Reconstructing the past in a post-Ottoman village: Turkishness in a transnational context

This study analyzes transformations of historiography and identity discourses by focusing on the Memory House of Ali R?za Efendi (the father of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) as a “site of historical consciousness” which was reconstructed in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia. The House, referred to by the villagers as the “Memory House of Atatürk,” was opened in 2014 in a Muslim village, Kocac?k, with the support of the Turkish state. Through material and textual representations of Atatürk’s life, the House speaks to the Turkishness and Turkish presence in the Balkans. The Turkishness, however, is imagined through the neo-Ottoman and Islamic prisms. The House thus becomes the locus of alternative interpretations of the past, and, consequently, narratives of Muslims’ identity and origin in the region. Moreover, as it is reconstructed at the nexus of the local and the transnational, the House is also called a symbol of the “politics of brotherhood” between Macedonia and Turkey. In this way, the institution embodies the reconstruction of the past not only at the local and national levels, but also at the international level.     

Établissements d’enseignement et de santé confessionnels,espace public et agency à Ouagadougou (1987–2010)

Abstract

In response to the significant urbanisation and the demographic expansion of Ouagadougou, the Catholic Church and Islamic associations are diversifying their operations, which were already significant in terms of health and education at the end of the 1980s. This social engagement is at the heart of humanitarian, proselytising, socio-economic and political challenges and influences the position of these actors in the public space. This article intends to contribute to consideration of the relations between these religious actors and the State in Burkina Faso with the aim of analysing the sectors of secondary teaching and health in Ouagadougou. It will be demonstrated that the operations of these actors (Muslim and Catholic) made their legitimacy evolve differently in the public space from 1987 to 2010. The Catholic actors have had a greater influence than the Muslims on the decisions of the State. Subsequent to the challenges and the political context, the capacity of agency (capacity to act) of the actors of the two denominations has modified.     

Ummah or tribe? Islamic practice,political ethnocentrism,and political attitudes in Indonesia

Existing research has uncovered a link between religious practice and political ethnocentrism. Religious individuals are relatively inclined to both support policies that benefit their own ethnic group and support political competitors seeking to represent them. These findings are broadly consistent with a large body of literature that examines the relationship between religion and ethnic prejudice. To date, empirical research has concentrated overwhelmingly on Western, Christian contexts. There is, however, reason to believe that Islamic practice may produce more universalistic beliefs and attitudes. This paper examines the relationship between religious participation and political ethnocentrism in Indonesia, this world’s largest Muslim-majority country. Using survey data collected during the lead-up to the 2009 national elections, this paper examines the relationship between religious practice and expressed preference for co-ethnic political leadership. It finds that a respondent’s self-reported level of religious activity strongly correlates with stated preference for co-ethnic leadership. These findings bolster confidence that the relationship between religious participation and ethnocentrism holds beyond Western Christian contexts. For Indonesia, deepening Islamic practice could thus predict a rise in ethnocentrism, threatening the country’s reputation for tolerance.     

Transforming Islam among Roma communities in the Balkans: a case of popular religiosity

In recent decades, numerous popular shrines devoted to saints have emerged in Romani settlements, usually in urban areas. At first sight, these shrines and the veneration of saints are reminiscent of the cult of saints and tombs common in regional Muslim traditions and beyond, and possess particular local features. A detailed analysis of this local case shows new meanings and forms the “wider” tradition gains under new conditions. This paper explores the way the regional Muslim tradition of worshiping holy sites is localized and elaborated within popular religious practice of certain Romani communities in the Balkans. Specifically, it focuses on the contestation of the issues of authenticity and marginality of this vernacular practice in order to reveal the peculiarity of images and meanings Islam gains at the intra-confessional level in a quite heterogeneous social and cultural environment. The material discussed in this paper was collected during ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2014 in Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo.     

Grasping the Syrian War,a view from Albanians in the Balkans

Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe’s Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.     

Contextualized violence: politics and terror in Dagestan

Despite the escalating terrorist actions, there is no polarized constellation in the Islamic politics of Dagestan. Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) officers regard the corrupt Dagestan authorities to be significantly responsible for the massive conversion of youths to terrorism, and began to contact with moderate Salafis to isolate the “forest brothers” (armed Salafis) in 2010. Exploiting the FSB's soft strategy, secular intellectuals requested to reform the Muslim Spiritual Board of Dagestan by electing a legitimate mufti. Having seen the incompetence of intra-Sufi opposition (non-Avar sheikhs) in the War on Terror, the Spiritual Board jumped on the bandwagon of dialog strategy in 2012. The secular authorities of Dagestan, indifferent to intra-Muslim politics, limit their activities to the call for dialog between the secular authorities and the forest brothers. In this way, political actors hijack the master narrative of the “War on Terror” and these narratives are imported to local politics.     

