The Muslim curator took up these religious reflections on tolerance with interest. She embodied ‘joy’ at the emerging possibility of an agreement over the value and appropriateness of the exhibition’s contents (here joy is meant to refer generally to a positive affectivity that makes the self vibrate). The female Muslim curator could be pleased about at least partial acknowledgement of her exhibition and thus also received new capacities for action, capacities to influence others in a self-confident way. The whole assembled dialogue group in turn ‘rejoiced’ in general about the faith-related debates and about the attitude of tolerance that was displayed. The Muslim speaker affected the dialogue group by providing what the rationality of interreligious dialogue seeks to promote: reflections on religion, tolerance and openness. Finally, all participants were able to draw an empowering intensity from this. After the Muslim representative had showed his capacity for tolerance, the whole group was able to ‘breathe’ again in the intended rhythm of dialogue. The Islamic reflections on tolerance were able to plug into the affective dialogue machine (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Lim 2010; Kleinherenbrink 2020), a machine that makes tangible a will to come together in which, in principle, all dialogue participants invest. The joy of the dialogue group in turn provided the Muslim representative with new agency. He could gain agency precisely by becoming a dialogical/tolerant subject (Grosz 2005; Braidotti 2011), (re-)connecting to other things/subjects. By being able to affect others, the Muslim spokesperson became affectively charged himself: he accessed capacities to affect/influence others. This in turn was linked to the fact that he had allowed himself to be affected in a certain way by the non-religious Muslim. Indeed, affect is the capacity to affect and be affected (Anderson 2006; Massumi 2002). Finally, by bringing Islamic knowledge into a secularized exhibition, the Muslim representative was also potentially able to connect with those Muslims who were critical of the exhibition. They could ‘rejoice’ that someone was reflecting on the non-religious Muslim from the perspective of a practising Muslim. Whereas the whole practice of guiding the interfaith group through the exhibition had been producing lines of difference between the Muslim communities and the rest, the events of Islamic-religious reflection altered the ways in which bodies could relate to each other. In addition, particular materialities—for example, the photograph of the friendly smiling,

170  Jan Winkler non-practising Muslim—became dynamically effective in different ways. Partially, such a photo, and the image it produced, acted as a displacement of the identity of the mosque communities. This image co-established an affective field in which potentially some Muslims must have felt out of place, being reminded that they were apparently not wholly accepted. In this mode, the photo itself was a negatively affecting artefact that reduced the capacity for connection/action/self-assurance of the Muslim community members. However, as with any element of an assemblage, the image of the non-religious Muslim contained a surplus, a ‘more’, of potentiality. Within the situated transactions between the Muslim community member and the photographically depicted non-religious Muslim, a religious memory could be actualized that the ‘heart’ of people can never be fully grasped and judged and that consequently an open attitude towards religious divergences was appropriate from an Islamic perspective. The actualization of this memory became a potential stepping-stone for the Muslims from the communities, from which they, as noted above, could become ‘tolerant’ and ‘dialogical’ religious subjects. This kind of becoming potentially allowed Muslim community members to intensify their bonds with the other (municipal and Christian) participants in the group, who affectively invest in religious tolerance as a goal of dialogue. They could potentially gain the affective capacities to plug into the community of dialogue, to be seen and heard within it, to draw on the relationships generated in it and to resonate with many others, thereby gaining empowering experiences of belonging to a dialogue community. In this mode now, the photograph of the non-religious Muslim generated an occasion for the religious self-assurance of the Muslim community members (in the form of a demonstration of Islamic tolerance), through which cross-differential bonds became possible simultaneously. While the ‘smiling man’ certainly continued to be part of the machine that was forging a secular Islam (producing repellent affects with regard to certain Muslim bodies), this image also became a gateway for the Muslim community members to explore their own capacities to (re-)connect with others. As a result, the image may have become a positively affecting artefact, increasing the capacity for connection/action/selfassurance of the Muslim community members. Affective relations between elements always contain many potentialities of becoming and relating. In general, dialogue, openness and tolerance were dispersed within the materiality of the exhibition as affective objects. As such, they circulated between the bodies present, the photographs, the personal objects on display and the elements of the exhibition site. This affective materializations of dialogue, openness and tolerance conditioned a heterogeneous productivity of power. They channelled welcomed reflections on openness, but they also hindered what is basically a very understandable Muslim criticism of, for example, the portrayal of a non-religious Muslim as Muslim. As outlined above, any upholding of traditional Islamic difference was placed on the outside of an affective realm of smiling and sympathetic human beings

The Affective Machines of Dialogue   171 calling for recognition as Muslim representatives. The Muslim speaker who grounded tolerance in Islam was now able to take up these affective objects of dialogue and tolerance in a specific way. He was able to dive into the exhibition’s affective relations of diversity without having to displace his own religious perspective. His creative becoming-a-dialogical-subject ­ demanded openness and self-reflection, but it could also go along with the reassurance of a particular Islamic perspective. Writing about the identity-related micropolitics of minoritarian subjects, Braidotti suggests that the latter ‘need to activate their memories against the black hole of counteridentity claims as well as against the grain of the dominant vision of the subject’ (2011, 32). In a way, this is what happened here: the Muslim speaker did not merely actualize a strong traditional Islamic counter-identity, as he embraced a person who had explicitly distanced himself from Islamic tradition. At the same time, while the Muslim speaker performatively mobilized Islamic knowledge, he did not fully subordinate himself to the implicitly working expectation that he would take up a secular perspective (as such and in itself) as a legitimate experience of Islam. He accessed empowering affective connections between a partial subjection to the exhibition’s diversity-political mechanisms and a partial resistance to its de-religionizing tendencies.

6.7 Synthesis and Concluding Remarks Using materialist perspectives and assemblage thinking, this chapter has analysed an exhibition about local Muslim life in a museum in a city in Germany. The exhibition was framed as an element of a politically facilitated local interreligious dialogue and used as a means of regulating diversity. The chapter reconstructed the political practice of exhibiting Muslim everyday life as an affective assemblage through which identities/differences were both (re-)produced and transformed. The dialogue-oriented practices of, and around, the exhibition partly (re-)produced specific lines of exclusion, as well as partly creating new spaces for different Muslim subjects to express their positions and experiences in ways that may have facilitated new affective bonds. The chapter illustrated how, within the material assemblage of the exhibition and its various practices, different forces were operating in various forms: unifying forces of coming together and forces of differentiation. Different affective machines simultaneously existing and operating from within the whole of the assemblages mediated these forces (Swanton 2010a; Grosz 2005, 185–195; Dewsbury 2011; Kleinherenbrink 2020; Deleuze and Guattari 1987). One can be understood as the desiring machine (Müller and Schurr 2016) of dialogue: a machine producing the affects of togetherness and affinity, and channelling those will to bond with others that is embodied in dialogue practices. Another can be understood as a differentiating machine that lies at the heart of hegemonic culturalist discourses and that operates through the production of an image of society as being composed of different cultural or religious collectives (Fortier

172  Jan Winkler 2008). This latter machine highlights difference—its effectiveness draws on the tendencies of subjects to strive for closed identities (Butler, Laclau and Zizek 2000; Ahmed 2014). Within the dialogue-oriented exhibition, differentiating and binding machines co-­ produced heterogeneous fields for many potential actualizations. Encounters were caught up between these machines: they were never just part of one movement, but fields for the intersection of multiple movements. The chapter suggested that actualizations of dialogical openness and of identity-political closure always come to be at odds within the complex and ever-changing interactions and encounters that make up a local practice of interreligious dialogue. Encounters ‘have a material affective force’ (Done and Knowler 2011, 849) and thus display wide-ranging potentials of becoming (Lim 2010). Dialogue seems to be characterized by both hopeful movements of connection and movements that mark differences or set expectations. Both movements are ­intertwined—and, for hopeful future cross-­differential relations to come, both movements must be taken seriously and be reflected as the dynamic and contentious realities of dialogue.

Notes 1 https://www.erlangen.de/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-1724/961_read-30985/, (30.03.2022). 2 “Gegen Pegida und Co: Ausstellung Muslime in Erlangen”, published online at 09.02.2015: https://www.frankenfernsehen.tv/mediathek/video/gegen-pegidaund-co-ausstellung-muslime-in-erlangen/, (30.03.2022). 3 http://www.ditib-erlangen.de/der-islam/, (30.03.2022); see also: https://ige-­ erlangen.de/islam, (30.03.2022). 4 Report in Erlanger Nachrichten from 30.01.2015, online: https://www. nordbayern.de/region/erlangen/erlanger-schau-zeigt-muslimische-vielfalt-indeutschland-1.4158470, (30.03.2022).

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Part III

The Practices of Interreligious Encounters

7

Dialogic Art The Photographer Peter Sanders on Promoting Understanding Jonas Otterbeck

7.1 Introduction This chapter addresses the dialogic character of the art of the distinguished British photographer Peter Sanders, who has a longstanding presence in the media and in interfaith and cultural dialogue contexts. As this chapter will show, Peter found a Sufi path 50 years ago and is among the most prominent Muslim artists worldwide; indeed, he has featured in the culture and arts section of every issue of The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims 2021 (web) since this online publication began appearing annually in 2009. This chapter argues that an in-depth understanding of how Peter makes and presents photographs, and how he approaches the objects of his photography, enables us to appreciate and analyse the dialogic character of his art, which has often aimed to represent Muslims as individuals who contribute to society, thus transcending both negative stereotypes and their exoticization. This is inscribed in his Sufi world-view, his modus operandi and his framing of his art. After the introduction, Peter’s biography is sketched, then his art is described and discussed, leading into an analysis of his perception of what being human means. After a methodological intermezzo, the overall message in Peter’s art is made visible, followed by a consideration of its dialogic aspects and characteristics. Peter? Well, I find it difficult to write about him as ‘Sanders’, as Peter is a particularly modest and direct individual. Anyone who has met him can confirm his presence and warm personality. Creative artists, including novelists, painters and musicians, contribute to dialogues in many fields, addressing complex social issues in their art that supply reference points in discussions about, for example, migration, trafficking, racism and violence, but also about compassion, sacrifice, respect and, not least, change (see Gonçalves and Majhanovich 2016). Artists and dialogue groups try to stimulate compassion and mutual respect by means of the emotional and experiential dimensions of art, experiences that are thought to lay the foundations for productive and in-depth dialogue and explication. Yet, compared to other aspects of dialogue, Ruth Illman has

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-11

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178  Jonas Otterbeck suggested (2014) that researchers have paid far less attention to the role of religious art. In response, she has coined the term ‘creative interreligious dialogue’ as a way of focusing on the contribution of artists and religious art to dialogue. Many artists relate to religion or religious identities in their creative expressions and, like other believers, consider that the divine can be expressed and experienced through art in emotional, non-discursive ways (Illman 2014). Concomitantly, there are also artists who are averse to religion and who see all religions or particular ones as deeply problematic; they too address this perspective in their art (Otterbeck, Mattsson and Pastene 2018). Undoubtedly, art engages and enables discourse, though the outcome is far from certain (Fairey and Orton 2019). Intentionally or otherwise, art might evoke positive emotions like empathy or curiosity, or alternatively contempt, scorn or charges of blasphemy. Using art in dialogue and attempting dialogue in art are difficult, as encounters are unpredictable and contain elements of risk (Wilson 2017), or, to quote Michael Gilsenan (1992, 60), ‘the control of the meaning of symbols is an uncertain operation’. According to Roland Barthes (1977), to enable meaning, signs are anchored to other signs, yet all meaning-making by a receiver requires some sort of shared language or symbols, as well as benevolence. Communication and meaning-making are practices. Seen as practice, works of art are acts of enunciation, at times imbued with the artists’ aspirations as to meaning, at others consciously multifaceted so as not to fix meaning, while in yet others aesthetic ideas take precedence. Generally, photographic art is rather open in both its potential meaning and use, although the suggested meaning of a photograph is often rooted in context and texts. Dialogic art and art in dialogue become intertwined with the highly discursive and practice-oriented element of dialogue to explicate intended or possible meanings. Photographic art is a newcomer on the art scene and has had to fight for recognition, experiencing progressive change during Peter’s career since it began in the 1960s (Palmer 2017). Today, photographic exhibitions are common, and some photographers are stars, even though photographs and photography are now available to almost everyone in one form or another (Palmer 2017). Photography as an industry is often sold on the basis of ideas of self-expression, yet it is interlaced with capitalism, materialism, advertisement, journalism, truth claims and propaganda (Evans and Hall 1999, part II). In relation to Muslim contexts, photography is also historically entwined with European colonialism and exoticism (see Behdad and Gartlan 2013). In some ways, Peter is the typical male, white, lone, travelling adventure photographer; in other ways, as we shall see below, he is not. Peter’s photos, books and his own ideas about his work, shared with me and others, provide the main material for this study. I had met Peter twice in person before I recorded our lengthy discussion by video call in December 2020. The three books discussed below, containing almost 500 photographs, were all accompanied or preceded by curated exhibitions, and

Dialogic Art  179 Peter has received input from many people whom he thanks carefully in his books. I present and analyse the books as Peter’s art, as expressing something he is interested in expressing – at times pointing out the help received from teammates and others – but I do not analyse the reception of his art or exhibitions. That requires a different methodology and material, a task for future research. This chapter is about Peter’s aspirations, expressed through his enunciations in art and that art’s dialogic character.

7.2 The Journeys of a Veteran Photographer Peter (born 1946) initiated a career in the 1960s and first became known for his photographs of the London rock stars of the day (Sanders web 1). Drawn to spirituality, he embarked on a journey to India in 1971 in search of a master and, after spending six months with ‘a Hindu saint in South India’, returned to England (Sanders 2019a, 6). Fascinated by the idea of spiritual masters, he eventually found a Sufi path (taking the Muslim name ‘Abd al-Azim) and developed a heartfelt attachment to the Moroccan Sufi, Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib (1876–1972), of the Darqawi order after travelling to Meknes and spending time with him during Ramadan in the autumn of 1971 (Sanders 2019a, 33). Ever since, he has lived in relation to his Sheikh’s writings, his successors and not least the hymns of the order that have carried on the legacy. Sufism is the collective name for a variety of trends within Islam. At times called mysticism, spirituality, metaphysical philosophy or poetry, Sufis generally seek union with God through contemplation and rituals. Sufism has a long history as part of Islam, and Sufis can be found in all its forms. The visit to Morocco was no coincidence. London-based script writer Ian Dallas had converted to Islam in 1967 and taken the name Abdalqadir as-Sufi, finding a Sheikh in Muhammad ibn al-Habib when on a visit to Morocco in 1968 (Sedgwick 2017). Abdalqadir as-Sufi became instrumental in introducing Sufism and the Sheikh to non-Muslim Londoners. In 1972, he started a Sufi lodge in London for his network, of which Peter was a part (Sedgwick 2017). One of Peter’s friends who frequented the lodge was Ian Abd al Lateef Whiteman, architect, musician, author and art director, who designed two of the books discussed below. Around that time, a number of Europeans and North Americans found Islam through Sufism, often in Morocco. These Sufis tended to promote an inclusive version of Sufism stressing wisdom and perennialism, that is, the idea of a universal religion taking different shapes in history, but always with the same, true core. The London lodge, however, embraced the idea that to follow Sufism one also had to abide by the legal, social and ritual principles of Sharia (Sedgwick 2017). Even though their knowledge of ritual Sharia was reasonable, legally and socially, the lodge’s practices were marked by innovation and experimentation (Peerbox and Whyte 2016; Whiteman 2021). Eventually, it moved to rural Norfolk and then to

180  Jonas Otterbeck Norwich. Ziauddin Sardar (2004, 68), who in his early twenties was part of the scene in London for a while, claims that the sectarian leadership style of Abdalqadir as-Sufi was troublesome. Eventually, Abdalqadir as-Sufi left and lived in South Africa, where he headed an Islamic movement until his death in 2021. Peter has kept contact with the lodge over the years, supporting the view that Sufism needs to retain the importance of, not least, the ritual principles of Sharia. With London as his base, Peter has journeyed for 50 years, criss- crossing the earth, meeting with a diverse range of people, from spiritual leaders to children, and photographing with a keen eye for the beauty of the seemingly mundane; his current portfolio contains more than half a million images that he is happy with (Sanders web 2). Close friend, author and fellow Sufi Michael Sugich (2013, 12) once described Peter’s project as a ‘four decades quest to capture the saints of Islam on film’. ‘Saints’ is understood as an inclusive category that does not just refer to the heads of Sufi orders, something made quite clear in both Sugich’s work and Peter’s own writing and photography. The key difference between Christian saints and Muslim saints, often referred to as awliya Allah (friends of God), is that, while Christian saints are dead, Muslim saints are alive (see further about Muslim saints below). Today, Peter is a legend to many and a highly respected artist. After all, not everyone has their books endorsed by the Dalai Lama (Sanders 2019a, iv), Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens (Sanders 2019a, blurb), Sami Yusuf (Sanders 2019a, blurb), HRH the Prince of Wales (Sanders 2008, blurb), Mostafa al-Badawi (Sanders 2019a, Forward) and Hamza Yusuf Hanson (Sanders 2007, Preface, 2019a, Forward). As Peter has good communicative skills, he has also become a popular, requested lecturer and panel participant, while exhibitions, lectures and travel all create contacts and further communications about art. Browsing the many interviews, reviews and postings about Peter on the internet, I find they frequently frame his art using three narratives: the start of his career, with especial mention of the rock and roll photography of the 1960s, the theme of spirituality and, finally, dialogue. Below I first discuss Peter’s relation to spirituality and then illustrate how his conception of spirituality informs his stance on dialogue.

7.3 Capturing the Spiritual At the very heart of Peter’s photography is his ambition to capture what he sees as the spiritual in people, or, put even more simply, people at peace. In the book In the Shade of the Tree (2007), he represents profiled saints and scholars, children, as well as people working, praying, playing or just being. The book also contains views of wide landscapes and religious buildings and Peter’s reflections in the text. The Muslims he portrays come from a wide variety of ethnicities and from different places. Many are smiling

Dialogic Art  181 or seem to be in deep concentration. This is also a reasonable, general description of his other two books. The spread on pages 46, 47 (Sanders 2007) is a typical composition and includes an atmospheric photograph also featured on the book cover. It is a good example of Peter’s attempt to capture the spiritual. On the left-hand page is the heading ‘The Praying Man’ and a quote from the Qur’an (2:152) about the importance of the remembrance of God. On the right-hand page, beside the photograph, is written: ‘Hasan Fathy mosque, Gourna, South Egypt’. Hasan Fathy (d. 1989) was a world-renowned architect who pioneered the reintroduction of traditional forms and materials in Egyptian architecture. There is also a short vignette on the making of the photograph. To me it is obvious that Peter ‘makes’ photographs, using his training, social skills, patience, editing skills and what we can call his artistic eye. There is also the moment of taking the photograph, a common verb used when describing the act of photography: that 1/125th of a second when the shutter opens and closes, a moment not entirely controllable. Peter considers any ‘good photographs… a gift from God’, humbly accepting the uncontrollability of the individual frame (personal communication, 14 December 2020). ‘The Praying Man’ photograph has four prominent features. To the right is an ochre-coloured sandstone wall, partly lit up by the sun. A crude ‘Allah’ in Arabic has been lightly carved into it. The second feature is an almost entirely black background divided merely by a wooden column cleverly vertically aligned with the sandstone wall. The lowest part of the scene features a deep red carpet. At the heart of the image is a lone unnamed man dressed in a white galabeya sitting cross-legged and barefoot, his palms turned upwards, resting on his knees. He is very likely in concentrated prayer. The sun lights up the upper part of his body. Peter ends his comments with: ‘This particular picture suggests the solitude of the spiritual path’. The remark about solitude should not be mistaken for a reference to the neoliberal, individualistic spirituality promoted in new-age spirituality (Carrette and King 2005). On the contrary, Peter tends to stress solidarity with others and the collective relation that all humans share, as created by God (personal communication, 14 December 2020). Yet, as much as people can strive collectively to reach or relate to God, Peter understands the individual encounter and moments of insight as the true path to God. He once thought saints would be surrounded by the fantastic, but as he came in contact with Sufis he found that ‘true saints’ make space in the mundaneness of everyday lives (personal communication, 14 December 2020). Therefore, his photographs often feature people who are grateful for the so-called small things in life or who appear content. For example, pages 36, 37 feature three photographs of two young women playing and strolling along the river on Tuti Island, Khartoum, Sudan. We see them as silhouettes, the river around them shining like gold. The images are accompanied by a quotation on friendship from ‘Caliph and Imam’ Ali ibn

182  Jonas Otterbeck Abi Talib, the fourth caliph, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad. The images are delicate, playful and very expressive. Even though the women are silhouettes – or maybe because they are? – the photographs form intimate representations of amity.

