The project "" aims at documenting and analysing how Sufi associations in Sweden (and to some extent Denmark) develop and change in diaspora as they at the same time maintain contacts with formal Sufi orders in Muslim countries. Sufism comprises long-term intellectual traditions, rituals, interpretations and movements with vast extension and influence; sufism has always been transnational to its character. The two parts of the project are named "Between Home and Home. Women's informal Sufi networks in Sweden and Bosnia" and "Authority on Distance. Transnational Sufism from Syria and Lebanon to Sweden" respectively.
Both parts of the project are founded on fieldwork in the Swedish diaspora as well as in Muslim countries. The aim is to accumulate a thorough documentation of some Sufi groups activities and thereby point at some more concealed parts of Muslim life in Western Europe. Rather than studying the theological ideas of leading characters the projects aims at looking into Sufism as an everyday practice among immigrants in Sweden. The activities of women and young people will be especially emphasised.
Mutual themes in the parts of the projects will focus on actual piety: informal groupings and the mobility in between them, social and theological hierarchies, prayer assemblies, the legendary history of the groups as well as the presence of texts in rituals in order to illustrate how discourse and ritual are interwoven in a local context. One hypothesis is that these currently informal, and sometimes marginalised, networks will have an undeniable impact on the development of Islam in Europe.