The Creation of Minder as a Form of Social Bricolage

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Ava Benham

Because of the lack of inclusivity, I have decided to focus on Muslims in North America and how they are seeking potential marital partners through dating apps that have been created by Muslims specifically for the Muslim community.  One app that I will highlight in this blog post is an app called Minder.  Minder was co-founded by Haroon Moktarzhada as a response to the lack of inclusivity Muslims in North America felt about pre-existing dating apps.  It is inspired by the app Tinder, but caters specifically toward Muslims seeking other Muslims for marriage.  Throughout my research on Minder and the use of dating apps by Muslims in North America, I have made connections to our course discussions as well as a couple interesting discoveries.  For instance, I found that the use of Muslim-centered dating apps in the West is predominantly driven by Muslim women.  I would not have originally thought that Muslim women in the West utilized these apps more often than men to find a potential spouse.  In addition, I found that many Muslim institutions that exist in North America support the use of online dating and act as intermediaries in finding spouses for Muslims that are members of the community.  As I expand on both points addressed above, I hope to bring this blog post full circle and further understand how Muslims in North America have engaged with online dating and how they have incorporated it into their culture and religion in a way that prioritizes their values.  I view the creation of Minder and the use of online dating among Muslim communities in North America as a form social bricolage that allows Muslims to embrace their cultural and religious beliefs through a lens of modernity.

Increased number of Muslim women utilizing dating apps

Muslim women living in North America are engaging in online dating platforms more frequently than Muslim men.  For instance, “we included an interaction term between gender and living in the West. The results show that the odds of women living in the West using the Internet both for arranging dates and for online dating platforms increases by 360% and 560% relative to men” (Afary 2017: 437).  These numbers are extremely polarizing compared to the number of women in Muslim majority countries who use social media with the intention of dating living.  This is because of some of the cultural restrictions that are imposed upon women who are living in Muslim majority countries.  Moreover, “not only is there a double standard which makes women more vulnerable to sanctions for immodesty in their home countries and women are less likely to have private access to the Internet, making dating online much more dangerous for them” (Afary 2017: 437).  Muslim women who are living in a western country like North America are able to navigate new spaces (cyber and pubic) that are less restrictive than those very spaces in some Muslim majority countries.  This allows women to freely participate in online dating platforms like Minder, which can connect them with Muslim men who exist beyond the limits of their local social network.

Online dating via apps like Minder in North America has significantly aided in encouraging gender equality and has given Muslim women a sense of autonomy to meet Muslim men on their own terms.  Minder is “like Tinder, users can swipe right if they like the look of someone and can start talking if they’re a match. Unlike Tinder, both apps allow users to filter results according to race, ethnicity, and level of religiosity” (Hamid 2015).  Minder was developed by Muslims with specific emphasis on the importance of cultural and religious values.  The app has also taken the perspective of Muslim women and their experiences into consideration.  Furthermore, Haroon Moktarzhada states that, “In America, the expectation of what a marriage is, is very different than in more traditional, conservative societies.  One of the things we tried to do with the app is be unapologetically progressive” (Majumdar 2016).  This has attracted many Muslims users who tend to be more open-minded to non-conventional ways of meeting and dating a potential spouse.  Not only does online forums such as Minder enhance one’s chance at meeting like-minded individuals, Minder matches individuals who may be the most compatible for each other.  Online dating via Minder can “combine both Islamic marriage culture and modern aspirations of individual freedom and personal choices. It gives users, especially women, who make up the overwhelming percentage of participants, the ability and opportunity to express their personal issues, concerns, ambitions and feelings” (Lo and Aziz 2009: 17).  The focus of Muslim women’s needs and the number of Muslim women using online forums such has Minder are not mutually exclusive.  Since there was an initial emphasis placed on Muslim women’s experiences, there has been an increase in the use of dating apps by Muslim women.

Since I have unpacked this point, I can dispel my initial assumptions as to why I surprised that more Muslim women were using Minder to seek marriage partners.  I now realize why there are more Muslim women than men who are using these apps.  The combination of the mobility Muslim women experience in North America and the consideration of Muslim women’s perceptions in the creation of these apps, it is clear that the trend would reveal that more women are participating in online dating via Minder.

Muslims institutions engaging in online forums as intermediaries

Prior to online dating forums, many Muslims in North America found it challenging to find a spouse through traditional facilitation methods.  These traditional methods, however, were often inaccessible or ineffective for Muslims living in North America.  As a result, many “American Muslims found spouses through diverse methods, often developing new social networks” (Lo and Aziz 2009: 6).  One crucial method was the use of intermediaries to find spouses.  These intermediaries often were a local imam who was connected to other Muslim communities outside of their own.

Certain Muslim institutions such as community mosques, Islamic centers, schools and local imams act as intermediators when a Muslim man or woman undergoes the search for a marital partner.  For example, “there are many local Muslim communities in which members send emails to an email moderator, who confidentially matches the sender with another mate-seeker from an existing pool” (Lo and Aziz 2009: 9-10).  Muslims who are seeking a marriage partner often seek guidance from their local mosque or imam because they have found it difficult to meet potential partners through family and friends.  In addition, Muslim community mosques and imams are utilizing online forums to help connect Muslim men and women who are looking for a marriage partner.  This has further facilitated the shift from tradition methods of finding a spouse to a more moderate and progressive method of matchmaking.  Because these new methods are being implemented, it further encourages Muslim men and women to seek out other avenues like Minder.

Minder as a form of Social Bricolage

The idea for this topic has continuously progressed the further I read into the phenomenon of online dating in North American Muslim communities and how Minder has revolutionized the traditional ways in which Muslims meet, date and marry.  In another course, I stumbled upon the concept of ‘bricolage,’ which is the idea that “equally, all symbolic innovations are bricolages, concoctions of symbols already freighted with significance by a meaningful environment” (Comaroff 1999: 197).  The concept of bricolage just clicked and I realized that the creation of Minder within the Muslim community is, in fact, a form of social bricolage.

