Mystical Islam and Cosmopolitanism in Contemporary German Literature: Openness to Alterity

At a time when the place of Muslims in German society is being disputed, this book explores how four contemporary German writers of Muslim backgrounds-Zafer Senocak, SAID, Feridun Zaimoglu, and Navid Kermani-point beyond identity politics and suggest new ways of thinking about religion and community. Twist highlights both the spirituality and the cosmopolitanism of these authors, bringing their thought into dialogue with the work of Jean-Luc Nancy. Nancy is critical of communities based on a single guiding principle (be it God or Reason) and thus involving a universalizing core that leads to conflicts between identity groups. He proposes alternative notions of both religious faith (a post-monotheistic version with elements of mysticism) and community (spontaneous communities requiring no shared identity). Twist relates these arguments to post-9/11 debates over cosmopolitanism and religion, illuminating how the writers under study draw upon mystical Islam’s deconstructive potential, finding divine insight in love, sex, music, pain and beauty. Such a worldly and affective spirituality dispels associations between Islam and sexual conservatism while rejecting monotheistic ideology. Thus, unlike the homogenizing drive of universalist cosmopolitanism, these writers’ non-foundational conceptualizations undermine the twenty-first century’s clash-of-civilizations narrative and open up space for new ways of coexisting. Joseph Twist holds a PhD from the University of Manchester and teaches in the German Departments of the National University of Ireland, Galway, and the University of Limerick.