Islam in Greece: religious identity and practice among indigenous Muslims and Muslim immigrants

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The proposed 18 month study will explore socio-cultural processes of religious identification and practice and the politics of recognition of indigenous and migrant Muslims in Greece. As a country that has only recently began to attract large scale immigration, including growing numbers of migrants from Muslim countries, while at the same time hosting an indigenous Muslim minority at the North-East region of Thrace, Greece provides an interesting case study for exploring processes, policies and practices relating to the presence and role of Islam in Europe. The project will build on our previous work on minorities and migrants in Greece and will specifically examine the ways through which religious identity and practice are experienced, perceived, negotiated and organised by Muslims in Athens, at formal, vernacular and symbolic levels. In particular, we seek to explore such experiences, perceptions and negotiations with respect to formal and informal places of worship, religious rituals and symbols, as well as everyday practices, expressions and relations.The focus will be on two specific Muslim groups in Athens: recently-arrived Pakistani immigrants (who constitute the largest Muslim migrant community in Greece) and internal Muslim migrants from the indigenous minority of Thrace. The rationale for this comparison responds to a need for integrated accounts of 'migrants' and 'national minorities', in order to understand the role of religion as a 'marker' of collective identification, the patterns of interaction between these distinct groups and their place within ongoing debates on Islam in Greece. In that sense, our study will also address the politics of recognition of Muslim identities in the public sphere of a country whose national myth is essentially constructed in opposition to the (Ottoman/Turkish) Muslim 'Other' and where the (Orthodox) Church is not legally separated from the State. The research will contribute to ongoing debates surrounding the place of Islam in Europe, at a time of EU enlargement towards countries with indigenous Muslim populations, of growing policy concerns about immigrants' integration centred particularly upon Muslims, and of discriminatory and exclusionary frameworks partly referring to global politics of terrorism. Our previous application was graded A+ and we were invited to resubmit. The original version has been revised to include issues arisen in the meantime through our ongoing preliminary work on the topic and to take into account the reviewers' comments. In particular, as suggested by one of the reviewers (Review ID: 150497), we have lowered our percentage of time from 80% to 60% for the PI and from 60% to 40% for the Co-I. Our innovative account of Muslims in Greece will be explored through a combination of qualitative methodologies and analytical tools, including interviews, observational studies, review of relevant academic literature, press articles and official statistics. The project will build on the research team's experience and expertise in researching immigrants and the Muslim minority in Greece, and will benefit from the links already established with community organisations in Athens. The topic is expected to raise sensitive issues, related to some participants' legal status and marginality, thus ethical considerations will be of paramount importance in carrying out the fieldwork research. The study will produce outputs of academic relevance, as well as outputs relevant to Muslim community organisations in Greece.