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In The Law of Peoples (1999), John Rawls invented a fictional Muslim state that he called Kazanistan. The genealogy of Kazanistan I offer here is the first examination of Islam in Rawls's papers. It contributes to a critical body of work about the Muslim Question and how Euro-American thinkers construct Islam. In recent years, theorists have turned to Rawls's papers. The archival turn, however, has neglected the last phase of Rawls's career and his book-length attempt at thinking internationally. I address this oversight and critically examine Rawls on Islam and global politics. I historicize Rawls's turn to Islam, Kazanistan's late introduction, and its transformations across drafts. By examining "the Kazanistan papers," I highlight the dissonance between Rawls's philosophical discourse on Islam and the contemporaneous geopolitics recorded in his archives. This disjuncture, I suggest, is characteristic of the logics of liberal deflection from empire and liberal "inflection" into the Muslim Question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper highlights the impact of religious oppositions in Muslim-majority states towards security cooperation with the U.S. Such cooperation provides security but is risky as the U.S. can coerce its weaker allies and push for regime change. To protect against this possibility, this paper suggests that incumbents in recipient states strategically extend or limit cooperation based on the strength of Islamist opposition parties. Weaker Islamist oppositions pose a threat to incumbents in recipient states as the U.S. can coerce and replace them without fear of bringing anti-U.S. elements to power, which results in lower cooperation. In case of a stronger Islamist opposition, the regime's replacement cannot offer better policy concessions to the U.S.; hence, a strong Islamist opposition leads to more extensive cooperation. This mechanism is demonstrated through U.S. military aid acceptance in 40 Muslim-majority states during 2002–2015, and a comparison of U.S. security relations with Algeria and Tunisia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the experiences of informal family care-giving for persons with ADRD in the context of Arab and Muslim communities. This paper offers fresh insight into the less-studied private sphere of the home, showing how families respond to the onset and long-term care of persons with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). It considers the extent to which sociocultural and religious influences are appropriated by family care-givers as coping mechanisms and motivators for care. Drawing upon interviews with 32 family care-givers for older persons living with ADRD in Qatar, findings reveal the intersectionality of the care-giving experience with various sociocultural, religious and emotional influences through seven emergent themes: (a) reasons and motivations for care-giving; (b) role of the extended family; (c) socio-demographic attributes of care-givers, their allocated responsibilities and how these intersect; (d) socio-religious attitudes towards care-giving of older persons; (e) social stigma; (f) personal knowledge of ADRD; and (g) coping mechanisms. The paper is concluded with key implications of these sociocultural insights for theory, policy and practice, which could inform Qatar's health and social care provision sector as well as other Arab and Muslim communities that share similar cultural and religious belief systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interactions between social identity groups can reduce perceptions of threatening out-groups and improve inter-group attitudes. But these interactions have an inevitable side effect: while an interaction may improve attitudes among its participants, the same interaction can increase exposure to out-groups in the proximity of the interaction, leading to increased perceptions of threat among those not participating in the interaction. With such negative externalities in mind, this paper argues that the presence of a large number of out-group members both improves and aggravates native attitudes toward out-groups in the same area, which may, in the aggregate, conceal a hot spot of anti-immigration attitudes. This study examines the effects of interaction and exposure through a series of surveys of native attitudes toward Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands. While the exposure effect was not observed, empirical analyses suggest that brief interactions tend to worsen negative attitudes toward Muslims, possibly due to their physical and religious appearances. This highlights the importance of visual cues in shaping inter-group relations, as these visual cues may prompt natives to sort out interactions based on appearance, hindering efforts to promote inter-group contact between Muslims and non-Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recently published paper in this journal (Choi, 2021) establishes a statistical link between, on the one hand, Islamist terrorist campaigns – including terrorist attacks and online propaganda – and, on the other the growth of the Muslim population. The author explains this result by stating that successful campaigns lead some individuals to convert to Islam. In this commentary, we intend to reply to this article by focusing on the impact of terrorist attacks on religious conversion. We first show that Choi's results suffer from theoretical flaws – a failure to comprehensively unpack the link between violence and conversion – and methodological shortcomings – a focus on all terrorist groups over a period where Islamist attacks were rare. This leads us to replicate Choi's analysis by distinguishing Islamist and non-Islamist terror attacks on a more adequate timeframe. By doing so, we no longer find empirical support for the relationship between terror attacks and the growth of the Muslim population. However, our analyses suggest that such a hypothesis may hold but only in contexts where the level and intensity of political violence are high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the association between religion and female labor market outcomes using new micro-level data on two distinct Muslim denominations in Turkey: Sunni and Alevi Muslims. We find a positive and significant association between being an Alevi Muslim and female labor force participation and