When a number of Muslims in non-Muslim majority countries in North America and Western Europe gained attention as upcoming performers in the genres of hip-hop, stand-up comedy and performing poetry in the last decades, this was perceived as a remarkable phenomenon by public media and social scientists. Firstly, a lot of these performers bring Islam to the fore in their artistic expressions in the public domain, whereas, secondly, the relation between art and Islam is perceived as troublesome at various social levels. While gaining visibility after the multiple terrorist attacks, the phenomenon of entertaining Muslims is often understood as an expression of post-Islamism, the attitude of tolerance in Islamism that synthesizes contrasting opinions. Expressions of Muslims are explained as "purposeful art" and the performing arts as a repertoire to diffuse (positive) Islamic values. To comprehend the complex manifestations of religion in modern day societies as reflected by these trends, existing social perspectives are now no longer considered satisfactory. The forthcoming paper examines if the perspectives of symbolic interactionist, process and relational sociology are indeed insufficient to discuss and explain several significant understandings of Muslims, their practices and discourse regarding (popular) art. Do all of these artists equally pursue art with a social purpose? Are Islamic authoritative voices significant to everyone? Or do the artists follow wayward conversion strategies in order to achieve their objectives and become established?
British and North American Muslim performing artists have the opportunity to translate Islamic knowledge in relation to art in various ways and in circumstances in which religion may be no longer obviously anchored in culture. At the same time, a reversed autonomisation in the field of Muslim artists seems at stake. If the main drive of the agents in the field is to improve social positions, according to Bourdieu, how can the level of autonomy of the field of Muslim performing artists in the UK and the US be understood? Taking the Bourdieusian concepts of field, habitus, capital into account, this paper intends to investigate in which ways the fields of art and religion intersect and how the orientations to art, culture and Islam are distributed among Muslim artists in the Muslim-minority contexts of the West.The present chapter will explore the kind of authoritative voices and the significance of relative autonomy in the field of Muslim artists in hip-hop, stand-up comedy, poetry, theatre and contemporary art considered from empirical data through in-depth interviews, content analysis of secondary sources and structural analysis of cultural events in the UK and the US. The disparate ideological orientations are influenced by views to restrict or, in contrast, reinforce the significance of art and culture and imply distinct struggles for social and artistic autonomy. Ranging from strict to secular perspectives, the encountered cultural views are assessed by their relatively weak and strong ties with the field of religion and the field of art. Reflecting gender, race and ethnic background as categories of difference, the scheme of cultural orientations might be transferable to other settings in which culture, religion and ideology are involved.Y. van Tilborgh ( ) Oxford Opleidingen,
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