Arabic, the Arab Middle East, and the Definition of Muslim Identity in Twentieth Century India

1998 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Muslim Identity ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Sizeable Minority ◽  
Arab Middle East

The “foreignness” of Islam in India is a familiar theme in the rhetoric of contemporary-Hindu fundamentalism. The numerical majority of Hindus in India is taken to mean that the nation-state ought to be founded on ideals and institutions defined as authentically “Hindu”, that India is the land of the Hindus, and that it must be ruled only by them. This ideology evidently leaves little room for non-Hindus, but especially so for Muslims, who ruled large parts of the Indian subcontinent for several centuries and who still constitute a sizeable minority in India. It is argued, for instance, that as the ruling elite in India, Muslims not only exploited the Hindus, they never even thought of themselves as “really” Indian and should not consequently be considered as such. For all the centrality of the Muslim Other to constructions of Hindu fundamentalism, the appeal and success of the latter is predicated on the systematic exclusion, if not the expulsion, of Muslims from the Hindu nation-state.

scholarly journals Stateless Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 416-434
Author(s):  
Marianne Hirsch
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
National Community ◽  
Artistic Works ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract Responding to current conditions of statelessness by way of Hannah Arendt's mid- twentieth century reflections, this article proposes the aesthetic encounter as a practice of alternative, counter-national community and belonging. Artistic works exploring the vulnerabilities and the vicissitudes of statelessness by Mirta Kupferminc and Wangechi Mutu inspire a definition of stateless memory as a suspension or hiatus in time and space. Stateless memory, the article suggests, can mobilize the memory of painful pasts in a different time frame than the progression toward preordained futures that often seem inevitable in the space-time of the nation-state and the catastrophes it causes and suffers.

scholarly journals Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 104-106
Author(s):  
Arshavez Mozafari
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Self Reflection ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Revolutionary Movements ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
Arab Middle East

One cannot think of politicized Islam in Iran without thinking of the IranianLeft’s formation and overall history. The awkward yet symbiotic relationshipbetween them continues to impact how political decisions are made,especially at the parliamentary level. Given the Left’s wide-ranging linkageswith surrounding regions, including the Causacus (early twentieth century)and the Arab Middle East (particularly during the 1970s), experts dealingwith those regions’ politics would benefit from this work. As one of theMiddle East’s strongest leftist movements before the 1980s, any discussionof neighboring revolutionary movements must at least consider it. Althoughthis book assumes familiarity with twentieth-century Iran’s secular politicsand might be considered too dense, its rather large bibliographic section ismeant to encourage individual intellectual pursuits.Many contemporary scholars of the Iranian Left agree on its adherents’general lack of critical self-reflection throughout the twentieth century.Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran offers a forum for criticalreassessments of organizational platforms along with constructive propositionsmeant to enhance the viability of left-leaning programs – especiallysocial-democratic initiatives. This latter point is crucial, because severalcontributors deliberately state the importance of rejuvenating the Leftthrough social democratic reformism. Historical examples are used to provethis option’s viability over the more “rigid” Marxist-Leninist and Stalinistexamples ...

Inclusion and Exclusion in the Arab City

2019 ◽  
pp. 117-132
Author(s):  
Nezar AlSayyad
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Massive Transformation ◽  
First Century ◽  
Ethnic Conflicts ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Arab Middle East

The urban world underwent a massive transformation at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. No region has escaped these changes, and many countries in the Arab Middle East have been particularly affected by them. This chapter analyzes how the construction of the Middle East as a concept has affected the evolution of a placeless urbanism in the region. In doing so, it illustrates the fluidity of identity under both colonial and modern conditions, but also discusses how old ethnic conflicts and religious rivalries in the age of globalization perpetuate different forms of exclusion that shape the contemporary Arab Middle Eastern City.

scholarly journals EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-146
Author(s):  
Sulayman S. Nyang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
The United States ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
To Come

The arrival of Islam in the United States ofAmerica has been dated backto the coming of slaves fromAfrica. During this unfortunate trade in humancargo from the African mainland, many Muslim men and women came tothese shores. Some of these men and women were more visible than others;some were more literate in Arabic than the others; and some were betterremembered by their generations than the others. Despite these multiple differencesbetween the Muslim slaves and their brethren from various parts oftheAfrican continent, the fact still remains that their Islam and their self-confidencedid not save them from the oppressive chains of slave masters. Thereligion of Islam survived only during the lifetime of individual believerswho tried desperately to maintain their Islamic way of life. Among theMuslims who came in ante bellum times intoAmerica one can include YorroMahmud (erroneously anglicized as Yarrow Mamout), Ayub Ibn SulaymanDiallo (known to Anglo-Saxons as Job ben Solomon), Abdul Rahman(known as Abdul Rahahman in the Western sources) and countless otherswhose Islamic ritual practices were prevented from surfacing in public.1Besides these Muslim slaves of ante bellumAmerica, there were otherswho came to these shores without the handicap of slavery. They came fromSouthern Europe, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent. TheseMuslimswere immigrants to America at the end of the Nineteenth Century andthe beginning of the Twentieth Century. Motivated by the desire to come toa land of opportunity and strike it rich, many of these men and women laterfound out that the United States ofAmerica was destined to be their permanenthomeland. In the search for identity and cultural security in their newenvironment, these Muslim immigrants began to consolidate their culturalresources by building mosques and organizing national and local groups forthe purpose of social welfare and solidarity. These developments among theMuslims contributed to the emergence of various cultural and religious ...

Towards a Minor Poetry: Reading Twentieth-Century French Poetry with Deleuze–Guattari and Bakhtin

Paragraph ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-153
Author(s):  
Daisy Sainsbury
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
French Language ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Minor Literature ◽  
Language System ◽  
Poetic Discourse ◽  
Poetry Reading ◽  
Century Poetry ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
A Minor

Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of minor literature, deterritorialization and agrammaticality, this article explores the possibility of a ‘minor poetry’, considering various interpretations of the term, and interrogating the value of the distinction between minor poetry and minor literature. The article considers Bakhtin's work, which offers several parallels to Deleuze and Guattari's in its consideration of the language system and the place of literature within it, but which also addresses questions of genre. It pursues Christian Prigent's hypothesis, in contrast to Bakhtin's account of poetic discourse, that Deleuze and Guattari's notion of deterritorialization might offer a definition of poetic language. Considering the work of two French-language poets, Ghérasim Luca and Olivier Cadiot, the article argues that the term ‘minor poetry’ gains an additional relevance for experimental twentieth-century poetry which grapples with its own generic identity, deterritorializing established conceptions of poetry, and making ‘minor’ the major poetic discourses on which it is contingent.

D?r al-?arb as the Motherland? The Muslim Tatars of (the Grand Duchy of) Lithuania and Social Contract

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-177
Author(s):  
Egdūnas Račius
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The Social ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Grand Duchy Of Lithuania ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Grand Duchy

Muslim presence in Lithuania, though already addressed from many angles, has not hitherto been approached from either the perspective of the social contract theories or of the compliance with Muslim jurisprudence. The author argues that through choice of non-Muslim Grand Duchy of Lithuania as their adopted Motherland, Muslim Tatars effectively entered into a unique (yet, from the point of Hanafi fiqh, arguably Islamically valid) social contract with the non-Muslim state and society. The article follows the development of this social contract since its inception in the fourteenth century all the way into the nation-state of Lithuania that emerged in the beginning of the twentieth century and continues until the present. The epitome of the social contract under investigation is the official granting in 1995 to Muslim Tatars of a status of one of the nine traditional faiths in Lithuania with all the ensuing political, legal and social consequences for both the Muslim minority and the state.

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