Islamic friday sermon in Italy: Leaders, adaptations, and perspectives

Abstract

The focus of this article is to spotlight the ritual frame of the canonical Friday prayer that is organized weekly around midday in places of Islamic worship in Italy. I verify how the Muslim communities in Italy, as a “cognitive minority”, use different strategies related to the performance of the Friday prayer ritual, and I analyze its continuous reframing. During the preliminary investigation I selected seventeen places of worship located in major cities and provincial towns located in the North, Central and South of Italy including Sicily. I have only considered spaces run by Sunni Arabs because they are the majority of Muslims in Italy. In these places I performed the participant observation from October 2016 to July 2017 collecting empirical data and more than a hundred sermons that I analyzed later. I also relied on interviews with preachers and people in charge of these places.