Muslims living in North America did not feel that mainstream forms of online dating encompassed their traditional values and as a result, many felt excluded from participating in online dating forums.  However, some Muslims began to realize that many traditional methods of finding a spouse were either absent in their community or ineffective.  It was extremely difficult for Muslims to meet other Muslims with marriage in mind.  Dating apps like Minder began to launch within Muslim communities.  The creation of Minder itself is a bricolage because it is inspired by pre-existing ideas (Tinder and Bumble) and has transformed from its original form and manipulated into something new to serve another purpose.  So, in short, the creators of Minder have taken their own spin on dating apps to serve their own cultural and religious communities.

I think Minder is unlike other online forums that are geared toward other communities (Christian, Jewish, Baha’i, etc.) because it has completely revolutionized how Muslim individuals meet, date, and marry in North America.  Not only are Muslims incorporating online dating praxis into their communities, but are normalizing it among both Muslim men and women alike.  Minder and the use of online dating among Muslim communities in North America is a form social bricolage that allows Muslims to embrace their cultural and religious beliefs through a lens of modernity.  This lens of modernity is understood through Muslim communities that value their cultural traditions and religious praxis, but also engage in contemporary forums that can enhance and further engage Muslim communities across North America.

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Class sources:

Ernst, Carl W. “Approaching Islam in Terms of Religion.” Following Muhammad: Rethinking Islam In the Contemporary World. The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

Majeed, Javed. “Modernity,” Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. Ed. Richard C. Martin. Vol. 2. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 456-458. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Wilson, John F. “Modernity,” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 6108-6112. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

 

External sources:

“The place for awesome Muslims to meet. Swipe. Match. Marry.” Minder online. Last modified February 22, 2015. https://www.minderme.co/.

Hamid, Triska. “Two ‘Islamic Tinder’ Apps Are Being Launched for Britain’s Independent Female Muslims.” Vice online. Last modified March 25, 2015. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8gk4nv/muslim-women-dating-minority-within-a-minority-495.

Majumdar, Shahirah. “What It Means to Date Online When You’re Muslim.” The Cut. April 28, 2016. Accessed April 24, 2018. https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/muslim-online-dating.html.

“Bricolage.” Wikipedia. March 09, 2018. Accessed March 27, 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage.

 

External scholarly sources:

Comaroff, Jean. “Chapter 7: Ritual as Historical Practice Mediation in the Neocolonial Context.” In Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance The Culture and History of a South African People, 194-251. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Lo, Mbaye, and Taimoor Aziz. “Muslim Marriage Goes Online: The Use of Internet

Matchmaking by American Muslims.” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 21, no. 3 (2009): 1-21. doi:10.3138/jrpc.21.3.005.

Sotoudeh, Ramina, Roger Friedland, and Janet Afary. “Digital Romance: The Sources of Online Love in the Muslim World.” Media, Culture & Society 39, no. 3 (2017): 429-39. doi:10.1177/0163443717691226.

 

Images:

Haefeli, William. “I went on a date with him. He looks better on paper.” Digital image. Punch cartoons. 1991. Accessed February 15, 2018.

https://punch.photoshelter.com/image?&_bqG=2&_bqH=eJxtj09rwzAMxT9Nc04LhhHwwbW0oKWxO_8p5GTSrrRpR8e6nvbpZ4WyhW06yL_35Gej5lBe4_NR6KEXzZvpPuv3LZz3Zh2wWjyIaiHKal7mqiiB1_Klvw2XQ0HJgwo4E8u2nQmQEwOADYCJ1eVik89s4.8o_o3i_1FNoRs_C3nMoG00wXWJvGVpHaHJM7KGJfnkcIXKI9zleqq9dUE6ZZpiXC4pA_KWOXp0iUBGXvz0dBqE215eidfekAtRrZKq0eiOLxVJLxPlh3P0jvEb3eMPtoxKB_mx76.7Y7EZ0_XYNfcv2W1x2Q–&GI_ID.

Screenshot of the dating app called Minder. Digital image. Global Dating Insights. 2016.Accessed March 05, 2018.

https://globaldatinginsights.com/2015/08/20/20082015-salaam-swipe-help-matchmaking-young-muslims/.

 

 

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Essentialization and Erasure in the Occupation of Palestine

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Thomas Mackell

Since at least the mid-nineteenth century, with the increasing spread of colonialism and the fall of the Ottoman empire, imperial world powers have essentialized the practitioners of the religion of Islam to be constitutive of a unified race. As with all processes of racialization, this involved not just a colonization of land with Muslims on it, but an accompanying erasure of the personhood of Muslims. I would like to make the overly-ambitious-for-a-short-blog-post argument that this process of racialization and essentialization has played a constitutive role in the occupation of Palestine.

Critical theorist Tomoko Masuzawa, historian Cemil Aydin, and postcolonial thinker Edward Said make clear that the presentation of Islam as a problem, an impediment to the expansion of British global empire, led to the racialization and essentialization of Muslims. The advent of European modernity can be said to have been brought on by the colonial encounter with the so-called “Mohammedan” (a colonial misnomer and pejorative term used to refer to Muslims) who had, up until the fifteenth century, held dominion over lands which the Europeans now wanted to claim for their own (Masuzawa, 180-182). In this project of Western expansion, the Near East was seen as simultaneously an Orientalized “land of desire” and also an impediment to attaining the objects of said desire (Masuzawa, 183). In other words, the Muslim rulers had spices and other resources that the Europeans wanted, temporarily giving these Muslim rulers political and economic sway, only to have this abruptly taken away by colonial expansion and domination granting Europeans control over said resources (Masuzawa, 183-184). The point I would like to draw out below is that in the contemporary postcolonial moment, the ramifications of the European domination and control over Middle Eastern resources still plays out in Palestine through the control of not just Palestine’s physical goods, but Palestinians’ identities.

