Gilliam, Laura. Being Muslim “without a fuss”: Relaxed religiosity and conditional inclusion in Danish schools and society. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 45(6), 2022, 1096–1114.
The ethnic boundary between majority Danes and Muslim minorities has become increasingly impermeable in recent decades, restricting Muslim minorities to conditional inclusion, adapting to the majority’s conditions of good citizenship. This article looks at the “conditions of inclusion” for Muslim pupils in multi-ethnic schools, focusing on what pupils express as an ideal of being a “relaxed Muslim”. This condition of “relaxed” religiosity reflects the dominant discourse on integration in Denmark with its anxiety about Islamism and demands that Muslims adjust to the moderate secularism that typifies Danish society. Yet it is argued that it also points to a more general condition of being a good minority citizen in the Danish welfare society and its institutions, as well as in other similar societies, linked to ensuring the smooth running of everyday practices, ideas about civilized interaction, and maintaining the cultural dominance of the majority, and thus to a majoritydefined harmony.