Religion as Resistance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Ryan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Religious Conservatism ◽  
Fascist Regime ◽  
Italian Nationalism ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
The Continuum

During the Italian occupation of Libya, debates over where Italy should be on the continuum between coercion and collaboration in colonial rule often reflected contentious battles over religious identity in Italian nationalism. These tensions came into sharpest relief in the Italian attempts to develop a power-sharing relationship with elite members of the Muslim Sufi order, the Sanusiyya in eastern Libya. Perceptions of the Sanusiyya as religious fundamentalists suggested to some the utility of emphasizing a shared sense of religious conservatism to “sell” Italian colonial rule. Others, however, argued that only a secular identity in colonial rule would prevent Muslim opposition to Italian occupation. Descriptions of the Sanusiyya in Italian sources therefore reflected their authors’ conflicting interests in projecting a Catholic or secular identity in Italian expansion. Adherents of the Sanusiyya were likewise divided in their responses to Italian colonial rule. In the early stages of the Italian occupation, Sanusi elites recognized the utility of negotiating a position of political authority in relationship to the Italian colonial state. As the fascist regime pushed colonial rule further toward coercion than collaboration (and embraced a Catholic identity in the process) in the 1920s, some Sanusi factions redefined the Sufi order as a force of anticolonial opposition and a nascent nationalist movement. This book explores the shifting relationship between religious and national identity through the process of negotiating colonial rule among both Italian imperialists and Sanusi elites.

Occupation, War, and the Transformation of the Sanusiyya

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen Ryan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Catholic Identity ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Objective ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Sufi Order

Fierce opposition to the Italian invasion of Libya in October 1911 demonstrated the fallacies of Insabato’s predictions that a positive Italo-Sanusi relationship would lead to an easy victory. Nevertheless, Italian colonial officials continued to pursue an alliance with the Sanusiyya as a central objective. During World War I Italian and British officials toyed with the idea of exacerbating divisions within the Sanusi family, descendants of the man credited with founding the Sufi order. Rather than negotiating with the recognized head of the Sanusiyya, Ahmed al-Sharif, officials promoted the leadership of his younger cousin, Idris al-Sanusi. In the context of prolonged war, Idris’s negotiations with European officials met with widespread approval among Sanusi elites. For Italian colonial officials, the development of a power-sharing relationship with Idris meant minimizing the Catholic identity of Italian colonial rule, much to the dismay of missionaries and Catholic political interests in Rome.

Rebel Poetry

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-74
Author(s):  
Kevin M. Jones
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
British Occupation ◽  
Public Protest

This chapter uses the concept of rebel poetry to illustrate the utility of anticolonial poetry as a method of public protest and public communication in the aftermath of World War I and the British occupation of Iraq. The chapter shows how Iraqi poets navigated divided political loyalties to rally popular support for the Ottoman Empire or the nascent Arab nationalist movement during the war and how poets accepted or rejected colonial patronage to support the British occupation. Most important, the chapter shows how prominent rebel poets challenged colonial rule and how the colonial state responded by regulating both public space and culture discourse. It also examines how Iraqi poets employed the new secular vocabulary of nationalism to challenge sectarianism and articulate their own vision of anticolonial modernity.

Baptising Pandita Ramabai: Faith and religiosity in the nineteenth-century social reform movements of colonial India

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110203
Author(s):  
Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati ◽  
Prithvi Sinha ◽  
Sneha Garg
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Annual Reports ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Pandita Ramabai ◽  
Role Of Religion

This essay aims to understand the role of religion in the social work of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922). By focusing on a twenty-five-year period commencing with her conversion to Christianity in 1883, we argue that religion constructed a political framework for her work in Sharada Sadan and Mukti Mission. There is a lacuna in the conventional scholarship that underplays the nuances of religion in Ramabai’s reform efforts, which we try to fill by conceptualising faith and religiosity as two distinct signifiers of her private and public religious presentations respectively. Drawing on her published letters, the annual reports of the Ramabai Association in America, and a number of evangelical periodicals published during her lifetime, we analyse how she explored Christianity not just as a personal faith but also as a conduit for funds. The conversion enabled her access to American supporters, concomitantly consolidating their claim over her social work. Her peculiar religious identity—a conflation of Hinduism and Christianity—provoked strong protests from the Hindu orthodoxy while leading to a fall-out with the evangelists at the same time. Ramabai shaped the public portrayal of her religiosity to maximise support from American patrons, the colonial state, and liberal Indians, resisting the orthodoxy’s oppositions with these material exploits. Rather than surrendering to patriarchal cynicism, she capitalised on the socio-political volatilities of colonial India to further the nascent women’s movement.

