The debate about the integration of Muslim migrants and their children has attained quite some political significance, triggered by notorious publications and political parties reflecting the current political culture, and the resilient reluctance of many Muslims to integrate into the host society. Both positions can be traced back to historically developed orientalist imaginations which also inform visions of Muslim elites. Interreligious dialogue is intended to solve this dilemma. Declared an essential agent of integration efforts, the dialogue still focuses on cultural and religious essentialism, although the majority of Muslims professes a modern, individualised performance ethos, beyond strict religious affinities.

The latest endeavour to establish centres of Islamic theology, as suggested seems to display an entanglement between theology and the policy of securitisation.

 

Prof. Dr Jamal Malik examines these and related issues with a particular focus on dialogue and integration of Muslims in the host community.

 

Dr Jamal Malik is a Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt. 

A member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Vienna, and the Fellow Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, UK, he works on Islam in South Asia and Muslims in Europe. He has published widely on Islamic education, religious pluralism, Sufism and the mobilization of religion. His last monograph is Islam in South Asia. Revised, Enlarged and Updated Second Edition (Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section Two South Asia) (Leiden 2020. Co-editor of Sufism East and West: Mystical Islam and Cross-cultural Exchange in the Modern World (Leiden 2019), and co-editor Culture of Da'wa: Islamic Preaching in the Modern World (Salt Lake City 2020).