Alternative Centers of Shiʿi Islam

Author(s):  
Simon Wolfgang Fuchs

The introduction discusses the fundamental transformations of Shi‘i thought and conceptions of religious authority that occurred in tandem with the expansion of Shi‘i religious education in colonial India and Pakistan throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. In particular, this section introduces the reader to the three key analytical lenses of the book, namely the evolving nature of sectarianism, the salience of transnational connections, and the creative potential of local religious authority when engaging with the Shi‘i scholarly tradition. The introduction adopts a model of “impetus” and “response” to elucidate the travel of ideas between the Middle East and South Asia, while also paying attention to their translation from Arabic and Persian into Urdu.

Author(s):  
Michael Farquhar

This chapter explores the role of large numbers of non-Saudi staff members at the Islamic University of Medina (IUM) from the early 1960s to the 1980s, and considers the part that they played in the remaking of Wahhabi religious authority. It argues that until the mid-twentieth century, the relatively parochial and insular nature of the Wahhabi scholarly milieu meant that Wahhabi scholars lacked the kinds of symbolic resources that would be required to launch such an ambitious missionary project. It then traces the trajectories that brought migrants from across the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and beyond to work at the IUM. It argues that, by bringing diversified reserves of spiritual capital — including qualifications acquired in venerable centers of learning like al-Azhar — these migrants lent legitimacy to the new effort to extend the Wahhabi mission to broad audiences beyond the kingdom’s borders.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-202
Author(s):  
Siti Rohmah ◽  
M. Syukri Ismail ◽  
Moh. Anas Kholish ◽  
Mona Novita

Some circles suggest that the phenomenon of intolerance and religious conflict in Indonesia will be reduced by a religious education model dominated by a mono-religious approach. The approach that focuses on deepening the knowledge of all religions is considered to be the cause of the persistence of interfaith stigma and prejudice. However, there are objections from various circles to the concept and application of interreligious education which requires close dialogue and interaction, an appreciative attitude, and openness to adherents of other religions. This article argues that the development of a peaceful and diverse mono-religious education approach is possible. This study employs Mohammed Abu-Nimer's theory as an alternative model of Islamic peace education that is strategic, participatory and practical; it focuses on his experience in conflict areas and in the Islamic education environment, which is often stigmatized conservatively in the Middle East and Africa. This study confirms that monoreligious education provides room for peace education that builds pedagogy of tolerance, diversity and human rights.


Author(s):  
S.A. Kirillina ◽  
A.L. Safronova ◽  
V.V. Orlov

Аннотация В статье изучены общие и специфические черты идейных воззрений, пропагандистской риторики и политических действий представителей халифатистского движения на Ближнем Востоке и в Южной Азии. В ретроспективном ключе прослеживается эволюция представлений о сущности и необходимости возрождения института халифата в трудах исламских идеологов, реформаторов и политиков Джамал ад-Дина ал-Афгани, Абд ар-Рахмана ал-Кавакиби, Мухаммада Рашида Риды, Абул Калама Азада. Внимание авторов сосредоточено на общественно-политических дискуссиях 2030-х годов XX столетия, а также на повестке дня халифатистских конгрессов и конференций этого периода. На них вырабатывались первые представления современников о пост-османском формате мусульманского единства и идейно-политической роли будущего халифата. Авторы демонстрируют различие между моделями реакции мусульман Ближнего Востока и Южной Азии на упразднение османского халифата республиканским руководством Турции. Установлена многоаспектная взаимосвязь между халифатистскими ценностями, проосманскими настроениями и формами самоотождествления, которые сложились в арабских и южноазиатских обществах. Отдельно намечено соотношение между подъемом халифатистских настроений и радикализацией антиколониальных действий мусульман Индостана.Abstract The article deals with analysis of common and specific features of ideas, propaganda, rhetoric and political actions taken by representatives of the movement for defense of the Caliphate in the Middle East and South Asia. The retrospection showing the transformation of conception of the Caliphate and the necessity of its revival in the works of eminent ideologists and politicians of the Muslim world Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Muhammad Rashid Rida and Abul Kalam Azad, is also given in the article. The authors also focus on the social and political discussions of the 1920s 1930s, as well as on the agenda of Caliphatist congresses and conferences of this period. They helped to elaborate the early representations of post-Ottoman pattern of the Muslim unity and the ideological and political role of the future Caliphate. The authors demonstrate the difference between the forms of reaction of Muslims in the Middle East and South Asia to the repudiation of the Caliphate by the Republican leaders of Turkey. The article establishes a multi-aspect interaction between the Caliphatist values and forms of self-identification, emerged in Arab and South Asian societies. The correlation between the rise of Caliphatist attitudes and radicalization of anti-colonial actions of South Asian Muslims is also outlined.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-37
Author(s):  
Ali Altaf Mian

Abstract This article contributes to scholarship on Muslim humanities, Islam in modern South Asia, and the Urdu literary tradition in colonial India. It does so by contextualizing and closely reading Ashraf ʿAlī Thānavī’s (1863–1943) commentary on the Dīvān of the fourteenth-century Persian poet Ḥāfiz̤. Unlike his modernist contemporaries, Ashraf ʿAlī does not read Ḥāfiz̤ through the prisms of social reform or anti-colonial nationalist struggle. Rather, in his capacity as a Sufi master, he approaches Ḥāfiz̤’s Dīvān as a mystical text in order to generate insights through which he counsels his disciples. He uses the commentary genre to explore Sufi themes such as consolation, contraction, annihilation, subsistence, and the master-disciple relational dynamic. His engagement with Ḥāfiz̤’s ġhazals enables him to elaborate a practical mystical theology and to eroticize normative devotional rituals. Yet the affirmation of an analogical correspondence between sensual and divine love on the part of Ashraf ʿAlī also implies the survival of Ḥāfiz̤’s emphases on the disposability of the world and intoxicated longing for the beloved despite the demands of colonial modernity.


2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 485-498
Author(s):  
Sravanthi Kollu

Abstract The multilingual turn in literary studies emphasizes the fairly recent emergence of a monolingual attachment to language. While this rightly calls into question the academic focus on monolingual competencies and offers a substantial area of inquiry for scholars working with the linguistically diverse regions of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, this essay posits that the persistence of multilinguality among historical actors from these regions does not merit a shift away from monolingualism in contemporary scholarship. This argument derives from the claims analyzed in this essay, made by South Asian writers in colonial India, about the singularity of one's own language (swabhasha) and the writers' anxieties to protect this language from vulgar speech (gramyam). Building on contemporary work on the vernacular, the essay seeks to draw renewed attention to the role of speech in language debates in Telugu, a language whose particularity has not become a metonym either for the nation (like Hindi) or for a pan–South Indian identity (like Tamil). In tracing the movement from vulgar speech to proper language in this archive, this essay reframes vernacularity as an ethical compulsion premised on the common.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagar ElDidi ◽  
Chloe van Biljon ◽  
Muzna Fatima Alvi ◽  
Claudia Ringler ◽  
Nazmun Ratna ◽  
...  

Geopolitics ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-209 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arang Keshavarzian ◽  
Waleed Hazbun

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