employment, whereas there are no significant differences in male labor market outcomes between the two denominations. We provide evidence that Alevi Muslims have more gender-equal views regarding the role of women in the labor market and consider themselves as more modern. Both Sunnis and Alevis consider themselves as believers in religion (Islam). However, Sunnis are more likely to abide by the rules of religion. We argue that differences in views on gender roles and self-identity regarding modernity between the two denominations drive the results on female labor market outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes relationships between Islamic religious behaviors and civic engagement in Europe and North America. Using data from an original survey of Muslims in Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the United States, it finds that Muslim religious behaviors relate to civic behaviors in varied ways. The conventional distinction between public and private religious behaviors does not graft perfectly on to Islamic religious behaviors, but the way Islamic religious behaviors straddle the public-private divide help explain their relationships with civic behaviors. Mosque attendance, an example of public religious behavior, is positively associated with secular organizational membership and mainstream political behaviors, and negatively associated with protest activity. Private, or quasi-private, religious behaviors are more commonly associated with protest activities. There are some national-level differences in patterns of civic engagement after controlling for other determinants, but not many, suggesting similar mechanisms mobilize and facilitate Muslim civic incorporation across national contexts. The results suggest that Islamic religious behaviors create diverse opportunities for Muslims to engage as civic citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As one of the most influential CCP campaigns that dramatically transformed the Chinese pre-revolutionary society, the early 1950s land reform has not been fully explored in the case of China's ethnic periphery. This article sheds light on the CCP's land reform and its impact on China's ethnic frontier by examining the official policies, implementation, and the reactions of the southern Muslim community in Yunnan between 1949 and 1958. Drawing on county government work team reports and the Party's land reform policy and evaluation records, it argues that although southern Yunnan Muslims were able to selectively internalize some Communist secular ideologies to cope with social and political changes that land reform brought about, the inconsistency between the Party's freedom of religion policy on paper and its local implementation failed to mitigate the ideological discord between Maoist revolutionaries' atheist worldview and Muslim villagers' religiosity. This jeopardized the possibility of reconciliation between the class-struggle-focused radical state and the community life of its religious subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why are religious riots between Hindus and Muslims endemic in some states of India and not in others? Scholarship on the topic is divided between those arguing that electoral competition increases the occurrence of such riots and those arguing that electoral competition decreases the occurrence of such riots. Both types of explanations assume a relationship between political parties and religious violence, but they ignore voting behavior. This paper accounts for party system instability or change, measured in terms of electoral volatility, to argue that electoral volatility in the Indian party system is a key overlooked determinant of religious violence. Specifically, higher levels of electoral volatility, implying high switching of party allegiances by voters, may indicate the process of ethnic outbidding that causes violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can Muslim values be reconciled with a feminist outlook? The question is pressing on both an individual level—for Muslim feminists—and on a political level—for the project of making Islamic practice compatible with the ideals of a just and liberal society. A version of this question arises specifically for the central Muslim text, the Quran: Can the message of the Quran be reconciled with a feminist outlook? There have, broadly speaking, been two approaches to this more specific question. I argue that both are inadequate. I then develop a novel approach to reconciliation that does not threaten the objective and universal normative force Muslims attribute to the Quran. My approach is revolutionary rather than apologetic and carves out a central role for moral understanding in Islam-as-practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I want to focus on some aspects of the political process in India that have an impact on the treatment of religious minorities. Much of the discussion on multicultural jurisdictions deals with differentiated citizenship rights that allow religious groups to maintain their normative universe. This literature shows the tensions surrounding individual and group rights. I want to approach the question of religious freedom from a rather different angle. I want to first focus on the protection of bare life in the face of religious violence and then examine the issue of conversion from one religion to another. The issues of human security and conversion are linked in India, since Hindu nationalists see Muslims as forcibly converted Hindus who should be reconverted. To highlight the importance of majoritarian nationalism rather than political systems in the treatment of religious minorities, I offer a brief comparison with China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of Assam as a new province in 1874 and the transfer of Sylhet from Bengal to Assam provided a new twist in the shaping of the northeastern region of India. Sylhet remained part of Assam from 1874 to 1947, which had significant consequences in this frontier locality. This paper re-examines archival sources on political mobilization, rereads relevant autobiographical texts, and reviews oral evidence to discover the ‘experienced’ history of the region as distinct from the ‘imagined’ one. The sub-text of partition (Sylhet) is more intriguing than the main text (Bengal), because events in Sylhet offer us a micro-level study. Generations of historians—writing mostly in Bengali and relying on colonial archives—have tended to overlook the mindset of the people of Sylhet. This paper, on the basis of an examination of combined sources, argues that the new province was implicated in overlapping histories, across Bengal-Assam borders. The voice of the indigenous—mostly Hindus but partly Muslim—elites were dominant from 1874 onwards. However, the underdogs—particularly ‘pro-Pakistani’ dalits (lower-caste Hindus) and madrasa-educated ‘pro-Indian’ maulvis—emerged as crucial players in the referendum of 1947. Hardly any serious study, however, has focused on the Sylhet referendum—a defining moment in the region. This study of the Sylhet referendum will reveal a new dimension to the multiple responses to these issues and provide a glimpse of the ‘communal psyche’ of the people in this frontier district, rather than a binary opposition between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ forces. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the development of multiple conceptions of citizenship in India in an attempt to understand how, despite profound social divisions, India's nationhood holds together. The paper advances the proposition that the Indian polity incorporated a deeply divided and conflict-ridden population by offering multiple notions of citizenship upon which a sense of membership in the nation, and a share in the enterprise of the state, could be sought. By negotiating and balancing distinct overlapping conceptions for competing membership claims in the nation, diverse social groups could find a viable place in the nation, without entirely resigning their various group identities. The analysis focuses as a lens on the Muslim citizens who are amongst the most excluded members in the whole body of Indian citizenry. It provides perspectives into how even some of the most marginalised members in Indian society found sufficient prospects for a meaningful participation within the nation. Multiple conceptions of citizenship enabled the state to manage its diverse social groups and contain many of their underlying conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary Islamic landscape in Bosnia-Herzegovina is often depicted as marked by fault lines between different Muslim groups, many of which are described as products of foreign intervention. This paper argues that this image does not reflect the multiplicity of Islamic discourses and practices, and the many ways that Bosnian Muslims engage with, promote, and resist them on the ground. It explores how pious Muslim women can move between different approaches to Islam over time, engage with a range of Islamic actors simultaneously, and draw on their teachings selectively or situationally without necessarily claiming group membership. By engaging with a range of actors making competing claims to authority, women contribute to both the pluralization of Islamic authority and the continued relevance of authoritative actors. The paper argues that paying attention to pious women's practices allows us to challenge crude characterizations of the transformations of Islam in Bosnia and question the narrative of distinct Muslim groups at odds with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prompted by two recent articles in European Review about the place of Islam in Europe, this article argues for the importance of considering the variants of Islam in Europe that are autochthonous as opposed to connected with migration or immigration. The article discusses the specifics of the Crimean Tatars, Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania, and the Muslims of Georgia by way of illustrating how the issues around European Islam are far from being a marginal curiosity and, in fact, point to key issues in continental culture and politics in the twenty-first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A government's decision to communicate in a native tongue rather than a commonly used and understood but non-native language can prompt perception through an ethnically-tinted lens. While native-language communication is commonplace and typically benign, we argue that conveying a threat posed by an outgroup in a native tongue can trigger dehumanizing attitudes. We conducted a pre-registered survey experiment focusing on attitudes toward Muslim and Chinese people in India to test our expectations. In our two-stage design, we randomly assigned respondents to a survey language (Hindi or English) and, after that, to threat-provoking or control conditions. While Muslims and China are associated with recent violence against India, the government has routinely portrayed only the former as threatening. Likely due to this divergence, Hindi language assignment alone triggers Muslim dehumanization. Indians' more innocuous views of Chinese are responsive to exogenously-induced threat, particularly when conveyed in Hindi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do White Americans operationalize Whiteness? This article argues that religion, in conjunction with country of origin, alters how self-identified White Americans assign ethnoracial labels to other groups. To test the role of religion in White assignment, this article uses the case of Muslims and of Americans from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Although MENA individuals are legally classified as White in the United States, they are subjected to racialization and often conflated with Muslims. Using an historical analysis of racial prerequisite court cases and a survey experiment, I find that country of origin and religion play separate, additive roles in racial assignment decisions, both historically and today. These findings also extend to perceived skin tone. This is important because many of the benefits that come from being White depend on whether others perceive an individual as White. Understanding the constitutive parts of Whiteness compels research to be specific when discussing White people and why some "White" people are excluded. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we explore the entanglement of spiritual and economic life through the example of Dagestani, Salafi-oriented entrepreneurs who try to live out their religious ideals in moral economic practices. We ask how living a religious life shapes economic behavior and its moral dimensions, and how the gradual acquisition of the norms of an Islamic economy influences the everyday economic practices of Salafi-oriented Muslims in Dagestan. Drawing on Stephen Gudeman's market-community framework, and offering our research as a corrective, we show how an Islamic framing of everyday economic activities and the gradual acquisition of the norms of the Islamic economy allows Salafi-oriented Muslims to escape traditional obligations, and to some extent, "the state," while at the same time bestowing meaning on "cold" market relations. As a result, instead of escaping the market-society script (that they criticize), they reinforce it. Our analysis is based on the results of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Dagestan between 2014 and 2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of the Islamic State, considerable debate has arisen over the relationship (or lack of therein) between its ideological discourse and broader Islamic exegeses and learning. This paper aims to connect these wider discussions to its self-defined ideological standpoint as set out in its magazine, Dabiq. All 15 of these, published between June 2014 and July 2016, amounting to more than 900 pages, are examined to assess their authors' (1) analysis of the Qur'an (2) use of classical scholarship, and (3) engagement with contemporary readings of Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains Israel's decision to outlaw the Islamic Movement Northern Faction in Israel (IMNF) and examines the methods and strategies adopted by the IMNF and its leaders that prompted the state's actions. Based on the British Defense Regulations from the British Mandate for Palestine, the State of Israel outlawed the IMNF on November 17, 2015, accusing the group of incitement, racism, and terrorism. Sheykh Kamal Khatib, former deputy leader of IMNF, declared that the IMNF had been a tool to serve the Islamic project and regardless of having been outlawed, the movement "would find a "thousand ways" to serve that project.'" I argue that the IMNF's shift in focus from the Palestinians to the larger Muslim community disrupted politics within Israel. Even so, Israel's policy change was based on political and personal calculations, rather than on national and regional security pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the narrative of Salmān al-Fārisī/"the Persian" and his conversion to Islam, as recounted in the eighth-century Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq, as a lens into the laudatory interpretation of Christian monasticism by early Muslims. This account of Salmān al-Fārisī (d. 656 CE), an original Companion (ṣaḥābī) of the Prophet Muḥammad, vividly describes his rejection of his Zoroastrian heritage, his initial embrace of Christianity, and his departure from his homeland of Isfahan in search of a deeper understanding of the Christian faith. This quest leads the young Persian on a great arc across the Near East into Iraq, Asia Minor, and Syria, during which he studies under various Christian monks and serves as their acolyte. Upon each master's death, Salmān is directed toward another mystical authority, on a passage that parallels the "monastic sojourns" of late antique Christian literature. At the conclusion of the narrative a monk sends Salmān to seek out a "new Prophet who has arisen among the Arabs." The monks, therefore, appear to be interpreted as "proto-Muslims," as links in a chain leading to enlightenment, regardless of their confessional distinction. This narrative could then suggest that pietistic concerns, shared between these communities, superseded specific doctrinal boundaries in the highly fluid and malleable religious culture of the late antique and early Islamic Near East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The special collection appearing in this issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society makes a valuable contribution to lively ongoing discussions centred on explorations of the concept of the sovereignty of God within contemporary Islamic traditions. As its Guest Editors Humeira Iqtidar and Oliver Scharbrodt highlight in their introductory essay, the concept of divine sovereignty has come to occupy a key place in Islamist thinking, with the writings of Abul A'la Maududi playing a hugely significant role in its twentieth- and twenty-first century articulations. Comprising articles based on papers first presented in September 2019 at an ERC-funded workshop organised jointly by King's College London and the University of Birmingham, it offers cutting-edge scholarly reflections on how Maududi's articulation of ḥākimiyyat-i ilāhiyya has been received in a multiplicity of Muslim contexts and communities. Hence, their authors—Humeira Iqtidar, Oliver Scharbrodt, Usaama Al-Azmi, and Simon Wolfgang Fuchs—grapple with how far Maududi's thinking can be understood as a response to perceived challenges of 'modernity', as well as to the ways in which ideas linked to this notion connect with debates going back much further in time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 20th century, some prominent Thomists questioned whether St. Thomas Aquinas is really committed to a theory of divine ideas. There is no doubt that Aquinas articulates such a theory in his Sentences Commentary, Disputed Questions on Truth, and Summa theologiae. Still, he seems to omit an account of divine ideas in the Summa Contra Gentiles. If St. Thomas thinks divine ideas are necessary for understanding God's knowledge, why would he skip discussing them in this ex professo work? This paper will argue two points. First, St. Thomas does articulate a theory of divine ideas in the Summa Contra Gentiles, even though he changes his terminology. His account of divine reasons (rationes) is equivalent to a theory of divine ideas. Second, Aquinas changes his vocabulary because of the more apologetic aim of the work. Use of the term 'ideas' would be less effective in dialogue with his Muslim and pagan interlocutors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some observations on what words associated with Islam are in, and what might yet go into, current ELT dictionaries. Muslims constitute a vast number of speakers of English as a Second Language (ESL) and a Foreign Language (EFL). As a consequence, many expressions associated with Islam have been introduced into contemporary English and its dictionaries – both general and ESL/EFL. The present paper focuses on three particular works: the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (LDOCE, 2003), the Macmillan English Dictionary (MED, 2002) and The New Oxford Dictionary of English (NODE, 1998), in order to discuss how Islamic terms are being used. It was found that few phrases or sentences are provided to illustrate such terms – even those in common use among English-speaking Muslims. The present paper therefore (1) suggests sample sentences for these terms, so that users of such dictionaries can set them in context, and (2) offers a list of common Islamic words for possible inclusion in future editions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Sociology is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

