Exclusion and Exclusiveness: Religious Leader’s Self-Presentation and Social Context of Religious Everyday Life


Ksenia Trofimova

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24848/islmlg.09.1.13

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Abstract


The paper addresses specific narratives of self-presentation of Sufi religious leaders who belong to Roma Muslim communities of Skopje (North Macedonia). Aiming at reconstruction of the actual social context by which the subjectivity of religious leader is formed, I focus on retrospective narrations and their interpretations provided by spiritual leaders and “ordinary” believers. Drawing from my ethnographic fieldwork (2014-2019), I describe some of their everyday practices and analyze the plots focused on the continuity, education and ethical code (adab) issues since they act as prime arguments in everyday polemics about the “proper” faith.


Keywords


Religious leadership, biographical narrative, Islam, Sufism, Balkans, Roma

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24848/islmlg.09.1.13