Picking up this historical narrative in the nineteenth century, Aydin undoes our understanding of a given, unified, global ummah while simultaneously demonstrating how the idea of such a unity came to be. Aydin points out that the conflict between “Islam” and “the West” was not always clear cut. As the Imperial world order deteriorated, it led to the categorization of Muslims as a race. As Aydin makes clear, power functions through control of narrative. After the Ottomans lost in World War I, the British took over Muslim societies in Palestine and Iraq and thus had the power to decide that a person’s Muslimness was the most important thing about them (Aydin, 101). This essentialization allowed for the imaginary of the “Muslim world” to be seen as a unitary thing to be displaced by an equally imaginary “Jewish world” through the British Empire’s endorsement of Zionism with the Balfour Declaration (Aydin, 120). Since then, Muslims have occasionally turned around and made use of their perceived unity for pan-Islamic solidarity, such as the Muslim Brotherhood’s support for the Palestinian revolt in 1936 (Aydin, 151). The very existence of Muslim holy sites in Jewish controlled Jerusalem made the question of Palestine an inherently religious issue. In the context of mid-twentieth century postcolonialism, questions of Palestinian liberation became key issues for the Muslim world (Aydin, 156).

The displacement of Palestinians through the aforementioned essentializations, racializations, and other various tools of colonialism creates a unique situation wherein what it means to be Palestinian must be reclaimed, or recreated anew. Read in tandem with Aydin and Said, religion scholar David Chidester’s discussion of the concept of indigeneity brings to light important nuances of the Palestinian situation,

“First, indigeneity represents a range of analytical strategies based on the recovery of place, the authenticity of tradition, and the assertion of self-determination in a project to forge postcolonial meaning and power on indigenous terms. Privileging the self-representation of indigenous people who have passed through the experience of colonization, indigeneity generates analytical terms for recovering the purity of local traditions from the defiling effects of global imperialism … ‘Colonization is not satisfied merely with holding a people in its grip and emptying the native’s brain of all form and content,’ Fanon observed. ‘By a kind of perverted logic, it turns to the past of oppressed people, and distorts, disfigures and destroys it’ (Fanon, 1963, p. 170)” (Chidester, 1858).

Here the ideas of Chidester and the philosopher Frantz Fanon can help us to understand the Palestinian situation as far as Palestinian history has been distorted in such a way as to erase the presence of Palestinian people. Israeli colonizers displace local Palestinians and occupy the land of Palestine as if there were no people there before.

The concept of indigeneity outlined above can also be applied to Aydin’s historical analyses of uses of “the idea of the Muslim world” by Muslims themselves for unifying purposes, as well as his discussions of Pan-Islamism, regionalism, and nationalism used as realpolitik for asserting the inevitability of empires, and not necessarily having to do with religion. The Palestinian/Israeli problem is not simply one of religion, but of empire, colonialism, and race. Said’s chapter “Towards Palestinian Self-Determination” is also relevant here as far as he discusses Palestinians’ reclamation of what it means to be Palestinian and Muslim post-colonization. Said argues that this reclamation must happen in the present for the Palestinian as whatever “indigenous past” they had has been erased by the violence of colonization.

“The Palestinian must make the present since the present is not an imaginative luxury but a literal, existential necessity. A scene barely accommodates him and becomes a provocation: The paradox of contemporaneity for the Palestinian is very sharp indeed. If the present cannot be ‘given’ simply (that is, if time will not allow him either to differentiate clearly between his past and his present or to correct them because the 1948 disaster [the Balfour Declaration], unmentioned except as an episode hidden within episodes, prevents continuity), it is intelligible only as an achievement.” (Said, 153)

Through the historical processes drawn out by Masuzawa, Said, Chidester, and Aydin, it becomes clear how the Palestinian, and the colonized subject in general, is essentialized, placed in a box, and erased. Displaced not only from their land, but from their very identity as far it is defined and co-opted by the colonizer, the Palestinian is physically and psychologically displaced. Israel seeks to further expand and occupy Palestine through a simultaneous dehumanization of the Palestinian and therefore a disconnection between the Palestinian and the very land they stand on. In order for Israel to conceptualize Palestine as something which can be occupied, the Palestinians must be deemed inhuman and treated as such. It is not enough that their very existence is negated, but their connection to the space and time they inhabit must be dismantled. As queer theorist Jasbir Puar and philosopher Reza Negarestani make clear, it is through the drive towards supposedly beneficial aspects of capitalism (expansion of Israeli territory, exploitation of Palestinian workers under the guise of “economic rehabilitation”) as well as through constant digital occupation of air and land (texts sent to Palestinians’ phones — routed through Israeli telecommunications companies — alerting them of incoming airstrikes, drone surveillance used for three-dimensional mapping of Palestinian territory) that the dehumanization of Palestinians and the expropriation of their land is made possible (Puar, 15; Negarestani, 183-184).

The minority consciousness of the Zionists leads to a simultaneous generalization of what it means to be a part of the new Jewish nation in Palestine, and a harsh separation between who can and can’t be a part of this new nation (Said, 147). As far as generalization, the “Come to Palestine” poster above was strategically designed so as to appeal not only to Jews of the Diaspora, but to Christians as well through its depiction of the Sea of Galilee, a hotspot for Jesus and his apostles. This scene is a romanticized Orientalist depiction of what the Holy Land has to offer; lush fields with almond trees and date palms framed by arabesque arches emblazoned with a verse from the Song of Songs welcoming in the new spring that has come after “the winter is past.” The representation of as many idyllic landmarks as possible crammed into one frame is reminiscent of a postcard. This is meant to attract tourists and spread the message that this is a place which deserves to be visited, as if there were not currently people already settled there that may be detrimentally affected by this influx of new settlers.

