Remembering Karbala in the diaspora: religious rituals among Iraqi Shii women in Ireland

Memory studies have gained much popularity in the humanities and social sciences since the 1980s. Particularly after the seminal work of Danièle Hervieu-Léger on ‘religion as a chain of memory’, discussions arose around how theories of memory can be applied in the Study of Religions. Few scholars, however, have discussed the intersection between religion, particularly Islam, and memory. In this article, the focus lies on Shii Muslim communities in Ireland, for whom remembering constitutes an important part of their identity and legitimises their particular sectarian existence within Islam in general. This article discusses Iraqi Shii women's engagement in ‘collective remembering’ (Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989; J.V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) expressed through constantly performed religious rituals and practices.