Marriage “sharia style”: everyday practices of Islamic morality in England

The growing visibility of Islam in the public spaces of Western societies is often interpreted in the media as a sign of Muslim radicalisation. This article questions this postulate by examining the flourishing Muslim marriage industry in the UK. It argues that these ‘halal’ services, increasingly popular among the young generation of British Muslims, reflect the semantic shifting of categories away from the repertoire of Islamic jurisprudence to cultural and identity labels visible in public space. Informed by long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the British field of Islamic law, this article examines a Muslim speed-dating event, which took place in central London in 2013. It investigates how Islamic morality is maintained and negotiated in everyday social interactions rather than cultivated via discipline and the pursuit of virtuous dispositions. Using Goffman’s “frame analysis” and his interpretation of the social as a space of “performances” as well as recent anthropological reflections on “ordinary ethics” (Lambek) and “everyday Islam” (Schielke, Osella and Soares), it examines the potential for such practices to define the contours of a new public culture where difference is celebrated as a form of distinction

The occultural significance of The Da Vinci Code

The popularity of books such as The Da Vinci Code is interesting in that it would seem to support surveys indicating at least a general level of public interest in the spiritual and the paranormal. More specifically, an analysis of the dominant ideas articulated in The Da Vinci Code suggests that it is a book reflecting key themes within western ‘occulture’ which have become central to the shift from ‘religion’ to ‘spirituality’ in western societies: the sacralization of the self; the turn from transcendence to immanence; the emergence of the sacred feminine; the focus on nature and the premodern; and a conspiracist suspicion of the prevailing order and dominant institutions, particularly the Church

Performing religion: Migrants, the church and belonging in Marrickville, Sydney

This article seeks to extend debates on questions of religious practices in a multicultural society and to explore the response of traditional churches to challenges and to customary practices. In particular, it considers the different forms of belonging sought within particular (albeit heterogeneous) ethnic groups, or within the wider community of a multicultural church, and the role played by the church in 'mixing-up people' across and within their differences, forging new connections and communities, and reconfiguring traditional religious practices to accommodate migrant cultures. The article proposes the concept of 'adaptive dexterity' to indicate the openness of an institution - in this case the church - at any one historical moment to the sharing of space and diverse cultural practices. It concludes with some brief reflections on the relationship between the possibility of enacting different religious practices and the question of everyday multicultural citizenship