Colonization was seen as valiant exploration, all to further advance human (read European) knowledge as the Europeans were the race which had achieved the maturity to do such exploration, backed up by their enlightenment philosophies and ideals (Said, 77). There was one proper way to use and think about land and if those currently on that land weren’t occupying it “correctly” or up to European standards, they might as well have not been there at all as far as the Europeans were concerned (Said, 74-75).

In her defense of the right to criticize Israel, philosopher Judith Butler argues that “No political ethics can start from the assumption that Jews monopolise the position of victim. ‘Victim’ is a quickly transposable term: it can shift from minute to minute, from the Jew killed by suicide bombers on a bus to the Palestinian child killed by Israeli gunfire.” Just as any essentialization of a race or religion has dangerous consequences, the essentialization of Jews as “victims” and Muslims as “terrorists” distorts the reality of the postcolonial situation of Palestine, and the larger structural systems of power at play which deny the Palestinian recognition at all, let alone as a victim.

 

 

References

 

Aydin, Cemil. The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Blumenthal, Max. “International community promises to rebuild Gaza … with sweat shops to exploit Palestinian workers” Alternet. 16 October 2014. viewed 1 March, 2015.

Butler, Judith. “The Charge of Anti-Semitism: Jews, Israel and the Risks of Public Critique” in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London, UK: Verso, 2004.

Chidester, David. “Colonialism and Postcolonialism.” in Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. Gale Virtual Reference Library. 1853-1860.

Esmeir, Samera. “Colonial experiments in Gaza” Jadaliyya. 14 July, 2014. (originally published in 2012). viewed 1 February, 2015. <<http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8482/colonial-experiments-ingaza>>

Google Arts & Culture. 1929. “Raban, Ze’ev. Come to Palestine Poster for the Society for the Promotion of Travel in the Holy Land” Lithograph Poster. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Photo © The Israel Museum, Jerusalem © The Doron Family, Jerusalem. Accessed February 20, 2018. <<https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/come-to-palestine-poster-for-the-society-for-the-promotion-of-travel-in-the-holy-land/JAGydpv1_K1r2w>>

Masuzawa, Tomoko. “Islam, a Semitic Religion.” in The Invention of World Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. 179-206.

Puar, Jasbir. “The ‘Right’ to Maim: Disablement and Inhumanist Biopolitics in Palestine.” borderlands. 14, 1. (2015). 1-27.

Said, Edward. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1979 [1992].

Said, Hashem & Zahriyeh, Ehab. “Gaza’s kids affected psychologically, physically by lifetime of violence” Al Jazeera. 31 July 2014. viewed 1 February, 2015.

Tawil-Souri, Helga. “Digital occupation: Gaza’s high-tech enclosure” Journal of Palestine Studies. 2012. vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 27-43.

Taylor, Adam. “Israel hopes phone calls to Palestinians will save lives. It ends up looking Orwellian” Washington Post. 17 July 2014. viewed 29 March 2018.

Negarestani, Reza. “Drafting the Inhuman: Conjectures on Capitalism and Organic Necrocracy.” in L. Bryant, N. Srnicek & G. Harman (eds). The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. re.press, (Melbourne 2011). pp. 183-184.

 

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Long Read: Colonialism, Modernity, Racialization, and African American Muslims

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Charis Jones

When I first began my research for this blog, I wanted to investigate how it is that black Muslim identity has and continues to inform Islam in America today.  Drawing from David Chidster, D.V. Kumar, and Tomoko Masuzawa’s works on the effects of colonialism, the implications of modernity, and the racialization of Islam, as well as my own assumptions about how I thought I could thoroughly address and answer this question appeared, at an oblivious first glance, doable and linear.  I learned quickly, however, that this was not the case.  In the slightest.

I hadn’t gotten far in my research when I realized that I had entered into a literary world where little had been published and what had been posed more questions and avenues of thought rather than answers.  What became increasingly clear to me was that the scholarly framework in place to explore the relationship between being black and being Muslim in America today was basically absent. This lack of scholarly work also implied the erasure of black Muslim experiences from the broader conversation regarding Islam in America today. The lived experiences of those who are black and Muslim and adequate analysis and research pertaining to their narratives had fallen through the cracks of America’s social, political, and religious paradigms. Why was this?

Frustrated, I continued to read. African American and immigrant relations, conversion to Islam as a protest to white supremacy, and the racialization of Muslims at large were some topics that had briefly touched on this question, although not completely.  It was at this point in my research that I had unknowingly begun to uncover a larger and arguably more pertinent reality: namely, that the evaluation on what it means to be black and Muslim in America is largely incomplete.

I took this opportunity to think about the ways in which the narrative and discussion regarding Islam in American could be more inclusive of African American Muslims. My hope was to interrogate various resources, historical and contemporary, in order to formulate a way of thinking that would be inclusive of the black Muslim population in America today.  The research thus far has produced models of what it means to be black in America and what it means to be Muslim in America but there has been little to no recognition of their intersectional experience.  I had assumed that I would come upon a space made for discussions and analyses about the lived experiences of these people with concise data lying next to it, and I was embarrassed and angered at my blind assumption and the overall absence of conversation.  There is writing out there, however, that could be instrumental to push us in the right direction of developing our understanding of the complex narratives and experiences that function beneath being both black and Muslim.  With this in mind, there are various sources that may be helpful in merging common notions of what it means to be black and what it means to be Muslim to show that the two are not mutually exclusive.