Refugees,Islam, and the State: The Role of Religion in Providing Sanctuary in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Malaysia has a mixed track record in providing Muslims with refuge, yet it increasingly lays claim to being an Islamic country. This article charts a history of the refugee engagement Malaysia has had based mainly on a shared regional and/or shared religious affiliation (Sunni Islam). I argue that the recent Malaysian history of refugee treatment presents a case for Muslim solidarity, but one tempered by a prevalent racism in Malaysia against people from the Indian subcontinent. Nonetheless, Islam provides an alternative history for providing protection to people in need. The UNHCR has pursued this approach in Muslim majority countries that are not signatories to the refugee convention in the hope of carving out a complementary protection space based on Islamic law and practice. This article traces these attempts and situates them within the Malaysian sociopolitical terrain, drawing out the possibilities and limits to such an approach.     

The Philosophy of the Revolution: Thoughts on Modernizing Islamic Schools in Ghana

This article examines the historical distaste for secular education within the Muslim communities of Ghana and the growing enthusiasm of Ghana’s Ministry of Education in transforming Qur’anic schools to integrate secular subjects. The popularity of the Qur’anic schools has remained as places—either under trees, at courtyards, or at street corners—where pupils simply recited the Qur’an, relevant only because it is fundamentally religious. The article argues that the contemporary philosophical foundations of Islamic education ought to be based upon the provision of Islamic learning that ensures not only taqwa or the fear of Allah but also renders students’ faith unshakeable for the modernization efforts of incorporating technical and scientific learning at the Qur’anic schools to become acceptable. The article concludes that the recent structural and pedagogical changes taking place at the Makaranta or recitation schools go beyond philosophical reconciliations to harnessing the combined benefits of Islamic and secular education for the good of the nation.     

Culturalism and the rise of the Islamic State: faith,sectarianism and violence

This paper looks at the ways in which culturalist discourses have influenced our understanding and representation of the rise of the so-called Islamic State. It argues that, in keeping with older narratives on the motives of ‘bad’ Muslims, its political and economic objectives have been overlooked and/or downplayed. Instead, I propose, there has been a strategically efficacious focus on its appeal to Islam, on its sectarian rhetoric and on its use of violence. By continuing to emphasise the ethical over the political in these ways, the culturalism that underpins the dominant representation of the Islamic State’s emergence has, I conclude, served three key purposes – the mobilisation of the ‘good’ Muslim, the exculpation of Western foreign policy and the legitimisation of force.     

Islam,médias,mise en place du Sénat et article 37 de la Constitution: changement de paradigme au Burkina Faso (1991–2014)?

Abstract

In the context of socio-political liberalisation, which has been happening since 1991, together with the competition between the different religions in the public arena in Burkina Faso, the visibility of Islam has increased considerably with the creation of Islamic media and the growing use of the Internet. This article examines the impact of the growing mediatisation of Islam on the agency and the content of the discourse of Muslim elites in Burkina Faso. This has led to the emergence of new, very mediatised religious figures who have gained authority in the public arena. However, the multiplication of the Islamic message is not accompanied by greater politicisation. Their agency resides rather in their relative capacity to invest in the public arena to defend their vision of society governed by Islamic moral norms. The debate surrounding the introduction of the Senate and the revision of Article 37 of the Constitution between 2011 and 2014 has shown the lacklustre agency of the Muslim leaders.     

Religious change in a minority context: transforming Islam in Sri Lanka

Scholarly work exists on how Muslim minority positioning affects identity and politics, but what is less known is its impact on religion. Sri Lanka’s 9% Muslim population, the country’s second largest minority, has undergone a series of recent changes to religious identity, thinking and practice, which have been shaped by its relationship to the dominant and warring ‘ethnic others’. As Sri Lanka plunged deeper into armed conflict in the 1990s, Muslims experienced significant shifts in religious thinking and practice, identifying strictly with a more ‘authentic’ Islam. After the war ended in 2009, Muslims became the target of majoritarian Sinhala-Buddhist violence, resulting in a reinterpretation of Islam and a counter process of change. Using the Sri Lankan Muslim case study to engage with scholarly critiques of majority–minority binaries, this article analyses how religious change is brought about through the interjection of minority status with ethno-nationalisms and conflict. Its focus on Islam in Sri Lanka contributes to area studies and to Islamic studies, the latter through a rare analysis of Islamic reform in a Muslim minority context.     

