Methodological Eclecticism: Feminist-Pragmatist Reflections on Re/centering Muslims in Research about Islam

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-45
Author(s):  
Sariya Cheruvallil-Contractor
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Research Paradigms ◽  
The People ◽  
Muslims In The West ◽  
Methodological Eclecticism ◽  
Epistemological Framework

For over a decade, researchers have consistently asserted that Muslims in the West are ‘research weary’ (Sangera and Thapar- Bjökert 2008: 544), ‘tired of too much research about them’ (Alvi et al. 2003: p. xv) and are concerned about ‘not being given the opportunity to shape research that is about them (Scott-Baumann et al. 2020). Research on Muslim in Britain and in the West are further complicated by social hierarchies and popular discourses that often position Muslims as the ‘different other’. Working within a feminist-pragmatist epistemological framework this chapter will bring together methodological reflections from a decade of research of Islam and Muslims in the West. It asserts the need for research paradigms that are grounded in partnership and positionality, and which maintain intellectual rigour while also being accountable to the people who are the subjects of research.

Definitions of Terrorism: Differences Between Christians and Muslims in the West and the Middle East

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna R. Samkavitz ◽  
Sarah Dolaty
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
The West ◽  
Muslims In The West

Growing Coconut Palms in the Pacific Islands: Colliding Knowledge and Values

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith A. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Islands ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Coconut Oil ◽  
Tropical Pacific ◽  
Experiential Knowledge ◽  
The West ◽  
Passive Resistance ◽  
The People ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Tropical Pacific

Coconuts provided commodities for the West in the form of coconut oil and copra. Once colonial governments established control of the tropical Pacific Islands, they needed revenue so urged European settlers to establish coconut plantations. For some decades most copra came from Indigenous growers. Administrations constantly urged the people to thin old groves and plant new ones like plantations, in grid patterns, regularly spaced and weeded. Local growers were instructed to collect all fallen coconuts for copra from their groves. For half a century, the administrations’ requirements met with Indigenous passive resistance. This paper examines the underlying reasons for this, elucidating Indigenous ecological and social values, based on experiential knowledge, knowledge that clashed with Western scientific values.

scholarly journals On the Discursive and Methodological Categorisation of Islam and Muslims in the West: Ontological and Epistemological Considerations

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (10) ◽  
pp. 501
Author(s):  
Fethi Mansouri
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
The West ◽  
Research Agendas ◽  
Muslims In The West ◽  
The Impact

This article reflects on the ethical and epistemological challenges facing researchers engaged in contemporary studies of Islam and Muslims in the West. Particularly, it focuses on the impact of the constructions and categorisations of Muslims and Islam in research. To do this, it considers the entwinement of public discourses and the development of research agendas and projects. To examine this complex and enmeshed process, this article explores ideological, discursive and epistemological approaches that it argues researchers need to consider. In invoking these three approaches alongside an analysis of a collection of recent research, this article contends that questions of race, religion and politics have been deployed to reinforce, rather than challenge, certain essentialist/orientalist representations of Islam and Muslims in the West in research. As this article shows, this practice is increasingly threatening to compromise, in a Habermasian communicative sense (i.e., the opportunity to speak and be heard for all concerned), the ethical and epistemological underpinnings of social science research with its emphasis on inclusion and respect.

scholarly journals Global insecurity and citizenship strategies: Young Muslims in the West

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 271-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catarina Kinnvall ◽  
Paul Nesbitt-Larking
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Muslims In The West

Legitimizing Transformation without Calling it Change:Tajdīd, Iṣlāḥ, and Saudi Arabia’s Place in the Contemporary World

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Sean Foley
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Political System ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
The West ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
The People ◽  
Diverse Society ◽  
Oil Revenues

For decades, many scholars have contended that Saudi Arabia is a fixed political system, where a conservative monarchy uses advanced technology, oil revenues, and religion to dominate the people. Such a system is often portrayed as inherently unstable, a seemingly never-ending series of collisions between an unchanging traditional political structure seeking to hold on to power at any cost and a dynamic modernity—a view encapsulated in a phrase expressed at virtually every public discussion of the Kingdom in the West: ‘you must admit that Saudi Arabia must change’. Ironically this phrase confirms what this article argues is a secret to the success of Saudi Arabia in the contemporary era: the ability to legitimize transformation without calling it change. No society is static, including Saudi Arabia. Throughout the Kingdom’s history, the defining social institutions have repeatedly utilized Tajdīd (Revival) and Iṣlāḥ (Reform) to respond to new technologies and the changing expectations of a diverse society. While Muslim scholars are most often entrusted to arbitrate this process, ordinary Saudis use this process to guide their actions in the various social spaces they encounter both at home and abroad. Critically, this process reflects the response of King Abdulaziz and the founders of the third Saudi state in the early twentieth century to the factors that had brought down previous Saudi states in the nineteenth century.