In order to begin the conversation regarding what it means to be black and Muslim in America, it is important to first talk about colonialism and the heaviest shape it took in America: slavery. The mass enslavement of Africans in the early 1500s as a part of North American colonial expansion is imperative to understanding the construction of black identities. The capturing of Africans, some of whom were Muslim as Islam was (and continues to be) one of Africa’s most dominant religions, thus facilitated the introduction of Islam to “The New World”.   At the time, European colonizers were armed with a theological requirement of inviting those to convert freely to Christianity.  This, however, was not an option and was violently imposed on Native Americans as well as those who were enslaved.  It is important to note here that freedom to publicly practice non-Christian religions was nonexistent at this point. This, however, does not mean that African Muslims of the time ceased to practice.  What is known about black Muslims in regards to Islamic practice in America at this point is miniscule, however, the simultaneous construction of identity for what it means to be black in America was underway while Islam remained covert.

Intertwined with this conversation on the effects colonialism and slavery lies the subject of modernity. At this point in American history, development was accompanied by the praise of Christianity through which the vehicle of modernity made a relentless entry into every aspect off society.  As mentioned above, this meant rejecting other forms of religious practice and ways of life, specifically among Native Americans and enslaved Africans, which colonizers characterized as being “backwards.” The conceptualization of modernity as being born alongside colonialism as its descriptive counterpart is relevant to the implications of being Muslim in America. The word “modernity” signifies, most often, what we as Westerners would consider to be “good.”  “Modernity,” in turn, has many implications and can be employed in various ways.  What is not “modern” in character is simultaneously deemed as an “outdated” obstacle (Kumar, 241).  This characterization illustrates the historically negative view of Islam held by the West. Because of this, Islam in America has gone from being largely unseen, to tacitly approved, to being employed as a mechanism for social change for some, to demonized and threatening at large.  This has led (many white) Americans to abandon social paradigms for seeing the diversity of Islamic practice as many people do not envision it as being socially, politically, and religiously “progressive.” The relevancy of modernity here in furthering our understanding of what it means to be black and Muslim in America is that the “better-than-before” comparativeness implied by modernity simultaneously constructs opposing identities for people who are not deemed to be as such (Kumar, 242).  Since America is the emblem of “modernity” as a result of colonialism, how have these bedfellows effected the construction of identities of being both black and Muslim?

The enduring effects of colonialism and America’s obsession becoming all things “modern” has had an enduring effect on the formation of people’s identity, especially those who are both racially and religiously marginalized.  So too has the process of racialization, an extension of both colonialism and modernity, in the way that it ascribes ethnic or racial identities to groups and practices to which they don’t belong in order to make easier the categorization of peoples.  Colonialism, “modernity,” and racialization all illustrate how those in power have the ability to choose, rename, and reclaim unfamiliar ideas and people in terms of their familiar. In trying to explore what it means to be black and Muslim in America, one must take into account the intersectional identities that operate beneath these repressive processes (Khabeer, 79). Although America preaches diversity and inclusivity, there has yet to be a space for the legitimization of those who are black or African American and Muslim at the same time.

Taking into account these historically complex and lasting processes of power and imposition offers a helpful starting point from which a more in depth study of what it means to be black and Muslim and American can prosper.  With this in mind, we must also acknowledge instances throughout American time and space where we can and have seen black Muslim Identity operate. Although I am admittedly limited in my resources and knowledge, I hope I am able to convey a way of thought and space that allows the identities of black Muslims to be at the forefront. We can even start by engaging with and asking questions about a figure many of us may be familiar with: Malcolm X.

Malcolm X, distinguished leader of the Nation of Islam as well as one of the many faces of the Civil Right Movement, was a prominent black Muslim figure during one of the most pivotal periods in American history. X captures one way in which being African American and Muslim has been expressed and popularly seen within and throughout the American context, as an instrument of social justice and a protest to white supremacy. Although Malcolm X does not and should not represent the lived experiences of all African American Muslims, his mere appearance may challenge common notions about what being black and Muslim in America can look like.

Although there is still more to do be done in gathering and evaluating this group of people and their many narratives existing within the American landscape, there are various areas where black Muslim identity has and continues to challenge common (mostly white) notions of being both black and Muslim.  These places show that these two identities, contrary to popular belief, do not exist as separate from one another, however, they are confronted with a distinct experience. It is here that I hope to offer some ways of thinking about where we can see this intersectional identity operating, in hopes of broadening the analysis and resisting social constructs that have informed this country since its conception.

Looking at African American and immigration relations regarding Muslim identity politics is in and of itself a huge avenue in regards to thinking about black Muslim identity.  Asking questions about and evaluating the effects of race, class, and residence is applicable to understanding the lived experiences of any person and is therefore necessary to consider (Karim, 27).  The issue of assimilation and isolation are two components in this discourse due to the fact that African American Muslims struggle with not being authoritative enough to non-Muslims nor representative enough to be thought off as Muslim in American popular vision (Karim, 42). These tensions exist where South Asian and Arab Muslims obtain a certain privilege by being “authentic” Muslims where as black Muslims are ignored and delegitimized because of long lasting historical prejudice embedded in the American framework.  Here we can ask questions such as how do the competing notions of Islam influence what “American” Islam discourses look like and how have these tensions informed space and a sense of belonging?

Another and equally important avenue to which exploration of this topic is needed is at the junction of Islam and forms of performance and expression such as Hip Hop. A hugely important and contemporary way of expression that pervades all aspects of American society, specifically the African American community, Hip Hop is a crucial site where African Americans draw upon their blackness to construct their identity of being Muslim. Hip Hop, a historically important location for the illustration of the struggle of being black in America faces the “erasure of Africa from the archive [as a] critical deletion that enables the categorization of Black music as un-Islamic” (Khabeer, 97).  Hip Hop then has the ability to become another location where questions regarding protest, assimilation, and isolation in regards to black Muslim identity can be posed (Khabeer, 36). Similarly, faith as a form of rebellion could also contribute greatly in pushing forward yet another category of thought that confronts deeply engrained social paradigms within the American context.