Regulating religious authority for political gains: al-Sisi’s manipulation of al-Azhar in Egypt

The shedding of blood is a serious matter in Islamic law; disregard for human life negates the very essence of just rule. By standing by General al-Sisi as he suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood, the popular legitimacy of al-Azhar – the oldest seat of Islamic learning – was called into question. This article shows how the al-Sisi government skilfully deployed the two other state-controlled religious establishments, the Ministry of Awqaf (Religious Endowments) and Dar-ul-Ifta, to boost al-Azhar’s popular legitimacy in this context. Existing scholarship highlights the importance of competition within the Egyptian religious sphere to explain how the Egyptian state co-opts the al-Azhari official establishment. This article instead shows how the state, equally skilfully, uses state institutions to boost al-Azhar’s popular legitimacy – albeit to ensure that it remains useful for the purposes of political legitimisation. Political authority and religious authority in Egypt thus remain closely entangled.     

Fear of Islam in Greece: migration,terrorism, and “ghosts” from the past

The article explores the “fear of Islam” through a specific series of political debates about Islam and the future of the Greek-Orthodox national identity. The analysis is based on the method of qualitative content analysis, which makes use of thematic categories and draws on the proceedings of the Greek parliament. The main questions the article will try to address are: How have Greek political parties reacted to public demand for the construction of a mosque? What have been the rhetorical tropes they use? How have they capitalized on current and old fears about Islam? What have been the implications of this discourse on state policies toward Islam? Have there been any differences in this discourse over time? The analysis highlights the role of historical interpretations of Greek national identity and contemporary problems related to new waves of migration due to Greece’s place on the border with Turkey and with the broader Islamic world.     

Negotiating meaning through costume and social media in Bulgarian Muslims' communities of practice

This paper shows how contemporary believers are negotiating a new identity of Islamic piety in Bulgarian Muslim communities. Driven by communal memory of repression and contemporary Islamophobia, Bulgarian Muslims have created communities of practice (Wenger 1998 Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]), participatory groups that share a common interest in learning more about their faith. Communities function on multiple levels: there are small pockets of Islamic activity at the local level, and at a broader level, an imagined community of Bulgarian-speaking Muslims connected to an imagined global Islamic community, the ummah. The practices examined here include face-to-face activities, such as learning to read the Qur’an and prayers in Arabic, learning Islamic principles and practice, and talking about faith in mosques and homes in Bulgaria. This paper also examines virtual practices, such as discussing faith on social media. The article focuses on women’s and girls’ Qur’an reading groups and discussions about wearing hijab, and it examines an online mixed-gender discussion of daily prayers. Such grassroots practice of Islam fosters a newly articulate and participatory version of religion, embracing and encouraging believers’ literacy and knowledge, activism, and agency. The mutual goals, repertoires, and activities of this community of practice create a sense of commonality and cohesiveness, while leaving room for some diversity of focus.     

