Two recent private religious museums on the living religious traditions of the Bektashi and the Inayati Sufi communities in Europe

Description

Two European private religious museums complemented by libraries and archives were recently opened by religious communities that ascribe to the mystical Sufi dimension of Islam: ‘The Bektashi Museum’ at the World Headquarters of the Bektashi Community in Tirana, Albania (Rr. Dhimiter Karmada; est. in the 1920s), inaugurated in September 2015, and ‘The Sufi Museum’ at the Dutch headquarters in The Hague (Anna Paulownastraat 78; est. 1922) of the Inayati Sufi Order (formerly the Sufi Order in the West) in September 2019. Their exhibitions build a theoretical understanding of their belief by means of texts, illustrations, photographs, installations, audio-visual media, and other interpretive and contextualizing techniques. Yet contrary to secular museums, these museums claim to approach the religious objects and installations not from a secular but from a religious perspective allowing visitors to connect with the religious heritage of the respective Sufi communities as well as with past religious leaders.
Drawing on semi-structured interviews with exhibition makers and visitors as well as on collections analysis, this paper explores why and how these museums stage and construct their belief and piety in carefully choreographed modern museum spaces. What discursive spaces do they generate? How are the installations and objects addressed in their ‘museum’ context and in what way do they keep their ‘sacred’ status in this context? How are these layers of meaning communicated to the diverse audiences of the museum?

Period	10 Jun 2020 → 12 Jun 2020
Event title	Research Network “Dynamics of religious things in museum” (REDIM), International Workshop Handling religious things: the material and the social in museums
Event type	Seminar/Workshop
Location	Marburg, GermanyShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International