Digital quranic practices among multilingual youth in Denmark

This paper presentation focuses on digital quranic practices among multilingual youth in Denmark. The empirical point of departure is an exploratory group interview with four young people to whom the quran is potentially at hand 24/7 through various religious apps on their smartphones or tablets. The youth are 14-15 years old and are in a Year 8 class in a lower secondary school in a large Danish province city. The class is one of five classes participating in Signs of language, a longitudinal study of multilingual children’s language and literacy practices through primary and lower secondary school (cf. Laursen et al 2018). The young people different linguistic and cultural backgrounds (Somali and Afghan) and various levels of Arabic literacy competences and may be described as ‘religious heritage learners’ of Arabic (cf. Temples 2013). All four consider themselves practicing Muslims, and quranic religious apps play a central role in their everyday life.
The paper presentation describes the different functions that the quranic apps take up in the young people’s everyday lives. This includes the youth’s criteria for selection of quranic apps, their understandings of what constitutes a good quranic app, and their preferences and strategies for use of the apps and for interaction with the quranic text. Some prefer to listen, while others read or recite; some prefer the original classical Arabic text, while others value translation to English or Danish. For some, the use of the apps are largely an individual enterprise, while for others, it is a social practice shared with friends, siblings or parents.
The paper presentation aims to shed light on a sparsely investigated set of language and literacy practices. Digital quranic practices have so far received little scientific attention in a Danish context and often go unnoticed in the public sphere as well as in the educational system. However, they constitute an integral part of the linguistic repertoires of many young people with a Muslim background and therefore have great importance for our understanding of everyday lives of Muslim children and youth today.