Somali women and daily Islam in the diaspora

Somali asylum seekers started migrating to Finland in 1990. Today, the number of Somalis, Finland's largest Muslim group, is around 7000. The author examines immigrant Somali women as religious agents, who in an active way follow Islam in their daily life and construct their identities as Muslims. Islam features as a practical and moral guideline, which helps Somalis to manage in a new religious and cultural environment, but which may also heal the sufferings of the civil war. In the diaspora, Somali women have started to actively redefine the essence of their religion. As is shown in what follows, possession cults known in Somalia are often rejected as non-Islamic. The article is based on ethnography carried out around metropolitan Helsinki.