7.4 The Sufi Anthropology of Peter Sanders Christopher Partridge (2013) proposes a division between religious people who emphasize particular revelations as radically separate, crucial moment(s) in history, and those who consider that the whole of creation, and how it is ordered, provides continuous divine guidance. The Sufiminded generally draw on the second attitude. At heart Peter is a Sufi, and from reflections in interviews and his books it is evident that his art and his attitude to his craft mirror that. In Meetings with Mountains (2019a, 6), Peter spells this out, telling how a friend admonished him gently: On my way home from India, I stopped in Delhi to meet with a Sikh friend. He asked me about my trip, and I told him of the experiences I’d had with my teacher. He paused, then looked at me and said ‘You missed the point. It wasn’t your teacher doing all of those things. It was God.’ I then realised that one of the mistakes often made regarding these great people, whatever religion they are from, is to associate the events that take place around them with the person and not recognise the Creator behind them, thus creating a cult of personality. After that conversation I began to search for all those who pointed to the One behind all things. This understanding of a creator who permeates the fabric of our everyday lives is crucial for Peter’s Sufi-inspired anthropology. In this chapter, I use ‘anthropology’ to denote a view of humanity, not a scholarly field, using it in line with the German Menschenbild or Swedish människosyn, concepts capturing both common-sensual and theoretical understandings of what humans are, or should be. Peter believes that there are spiritual paths to find and follow, and also that transformation requires travel – metaphorical or physical – as gratitude and humility before the divine is an outcome of the experience of ‘the search for “truth”’ (Sanders 2019a,  6). We all have the potential to find such paths, but not all of us manage to hone the skills and patience required to appreciate these, despite the continual presence of the paths, in history as well as today, in every culture, context and religion. Finding paths is not a matter of education, charisma, talent or cosmopolitan experience, nor is it the prerogative of the rich and resourceful; it is all about perception and the willingness to strive for the truth. The truth is there for the receptive, for the one who understands the soul, the heart (a central metaphor for the gateway to the soul in Sufism) and the divinity of the cosmos (Sanders

Dialogic Art  183 2019a, 24, 35). To polish the heart and mirror, the divine (yet another Sufi metaphor used by Peter in our conversation) is within the ability of us all. In Sufi thought, the initiate must mentally travel through various stations, often said to be seven: after the initial turn to Sufism, recognizing the error of one’s previous ways (tawba) and guarding oneself against falling back into previous behaviour (wara’), the Sufi is expected to renounce dependence on worldly matters (zuhd) and find peace in poverty (faqr). The fifth station is sabr, the continuous patience required to abide in the world, which leads to unconditional trust (tawakkul) in the divine and finally to satisfaction (rida) with one’s existence. The final station implies transforming oneself into al-insan al-kamil, the complete person, who is entirely aligned with the divine will for the world, the true human ‘be-ing’ (Sanders 2019a, 33, 140). Such a person views the world ‘with the eye of the soul’ and ‘finds none other than God’ everywhere (Muhammad ibn al-Habib, quoted in Sanders 2019, 31). Muhammad was such a person, and he now serves as the ‘blueprint’ (Sanders, personal communication, 14 December 2020) for Muslims. The essence of Muhammad’s being, al-nur al-muhammadi, ‘the light of Muhammad’ (Sanders 2019a, 16), permeates the characters of later saints. Like many Sufis in history, Peter has a fascination for stories of miracles and saints. When writing about and discussing the saints and sages he has met, he often narrates fantastic stories that are both entertaining and thrilling and obviously deeply meaningful to him (Sanders 2019a). The stories fulfil the function of providing vivid examples of God’s ongoing blessing of the world, encouraging people to open their eyes and hearts, and to be truer, more at peace and ultimately more complete. Typically, saints will appear out of the blue or in dreams, they will have knowledge about people they have never met, and they will know about future events. According to Sufis, the world can be perceived through its outer (zahir) or inner (batin) dimensions. Having knowledge of al-batin allows a saint to transcend time and space, in spirit and in flesh as well as knowledge-wise (Sanders 2019a, 171, 234). In Sufism, the inner reality of the world is the actual reality connecting to the hereafter, the cosmos and the divine, while the outer – the immanent – is, despite its acuteness and gravity, a chimera. This anthropology, upheld by Peter, is consistent, elaborately thought through and important for his work (Sanders 2019a, 377). At the book launch of Meetings with Mountains in Bradford in 2019, Sheikh Habib Ali al-Jifri, a well-known and respected Sufi from the Arabian Peninsula (portrayed in the book on pp. 208–211), remarked in his presentation that, when looking at the faces of the saints and sages – when reflecting upon them – a narrative between the viewer and God will begin to take shape, something Peter reiterated in a later interview (Sanders 2019b). This is exactly what Peter hopes for: the book as the start of a journey or a station along it. The purpose is not to convert people, but to inspire spiritual love, peace of mind and cross-cultural understanding

184  Jonas Otterbeck (personal communication, 14 December 2020) – or, as he formulates it in his conclusion, ‘to give people hope that these great souls still exist in our world’ (Sanders 2019a, 377). There is a certain amount of nostalgia to Peter’s world-view. He considers the modern world a bit of a hindrance in three respects: people have difficulty finding spiritual rest, children are exposed to negative imageries in popular culture, not least through TV and the Internet, and finally, much art in modernity is only about the ego instead of the spiritual. Somehow, this positions simplicity, spirituality and peace as the values of the past and the ideal, while modernity comes to be characterized by complexity, egocentrism and troubled souls, detached from tradition and unaware of where to find solutions (personal communication, 14 December 2020; Sanders 2019a,  377). However, this is also a very Sufi world-view, according to which all spiritual travelling begins with seeking a path.

7.5 (Mis)interpretations and Conversations: A Methodological Intermezzo In my work with creative artists who express themselves with Islamic signs and symbols, their reflections about their craft, aesthetics and ethics are crucial to me. I am curious about their understandings, their feelings and motives, not as an expression of detached genius, but as part of their individual understanding of the contexts in which they operate. As a researcher-reader who has been steeped in Islamic studies for decades, my reading of their art has a different starting point to that of the artists. Artists are actors in relation to religious discourse, and the possibility of discussing living artists’ art with them produces rich and meaningful conversations about creative processes and intentions. It also opens up discussions of how they position themselves in relation to religious discourse. Let me give a few examples. I probed Peter about the first part of Meetings with Mountains, which celebrates Muhammad, and I presented an elaborate interpretation of a photo of Jabal al-Nur (the mountain of light) in Mecca – said to be the place of Muhammad’s first revelation (pp. 14, 15) – which also contains a full moon (often a symbol of Muhammad). This photo can be coupled with another spread (pp. 20, 21) of a mountainous landscape, viewed from Jabal al-Nur and coloured red by the sun, in which I saw the symbol of the revelation of Muhammad and then the spread of the light of Muhammad to other mountains. When I presented this interpretation to Peter, he laughed and commented that up until now nobody had pointed out the moon/mountain Muhammad/Muhammad’s revelation connection, and he had not thought about it, despite being well aware of comparisons between Muhammad and the moon. Instead, we agreed that the introduction establishes the mountain metaphor that symbolizes both remarkable phenomena in nature by which you can, not least, orient yourself, and remarkable individuals who can,

Dialogic Art  185 likewise, offer guidance. The possible associations with signs and symbols are not always mobilized in the mind of the artist. Sometimes a moon is simply a moon, even though it might look suspiciously like Muhammad. To complete the opening part of Meetings with Mountains, some photographs introduce the space of the zawiya, the word in Arabic for the designated gathering space of Sufis. Peter declares, ‘If you allow the stillness of this place to enter your heart, you will begin to notice the hidden secrets of that sacred space’ (Sanders 2019a, 24). It is in such spaces that many of the photographs of Meetings with Mountains are made. Introducing this final part of the introduction is a photograph of a bolted and colourful wooden door fashioned in a traditional Moroccan, Islamic style. The house is painted in a warm yellow earth tone, and a bougainvillea surrounds the door. I braced myself, made apologies for my tendency to seek out symbols in my reading and asked, ‘There are quite a few doors in the photographs; are they symbolic?’ ‘Oh yes, they are!’ Peter immediately acknowledged with a smile (personal communication, 14 December 2020). There is an alignment between a common and a specific use of doors as a symbol. Of course, they can be closed or open, they may hide, invite or make visible. In the book, this closed door ‘opens’ into the zawiya with the help of the subsequent photographs. But doors also metaphorically express the promise of the hidden (batin) to which the book invites its viewers. I consider the above to support my methodology. I dialogue with artists, rather than merely sharing my associations with their art with my readers. By using the methodology of a Socratic discourse, challenging, testing and risking interpretations (Kvale and Brinkmann 2009), I aim to offer rich, initiated portraits and analyses of the artists’ thoughts about their art, in this case the messages with which Peter attempts to imbue his art. This approach emphasizes individual interpretations, ideas and lives. In fact, my stress on the individual is a conscious discursive intervention. Analysing the agency and intentions of named individual agents and understanding enunciations made in different ways – through deeds, utterances and art – as complex power practices made in intricate social fields is vital to the field of ‘Muslims in Europe’, a field where individuals often disappear through anonymization. This is not a critique of research that anonymises – that would be unreasonable – merely a comment on the gaps that appear when looking at aggregated research in the field.

7.6 Light and Light My camera captured the shadow and light of their faces and forms, but there is no way it could register the celestial blessing (baraka) and the inner light (nur) that radiated from their hearts, transforming the world around them and permeating my being. (Sanders 2019a, 18)

186  Jonas Otterbeck To Peter, working with photography is an art of light, and light is, furthermore, a central metaphor for the divine and the sacred in Islam. This double use of light is crucial to Peter’s artistic endeavour. While the sun, moon or bulbs provide light that enables photography, the ambition to capture the divine light is the true object of his photographs. But, as this is per definition unphotographable, a symbolic representation is part of the making and sharing of photographs (personal communication, 14 December 2020). Yet Peter considered the possibility of capturing the inner light that seeps out when having to make a photograph of Shaykh Muhammad Al-Fayturi in a fairly dark room in Benghazi, Libya (Sanders 2019a, 114, 115). The light meter behaved oddly, oscillating between too little and too much light. Peter had to settle for ‘invoking God’s Name in a whisper’ and chancing it. The photograph is crisp, atmospheric and beautiful, although not as sharp as it could have been. Clearly, Peter is indicating that technique can be aided by the spiritual light that radiates from individuals. He returns to the idea on page 127, pointing out that Muhammad Ali in Twemerit, Mauritania, ‘suddenly shone’ when portraited. Peter suggests that something of his inner self, which points to the cosmos, both through Muhammad Ali’s knowledge of astronomy and his understanding of al-batin, is present in the portrait. The idea is recurrent in the 2019 book. As I have already pointed out, Peter likes stories of saints. Sidi Muhammad ibn al-Habib, the Sufi who had impressed Peter in 1971, wrote the following in his Diwan, quoted by Peter, ‘My spirit speaks to me and says, “My deepest nature is God’s light - so see no other”’ (Sanders 2019a, 231). That other is then called nothingness. To see light is thus to capture the inner reality. Commenting on a photo of some people crossing a white marble piazza, the sun’s reflection making the bodies blurred and the shadows deep, Peter cogitates in line with his Sheikh: ‘Can we always be sure that what we see is what actually is?’ (Sanders 2007, 86). When I ask him about this dilemma – the unphotographable versus the photographable – Peter allows himself a simple rationalization, claiming it is in the hands of God. I push him on the matter of his craftsmanship – surely there is more to this – and we end up in a discussion about sabr, the Arabic word for patience so central to the Sufi path. He recalls someone pointing out to him that the root of the word, the core meaning, has to do with being attached to, tied to and dependent on someone and something else. Making a photograph requires patience, waiting for the right light and opportunity to appear. To wait patiently for the light while working to be prepared is a fine description of the working process for a photographer like Peter, as well as his attitude as a Sufi. Further, according to Peter, making a portrait requires a dialogue with the subject who is about to become the object, a dialogue about purposes and respective expectations. Many vignettes provide testimony to the patience and mutual trust which were important when making the photographs featured in the books. Thus, the photographs that are used later as means of

Dialogic Art  187 dialogue are from the beginning the outcome of dialogue. Often, several other people are involved in the making of a photograph apart from the photographer and those who are portrayed: people helping out on location and others processing and editing prints. There is thus a collaborative and dialogic dimension to photographic art (Palmer 2017). The parallels with qualitative fieldwork are obvious: The ones who, in the end, will re-present the encounter, must, or ought to, reflect on ethics, method and power.

7.7 Promoting a Message of Peace and Understanding Sufi anthropology and the vision of craft and creativity, mentioned earlier, comprise the foundation of Peter’s trust in the meaningfulness of his art. Peter believes that everyone can connect to the so-called Other, as deep down everyone shares the same spiritual essence, regardless of the plurality of human experiences and positions. The hope to initiate change is at the core of The Art of Integration project. In the accompanying book from 2008, Peter emphasizes the message of integration through contribution and presence by portraying Muslims and Islam as a part of the UK with a long history, making it an art project about recognition. In the introduction, Peter reflects on a William Blake poem, suggesting that the UK is: a place where people of all faiths could live in harmony. This is a vision I believe could come true if we work very hard together. Like most great visions, it is not something easily achieved – as events in London in July 2005 made all too clear [alluding to the 7/7 terror attack]. Yet such is the enthusiasm and sincerity of the Muslims I met while working on this project that I truly believe it is a possibility. Most are second or third generation British Muslims, many of them often young professionals. (Sanders 2008, 5) Peter considers that those who are portrayed provide testimonies of positive contributions to UK society. Quite a few are people Peter knew before photographing them, like the editor, writer and interfaith pioneer Fuad Nahdi (d. 2020), the calligraphist (and daughter-in-law) Soraya Saed or the musician Richard Thompson. Their lives are interwoven with society through their professions, industry and creativity, and by naming them and portraying them, they become represented. Typically, Nadia Al-Lawati is introduced as a professional architectural assistant (2008, 104). We learn about her Omani-Peruvian background and her ambition. She also gets to share some thoughts about her studies in Glasgow, which, she says, was an experience of learning and discovery. To discover is to experience, to experience is to understand, to understand is to respect, and to

188  Jonas Otterbeck respect is to integrate. I consider integration as a form of art, and where better to practise the art of integration than the multicultural city of London? Integration is a delicate, sensitive and contextual practice, which, when perfected, is a joy for all who participate. This vision of integration, which made it to the title of the book, rhymes well with Peter’s ambitions and thoughts, and his photographic art attempts to offer representations to stimulate reflections and understanding (personal communication, 14 December 2020). According to Peter, integration is not possible without encounters that in turn require ‘hard’ work dealing with different experiences; it is not something that comes easily and is always in done in relation to context. It entails reflection, understanding and respect. This type of integration implies establishing an emotional connection, in much the way that Gordon Allport (1958) described when developing the contact hypothesis from a starting point in social psychology. It is through meetings of some quality that respect and understanding develop. Understanding is to be perceived as gradual: it is not the same as knowledge, which is more centred on facts. Understanding is not a state but a continuous process (Baumberger 2013). Peter himself often returns to his Englishness and how he was encouraged not to leave that behind when he became Muslim. Then and now, many European converts to Islam have taken on personal acculturation projects, not least initially in a search for authenticity, with the goal of becoming as Pakistani or Moroccan as possible – whatever that would mean (van Nieuwkerk 2006). Instead, Peter was asked to unite his experiences (Sanders 2008, 5, 2019a, 33). By presenting Muslims and Muslim environments through his art, he ties together his own world. Repeatedly, he claims that he only takes on projects that interest him, projects that are meaningful to him. The three projects discussed here respond to his concerns about the situation after 9/11 2001, the suspicion directed towards Muslims in the UK after July 2005 and the lack of understanding of traditional spirituality. Thus, in their character, the projects are dialogic. Created in dialogue, aiming for dialogue. Peter tends to downplay the politics of representation when discussing his photographs, yet when his work is displayed there are clear strategies. For example, when writing the texts for Meetings with Mountains, he put a lot of effort into avoiding the technical vocabulary of Sufism, often in Arabic or Persian, for the benefit of the general reader. His ambition was to communicate about spirituality to a general audience in a graspable, shared language (personal communication, 14 December 2020). He is particularly proud and happy that the Dalai Lama responded when Meetings with Mountains was sent around to a few key people before its final print asking if they would recommend it. In his endorsement, the Dalai Lama underscored the educational potential of the photographs of ‘Muslims in their everyday setting’ and emphasized the book as an opportunity to ‘build

Dialogic Art  189 genuine harmony’ and nurture mutual respect, learning and admiration (Sanders 2019a, iv). When asked about the intention behind his aiming at general audiences, Peter alternates between jokingly quoting someone who has called him a propaganda machine, dismissing a missionary attitude and admitting to being an idealist striving for peace. He has experienced a lot when travelling and has had the opportunity to photograph environments few have had the possibility to visit, let alone portray. Thus, he feels an obligation to give back, to re-present people and to help others experience and understand. The main means become exhibitions, photobooks, his webpages, interviews and presentations (personal communication, 14 December 2020). There are two aspects to Peter’s work: the immediate, and al-batin, the inner aspect, with an assumed transformative power working its magic. Above, I quoted Peter on the light radiating from Sufi saints’ hearts with the power to transform ‘the world around them’. Through his portraits of saints, Peter not only wants to make the Other familiar, he strives to make people aware of the spiritual dimension of life.

7.8 Reaching Out Thematic exhibitions or books produced by enthusiast amateurs or professionals, frequently on the side of their ordinary work, are demanding projects often preceded by years of travel, preparation and applications for funding. Making photo books are expensive. Despite his fame, Meetings with Mountains is crowd-funded and produced by Inspiral books, Peter’s own company. It is no coincidence that Peter’s first book came rather late in his career, after more than 30 years as a professional. Nor is it a coincidence that it appeared in 2002. Peter told me that the attacks on the USA on 9/11, 2001 by al-Qaida triggered an unpreceded, unexpected demand – or call it a market – for his work on Muslim contexts. Peter grasped the opportunity and attempted to become a mediator between Muslims and non-Muslims. The first edition of Peter’s In the Shade of the Tree (2002) was produced in collaboration with two small presses: Starlatch Press (USA) and Mountain of Light (UK), both run by idealists rather than as true publishing houses. The second book was printed by Awakening Books, an up-and-coming Islamic media house at that time (Otterbeck 2021). All those involved were passionate about communicating about Islam with their environments, if for no other reason than to promote understanding. Yet relying on small publishers does not guarantee a wide outreach. Thus, books are accompanied by exhibitions, or sometimes the other way around. Still, art books and galleries have a relatively restricted reach compared to mass communicated culture. To get people to listen, you need the right promotion. Thus, Peter is on social media (Instagram, 12,500 followers; Facebook, 38,000) and has a very well-kept webpage (Petersanders.com) with strategies for displaying his photographs, yet controlling their dissemination, and for selling photographs.

190  Jonas Otterbeck Throughout the years, Peter has gained fame as a photographer with exhibitions world-wide. Is his outreach and success conditioned on his being white, English, educated, male and Muslim? That is impossible to test. Evidently, it is part of the social position from which he acts. But Peter is also his experiences, thoughts and ambitions, and as an individual he has an urgent will to communicate through art. We are all situated in our experiences, yet we are not pre-determined (Haraway 1988).

7.9 Art as Dialogue In her research on creative interreligious dialogue, Illman (2014) emphasizes Martin Buber’s dialogue philosophy, stressing the human potential to empathize with the Other by acknowledging ‘the similarity-in-difference’ in people and ideally using this as a foundation for recognition. Illman finds that developing this type of understanding was particularly important to the six creative artists she interviewed who were engaged in creative interreligious dialogue (Illman 2014, 197). This should not be confused with a naïve soteriology; rather, it is a conviction about the necessity of nurturing understanding and the general potential ability of humans to appreciate each Other. Similarly, one of Peter’s main ambitions with his work, assuming a shared spirituality as a means of recognition, is to increase the audience’s understanding of what being human may mean. Even his most politically oriented project, The Art of Integration, which opposes the suspicion and exclusion to which Muslims in the UK were exposed at the time (Allen 2010), is also a general appeal to solidarity, curiosity and similarity-in-difference, with a hope that understanding will grow. In his art, Peter endeavours to familiarize those he has portrayed and their environments instead of objectifying or exoticizing them. The latter is always a risk in pictorial art, especially considering the cognitive heritage of Orientalist photography (see Behdad and Gartlan 2013). A photograph is only weakly anchored in language and other sign systems (Barthes 1977) and is thus rather open to interpretation. Having met people similar to those he has portrayed, I have an accustomed gaze and might miss what would be thoroughly unfamiliar to someone less experienced in moving in Muslim contexts. Yet I claim that the move away from collective representations and de-individualization in favour of an insistence on providing details from the lives of named individuals is surely a path away from Orientalist photography. Vignettes and exhibition or book contexts further serve to anchor meaning in line with the main message. To me, it is clear that Peter’s aspiration is to promote understanding through his photographic art and through the communicative act of sharing it. He is attempting to create opportunities for encounters, for engagement and reflection, using his photographs as discursive interventions and pushing for alternative narratives. His required status as a mediator is one of the conditions of dialogue. In the formal contexts of dialogue in which Peter partakes, his art

Dialogic Art  191 is ushered forth by established dialogue groups or enthusiasts with trust in the bridging ability of art (Savva and Telemachou 2016). Peter is frequently on a platform being interviewed or presenting his work. Giving names and providing portraits and life stories is a well-known way to intensify the emotional quality of encounters, as used, for example by journalist Robert Fisk (d. 2020) in his books about the strife of ordinary people in the Middle East, in Holocaust pedagogics (the impact of meeting a survivor) and art projects such as Peter’s. The idea of engagement through personal example has an appeal, but there is no simple way of guaranteeing results. Tragically, Palestinians continue to suffer from being dehumanized despite Fisk’s journalism, dehumanizing antisemitism continues despite the lifelong efforts of survivors like Hungarian-Swedish Ferenc Göndör (d. 2010), and Muslims are still being subjected to attacks, ridicule and Islamophobia regardless of Peter’s artistic endeavours. Understanding ‘is not something easily achieved’, to refer to a previous quotation from Peter. However, it is not within the scope of this chapter to comment on the possible overall success or failure of Peter’s dialogic discourse (for discussions about dialogue and results, see Gonçalves and Majhanovich 2016; Wilson 2017). Contrary to expectations, Illman (2014) found no attachment to clear theological positions being conveyed by her informants through their art. By contrast, Peter’s photography is imbued with a Sufi theology, conveying an anthropology informed by Sufism which he believes depicts who we all are, in essence. Furthermore, Peter considers photography a dialogue with light. However, light serves a double function: as a prerequisite for photography, and as the central manifestation of the inner aspects of a divine cosmos. Peter believes God acts in the everyday, and he experiences his photography to be in dialogue with both forms of light. To capture, frame and mediate spirituality that stems from the divinely ordered creation is his underlying project. This perceived dialogue with creation is the ideological foundation of what makes photographic art meaningful to Peter. I argue that it is important to understand the dialogic religious message that permeates his art, as it inspires him to reach out, to share and dialogue. Through his art, Peter is also in dialogue with himself, drawing together different social identities into a coherent whole. Furthermore, as a Sufi, he is in dialogue with his selves, as, according to Sufism, there is a higher soul/ self (ruh) and a lower soul/self (nafs). While the former is to be nurtured in order to hone spirituality, the latter is to be repressed so as not to nourish the ego. Patience and purpose are key. Photography is often seen as a means of self-expression, and as an artist Peter ties his photographs intimately to his life story and his experiences. Simultaneously, Peter’s message appeals to what he perceives we all have in common – a shared spiritual disposition. Peter’s art has a double relationship to the similarity-in-difference position. On the one hand, when representing Muslims generally, it is an accurate description, but on the other hand, when representing the spirituality

192  Jonas Otterbeck that he strives to depict, it needs to be re-understood: ‘of-the-same-essencein-different-bodies’ would be more accurate. Thus, in many ways, Peter shares a position with modernist humanists; knowledge, understanding, experience, education and acknowledging the Other are key features of the dialogue type he promotes. However, the Sufi anthropology of his art provides an original angle appealing to spirituality and religious world-views to bridge assumed differences. While recognizing differences as self-evident, the understanding of our similarities seems more important to Peter. For the complexity of his humanist spirituality to emerge as a clear theme, Peter’s art has to be carefully studied, preferably in combination with his discourse about it. Furthermore, it is necessary to see how contexts and to a certain degree serendipity have formed the opportunities for Peter to emerge as a seen photographer. The motives and thoughts of artists about their art, craft and dialogue, their agendas, are important components of creative interreligious dialogue. Acknowledging the roles artists play, that is, emphasizing them as actors, not merely as providers of artwork, is vital for a richer understanding of the practices of interreligious dialogue.

