The colonial encounter between France and Morocco took place not only in the political realm but also in the realm of medicine. Because the body politic and the physical body are intimately linked, ...French efforts to colonize Morocco took place in and through the body. Starting from this original premise,Medicine and the Saintstraces a history of colonial embodiment in Morocco through a series of medical encounters between the Islamic sultanate of Morocco and the Republic of France from 1877 to 1956.
Drawing on a wealth of primary sources in both French and Arabic, Ellen Amster investigates the positivist ambitions of French colonial doctors, sociologists, philologists, and historians; the social history of the encounters and transformations occasioned by French medical interventions; and the ways in which Moroccan nationalists ultimately appropriated a French model of modernity to invent the independent nation-state. Each chapter of the book addresses a different problem in the history of medicine: international espionage and a doctor's murder; disease and revolt in Moroccan cities; a battle for authority between doctors and Muslim midwives; and the search for national identity in the welfare state. This research reveals how Moroccans ingested and digested French science and used it to create a nationalist movement and Islamist politics, and to understand disease and health. In the colonial encounter, the Muslim body became a seat of subjectivity, the place from which individuals contested and redefined the political.
With more than half its population under twenty years old, Iran is one of the world's most youthful nations. The Iranian state characterizes its youth population in two ways: as a homogeneous mass, ..."an army of twenty millions" devoted to the Revolution, and as alienated, inauthentic, Westernized consumers who constitute a threat to the society. Much of the focus of the Islamic regime has been on ways to protect Iranian young people from moral hazards and to prevent them from providing a gateway for cultural invasion from the West. Iranian authorities express their anxieties through campaigns that target the young generation and its lifestyle and have led to the criminalization of many of the behaviors that make up youth culture. In this ethnography of contemporary youth culture in Iran's capital, Shahram Khosravi examines how young Tehranis struggle for identity in the battle over the right to self-expression. Khosravi looks closely at the strictures confronting Iranian youth and the ways transnational cultural influences penetrate and flourish. Focusing on gathering places such as shopping centers and coffee shops, Khosravi examines the practices of everyday life through which young Tehranis demonstrate defiance against the official culture and parental dominance. In addition to being sites of opposition, Khosravi argues, these alternative spaces serve as creative centers for expression and, above all, imagination. His analysis reveals the transformative power these spaces have and how they enable young Iranians to develop their own culture as well as individual and generational identities. The text is enriched by examples from literature and cinema and by livid reports from the author's fieldwork.
"Islam exists in global history with its richly variegated cultural and social realities. When these specific cultural contexts are marginalized, Islam is reduced to an ahistorical religion without ...the ability to contribute to humanity. This limited understanding of Islam has been a contributing factor in many of the violent conflicts in the present day. Reflecting on Islam in Indonesia, the world’s third largest democracy, supporting the largest Muslim population, Ahmad Syafii Maarif argues for an understanding that is both faithful to Islam’s essential teachings and open to constantly changing social and cultural contexts. Building on this, he then addresses critical contemporary issues such as democracy, human rights, religious freedom, the status of women, and the future of Islam. Through this book the breadth and depth of the ideas of one of Indonesia’s foremost Muslim scholars are made accessible for English language readership."
The subtitle of the book under review suggests that it deals with modern relationships between Hindus and Muslims in India, but the scope of the book is actually much wider. It deals with the general ...question of the various Muslim views of the relationship between Muslims and adherents of other civilizations and religions, ranging from the 9th century al-ʿĀmirī and the 11th century al-Bīrūnī, to the 18th century Mirzā Maẓhar Jān-i Jānān and thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries, including such luminaries as Abū al-Kalām Āzād, Aḥmad Riźā Khān, Sayyid Aḥmad Khān and several Deobandī scholars. One of the great virtues of the book is the author’s use of the sources, some of them rarely mentioned in scholarly literature and certainly not to this extent and in such detail. In an academic culture in which various “narratives” have taken the pride of place, it is most welcome to have a work which is replete with theory, but also surveys and analyzes a substantial amount of hitherto unknown source material. The book is also another proof of the great variety of Muslim tradition which enables Muslim scholars to find Islamic justification for their modern world views and policies, even if these are contradictory to each other. Because of its rich content – much of it unknown – the book deserves a detailed review.
Expressing Islam Institute of Southeast Asian Studies; Fealy, Greg; White, Sally
08/2008
eBook
As the forces of globalisation and modernisation buffet Islam and other world religions, Indonesia's 200 million Muslims are expressing their faith in ever more complex ways. Celebrity television ...preachers, internet fatwa services, mass religious rallies in soccer stadiums, glossy jihadist magazines, Islamic medical treatments, alms giving via mobile phone and electronic sharia banking services are just some of the manifestations of a more consumer-oriented approach to Islam which interact with and sometimes replace other, more traditional expressions of the faith.