Gender must also be included in the quest for a better understanding of what it means to be black and Muslim in America. The intersection of gender to race and class vary not only depending on location and context, but have informed popular understanding of what it means to be a “model citizen,” specifically throughout the United States.  African American females as well as non-binary Muslims are forced into the need to navigate race, class, and gender within a context that deems South Asian and Arab Muslims as the “model minority” (Khabeer, 92).  Here, America’s exclusive nature should once again be interrogated by asking questions about the specific discomfort and prejudice that manifests when considering the intersectional experiences specifically of those who are female and black.  What does this experience look like when Islam is added and is of equal importance? In a place like America where Islamophobia is at its highest levels, anti-blackness is pervasive, and sexism is the norm, a look into the various narratives of those who are female, black, and Muslim is necessary.

There is a lot to be said about what it means to be both black and Muslim in America. A multiplicity of narratives and experiences are alive and living every day. The absence of standard conversation as well as scholarly analysis is indicative of the problematic way in which many (mostly white) Americans tend to categorize people with unfamiliar identities in terms of what is familiar to them.  If you are not recognized, then you don’t have access nor space to esteem who you are, if you’re not legitimized because of who you are, you are not invited to the table of legitimate “diversity” that although has been preached by America since day one, has and continues to be perverted. I hope that by offering some historical analyses shedding light onto various ways in which we can see black Muslim identity functioning throughout America today that the conversation about how and why Islam is racialized can continue.  There are stories that need to be told, voices to be heard, and normative ways of thinking that need to be confronted.

 

Bibliography

Chidester, David, “Colonialism and Postcolonialism.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 1853-1860. Gale Virtual Reference Library

 Curtis, Edward E. Muslims in America: a Short History. Oxford University Press, 2009.

 Feddes, David. “Islam Among African American Prisoners.” Sociology: SAGE Journals , vol. 36, 1 Oct. 2008, pp. 505–521.

 Karim, Jamillah Ashira. American Muslim Women: Negotiating Race, Class, and Gender within the Ummah. New York University Press, 2009.

 Khabeer, Su’ad Abdul. Muslim Cool: Race, Religion, and Hip Hop in America. New York University Press, 2016

 Kumar, D.V., “Engaging with Modernity: Need for a Critical Negotiation,” Sociological   Bulletin, Vol. 57, No. 2 (May-August 2008), pp. 240-254

Masuzawa, Tomoko. “Islam, a Semitic religion,” ch. 6 in The Invention of World Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 2005), 179-206

Wheeler, Kayla. “It’s ‘Been’ Cool to Cover: Why Ayana Ife Matters.” Sapelo Square, 21 Nov. 2017.

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Towards Light and Hands: Visual Grammars of Shirin Neshat and Saba Taj

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Edil Hassan

In Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production, cultural anthropologist Amy Malek writes that the cultural production of exile makes possible new codes, inscriptions, and identities that can uniquely exist outside of hegemonic powers (Malek 356). Uniquely too is the transformative space visual artists occupy, as producers and products of mediascapes. Malek writes that exiles are deterritorialized. This is to say that these inscriptions do not belong to them and yet these powers and structures that marginalize them can at the same time be the sites through which such ideas can be challenged. 

Two visual artists who are creating these new meanings through visual grammars are Iranian photographer Shirin Neshat and Muslim American Saba Taj. I define visual grammar most simply as the way artists are able to communicate without words. The discourse of political, social, and historical events act as texts that can be read upon image, and artists are able to dismantle and assemble new texts by questioning its relationship with image.

In the photo series Women of Allah Neshat writes literal text onto the bodies of her subjects. She simultaneously reconfigures the orientalist gaze through Persian writers while mediating upon the political constructions of Muslim women. In the mixed media series An-Noor Taj uses portraiture to place Muslim American women outside of the everyday contexts through which they are seen.

Neshat and Taj are located in different exiles, different mediums, and are invested in different projects. Despite this, both create visual grammars that not only help us evaluate and analyze media representations of Muslim women globally, but they also answer the age old question, who is the Muslim Woman?

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian visual artist. Born in 1957 in a small town near Tehran, Neshat was college educated in the United States and travels between New York and Iran. In the image entitled “Unveiling” from the larger 1993-4 black and white photograph series Women of Allah, a woman directly faces the viewer, wearing a veil that reveals her neck and chest. The skin visible is covered in calligraphy. In other photographs in this series, some women hold rifles and guns.

Much of Neshat’s work explores the orientalist lens through which the West renders Muslim women voiceless and vulnerable. In this series, Neshat’s visual grammar is communicated through the work of Tahereh Saffarzadeh and Forough Farokhzad, two Persian poets born in the 1930s. While Saffarzadeh is interested in martyrdom and femininity, Farokhzad speaks on sexual desire. However, both poets center women, desire, and love through social critiques and both of their works were banned during the Iranian Revolution.

Neshat’s use of these poets is complex given the relationship between power and discourse discussed in Representations of Post-Revolutionary Iran by Iranian-American Memoirists. Seyed Mohammad Marandi, an Iranian postcolonial academic, and Ghasemi Zeinab Tari, a professor of American Studies at the University of Tehran, write that public perception in Iran is shaped by text and narrative not wholly historical. Further that the same powers that make certain cultures for Malek is the same that limits access to discourse and thereby shapes the public mind (Marandi & Tari, 150).

While Neshat’s work documents, she is neither memoirist or ethnographer. However, her incorporation of two artists creates a sort of feminist genealogy and thereby provides an alternative grammar to make coherent Muslim women.

To better understand the implications of this reversal I turn to Chadors, Feminists, Terror by Professor of Gender Studies at Rutgers Sylvia Chan-Malik. Chan-Malik makes the connection between United States media representation of the 2009 Green Movement, protests against the corruption and reelection of President Ahmadinejad, and the protests by women following the Iranian Revolution. Chan-Malik illustrates how intersecting structures such as second wave feminism, secularism, and nationalism created the image of what she calls the figure “Poor Muslim Woman,” what I call more specter than figure given the simultaneous erasure and hollow visibility, that haunts and informs post-9/11 United States.

