Abstract
This study draws from ethnographic data of a scarcely researched region of Central Europe to show how migrant Muslims in Slovakia confront everyday translocality by reifying a single community of Muslims. This symbolic community is articulated in the concept of the ummah. Muslims in Slovakia are mostly migrants, since formation of a larger “native” Muslim population was historically limited. It will be argued that ummah is an imagined community that translates the political and religious narratives of a global Muslim community into the local group of Muslims and, in such way, enables Muslims to transcend mutual ethnocultural, national and social heterogeneity. Furthermore, this study will show four different ways how the ummah as an imagined single community is reified: (1) ummah as a set of functional networks; (2) ummah as a symbol to interpret migrant experience; (3) ummah as a network of trust; and (4) ummah as a symbol in political narratives.
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Notes
After being denoted as the “black hole on the map of Europe” in the 1990s by Madeleine Albright, Slovakia changed its political course towards Western institutions and entered the European Union in 2004.
Facebook protest pages were created http://www.facebook.com/events/200502996638415/, web pages explaining potential threats were created http://www.priamaakcia.sk/Scitanie-obyvatelov-2011--co-sa-da-robit-ak-nesuhlasime.html and media informed about a potential violation of the protection of personal data act http://www.aktuality.sk/clanok/187221/scitanie-mozu-uniknut-citlive-informacie/.
This estimate was produced by studies of non-governmental organizations (see http://www.euractiv.sk/rovnost-sanci/analyza/slovenski-romovia-myty-odhalene)
Recognition is in this sense a political euphemism, which connotates that other religious societies and churches are “unrecognizable”. The recognition, however, takes place only after meeting specific administrative requirements, despite possible and “recognizable” religious and community activities already taking place.
The Baha’i Faith representatives managed to apply for recognition still before the new legislation. Most probably, they would not meet the new criteria.
The Attorney General argued that by restricting the 20,000 signatures to church members with citizenship, the legislative act violated the provision stipulated in paragraph two, i.e., the freedom to publicly express one’s religion and to observe religious rites. By setting criteria that were unattainable, it virtually denied members of smaller churches and religious societies to perform their religion equally to other larger groups.
Contrary to the opinion of the Attorney General, the Constitutional Court denied any limitation to freedom of religious practice, since, according to its position, official state registration is not by itself necessary to practice one’s religion.
Names of individuals from my field data are changed for the sake of privacy and protection of my informants.
The French political scientist Olivier Roy writes on this account: “How do we reconcile manifesting hatred for the West with the queues for visas outside Western consulates? It is not a contradiction, even if it is often the same people who do both. And we would be mistaken to take the aspiration of Iranian youths for democracy as an invitation of a US military intervention to topple the conservative regime in Tehran.” (2006, p. 23)
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Webpages referred to in the article
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