The research project is meant to inquire into forms of global interaction by Islamic groups and movements from the non-Arabian Muslim world, mainly for South and Southeast Asia, but also Africa and Europe. It proposes to study networks of institutions, actors and “travelling concepts” with their various mutations. It is expected to result in a new and better understanding of global Muslim networking and its current condition.
The research links up with the research group “Trajectories of Life and Knowledge” tracing the transformation of Muslim actors, their institutions and Islamic knowledge in the process of global expansion and intervention.
At the same time, the research continues to contribute to the "Crossroads Asia" competence network funded by BMBF which supported a separate regional study of connectivity with the Central Asian states of Kyrghyzstan and Tajikistan.
During the following period selective complementary field work will be undertaken to fill remaining gaps and to update previous findings.
The proposal further incorporates research conducted at ZMO within the research group “Muslims in Europe” (Reetz/Gugler/Kamp 2006-09), but also within the DFG-funded research of the interaction of religious and secular Muslim institutions between South and Southeast Asia (Noor/Reetz 2004-05; Noor/Saeed/Ahmad/Reetz 2006-07).
Primarily the project focuses on global Muslim networking emanating from South Asia. Groups such as the Deobandis, Barelwis, Ahl-i Hadith and the Jama’at-i Islami have become agents of globalisation in their own right establishing networks and figurations that bind together the global transfer of religious knowledge and practice, translocal migration as well as social and economic resource-sharing. Inquiries into Deobandi and Tablighi Jama'at networks in Western Europe, North America and South East Asia, together with Central Asia under the Crossroads Programme, will allow adding to the previous findings based in South Asia and South Africa. The following manuscripts have emerged from this line of research:
‘Alternate Globalities?’ On the Cultures and Formats of Transnational Muslim Networks from South Asia. In: Ulrike Freitag/Achim von Oppen (eds.), Translocality: The Study of Globalising Processes from a Southern Perspective. Leiden: Brill, 2010, 293-334.
Migrants, Mujahidin, Madrasa Students: The Diversity of Transnational Islam in Pakistan. In: (National Bureau of Asian Research – NBR) Transnational Islam in South and Southeast Asia: Movements, Networks, and Conflict Dynamics. Seattle: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2009, 53-77.
The Tablighi Madrasas in Lenasia and Azaadville: Local Players in the Global ‘Islamic Field’. In: Abdulkader Tayob, I. Niehaus, & W. Weisse (eds.), Muslim Schools and Education in Europe and South Africa. Münster, New York, München, Berlin, Waxmann, 2011, 85-104.
Travelling Islam – Madrasa Graduates from India and Pakistan in the Malay Archipelago. ZMO Working Papers. Berlin, 2013.
Mediating mobile traditions: the Tablighi Jama‘at and the International Islamic University between Pakistan and Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan), paper at Crossroads Asia Workshop, ZMO, Berlin, 21 March 2014.