Friday, March 14, 2014
Congressional B (Omni Shoreham)
This paper analyzes the governance of Islam in contemporary Spain. Rather than presuming the existence of a singular and all-encompassing “Spanish model” of religious governance, I focus on the critical role that actual practices of modeling have played in shaping the institutions and organizations implicated in the accommodation and regulation of Islam, as well as the concrete strategies that have guided the process of Muslim incorporation. Modeling practices, I argue, have been particularly significant in Spain due to its late transition to democracy and the absence of viable frameworks for regulating religious diversity from within its own past. In determining which frameworks to use as models for religious governance, public actors have been influenced by a variety of factors, including: 1) their respective political and social agendas; 2) the professional networks, organizational fields, and other means of knowledge circulation through which they have gained exposure to exogenous models; and 3) religious, cultural, linguistic, and historical factors that have made certain models more accessible or attractive than others. Given that these factors have varied at different levels of government, so too have practices of modeling influential in the development of national, regional, and local approaches to governing Islam, and religious diversity more generally.