References Allen, Chris. 2010. Islamophobia. Farnham: Ashgate. Allport, Gordon W. 1958. The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge: Addison Wesley. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image, Music, Text: Essays Selected and Translated by S. Heath. London: Fontana Press. Baumberger, Christoph. 2013. “Art and Understanding. In Defence of Aesthetic Cognitivism.” In Bilder Sehen: Perspektiven der Bildwissenschaft, edited by Marc Greenlee, Rainer Hammwöhner, Bernd Körber Christoph Wagner, and Christian Wolff, 41–68. Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner. Behdad, Ali and Luke Gartlan, eds. 2013. Photography’s Orientalism: New Essays on Colonial Representation. Los Angeles: the Getty Research Institute. Carrette, Jeremey and Richard King. 2005. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. Abingdon: Routledge. Evans, Jessica and Stuart Hall, eds. 1999. Visual Culture: The Reader. London: Sage. Fairey and Liz Orton. 2019. “Photography as Dialogue.” Photography & Culture 12 (3): 299–305. Gilsenan, Michael. 1992. Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris. Gonçalves, Susana and Suzanne Majhanovich, eds. 2016. Art and Intercultural Dialogue. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Haraway, Donna. 1988. “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective.” Feminist Studies, 14 (3), 575–599. Illman, Ruth. 2014. Art and Belief: Artists Engaged in Interreligious Dialogue. London: Routledge. Kvale, Steinar and Svend Brinkmann. 2009. InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. London: Sage.

Dialogic Art  193 Nieuwkerk Karin van, ed. 2006. Women Embracing Islam: Gender and Conversion in the West. Austin: University of Texas Press. Otterbeck, Jonas. 2021. The Awakening of Islamic Pop Music. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Otterbeck, Jonas, Douglas Mattsson and Orlando Pastene. 2018 “‘I am Satan!’ Black Metal, Islam and Blasphemy in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.” Contemporary Islam, 12 (3): 267–286. Palmer, Daniel. 2017. Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing. London: Bloomsbury. Partridge, Christopher. 2013. The Lyre of Orpheus: Popular Music, the Sacred, and the Profane. New York: Oxford University Press. Peerbox, Ahmed and Sean Hanif Whyte. 2016. Blessed are the Strangers. Radical Middle Way. Documentary [DVD] Sanders, Peter. 2007. In the Shade of the Tree: A Photographic Odyssey Through the Muslim World. Second edition. Chesham: Inspiral Books. Sanders, Peter. 2008. The Art of Integration: Islam in our Green and Pleasant Land. Swansea: Awakening. Sanders, Peter. 2019a. Meetings with Mountains: Encounters with the Saints and Sages of the Islamic World. Chesham: Inspiral Books. Sanders, Peter. 2019b. “Michael Sugich and Peter Sanders: Readings from Hearts Turn and Meetings with Mountains”. Presentations and interviews at Zaintuna College 7 Dec. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEmB44Oh1Mg. Visited 8 December 2020. Sardar, Ziauddin. 2004. Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim. London: Granta. Savva, Andri and Nopi Telemanchou. 2016. “Voices and Positions: Facilitating Dialogue through Arts and Media.” In Art and Intercultural Dialogue, edited by Susana Gonçalves and Suzanne Majhanovich, 143–160. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Sedgwick, Mark. 2017. Western Sufism: From the Abbasids to the New Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sugich, Michael. 2013. Signs on the Horizons: Meetings with Men of Knowledge and Illumination. Self-published. Whiteman, Ian Abdal Latīf. 2021. Average Whiteman: Adventures with Quakers, Architects, Rock Stars and Sufi Sages. A Memoir. Granada: Editorial Qasida. Wilson, Helen F. 2017. “On the Paradox of ‘Organize’ Encounters.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 38 (6): 606–620. WEB The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 most influential Muslims 2021. https:// themuslim500.com/. Visited 18 February 2021. Muslim Heritage web 1. https://muslimheritage.com/interview-peter-sanders/. Visited 16 December. Sanders web 1: https://petersanders.com/portfolio/musician/. Visited 14 December 2020. Sanders web 2: www.petersanders.com. Visited 14 December 2020.

Interview Sanders interview. Recorded Zoom conversation between Jonas Otterbeck and Peter Sanders. 14 December 2020.

8

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation? Examining the British Context for Multifaith Social Action and Interfaith Dialogue from 1997 to the Present Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer

8.1 Introduction The imperative to serve others, which is shared by virtually all religions, motivates the practice of social action in neighbourhoods and cities across the UK. The scale of action ranges from the multi-million-pound international work of major charities such as Christian Aid and Islamic Relief to tiny coffee mornings for the elderly held in places of worship and run on donations of refreshments provided by individuals. In this chapter, examples of multifaith social action will be discussed in order to explore some of the practical and theoretical issues related to the practices of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue. Within the context of this collection, we work with multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue as practices – situated, embedded and often contested – which provide the means and scope for actors to engage with one another and the state. The two case studies reveal theoretical issues pertaining to the nature and articulation of interfaith dialogue and multifaith social action, as well as practical issues concerning the engagement of faith-based organizations with the state and the local impact of multifaith social action. Reflections from the two case studies provide a basis for interrogating the social, policy and funding developments that shape, challenge and motivate different forms of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue. The two case studies come from England and, although there are some commonalities with other parts of the UK, it should be noted that there are differences between the regions. Therefore it cannot be assumed that patterns are common across the nation. To describe the UK as an increasingly polarized nation is a bold claim, but one which sets the scene for understanding the factors that are shaping, and have shaped, the practice of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue in local communities – the ‘local connections’ which our case studies help to illustrate. In the period we are looking at, from the late 1990s to the present day, there has been ongoing political and social concern about the nature of ‘cohesion’ in the UK. A series of events have provided a focus for policy interventions and for shifting articulations of this challenge. In the late 1990s and the early 2000s, urban disturbances (‘riots’ or ‘uprisings’)

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-12

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  195 led to a policy focus on the integration of ethnically and racially diverse communities (Rhodes 2009). Following the London bombings of 2005, there was a renewed focus on countering violent extremism and a more focused attention on Muslim communities as ‘the problem’ (O’Toole 2016). The 2014 Scottish Referendum signalled that the union was under pressure (Keating 2017), and the 2016 Brexit vote underlined the polarization of the nation. An incredibly finely balanced vote, often depicted as between outward-facing Europeans (Remainers) and inward-facing Brits (Brexiteers), the Brexit vote gave rise to strong reactions that have seen massive upheavals in party politics, both locally and nationally (Wincott 2018), and a rise in racially and religiously motivated hate crime (Carr et al. 2020). Although the Brexit vote did not concern religion, it did concern British identity. For some communities more than others, religion is a fundamental aspect of their British identity. Our narrative throughout this chapter will note the polarizing events that shape policy but also shape the context for multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue. The argument of this chapter is that multifaith social action projects are an opportunity for, and often rooted in, interfaith dialogue and can have profound impacts on communities and ‘local connectivity’ that extend beyond the reach of the services which the projects provide. It will also be argued that the existence and development of multifaith social action projects in the UK are revealing of broader issues related to the place and nature of religion in a religiously diverse and arguably ‘secular’ state (Davie 2015). Practices of interfaith dialogue and multifaith social action in the UK have arisen out of a very particular history that continues to impact on the nature, form and success of initiatives to the present day. Following a brief contextualization of this inter-relationship between multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue, a more specific discussion of the policy agendas since 1997 will help to explain the environment in which our case studies have emerged. The concept of the ‘religion policy window’ – developed from the work of Kingdon (2003) in Prideaux and Dawson (2018) – will be used to frame the way in which policy opportunities have shaped the evolution of multifaith social action. A discussion and analysis of our two case studies will then be used to illustrate some of the factors that shape multifaith social action, and more specifically the impact of government policy locally.

8.2 The Relationship Between Interfaith Dialogue and Multifaith Social Action There are many ways to define interfaith dialogue and multifaith social action. Broadly speaking, we understand interfaith dialogue as a theologically driven practice, often but not necessarily formally organized, where people of faith seek to understand, discuss and develop their religious positions together. Historically, much of this activity has been conducted

196  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer by leaders and academics rather than people living in religiously diverse communities, although many cities in the UK have had interfaith fellowships for many decades which have wide, but in many cases now ageing, memberships. Multifaith social action is a practice within communities, involving people of different faiths, who aim to provide a service to others based on shared, religiously inspired values. These activities occur in religiously diverse neighbourhoods where individual religions often have a relatively well-developed infrastructure to support the development of managerial and operational practices. Ramadan (2006) maintains that it is those who are already open-minded who become involved in interfaith dialogue. The full range of schools of thought within a religious tradition is not represented, and those with closed opinions do not become involved. Multifaith social action, on the other hand, can include a much broader range of individuals, as there is a shared, positive focus on a social need that does not necessitate any discussion of religious differences. Interfaith dialogue can act as the basis for multifaith social action, and multifaith social action can lead to interfaith dialogue: indeed, the two activities are mutually implicated and difficult to disentangle. Although we will endeavour to disentangle and critique the relationship between dialogue and social action as both individual and communal practices, it is by no means a straightforward process to do this in relation to the two case studies, and there is an inevitable degree of ‘messiness’ in describing the field. This contextualization of the relationship between interfaith dialogue and multifaith social action has made it clear that this terrain is by no means straightforward. Our focus here is on multifaith social action, though we will repeatedly be identifying overlaps with interfaith dialogue. Our key concern is how this range of activity relates to government policy – and especially how the transience of policy can render some projects fragile. We turn now to a discussion of how government policy in relation to communities and religion has developed over 30 years in order to contextualize the historical and contemporary dimensions of our case studies.

8.3 Interfaith, Multifaith and Government Policy In our discussion of policy, we are broadly working with the concept of a ‘religion policy window’ (Prideaux and Dawson 2018, drawing on Kingdon 2003) as a way to think about moments of policy opportunity that are ‘opened’ based on factors which often include political or social ‘problems’ but can also be a response to political ideology or identity. These policy windows are a moment where funding and other governmental interventions become available and can be strategically engaged with. Much like the ‘policy paradigm shift’ described by Griera (2012), this is a way of understanding the flows and changes in policy as responsive and shaped by multiple factors.

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  197 Within the UK context of an arguably ‘secular’ state with an established church (Prideaux 2020), the New Labour government of 1997–2010 generated a very specific sense of what religion is and what its role should be that has had an ongoing impact on multifaith social action. In response to the eventual failure of the New Right and the failure of the Labour Party to respond adequately to the Thatcher years during the 1970s and 1980s, the New Labour political movement gathered momentum. The New Labour ‘Third Way’ won power through consensus building and carefully balancing the individual and the state (Levitas 1998, 2). Religion, whether through the personal conviction of New Labour politicians1 or because of its resources and location, became part of this consensus-building. For the state, religious and other faith-based organizations became key partners because of their ability to access communities the state has often struggled to reach, the social capital they could call on and contribute to (Furbey et al. 2006) and their resources, such as buildings (Farnell et al. 2003) and volunteers (Lukka et al. 2003). For individual faith communities and multifaith social action projects, they were able to access financial and other support from the government to pursue their activities. This ‘enhanced role for faiths in public life’ has been criticized on a variety of levels. Dinham and Lowndes point out that: Many challenge the instrumentalism of policy and its focus on the ‘usefulness’ of faith, or on faiths as a means of ‘classification’. Respect for the values and traditions of faiths themselves may be absent. Indeed, it is paradoxical that, while it is suggested that religion is practised in private, if at all, in Britain, this new instrumentalism brings religion out of the private realm and into the public. (2009, 6) Beckford (2010) specifically uses the New Labour period to argue that the visibility of religion was as much the result of the government’s ‘interpellation’ of religion, and particularly ‘faith’, as of any resurgence in belief. The visibility of religion in policy was not therefore about religion moving from the private to the public sphere, but about the government engaging religion for specific purposes which are not necessarily related to the goals and aspirations of the religions or multifaith groups themselves. For a multitude of reasons, there was an increasing political awareness of the saliency of religion in local communities under New Labour. However, multifaith activity expanded rapidly around the globe during the 1990s (Halafoff 2013; Fahy and Bock 2019), and there was activity in this realm prior to the New Labour years. Indeed, the founding of the Inter Faith Network for the UK (IFNUK) in 1987 is evidence of the extent of existing activity. As an independent body, the IFNUK worked with the public sector relatively soon after being founded. It is important because of its role in promoting and supporting interfaith dialogue, and increasingly in instigating

198  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer a variety of activities, including reflection upon and networking regarding multifaith social action. The Inner Cities Religious Council (ICRC), created as part of the then Department of Environment in 1992, was another significant early organization with a national remit and governmental relationships. Representatives of the Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh religions met to work with the Government on issues including regeneration, neighbourhood renewal and social inclusion. Although not above criticism, the strategic role of the ICRC formed one of many routes in government through which religious voices began to be heard as faithcommunity representatives rather than as people who happened to be of a particular religion. Although engagement with faith communities was more pronounced under New Labour, the Conservative government made this first important step in inviting religion into government beyond working with the Church of England as England’s civic religion. Under New Labour, it was initially the two policy streams of urban regeneration and then latterly community cohesion where religion was most evident. In response to the regeneration agenda a variety of organizations and networks developed, many of them looking to a single faith community, while others, such as the Faith Based Regeneration Network (FbRN), sought to work at a multifaith level. The community cohesion agenda was also particularly significant for the development of state support for multifaith social action. The Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund was launched in January 2005 to support ‘Faith-based groups whose work promotes understanding and dialogue’ (Home Office 2006), and in its first round, it provided £7.5 million for community work. This fund is especially relevant to the present study because one of the major issues for faith-based organizations in seeking state funding for their work was, and still is, the perceived difficulty of convincing funding bodies that faith-based organizations are valid groups to fund either because of their internal organizational capacity or because of the perceived risk that the funding would be used for proselytization (Bickley 2015). The Capacity Building Fund actively attempted to address this drawback. The ‘Face to Face and Side by Side’ report (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2008) provided important insights into how religion, and specifically dialogue, was construed as significant in UK public life by the New Labour government, which was reaching the end of its term of office. The report acknowledges (2008, 17) that the distinction between face to face and side by side was drawn from the work of the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks. The ‘face to face’ dialogue element more clearly addresses the concerns of community cohesion following the 2001 northern ‘riots’ and the 2005 London bombings. The ‘side by side collaborative action’ element more clearly relates to local regeneration projects led by multifaith groups. The report describes face-to-face dialogue as leading to ‘people developing a better understanding of one another, including celebrating the values held in common as well as acknowledging

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  199 distinctiveness’. This is contrasted with ‘side by side’ collaborative action, which ‘involves people working together to achieve real and positive change within their local community’ (2008, 17). However, the report does not suggest a strategy for engaging those who might feel that working with people of other faiths is counter to their religious teachings. Nor does it deal with issues which Humanists, Atheists and Secularists might raise about the privileging of faith communities. Although the ‘Face to Face and Side by Side’ provides evidence of how New Labour engaged with interfaith activity, it almost immediately became a historical document. The election of the 2010 Coalition and 2015 Conservative governments saw a marked shift away from the New Labour policy focus on faith-based social action. Austerity, public spending cuts and a narrowing of state provision meant that faith groups were increasingly encouraged to run initiatives previously led by the state and to do so with less funding. While some multifaith social action folded or struggled under the pressure of new agendas, local multifaith activism continued in new and adapted ways. The ‘religion policy window’ of opportunity that opened during the New Labour administration was altered, but not closed. The major policy shift directly related to locally rooted multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue following the appointment of the 2010 Coalition government was the introduction of the notion of the Big Society and the related devolution of powers from central to local government. Considered to be Prime Minister David Cameron’s ‘core intellectual idea’, the aim of this agenda was ‘to devolve powers to communities and establish a greater role in public services for voluntary and community organisations’ (Lowndes and Pratchett 2012, 30). Although this much-criticized policy direction (cf. Harrison and Sanders 2014) is still visible in Conservative policy, the term ‘Big Society’ largely disappeared after the Conservative party achieved an outright electoral majority in 2015. Alongside, and clearly related to the Big Society agenda, the ‘austerity’ economic policies introduced by the Coalition government also had a marked impact on local multifaith social action simply because of the reduced access to funding that was available to local statutory organizations, and therefore to locally rooted voluntary and community groups which might rely on this local funding. Austerity was an economic policy in response to the debt crisis that followed the 2008 financial crash (Baker 2020; Clarke and Newman 2012). Baker notes that: The policy featured an average reduction of nearly 50% to the overall budgets of local authorities that substantially reduced statutory funding for local voluntary sector organisations during this period. (2020, 7) A major development in the Big Society approach to religion was the formation of the Near Neighbours initiative in 2011, which encourages and

200  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer funds multifaith social action across the UK. Near Neighbours describes itself as bringing: people together in communities that are religiously and ethnically diverse, so that they can get to know each other better, build relationships of trust, and collaborate together on initiatives that improve the local community they live in. (Near Neighbours 2021) Although it does not explicitly describe its work as interfaith dialogue or multifaith social action, the Near Neighbours website distinguishes between social interaction and social action, and its descriptions of activities clearly relate to the categories of interfaith dialogue and multifaith social action that we are using. However, it is useful to note that the descriptions of these themes, such as ‘Help people from different faiths get to know and understand each other better’ (2021), do have a slight difference from the normal expectation of interfaith dialogue, where the content of the dialogue would be expected to be about religion – that is not stated as an explicit objective here. While Near Neighbours essentially replaced the Faith Community Capacity Building Fund (FCCBF), several key differences marked a shift in the government’s approach to religion. First, the funding for Near Neighbours was significantly less than the FCCBF. While the scheme has ensured funding for local multifaith social action has continued for the last ten years, it also represents a narrowing of state provision, exemplifying the impact of austerity. Another key difference from the FCCBF is that Near Neighbours provides government money for interfaith activity administered by the Church of England through the Church Urban Fund. It is also Near Neighbours national policy that a local vicar must sign off each funded project. O’Toole et al. (2013, 49) assessed Muslim participation in and attitudes towards the Christian administration of Near Neighbours and found a mixture of ‘critical’, ‘accepting’ and ‘positive’ attitudes. They found that the more critical voices suggested that the administration of Near Neighbours creates a problematic power dynamic across the faith sector and that members of other faith communities might feel more comfortable approaching a non-religious funding source than a Christian organization (2013, 49). Although, as identified in other contexts (e.g. Körs and Nagel 2018), the established churches may benefit from historically privileged access to resources, this Near Neighbours arrangement introduces a new dynamic whereby the established church becomes the route through which other religious groups are able to access the resources to increase their local capacity for activity. The role of the established church in the practices of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue is a significant but unsurprising shift (Prideaux 2020). Lastly, the funding opportunities offered by Near Neighbours are only available in England and are not geographically spread but instead targeted in specific areas. They offer funding for local multifaith

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  201 social action on the condition that organizations are based around one of their local hubs, for example the Black Country, West Yorkshire or Peterborough (as discussed below). The Near Neighbours funding, as will be seen in the case studies, has been significant in maintaining and shaping local practices of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue, but other policies and strategies create competing policy windows that have created or diminished the opportunities for this work. More recently, the government’s approach to faith has broadened to ‘faith and integration’. The Integrated Communities Strategy Paper (MHCLG 2018b) is a response to the Casey Review, a 2016 investigation charged with reviewing ‘integration and opportunity in isolated and deprived communities’ (Casey 2016, 5), and it raised concerns around segregation caused by migration in particular areas of the UK. In the Integrated Communities Strategy, faith becomes part of a wider agenda that is focused on improving integration. The paper devotes a small section specifically to faith, highlighting the work of Near Neighbours and stating, ‘we support interfaith work as a means of breaking down barriers between communities, building greater trust and understanding and removing the conditions which allow intolerance and unequal treatment to flourish’ (2018, 60). However, the paper has a more central focus on ‘meaningful social mixing’ (2018, 12) as an antidote to community segregation. This focus on addressing segregation is indicative of wider and more multifaceted community tensions in recent UK history. The 2016 Brexit vote and the 2014 Scottish independence referendum brought new social fault lines to the fore, and new categories of difference such as ‘Remainers’ and ‘Brexiteers’ emerged. The aftermath of such a close vote in the EU Referendum led to ‘increasing divisions along the lines of class, education, age and regional identity’ (Pennington 2020, 29). Policy around cohesion therefore went beyond responding to concerns about Muslim communities (heightened following the 2005 bombings) to address a broader sense of unease in British society about British identity. In this new context, dialogue was not seen as an approach limited to faith communities, but was employed more widely across local communities. The Integrated Communities Strategy Paper looked at particular local areas, noting that ‘integration challenges are not uniform throughout the country’ (2018, 13). All in England, the five proposed ‘integration areas’ (Blackburn and Darwen, Bradford, Walsall, Peterborough and Waltham Forest) would receive significant funding for cohesion work over a twoyear period from 2019 to 2021. The exact process for deciding on these areas is not made clear by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and 2 ­ (MHCLG), but the policy focus on ‘problem’ localLocal Government ities is clear. Analysis from the research body The Campaign Company maps the rate of change in terms of black and minority ethnic and migrant populations in British local authorities and concludes that each of the five integration areas has a ‘comparatively extreme’ rate of change compared to the rest of the UK, with particularly notable recent changes (Clarke 2018).

