Author Description

The book comprises a systematic presentation of conflicts over the building of mosques in Austria from a religious studies perspective. It describes and analyzes several conflicts in different federal states of Austria especially in the period between 2003 and 2008. The main focus of the study is the case of the construction of a new mosque in Bad Vöslau (near Vienna) which formed the basis for a research project in the field of empirical research on religion (2009-2012). Together with the case studies, the book describes the political context of labour migration to Western Europe from the 1960s and the historical development of Islamic centers in Austria. The final chapter offers a systematic analysis of these conflicts over mosque-building, combining the analytical perspectives of different disciplines (like sociology, space studies, and religious studies). The conflicts over mosque-building are seen as an expression of the tensions between the dynamism of the nation state and the processes of globalization and migration, between national concepts of space and new transnational spaces. The volume is the first scientific monography on mosque-building and related conflicts in Austria.