Governing Islam - the Case of Norway

If there has been an historical model for the governance of Islam in Norway, it has been a model in which the Norwegian state, committed to broadly social democratic notions of equality funds and support minority religions and life stance communities as long as these operate within the ambit of secular and liberal laws and regulations, and in which the state to a large extent refrains from overt intrusion into the internal life of minority religious communities. That model has arguably come under pressure in Norway in the past decade due to concerns relating to gender equality as well as 'counter-radicalization', and the rise of populist right-wing formations in Norway mobilizing on the basis of popular anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views in the Norwegian population at large. Yet preliminary findings in a study of governance of Islam in Norway which has explored this in the context of state-Muslim interactions on halal certification, hijab regulations, niqab regulations and 'counter-radicalization' seem to suggest that in spite of Norway having had populist right-wingers in government since October 2013, more pragmatic state bureacratic logics premised on dialogue have prevailed in the shaping of policy processes, if not necessarily outcomes in this field.