Matthew Reifsnider

About me

Presently, Matthew Reifsnider is a post-doctoral researcher through a research grant provided by Wenner-Gren Stiftelserna. This research project is a comparative study between Sweden and the UK concerning Muslim cultural maintenance with the purpose of analysing cultural maintenance practises and ideas related to integration in majority society. Cultural maintenance is “The effort to sustain a culture by asserting its way of life (the ideology, life style, arts, language, etc.) and preserving its material embodiment (landscapes, architecture, and other artifacts).” Many Muslims want to be a part of the majority society without giving up their previous identity, religious belonging and Islamic values, which is cultural maintenance. When majority society expects integration and denies cultural maintenance, confusion is created for minorities. Sweden and the UK have rather different policies on integration and maintenance. Issues of integration, assimilation, marginalisation and the role of cultural maintenance will continue to be part of the society’s anthropological geography. Research into cultural maintenance practices of Muslim minorities of Sweden and the UK could potentially bring results that both countries’ policy makers can compare and use to establish better communication and understanding between communities.

Matthew Reifsnider’s doctoral thesis from Middlesex University, Integration and Minority Fiqh, concerns how minority fiqh, (fiqh al-‘aqalliyyāt), has been theorised to assist minority Muslims, in a Western setting, to be able to integrate in society, as in the maxim, “integration without assimilation.” The thesis examines how a Muslim community interpret sharī‘ah, and its purposes (maqāṣid al-sharī‘ah) as it directly relates to them and integration. The discussion involves a comparison to the traditional/taqlīd approach as well as fiqh al-‘aqaliyyāt in relationship to respondents’ answers.