A Bridge Across the Mediterranean

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Women's Rights ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Marriage And Divorce ◽  
Divorce Laws ◽  
The Future ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Mediterranean

During the Algerian War, Nafissa Sid Cara came to public prominence in two roles. As a secretary of state, Sid Cara oversaw the reform of Muslim marriage and divorce laws pursued by Charles de Gaulle’s administration as part of its integration campaign to unite France and Algeria. As president of the Mouvement de solidarité féminine, she sought to “emancipate” Algerian women so they could enjoy the rights France offered. Though the politics of the Algerian War circumscribed both roles, Sid Cara’s work with Algerian women did not remain limited by colonial rule. As Algeria approached independence, Sid Cara rearticulated the language of women’s rights as an apolitical and universal good, regardless of the future of the French colonial state, though she—and the language of women’s rights— remained bound to the former metropole.

scholarly journals Tuberculosis, Housing and the Colonial State: Hong Kong, 1900-1950

2003 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 653-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Jones
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Laissez Faire ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Indirect Rule

As Tak-Wing Ngo has argued, the ‘dominant’ view of colonial rule in Hong Kong is one of a state which governed through ‘a deliberate policy of indirect rule—a combination of economic laissez-faire and political non-intervention’. It depicts a government which was disengaged from the population, preferring to see the colony as a trading opportunity, whilst leaving the condition of the peoples it held sway over to the philanthropy and humanitarianism of the colony's Chinese elites. This view of British rule was even supported by the primary representative of the imperial state when Sir David Trench admitted in 1970 that social policy, in the sense of responding to the needs of the populace, only began in the colony in 1953. But as Tak-Wing Ngo has argued, these ‘established narratives’ of Hong Kong's colonial history need to be reassessed and a more nuanced approach adopted to reveal the complexity of even Hong Kong's seemingly simple ‘colonial state-society’ relations.

scholarly journals Inequalities and Indirect Con?ict Interventions: The Evidence on Perceptions of Difference, Social Cohesion, and Sub-national Variations in Violence in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 95-147
Author(s):  
Rachael Diprose
Keyword(s):  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Group ◽  
Power Sharing ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
Political Group ◽  
Central Sulawesi ◽  
Horizontal Inequalities

This paper examines the empirical evidence on social cohesion and perceived horizontal inequalities in two neighbouring districts in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Despite having similar sized groups (religiously polarised, ethnically fragmented) and the opportunity to mobilise during the national political transition beginning in 1998, only one of the districts had serious violence. First, the evidence suggests that such violence was linked to perceived horizontal inequalities in terms of access to the state, particularly in terms of religious identity in the district affected by con?ict. In the same district, there was also evidence of weaker social cohesion: there were more pervasive negative stereotypes of other groups along religious lines, and the least inter-religious mixing in terms of everyday interaction and friendships. These attitudes and less frequent mixing were more likely, too, among the group that was initially marginalised from the state when power-sharing arrangements broke down. Meanwhile, in the district with less violence, there was more frequent inter-religious group mixing overall but particularly on the part of the group that did not dominate the state. That is, frequent inter-religious group mixing and the absence of negative attitudes on the part of this group towards others may have signalled that it was not a viable group to be mobilised for political gain. Instead, in this more peaceful district, ethnic identity was the more salient form of political capital, but demographically the district is ethnically fragmented. Inter-ethnic rather than religious mixing was less frequent in this district, but it was worst among the dominant political group along religious and ethnic lines. Yet, the negative attitudes and stronger in-group (rather than out-group) bonds between members of the dominant political group did not translate into violent con?ict because there were minimal challenges to their power during the transition. Finally, the evidence suggests that the associational membership of mixedethnic or religious organisations is less likely to explain violence prevention, given that membership of such organisations was greater in the con?ict-affected district. The evidence overall suggests that demographic divides are not always an indicator of political divides and the propensity for con?ict, but rather this is related to the politics of exclusion. Furthermore, it indicates that to some extent increased crossgroup contact can act as an indirect con?ict intervention mechanism.

scholarly journals Perlawanan dan Pembebasan Kolonialisme pada Tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah (1888-1903)

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Reni Dian Anggraini
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Political Resistance ◽  
Agents Of Change ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
Library Method

