Webinar “From Hidden Rooms to City Streets: Shia Rituals, Student Activism, and Public Space in Italy” by Minoo Mirshahvalad — Online, 4 March 2026
Wednesday, March 4, 2026,
12.00 pm, New York / 6.00 pm, Rome
NYU-ROMATRE PERMANENT GLOBAL SEMINAR
Minoo Mirshahvalad (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)
From Hidden Rooms to City Streets: Shia Rituals, Student Activism, and Public Space in Italy.
Respondent: Fabio Vicini (University of Verona, Italy)
This paper examines how Shia Muslims—particularly Iranian students—navigated and reshaped Italian urban spaces between the early 2010s and 2018, that is, immediately before and following the rise of ISIS and the intensification of security discourses around Islam in Europe. It explores how a marginal religious minority negotiates its right to urban presence through evolving practices of visibility, how students act as cultural mediators, and how Italian urban spaces both limit conventional forms of public religiosity, but also open space for creative and locally adapted modes of ritual expression.
Shia’s presence in the Italian urban fabric remains exceptionally discreet. Their places of worship are typically located in rented or improvised venues, such as warehouses, gyms, bars, school halls, or municipal rooms; none of which display external markers of religious identity due to legal and administrative restrictions. As a result, Shia religious life unfolds largely within hidden or “interiorized” urban micro-spaces that remain imperceptible to the wider public. Public visibility emerges only during the first two months of the Islamic calendar, when mourning rituals for Ashura and Arba’in briefly spill into Italian streets. In the early 2010s, these processes functioned as “public-private” events: highly expressive and emotionally charged, performed in non-European languages as if they had been planned for a private space. Thus, they were perceived as entirely culturally unfamiliar by passersby.
A significant shift occurred in 2014–2015, following the rise of ISIS and the intensification of security discourses around Islam in Europe. Iranian student associations responded by developing information campaigns designed to challenge what they saw as stigmatizing representations of Islam and to provide accessible explanations of Shia history and ritual. These campaigns–conducted in parks, squares, and along procession routes in Milan, Rome, and Turin– transformed Shia mourning from a closed communal performance into an outward-facing urban intervention. To make the ritual legible within the Italian urban environment, students gradually adjusted both its form and content, reducing elements deemed too unfamiliar and emphasizing perceived themes as locally relevant. (…)
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Chargé de diffusion scientifique (2 mars 2026). Webinar “From Hidden Rooms to City Streets: Shia Rituals, Student Activism, and Public Space in Italy” by Minoo Mirshahvalad — Online, 4 March 2026. IISMM. Consulté le 17 mai 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15sia
