Academic Research and Activities
The key features of the research developed under the MUSMINE umbrella are:
- European-level shared knowledge, experience, and collaborative activity to mitigate the relative intellectual isolation and lack of communication observed by specialists on Islam in Europe.
- Systematic integration of disciplines (such as economics and law) to form tighter associations, especially for work framed in a comparative perspective, as they address the question of Islam in Europe.
The RSCAS will host visiting scholars (PhD students, post-doctoral fellows and/or senior faculty) from other countries in the EU for brief stays at the Centre to complete and publish their work, and to contribute to the MUSMINE research programme and actively participate in its activities.
The academic work will culminate in publications such as working papers, analytical notes, and volumes in a monograph series.
Activities
14-15 December 2007: Training seminar on the construction of Mosques in European contexts
EU member states have very different experiences and knowledge in this area, depending upon the history of migration, the legal settings framing the construction of religious building, the public discourse on Muslim minorities. On the basis of the European accumulation of experiences of controversies dealing with the construction of mosques, this seminar aims at providing local public authorities with an opportunity to discuss their current problems with experts, scholars and religious authorities. The seminar, based on the expertise of scholars in the different disciplines (urban sociology, sociology of religion, political science, law), is conceived as addressing practical issues in a problem solving perspective.
The planned activities for the 2006–7 academic year are a workshop and an international conference and the publication of the proceedings of both events, as well as a working paper on Islamic Business and Finance in Europe.
Potential research topics include:
- The social integration of Muslim minorities
The Islamic veil in non-Muslim societies
Post-colonial heritage and religious identity
Muslim participation in civil society
Public controversies on religion: 
religious pluralism compared
- Organization of Muslim minorities
Religious authorities in Europe
Islamic finance in Europe (Islamic banking, Islamic business)
Islamic leadership
- Religion and politics in secular Europe
The ethnicization of religious identities
The study of the religious subject in European social sciences
Secularism
Page last updated on 26 June 2019