Islam, culture and authoritative voices in the UK and the US

Abstract

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.