This chapter analyses the commemoration of Muharram, a Shi‘ite rite of mourning, as an arena for creating a moral, religious and social community of Shi‘a Muslim Iraqis in Copenhagen. Drawing from performance theories, the chapter shows how women’s bodily performances during Muharram give birth to a contingent community of suffering and remembering. However, meanings attributed to the ritual may differ, and many women were not familiar with this specific form of commemoration before they came to Denmark. Both in terms of their performance and the social composition of the participants, the rituals are strongly influenced by their performance in Danish society. The religious milieu thus gains its importance because there women can negotiate their sense of belonging in relation to both their socio-cultural background and their everyday lives as part of an ethnic minority in Denmark. The chapter argues that it is necessary to thoroughly examine the sometimes contingent forms of community and belonging constructed among ethnic minorities rather than taking for granted that such communities exist on the basis of people’s shared point of origin.

Taking its starting point in the taklif ritual that is celebrated when a nine-year old girl begins to observe Islam, this chapter investigates how Iraqi women seek to transmit to the next generation particular norms, values, and traditions associated with the place of origin. From a parental perspective, the celebration of taklif represents both efforts to create relatedness between parents and children and attempts to include children in different kinds of community. All in all, the event forms part of a greater effort to make children into moral human beings. However, in the view of the majority society, women’s veiling is generally considered as one of the most visible signs of a chosen ‘otherness’ . Young women’s taklif may therefore also potentially expose them to various forms of exclusion in Danish society. The chapter highlights the sometimes contradictory processes of inclusion and exclusion associated with transmitting religious practice across generations.

This chapter introduces the reader to main problem of the book and the ethnographic, analytical and political contexts of the study. The author argues that overlapping trends in fields such as anthropology, sociology, and political science towards investigating topics such as diasporic identity, public and politicised religion, or the maintenance of transnational relations have created a lacuna where studies of migration tend to neglect local practices and social relations in migrants’ everyday lives. The chapter then provides an overview of Iraqi migration and it explains why the case of Iraqi refugees is particularly apt to study the issue of belonging. Finally, it introduces the reader to the political situation in Denmark where issues of immigration, integration and Islam are highly debated and subject to numerous tightened policies. Denmark thus provides a paradigmatic case of developments that are taking place across Europe.

This chapter develops the book’s analytical framework and situates the monograph within the field of studies on migration and religion. It argues that ritual performance can be used as a ‘cultural prism’ to shed new light on important themes in anthropological research on migration: social networks, processes of place-making, and the reproduction of practice. The author claims that migrants’ relations to place can be understood by examining their notions of relatedness to others. She further discusses the change and continuity of social practice in a migration context. The final part of the chapter introduces the 15 months of fieldwork among Iraqi women and their families and it discusses the methodological and analytical implications of the author’s approach.

This conclusion draws out the main findings of the book and discusses them in relation to both the analytical perspectives that provided the framework of the book and the political contexts that frame the everyday lives of Iraqi women in Denmark. It starts by outlining the processes of localisation that Iraqi women have gone through and it points to the limitations in their construction of belonging to Danish society, particularly with regard to the politics of belonging in Denmark. The author calls for grounding analyses of migration and belonging in ethnographic studies of everyday lives, social relations and practice. The findings of the book raise several questions regarding rituals and belonging in the context of migration, and the author therefore reflects on the potential of ritual events. The conclusion ends with a discussion of the structural barriers of inclusion in Denmark and the effects of the so-called ‘cartoon crisis’ that unravelled in Denmark just after the author had concluded her fieldwork.

This chapter analyses Iraqi women’s celebration of ‘Id al-fitr in order to explore the possibilities and difficulties of reconstructing religious ritual in a new social setting. For Iraqi families, ‘Id al-fitr comes to symbolize the ways in which they do not belong in Denmark, partly because the holiday is not officially recognised, and partly because they miss the extended family and neighbours with whom they used to celebrate in Iraq. Yet, despite the fact that the ritual cannot be ‘properly’ reproduced in Denmark, its continued performance implicitly entails that families over time gain a sense of attachment to Copenhagen. The chapter ultimately takes issue with the widespread notion that the performance of traditions and religious rituals among migrants should be interpreted as a site of resistance to incorporation in local society.