I lean on Chan-Malik’s idea of racial-orientalist discourse as one that I believe Neshat is speaking against, and yet I want to imagine Neshat’s visual grammar as one that seeks to do more than place a gun in the hands of the Poor Muslim Woman. In an interview Neshat says: “In Islam, a woman’s body has been historically a type of battleground for various kinds rhetoric and political ideology.”

This is certainly true when some might reduce the bodies of Muslim women into field guides. However, to loan Neshat’s own metaphor, the merging of body and poetry assembles a visual grammar as a guide as well, to take up arms against Chan-Malik’s racial orientalist discourse. Perhaps to do this messy work of deconstruction is indeed in the hands of Muslim women and the women that have come before them. Or more simply in Saffarzadeh’s own words, “O, you martyr/hold my hands/with your hands.”

Decades after Neshat’s series, in North Carolina Saba Taj, a Queer Muslim artist, is interviewed by the Huffington Post. She is asked whether the current political climate has changed the work that is expected from her by galleries and buyers. She writes:

“Some people want Islamic patterns and calligraphy from me. And others—hijabs and high heels, or women in burqas making out— the kind of shock value that capitalizes on stereotypical representation and seems “feminist” or “progressive” but is still rooted in racism.”

It is clear in the 2013 series An-Noor that Taj is concerned with this expectation and meets it with subversion. For this project, Taj accepted submissions of photographs by American Muslim women, and uses the background of the portraits as a space to locate them abstractly.

In the mixed media image on canvas “Rebel” shows a hijabi woman wearing a shirt with the title of the image. Against her is background of red, gold, and brown, made up of lines and swirls, creating stars and crescents.

In another portrait entitled “Maesta” a woman and her three children stand, gold halos around their heads. Against her is a background consisting of the American flag: blue beneath yellow stars, red and white stripes, and swirls everywhere.

In my favorite, “Lioness” a woman sits on a pillar made of bricks, and holds a book and sun flower while closing her eyes to the bright yellow sun above her.

Her mediation on light, and the use of sun and brightness in her work is a deliberate choice by Taj. The title An-Noor translates as the Light, coming from the 24th chapter of the Quran. This chapter most notably contains the verse of light, interpreted literally and mystically by Sufis, poets, and philosophers. Light upon light, Taj’s women are soaked and wondered by it, divine and loving.

What is so unique about the grammar Taj engages with is how she places women in a kind of religiosity without making them seem to be from the past or from a distant land. These women wear t-shirts and jeans. Some wear hijab and some do not. All vary in skin color.

Taj is not interested in direct or singular readings of her work just as she is not interested in a direct or singular geographic origin of Muslim women. Instead, her inspiration is multidirectional due to the diverse participation of Muslim American women. This inclusion is similar to the way Neshat uses poetry to create a feminist genealogy. It is also similar to the way there is not an attempt at memoir or ethnography.

Yet, it is important to consider the unique geographic location that Taj occupies that alters this genealogy. She ends the Huffington interview with this final thought:

“I hold a strong awareness of how and what I created could potentially be used against Muslims, to push Islamaphobic narratives (of homophobia, of patriarchy), but that if I try to make my art invincible to misinterpretation— it will lose its quality.”

Taj is specifically constructing a grammar of kinship and sisterhood that positions the identity of Muslim American women as one of hybridity. She does not attempt to reconcile religion and nation, or reiterate American-ness despite Muslim-ness. This is especially important given how the discourse of war on terror and more recently the Muslim Ban  seek to rigidly divide these two identities.

And so I end this by asking most simply what grammar can we use to read Muslim women out of the spaces in which they have been captured. Out of prisons and detention centers. Out of the arsenal of white women, politicians, and national rhetoric.

In her biography, Taj mentions that she is interested in diaspora, inherited trauma, and apocalypse. If Malek is correct, that exiles have become deterritorialized, stuck within in between spaces and untethered to land,  I wonder to what extent we can consider art as a means towards this apocalypse. Towards the mass destruction of nonconsensual and damage based representations. Towards desire instead. Towards Taj’s light and Neshat’s hands. 

Bibliography

CHAN-MALIK, SYLVIA. “Chadors, Feminists, Terror: The Racial Politics of U.S. Media Representations of the 1979 Iranian Women’s Movement.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 637 (2011): 112-40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41328569.

Marandi, Seyed Mohammd, and Tari, Ghasemi Zeinab. Representations of Post-Revolutionary Iran by Iranian-American Memoirists: Patterns of Access to the Media and Communicative Events. Reorient 2, 2017.

Malek, Amy. “Memoir as Iranian Exile Cultural Production: A Case Study of Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis” Series.” Iranian Studies39, no. 3 (2006): 353-80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4311834.

 

 

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The ways in which Islamic mysticism (Sufism) presents as part of the so called ‘Muslim world’, in India during the British Raj.

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Ujjwala Harshavardhan

When the British came to India they made distinctions between the Hindus and Muslims living there based on experiences that the Western world had already had with Muslims, namely the idea of a simple and unified ‘Muslim world’ (Aydin, p.3). Muslims were seen as violent and threatening to the British goals, and so had to be effectively controlled, while Hindus were seen as docile and easy to rule over. This distinction, however, did not appear to include Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, which seemed to fall outside of the bounds of the problematic idea of the ‘Muslim world’.