<p><em>This paper explains and describes how </em><em>tarekat</em><em> and Sufi political resistance as agents of change and liberation from colonialism in the Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah order. A Sufi is not a person who only dwells on spirituality, but also with social and political problems, such as resistance and rebellion against colonial rule. In carrying out this resistance, it cannot be separated from the encouragement of the Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah order. It was the tarekat that played an active role in defending colonialism, which criticized society and the oppression that had been perpetrated by colonialism. In carrying out his defense action, the Sufi order of the Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah order taught knowledge to his students to fight against colonialism. Fighting colonialism was not easy to go through. It even claimed many lives. Seeing this reality did not diminish the spirit of the tarekat in carrying out their actions as defenders of society in colonialism over colonialism. In this discussion, the authors use the library method by using various related sources in books, journals, and articles. Thus this paper attempts to unravel the problems of Sufism and political resistance and Sufi roles in liberation from colonialism pioneered by the Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah tarekat.</em></p><p><strong><em> </em></strong></p><p><em>Tulisan ini menjelaskan dan menguraikan tentang bagaimana </em><em>peran tarekat dalam</em><em> perlawanan politik, sufi sebagai agen perubahan dan pembebasan dari kolonialisme dalam tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah. Seorang sufi bukanlah orang yang hanya berkutat pada spiritualitas, tetapi juga dengan persoalan sosial dan politik, seperti perlawanan dan pemberontakan terhadap penjajahan kolonial. Dalam melakukan perlawanan tersebut tidak bisa terelepas dari dorongan para tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah. Tarekatlah yang sangat berperan aktif dalam melakukan pembelaan dari penjajahan  kolonialisme yang mengecam masyarakat dan ketertindasan yang telah dilakukan oleh para kolonialisme. Dalam menjalankan asksi pembelaannya, sufi tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah mengajarkan ilmu kepada muridnya untuk berjihad melawan penjajahan. Dalam melawan kolonialisme tidak mudah untuk dilalui, bahkan banyak memakan korban jiwa. Melihat realitas tersebut tidak memudarkan semangat para tarekat dalam menjalankan aksinya sebagai pembela masyarakat dalam penjajahan atas kolonialisme. Dalam pembahasan ini penulis menggunakan metode kepustakaan dengan menggunakan berbagai sumber yang terkait berupa buku, jurnal serta artikel. </em><em>Dengan begitu tulisan ini mencoba untuk menjelaskan bagaimana tasawuf dan perlawanan politik, serta sufi berperan dalam pembebasan dari kolonialisme yang dipelopori oleh tarekat Qadiriyah wa Naqsyabandiyah. </em><em></em></p>

Personal Law and Citizenship in India's Transition to Independence

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
ELEANOR NEWBIGIN
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Religious Identity ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
Liberal Citizenship ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Personal Law

AbstractStudies of the post-colonial state have often presented it as a structure that has fallen under the control of self-interested sections of the Indian elite. In terms of citizenship, the failure of the state to do more to realize the egalitarian promise of the Fundamental Rights, set out in the Constitution of 1950, has often been attributed to interference by these powerful elite. Tracing the interplay between debates about Hindu property rights and popular support or tolerance for the notion of individual, liberal citizenship, this paper argues that the principles espoused in the Fundamental Rights were never neutral abstractions but, long before independence, were firmly embedded in the material world of late-colonial political relations. Thus, in certain key regards, the citizen-subject of the Indian Constitution was not the individual, freed from ascriptive categories of gender or religious identity, but firmly tied to the power structures of the community governed by Hindu law.

Reform in fragments: Sovereignty, colonialism, and the Sikh tradition

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Rajbir Singh Judge
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
A Site

Abstract This article rethinks how we understand religious reform under colonial rule by examining Maharaja Duleep Singh, the deposed ruler of the Sikh empire, and how the Singh Sabha, a Sikh reform movement, debated, deployed, and organized around him in the late nineteenth century. I demonstrate how religious reform was a site of intense conflict that reveals the processes of argumentation within the contours of a tradition, even as the colonial state sought to continually mediate the terms. Embedded within a frame of inquiry provided by the Sikh tradition, the contestations that constituted reform within the tradition remained intimately tied in with the question of sovereignty. Ranjit Singh's empire in Panjab had only been annexed 30 years earlier in 1849 and remained a central reference point for thinking about the political at the turn of the century. These debates surrounding Duleep Singh, therefore, disclose the contentious engagements within a tradition that cannot be reduced to binary designations such as colonial construct/indigenous inheritance or religious/political.

scholarly journals “Imperium in Imperio”: The Corporation, Mining, and Governance in British Southeast Asia, 1900–1930

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
DAVID BAILLARGEON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Colonial Period ◽  
State Model ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Colonial ◽  
Corporate Ventures

This article examines the history of mining in British Southeast Asia during the early twentieth century. In particular, it focuses on the histories of the Burma Corporation and the Duff Development Company, which were located in British-occupied Burma and Malaya, respectively. It argues that despite being represented as “rogue” corporate ventures in areas under “indirect” colonial rule, the contrasting fates of each company—one successful, one not—reveal how foreign-owned businesses operating in the empire became increasingly beholden to British colonial state regulations during this period, marking a shift in policy from the “company-state” model that operated in prior centuries. The histories of these two firms ultimately demonstrate the continued significance of business in the making of empire during the late colonial period, bridging the divide between the age of company rule and the turn toward state-sponsored “development” that would occur in the mid-twentieth century.

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