Abstract
This article presents the results of a fieldwork project from January to April 2017 in Spanish mosques, an on-the-ground investigation using interviews with female Muslim teachers who constitute a sort of women’s movement within Islamic education in Islamic associations and schools across Spain. These women reflect on their zeal for teaching and the desire to receive an education in Islamic studies among Muslim women, students and teachers, who participate in these activities to transmit their knowledge of Islam in Spain. These female teachers form a heterodox group of interconnected educators who have acquired status within their communities, legitimized by their ability to impart Islamic religious knowledge, and who could prove to be potential alternative educational authorities in Spanish Islam. This educational activity by and for women in Spanish mosques, which has been studied by others at the European level could be seen as a revitalization of religious dynamics or as processes of re-Islamization. However, as the interviewees themselves observe, ‘we never stopped believing and practicing’, suggesting that this educational activity should be situated within the framework of the active search for Islamic knowledge in a non-Islamic European context.
Highlights
This article looks at the dynamics behind education developed by and for women in mosques and Islamic cultural centers in Spain
This educational activity by and for women in Spanish mosques, which has been studied by others at the European level could be seen as a revitalization of religious dynamics or as processes of re-Islamization
Building on the definition of ‘ilm, or Islamic knowledge proposed by these women, the study investigates their status and authority with regard to occupying leadership positions in the community that result from the process of acquiring and imparting religious knowledge
Summary
Islam and Muslim communities in Spain are organized within a special legal framework in accordance with the provisions in the Organic Law of Religious Freedom of 1980 and the Constitution of 1978, which establish that the state must cooperate with the religious orders or communities duly inscribed in the Registry of Religious Entities maintained by the Ministry of Justice that have achieved the status of notable arraigo due to the number and scope of their believers and, the religion itself.
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