Publications

As part of the International Project on Sexual Violence in Muslim Communities, I contributed a chapter to the open‑access book published by Boston University. My chapter explores how coercion into marriage can take on an Islamic framing. Drawing on the experiences of young women from diverse Muslim communities in transnational settings, I show how parents and community members exert systemic and escalating pressure to marry.

This coercion often appears through religiously framed narratives that present marriage as a moral and communal obligation. When these discourses are unpacked, they reveal not only pressure to marry but also a sexual dimension. By relying on cultural taboos and ambiguous language, community members limit open discussion about marital sexual expectations while promoting interpretations of Islam that emphasise spousal intimacy. In doing so, they inadvertently facilitate environments where sexual coercion and violence within marriage can occur.

This article I wrote as part of a collection in honour of Wilhelm Gräb, the mastermind of the IRTG who unfortunately passed away last year.

In my essay on luxury headscarves, I delve into the complexities surrounding this contested issue, highlighting the necessity of a Muslim theological discussion to better understand the nuanced and varied religious phenomena within the sociological realm. Drawing on Wilhelm Gräb’s approach to lived religion, I emphasise how individuals live out their religion in diverse ways, resolving their often conflicting religious and social needs.

Through the example of luxury headscarves, I show that ordinary Muslims provide interpretations of Islam that are just as relevant as those from religious leaders. The choices Muslim women make regarding headscarves involve a dynamic process of balancing personal preferences and religious values, reflecting the moral flexibility and interpretive nature of lived religion. This perspective underscores the importance of examining how people justify their religiously motivated actions, as it shifts the focus from the object of study to the objective of understanding the lived experiences of religion.

Last year, my friend and teacher, Boike Rehbein, suddenly passed away. He had shaped a generation of scholars across the globe, including myself. In the essay, I look at his characteristics: His conceptual principle of Verstehen, his scholarly contribution through habitus hermeneutics and his structural contribution through the specific design of the Global Studies Programme (GSP). Assessing these three elements and seeing how they are linked, I propose moving towards a Rehbeinian pedagogy, which is instrumental in levelling the academic playing field and allows critical sociology to gain a global orientation.

in: Gedenkschrift Rehbein „Für eine menschliche Welt – Zum Werk von Boike Rehbein“ (For a human work – Work of Boike Rehbein), 2024 Beltz Juventa, p. 188 et seqq.

Special Issue „Digital Youth and Religion“ in Religions 2022, 13(7), 658

This article argues that Muslims have created a specific Muslim Instagram that sustains youthfulness and cultivates their deen (religion). Instagram as a social has become a space for Muslim youth all over the world to share images. These images, being circulated over Instagram across localities, create visual representations for other users. For this research, over 500 images with the hashtags #muslim and #islam were analysed to understand how Muslims represent themselves and their religion online. A two-step methodological procedure involved the adaption of iconographical and iconological techniques of visual art interpretation to the images collected. The concept of youthfulness and the Islamic concept of deen will be discussed in relation to the analysed images to demonstrate the emergence of a Muslim Instagram. Muslim Instagram is a translocal space that enables Muslims to simultaneously act eternally youthful and cultivate their deen. By playing with notions of youthfulness, Muslims recontextualise their faith and practice online to cultivate their deen. They thereby embed Islam and subsume Islamic concepts and practices into modern global lifestyle patterns of consumption. 

This article reflects on Pakistan’s imaginary within contemporary Indian society. It is based factually on a personal experience of events and encounters during my study visit at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi 2018.

In: Südasien-Chronik/South Asia Chronicle 2022 (12)

This article reveals how Muslim religious identity is impacted by Muslim dating apps. The development of Muslim dating apps within the last decade has led to Muslims seeking partners beyond their physical and social locality. The following research takes inner-Muslim discursive traditions into account in order to examine how Muslim males articulate and negotiate their Islamic identity in the process of partner selection. The research’s methodological approach draws from digital ethnography, with the smartphone as the primary field site. The smartphone ethnography on the app of Muzmatch will demonstrate that users are physically embedded in doctrinally heterogenous contexts. Yet, the religious framework of the app promotes a “doctrinal homogeneity” that finds expression via the discursive articulations of the app users. It will be shown that users are being shaped by the app as they incorporate the religious framework provided by it. 

See the video about this DAAD-Prize Winning Article 🏅🇩🇪