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Photo of Torsten Janson

Torsten Janson

Researcher

Photo of Torsten Janson

"A Halal Happy Ever After" : Envisioning Muslim Futures in Islamically Minded Children's Literature

Author

  • Torsten Janson

Summary, in English

What future aspirations have informed the incentives for producing children's literature in Muslim minority communities? What social dynamics and theological debates have accompanied its visions of Islamic futures? What narrative tropes, visual-aesthetics norms and literary genres has it appropriated, while maturing into an innovative religious-pedagogic-literary expression? Probing such questions, this article challenges distinctions between "Islamic"and "secular"to build a concept of Islamically minded children's literature. It follows the diversification of the literature as a globalised child cultural format, emulating genres such as picture books, fairy tales, detective stories, romantic fiction, autobiographies, handbooks, graphic novels and comics. As cultural texts, Islamically minded children's literature has developed through increasingly confident, open-ended and dialogic literary negotiations of the socio-cultural complexities of Muslim minority life vis-à-vis the formative pasts of sacred history, theology and textual canons - all under the pedagogical sway of envisioning Islam and Muslim futures, in minority communities and beyond.

Department/s

  • Centre for Theology and Religious Studies
  • Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
  • MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
  • History of Religions and Religious Behavioural Science

Publishing year

2024

Language

English

Pages

301-321

Publication/Series

Journal of Muslims in Europe

Volume

13

Issue

3

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Brill

Topic

  • Studies of Specific Literatures (including Literature from specific Language areas)

Keywords

  • child culture
  • children's literature
  • cultural texts
  • future
  • Islam
  • Islamic education
  • Islamic image norms
  • Muslim minority

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2211-7954