Dr. Jennifer Selby, Memorial University of Newfoundland
Author of Questioning French Secularism: Gender Politics and Islam in a Parisian Suburb (2012) and co-editor of Debating Sharia: Islam, Gender Politics and Family Law Arbitration (2012).
The starting point for this paper stems from a conversation with a Muslim community group in St. John’s, Canada. “Tobias,” a resident of the island for over 30 years and an executive member of the city’s one mosque, worried that research on local Muslims would focus only on the most pious and committed community members. Tobias’s concern parallels a key theological debate in this small Muslim community about the so-called mainstream and astutely calls into question social scientific scholarship on Islamic ethics and piety that tends to over-privilege the most committed religious practitioners. Dr. Selby reflects on how her own interview questions upheld unrepresentative characterizations of religiosity and considers how to capture the pursuits and concerns of everyday practitioners.