Vidi for research on pluralism in Muslim public spheres

18 december 2009

November 18th NWO awarded a Vidi grant to 89 talented researchers, one of whom related to the research field of WOTRO. Prof. dr. P.P. Eisenlohr received a grant for his research into ‘Islam and Multicultural Citizenship: Practical Morality and Pluralism in Muslim Public Spheres’. Each researcher awarded with a Vidi grant receives a maximum grant of 800.000 euro. The researchers get the opportunity to develop their own innovative lines of research in the next five years and to form a group of researchers to assist them in the task.

Eisenlohr aims to find out how everyday and emotional aspects of citizenship support or hinder inclusion in ethnically and religiously plural societies.

Abstract:
Contemporary approaches to multiculturalism are confronted with two principal limitations. On one hand, theories of multiculturalism are foremost concerned with the deliberative aspects of politics, above all considerations of fairness and justice in the relations between majority societies, the states dominated by them, and the claims of ethnic and/or religious minorities. They thus tend to overlook that pluralist policies have many non-institutional, everyday aspects that are often more consequential than those deliberative dimensions of politics, public debates, and justice that approaches to the problem have so far focused on. On the other hand, religious traditions and identities have also emerged as a problem for more established theories of multiculturalism, because most theorists have so far tried to reconcile justifications for group rights with the basic principles of liberalism, and have not been able to come forward with an alternative to secularism in addressing the problem of religious pluralism.

In the Islam and Multicultural Citizenship: Practical Morality and Pluralism in Muslim Public Spheres project Eisenlohr proposed to address these limitations by focusing on the everyday and emotional aspects of citizenship and other forms of political belonging by investigating the role of Islamic religious traditions in everyday politics of coexistence in multi-religious societies. It addresses the fact that in many societies around the world coexistence and pluralism is viewed as a moral question that cannot be separated from religious values and traditions. Taking the example of Islam in plural societies, one of the main goals is to investigate how far religious traditions become part of such moral considerations and practices geared towards peaceful coexistence. Further, the project aims to arrive at a better understanding of how non-deliberative everyday and emotional aspects of citizenship and coexistence under conditions of religious pluralism are shaped by the practice of Islamic traditions.

Visit the programme website to find the other projects awarded with a vidi grant (Dutch only)