202  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer This analysis is supported by the fact that funding for the Integration Area programme comes from the wider government Controlling Migration fund, which provides finance to ‘help local authorities respond to the impact of recent migration on their communities’ (MHCLG 2019). Politically, this is an overt link to migration and associated concerns about diversity and extremism. It is worth noting, for instance, that three of the five areas were also listed as priority areas in the government’s Prevent Strategy (Home Office 2011, 98). The Integrated Communities agenda presents new opportunities for multifaith social action in certain locations, but also risks signalling that certain local communities or faith groups are seen to pose a threat to cohesion. Indeed, the government consultation around this policy raised grassroots concerns about this approach ‘targeting specific groups or communities’ (MHCLG 2019, 8). Kingdon’s observation that a policy window can open because ‘a new problem captures the attention of government officials and those close to them’ (2003, 68) is evident here, as is the impact on engagement with religion and support for multifaith social action. The fact that both Near Neighbours and the Integration Area scheme, the two primary government sources of funding for multifaith social action, have this kind of regional focus shows how the policy window of opportunity is changing, and arguably narrowing. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a renewed focus on faith-based social action. While it is too early to draw full conclusions, preliminary evidence shows that faith groups have made up a significant part of community-based COVID-19 responses. Baker’s recent research for the APPG on Faith and Society (2020) used information from 194 local authorities across the UK to show how much statutory bodies have relied on faithbased social action in their responses to the pandemic. Baker particularly notes that faith groups are well placed to access many of the more vulnerable and isolated people within local communities, a uniquely important need during the pandemic that extends previous understandings of the kind of social capital that faith groups can provide. It is noticeable that Baker’s research, along with other early evidence (e.g. Agace and Macfarland 2021), almost exclusively focuses on single-faith responses, tracking churchbased food banks, mosque-based efforts and Sikh langar provision separately. This could point towards a trend of increased social action rooted in single-faith communities, rather than increased multifaith social action. However, what our case studies will suggest is that, in this context of single-faith social action, and particularly during COVID-19, networks that draw together single-faith social action and foster multifaith collaboration are emerging. More research is needed to explore the extent of multi-faith social action during the pandemic, as well as the impact and prevalence of multifaith networks that draw together single faith-based social actors. The two local case studies we now describe to explore further the policy themes identified here illustrate different features of the policy environment, as well as some of the ways in which multifaith social action projects

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  203 and leaders can challenge and make strategic use of the funding and policy environment. In so doing, these case studies draw out theoretical and practical issues in how local connectivity is developed or challenged as a result of the policy interventions that do or do not support the development of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue.

8.4  Evidence from the Case Studies 8.4.1  Faith Together in Leeds 11 Our first case study is one where the impact of government policy and the interrelationships between multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue have been relatively well documented, but the changes over time less well (Prideaux 2009a, 2009b). In contrast to our second case study, which looks across the local connections and practices of an entire city, this first case study is of a hyper-local neighbourhood project. Although many themes are evident across both of our examples, this first case study particularly provides a historical view of change and development in a multifaith social action project over a period of over 20 years. Leeds is a city in the north of England with a long-established Jewish community, which also saw a significant growth in religious diversity from the 1960s, with workers arriving from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent to work in the textile and other industries of the region. The city has one of the oldest interfaith fellowships in the country, Concord Interfaith Fellowship, founded in the 1980s (Bates 2016). There are several small interfaith dialogue groups meeting in local areas, as well as a Faiths Forum for representing religion to the local council and a ‘Religion and Belief Hub’ as part of the Leeds City Council Equalities Assembly. As well as these fellowship and representational groups, there are also a significant number of faith-based organizations in Leeds working on a variety of issues, from supporting the homeless and refugees to supporting religious education in schools. Among these, there are a number of multifaith social action projects, some of which are multifaith by design, others are multifaith as a result of the people who are involved. This multifaith social action takes place within a context in which there are a significant number of non-­ religious social action organizations, with the Leeds Citizens group latterly playing an important role in bringing together the range of activities that exist across the city. Faith Together in Leeds 11 (hereafter ‘Faith Together’) was founded in 1997 in the Beeston Hill neighbourhood. When it was established it was openly described as a Muslim-Christian-secular partnership. The project resulted in the building of two separately owned community centres, which initially shared joint strategic management. This case study draws on extensive research in the early 2000s alongside some more recent interviews with local activists in order to provide an example of how projects are initiated,

204  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer grow and change in response to policy and funding opportunities, as well as to the changing personnel and needs of the local community. The impetus for reconsidering the availability of community space in Beeston Hill came when a local Methodist minister and a Muslim community worker attended the same meeting about funding opportunities for economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The vision of the two was to find a way to free up the large amount of ‘Christian’ space in the neighbourhood for the use of the whole community, and in so doing to contribute to regeneration and cohesion and thereby improve the standard of living of the local population. This was a practical imperative driven by the spatial needs of the local Muslim community and the desire for relevance on the part of the Christian community. It was also a religious imperative, in that it sought to express hospitality and co-operation from both sides. The project was initially concerned with asserting that local people have faith in the area, as well as asserting the role of organized religion in the area and the ability of different faith groups to work together. The title (‘faith’, not ‘faiths’) made it possible for non-religious individuals or groups to take part in the project. However, when the project first began, the leaders were very willing to talk about religion as one of its key aspects, with one stating that: I believe people of faith have to stand together if we are going to see the kind of world we believe in materialise, a world controlled by God and not by people. We have said from the beginning that if God wants our scheme to succeed it will succeed. (Leeds Faith Communities Liaison Forum 2000, 9) This level of religious discourse points to the original articulation of the project, which was religiously motivated and focused on multifaith social action. However, this dimension of the project rapidly diminished during the initial years of operation. By drawing in partners from a variety of local non-religious organizations as well as the Anglican and Methodist churches, Faith Together developed over a period of several years into a broad-based regeneration project. The Muslim community was involved via two organizations that mainly serve the local Muslim population. The primary partner in this regard was the South Leeds Elderly and Community Group (SLECG), and the second was the Asha centre, which is a support and activity base for local South Asian women. Secular partners included Vera Media, a community arts project. Initial funding came from a variety of bodies, including the National Lottery, the European Union, the Single Regeneration Budget, Yorkshire Forward (the Regional Development Agency) and a range of smaller grant-issuing organizations and trusts, including church trusts. The range of funding opportunities here is revealing of the policy window on which Faith Together was able to capitalize. Some of these funding streams (Single Regeneration, Regional Development Agency) were related

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  205 to specific New Labour policies. A contemporary project of this nature would be relatively unlikely to access such a range of state funding sources, and of course European funding is no longer an option. The most visible outcome of the Faith Together vision is the two community centres, Building Blocks and Hamara. Building Blocks, opened in 2003 and built around the Anglican parish hall, was owned and run by the local Methodist and Anglican churches, though ownership is currently being transferred to the nursery that occupies the space. Hamara, opened in 2004 and built around the former Methodist church hall, was initially owned and run by the Muslim community via SLECG rather than the local mosques, which had no official role in the project, although there was an overlap of personnel between management committees. Initially, the buildings were owned separately, giving both communities a sense of ownership and anchorage through them, but at a strategic level they were run jointly. Initially designated a Healthy Living Centre,3 Hamara describes itself as ‘the largest ethnic minority organisation in the voluntary and community sector in Leeds’, with work extending across the themes of ‘Health Promotion, Youth Activities, Older People’s Services, Saturday Supplementary School, Learning Disabilities, Education and Employment & Training Programmes’ (Hamara 2021). Building Blocks is a parents’ centre offering a private nursery and other children’s groups. Initially, Building Blocks was also, between the hours of 6 pm and 8 am and at weekends, the Methodist church building and the Anglican church hall. It is now, however, the home of the nursery. As Lindsey Pearson, a local vicar noted: ‘When it started there was a bigger vision, and that hasn’t happened; but we have a thriving, functioning, good nursery’. Located across a side street from one another, the buildings were visually significant, providing at the time when they were developed one of the few examples of the new building in the area. As one woman commented upon the opening of the Hamara Centre, ‘The buildings make it look like someone cares about us’. Activists and leaders in Faith Together were particularly adept at the strategic use of religion for accessing funds. One activist, who was herself an atheist, felt that religion ‘is certainly not a disadvantage’ to the Faith Together project, as it ‘lends respectability sometimes’. A religious dimension to the project ‘gives you more choice really because you can apply to faith funds … as well as to community and voluntary sector funds’. In contrast, for one of the key Christian leaders of the project in particular, the need to express a religious identity in what he considered to be an overwhelmingly secular society was paramount in his community work, and he commented that: ‘as people of faith we wanted to make an assertion that faith matters … when you’re up against a secular culture, it’s more important to stand together for faith’. Despite this clear religious basis, he was prepared to make strategic decisions about the way the project was represented to funding bodies, including strategically choosing to emphasize the individual roles of the buildings, rather than the shared basis in

206  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer Faith Together: ‘You could always present them as a coherent whole, but the trouble is [that] there are times when it is easier to get funding by not doing that’. Clearly, different activists within the same project might choose different ways at different times to describe and emphasize the multifaith dimension of their work. There was also a difference in how the project was understood and described between those who had leadership roles and those who used the buildings as clients. Those in leadership roles demonstrated the extent to which they had become socialized into the dominant discourse around community cohesion. The leaders were actively involved in interfaith dialogue and facilitated local interfaith dialogue events in the buildings. One that was especially memorable involved a group of mainly older female Christians meeting for discussion with a group made up mainly of young Muslim men who had just come from football training. The motivations and interests of the two groups were quite different, but the strength of the vision of the Faith Together leaders facilitated such unusual gatherings. However, the impact of these activities, or even awareness of them, was somewhat limited. This was most clearly observed around the issue of how well known ‘Faith Together in Leeds 11’ was as the overarching project. Whereas for one Muslim project leader ‘Faith Together in Leeds 11 is very well known in the locality’, a Muslim community worker pointed out that this really only extended to local officials, rather than local residents: I think some people are aware but not as aware as we would like them to be… people are aware that we work together, we are partners, but I’m not so sure whether they’re aware that faith plays an important part in this. In some senses, this is unsurprising. Local residents use the buildings on the basis of need or interest, whereas those who manage the buildings are involved at a more strategic level with the nature and identity of the buildings. However, the importance here of the vision of the leaders in the development of the project and the gap in awareness of the founding objectives among the local community may well be central to how the project evolved. None of the three early key leaders of the project, who all shared the strong religious dimension to the vision for Faith Together, are any longer in the role. From 2008, and the ending of the regeneration funding which was the springboard for the project, the community activity and shared working rapidly declined. Joint events and activities stopped being a key focus for Faith Together, and Hamara stopped having a seat on the Faith Together Board, while independently it became more successful. Asha and Vera Media are still key organizations in Faith Together, and this supports both community awareness and liaison work. Although Hamara and Building Blocks are now entirely separate at the Board level, the current Chair of Faith Together was on the Hamara board from 2012 to 2015 and

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  207 was able to instigate some shared working and events. The fragility of such enterprises is underlined by the extent to which individuals committed to co-working are pivotal to the continued success of the initial vision for the project. In terms of the theoretical framing of and practical implications for multifaith social action, especially in the context of identifying the religion policy window that provided the conditions for the project’s plausibility, it is important to note here the significance of local leaders. While funding linked to specific policy objectives provided the opportunity for the project, local practices around leadership and engagement have proved essential to maintaining the focus on wider objectives that might relate to interfaith dialogue, for instance, rather than the immediate tangible services required by the local community. The closure of both the Anglican and Methodist congregations that were linked to the Building Blocks centre also underlines how religion is of decreasing significance to the project. As the visible practice of religion has declined in the locality, the practice related to community social needs has become more significant. The Faith Together Board is now primarily concerned with the running of the nursery that meets at Building Blocks, and the nursery is in the process of purchasing the building, meaning that the building will no longer have any religious meetings or identity associated with its space. However, the informal space of religion continues to be important and is visible in the makeup of the current Board on which several members have a (Christian) religious identity that adds value in terms of networking. As the Revd Lindsey Pearson noted: ‘there is a recognition of faith and religion being part of life which you might not find in some organizations’. In this sense, the personal practice of religion continues to impact on the project, even when the communal practice is less visible. The current chair of Faith Together in Leeds 11, Al Garthwaite, is very clear that, despite being different from the original project and vision, the activity is nonetheless significant and has the potential to be more so. The nursery itself is a hugely important community asset, whatever its origins. For Garthwaite, Faith Together continues to seek to be ‘of service to the community, and a local organization’ and it ‘exists as part of a quite well defined and strong community in the area’. She notes that a strong sense of locality permeates the practice of the Board and that there is a desire to be of value and to signify ownership of key spaces for the community. Policy may shape, create and direct local multifaith social action, but it does not necessarily create the conditions for ongoing work. Instead, the needs of the community and the motivations of individuals who take on leadership roles are key to shaping and continuing the legacy of multifaith social action projects and their relationship with interfaith dialogue activity. Faith Together demonstrates several of the key theoretical and practical themes that are emerging in this discussion. First, the example demonstrates how important the religion policy window of the New Labour years was to the development of multifaith social action projects. There is a balance in

208  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer the case study between the principled approach to the project of the initial instigators, the strategic use of religion to access funding and the decline in the significance of religion to the project as the funding opportunities and the personnel changed. The situated practices related to the development of local connections involve a continued ethical practice of negotiation of the policy windows, religious or otherwise, which shape the funding and social environment for multifaith social action. Importantly, the case study demonstrates that, although multifaith social action projects can be shaped to a significant extent by the funding available, the project leaders are not passive receivers of this funding but are instead actively engaged with a practice of making strategic use of the opportunities that funding presents. Second, the example illustrates how, despite a firm rooting in interfaith dialogue and a leadership aspiration to enable local interfaith dialogue, this is not a necessary outcome of such projects. The ‘demotic’ (Prideaux 2009b) practice of local informal interfaith dialogue, based on the spaces and contexts for contact between people of different faiths, has declined as the social action practice of the project has become primary and the local Christian community has stopped meeting for worship in the neighbourhood. The site for dialogue is significant here. Anywhere can be a site for interfaith dialogue – the school gates, the queue at the bank, or the doctor’s waiting room can be spaces where people of different faiths engage in dialogue of an informal nature about religion. When projects such as Faith Together in Leeds 11 create spaces which actively facilitate such practice, there is an opportunity to develop more formal and wide-ranging opportunities for dialogue. However, this opportunity is contingent on ongoing practices which support the vision and capacity to facilitate such dialogue. As Faith Together in Leeds 11 demonstrates, a project rooted in the practice of interfaith dialogue, making strategic use of policy windows to access funding, can create valuable opportunities for the practice of multifaith social action and demotic interfaith dialogue. However, this is fragile. When funding and personnel changes, what remains is the immediate need of the local community. Faith Together in Leeds 11, as a project which now supports the running of a valuable community asset, is still an important and valuable part of the civic landscape of Beeston Hill. ‘Faith’, however, is no longer about religion but about faith in the community and the people. Religion has left, but faith remains. This review of Faith Together in Leeds 11 has provided a more historical look at the changing space for multifaith social action. Our next case study provides a more contemporary example that illustrates the continuing fragility and contestation regarding multifaith social action. 8.4.2  Peterborough Our case study of Peterborough looks at work across a city to demonstrate the range and challenges of multifaith social action across a single location

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  209 which significantly since 2018 has been a government Integration Area. Peterborough demonstrates the range of local activity that has been possible and the way in which strategic use can be made of changing policies and funding opportunities to further the objectives of local groups and projects. Peterborough is a city in Cambridgeshire, in the east of England. With historical roots as a cathedral city, more recently Peterborough has been characterized by its rapid growth. The Council’s Belonging Together ­Strategy notes: In recent years Peterborough has seen rapid growth in migration. Between the 2001 and 2011 census, Peterborough’s population overall grew by 17%. We live in one of the fastest growing cities in the country. Having a rapidly increasing and changing population creates great opportunities but also brings challenges. (Peterborough City Council 2019, 6) The report variously lists some of these ‘challenges’ as poverty, Englishlanguage proficiency, social exclusion and BAME (still the term in use at the time of the report) attainment in both education and employment. Peterborough has a longstanding Interfaith Council which dates back more than 35 years and runs several local annual events, such as a food festival at the Town Hall (Kartupelis 2015, 28). The Council has been led by the same individual, Dr. Jaspal Singh DL, for over 20 years (Cambridgeshire Lieutenancy 2021), who has consistently spoken out about the important role of interfaith dialogue in the city. In 2015, the Local Authority commissioned an Audit of the presence of faith in Peterborough in collaboration with the Peterborough Council of Churches and the Peterborough Council of Voluntary Services, for which the stated aim was ‘to underline the benefit of the presence and activity of its faith groups to the community as a whole’ (Kartupelis 2015, 4). The report shows the impact of austerity, noting the 2013 closure of the East of England Faith Forum, which formerly provided support and resources to Peterborough’s faith communities and Interfaith Council. It cites many examples of local social action rooted in single-faith communities, arguing that the decreased availability of government funding post-2010 was having a direct impact on the practice of multifaith social action: … there was very little ‘multifaith’ working, that is, different faith groups coming together to provide for the common good. Two projects in Peterborough are distinctive in drawing in a number of worshipping communities; one is Hope into Action, which does not currently envisage any links with non-Christian groups and the other is the Foodbank, which has one Muslim distribution centre and has volunteers from a variety of faiths. (Kartupelis 2015, 26)

210  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer The report argues that this finding is indicative of a national picture, claiming exceptions are only found where ‘a scheme such as Near Neighbours, Faith in Action or the Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund intervenes to support and stimulate the concept’ (2015, 26). No such schemes were available in Peterborough in 2015. What is significant here is that, six years after this Audit was written, Peterborough is again in receipt of substantial government funds, providing an opportunity to explore whether a new policy context creates renewed opportunities for multifaith social action. In 2018, it was announced that Peterborough would be added to the regions where Near Neighbours works and would also be one of the five new Integration Areas as part of the national Integrated Communities agenda. These two funds are separate, with Near Neighbours being more overtly faith-focused and the Integrated Communities funding having a broader agenda, of which faith is a part. Together, the availability of these two funds represented a huge increase in resources available to faith groups in Peterborough and a clear policy shift to focus integration efforts in local areas like Peterborough with a perceived need to support cohesion. Our research found that the funds had different impacts. A Near Neighbours ‘hub’ was established in Peterborough, and a local staff member, Femi Olasako, was employed to work out of Peterborough Cathedral. Femi makes it clear that the decision to go to Peterborough came from the central government, stating: the government highlights a particular city as an integration area and asks if Near Neighbours can move into that city … MHCLG would indicate where they want Near Neighbours to expand to. As a result, 25 local interfaith events and initiatives have been funded by Near Neighbours since 2018. For example, the Peterborough Liberal Jewish Community and All Souls Catholic Church jointly ran a Holocaust Commemoration Concert that attracted 400 people (Diocese of East Anglia, February 11, 2020). A hundred people also joined the ‘The Sultan and The Saint’ Christian Muslim dialogue event, jointly run by the Peterborough Interfaith Council, Churches Together in Central Peterborough and the Medina Mosque (Baptist Times, July 30, 2019). These relatively large, but nonetheless local events run by a range of groups show that the presence of Near Neighbours in Peterborough has resulted in an increased practice of interfaith activity. However, the funded initiatives have largely been oneoff events focused on interfaith dialogue, rather than sustained multifaith social action. Another consequence of the policy decision to bring Near Neighbours to Peterborough is that Peterborough Cathedral has become a central point of local interfaith activity. In some ways, the criticism of Christian dominance highlighted in O’Toole et al.’s research (2013) is played out locally

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  211 here. The Near Neighbours hub is based in a Christian venue and led by a Christian member of staff ‘under the guidance’ of the Cathedral’s Canon (Peterborough Cathedral 2018). However, Femi is very clear to describe her role as a ‘point of contact’ and a ‘conduit’ to link groups and open up access, explaining how through her practice she has been able to support groups from different faith backgrounds to access other funding opportunities and encouraged ‘smaller ethnic minority groups who would not have thought they had the right to approach the Cathedral’ to access its space. While Near Neighbours’ funding led to an increase in local interfaith dialogue activity, the Integrated Communities Strategy led to an increase in local multifaith social action. Peterborough’s identity as an Integration Area resulted in a £300,000 Communities Fund being made available to local Peterborough groups, disbursed in three tranches, with decisions made by the Peterborough Together Partnership Board (Peterborough Today October 29, 2019). None of the funded projects openly describe themselves as multifaith social action projects in the way Faith Together did in the early stages of the Leeds case study. However, one project, ‘Community First’, is chaired by a local vicar and has a prominent Muslim community leader as the Vice Chair. The name ‘Community First’ is interesting here, perhaps signalling the strategic importance of multifaith work being able to position itself within a wider community context under a broader integration funding agenda. Other funded projects were led by one faith community, but informally multifaith social action was occurring through grassroots collaboration. It is clear here that one of the key practices identified throughout the two case studies – the strategic use or not of religion – continues to be significant in how religious individuals and groups approach funding opportunities. One large scale, non-denominational Church in receipt of this funding was running a multitude of local social action projects. They had worked significantly with a local Muslim charity on a resettlement project for Syrian refugees. More broadly, their focus was Christian-led social action, but a staff member described their practice as ‘very, very outward focused’ explaining that connecting beyond their Christian community was essential to achieve social impact in a diverse community: Peterborough is not an affluent community, there’s a lot of poverty here, a lot of challenges…. And I think there’s also a recognition that in terms of some of the challenges people are facing, we can’t do it on our own… that actually as a Church, we can’t go in and solve, y’know, turn [the community] around on its own, we actually need to work…, we’re much stronger and we’re much better if we work with other people and other organizations. The same staff member went on to explain that they recognized that their Church was well placed to access funds, and would sometimes lead a funding