Fetishism and the Moral Marketplace: How Abolitionist Sugar Boycotts in the 1790s Defined British Consumers and the West Indian "Other"

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Laurel Carmichael
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
West Indian ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Class Consciousness ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
The West ◽  
The People

<p>In the early 1790s more than 300,000 Britons boycotted West Indian sugar in one of the most impressive displays of public mobilisation against the slave trade. Many of those who abstained were inspired by William Fox’s 1791 pamphlet An Address to the People of Great Britain on the Utility of Refraining from the Use of West India Sugar and Rum. The abstention movement gained momentum amidst the failures of the petition campaign to achieve a legislative end to the slave-trade, and placed the responsibility of ending slavery with all British consumers. This thesis draws from cross-disciplinary scholarship to argue that the campaign against slave sugar appealed to an idealised image of the humanitarian consumer and maligned slave. Writers such as Fox based their appeal on a sense of religious duty, class-consciousness and gendered values. Both the domestic sphere and the consumer body were transformed into sites of political activism, as abolitionists attempted to establish a direct link between the ingestion of sugar and the violence of colonial slavery. Attempts to encourage consumers’ sympathetic identification with the plight of distant slaves occurred alongside attempts to invoke horror and repulsion at slave suffering. The image of the West Indian slave presented to consumers was one shaped by fetishized European imaginings. The decision to abstain from slave sugar, therefore, was not only motivated by genuine philanthropic concerns, but the desire to protect the civilised and refined modern consumer, from the contaminating products of colonial barbarity.</p>

Art. VII.—Notes on Persian Belúchistán. From the Persian of Mirza Mehdy Khán. Published Teheran, July, 1875

1876 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-154
Author(s):  
A. H. Schindler
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Temperate Climate ◽  
The South ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
The People ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
The Hill ◽  
Cool Climate

The part of Belúchistán now under Persian rule is bounded upon the north by Seistán, upon the east by Panjgúr and Kej, upon the south by the Indian Ocean, and upon the west by Núrámshír, Rúdbár, and the Báshákerd mountains.This country enjoys a variety of climates; almost unbearable heat exists on the Mekrán coast, we find a temperate climate on the hill slopes and on the slightly raised plains as at Duzek and Bampúr, and a cool climate in the mountainous districts Serhad and Bazmán. The heat at Jálq is said to be so intense in summer that the gazelles lie down exhausted in the plains, and let themselves be taken by the people without any trouble.

L'Eviction des Sēfuwa du Kānem et l'origine des Bulāla

1982 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dierk Lange
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
The West ◽  
Lake Chad ◽  
Border States ◽  
Sedentary Population ◽  
The People ◽  
In The Beginning

The Sēfuwa dynasty seized power in Kānem around 1075, but it was only in the beginning of the thirteenth century that the rulers of Kānem were able to extend their authority over Bornū. Prior to this move small groups of Saharan speakers had already established themselves among the Chadic speakers of the Komadugu Yobe valley. Towards the end of the reign of Dūnama Dībalāmi (c. 1210–48) the court of the Sēfuwa itself was shifted to Bornū, mainly as a result of disturbances in Kānem. Indeed, according to oral traditions of the sixteenth century, the Tubu, in alliance with certain members of the Sēfuwa aristocracy, staged a major rebellion against the central government, apparently attempting to resist the strict application of Islamic principles of government by Dūnama Dībalāmi. Towards the end of the thirteenth century powerful rulers were again able to establish the authority of the Sēfuwa on firm grounds: in the east, even on the fringes of Kānem, they brought the situation under strict control and in the west they extended – or confirmed – the political influence of the Sēfuwa dynasty over the focal points of interregional trade which began to rise in Hausaland. Thus Bornū became the central province of the Sēfuwa Empire in spite of the fact that several kings continued to reside temporarily in the old capital of Djīmī situated in Kānem. This major shift of their territorial basis affected the position of the Sēfuwa in their original homelands. Written sources from the end of the fourteenth century show that the increasing involvement of the Sēfuwa in Bornū and its western border states must have changed their attitude towards the people living east of Lake Chad: after having acquired the character of an autochthonous (or national) dynasty of Kānem – in spite of their foreign origin – the Sēfuwa progressively became an alien power in this major Sudanic state, even though the people of Kānem and Bornū were closely related. Furthermore, the rise of a powerful kingdom in the area of Lake Fitrī under the rule of the Bulāla became a serious threat to the Sēfuwa in their original homelands as the warrior aristocracy of the Bulāla state – which must have been of Kanembu origin – remained closely connected with the sedentary population of Kānem. When finally during the reign of 'Umar b. Idrīs (c. 1382–7), the Sēfuwa were forced by the Bulāla to withdraw their forces from Kānem, this territorial loss did not affect the future development of the Empire to the extent that has formerly been supposed, since losses in the east were largely compensated by earlier gains in the west.

