... Will have an impact on two important fields of scholarship:
social movement theory and the study of Islamic activist movements. -- John
Voll, Georgetown University This volume represents the ...first
comprehensive attempt to incorporate the study of Islamic activism into social
movement theory. It argues that the dynamics, processes, and organization of Islamic
activism can be understood as important elements of contention that transcend the
specificity of Islam as a system of meaning and identity and a basis for
collective action. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the contributors show how social
movement theory can be utilized to address a wide range of questions about the
mobilization of contention in support of Muslim causes. The book covers myriad
examples of Islamic activism (Sunni and Shi'a) in eight countries (Arab and
non-Arab), including case studies of violence and contention, networks and
alliances, and culture and framing.
Compulsion in Religion relies on extensive research with Ba’thist archives to investigate the roots of the religious insurgencies that erupted in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003. The ...Iraqi archival records demonstrate that by the 1990s, Saddam’s regime had developed institutions to control and monitor Iraq’s religious landscape. The regime’s ability to do so provided it with confidence to launch a national “Faith Campaign” and to inject religion into Iraqi politics in a controlled manner. Islam played a greater role in the regime’s symbols and Saddam Hussein’s statements in the 1990s than it had in earlier decades. This increase in religious rhetoric did not represent a shift from secular-nationalist ideology to Islamism, however. The regime’s official policies toward religious leaders and institutions remained remarkably consistent throughout the Ba’thist period; Saddam spoke derisively about all forms of Islamist politics in Iraq throughout his presidency. He promoted a Ba’thist interpretation of religion that subordinated it to Arab nationalism rather than depicting the religion as an independent or primary political identity. Saddam did so explicitly to undermine Islamists and the revolutionary religious movements that would emerge after 2003. When the American-led invasion of 2003 destroyed the regime’s authoritarian structures, it unhinged the forces that these structures were designed to contain, creating an atmosphere infused with politically instrumentalized religion but lacking the checks provided by the former regime. Sadrists, al-Qaida, and eventually the Islamic State emerged out of this context to unleash the insurgencies that have plagued post-2003 Iraq.
The Ethical Soundscape Hirschkind, Charles
2006., 20061010, 2006, 2006-10-20, 20060101
eBook
Charles Hirschkind's unique study explores how a popular Islamic media form—the cassette sermon—has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades. An ...essential aspect of what is now called the Islamic Revival, the cassette sermon has become omnipresent in most Middle Eastern cities, punctuating the daily routines of many men and women. Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have been recalibrated to a modern political and technological order—to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call for citizen participation. Contrary to the belief that Islamic cassette sermons are a tool of militant indoctrination, Hirschkind argues that sermon tapes serve as an instrument of ethical self-improvement and as a vehicle for honing the sensibilities and affects of pious living. Focusing on Cairo's popular neighborhoods, Hirschkind highlights the pivotal role these tapes now play in an expanding arena of Islamic argumentation and debate—what he calls an "Islamic counterpublic." This emerging arena connects Islamic traditions of ethical discipline to practices of deliberation about the common good, the duties of Muslims as national citizens, and the challenges faced by diverse Muslim communities around the globe. The Ethical Soundscape is a brilliant analysis linking modern media practices of moral self-fashioning to the creation of increasingly powerful religious publics.
The prophet Muhammad and the early Islamic community radically redefined the concept of time that they had inherited from earlier religions' beliefs and practices. This new temporal system, based on ...a lunar calendar and era, was complex and required sophistication and accuracy. From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, it was the Muslim astronomers of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires who were responsible for the major advances in mathematics, astronomy and astrology. This fascinating study compares the Islamic concept of time, and its historical and cultural significance, across these three great empires. Each empire, while mindful of earlier models, created a new temporal system, fashioning a new solar calendar and era and a new round of rituals and ceremonies from the cultural resources at hand. This book contributes to our understanding of the Muslim temporal system and our appreciation of the influence of Islamic science on the Western world.
Can islam be french? Bowen, John R
2010., 20090908, 2009, 2009-09-08, 20090101, Volume:
43
eBook
Can Islam Be French? is an anthropological examination of how Muslims are responding to the conditions of life in France. Following up on his book Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, John Bowen ...turns his attention away from the perspectives of French non-Muslims to focus on those of the country's Muslims themselves. Bowen asks not the usual question--how well are Muslims integrating in France?--but, rather, how do French Muslims think about Islam? In particular, Bowen examines how French Muslims are fashioning new Islamic institutions and developing new ways of reasoning and teaching. He looks at some of the quite distinct ways in which mosques have connected with broader social and political forces, how Islamic educational entrepreneurs have fashioned niches for new forms of schooling, and how major Islamic public actors have set out a specifically French approach to religious norms. All of these efforts have provoked sharp responses in France and from overseas centers of Islamic scholarship, so Bowen also looks closely at debates over how--and how far--Muslims should adapt their religious traditions to these new social conditions. He argues that the particular ways in which Muslims have settled in France, and in which France governs religions, have created incentives for Muslims to develop new, pragmatic ways of thinking about religious issues in French society.
Drawing on previously unavailable archival material, this book argues that Indonesian nationalism rested on Islamic ecumenism heightened by colonial rule and the pilgrimage. The award winning author ...Laffan contrasts the latter experience with life in Cairo, where some Southeast Asians were drawn to both reformism and nationalism. After demonstrating the close linkage between Cairene ideology and Indonesian nationalism, Laffan shows how developments in the Middle East continued to play a role in shaping Islamic politics in colonial Indonesia.
In den letzten Jahrzehnten sind in Europa vermehrt Moschee-Neubauten entstanden. Lucia Stöcklis religionswissenschaftliche Studie geht der Geschichte der Etablierung der Moschee-Neubauten in England ...und der Schweiz nach und beleuchtet ihre Bedeutung für die Muslime.Anhand bestehender und in Planung befindlicher Bauprojekte arbeitet sie gemeinsame Strukturen sowie nationale Kontexte heraus und untersucht Themen wie die Entwicklung eines multifunktionalen Zentrums, die Rolle der Frau in den Moschee-Neubauten sowie den Stellenwert der Sichtbarkeit dieser Bauten für die Muslime.
Over time the Pakistani state has moved from accommodating the Ahmadiyya community as full citizens of the state to forcibly declaring them non-Muslim and eventually criminalizing them for their ...religious beliefs. Politics of Desecularization deploys the 'Ahmadi question' to theorize a core feature of modern public Islam - its contested and unsettled relationship with the nation-state form. It posits that our current understandings of modern religious change have been shaped by a highly limited number of national cases in which states have been successful at arriving at stable ideologies about religion. Pakistan, however, epitomizes polities that are undergoing protracted political and cultural struggles over religion's proper place in the state. The book's gripping account shows that these struggles are carried out in social sites as diverse as courts, legislative assemblies, and newspapers. The result in Pakistan has been the emergence of a trajectory of desecularization characterized by official religious nationalism.
Alone among Muslim countries, Morocco is known for its own national form of Islam, "Moroccan Islam." However, this pathbreaking study reveals that Moroccan Islam was actually invented in the early ...twentieth century by French ethnographers and colonial officers who were influenced by British colonial practices in India. Between 1900 and 1920, these researchers compiled a social inventory of Morocco that in turn led to the emergence of a new object of study, Moroccan Islam, and a new field, Moroccan studies. In the process, they resurrected the monarchy and reinvented Morocco as a modern polity. This is an important contribution for scholars and readers interested in questions of orientalism and empire, colonialism and modernity, and the invention of traditions.