212  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer bid on behalf of a range of organizations from different backgrounds, further evidence of the strategic use of religion. The identity of this church as non-denominational is also significant. Where evangelically aligned churches tend to engage less in formal interfaith dialogue (e.g. Azumah 2012), here multifaith social action, framed as part of a broader integration agenda, is providing an opportunity for this Church to work alongside other faith communities, with informal dialogue occurring through their coalescing around shared action. More recently still, the COVID response had led to the emergence of new multifaith partnerships and social action in Peterborough. Peterborough Council for Voluntary Services or CVS (secular organizations existing across the UK connecting and providing support for community and voluntary groups) had convened several community response networks under different themes, including food insecurity. Although this network was not overtly faith-based, one Christian participant noted how many of the groups involved were faith-based, and how the network had led to the Sikh community collaborating with Christian and secular foodbanks ‘for the first time ever’. This network resulted in the practice of multifaith cooperation to share food surpluses across initiatives from different backgrounds and ensure that these surpluses got out to those most in need. Further to the CVS example, a new locally led Interfaith Support Group was also created. In the context of online working, the longstanding Peterborough Interfaith Council, which focuses on interfaith dialogue, was less active. The new Interfaith Support Group, while having many of the same members, had more of a focus on social action and crisis response. It was initiated by a staff member in the Cathedral, meeting every two weeks to respond to COVID needs and coordinate action. The group was closely linked to different statutory bodies and helped local faith groups disseminate public health messages and interpret government guidelines. Notably, one interviewee stated how this more action-focused group had a particularly representative range of ‘all the faith groups in Peterborough’ and also included community leaders such as the local Black Lives Matter lead and the Racial Equality Council. This example points to the capacity of an actionbased group to draw in a wider range of faith groups than some of the more traditional dialogue groups. Both the Interfaith Support Group in Peterborough and the CVS example support Baker’s finding (2020) that new partnerships across faith-based and secular bodies have emerged from the pandemic. This study of Peterborough shows how the practice of multifaith social action continues in new ways in the UK. Compared to Kartupelis’ assertion in 2015 that ‘very little’ multifaith social action was taking place in Peterborough, the strategic use of more recent policy and funding opportunities, coupled with a context of crisis, has changed the picture once again. However, the multifaith social action that is occurring in contemporary Peterborough is not the overt practice that was demonstrated by the early model of Faith Together in Leeds 11, whereby two different faith groups

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  213 collaborate and lead a project from its inception. Rather, social action that begins in the practices of single-faith communities is subsequently reaching out beyond that community through new multifaith action networks that foster collaborative practice. This less overt form of multifaith social action can perhaps be seen as the result of a different policy context in which faith is part of a broader agenda around community cohesion, rather than being the specific focus of concern or opportunity. Interestingly, these kinds of networks are also appearing elsewhere in the UK, in areas without priority government funding. In northern England, the interfaith organization Building Bridges Pendle runs the Pendle Food Alliance, which brings together Christian, Muslim and secular initiatives working on food poverty (Building Bridges Pendle 2021), while in Scotland, the Glasgow Interfaith Food Justice Network fulfils a similar function (Interfaith Glasgow 2021). The Peterborough example demonstrates how more recent funding streams have had a local impact on multifaith social action. The Leeds case study shows evidence of a strategic use of funding opportunities in order to pursue a multifaith social project with an interfaith ideology at its heart. In the Peterborough example, we see some activity which had a theological underpinning being pursued through Near Neighbours funding, while multifaith social action is being funded and pursued through Integration Area funding, which does not have a policy priority for religion. As with the Leeds example, strategic use is made of funding opportunities to pursue activities that the faith groups can see are needed by local communities and that they are particularly well placed to deliver.

8.5 Conclusion This chapter has attempted to unpack some of the implications and complexities in the relationships between government policy and the practices of multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue in local communities. Through our two case studies, it has been possible to trace how local connections are being forged through multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue that has developed in response to policy and funding initiatives which try to tackle the experience of polarization in society. It has been clear throughout that there is a tension and intersection between the practices of interfaith dialogue and multifaith social action, and that the tensions can often be creative as well as sometimes being complicated considerably by location, leadership and the broader ‘religion policy window’ in action. Multifaith social action and interfaith dialogue are implicated, shaped and sometimes generated by policy and funding, while also being influenced by the local specificities and local leadership that engages strategically with this policy and funding landscape. They also mutually implicate, shape and generate one another. The implications of this are of practical significance for faith communities and policy, as well as for theory. The growth in multifaith social

214  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer action during the New Labour period, though locally significant in terms of the opportunities and impacts for action in communities, can also be shown to be as much a strategic response to funding streams as a growth in religiously motivated activity. As the religion policy window of the New Labour period became available, practice arguably shifted towards how to make strategic use of funding in order to pursue the underpinning religious practices (of charity and community), rather than the practice starting from the underpinning religious practices. The later decline of some of this multifaith social action, with a more significant presence of social action rooted in single-faith communities, has often been the result of changing funding opportunities. While opportunities are now more limited, recent policy contexts situate religion as part of a broader context of integration, resulting in new and interesting forms of multifaith social action in particular locations. As Beckford has argued (2010), when surveying the engagement between policy and religion, social action may plausibly tell us more about the state than it tells us about religion. It nevertheless remains the case that the type of work happening in Faith Together in Leeds 11 and Peterborough has significant impacts in local communities, not just in the services they provide, but also in the opportunities they create for engagement between people of different faiths, both as project leaders and service users. The impact of multifaith social action is felt not just in the services it provides but in the lives of those who develop new and lasting friendships with people of other faiths.

Notes 1 Both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, key architects of the New Labour project, are Christians. 2 This government department was renamed the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities in 2021. 3 Healthy Living Centres are a particular type of community centre found around the country that are charged with improving the health of neighbourhoods and work closely with local Primary Care Trusts. They are centrally funded through the National Health Service for much of their work.

References Agace, Matilda, and Caroline Macfarland. 2021. Restoring Social Confidence: Lessons from Faith-led Social Action During the COVID 19 Pandemic. ­London: Common Vision. https://www.belongnetwork.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/ Restoring-Social-Confidence-Common-Vision-report-June-2021.pdf. Azumah, John. 2012. “Evangelical Christian Views and Attitudes Towards ­Christian-Muslim Dialogue.” Transformation: An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies 29 (2): 128–138. Baker, Chris.  2020.  Keeping the Faith: Partnerships between Faith Groups and Local Authorities During and Beyond the Pandemic. APPG Faith and Society. http://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/29489/.

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  215 Bates, Trevor, ed. 2016. A Leeds Interfaith Story 1946–2016. Leeds: Concord. Beckford, James A. 2010. “The Return of Public Religion? A Critical Assessment of a Popular Claim.” Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 23 (2): 121–136. Bickley, Paul. 2015. The Problem of Proselytism. London: Theos https://www. theosthinktank.co.uk/research/2015/10/20/the-problem-of-proselytism. Building Bridges Pendle. 2021. https://www.buildingbridgespendle.org.uk/ pendle-food-alliance. Cambridgeshire Lieutenancy. 2021. https://www.cambridgeshirelieutenancy.org. uk/jaspal-singh/. Carr, Joel, Joanna Clifton-Sprigg, Jonathan James, and Suncica Vujic. 2020. “Love Thy Neighbour? Brexit and Hate Crime.” IZA Discussion Paper 1 (13902): 1–52. Casey, Louise. 2016. The Casey Review: A Review into Opportunity and Integration. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/575973/The_Casey_Review_Report.pdf. Clarke, Chris. 2018. “A Long Read: What Do We Know About the 5 Integrated Communities Councils?” The Campaign Company, April 3. http://www. thecampaigncompany.co.uk/community-cohesion/long-read-know-five-integratedcommunities-councils/. Clarke, John, and Janet Newman. 2012. “The Alchemy of Austerity.”  Critical ­Social Policy 32 (3): 299–319. Davie, Grace. 2015. Religion in Britain: A Persistent Paradox. 2nd ed. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. Department for Communities and Local Government. 2008. ‘Face-to-Face and Side-by-Side’: A Framework for Interfaith Dialogue and Social Action. London: HMSO. Dinham, Adam, and Vivien Lowndes. 2009. “Faith and the Public Realm.” In Faith in the Public Realm: Controversies, Policies and Practices, edited by Adam Dinham, Robert Furbey, and Vivien Lowndes, 1–19. Bristol: The Policy Press. Diocese of East Anglia. 2020. “Moving Peterborough Commemoration of the Holocaust.” Diocese of East Anglia, February 11. https://www.rcdea.org.uk/ moving-peterborough-commemoration-of-the-holocaust/. Fahy, John, and Jan-Jonathan Bock. 2019. “Introduction: Interfaith and Social Movement Theory.” In The Interfaith Movement: Mobilising Religious Diversity in the 21st century, edited by John Fahy, and Jan-Jonathan Bock, 1–27. London: Routledge. Farnell, Richard, Robert Furbey, Stephen Shams Al-Haqq Hills, Marie Macey, and Greg Smith. 2003. ‘Faith’ in Urban Regeneration? Engaging Faith Communities in Urban Regeneration. Bristol: Policy Press for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Furbey, Robert, Adam Dinham, Richardt Farrell, Doreen Finneron, and Guy Wilkinson. 2006. Faith as Social Capital: Connecting or Dividing? Bristol: The Policy Press. Griera, Mar. 2012. “Public Policies, Interfaith Associations and Religious Minorities: A New Policy Paradigm? Evidence from the Case of Barcelona.” Social Compass 59 (4), 570–587. Halafoff, Anna. 2013. The Multifaith Movement: Global Risks and Cosmopolitan Solutions. Dordrecht: Springer. Hamara. 2021. https://www.hamara.org.uk/about/about-hamara/. Harrison, Malcolm, and Teela Sanders. 2014. Social Policies and Social Control: New Perspectives on the ‘Not-So-Big Society’. Bristol: Policy Press.

216  Melanie Prideaux and Tim Mortimer Home Office. 2006. “Press release: £7.5 Million Boost to Help Faith ­Communities Play a Fuller Part in Civil Society and Community Cohesion.” Accessed April 24, 2007. http://press.homeoffice.gov.uk/press-releases/boostfaithcommunities-society. Home Office. 2011. Prevent Strategy. London: The Stationary Office Limited. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/97976/prevent-strategy-review.pdf. Interfaith Glasgow. 2021. https://interfaithglasgow.org/interfaith-food-justicenetwork/. Kartupelis, Jenny. 2015. An Audit of Faith Presence and Activity in Greater ­Peterborough. Peterborough: Peterborough City Council. Keating, Michael. 2017. Debating Scotland: Issues of Independence and Union in the 2014 Referendum. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Kingdon, John W. 2003. Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies. 2nd ed. New York: Longman. Körs, Anna, and Alexander-Kenneth Nagel. 2018. “Local ‘Formulas of Peace’: Religious Diversity and State-Interfaith Governance in Germany.” Social ­ ­C ompass 65 (3): 346–362. Leeds Faith Communities Liaison Forum. 2000. Islamic Social Action Seminar. Leeds. Levitas, Ruth. 1998. The Inclusive Society? Social Exclusion and New Labour. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. Lowndes, Vivien, and Lawrence Pratchett. 2012. “Local Governance under the Coalition Government: Austerity, Localism and the ‘Big Society’.” Local ­Government Studies 38 (1): 21–40. Lukka, Priya, Michael Locke, and Andri Soteri-Procter. 2003. Faith and Voluntary Action: Community, Values and Resources. London: Institute for Volunteering Research and University of East London. MHCLG. 2018a. Controlling Migration Fund Prospectus: A Fund to Help Local Authorities Respond to the Impact of Recent Migration on Their Communities. London: MHCLG. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/ system/uploads/attachment_data/file/733160/CMF_Prospectus_2018_-_2020.pdf. MHCLG. 2018b. Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper: Building Stronger, More United Communities. London: MHCLG. https://assets.­publishing.service. gov.uk/government/ uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/696993/­ Integrated_Communities_Strategy.pdf. MHCLG. 2019. Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper: Summary of ­C onsultation Response and Government Response. London: MHCLG ¡Error! Referencia de hipervínculo no válida. Near Neighbours. 2021. About Us. https://www.near-neighbours.org.uk/about. O’Toole, Therese, Daniel Nilsson Dehanas, Tariq Modood, Nasar Meer, and Stephen Jones. 2013. Taking Part – Muslim Participation in Contemporary ­ ­Governance. University of Bristol. O’Toole, Therese, Nasar Meer, Daniel Nilsson DeHanas, Stephen Jones, and Tariq ­ ractice Modood. 2016. “Governing through Prevent? Regulation and Contested P in State–Muslim Engagement.” Sociology 50 (1): 160–177. Pennington, Madeleine. 2020. Cohesive Societies: Faith and Belief. London: ­British Academy.

Local Connections in an Increasingly Polarized Nation?  217 Peterborough Cathedral. 2018. “Peterborough Cathedral Announces New Project in Collaboration with Near Neighbours.” Peterborough Cathedral Newsletter, March 11. https://www.peterborough-cathedral.org.uk/newsarticle.aspx/41/ near_neighbours. Peterborough City Council. 2019. “Belonging Together” A Conversation About Our Communities and Future. https://www.belongnetwork.co.uk/wp-content/ uploads/2019/07/ BelongingTogether-AConversationAboutOurCommunitiesAnd Future-May2019.pdf. Peterborough Today. 2019. “£300000 Handed Out to Peterborough Groups to Bring Communities Together.” Peterborough Today, October 29. https:// www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/politics/council/ps300000-handed-outpeterborough-groups-bring-communities-together-923403. Prideaux Melanie. 2009a. “The Significance of Identity to the Lived Realities of Muslim-Christian Dialogue.”  Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations  20 (2): 153–170. Prideaux Melanie. 2009b.  “Muslim-Christian Dialogue: The Gap Between Theologians and Communities.”  International Journal of Public Theology  3 (4): 460–479. Prideaux Melanie. 2020. “Legitimising Religion in Public.” Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 6 (2): 473–490. Prideaux Melanie, and Andrew Dawson. 2018.  “Interfaith activity and the governance of religious diversity in the United Kingdom.” Social Compass 65 (3): 363–377. Ramadan, Tariq. 2006. “Interreligious Dialogue from an Islamic Perspective.” In How to Conquer the Barriers to Intercultural Dialogue, edited by Christiane Timmerman and Barbara Segaert, 85–100. Brussels: Peter Lang. Rhodes, James. 2009. “Revisiting the 2001 Riots: New Labour and the Rise of ‘Colour Blind Racism.’” Sociological Research Online 14 (5): 80–91. Wincott, Daniel. 2018. “Brexit and the State of the United Kingdom”. In The Routledge Handbook of the Politics of Brexit, edited by Patrick Diamond, Peter Nedergaard, Ben Rosamond, 15–26. London: Routledge.

9

Atmospheric Encounters Interfaith Dialogue in a Multifaith Neighbourhood of Copenhagen Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen

9.1 Introduction One Saturday morning, the participants on an interfaith dialogue course gathered in front of Brorson’s Church in Nørrebro, a culturally and religiously diverse neighbourhood of Copenhagen. We had just finished the morning programme in the church itself and were now heading towards the Imam Ali Mosque about two kilometres from the church. We walked from central Nørrebro towards the neighbouring North-West district, first along the so-called Green Path constructed for cyclists pedalling across the city, and next through rather bland living areas interspersed with light industry. Walking, chatting and laughing, enmeshed in the informal and undemanding atmosphere of the neighbourhood, it felt like a break from the formal and sometimes demanding activities of the course. The interfaith dialogue course took place partly at Brorson’s Church and partly at Imam Ali Mosque in 2016. The walk connected these two localities, and hence was an integral activity of the course. Even though it was not presented as a break, it also took on that air. Maybe this was because of the change of locality; maybe because of the movement of bodies next to each other; maybe because there were no expectations concerning whom to talk to or what to talk about; or maybe because we were leaving behind the intense atmosphere of the morning session. Looking back over her fieldwork, the researcher (Lise Paulsen Galal) particularly remembers the various atmospheres that enveloped her and the other participants. In addition to a governance perspective, studies of interfaith and intercultural dialogue have mostly been preoccupied with rational dialogue and interpersonal proximity as instruments to counter prejudice and intolerance towards the other (Agrawal and Barratt 2014; Johanson 2016; Keaten and Soukup 2009; Wolf 2012). Despite an increasing interest in affective and spatial perspectives on intercultural and interfaith dialogue (Galal 2019; Wilson 2013), studies of the material aspects of interfaith dialogue are still scarce (see Introduction to this volume). In this chapter, we explore these material aspects by asking how atmospheres develop, envelop and imprint upon interfaith encounters. While this may seem to be a contradiction

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-13

Atmospheric Encounters  219 in terms, we introduce the concept of atmosphere in order to analyse the entanglement of spaces, matter, bodies and subjectivities in local interfaith dialogue practices. We ask: How do atmospheres tune encounters, and what embodied attunements emerge among the participants? The chapter is based on findings from fieldwork in 2016 (to which we return in more detail below) at Brorson’s Church, the Imam Ali Mosque and the space in between. This fieldwork was one of several such projects related to organized interfaith encounters in Denmark and was part of a wider research project on organized cultural encounters.1 Following the conceptualization of atmosphere as tuned spaces and an introduction to the context and method of the research, the analysis proceeds in three parts, each taking up a different atmospheric tuning. The first tuning drew upon the sacrality of church and mosque and introduced an invitation to orient oneself towards a shared and embodied spirituality. The invitation was inclusive, but in partly contradictory ways. In the second part of the analysis, we show how the atmosphere of the nave of the church became entangled with the course exercises and co-produced an expectation of transcendence. Finally, in the third part of the analysis, we move out of sacred or semi-sacred spaces and take up the everyday atmosphere of the walk and talk between Brorson’s Church and the Imam Ali Mosque, which appeared to tune the participants into a collaborative and open-ended dialogue. The three atmospheres were suggestive of orientations and movements in their accentuation of particular relationships between different bodies, as well as between the sacred and the profane.

9.2 Atmosphere In our book Organised Cultural Encounters (2020), we employ a practice perspective to explore interfaith dialogue as a kind of organized cultural encounter, studying it along with other organized cultural encounters. In the book, we analyse the practices and performativity of interfaith encounters by employing different perspectives. In this chapter, we expand and develop one of those perspectives, which zoomed in on the affective dimensions of organized encounters, and touched briefly on atmospheres. Across different varieties of organized cultural encounters, a significant tendency is for them to work in and with what we may call ‘affective registers’ (Wilson 2013), sometimes as part of the organizers’ scripting of activities and sometimes off-script. In a handbook by a prominent organizer of interfaith dialogue events in Denmark (Danmission), we find this statement: Facilitating dialogue isn’t easy. Feelings, values and opinions are at stake, and the good atmosphere can easily change when vulnerable [sic] topics such as racism, sexism, classism or heterosexism come up. (‘Dialogue Toolbox’ n.d.; Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen 2020, 152ff.)

220  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen While the term ‘atmosphere’ is used idiomatically in the quotation above, it also draws attention to the fact that organizers of interreligious encounters need to pay attention to something pertaining to the overall quality in which an encounter becomes enveloped. In the quote, the difficulty facing a facilitator is not presented as being about the specific embodied subjects and their religious persuasion, but rather about the atmosphere in which they are all enveloped. The space for dialogue can become tuned in a particular (bad) way – mistuned perhaps, and facilitating therefore involves attempts at attunement. The term ‘tuned spaces’ is Gernot Böhme’s and constitutes his attempt to come up with a shorthand description of what atmosphere means (2017, 1). It may seem paradoxical to claim that we turn towards materiality through the concept of atmosphere, since atmospheres would seem to be rather intangible (immaterial) kinds of matter. And yet, atmospheres are a particular kind of matter, and although they are ephemeral and ‘airy’, thinking about them with the term ‘tuned spaces’ accentuates their material character. They become articulated to (and as) a spatial expanse that circumscribes, carries or exhumes a particular quality, tone or tune. Spaces are material, they have a history, and they enfold elements (bodies, objects, agents) in particular ways. Along with Böhme’s writings about architecture and atmospheres, we also draw upon the work of Sara Ahmed (2014) and Ben Anderson (2009; 2014) in our description of how we theorize atmospheres and how, in turn, we encounter and analyse them. Ben Anderson (2014, 156) highlights the ephemeral and ambiguous character of atmospheres and argues that, due to this character, they work as ‘propositions, unfinished lures to feeling a situation, site, person or thing in a particular way’, rather than as setting limits for how encounters may take form. Atmospheres orient bodies, but they do not determine how encounters proceed, and consequently they ‘may be distractedly dwelt within, intentionally shaped, barely noticed or felt as overwhelming presence’ (ibid.). Atmospheres, then, can be targets of intervention and therefore also manipulated or co-created for particular purposes (for instance, using music in elevators or shops, but also in facilitating dialogue); but since they are ‘unfinished lures’, the outcome is uncertain (the music in the elevator may cause irritation rather than suppressing anxiety, etc.). Anderson stresses that atmospheres are localized, since they surround and envelop particular ensembles of elements. As already argued, the spatial aspect is central to Böhme, whose development of an aesthetic concept of atmosphere (related to architecture) inspired Anderson’s take. Atmospheres, Anderson argues, both emanate from ensembles of spaces/ environments and objects and exceed them. This is what Böhme describes as ‘ecstatic’ (2017, 39). For the latter, atmospheres are ‘obviously what is experienced in the bodily presence of humans and things, or in spaces’ (ibid., 20). The German term ‘sich befinden’ illustrates the simultaneity of a position in space and disposition, Böhme argues: ‘On the one hand, sich

Atmospheric Encounters  221 befinden means to be in a space and, on the other, to feel in such and such a way, to be disposed in a certain way’ (ibid., 90, Böhme’s emphasis). This disposition generates what Böhme calls a basic mood – an atmosphere – which ‘tinges’ any other mood that may arise. Bodily presence in space is thus mediated by atmospheres, which are sensed as (but do not originate in) bodily experiences of that space, such as expansiveness, tightness, uplift, depression, closeness, distance and movement suggestions (ibid., 91). The space tunes, and the body works as a ‘sounding board’. Whereas Böhme veers towards an interest in atmosphere as a basic mood, he also points out that if a stranger – an outsider body, we could say – appears that strange body may cause a disturbance ‘because he or she is not tuned into a common atmosphere or the community is not attuned to him’ (2017, 107). Anderson’s discussion of atmospheres as targets of intervention, as well as his observation that they work as unfinished lures, also implies that different bodies may perceive or perhaps rather sense atmospheres differently. One body may dwell distractedly in an atmosphere, whereas another feels it as an overwhelming presence. This is what Sara Ahmed emphasizes. Taking ‘moods’ as her central term, she explores how they impress differently on embodied subjects, or perhaps rather: how they orient and attune different bodies differently. Moods, Ahmed argues (following Heidegger), are ‘rather like an atmosphere’ (2014, 15). Moods in Ahmed’s exploration are not singularly directive in their orientation of bodies (or invitation to orient), but on the other hand the association between moods and attunement means that they delimit encounters or situations in rather strict ways, and certainly in stricter ways than suggested by either Anderson or Böhme. This may be due to Ahmed’s focus on attunement, i.e. on the normative character of interventions into atmospheres. ‘Mood work’, she suggests, is a pedagogical practice that re-tunes through attunement and matches feelings to appropriate actions (2014, 19). She adds: ‘Much of what I have called “diversity work” involves the effort to minimize differences so that those who arrive can appear more “in tune” with those who are already here’ (ibid., 22). Based on these conceptualizations of atmosphere, we need to revise our initial interpretation of the quote from Danmission’s Dialogue Toolbox (above). The shift in the good atmosphere probably does involve differences among the bodies present in the encounter; furthermore, the responsibility for keeping the mood good may be differently distributed among these bodies, and sensitive topics may make some feel more vulnerable than others.