Religious Basis for Islamic Terrorism: The Quran and Its Interpretations

Extreme religious interpretations of the Quran and the movement of Islamic Revivalism influence the emergence and progression of violent Jihad in contemporary times. Islamic “terrorists” are able to legitimize their movement as an act of violent Jihad permitted by the Quran essentially because of religious sanctions that permit the use of violence as an act of defense and to preserve the will of God in Islamic communities. The Quran systematizes this use and relates it to other aspects of the Shariat through its discourse on revivalism. Based on the Quranic principle of ijtihad, terrorists emphasize the Quran's tenets on violence and revivalism in their religious interpretations and present it as a legitimate premise for the use of excessive aggression. According to ijtihad Muslims can interpret and determine the extent of their Islamic practices individually as long as these are directed toward ensuring the will of God in an Islamic community. Thus terrorists use ijtihad to emphasize Quranic clauses that sanction the use of violent Jihad as a method ordained by God to preserve the Shariat in an Islamic community. The manner in which terrorists use ijtihad to contextualize geopolitical factors as a cause for violent Jihad is determined by their extreme interpretations of the Quran. These interpretations also determine the extent of violence used in a Jihad for religious amelioration. The religious legitimacy of this violence prevails until the cause and course of violent Jihad correlates with the Quran's discourse on violence and revivalism. In contemporary times an extreme interpretation of the movement of Revivalism ¹ 1. Refers to the contemporary movement of Islamic Revivalism. that is inspired by “revivalism” also provides an organized premise for Islamic terrorism. When implemented, this causes variations within specific geopolitical conditions and in different Jihadi groups. However a common understanding of religious doctrines determines the extent of Revivalism in Islamic communities because this movement relies heavily on the Quranic discourse for its existence. Thus, the religious basis for Islamic terrorism is primarily found when extreme interpretations of the Quran's tenets on violence and revivalism are directed toward obtaining an equally radical version of Revivalism in specific geopolitical conditions. In this manner, extreme Quranic and Revivalist interpretations ensure the ideological persistence of Islamic terrorism as a religious effort to preserve the will of God in an Islamic community. The aim of this article is to show the manner in which religion can cause the emergence of Islamic violence as it is known today. The discourse on Islamic violence and counterterrorism needs to be urgently studied given the numerous instances of violent Jihad in contemporary times. Many writings on Islamic violence and statements released after an act of Islamic violence allude to the impact of religion on violent Jihad, but they rarely explore it or present a premise for its existence. This exploration will be conducted based on research of the author's on the Kashmir crisis and the insurgency in it. Thus, examples from insurgency in Kashmir will be used on occasion to illustratively develop this argument. In his book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington states that a theory must be causal and simple. Using the words of Thomas Kuhn, he explains that “to be accepted as a paradigm [it] must seem better than its competitors but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted.” ² 2. Samuel Huntington, Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1996), p. 30. Furthering such simplicity and exploration, will be the central effort of this discourse. The sources for this exploration will be mainly derived from theoretical and practical understandings of terrorism, Islamic religion and theology, and the movement of Islamic Revivalism. A comparison between Islam and other religions will not be presented when evaluating the impact of Islam on violent Jihad. It will essentially present religious premises for violent Jihad from a Muslim rather than non-Muslim or “Western” perspective; although it is accepted that parallels in the understanding of “violence” do exist in the Muslim and non-Muslim world. Non-Muslim perspectives on violence and terrorism are relevant and known to the author. However a perpetual emphasis on these factors or a failure to acknowledge them limits the scope of the study of Islamic terrorism itself. The aim will be to present an Islamic perspective on violent Jihad. Then, it is accepted that a complex interplay between religious understandings and geopolitical events influence the emergence of Islamic violence in contemporary times. Thereafter, it must be stated that extreme psychological and sociological factors intrinsic to the Jihadis influence the religious choices that cause violent Jihad. An analysis of these factors is outside the realm of this discourse, which remains political in its scope. Further, on occasion a lack of empirical data and non-circumstantial evidence is encountered to substantiate some contentions mentioned ahead. As it has been suggested previously ³ 3. Nancy C. Biggo, The Rationality of the Use of Terrorism by Secular and Religious Groups available at (http://www.dissertations.com), 2002. this is mainly because there is a dearth of such data and reliable evidence pertaining to religious terrorism. At certain points, it becomes difficult to validate external opinions mainly because of the right to individual interpretations vested by the Quran in all Muslims. The validity of these opinions is vested in the fact that they are taken from informed Muslims who practice moderate and radical interpretations of Islam. Any reader may be expected to believe that any kind of terrorism is unjustifiable. However, in order to address these movements effectively, they must be studied from all possible dimensions and especially from the cultural contexts from which they arise.     

Anatomy of creeping authoritarianism in Bangladesh: a historical analysis of some events that shaped the present state of Bangladesh’s culture and politics