The Britons in Southern Scotland

Antiquity ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 29 (114) ◽  
pp. 77-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
The West ◽  
Early Medieval Period ◽  
The North ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The People ◽  
Northern Portion

The archaeological background of the people of what is now Scotland south of the Forth and Clyde in the Roman period was a La Téne one, and specifically chiefly Iron Age B. This links them intimately with the Britons of southern Britain in the conglomeration of Celtic tribes who called themselves Brittones and spoke what we call the Brittonic or Ancient British form of Celtic, from which are descended the three modern languages of Welsh, Cornish and Breton. To the north of the Forth was a different people, the Picts. They too were Celts or partly Celts; probably not Brittones however, but a different branch of the Celtic race, though more closely related to the Brittones than to the Goidels of Ireland and (in later times) of the west of Scotland. Not being Brittonic, the Picts may be ignored here. Our southern Scottish Brittones are nothing but the northern portion of a common Brittonic population, from the southern portion of which come the people of Wales and Cornwall. Some historians speak of the northern Brittones as Welsh, following good Anglo-Saxon precedent, but this is apt to lead to confusion. The best term for them, in the Dark Ages and early Medieval period, as long as they survived, is ‘Cumbrians’, and for their language, ‘Cumbric’. They called themselves in Latin Cumbri and Cumbrenses, which is a Latinization of the native word Cymry, meaning ‘fellow-countrymen’, which both they and the Welsh used of themselves in common, and is still the Welsh name for the Welsh to the present day. The centre of their power was Strathclyde, the Clyde valley, with their capital at Dumbarton.

The tompon-tany and the tompon-drano in the History of Central and Western Madagascar

1982 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 61-76
Author(s):  
Finn Fuglestad
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
The West ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Conceptual Revolution

At some undefined time in the fairly recent past central and western Madagascar witnessed a conceptual 'revolution' which had far-reaching political consequences. The religious beliefs and symbols which constituted the main ingredients of this 'revolution'--and probably also the people who propagated them--were in some way connected with the Zafindraminia-Antanosy and the Anteimoro of the southeastern and eastern coast. It is quite clear that these and similar groups had been strongly influenced by Islam and that they practiced what could perhaps be described as a corrupt or diluted Islam or a syncretic 'pagan' Muslim religion. (It is significant that as their name indicates the Zafindraminia claim descent from Raminia who they hold to have been the mother of Muhammad.) One of the main ingredients of this religion was the cult of the ody or guardian amulets, objects usually made of wood which are strikingly reminiscent of the so-called “charms” or “gris-gris” sold by Muslim clerics over much of Africa. Another ingredient is represented by the institution of ombiasy. The ombiasy (the main manufacturers of ody) whom the Frenchman Etienne de Flacourt at Fort-Dauphin in the seventeenth century took to be Muslim clerics were originally the “priests” (or the “devins guérisseurs,” according to Hubert Deschamps) of the Anteimoro and the Zafindraminia-Antanosy. Subsequently this institution was disseminated throughout nearly the whole of Madagascar. Yet another ingredient was the system of divination known as sikidy, which also spread to other parts of Madagascar, including Imerina and the Sakalava country.These beliefs, symbols, and institutions deeply influenced the people of the west coast (the present-day Sakalava country) and of central Madagascar (Imerina and Betsileo country).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document