THE POWER OF EUROPEAN FATWAS: THE MINORITY FIQH PROJECT AND THE MAKING OF AN ISLAMIC COUNTERPUBLIC

Abstract

This paper seeks to understand and contextualize the work of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, an institution committed to the elaboration of a fiqh of minorities through the production and dissemination at regular intervals of fatwas for Muslims living in Europe. Drawing closely on the work of Michael Warner, I suggest that the minority fiqh project may be best understood as the result of a performative conjunction between a particular tension—the tension between the cultivation of a pious subjectivity in tune with the temporalities of the global Islamic Revival and the perceived necessity to integrate Muslims into local European contexts—and a specific relation to public discourse. The paper argues that the Islamic counterpublic brought about by the European Council for Fatwa and Research's mode of interpellation of European Muslim subjects finds in the Muslim reader its paradigmatic figure. It concludes by suggesting some of the ways in which the Islamic counterpublic may be authorized or disrupted both by its Muslim addressees and by other discourses articulated in mainstream European publics.