9.3 The Study, Context and Methodology The atmospheres we explore in this chapter tuned the spaces and enveloped the participants on the interfaith dialogue course mentioned in the opening vignette. The course, which lasted from late Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon, took place in the Nørrebro and North-West districts of

222  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen Copenhagen in November 2016. The main location was Brorson’s Church, but, as indicated in the vignette, the course also included a walk to the Imam Ali Mosque and further activities there. The organizers were Ikon (a Danish NGO and a branch of Danmission, which is the largest mission association in Denmark), Brorson’s Church and CPH in Dialogue (at that time a network for young Muslims and Christians living in the Copenhagen area). Members of the three partner organizations facilitated activities during the course, which was advertised (on Facebook) as a dialogue training focusing on faith, outlook on life and existential issues. Organized as an encounter, the interaction among participants took centre stage. Implicitly, then, the aim was to transform or mould their dialogical skills, but it was (also) a way of training participants to become facilitators of similar encounters. Women in their twenties or early thirties undertaking higher education or newly graduated predominated among the approximately thirty participants, several of whom were already involved in dialogue initiatives. Apart from one Buddhist, most of the participants had either Christian or Muslim backgrounds. There were also a few non-believers, but the majority identified as believers, although with varying degrees of commitment to a religious community. The analysis that follows is based on participant observation in the course by one of the authors (Lise). She participated in all activities on equal terms with the other participants. 2 The data consist of the programme and text material used in the course, observation notes, informal conversations with half of the participants and a semi-structured qualitative interview with one of the organizers. While there is necessarily a speculative element involved in an analysis that focuses on atmospheres, this is the case with any interpretive work, and of course it is not speculation in thin air. Analytically, as well as with respect to participation in the field, a pertinent question is how to identify and grasp an atmosphere, since it is ephemeral and ambiguous, an affective experience ‘occurring beyond, around, and alongside the formation of subjectivity’ (Anderson 2009, 77). As argued above, atmospheres make impressions because they simultaneously emanate from objects, spaces and bodies and envelop them. As in all participant observation in anthropology (Atkinson and Hammersley 1998; Galal 2014; Lee and Ingold 2006), the researcher(’s body) is a key instrument, a sounding board that vibrates or resonates with the rhythm of what is going on. One important aspect is that atmospheres do not originate in bodies, and thus they do not belong to the researcher’s body either. As argued above, we cannot take for granted that the way an atmosphere presses upon the researcher generates the same mood qualities for all participants. Nonetheless, the reactions of participants to ruptures, shifts in intensity, elation, uneasiness, etc. are still observable imprints of atmospheres that also envelop the researcher. Atmospheres are collective, whereas the moods they co-create when entangled with particular bodies may be distributed.

Atmospheric Encounters  223 Another point of entry is the facilitators’ attempts at attunement and the ways in which the script of the event seeks to orchestrate this, for instance, through suggestions for movement and the manipulation of objects and spaces. While the ephemerality of atmospheres generally makes them difficult to grasp firmly, this last point of entry is at least partly accessible through the organizers’ explicit accounts of their aims and practices. According to one organizer, activities are deliberately arranged so as to promote ‘the personal faith encounter’, which to her is not the same as an encounter between faith systems. The organizer adds: ‘[the dialogue] doesn’t always need a purpose; you meet as people of faith […] this is a purpose in itself and is allowed to be so’.3 For that purpose, the organizers work at creating ‘intimate spaces for people to meet, where it is possible to create the deep or innate dialogue’.4 The organizer did not elaborate further on how this space is created, but the attempt to tune spaces stands out in these statements and prompts us to explore how organizers can intervene in atmospheres. In sum, our analysis pays attention to: (1) the materiality of space and objects and how these are arranged in particular ways by the organizers or through the setting itself; (2) how bodies are enveloped differently according to the character of a given activity. This includes the different ways in which course organizers encourage bodies to enter into relationships or orient in particular ways; and (3) ruptures, for example, through expressions of uneasiness, or bursts of anger, which are sometimes explicitly expressed by participants and sometimes left ‘hanging in the air’. In the following, we identify three atmospheres that, in conjunction with specific activities, enveloped and imprinted on participants in the course.

9.4 The Spirit and the Body At 7 a.m. on Saturday, I leave the dark November morning outside and enter Brorson’s Church to participate in church yoga. Yoga mats are laid out on the floor of the church. I pick a mat, sit down and look around, waiting for the rest to arrive. The electric light is dimmed, and the spatial expanse of  the hall flickers in the play of light and shadow of candles. Waves of burning incense fill the air. Some of the other participants are talking together in hushed voices; others arrive and move quietly and gently towards a mat. The yoga teacher is in front of us, making us face the original altar in the choir. She strikes the meditation bell and in a low and calm voice leads us through 45 minutes of fairly easy yoga exercises. She strikes the bell again to finish the session, after which the pastor takes her place and gives us his priestly blessings. We then move downstairs to the communal hall for breakfast (Lise Paulsen Galal, field-notes). The previous evening, the organizers had introduced church yoga by emphasizing that it was not a way of sneaking in an ‘Eastern’ religious practice. According to the course programme, the aim was ‘to offer the

224  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen possibility to “involve the body”, before we start a good, long Saturday filled with many inputs in the form of words’. Whereas the local pastor had given us a short introduction to the church on Friday evening, yoga was the first activity in this location. When we arrived, the chairs and the ellipse-shaped altar, which is placed at the centre of the church during services, had been removed and stored in the side aisles. Hence, most of the floor of the nave was open to activities that did not conform to the choreography of a service. Compared to Friday evening, when the room with its high and vaulted ceiling was ‘only’ spacious in the vertical dimension, this spaciousness was now extended to the horizontal dimensions as well. We were encouraged not to look upwards but rather inwards, while sensing the bodies of others beside us. Brorson’s  Church  is situated in Nørrebro, one of the districts built to house the rapidly growing population of Copenhagen during the 19th century (Schmidt 2015). To cater for the increasing population,  many new churches were built, one of these being Brorson’s Church, inaugurated in 1901. The church is formed in the shape of a cross with the square tower at its centre, drawing on stylistic elements from Byzantine and late-Roman architecture. In the vaults of the central tower, frescos depict Christ surrounded by evangelist symbols and angels. The windows of the choir contain stained glass mosaic art, and the choir walls display verses by the Danish bishop and hymn writer Hans Adolph Brorson (1694–1764), after whom the church is named.5 Thus, the architecture of the church draws on the long history of Christianity in Europe and gestures towards local Danish (Protestant) versions. The familiar architectural and (other) aesthetic elements co-create a (church-like) atmosphere in which the participants – or perhaps the Christian participants in particular – can dwell, seamlessly orientate and follow the movement suggestions, suspended as they are between the scale of their own bodies and the scale and upward drift of the building. This drift is noticeable, but gentle – after all, the Gothic stretching towards heaven did not guide the architectural design. Brorson’s Church stands out as solid and earthbound compared to some of the other churches in Nørrebro. However, the interior of Brorson’s Church is multi-layered and entangled with less well-rehearsed sacral and churchy elements than those mentioned above. A modern altarpiece adorned with graffiti and the beginning of the Bible verse: ‘Whoever does not love does not know God …’ in Danish and Arabic has replaced the original.6 The Arabic language (and script) and the graffiti-like style could be seen as distancing the room somewhat from the Christian tradition described above, but they are held in place – or called back – through their attachment to the Bible verse. Elaborating on church atmospheres, Böhme argues that they ‘retain the historical conditioning stemming from liturgical use even when they become profane’ (2017, 179). However, the hybridity of Brorson’s Church is not profane in a strict sense – after all, the church has not been officially

Atmospheric Encounters  225 deconsecrated. But, as Böhme also argues, church atmospheres (in the plural) are no longer sustained through an attachment to a singular authority, and therefore the profane is always snapping at the heels of the numinous. Perhaps the signs on the altarpiece in Brorson’s Church can be understood as an unfixed entanglement of elements: the profane (graffiti) and the otherwise religious and liturgical use (the Bible verse in Arabic and Danish). A similar kind of ‘negotiation’ occurs when yoga is presented as non-religious (profane), but apparently still needs to be counterbalanced with a Christian blessing. The spatiotemporal location of the church is also a knitwork: Brorson’s Church is a religious institution in the contemporary hybrid space of Nørrebro. Immigrants of religious persuasions other than Christian have settled in the area, particularly since the 1970s, and a decline in numbers of church members7 has occasioned the transformation of Brorson’s Church from an ordinary parish church into a Youth Church. Both aspects have made imprints (and continue to do so) on the church. The combination of a prominent activist tradition in the district, the diverse population and the materiality of Brorson’s Church fused together in 2009, when the Church granted church asylum to a group of rejected Iraqi political asylum-seekers on the verge of being deported. After housing the refugees in the crypt for three months, the church was cleared by the police, leading to violent clashes with protesters. The youth-church status appears in the interior design (the graffiti on the altarpiece), in activities such as the weekly church yoga sessions and in the choice of a jazz orchestra instead of the traditional organ during services. Thus, while bodies stretch, ache and relax during the Saturday morning yoga class, they are enveloped in an atmosphere that entangles elements that do not fit seamlessly together. The space is open and yet not open – it is hybrid and inclusive, and yet singularly directive. In the last instance, it is somehow kept in place by the final blessing of the pastor. The participants are mobilized through and enveloped in atmospheres that hover across divides, intermittently called to order, but also intermittently ‘let loose’. It is partly pedagogical: we are in a learning space, a space intentionally organized towards an end. It also evades or exceeds the pedagogical intervention. This both faith-anchored and inclusive pull (or perhaps it was alternating between these poles) framed the subsequent activities that took place in the church room, to which we will return in the next section. The feel of the Imam Ali Mosque was less hybrid. Having walked together from Brorson’s Church, as described in the opening vignette, we arrived in time for prayer at the mosque. Upon arrival, we split into male and female, and we – the women – went with one of the female Muslim organizers to a spacious balcony where the women pray. On this Saturday, around twenty women had turned up for prayers. Those of us who wanted to participate in the prayer borrowed a rope (chador) to cover the hair and body and joined in immediately after arrival.

226  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen While the majority of Muslims in Denmark are Sunni, the Imam Ali Mosque was inaugurated by the Shia community in October 2015.8 With its 2,100 m 2 and space for 1,500 people, it has become a landmark and an architectural highlight for the entire Shia community in the country (Kaas 2015; Kühle and Larsen 2019, 2017, 70, 71). Compared to purpose-built Sunni mosques in Denmark, its visual expression stands out as distinctively Middle Eastern, with turquoise tiles, golden patterns and tall minarets (Kaas 2015; Kühle and Larsen 2017, 71). This prominent building has replaced the former Shia mosque, which had occupied the same site since the millennium, tucked away in an anonymous abandoned factory, like many other mosques in Denmark (Kaas 2015). The area around the mosque in the North-West district of Copenhagen is unpolished and characterized by light industry, shared offices, groceries and low-cost housing, and it has been gentrified to a lesser degree than Nørrebro (Lapina 2017). Although she had visited several mosques and observed Muslim prayers, primarily outside Denmark, this was the first time the researcher (Lise) had participated in a Muslim prayer. Somehow the preceding activities in Brorson’s Church had prepared or tuned the body to the atmosphere of the mosque. Without any pressure or discussion, some course participants quietly joined the prayer, while others did not. It felt like a safe space. The spacious room, the interior decorations in quality materials and the matter-of-fact guidance by the female organizer contributed to an expansive and unpretentious atmosphere that made it possible to tune in, even for a non-Muslim body like the researcher’s. The bodily movements during the prayer felt as though they did not differ much from the bodily movement during yoga. The participants – or at least those who had decided to participate and were not Muslim by persuasion – were tuned in to the prayer, not for religious reasons, but as part of an orientation towards the unfamiliar space of ‘the Others’, an attunement that had somehow been anticipated by the (church) yoga. After prayers, we stayed in the mosque, where we first had lunch with one of the imams and subsequently conducted dialogue exercises in a large room in the cellar. This room was adaptable to the performance of prayers. It had thick carpets and a movable partition, which was used to separate women and men during prayers; there were no chairs. Despite the similarity between the functionality of the room and the balcony, the low ceiling and simple decorations meant that it did not evoke the same expansive uplifting sensation as did the main prayer hall. Thus, the distributions of activities were slightly different in the church and the mosque. In both places, spiritual practices – yoga, Muslim prayers and later the Sunday service – mobilized bodies in very particular ways. In the church, the sanctity was consistently ambiguous, but the atmosphere was never entirely profane. In the mosque, the holy and profane were separated, not only by keeping the main hall for prayer only but also through

Atmospheric Encounters  227 the nature of the exercises performed in the cellar. These diverged from religious issues or identities and instead turned towards values that were framed as universal. As such, the invitation to enter the majority space of the church was characterized by a purposeful use of its hybrid atmosphere, while we were not invited to the same degree to immerse ourselves in the minority space of the mosque as hybrid. The mosque remained the place of ‘the Others’, although it was also a friendly and welcoming space. While it logically makes sense that the majority space carries a greater responsibility towards inclusion, the hybridity or openness of the church space may nevertheless be seen as a prerequisite for the pressure on the participants to find their own place within it, the push towards transcendence.

9.5 Expectations of Transcendence Turning towards the course’s dialogue exercises, these made use of the spaces in which they were performed. In other words, the organizers intentionally inserted exercises into atmospheres, but conversely the exercises also co-created atmospheres – and moods. Interestingly, in Brorson’s Church, there was a clear spatial distribution of course elements: programme items that consisted of teaching authoritatively delivered by an instructor took place in the rather ‘neutral’ and unstimulating communal room in the basement. Exercises that relied on interactions among participants and impressed themselves upon participants as being (or pushing them towards being) authentic believers were located in the church. On Saturday morning, after yoga and breakfast and before the visit to the mosque, the participants returned to the church, where we were introduced to a series of exercises based on the pamphlet The Dialogue Pilot (Støvring et al. 2010). The previous evening, we had been through a few introductory exercises, which we performed in the communal room in the basement. These exercises were designed to rehearse our ability to listen and to initiate mutual trust but did not address faith or religion in any way. For instance, one exercise placed two participants back to back. One described a geometrical figure, while the other drew this figure to the best of her ability. Thus, we were asked to listen carefully to a stranger while sitting physically close to them. The physical proximity invited intimacy and felt slightly uncomfortable. During the Saturday morning exercises, values and faith were key issues, presupposing that a space of intimacy had been established. During the first exercise, we were divided into groups of three. The groups spread out across the hall and sat down on the floor, closing in on themselves in small intimate clusters. On a piece of paper, everyone wrote one question – philosophical, religious or existential – that preoccupied them. The pieces of paper were then placed in a pile with the text downwards. One by one, we drew a question (you were allowed to swap if you picked your own) and had five minutes to answer it, while the second group member listened

228  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen and the third watched the time. We were told not to discuss but to listen without interrupting. These elements, the value-oriented content, the personal investment and the listening, impressed participants to commit themselves personally and sincerely. The organizers asked us not to answer the questions as experts or through dialogue but based on our own experiences and beliefs. This orientation was further strengthened and developed during the following exercises. First, we were asked how we would respond to an invitation from a friend of a different faith to participate in the prayers of her community. There were four possible answers: (a) no thank you; (b) yes, but only as an observer; (c) yes, if I can pray in my own way; or (d) yes, I will participate like everybody else. Depending on our choice of answer, we were instructed to go to one of the four corners of the hall to join those with the same response. The next exercise had the same format, now with the question: You have fallen in love with a person of a different faith than yours. What do you do? The answers were presented as: (a) this will never work out because we are too different; (b) this will work if one of us converts so we both have the same religion; (c) fine, as long as we respect each other’s faith and traditions; and (d) love overcomes all obstacles.9 In both exercises, participants shared the arguments behind their choices with others of the same group, followed by a round where selected people from each group were asked to present their thoughts on their position. Rather than taking dogma as a point of departure, the individual perspective of each participant took centre stage. As we have argued elsewhere, ‘[t]he array of possible right answers was firmly located in the individual and decontextualised participant’ (Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen 2020, 74). According to the organizers, the latter two exercises visualize the reality that people share values across religious divides and that they may not agree with the same people about both questions (Støvring et al. 2010). The suggestions for movement, orientations and space were, however, also ingredients that moulded the affective intensity of the atmosphere, as well as the emotions impressing upon individual participants. Thus, intensity and arousal were in the air when participants sat on the floor or stood together as part of a group in a corner, when they were requested to position themselves not only by speaking but also by moving their bodies. By asking participants to stand physically in one of the corners, they were asked to stand up for and place their bodies in the room in accordance with what they believed in. This bodily investment intensified the feeling of the significance of taking a stance. The researcher felt this as a push towards thinking carefully and as pressure to take a position that was in accordance with herself: an authentic position. In this way the request for authenticity bypassed any claim to absolute truth (authority or the expert position) and asked the participant instead to demonstrate or practise her belief (Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen 2020, 35). In other words, what you say and what you do should coincide. Had you placed yourself in the group where you

Atmospheric Encounters  229 accepted the invitation to prayer, you were envisaged as joining the prayer at the Imam Ali Mosque. Thus, while being part of the collective situation, the atmosphere was also ‘felt as intensely personal’ (Anderson 2009, 80). We have argued elsewhere that authenticity in current interfaith work entails a shift away from authority that is entangled with the development from mission, via contextual theology, towards dialogue and the ensuing translation of bearing witness (Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen 2020, 35). Authenticity as a way of bearing witness becomes a matter of living in accordance with your inner (Christian) self (ibid.). While bearing witness takes many forms in organized interfaith encounters, witnessing itself becomes, in the language of the Christian organizers, a testimony of Jesus Christ (ibid., 36). In this way, ideas of transcendence have not disappeared with authority, nor have they been superseded by a this-worldly pluralism. The participants’ disclosures of their inner selves were implicitly expected to refer to something (transcendent) outside themselves, thereby connecting authenticity with authority. At the same time, the room itself contributed to a specific kind of (transcendent) power/authority. As Böhme argues: Church spaces, after all, belong to institutions that claim authority even over the interpretation of experiences occurring in these spaces or, conversely, attach importance to their design, such that only certain experiences are possible. (2017, 168) The request for physical proximity, bodywork and interaction, along with the participants’ honesty and commitment to their own values, became entangled with the lingering atmosphere of a space defined by authority and universality rather than individual truth. Despite the removal of its furniture, the church was permeated by a different atmosphere than the bland, naked communal room downstairs. As Böhme argues (2017, 172), the blend of architectural forms, sensorial qualities and Christian symbols of the church are still effective in profane use. Even though the church was partly distanced from ritualized practices and symbols, the space was still tuned by an expectation of transcendence, foregrounded by the over-large space that may enforce the feeling of one’s own limits (Böhme 2017, 176). The church co-created an atmosphere of something out of the ordinary. The exercises in this room oriented bodies not only in relation to other bodies, but also towards something outside or above, as well as inside, the participants’ bodies. The request for authenticity – in other words, transcending yourself – was demanding and intense for all the participants. We all had to do the job ourselves as individuals. The exercises encouraged or prompted a collection of monologues created through monological rather than exploratory and dialogical processes.