As the papers and discussion on the first day of the conference suggested, the tension between civil and religious loyalties is central theme of citizenship in Southeast Asian nation-sates. The separate law, courts, and customs of Muslim citizens and the complexity of dealing with marriages and divorces involving a Muslim and a non-Muslim were recurring themes in a number of the essays. Sociologist Mehrun Siraj's paper focused as well on the issue of how a law that is seen as God-given, such as the Quran, can be made more accessible, so that the fundamental gender equalities dictated by the Quran can be found. Finally, there was discussion of what divorce or polygamy or marriage meant where religious differences, rural-urban differences, or gender differences marked radically different practices. The discussion of polygamy also took up rural/urban differences, as well as class differences, but there was more focus on its economic and symbolic significance, for both men and women, across national and ethnic boundaries. The discussions of divorce and of polygamy are closely connected in that both raise the question of rights for different women who are or have been married to the same man. In addition, both divorce and polygamy raise questions of interpretation and questions about official versus unofficial practices.

In the early twentieth century, economic and religious antagonism between Sinhalese and Moors in Ceylon escalated into widespread, deadly violence. In the immediate aftermath of the 1915 pogrom, which involved the targeting of Moors and their property, the Sinhalese nationalist Anagarika Dharmapala observed that 'Muhammadans' had accumulated wealth through 'Shylockian methods'. Even prior to Dharmapala's claim, Moors were repeatedly depicted as the 'Jews of Ceylon' by both influential Sinhalese actors and colonial state actors. As Ceylon did not have a local Jewish population, this article investigates the use of a rhetorical device that was familiar within the broader networks of empire to 'other' a non-Jewish mercantile minority. The article accordingly enquires into how and why antisemitic epithets came to be used in prejudicial speech against Moors. It also explores propaganda portraying Moors in terms of 'hostile' Jewish stereotypes and the way in which such stereotypes were deployed in Sinhalese interactions with Moors. By tracing the connections between antisemitism and anti-capitalism, this article aims to contribute to a broader discourse on the positions of Semitic groups in British imperial ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales is the property of Cambridge University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Mecca is often conceptualized as a destination for the ḥajj or a source of leverage for both western and Ottoman imperial states, and in the twentieth century, for Saudi national foreign policy and Islamist movements. While building on such transnational angles, this article views the city as a convergence point for diaspora populations, an intermediary site that has received and redirected the mobilities of sojourners, refugees, and exiles from different parts of Asia throughout the manifold turnovers of the twentieth century. The article focuses on a community of first- to third-generation settlers in the Hejaz who trace their other homes to different places in China proper. Using archival documents, travelogues, and ethnographic interviews, the article argues that the routes to Mecca, coupled with imaginaries of the city as a home place for Muslims worldwide, served as a rare constant orienting force that sustained two-directional mobilities of Chinese Muslim diasporas through the wars and revolutions of modern times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how the Great Bengal Famine of 1943–1944 and relief activism during it fed the politics of the Hindu right, a development that has not previously received much scholarly attention. Using hitherto unused primary sources, the article introduces a novel site to the study of communal politics, namely, the propagation of Hindu communalism through food distribution during a humanitarian crisis. It examines the caste and class bias in private relief and provides the first in-depth study of the multifaceted process whereby the Hindu Mahasabha used the famine for political purposes. The party portrayed Muslim food officials as 'saboteurs' in the food administration, alleged that the Muslim League government was 'creating' a new group of Muslim grain traders undermining the established Hindu traders, and publicized the government's failure to avert the famine to prove the economic 'unviability' of creating Pakistan. This article also explores counter-narratives, for example, that Hindu political leaders were deliberately impeding the food supply in the hope that starvation would compel Bengali Muslims to surrender their demand for Pakistan. The politics of religious conversion played out blatantly in famine-relief when the Mahasabha accused Muslim volunteers of converting starving Hindus to Islam in exchange for food, and demanded that Hindu and Muslim famine orphans should remain in Hindu and Muslim orphanages respectively. Finally, by dwelling on beef consumption by the army at the time of an acute shortage of dairy milk during the famine, the Mahasabha fanned communal tensions surrounding the orthodox Hindu taboo on cow slaughter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I argue that the ways in which a genealogical idiom brings together multiple scales of space and time is as important to its social, political, or religious efficacy as the particular people, places, and events it incorporates. To illustrate this