Observing the Sunni-Shiʿa Divide in Fieldwork

Abstract

Based on an ethnographic study of non-conformist mosques, this article demonstrates how Muslims may adopt a Sunni or Shiʿa identity while navigating spaces that are institutionalised as such but give much less importance to this identity – if any – when occupying less structured spaces. It may, for example, have little influence on what religious literature they read, which preachers they follow on social media, and how they practise religion in everyday life. The article argues that research methodologies must be properly sensitised to this. Otherwise, they risk making the Sunni–Shiʿa identity hypervisible, thus producing the divide rather than investigating it.