Exploring the Multitude of Muslims in Europe: Essays in Honour of Jørgen S. Nielsen

In Exploring the Multitude of Muslims in Europe a number of friends and colleagues of Jørgen S. Nielsen have joined together to celebrate his life and work by reflecting his more than forty years of scholarly contributions to the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe. The fourteen articles move through conceptualisations, productions and explorations of the multitudes of Muslims in Europe, and the authors draw on Jørgen S. Nielsen’s own work on the history and challenges of the Muslim community in Europe, critical thinking, ethnicities and theologies of Muslims in Europe, Muslim minorities, Muslim-Christian relations, and on Islamic legal challenges in Europe.

Contributors are: Samim Akgönül, Ahmet Alibašić, Naveed Baig, Safet Bektovic, Mohammed Hashas, Thomas Hoffmann, Hans Raun Iversen, Göran Larsson, Werner Menski, Egdūnas Račius, Lissi Rasmussen, Mathias Rohe, Emil B. H. Saggau, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Thijl Sunier, and Niels Valdemar Vinding.

Niels Valdemar Vinding, PhD (2013), University of Copenhagen, is Assistant Professor researching on Islam in Europe and European Muslim institutions. Currently, his focus is on ‘Imams of the West’ and the authority and leadership challenges amongst Muslims.

Egdūnas Račius PhD (2004) is Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania). His research interests encompass Eastern European Muslim communities as well as Muslim revivalist movements. Račius is a co-editor (together with Antonina Zhelyazkova) of Islamic Leadership in the European Lands of the Former Ottoman and Russian Empires Legacy, Challenges and Change (Brill, 2018) and the author of Muslims in Eastern Europe (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

Jörn Thielmann, Ph.D. (2001) in Islamic Studies, Ruhr-University Bochum, is Executive Director of the Erlangen Centre for Islam and Law in Europe EZIRE, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. He has published with Ala Al-Hamarneh Islam and Muslims in Germany (Brill 2008).