Breathing Hearts in Suffocating Times: Sufi healing practices and anti-Muslim racism in Germany
In this online seminar, Nasima Selim will discuss her book ‘Breathing Hearts in Suffocating Times’.
Date: 31 / 03 / 2025 Digital Lecture: 15.00 – 16.30 CET
Sufism is known as the mystical dimension of Islam. ‘Breathing Hearts’ explores this definition to find out what it means to ‘breathe well’ along the Sufi path in the context of anti-Muslim racism. ‘Breathing Hearts in Suffocating Times’ is the first book-length ethnographic account of Sufi practices and politics in Berlin and describes how Sufi practices are mobilized in healing secular and religious suffering.
The book tracks the Desire Lines of multi-ethnic immigrants of color, and white German interlocutors to show how Sufi practices complicate the post secular imagination of healing in Germany.
Nasima Selim is a Postdoctoral Research Associate of Anthropology at the University of Bayreuth. Nasima’s work intersects medical anthropology, global health, public anthropology, and anthropology of Islam across Western Europe and South Asia. She is a breathworker, educator, researcher, and writer.