This book examines some of the myriad ways in which Islam is being expressed in contemporary Indonesian life and politics. Authored by leading authorities on Indonesian Islam, it gives fascinating insights into such topics as the marketisation of Islam, contemporary pilgrimage, the rise of mass preachers, gender and Islamic politics, online fatwa, current trends among Islamist vigilante and criminal groups, and recent developments in Islamic banking and microfinance.
Zachary Lockman's book offers a broad survey of the development of Western knowledge about Islam and the Middle East. Beginning with ancient Greek and Roman conceptions of the world, the book goes on ...to discuss European ideas about Islam from its emergence in the seventh century, with particular attention to the age of European imperialism, the era of deepening American involvement in this region, and the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Along the way, Lockman explores how scholars and others in the West have studied and depicted Islam and the Middle East, focusing on the politics and controversies that have shaped Middle East studies in the United States over the past half century, including the debates over Said's influential critique, Orientalism. This book relates many of today's critical issues, including Muslim extremism, terrorism and United States policy in the Middle East, to the broader historical and political contexts.
"Once celebrated in the Western media as a shining example of a 'liberal' and 'tolerant' Islam, Indonesia since the end of the Soeharto regime (May 1998) has witnessed a variety of developments that ...bespeak a conservative turn in the country’s Muslim politics. In this timely collection of original essays, Martin van Bruinessen, our most distinguished senior Western scholar of Indonesian Islam, and four leading Indonesian Muslim scholars explore and explain these developments. Each chapter examines recent trends from a strategic institutional perch: the Council of Indonesian Muslim scholars, the reformist Muhammadiyah, South Sulawesi's Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Shari'a, and radical Islamism in Solo. With van Bruinessen's brilliantly synthetic introduction and conclusion, these essays shed a bright light on what Indonesian Muslim politics was and where it seems to be going. The analysis is complex and by no means uniformly dire. For readers interested in Indonesian Muslim politics, and for analysts interested in the dialectical interplay of progressive and conservative Islam, this book is fascinating and essential reading."
—Robert Hefner, Director, Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University
"Indonesian Islam has been (and still is) largely known as Islam with 'smiling faces'. But in the last decade at least, drawing benefit from the democratic opening up, some figures and groups introduced radical Islamic ideas and praxis that have transnational origins that in turn could affect the future of Indonesian Islam. This book is an excellent anthology of this disturbing development brought about by the so-called 'conservative turn' within certain elements of moderate Islam in the largest Muslim country in the world. There is no doubt that this book contributes a great deal to a better grasp of some recent development to watch in Indonesian Islam."
—Azyumardi Azra, Professor of History, Director of Graduate School, State Islamic University, Jakarta, Indonesia
"Over the course of the past decade, journalists and other observers have noted a 'conservative turn' in Indonesian Islam, but without seriously investigating or explaining the nature and extent of the transformation(s) under way. With the publication of this excellent new volume, Martin van Bruinessen and his collaborators have now provided a fine-grained account of the complex and diverse manifestations of this 'conservative turn', with in-depth treatments of developments and trends across a range of different arenas and institutions - and regions - of Indonesian Islam. Van Bruinessen has always been a pioneering figure in the study of Islam in Indonesia, and with this volume he once again brings unparalleled insight and illumination to our understanding of Islamic life in the archipelago. This is a must-read book for anyone interested in Indonesian politics and society today."
—John Sidel, Professor of International and Comparative Politics, London School of Economics and Political Science
This book deals with certain "hot-button" contemporary issues in Islam, including the Shari'a, jihad, the caliphate, women's status, and interfaith relations. Notably, it places the discussion of ...these topics within a longer historical framework in ord.
Le Conseil constitutionnel français a approuvé en août 2021, avec des modifications mineures, la « loi confortant le respect des principes de la République ». Ce dispositif juridique fait suite aux ...discours du président Emmanuel Macron en 2020, au cours desquels il a présenté son plan de lutte contre le « séparatisme islamiste ». Parmi les mesures annoncées : imposer la neutralité des organisations qui collaborent avec les services publics, permettre au gouvernement d'exercer un contrôle accru sur les associations, mosquées et organisations caritatives musulmanes, exiger une autorisation pour l'enseignement à domicile, limiter la liberté d'expression en ligne, proscrire les « certificats de virginité » ou encore renforcer la lutte contre la polygamie. Pour les défenseurs des libertés fondamentales, la lutte contre le séparatisme illustre la gestion de « l'islam », par le gouvernement français, comme un « problème public » qui menacerait la sécurité et l'unité nationale. Cet article propose de souligner de quelles manières cette loi porte de multiples atteintes aux libertés politiques, associatives, religieuses, d'entreprendre et d'expression des populations musulmanes en France, sous couvert de la défense de la laïcité et de l'égalité hommes/femmes.
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