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a critical analysis of creeping authoritarianism in Bangladesh’s culture and politics. Political events since the 1940s that have shaped the presently unstable state of Bangladesh’s society are interpreted specifically in terms of their cultural and political significance. One important aspect of this unstable political state is the ongoing search for Bangladeshi national identity. Accordingly, the paper seeks to answer the questions of why and how the present sociocultural and political divisions in Bangladesh have emerged from the fundamental debate over whether (1) Bengali ethnicity, language, culture, and secularism, (2) Muslim nationalism or (3) a combination of both should become the marker of Bangladesh’s national identity to secure social and political stability. Furthermore, recent social, religious and political developments across the Muslim world suggest that attempts to introduce ultra-secularism in some Muslim-majority countries since the 1950s have led to authoritarianism, a movement which has ultimately ended or will soon end through popular Islamic upsurges. Bangladesh seems to be moving toward such social and political change, as the people have become restless in their desire to remove creeping authoritarian, the mark of a repressive regime that has emerged since the early 1970s. The key lesson that can be drawn from the extant literature on this issue in the context of Bangladesh is that the extreme form of secularism or ultra-secularism, which the present ruling Awami League and its left-communist allies continue to advance and impose from above, is neither desirable nor acceptable to Bangladeshi Muslims whilst there is clear movement away from ultra-secularism by other Muslim-majority countries. This paper draws the conclusion that since neither assertive secularism nor theocratic Islamism can flourish in Bangladesh, a competitive democratic political order that accommodates aspects of both secularism and Islamic ethical-moral codes could be a feasible model for the achievement of social, cultural and political stability that is so fundamental to the promotion of steady economic growth and social justice.     

The Identity of Turkey: Muslim and secular

Abstract

This article analyses the rise of political Islam in Turkey in the context of the akp's tenure in power with reference to complex social, economic, historical and ideational factors. It aims to answer one of the key questions, which has wider implications for the West and Islamic world: ‘having experienced the bad and good of the West in secularism and democracy’, as claimed by Samuel Huntington's ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis, is Turkey in transition from a secular to an Islamic state? The article first questions Turkey's ‘bridge’ or ‘torn-country’ status and then explains the akp's ambivalent policies towards religious and identity issues in relation to the increased public visibility of Islam and a ‘performative reflexivity’ of ‘Muslim-selves’. It concludes that the real issue at stake is not the assumed clash of secular and Muslim identities but the complex of interdependence between Islam, secularism and democratisation in Turkey.     

Mode of Production Analysis and Historical Production

A striking feature of Gambian society is its tripartite social structure composed of nobles, artisans and descendants of former slaves. Among the artisans, the role of the finoo, or Islamic bard, is by far the least understood. While there is hardly any documentation on finoos, indications are that they have specialized in the Islamic traditions. This article records the life story of Mariama Fatty, a successful Gambian female finoo. In addition to sketching a portrait of her profession, it provides an account of a Muslim woman’s involvement in Islamic practices, her engagement in the propagation of Islam, and her understanding of proper Muslim womanhood. By focusing on the female finoo’s manoeuvring between her cultural obligations and her religious tenets, it emerges that she exercises her profession in what is not so much a contradiction as a dialectic between submission and religious empowerment.     

Construction Jihad: state-building and development in Iran and Lebanon’s Shiʿi Territories

Abstract

Based on fieldwork in Iran and Lebanon, this article compares the Iranian reconstruction and development organisation Construction Jihad with its Hizbullah-affiliated subsidiary in Lebanon. Beyond shedding light on Iranian and Lebanese history and politics, this comparison offers insight into the transnational diffusion of a development organisation by a state actor to its non-state or quasi-state ‘client’ in the Muslim and developing world. Despite the distinct environmental and operational conditions of Iran and Lebanon, Construction Jihad similarly assisted a nascent Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and a fledgling Hizbullah with state-building. The latter consisted of consolidating coercive power against domestic and foreign opponents, increasing administrative capacity through service provision and post-war reconstruction, and strengthening the political and religious identity of citizens and constituents. Regardless of the differing contexts of Iran and Lebanon, Construction Jihad counter-intuitively possessed a similar organisational and developmental model in both countries that did not neatly conform to the dichotomous typologies in development studies. This seemingly contradictory model was largely faith based, exclusive, distributive and top down with certain decentralised, community driven and participatory elements.     

Sacral Defense of Secularism: The Political Theologies of Soroush, Shabestari, and Kadivar

This paper discusses three post-revolutionary dissident political theologies in Iran. They all question the absolutist theology of the ruling clerics and utilize indigenous sources of scholarship to oppose the clerical hegemony. They have complementary emphases: whereas Soroush highlights the variable nature of religious knowledge, Shabestari and Kadivar underline its limited and multiple nature. They represent the maturing of the dialogue of the Iranian-Islamic thought with Western social and political philosophy, and as the coming of age of the indigenous Islamic political theology reclaiming its pluralistic and democratic elements. Together, they attack the totalitarian Islam, and call for a guarded and objective secularism, while preserving Islam's spiritual and cultural identity.