Abdessamad Belhaj

Authority in Contemporary Islam

Structures, Figures and Functions


Dissent and anti-authority

Another limitation to religious authority is the initiatives taken to challenge certain structures or authority figures. Several cases illustrate this element; for example, the Paris Mosque left the French Council of the Muslim Faith, followed by other organisations, leading to its disintegration.1 Another example is the case of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany (ZMD), which expelled the German Muslim Community (DMG, close to the Muslim Brotherhood) in January 2022 for extremism. In Belgium, the Association des Fidèles de la Grande Mosquée de Bruxelles plays the anti-authority game to the full and willingly cooperates around “an Islam of Belgium” with the federal government against the Moroccan and Turkish actors dominating the Muslim Executive of Belgium.2 The central figure of this association Mohamed El Farhaui (born in Nador, Morocco in 1962 and naturalised citizen of Belgium in 20163) is a manager who claims transparency in the management of the EMB;4 however, transparency alone cannot give the manager enough standing to emerge as a competing religious authority figure.5

Authority in Contemporary Islam

Tartalomjegyzék


Kiadó: Akadémiai Kiadó – Ludovika Egyetemi Kiadó

Online megjelenés éve: 2024

ISBN: 978 963 454 960 4

Authority is a key question in Islamic studies and beyond. This book examines the nature, figures, structures and functions of religious authority in contemporary Islamic ethics. It also discusses how Islamic authority and political power compete and/or cooperate in Muslim contexts and Europe. Moreover, it provides a coherent framework to understand authority as a moral foundation in relation to community, power, tradition and subversion. Various cases from Europe and the Muslim world are studied here to showcase the claims and practices of authority in their contexts. Despite its active role and resourcefulness in contemporary Islam, religious authority has to confront many limitations, including the dynamics of secularisation and individualisation. The author is a senior researcher at the Religion and Society Research Institute of the Eötvös József Research Centre at the University of Public Service (Budapest).

Hivatkozás: https://mersz.hu/belhaj-authority-in-contemporary-islam//

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