point, I turn to the unusual patrilineal genealogy of Habib Abdurrahim, a nineteenth-century descendant of the Prophet Muhammad buried in the Indonesian region of Seunagan. Since the late 1950s, Habib Abdurrahim's descendants have cultivated a version of his patriline emphasizing five prominent figures. This constellation of figures, together with the relationships Muslims in Seunagan foster with each of the five, produce configurations of spatial-temporal scale through which local Muslims inscribe themselves as participants in several Islamic pasts: the establishment of Seunagan's customary practice, the Islamization of the Indonesian nation, and Islam's cosmic history. Narrative, social, and ritual practices surrounding Habib Abdurahim's patriline link Muslims in Seunagan to the multiple scales that inhere in the genealogy, encouraging them to see themselves as actors within entwined and unfolding histories of Islamization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the most salient features of the medieval Mediterranean is that it was a zone of intense interaction and long-term cohabitation of members of various ethno-religious communities whose relations are usually conceived of as fundamentally adversarial. Yet Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived amongst each other in both the Christian- and Muslim-ruled Mediterranean, even during the era of the crusades. Typically, such relationships have been presented as either fundamentally hostile, or cordial, and as related to the “tolerance” that host cultures were inclined to demonstrate as a consequence of their own religious orientation. This paper takes a different, phenomenological approach by focusing on a specific manifestation of this interaction: the emergence of out-group political elites in confessionally defined societies. Through the medium of three case studies—a powerful Jew in Islamic Spain, a powerful Muslim in Norman Sicily and a powerful Coptic Christian in Fatimid Egypt—I demonstrate that the status of minority elites was related to concrete political circumstances grounded in the particular environment of the region, and that, despite cultural differences that might have distinguished them, these societies developed near-identical strategies for engaging with minority elites. The language of religious polemic, exclusion, and marginalization was present, but it tended to serve as a post factum rationalization for repression rather than its cause, and tended to be deployed decisively only in certain circumstances. This provides new insights not only into Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations, but the fundamental nature of Mediterranean history and society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The story of the Somnath temple, in the northwestern Saurashtra peninsula, has often been taken as an example of the contentious legacies of the penetration, settlement, and political establishment of Muslims in India. Its history testifies to the complex relationship between history, heritage, and the consolidation of collective memories of past events and processes. This article focuses on two key moments in the temple's recent history: the retrieval of the Somnath gates by Lord Ellenborough in 1842 and the reconstruction of the temple between 1947 and 1951. At these two moments—one during colonial times and the other at the creation of the independent state—Somnath became the battlefield for questioning how the state should be positioned with regard to religious places, histories, symbols, and practices. While the temple was apparently dealt with as a tangible place of heritage, both episodes show how the value endowed upon the temple had far more complex meanings. The analysis proposed in this article ends with the reconstruction of the temple. This shows the way in which architects of independent India addressed the country's history, directly or indirectly engaging with the construction of a heritage for the new state. Their efforts aimed to strengthen a shared memory of the past, which could in turn consolidate membership and a sense of belonging to the new nation. Advocates and promoters of the temple's reconstruction, among whom were Vallabhbhai Patel and K. M. Munshi, envisioned that the reconstruction would embody the long-awaited liberation of India from centuries of continuous domination by 'foreign' powers. In contrast, secular politicians, with Nehru at the helm, opposed the reconstruction, fearing that Somnath might become the symbol of a sectarian vision of the nation and, in the wake of partition, derail efforts to characterise independent India as an inclusive country. While the reconstruction did eventually take place, the entire episode invites us to question the relationship between the framing of Indian nationalism and the heritagisation of Indian history. Following a critical theoretical approach to Heritage studies, where heritage has less to do with the item that is preserved than with the value with which it is endowed, this article proposes to investigate the meanings that heritage preservation, conservation, and reconstruction acquired as part of the project of nation- and state-building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pakistan, 15 January 1950. Impeccably dressed, Zarina is going out to celebrate the wedding of her partner-in-gossip-crime, Fizza. Her busy life makes her feel anxious. The wrongdoings of the home helpers and her parents' constant bickering fill her family life. Fashion magazines, get-togethers at the association she has just joined, and ladies' glamorous parties are her only antidotes to stress. This article explores the history of Zarina and her fellow upper class women's emotions, everyday lives, and daily perception of religious and socio-political ideas of change in Pakistan's momentous formative years (1947–1962). By relying on Francis Robinson's research on religious change, self, and the fashioning of Muslim identity, it provides the first historical ethnography of how upper class women in Pakistan understood and experienced socio-political change through the transformation of their emotions, religious views, lifestyle, and behaviour. Drawing on material and visual culture and a rich selection of newspaper clippings and government records, this article lifts the curtain on the material and immaterial 'stuff' of women's dreams, taste in fashion, private