Over the last decades, Europe debates on Islam have been framed increasingly through the lens of cultural difference. In this discursive climate, culture constitutes a crucial terrain of investment for European Muslims in their struggle for inclusion and recognition. Based on two different ethnographic research projects among European Muslims, this essay examines two distinct types of culture discourses. One employs an Islam-versus-culture trope that serves to disconnect Islam from certain patriarchal practices perceived to exist within Muslim communities. The other discourse defends the intrinsic and symbiotic link between Islam and culture, especially in order to elevate the place of artistic practices within Muslim communities. To make sense of these seeming contradictions, I explore the multivalent meanings contained in my interlocutors’ uses of the culture concept by tracing the respective genealogies of these meanings. This includes an investigation of culture's conceptual histories, formulated successively by Enlightenment thinkers, Romanticists, and early anthropologists, as well as by Islamic reformers and their more recent successors. My investigation into these conceptual histories exposes broader concerns about individual freedom and agency on the part of cultural theorists, which have furthermore enabled various claims about modernity and backwardness. While European Muslims creatively integrate various articulations of the culture concept into their world-making projects, I argue that the ontological assumptions underpinning the culture concept continue to haunt and render precarious efforts to demonstrate Muslim belonging to Europe via culture.

中文翻译：

---

伊斯兰教与文化：现代概念领域的分歧/接合点

在过去的几十年里，欧洲关于伊斯兰教的辩论越来越多地通过文化差异的镜头来构建。在这种话语氛围中，文化构成了欧洲穆斯林争取包容和承认的重要投资领域。本文基于欧洲穆斯林中两个不同的民族志研究项目，考察了两种不同类型的文化话语。一种采用伊斯兰教与文化的比喻，旨在将伊斯兰教与穆斯林社区中被认为存在的某些父权制实践脱节。另一种话语捍卫伊斯兰教与文化之间的内在和共生联系，特别是为了提升穆斯林社区内艺术实践的地位。为了弄清这些看似矛盾的地方，我通过追溯这些含义的各自谱系来探索我的对话者对文化概念的使用中包含的多价含义。这包括对文化概念历史的调查，这些历史由启蒙思想家、浪漫主义者和早期人类学家以及伊斯兰改革者和他们最近的继任者先后提出。我对这些概念历史的调查揭示了文化理论家对个人自由和能动性的更广泛关注，这进一步促成了关于现代性和落后的各种主张。当欧洲穆斯林创造性地将文化概念的各种表达融入他们的世界创造项目时，