Abstract
Within the current Western European context, where the presence of Islam in the public sphere has become an object of continuous polemics and debates, emigrating or ‘leaving Europe’ has emerged as a conceivable option among a wide range of people who identify as Muslim. Both within and beyond specific pious circles such migratory moves have sometimes been framed as hijra. This special issue enquires into the way hijra is imagined and experienced, but also how the issue of hijra is debated and acted upon among European Muslims who are contemplating the possibility of leaving Europe, or who have already left the continent. In order to cover both the specific and the more general dynamics surrounding hijra, this thematic issue is motivated by one, albeit multi-layered hermeneutical objective. In general terms, we aim to understand the complex and multiple significations operating around the notion of hijra among European Muslims of various backgrounds and convictions. In so doing we seek to contribute to the mounting anthropology of Islam in Europe by examining articulations of mobility and migration through religious imaginaries and repertoires. This implies ethnographically accounting both for the perspectives and assessments of those who are situated and located in Europe and desire to leave the continent in order to perform the hijra, as well as for the ways in which hijra is lived and practiced by those who have left Europe and moved to a Muslim-majority context. In order to buttress further the emerging anthropological field at the nexus of religion and mobility/migration, this introduction cautiously maps out a number of analytical concepts which we think could strengthen the multifaceted ethnographic ventures of the contributions comprising this thematic issue: the ‘ethics of dwelling’, ‘regimes of mobility/diversity’ and religious imaginaries and repertoires, being the most prominent.
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Notes
See in this respect the website: http://hijra.albounyane.com that supports and advices Muslims on how to prepare for the hijra, and even offers coaching sessions. The popular French website Al-Kanz also devoted a series of articles and interviews with Muslims who left France to settle in Muslim-majority contexts in 2013 and 2014.
For a critique on the glorification of hijra within the Francophone Islamic field, understood as an “individual flight into a utopia”, see Aissam Ait Yahya: “Remarque et reflection autour de la hijra” (2019) (https://editions-nawa.com/smartblog/132_reflexion-autour-de-la-Hijra.html).
Alan Verskin traces how the notion of hijra first became invoked within Maliki fiqh on the verge of the Reconquista. He explains that the earliest fatwas on the hijra were pronounced at a moment when scholars realized that the territorial gains by the Christians in the Iberian peninsula would be long-lasting. Even then, however, he notes a reluctance by scholars to resume the call for hijra, as this was believed to have been abrogated by a hadith of the prophet (Verskin 2015: 41–42).
This perspective is, for instance, promoted by militant groups such as ‘takfir wal hijra’ which have been around since the 1960′s before being equally adopted more recently by ISIS.
For example, one of his informants, a French woman who moved to Jordan and expresses her gratitude of being able to raise her daughters according to a pious lifestyle (with the veil) without worrying about the social services taking them away from her, and his other informant, called M, talks about the difficulties of leading a pious lifestyle and the fear for hostilities. These experiences of marginalization are stigmatization are, however, not considered by the author as motivators for their migration. In so doing, however, his informants’ experience of stigmatization in France become downplayed
.
We are grateful to Jaafar Alloul for his comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this paragraph.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the different participants of the ‘Leaving Europe’ conference, the reviewers of the special issue and the co-organisers Jean-Michel Lafleur, Jérémy Mandin and Jaafar Alloul.
Funding
This special issue is the result of the conference ‘Leaving Europe’ organised in Leuven in September 2018, and which looked at different types of emigrations from the continent and part of the ‘Redefining Home’ Project funded by the KU Leuven (OT 3H140258).
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Fadil, N., Moors, A. & Arnaut, K. Envisioning Hijra: the ethics of leaving and dwelling of European Muslims. Cont Islam 15, 1–16 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-021-00461-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11562-021-00461-7