230  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen

9.6 Moving Together After around three hours of exercises enmeshed in an atmosphere that ‘pressed on’ subjects to take a stance and to be sincere and authentic, we walked from Brorson’s Church to the Imam Ali Mosque, as described in the opening vignette. While it was presented in the programme as a ‘walk and talk’ under the guidance of one of the organizers, we did not receive any instructions. The participants slowly gathered in front of the church, musing, silent or chatting in pairs or small groups. The walk covered two kilometres and took around half an hour. Through the walk, a ‘line’ (Lee and Ingold 2006, 76) was established ‘between [emphasis in the original] the church and the mosque, and the terrain in between becomes spatially and temporally attached to this line. In this way, the moving group is a place-making “unit”’ (Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen 2020, 159). However, it was also a ‘unit’ enveloped in an entirely different atmosphere compared to the church. Instead of being weighed down beneath (or raised up towards) the vaults, walls and religious symbols, the bodies were now in the streets of Nørrebro. The unpretentious and varied everyday life of the streets of superdiverse Nørrebro mingled with the walkers and established a relaxed and loose atmosphere. Although some of the participants were unfamiliar with the district, the everyday space of Nørrebro, with its bicycle paths, pavements, traffic lights, shops and cafés, gave clear indications of how to move. The load of the church building and the pull towards transcending yourself were lifted from the shoulders of the participants. At the start of the walk, the researcher (Lise) was approached by a young woman who wanted to ask about what she had just revealed during the last exercise in the church. In the exercise on interreligious marriage discussed above, one participant had uncompromisingly argued that such marriages could never be possible. Because this was presented as a fact, rather than as a personal stance, the researcher, who as a Christian had been married to a Muslim for more than 20 years, felt obliged to challenge this position by revealing her own story. The young woman, who had a Turkish-Danish background and was a Muslim, wanted to know more about this marriage, not from a legal or religious point of view, but as a personal account. She was clearly testing or mirroring her own opportunities for partnership across religious divides in the researcher’s personal story. Whereas the exercises in the church had invited participants to identify with clear positions, the walk and talk initiated a more reflexive and exploratory dialogue. This was enveloped in moving together. According to Lee and Ingold, walking together is ‘to walk with – where “with” implies not a face-to-face confrontation, but heading the same way, sharing the same vistas, and perhaps retreating from the same threats behind’ (2006, 67). As we have argued elsewhere, walking together in this way marks a move away from face-toface encounters – as when participants in the corner games confronted each other from each corner – to an appearance in terms of bodily proximity, a

Atmospheric Encounters  231 side-by-side or next-to encounter (Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen 2020, 157). This means that walking together has a potential, which may or may not ‘be fulfilled’. It can become a way of sharing the same rhythm, which creates a particular proximity, blurring ‘the boundaries between the bodies of the walkers (and between these and the environment)’ (ibid.). In this way, the walk may become transpersonal rather than interpersonal, as it is set in motion through a transcorporeal flow of affect massaged forward by walking (Springgay and Truman 2017). As the researcher and the young woman walked side by side, the conversation developed without any expectations of a clear conclusion. Instead, they shared what we could call a collaborative investigation of topics of mutual interest. As Jon Anderson argues, talking whilst walking does not produce ‘a conventional interrogative encounter, but a collage of collaboration’ (Anderson 2004, 258). Maybe the collaborative aspect of this encounter explains why the researcher (Lise) remembers her partner and this conversation better than the interrogative encounters during the exercises. Another situation that left a similar impression on the researcher was the conversation she had over Sunday lunch in the communal room of Brorson’s Church. Even though this lunch consisted of eating while sitting around a table, it reached out towards movement. Without any instructions, the lunch was another break before the final evaluation and farewells. On the verge of going our separate ways to continue with our daily lives, the researcher’s conversation with two of the participants moved around the emotions, reflections and beliefs that had contributed to the atmosphere of the course. Rather than individually witnessing, we together – as a collective – had examined potential interpretations and routes to follow. There was no pressure, and the atmosphere of the communal room did not communicate expectations of transcendence. In the context of the exercises in the church, ‘the Other’ became a kind of distant figure in which to mirror ourselves. When walking and eating lunch, the bodily proximity and rhythm transformed ‘the Other’ into someone with whom to converse and collaborate while simultaneously creating ‘the Other’ as multifaceted, rather than as a clear-cut figure identified by its place in a corner.

9.7 Conclusion In the context of interfaith dialogue as an intervention strategy, organizers and researchers alike have mostly been preoccupied with communication techniques as the privileged medium for change. In this chapter, we have adopted a different perspective and instead made the atmospheres in which interfaith activities are embedded our priority for observation and analysis. Drawing on the work of Ben Anderson, Sara Ahmed and Gernot Böhme, we have conceptualized atmospheres as ephemeral, yet tangible, in the sense that they work as ‘unfinished lures to feeling a situation, site, person or thing in a particular way’ (Anderson 2014, 156). Atmospheres both

232  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen emanate from ensembles of spaces/environments and objects and exceed them. They are sensed by subjects as bodily incentives towards feeling, movement, etc., and they are intervened in (heightened, lowered, condensed, diffused) by the organizers. Hence, the participants in the interfaith course we have analysed in this chapter are enveloped in atmospheres that both cling to specific localities and are shaped by organizers and participants as they perform ritual practices, do exercises and – occasionally – relax. Drawing together the analysis, we suggest that the lingering Christian church atmosphere in the hall of Brorson’s Church provides a kind of key tonality. Thus, we have argued that the church exerts a gentle upward pull, which during yoga is accompanied by a pull in the horizontal direction. The slow and rhythmic movements, the instructor’s subdued voice and the candlelit vaults high above enveloped and lifted the bodies of participants, while also attuning them to the bodies next to them. Yoga, which was introduced as a universal spiritual practice, was one of several elements that contributed to the heterogeneity of Brorson’s Church. Thus, the atmosphere(s) were simultaneously hybrid and inclusive, while also held in place by both counterbalancing measures like the Christian blessing after the yoga and the building’s upward pull towards transcendence. During yoga, the vertical dimension of the building was overlaid by an invitation to look inwards, while sensing the other alongside. In the mosque, the upward orientation towards God was clear rather than lingering, but the space felt safe and in that sense inclusive for Christian participants like the researcher. The yoga exercises had the effect – whether intentionally on the part of the organizers or not – of tuning non-Muslims into prayer as part of an orientation towards the unfamiliar space of ‘the Others’. After breakfast, the horizontal pull towards proximate bodies sharing orientations and movements of the morning yoga was replaced by a push towards being authentic believers. The exercises did not strive towards truth in a universal sense, nor towards compromise for that matter. Rather, they demanded intense individual bodily investment and authentic positioning based on inner dialogue. Changing relations of sameness and difference became defined by shared opinions across differences in religious belonging. ‘The Other’ as a figure became someone to agree or disagree with, while the actual persons embodying ‘the Other’ continually shifted. However, the upward drift of the church atmosphere raised the stakes of authenticity: thus the authentic self was expected to refer to something above or outside itself. Hence, we may say that individual authenticity becomes drawn towards and stuck to authority and transcendence, and in that move the orientation towards ‘the Other’ as proximate or as alongside you is replaced by an orientation that starts from the inner self and moves vertically towards transcendence. In contrast to both the bodily (ritual) practices and the exercises, the breaks during the course offered a relaxed atmosphere in fluctuating (but consistently profane) and more open-ended spaces than the church or mosque. This,

Atmospheric Encounters  233 it seemed, invited a collaborative dialogue in tune with an idealized notion of dialogue. During these breaks, ‘the Other’ became a partner – a team-mate. We began this chapter with a question: How do atmospheres tune encounters, and what embodied attunements emerge among the participants? Besides attempting to answer this question, we believe that, in posing it, and in consequently bracketing ‘dialogue’, we also relativize the importance of the communicative aspects of interaction when it comes to what happens during interfaith encounters.

Notes 1 The collaborative research project, ‘The Organised Cultural Encounter’, ran from September 2013 to December 2017 and was funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark with funding ID DFF-1319-00093. 2 Lise’s dual role as researcher and participant was agreed with the organizers. When all the participants introduced themselves at the beginning of the course, Lise also explained her interest as both a researcher and participant. 3 Personal interview with organizer by Lise Galal, September 2017. 4 Personal interview with organizer by Lise Galal, September 2017. 5 http://www.nordenskirker.dk/Tidligere/Brorsons_kirke/Brorson_kirke.htm [date of last access: 12.03.2021]. 6 John 4:8 (Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love). 7 The Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark, also called Folkekirken, organizes the majority of Danes religiously with 74.3% of the population being members as of 1 January 2020, compared to 89.3% in 1990. In the Diocese of Copenhagen, the decline is even more significant, with only 56.4% being members as of 1 January 2020, compared to 80.3% in 1990. The decrease is due to a combination of people leaving the church, not being baptized as children and therefore not becoming members, and a growing number of residents with other religious belongings, primarily due to immigration. All three aspects are greater in the capital area than in other cities and regions. See Kirkeministeriet, http://www.km.dk/folkekirken/kirkestatistik/folkekirkens-medlemstal/ [date of last access: 25.03.2021]. 8 Lene Kühle and Malik Larsen (2017, 68) estimated that the number of Muslims in Denmark in 2017 was 300,000 plus/minus 15,000. 9 These two exercises are described in the dialogue pilot handbook (Støvring et al. 2010, 40–42) as well as by Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen (2020, 73).

References Agrawal, Sandeep, and Caitlin Barratt. 2014. “Does Proximity Matter in Promoting Interfaith Dialogue?” Journal of International Migration and Integration 15 (3): 567–587. Ahmed, Sara. 2014. “Not in the Mood.” New Formations: A Journal of Culture/ Theory/Politics 82 (1): 13–28. Atkinson, Paul, and M. Hammersley. 1998. “Ethnography and Participant ­Observation.” In Handbook of Qualitative Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, 248–261. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Anderson, Ben. 2009. “Affective Atmospheres.” Emotion, Space and Society 2 (2): 77–81.

234  Lise Paulsen Galal and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen Anderson, Ben. 2014. Encountering Affect: Capacities, Apparatuses, Conditions. Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate. Anderson, Jon. 2004. “Talking Whilst Walking: A Geographical Archaeology of Knowledge.” Area 36 (3): 254–261. Böhme, Gernot. 2017. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces. Edited by Tina Engels-Schwarzpaul. London: Bloomsbury. ‘Dialogue Toolbox’. n.d. Danmission. Accessed 5 September 2019. https:// dialoguetoolbox.com/about-dialogue-in-danmission/. Galal, Lise Paulsen. 2014. “Interculturality in Ethnographic Practice: Noisy Silences.” In Researching Identity and Interculturality, 157–174. London: Routledge. Galal, Lise Paulsen. 2019. “Making Space for Faith: Interfaith Initiatives in ­Denmark.” In The Interfaith Movement: Mobilising Religious Diversity in the 21st Century, edited by John Fahy and Jan-Jonathan Bock. Social Movements in the 21st Century: New Paradigms. London: Routledge. Galal, Lise Paulsen, and Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen. 2020. Organised Cultural Encounters: Practices of Transformation. Global Diversities. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG. Johanson, Todd. 2016. “Pluralistic Inclusivism and Christian-Muslim Dialogue: The Challenge of Moving beyond Polite Discussion toward Reconciliation and Peace.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 51 (1): 31–53. Kaas, Susanne. 2015. “Turkis Kupler i Fuglekvarteret.” Magasinet KBH, 27 November 2015. https://www.magasinetkbh.dk/indhold/imam-ali-moske-vibevej. Keaten, James A, and Charles Soukup. 2009. “Dialogue and Religious Otherness: Toward a Model of Pluralistic Interfaith Dialogue.” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 2 (2): 168–187. Kühle, Lene, and Malik Larsen. 2019. Danmarks Moskeer. Mangfoldighed Og Samspil. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Kühle, Lene, and Malik Christian Reimer Larsen. 2017. Moskéer i Danmark II: En Ny Kortlægning Af Danske Moskéer Og Muslimske Bedesteder. Aarhus: Aarhus University Library Scholarly Publishing Services. Lapina, Linda. 2017. Making Senses of Nordvest: Tracing the Spaces, Bodies and Affects of a Gentrifying Neighborhood in Copenhagen. PhD thesis, Roskilde: Roskilde University. Lee, Jo, and Tim Ingold. 2006. “Fieldwork on Foot: Perceiving, Routing, Socializing.” In Locating the Field: Space, Place and Context in Anthropology, edited by Simon Coleman and Peter Collins, 67–85. London: Bloomsbury. Schmidt, Garbi. 2015. Nørrebros Indvandringshistorie 1885–2010 [The History of Immigration to Nørrebro 1885–2010]. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Springgay, Stephanie, and Sarah E Truman. 2017. “A Transmaterial Approach to Walking Methodologies: Embodiment, Affect, and a Sonic Art Performance.” Body & Society 23 (4): 27–58. Støvring, Charlotte, Anni Louise Albæk, Stina Lyngby, Pernille Aagaard, Christina Kleis, Louise Buch Viftrup, and Louise Bjerg Pedersen. 2010. Dialogpiloten - En Håndbog i Dialog [The Dialogue Pilot - a Handbook of Dialogue]. Aarhus: IKON-Danmark. Wilson, Helen F. 2013. “Learning to Think Differently: Diversity Training and the ‘Good Encounter’.” Geoforum 45: 73–82. Wolf, Alain. 2012. “Intercultural Identity and Inter-Religious Dialogue: A Holy Place to Be?” Language and Intercultural Communication 12 (1): 37–55.

Afterword Laura Haddad, Jan Winkler, Julia Martínez-Ariño and Giulia Mezzetti

An Afterword This volume has examined the complexity of interreligious encounters by means of a variety of empirical case studies in Europe. By proposing a threefold conceptual lens and providing both rich empirical descriptions and thorough analytical reflections, the book has shed light on the various accounts in which the interreligious takes place and shapes social encounters, whether as an intentional aim or as a by-product of other governance strategies. In our introduction, we identified three analytical lenses that enable systematic examination of interreligious encounters: those of materialities, spatialities and practices. While not all the contributions in this book explicitly draw on the theories presented in the introduction, and while the authors each use the proposed analytical categories in a unique and flexible way, taken together the contributions illustrate the fruitfulness and productivity of the analytical categories of spatialities, materialities and practices with regard to the analysis of empirical data. The contributions illustrate the potential for a stronger integration of practice-theoretical accounts and theories of materiality (theoretical perspectives that both lead to new considerations of space as well) into the studies of interreligious dialogues and encounters. From our perspective, this novel integration should continue to be advanced in the future. We often found all three dimensions being simultaneously represented in the contributions to the volume, which indicates the multi-dimensionality of the cases studied in each of the chapters, as well as some of the limitations of analytical categories. We kept the structure nevertheless, since our focusing on these three dimensions—space, materiality and practice—made visible how new forms of the social emerge from interreligious initiatives, even under unjust and unbalanced power relations (or maybe exactly because of them). As an Afterword to this volume, we will point out our two main findings in this collection, which are reflected, explicitly or implicitly, in most of the contributions: the productivity of interreligious encounters, and the effectiveness of the power inequalities that linger on in interreligious encounters. We will close by outlining some new questions that the work of this volume opens out for future inquiry.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228448-14

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236  Laura Haddad et al.

The Productivity of Interreligious Encounters Interreligious encounters are not just a product of social interactions: they are themselves socially productive. They generate new realities, subjectivities, spaces, materialities and practices, as well as reproduce existing ones. In general, these types of encounters create new social realities that may contribute to the goals set out intentionally for those encounters, such as enhancing conviviality and social cohesion. However, they can also generate contradictory realities, such as reinforcing inequalities and reifying religious differences. Several chapters in the book have pointed out the unintended consequences of both planned and unplanned encounters. The unexpectedness of this is what makes such encounters interesting study objects with rich analytical potential. Their analysis highlights the fact that although encounters may produce the intended outcomes, they may also generate unintended outcomes or no concrete outcome at all. The chapters in this volume display the productivity of interreligious encounters. In other words, they demonstrate that these interactions do not simply bring together people from different religious backgrounds to discuss their faiths. Rather, interreligious encounters generate new realities, projects, networks, identities, etc. As the study by Prideaux and Mortimer shows, new connections between religious actors may result from policies to fund the social action of a variety of religious groups. Interestingly, then, interreligious encounters may be the non-intentional outcome of specific policies that are not intended to generate interreligious encounters specifically. These new connections may generate new forms of interaction, or they may fade away as the funding schemes that facilitated them disappear. It is important to not romanticize these encounters because they may well just be a temporary outcome of a funding scheme without any further consequence in terms of furthering coexistence between people of different faiths. As Nagel shows in this volume, interreligious art produces not only new aesthetics in the religious field, it also inscribes itself into the urban fabric, thereby transforming the public space beyond the framing of interreligious encounters. Similarly, Otterbeck’s contribution provides an understanding of how the art of a distinguished and popular photographer produces what Otterbeck calls ‘dialogic art’. This art communicates a specific Muslim aesthetic to the wider multireligious public, thereby creating new images of Muslims and their faith(s) all over the world. In a very different account, in her chapter Djolai introduces us to societal negotiations that have been coined by a new order in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. She shows how the (inter)religious dimension is related to and mutually shapes the conception and realization of town planning, especially in a multi-religious context like Bosnia and Herzegovina. The case studies in this book illustrate the great variety of social productivity generated by interreligious encounters, as well as emphasize the

Afterword  237 unexpectedness of such encounters. Whether interreligious encounters are planned or not, and whether they take the shape of an architectural project, a collective meditation, an artistic installation or a local partnership, they all generate effects that were not envisaged from the outset. Therefore, the study of the interreligious should be opened to capturing not only the effects outlined in the plans for such interreligious encounters and dialogues, but also to the myriad and sometimes unimaginable consequences they may have.

Power and Inequalities in Interreligious Encounters In contrast to other publications on the topic that interpret interreligious dialogues primarily as a social phenomenon and as a way to overcome differences and to generate mutual understanding, we illuminate the different dimensions of power, inclusion and exclusion, as well as societal participation, that are realized or manifested through interreligious encounters. In this regard, we followed the approach of Marianne Moyaert, who takes into account an intersectional perspective in her volume on Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries. While her edited volume does not elaborate further on the dynamics of power, we did find this motive to be crucial to several of our contributions. Through the analyses in the chapters of this book, we observe how the power dynamics between different actors are played out in interreligious encounters and in their effects. The example discussed by Burchard and Haening shows that the social position of different religious groups within local religious and urban hierarchies affects their engagement with interreligious encounters and projects, as well as their assessment of the potential of those projects to transform social reality. In this sense, interreligious encounters may reproduce existing hierarchies in the project or encounter itself, as well as more broadly in society, rather than generating more equal realities. Similarly, Emmerich’s chapter shows how partnerships between religious and non-religious actors may produce certain alliances which can lead to positive outcomes, such as the protective function that an interreligious network can have for a mosque community, which is more frequently under the spotlight. At the same time, however, this reinforces the inequalities of power between religious and social groups and goes hand in hand with patronage relations. Moreover, his work also shows how what Emmerich calls postsecular governance networks may also create the figure of the ‘professional (inter-)religious representative’, which creates a sort of para-governance that is not submitted to democratic scrutiny and which also erases the internal diversities of religious groups. All these processes, then, have an impact on the distribution of power, sometimes balancing it out, sometimes making it even more unequal. Interestingly, these inequalities not only take shape in interpersonal encounters. In their study of the materiality of the production and

238  Laura Haddad et al. circulation of a digital poster/image for the celebration of the Day of Islam in the Catholic Church of Poland, Motak and Krotofil show how the poster represents inequalities in and through its visuality. The way the poster represents Islam and Catholicism was contested because for some it reverted the balance of power between these two groups. Shifting power relations are also at work in the representations of Muslims in the exhibition analysed by Winkler, which was contested by some Muslim representatives because it attributed more power to certain conceptions of Islam that they conceived as not sufficiently religiously normative. In other words, images and material objects may contribute to depicting and reproducing certain social and religious hierarchies through their representation of interreligious dialogue and encounter. At the same time, however, such encounters and projects may open up spaces for the contestation and negotiation of such hierarchies. This point is also reflected in those chapters that analyse the simultaneity of inclusion and exclusion, and the strengthening and the dissolving of differences, within the practices of interreligious encounters and dialogues. The chapter by Galal and Hvenegård-Lassen, for example, shows how specific modes of behaviour and self-relationship are constantly produced and transformed within the atmospheric and bodily practices of interreligious encounters. These modes of behaviour and self-relationship can generate sociality, but they also go along with the establishment of certain normative ways of ‘doing dialogue’ and of being dialogical while potentially excluding other modalities. The contribution by Jan Winkler illustrates how both differentiating power technologies that materialize difference and binding technologies that aim at producing desired subjectivities and impulses for a cross-differential ‘coming together’ are dispersed within the materiality of local interreligious practices.

Looking Ahead As we indicated in the introduction, this book contributes to the further theoretical and conceptual elaboration of interreligious dialogue and encounters. Our approach differs slightly from those which try to reduce interreligious dialogue to a single analytical category (a social movement, a policy paradigm, etc.). Instead, in using our three-fold approach based on the concepts of space, materiality and practice, we have offered a different lens through which to study these three dimensions, which are involved in the dynamics of such encounters. For future research, and particularly in connection with the conceptual perspectives proposed in this book, a whole series of questions arise that need to be addressed. On the one hand, reference should be made to the argument of the Introduction: against the background of a distinctive diversification of interreligious relations, encounters and dialogues, flexible categories have to be developed in order to do justice to this ‘diversity of dialogues’. However, beyond this, further specific questions arise.