lives, and political and religious ideas. Finally, it illuminates how women and their gendered agency became the key 'sites' for a new and, at times, surprising Islamic revival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The tazkira , a long-established genre of life-history writing in South Asian literature, was increasingly used over the course of the twentieth century to document the lives and achievements of 'ulamā ('learned men', or scholars of religion). This article explores a foundational work within this genre: 'Ashīq Ilahī Mīrutī's Tazkira't al-Rashīd (first published in 1908–1910), a life-history of the Dēōbandī scholar and Sūfī shāykh Rashīd Ahmad Gangōhī. It argues that such life-histories of 'ulamā were written not merely as historical records but as 'lessons' to their readers. This article illustrates how the tazkira appropriated Gangōhī's life and teachings to provide an indispensable repository of Dēōbandī understanding on issues such as tarīqah (the Sūfī path), sharī'ah (religious law), pīrī-murīdī (the master-disciple relationship), religious and social conduct, and relations with the state. The article thus makes a case for understanding the tazkira as an important vehicle for informing and shaping the religious behaviour of a Muslim public, which was employed ultimately by both the Dēōbandī and other Islamic revivalist movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1975 and 1979 the genocidal regime of Democratic Kampuchea (DK) in Cambodia targeted minorities including the Cham Muslim population. To hold the regime to account for its crimes against the Cambodian people, the Cambodian government in 2001 formed the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). Using transcripts of testimonies and judgements from the ECCC, this article examines Gender-Based Violence (GBV) among the Cham Muslim population. The study shows that Alexander Hinton's arguments to explain GBV using cultural frameworks are insufficient in this case. Indeed, Nicole Rafter has proven it is important to take into account the broader genocidal context to the violence. This article argues that ECCC documentation proves that GBV cannot be explained by cultural contexts alone and instead needs to be understood as a means to destroy the Cham and Cham culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of settled minorities for facilitating refugee belonging is seldom discussed in research on refugee integration. Drawing on scholarship on belonging, boundary-making, and bordering, this study investigates how boundaries are drawn between settled minorities and refugees in Bulgaria. Based on interviews with integration workers and organizations of settled minorities in a state with the largest historically present Muslim minority in the EU, an Arabic-speaking diaspora settled decades ago, and with minimal state involvement in refugee integration, the study shows how spatial, linguistic, and religious boundaries separate settled minorities from newly arrived refugees. Arabic-speaking diasporas are nevertheless witnessed to overcome the boundaries through geographical proximity, a shared language, and shared countries of origin, whereby they have functioned as facilitators of refugee belonging and inclusion. Furthermore, Muslim institutions led by Bulgarian Turks have functioned as spaces for refugee belonging. The study finds that settled minority communities have, despite multiple boundaries and some assimilatory discourses, contributed to refugee belonging in ways that in part has compensated for the state absence. The study calls for further research investigating the role of settled minorities in inclusionary processes in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses how the wombs of women and the absent skin on the circumcised penises of men become the predominant sites on which racialized and gendered discourses operating during the Bangladesh War are inscribed. This is explored by examining instances of sexual violence by Pakistani soldiers and their local Bengali collaborators. The prevalence of these discourses in colonial documents about the Bengali Muslims underscores the role of history, the politics of identity and in the process, establishes its link with the rapes of Bangladeshi women and men. Through this, the relationship between sexual violence and historical contexts is highlighted. I locate the accounts of male violations by the West Pakistani army within the historical and colonial discourses relating to the construction of the Bengali Muslim and its intertextual, contemporary citational references in photographs and interviews.I draw on Judith Butler's and Marilyn Strathern's work on gendering and performativity to address the citational role of various practices of discourses of gender and race within colonial documents and its application in a newer context of colonization and sexual violence of women and men during wars. The role of photographs and image-making is intrinsic to these practices. The open semiotic of the photographs allows an exploration of the territorial identities within these images and leads to traces of the silence relating to male violations. Through an examination of the silence surrounding male sexual violence vis-à-vis the emphasis on the rape of women in independent Bangladesh, it is argued that these racialized and gendered discourses are intricately associated to the link between sexuality and the state in relation to masculinity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Notwithstanding the many precedents for economic boycott before the crusader period, the first evidence of a Christian offensive other than on the battlefield appears only in the second half of the twelfth century, almost seventy years after the Council of Clermont. This paper aims to complement Moore's theory about the emergence of the Christian persecuting society with an additional case that, from a medieval Christian point of view, associates two of the Devil's main partners: first and foremost Muslims but also Christian merchants who profited from trading with them. It is the premise of this study that the many bans on trade with the Muslims in the crusader period – both in their essence and timing – and the reactions that they aroused reveal conflicting attitudes toward Muslims and Islam, thus contributing new perspectives for the study of the crusades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Keramat