"Maulana says the prophet is human, not god" Milads and hierarchies among Bengali Muslims in Lisbon

Abstract

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out among Bengali Muslims in Lisbon. It specifically examines a ceremony, called milad that is performed on certain occasions such as the opening of a shop or the inauguration of a house. What it is intended to argue is that milads are a good metaphor to understand current debates among the Bengalis about what Islam "should be" and what, as a Muslim, one should do. Based on this ethnographic exercise, it is argued that the modernization rhetoric on social change and transformations in religious practices and religiosity, that is currently prominent in migration and religion studies should be substituted by a phenomenology of Islam in the context of migration. © 2007 Brill Academic Publishers.