In this talk, Martin Eidrup will explore the history of legislation on Muslim family relations in Sweden through a number of Public Reports published from the 1950s. He will trace this history using a five-part typology based on the concept of juridification, which Jürgen Habermas described as the tendency of the modern state to expand its laws to cover social relations. The reports can be considered a trajectory from rights-based inclusion, through definition, to problematization and regulation. Because juridification is inherently ambivalent, this trajectory also reflects tensions between freedom of religion and regulation of religious minorities in contemporary Europe.
Martin Eidrup (BA, LLM) is a PhD student in religious studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where he focuses on how Muslims in Sweden navigate between state law and religious norms. Before beginning his PhD project, Martin worked in several sectors of civil service, including war crimes investigation and crisis management, in Sweden and across the Middle East.