is the Malay word for the graves of notable figures which are popular sites of prayer and dot the social and physical landscapes of much of Muslim Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean region as a whole. The term refers to both people as well as their burial sites. Historically, keramat drew people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. While the venerated dead also came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, histories, and faiths, they were usually Muslim and frequently Hadrami (from the Hadramaut region in Yemen). In this paper, I view keramat as a significant site of social and cultural diversity. The study of keramat, and the transoceanic movement of the people and faith to which it is linked, may shed further light on the cultural interaction that has historically characterized the region. At the same time, the permissibility of the veneration of graves constitutes a terrain that has long been contested by Muslim scholars. As a result, the fate of this popular practice may offer insights into the complex process of Islamization in the region which began around 700 years ago. I explore two questions in particular. First, in what ways do keramat embody cultural diversity? Secondly, where do keramat stand in relation to state- and organization-driven Islam? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Networks of travel and trade have often been viewed as central to understanding interactions among Muslims across South and Southeast Asia. In this paper I suggest that we consider language and literature as an additional type of network, one that provided a powerful site of contact and exchange facilitated by, and drawing on, citation. I draw on textual sources written in Javanese, Malay, and Tamil between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries to argue that among Muslim communities in South and Southeast Asia, practices of reading, learning, translating, adapting, and transmitting contributed to the shaping of a cosmopolitan sphere that was both closely connected with the broader, universal Muslim community and rooted in local identities. I consider a series of ‘citation sites’ in an attempt to explore one among many modes of inter-Asian connections, highlighting how citations, simple or brief as they may often seem, are sites of shared memories, history, and narrative traditions and, in the case of Islamic literature, also sites of a common bond to a cosmopolitan and sanctified Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Inequalities in mental health treatment access and outcomes for minority ethnic and religious groups in the UK have been recognized for more than a decade; however, work to address these at an operational level is still emerging. In recognition of the need for culturally adapted therapies, researchers at the University of Leeds developed and piloted an adapted therapy for Muslim clients, based on behavioural activation (BA), an existing evidence-based psychosocial treatment for depression. Therapists and supervisors at Touchstone, Leeds have been trained to deliver the culturally adapted approach, which supports Muslim clients who choose to use 'positive religious coping' as a resource for health. This paper describes the key elements of the intervention and how it is being delivered in practice to increase service uptake and recovery in Muslim communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the nature of local permutations of transnational Muslim networks in Thailand's southern Muslim-majority provinces and assesses their impact on creed, custom, and conflict in the region. More specifically, the paper interrogates the agenda and methods of idea and norm-propagation on the part of these agents and networks, and their evolving role, as well as the structures and conduits through which they operate and mobilize. In so doing, it finds a tremendously fluid and dynamic terrain in southern Thailand, where narratives, representations, and expressions of Islamic doctrine, legitimacy, and authority, are increasingly heavily contested within the Muslim community as a whole. In addition, the paper investigates the transnational dimensions of on-going violence in the southern provinces. Here, it argues that there is little by way of substantive evidence of any sustained penetration of the conflict in southern Thailand by external actors. No doubt, many have attempted to draw conclusions to the contrary, but their evidence and arguments, not to mention analytical methodology, are tenuous at best. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides a critical historical analysis of the Muhammadiyah movement in Singapore. I argue that four processes have been crucial in the emergence and sustenance of the Muhammadiyah within a predominantly non-Muslim society: the symbiotic relationship between the leaders and their followers, the formulation and subsequent reformulation of the ideology of the movement, political opportunities which were judiciously exploited and the availability of a wide array of infrastructures. The Muhammadiyah, as will be shown, provides an informative example of an Islamic movement in Southeast Asia that has transcended the challenges faced by the minority Muslim population by making effective use of the limited resources at its disposal. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper explores the construction of both Muslim and Islamist identities and the ways in which they interact, converge and diverge. This exploration is set against the background of debates on the nature of Islamism and its positioning vis-à-vis modernity and post-modernity. The paper argues that processes of modernity and post-modernity may be at work in the production of Muslim identities, but highlights the need to examine how different dimensions of identity formation such as socio-economic position, gender, age and lifestyle enter into the formation of Muslim selves. This is made necessary if we accept the premise of the sociality and historicity of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper describes the origins and size of the Muslim population in Australia, at present about 1% of the total population. Their age distribution is younger and their sociodemographic characteristics are different from those of the rest of the Australian population. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]