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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam

Cultures in conflict? How islamists cope with football

Alternative title: Kulturer på kollisjonskurs? Hvordan islamister takler fotball

Awarded: NOK 10.1 mill.

This study seeks to include, but move beyond what we call the "political barometer paradigm" that has dominated studies on football in the Middle East with a focus on the role of football as a provider of one of few arenas where youth gather, taboos are broken and protests erupt. What has not been sufficiently illuminated through the political barometer paradigm has been the depth of genuine cultural processes during football matches, how symbols have been invented and reinvented, interpreted and reinterpreted - how football may be an arena for the symbolic construction of cultural belonging. Islamism, the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life, became a dominant ideological, social and moral force in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab defeat to Israel in 1967. Islamism has for nearly fifty years constituted not only the strongest political opposition movement in the Middle East, but also the strongest cultural movement. Yet Islamists have problems coping with popular quests for fun and entertainment. One example of this is football, the world's largest sport and tremendously popular throughout the Middle East, which has largely been regarded as morally corrupt by Islamist clerics. This lack of adaptation to both local and global football cultures alienate many Middle Easterners, especially young people. To overcome the crisis in the Islamist movement after the Arab spring in 2011, Islamists have to come to terms with the cultural challenges to their ideological hegemony in the area. This is thus a pioneering study of what is ultimately about the future of Islamism as the dominant cultural and political movement in the Middle East. In this study we compare how three Islamist currents, Neo-Shiism in Iran and Lebanon, Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Wasatism in Egypt, respond to football through three analytical fields: Theological discourse on football, local organization of football and spectator culture. We organised a start-up seminar in Doha, Qatar, in November 2021, with invited researchers with expert knowledge on the relations between football culture, politics and religion in the Middle East. Two members of the group, Dag Tuastad og Bjørn Olav Utvik, participated with papers at the seminar "Praying on the Pitch: Football, Religion and Social Identities", an academic workshop organised by Aga Khan University, London, 28 – 30. april 2022. Tuastad presented the paper “Why Hezbollah loves football” Both these papers have been reviewed and will be published in 2024. 22-24 September we participated with a panel of our own at the tri-annual conference of the Nordic Society for Middle Easts Studies (NSMES) in Reykjavik; "Cultures in conflict? Football and religion in the Middle East". Project manager Hans K Hognestad presented the research project with plans for research, while Bjørn Olav Utvik presented the paper “The Muslim Brothers and the Good Muslim Football Spirit”. Dag Tuastad presenterte his paper "Football as orthopraxy in Shiite Lebanon". 2022 ended with field observations from the FIFA World Cup in Qatar where we gathered data from four group-stage matches and events in a fan festival area. Data from these observations and conversations were presetned at several seminars and conferences in 2023. One focus here has been on comparing a mainly western rhetoric around the first ever World Cup in an Arab country with the experiences of the fans and the terrace culture during the World Cup. In June 2023 Charlotte Lysa was formally associated as a member of the research team while phd student Kyra Angerer (University of South-Eastern Norway) became linked to the project through a plan that sits close to the overall aim of the project. Angerer is doing fieldwork in Saudi-ARabia between August 2023 and April 2024. Project manager Hognestad is her main supervisor, while Charlotte Lysa and associated member Richard Giulianotti are co-supervisors. We have during 2023 established a blog at forskersonen.no in which we aim to publish once a month (in Norwegian only). 2023 has been a very productive year for the project with two field trips to Morocco in May and Saudi-Arabia in December resepectively, in addition to participation with a panel based on the project at the 2023 MESA (Middle East Studies Association) conference in Montreal in November, where all four members of the group had presentations: Charlotte Lysa: "The contested field of women’s soccer in Saudi Arabia (2005 – 2015)", Bjørn Olav Utvik: "Soccer, Islamism and the Good Muslim", Dag Tuastad: "How ritual and politics intersect in Hizbollah’s relation to football" andHans K Hognestad: "Football, Religion and Politics: contested narratives from the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar". The team has had a very regular contact throughout the year and held meetings once a month, with a number of media appearances with comments and analysis of relevant issues related to football in the Middle East.

This study seeks to go beyond what we call the "political barometer paradigm" that has dominated studies on football in the Middle East, much due to its role as an one of few arenas where youth gather, taboos are broken and protests erupt. What was not illuminated through the political barometer paradigm was the depth of genuine cultural processes during football matches, how symbols were invented and reinvented, interpreted and reinterpreted - how football was an arena for the symbolic construction of cultural belonging. Islamism, the belief that Islam should guide social and political as well as personal life, became a dominant ideological, social andmoral force in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Arab defeat to Israel in 1967. Islamism has for nearly fifty years constituted not only the strongest political opposition movement in the Middle East, but also the strongest cultural movement. Yet Islamists have problems coping with popular quests for fun and entertainment. One example of this is football, the world's largest sport and tremendously popular throughout the Middle East, which has largely been regarded as morally corrupt by Islamist clerics. This lack of adaptation to both local and global football cultures alienate many Middle Easterners, especially young people. To overcome the crisis in the Islamist movement after the Arab spring, Islamists have to come to terms with the cultural challenges to their ideological hegemony in the area. The relations between Islamism and football has previously not been systematically studied. This is thus a pioneering study of what is ultimately about the future of Islamism as the dominant cultural and political movement in the Middle East. In this study we compare how three Islamist currents, Neo-Shiism in Iran and Lebanon, Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and Wasatism in Egypt, respond to football through three analytical fields: Theological discourse on football, local organization of football and spectator culture.

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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam