Sufism and Insurgency: Religiosity and Cosmopolitanism in Schwarze Jungfrauen by Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel

Abstract

After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Islam is increasingly being viewed as the Other of an enlightened and tolerant Germany. Turkish-German author Feridun Zaimoglu and his co-writer Günter Senkel destabilize these Western assumptions in the play Schwarze Jungfrauen (2006), in which performed monologues from the perspective of Muslim women evoke both fundamentalist and mystical (Sufi) manifestations of Islam. The play challenges contemporary cosmopolitan theory's engagement with religion, implying that its insistence upon the rational individual's exercise of free will is actually conducive to fundamentalism. Instead, Schwarze Jungfrauen suggests, corresponding with Jean-Luc Nancy's philosophy, that any hope of stemming religious fundamentalism rests not in the perpetuation of immanent identities and universalizing ideologies, but rather in notions of religiosity and community beyond representation. Thus, rather than acting as a barrier to cosmopolitan solidarities, Islam, in the form of Sufism, in fact provides inspiration for a non-identitarian religiosity that would avoid religion-based conflict.