Afterword  239 Frequently, encounters are celebrated in academic as well as in social and political debates as emancipatory events that will strengthen the community and overcome differences. At the same time, dialogue is cultivated and imagined as a power-free and symmetrical form of communication that will primarily reduce conflict and promote social cohesion. Without negating these real and important potentials of encounters and dialogues, we would like to problematize these perspectives. Encounters can generate hopeful new perspectives and cross-differential bonds, but they can also create conflicts and reproduce or even reinforce sedimented relations of difference and identity. Encounters reflect an interplay of tendencies to come together and tendencies to draw boundaries. An analytical focus on the concrete spaces, materialities and practices in and through which encounters are mediated can and should make this interplay visible in the context of future research. Similar reflections are also relevant with regard to the format or rationality of dialogue. Dialogue connotes an absence of power and appears primarily as a path towards mutual understanding. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that any practices and politics of dialogue take place within social power relations and, moreover, can themselves operate as interventions or as normative technologies of power. Precisely because these dimensions of dialogue are often barely represented at the programmatic level, the power effects of dialogue-related practices and politics can easily be obscured. Consequently, the power effects, as well as the often intertwined processes of inclusion and exclusion within dialogue-related practices and politics, often unfold in rather implicit and subtle ways. The focus on the sites, materialities and practices of interreligious dialogues and encounters proposed in this book thus offers future research perspectives for elaborating precisely on these subtle relations of power. Moreover, hegemonic notions of dialogue and mutual understanding through dialogue tend to reproduce the idea that understanding is primarily an effect of intellectual processes and a language-mediated exchange of opinions and views. This is undeniable, but we would like to point out that mutual understanding is always also mediated by practices, embodied experiences, emotions and feelings. The extent to which mutual understanding is or is not achieved, and what forms of understanding may be thinkable and may be made manifest at all, all depend on the concrete, situated and corporeal practices of interreligious dialogues and encounters, as well as on the spatial and material configurations of dialogue. Further research will need to take more account of this more-than-representational dimension of the practices and politics of interreligious encounters and dialogues in order to understand the complex and conflictual dynamics of interreligious dialogues. Finally, it should be noted that, in the context of processes of societal pluralization and diversification (like the effects of globalization, global migration, new forms of communication and various cultural transformations), many established identity patterns are being challenged. Future practices

240  Laura Haddad et al. and politics of interreligious dialogues need to recognize the existence of complex, hybrid and multi-layered identities as well as develop intersectional sensibilities. The grounding of dialogues in fixed identity categories as the basis for a communicative reaching out towards the ‘other’ needs to be continuously reflected on and questioned. The contributions in this book and the conceptual perspectives the book offers encourage future research not to adopt the identity-political presuppositions and sedimentations of interreligious dialogues, but to engage in an ongoing exploration of new perspectives and concepts enabling us to understand the complex negotiations involved over issues of identity and belonging. The aim is to make visible the fault lines, transformations and contradictions of interreligious dialogues and encounters and to analyse them with regard to their effects in local contexts. In sum, this book has opened up perspectives on the situated practice of interreligious encounters that go beyond the programmatic level, whereby a deeper understanding of this practice is necessary to be able to develop hopeful visions for the dialogue-oriented politics of the future.

Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. ‘Abrahamic’ religions 27, 30, 34, 38 ‘aesthetics of religion’ approach 120 affect 10, 12, 148–150, 161, 163, 166, 169–171, 231, 237 affective relations 10, 148, 150, 168, 170, 171 Ahmed, S. 149, 220, 221 Alevis 76, 86, 102, 106, 109, 111–114 Alevism 102, 106, 109–114 Ali, Muhammad 186 Alternative for Germany (AfD) 84 Anderson, B. 51, 149, 220 ‘Angel of Culture’ 26, 27, 38, 40; configuration and religious emissions 33–36, 34; interaction and infrastructuration 36–37 ‘Annual Meeting on Interreligious Dialogue’ 4 antemurales christianitatis 120 Archdiocese of Krakow 135–136 architecture 62, 98, 104, 114, 115; see also House of One art: as dialogue 190–192; in dialogue 178; interreligious 10, 23, 25, 26, 37, 39, 236; of light 185–187; photographic 178, 187, 190, 191 The Art of Integration 187, 190 Asha 204, 206 assemblages 10–12, 147–148 atmospheres: authenticity, interfaith work 227–229; dialogue training course 222; interfaith dialogue 219–221; manipulation of objects and spaces 222–223, 231–232; place-making “unit” 230; spirit and the body 223–227; transcendence

227–229; values and faith 227–229; ‘walk and talk’ programme 230–231 authenticity 228–229 Barthes, Roland 178 Beckford, J. A. 197, 214 Berlin: Alevism in 102, 106, 109–114; architectural intervention in 12; Christian beginnings of 99; House of One in 6–7, 98–101, 103; interreligious life in 107, 108; multi-religious building 6–7, 12, 15, 103, 105, 115; Protestant Christians 101; religious diversity in 111; Sunni Islam 101–102; urban space of 105 ‘Big Society’ 199–200 binding forces 161–163, 166 Blake, William 187 bodies 1, 10, 11, 73, 120, 148–149, 167, 220, 223 bodily encounters 10, 13 bodily movements 226, 232 Bohme, Gernot 220–221, 229 Boissevain, Jeremy 75, 81, 88, 89n6 bonds of affinity 164 Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) 8; community in 47–52, 65; consociational political system 46; ethnic and religious identities in 44, 45, 50–51, 53, 66; geographical region of 44, 51; ‘Global Exchange on Religion in Society’ 46; interfaith dialogue in 43–46, 52–56, 55, 64–66; interreligious dialogue 56–57; Kotor Varoš 44–47, 51, 52, 54, 55, 58,

242 Index 62–64, 64; Stolac 44–47, 51–52, 54–58, 58, 59–62, 61–62 Bourdieu, Pierre 13 Brexit vote, 2016 195 Brorson’s Church 218, 219, 224–225, 232 brotherhood 125 Brubaker, Rogers 50 Buffalo Creek catastrophe 45 Building Blocks 205, 207 Cameron, David 199 Cantle, Ted 51 Catholicism: Kraków 126–127, 136–140; Poland 129–131 CDU see Christian Democratic (CDU) Christian Aid and Islamic Relief 194 Christian Democratic (CDU) 81, 84 Christianity 28, 33, 34, 38, 105, 111, 125, 129, 224 Church of England 198 church yoga 223–225, 232 coexistence 3, 12, 44, 45, 52, 56, 57, 65, 66, 97, 101, 110, 114, 138, 161, 236 community(ies) 65, 82, 107, 112, 197, 198–202, 204, 209–214; Alevi 31, 102, 106, 110; in BiH context 47–52, 54, 65; Christian 83, 166, 204, 208, 211; faith 82, 107, 112, 197, 198–202, 204, 209–214; mosque 30, 32, 33, 78, 79, 83, 85, 147, 151, 152, 159, 160, 163–165, 170, 237; Muslims 28, 78, 84, 89n10, 97, 127, 133, 146, 147, 152, 159, 161, 163–170, 195, 201, 204–206, 211; sociological thinking on 48; sociology of 65; Turkish 77, 89n8; see also local communities; post-war community; religious communities community cohesion 51, 198, 206, 213 ‘Community First’ 211 Copenhagen 8 COVID-19 pandemic 202 creative interreligious dialogue 178, 190, 192 ‘Cultural Capitals of Europe’ 35, 37, 39 Dalai Lama 180, 188 DAP see Dayton Peace Agreement (DAP) Day of Islam 11, 12, 15, 122, 124, 130, 140, 141 Dayton Peace Agreement (DAP) 52, 54

Deleuze, G. 10, 147 dialogic art 178, 236; see also Sanders, Peter dialogue: affective machines 146–171; dialogue paradigm 1–3, 8, 16, 86, 88n1, 98, 100; Kraków 134–135 Dignitet 56–57 Dinham, A. 197 DITIB (Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs) mosque 76, 77, 80, 83–86, 89n8 diversity 139; religious 72, 74, 111, 115, 127, 140, 203 Durkheim, Émile 48 emotion 2, 3, 14, 108, 115, 120, 128, 148, 149, 153, 162, 163, 167, 177, 178, 188, 191, 228, 231, 239 encounters 1–4; see also interreligious encounters entanglements of difference 150–151 Erikson, Kai 45, 47 ethnic and religious identities 44, 45, 50–51, 53, 66 EU Referendum 201 Europe: Christianity in 224; Hindu community in 27; interreligious dialogue in 4, 5, 100; Islam in 73, 163, 179, 188; political secularism of 73 European Commission 62–63 Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Denmark 233n7 experience: bodily 220, 221; dialogue community 166, 167, 170, 171, 177, 178; of discrimination 106, 109; embodied 11, 120, 121, 239; emotions and 162, 163; of ethnopolitical violence 43; interactions 148–150; of 9/11 terror attacks 34; of polarization 213; positive 166, 167; religious 11, 25, 28, 38, 76, 120, 121, 139; spiritual 182, 187–189, 191; urban integration 27, 35–36; of war 45, 54–56, 59 ‘Face to Face and Side by Side’ report 198–199 faith actors 73 Faith Based Regeneration Network (FbRN) 198 Faith Communities Capacity Building Fund 198, 200, 210

Index  243 faith community(ies) 82, 107, 112, 197, 198–202, 204, 209–214 Faith Together in Leeds 11 203–208, 214 Federal Research Institute for Rural Areas 75–76 Federation of BiH 53, 54 Forum for Intercultural Dialogue 101–102, 107 ‘Gates of World Religions’ 8, 26–27, 38, 40; configuration and religious emissions 28–31, 29; interaction and infrastructuration 31–33 Gemeinschaft 48 gender stereotypes 166 ‘generalised other’ 121 geographical communities 44, 47, 49 German Islam Conference 73, 80 Germany: Alevism in 102; case study and methods 75–77; cultural significance in 105–106; federal structure 73; interreligious dialogue 23; mosque communities in 79; Muslims in 112; national policy framework 78; Protestant Church in 112; religious diversity in 76; rural networks and brokers 74–75 Gesellschaft 48 governance 1, 5, 14, 24, 26, 218; intensifying network relations 82–85; mosque segregation 86–87; religious diversity 26, 28, 33, 37, 39, 73, 74, 76, 87, 88, 100; secular–religious competition 85–86 governmentality 14, 163, 196, 198 government policy 196–203 Griera, M. 5, 196 groupism, definition of 50 Guattari, F. 10, 147 Gülen, Fethullah 98 Gülen movement 106–107 al-Habib, Muhammad ibn 179, 183, 184, 186 Hamm: demographic overview of 27; infrastructuring religion 24–25; interreligious activism in 28; interreligious place-making 23–27, 37; municipal integration concept 27; post-secular administrative culture 28; see also interreligious place-making

haptic stimuli 30, 36, 38 Healthy Living Centres 214n3 House of One 6–7, 12, 15, 97–100, 99, 109; aesthetic and political prominence of 102; as interreligious building project 103; interreligious dialogues 100–101, 113; materiality of 112–113; Protestant Church in 112; to raise interreligious dialogues 112; religious diversity 111, 115; symbolic power 15, 110–111, 114; visibility of 103–107 iftar 78, 86, 87, 160 Illman, Ruth 177–178, 190, 191 Imam Ali Mosque 218, 219, 225–226 inequalities 4, 8, 115, 235–238 infrastructuration 25; ‘Angel of Culture’ 36–37; ‘Gates of World Religions’ 31–33; interaction and 31–33 Ingold, T. 230 Inner Cities Religious Council (ICRC) 198 institutionalised dialogue 44, 66 Integrated Communities Strategy Paper 201–202 integration 28, 72, 85, 146, 152, 187, 188, 201, 235; of immigrants 1, 4; of migrants 71, 89n4; migration and 76; municipal integration concept 27; policy 85, 86–87, 89n5, 160, 163, 164, 195; social 48, 100, 152; through multi-ethnic models 50, 52; urban 27, 28 interaction(s) 24, 25, 37, 39; ‘Angel of Culture’ 36–37; ‘Gates of World Religions’ 31–33; interfaith dialogue 57–59 interfaith activities 24, 78, 98, 140, 199, 200, 210, 231 Interfaith Council 209 interfaith dialogue 43–44, 122, 129, 133, 135, 213; atmospheres 219–221; between Catholicism and Islam 119; Catholicism and Islam, Poland 119–141; Copenhagen neighbourhood 218; demotic practice 208; government policy 196–203; interactions 57–59; intervention strategy 231; materiality 218; multifaith social action 194–214; organized cultural encounter 219; Poland 133; spatial segregation

244 Index 57–59; see also Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) interfaith events 210 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) 63 interreligious art 10, 23, 25, 26, 37, 39, 236 Interreligious Council (IRC) 44, 52, 53, 56, 66, 67n13 interreligious dialogues 1–5, 23–24, 54, 56–57, 100–101, 146, 172; as divergent problem 107–111; feelings of “community” 151; generate representational claims 111; materiality of 147–151, 171; multiplicity of articulations of 1; as policy paradigm 5, 6; post-secular governance networks 73; Protestant mainline church 78; scholarly perspectives on 5–7; as social movement 5–7; spatial approach to 23–26, 38; and suživot 56–57; symbolisms of peace 112–113; visibility 104–107 interreligious encounters 147–148; diversification and complexification of 4–5, 7; House of One 102, 104, 108–110, 114; materialities 10–12; practices 12–16; spatialities 8–10; three-fold approach 7–8, 238 interreligious engagement 6, 57 interreligious place-making 7, 23–26, 37; aesthetic formation 25, 30, 35, 37, 38; ‘Angel of Culture’ 26, 27, 33–37, 34; ‘Gates of World Religions’ 26–33, 29; infrastructuration 25, 31–33, 36–37, 39; interaction 24, 25, 31–33, 36–37, 39; religious emissions 25, 28–31, 29, 33–36, 34, 38; spatial configurations 23–26, 38; see also religious emissions interreligious practice 6, 11, 14–16, 24, 40, 150, 238 interreligious relations 6, 7, 16, 80, 86, 97, 101, 102, 113, 238 interreligious spaces 24, 25, 39 In the Shade of the Tree (Sanders) 180, 189 IRC see Interreligious Council (IRC) Islam 1, 14, 105, 107, 125, 132; architecture 32, 119; fight against terrorism 100; institutionalization of 73, 78; interreligious dialogue in 12; Poland 131–134; political 89n8; post-secular governance networks

73; problematizations of 16; refugee crisis 89n11; signs and symbols 184, 185; Sufism 179; Sunni 85, 101–102, 106, 107, 109, 226; symbolic references 33; see also Day of Islam Jabal al-Nur (the mountain of light) 184, 189 Judaism 30, 33, 38, 105–106, 111 Kalender, Mehmet 24, 25, 80, 81, 83–84 Knott, Kim 9, 25, 29, 38 Kotor Varoš 44–47, 51, 52, 54, 55, 58, 62–64, 64 Krakow Archdiocese 119, 124–125 Kurds 86, 89n8 Law on the Freedom of Religion 53 leadership roles 206, 207 Lefebvre, Henry 45 Legal Status of Churches and Religious Communities 53 lighthouse project 102, 103, 107 local communities 30, 45, 54, 55, 64–66, 75, 194, 197, 199, 201, 202, 204, 206–208, 213, 214 local connectivity 195 local context 1–3, 8, 9, 11, 72, 240 local media rapport 80–81 ‘local turn’ 74 London bombings, 2005 195 Lower Saxony 75–77, 80, 84 Lowndes, V. 197 materialism 128–129 materiality/materialities 7, 9, 10, 12, 136–140, 147–151, 171, 223; of House of One 112–114 material religion approach 11, 25, 30, 120 Mead, George Herbert 121 meaning-making processes 98, 114, 178 Meyer, Birgit 11, 25, 38 Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) 201–202 mjesto susreta 45, 47, 49, 56, 64, 65 mosque communities 30, 32, 33, 78, 79, 83, 85, 147, 151, 152, 159, 160, 163–165, 170, 237 mosque segregation 86–87 multifaith chaplaincy 28 multifaith migrant societies 72

Index  245 multifaith social action 200–201, 213; COVID-19 pandemic 202, 212; faith-based organizations 194; Faith Together in Leeds 11 203–208; government policy 196–203; interfaith dialogue 194–214 multifaith spaces 24, 100–101 multi-level governance 75, 78 multireligious spaces 100, 101, 112 municipal integration concept 27 Muslim communities 195; counteridentity 171; Denmark 226; Faith Together 204; tolerance 169–170 Muslims 1; and Alevis 113, 114; artists 152, 177; Bosniaks 44, 45, 58, 64; Christian-Muslim approach 31, 33; Christians and 83, 89n9, 124, 125, 128–130, 222; civil-society organisation 4, 56; communities 28, 78, 84, 89n10, 97, 127, 133, 146, 147, 152, 159, 161, 163–170, 195, 201, 204–206, 211; dialogue and education centre 110; ethnic identities 58; ‘Muslims in Erlangen’ exhibition 147; photography 14, 15, 178, 180, 187–191; population 59, 62, 63, 74; refugees 76, 131; religious practices by 107, 159, 214; religious visibility of 104–107; secular 59, 165, 166, 169; social projects 109; Sunni 101–102, 106, 107; symbolic power 111, 112 neo-corporatism 73, 78, 89n4 network governance: benefits, obligations and internal tensions of 81–82; intensifying network relations 82–85; mosque segregation 86–87; secular–religious competition 85–86 network protagonists 79–81 organized cultural encounters 219–220 Orientalist photography 190 orientalization 129 ‘the Other’ 132, 231–233 peace 183–184, 187–189; ambivalent symbolisms of 112–113; in BiH 52, 56; education 100; interreligious 79, 110, 111, 114; prayer for 28, 36, 78, 79, 100, 114 peaceful coexistence 45, 56, 66, 97, 101, 108, 110, 112, 138 Pendle Food Alliance 213

photographic art 178, 187, 188, 190–191 physical space 25, 121–122, 124, 126, 129 Poland: data sources 122; interfaith dialogue, Catholicism and Islam 119–141; poster controversy 119, 122–123, 123; religious approach 120–122 policy paradigm shift 196 Polish Bishops’ Conference (PBC) 130 post-secular 2, 9, 71, 72, 89n3 post-secular administrative culture 28 post-secular constellation 72, 73–74, 81, 85 post-secular governance networks 71, 72–78, 80, 82, 84–87, 89n3, 237 post-war community 45–47, 49, 52 power: dynamics 200, 237; effects 16, 146, 151, 168, 239; imbalance 24, 83; and inequality 4, 237–238; materializations 170; relations 8, 9, 16, 73, 108, 112–113, 130, 135–136, 141, 147, 235, 239; -sharing arrangements 43, 52, 65, 66; spatialities 8, 9; symbolic 15, 110–111, 114; technologies of 6, 164, 239; transformative 25, 189 practices 1–17, 44, 45, 65, 141, 146–151, 166, 171, 195 practice theory 12–16 principles of Sharia 179, 180 Protestant Christianity 101, 105 Protestant mainline church 78, 79, 81, 83, 89n9 race: assemblages 149; differentiations 148–149; ethnicizing machines 150 racializing viscosity 149 Ramadan, Tariq 196 refugee crisis 74, 78, 81, 89n11 religion 57, 85, 164, 167, 178, 194–196, 199; to access funding 204, 205, 207, 208, 211, 213; ‘aesthetics of religion’ approach 120; community cohesion 198; definition of 46, 66; dimensions of 120–122; discourse analysis 120; ethnicity and 49, 50; freedom of 53, 67n9, 141n5; materiality of 11, 25, 151; ‘material religion’ approach 120; multifaith spaces 24, 100, 202; nature of 46, 195; physical space 121–122, 124, 126; saliency in local communities

246 Index 197; social space 121–122, 124–126; spatiality of 9; theology of 23, 30, 34, 38, 54; urban regeneration 198; in urban space 102, 103, 105, 112; visibility of 104–107, 197 religious actors 4, 72–75, 85, 87–88, 98, 101–102, 114, 130, 236, 237 religious beliefs 55, 58, 74, 232 religious communities 14, 15, 28, 43, 44, 49, 53, 57, 65, 71, 81, 97, 101, 104, 112, 130, 132, 152, 167–171, 168, 222 religious diversity 72, 74, 111, 115, 127, 140, 203 religious emissions 25, 38; ‘Angel of Culture’ 33–36, 34; ‘Gates of World Religions’ 28–31, 29 religious identities 1, 11, 15, 44–46, 49, 51, 58, 66, 66n1, 78, 134, 147, 152, 157, 159, 161, 167, 168, 178, 205 religious institutions 9, 44, 53, 57, 81, 225 religious minorities 72, 78, 79, 81, 84, 89–90n12 religious symbols 8, 28, 30, 38, 105, 106, 115, 136, 165, 230 Republika Srpska (RS) 53, 54 Sanders, Peter 15, 177–179; art as dialogue 190–192; art of light 185– 187; fame as a photographer 189– 190; journeys of 179–180; Meetings with Mountains 182–185, 188, 189; methodological intermezzo 184–185; peace and understanding 187–189; In the Shade of the Tree 180, 189; spirit photography 180–182; Sufi anthropology of 182–184; Sufi path 179; vision of integration 187–188 Scottish Referendum, 2014 195 secular depictions 165, 166 secular foodbanks 212, 213 ‘secular’ iftar 86, 87 secular Muslims 59, 165, 166, 169 secular partners 203, 204 secular religion 9, 44, 46, 59, 71, 72, 74, 89n3, 105, 161 secular–religious competition 85–87 ‘secular’ state 195, 197 Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) 53 Shia community 226 Simmel, Georg 75 sites 3, 4, 7–10, 14, 25, 27, 29, 32, 97–100, 105, 208, 239 small-town context 73–75, 77, 88 small-town governance networks 74–75, 81

social cohesion 146 social identity theory 50, 65 social integration 48, 100, 152 social interaction systems 75 social media 119–120, 122 social movement, interreligious dialogues as 5–7 social relations 46, 48, 49, 51, 58, 65, 87, 88, 89n5, 146, 148 social space 121–122, 124–126 sociocultural universe 132–133 space 8–11, 185, 225; community 204, 207; of dialogue 129, 134–135, 220; interreligious spaces 25, 28, 36, 38, 39, 82; relational concepts of 24; social 45, 48, 58, 121, 122, 124, 126; see also multireligious spaces; urban space spatial approach, to interreligious dialogue 23–26, 38 spatialities 3, 7, 8–10, 15–17, 46, 235 spatial segregation 8, 57–59 ‘specific other’ 121 state actors 14, 26, 31, 32, 36, 39, 72 Stolac 44–47, 51, 52, 54–62, 61, 62, 67n31 Sufi anthropology 182–184, 187, 191, 192 Sufism 179, 180, 183, 188, 191 Sunni community 226 Sunni Islam 85, 101–102, 106, 107, 109, 226 symbolic power 15, 110–111, 114 Tatars 131, 135 Tonnies, Ferdinand 48 transcendence 227–229 tuned spaces 220 Turkish community 77, 89n8 UK: interfaith fellowships 196; multifaith social action 194; New Labour government 197, 198–199 urban disturbances 194–195 urban integration 27, 28 urban regeneration 198 urban space 28, 98, 100–105, 113, 115, 120, 130 visibility 31, 100, 102–103; poster materiality 136–140, 139; of religion 104–107, 111, 134, 197 Western visualities 127 ‘World Interfaith Harmony Week’ 4