Challenging From Within : Youth Associations and Female Leadership in Swedish Mosques

This chapter focuses on women members of the Sunnī-dominated national organization Sweden's Young Muslims (Sveriges Unga Muslimer, SUM) and some of its local youth associations in different Swedish towns, to argue that involvement with these associations is increasing Muslim women's engagement with mosques and other venues for acquisition of Islamic knowledge. Illuminating the continuous challenges to the women's presence in mosques and their wider public activism the chapter examines how these women defend their right to exercise religious authority while supporting the traditional sources of Muslim authority in the public sphere. It analyzes how the women reinterpret the Islamic texts to change their daily lives as well as their position within both the Muslim community and Swedish society as a whole. The chapter emphasizes that in more informal situations, backstage among peers, the women put gender on the agenda, initiate reflexive deliberations, and test alternative norms and practices.

Introducing "Fourth Space" : Young Muslims Negotiating Marriage in Europe

Based on interviews with young persons in two national Muslim youth organizations in Europe, this article examines how young Muslims negotiate between the cultural customs of their societiesof origin, their everyday experiences in Europe, and the global Muslim public sphere. In seekinga universal “true” core of Islam, these young persons create their own version of Islam, a “fourthspace” in which they reinterpret the authoritative source texts of Islam in light of personal diasporicexperiences in Europe. This reinterpretation becomes particularly pertinent in the context of planningfor future marriage, where they jointly construct new understandings of Islam to argue for inter-ethnic marriages and later age at marriage, to argue against coercion in arranged marriages, tooppose polygyny and to portray the stigmatization of divorce as counter to the true spirit of Islam.