Doctoral Dissertation Research: Turkish-Dutch Mosques and the Construction of Transnational Spaces in Europe

清真寺的选址和建立往往是关于欧洲穆斯林融合和民族归属感的辩论的前沿。这些辩论通常在城市空间伊斯兰化和穆斯林公众能见度的框架内处理清真寺建设问题。然而，穆斯林将清真寺作为宗教空间的含义和用途的变化仍然没有得到充分的研究。本研究旨在通过考察在荷兰的土耳其移民对清真寺空间的象征性、物质性和认知性生产来填补这一空白。尽管土耳其-荷兰清真寺通常被视为统一的场所，但实际上，它们在政治、种族、地区、性别和教派方面都有所不同。由于土耳其和荷兰之间的跨国联系提供了清真寺的想象、建造和制度化的方式，该项目还将调查土耳其和荷兰清真寺项目的历史轨迹及其对国家归属感的影响。这项研究将通过在荷兰城市阿姆斯特丹、哈勒姆和海牙以及土耳其城市伊斯坦布尔和安卡拉进行的多地点民族志进行。研究数据将通过参与者观察、半结构访谈、政策和媒体文件的语篇分析以及焦点小组等方式收集。这项研究的结果可能会证明背景差异和相互竞争的参与者在土耳其-荷兰清真寺的想象、建设和竞争中的重要性。基于这样一种信念，即空间不仅是身份的容器，而且是社会构建的和社会关系的组成部分，本研究还将阐述清真寺在土耳其和荷兰之间的跨国空间内培养民族、民族和宗教归属模式和主体地位方面所发挥的作用。关于伊斯兰原则、信仰和习俗与欧洲规范和价值观是否相容的激烈辩论最近变得司空见惯。穆斯林移民经常因为复制他们的宗教传统而拒绝他们所在国的法律、文化和政治环境而受到批评。该项目将把接近清真寺作为荷兰穆斯林身份的原始和静态地点的问题解决。取而代之的是，它将展示多种和有争议的观点、演员和过程，这些观点、行为者和过程进入了独特和多样化的清真寺空间和穆斯林社区的生产。通过这样做，这项研究将纠正清真寺主要是作为抵抗融合的场所和荷兰原教旨主义的滋生地的表现。与将穆斯林及其在欧洲的公共场所具体化的观点不同，这个项目将展示伊斯兰信仰、习俗和空间是如何由他们特定的背景定义的。作为博士论文研究改进奖，该奖项还将为有前途的学生建立独立的研究生涯提供支持。

The location and establishment of mosques is often at the forefront of debates on Muslim integration and national belonging in Europe. These debates typically treat mosque construction within a framework of the Islamicization of cityspaces and of Muslim public visibility. The changing meaning and use of mosques as religious spaces by Muslims, however, remain understudied. This research aims to fill this gap by examining the symbolic, material, and cognitive production of mosque spaces by Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands. Even though often approached as uniform places, Turkish-Dutch mosques in fact are differentiated along political, ethnic, regional, gender, and denominational lines. Since the transnational connections between the Turkey and the Netherlands inform the ways in which mosques are imagined, built and institutionalized, this project also will investigate the historical trajectories of, and influences between, mosque projects and national belonging in Turkey and the Netherlands. The research will be conducted through a multi-sited ethnography that will take place in the Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Haarlem and The Hague and in the Turkish cities of Istanbul and Ankara. The research data will be collected by means of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, discourse analysis of policy and media documents, and focus groups. The findings of this research likely will demonstrate the importance of the contextual differences and competing actors in the imagination, construction and contestation of Turkish-Dutch mosques. Based on the conviction that space is not just the container of identities but is socially constructed and constitutive of social relations, this research will also explicate the role mosques play in the cultivation of ethnic, national and religious modes of belonging and subject positions within the transnational space between Turkey and the Netherlands. Intense debates about the compatibility of Islamic principles, beliefs and practices with European norms and values have recently become commonplace. Muslim immigrants are often criticized for reproducing their religious traditions while rejecting the legal, cultural, and political circumstances of their host countries. This project will problematize approaching mosques as primordial and static locations of Muslim identity in the Netherlands. Instead it will show multiple and contested views, actors and processes that go into the production of distinct and diverse mosque spaces and Muslim communities. In so doing, this research will offer a corrective to the representation of mosques mainly as sites of resistance to integration and as breeding grounds of fundamentalism in the Netherlands. In contrast to views that externalize both Muslims and their communal sites in Europe, this project will demonstrate how Islamic beliefs, practices, and spaces are defined by their specific context. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish an independent research career.