Sufism has been seen as an offshoot, sect or even a way of practicing Islam, that primarily focuses on the idea of love and selflessness in order to lead the seeker to ultimate knowledge or haqiqa, with arguably less emphasis on the rules of sharia which have often been the identifier for Islam (Akman, p.2). This is with the intention of raising one’s self up to join with the Divine. The perceived peacefulness spiritual practices of Sufis have long resonated with western Christians who maintain interest in or even convert to Sufism. This has meant that Sufism has often not been considered to be a part of Islam but as something else entirely that is accessible to non-Muslims. Even amid all the western fears that Islam was a unitary force coming together to fight the west, same everywhere and equally frightening, Sufism has remained a domesticated and simplified separate thing with at best an unfortunate link to the dangerous world of Islam.

Lawaih-e-Jami by Hidayat Ullah Sherazi. 18th c. Lahore Museum, Lahore, Pakistan. Via Google Arts & Culture.

Persian script from the 18th century showing a Lawaih, which literally means ‘flash of light’. This is a treatise on Sufi theology, where this one is written by prominent mystic and poet Nurudin Abd Rehman Jami, who had lived in the 15th century. The Persian influence from Mughal leaders who had ruled in India before British colonisation continued to have a strong impact. How did the British make sense of Muslims in India when they saw beautiful religious artwork like this that didn’t necessarily fit with their conception of the ‘Muslim world’?

Sufism was seen as different, and often still is. It was special and welcoming and so very attractive for the Orientalising West who encountered it, nothing like the harsh and legalist Islam that they knew (Akman, p.6). Orientalists labelled their discovery of this peaceful mysticism as a form of spirituality rather than religion, accessible and encouraged for Christians and secular thinkers alike (Akman, p.6). For Western thinkers Sufism seemed to be a strange addition to Islam, it did not fit neatly into their conceptions of what Islam must look like. Yet for those practising Sufism, it made no sense to separate them from the rest of Islam because in that case, their faith would have no meaning. This kind of split in understanding may help us to better understand the problem of the ‘Muslim world’ as something so pervasive and powerful.

The most popular concept of Islam was this image of an all-encompassing, legalistic and violent religion. The unified so-called ‘Muslim world’ lumped together with groups from all over the world. This was one of the reasons that the British chose to pit Muslims and Hindus against each other so that they could not rise up against the (outnumbered) British in charge.

An interesting figure to look at was Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who was a Muslim yet also a friend of the British and loyal to the throne. We can look at him to understand an example of who the British were actually communicating with when they were talking with Muslims. Khan (p.7) made a response to his contemporary, W.W. Hunter, in defence of his fellow Muslims, making the case that they are not so different from the British and trying to convince them that he could juggle both identities in an effective manner. His presentation of the problem of Indian Muslim ability to co-exist with the British in charge is complicated by the fact that as a wealthy and privileged individual, with access to British education and a pronounced loyalty to the crown, he can’t really represent the majority of the many Muslims existing in colonial India. By looking at Sir Khan we can understand the problematic assumed state of the United ‘Muslim world’ through his explanations of the communication happening between the elite Muslims and their British counterparts, he fails to complicate Muslim identities.

Of course, some Sufis also felt the tension between their faith and the British rule. Even though they may not have been associated with the legalistic side of Islam, Sufi scholars also produced fatwas, answers to specific questions based on their understanding of the religious texts and personal judgement as professionals. Ernst explains that one major effect of colonialism was that it “led to the breakup of scholarly networks previously supported by Muslim patronage… in favour of a focus on authoritative Islamic texts” (p. 250). One Sufi school that arose from this need to go back to the core Muslim texts, rather than focusing on non-religious matters was the Deobandi Reform group. This group during the British Raj strove to fight against British influence.

Rashid Ahmad Gangohi was a member of the Deobandi Movement, which aimed to save Islam from western influence through the use of formally trained scholars and advocated the Hanafi legal school of jurisprudence. Two of Gangohi’s fatwas show the practical ways in which Muslims living in India should live and offers a glimpse into the ways they were encouraged to resist the influence of British colonials (p.541). The fatwas do not seem to be overtly political, nor do they even mention the British rule in India during that period. They do however aim to solidify the goals of Muslims living in India, reiterating the proper reasons for making the journey to Hajj as well as speaking on the value of being a good example.  In contrast with the Khan’s attempt to bring Islam and the British together, Gangohi’s fatwa almost ignores the political climate and asks that the devout Muslim do their duty to remain in a less holy Land in order to be a good example. This is a kind of resistance, in so far as the individual that is praised, is one that does not abandon their peers for their own perceived religious well being. This comes back around to the idea of Sufism as being focused on selflessness, putting the religious wellbeing of others before ourselves, yet also shows the ways in which they may have been rebellious in their resistance.

This satirical cartoon illustration from the British Magazine Punch, shows Mahatma Gandhi playing a game of chess against Muhammad Ali Jinnah who was the leader of the Muslim league in India and who would go on to become the Father of Pakistan. Looming over them, watching the game with a look of worry on his face is the British Viceroy of India, Archibald Wavell.

Regardless of Muslim resistance or Muslim friendship, Western ideas of Islam couldn’t escape the alluring image of the unified ‘Muslim World’. The image above is based towards the end of British rule in India, during the fight for independence and calls for decolonisation. It is interesting to note the way the British artist has drawn the Muslim representative, who is dressed almost identically to his (British) superior. This could show us the way that the Western world regarded Islam, similar to themselves in terms of motivations yet racialised  The only things distinguishing Jinnah as different from Wavell are his facial features and darker skin colour, reminding the British audience that he is still an ‘other’ no matter how he is dressed. This is opposed to the orientalised image of Gandhi floating serenely in robes. Images like this show the power dynamics in play, with Jinnah and Gandhi on the same level under the British man, showing both figures as the domesticated versions of the experiments of their respective religions, totally under control and made to fight each other.

The myth of the unified ‘Muslim World’ has persisted long after India went through Partition and the British Raj ended but conceptions of Sufism have not changed much. British attitudes towards Muslims shaped the ways in which the Western World continues to see them today. We can see the ways in which the Muslim elite and Islamic scholars fought for their rights to be recognised as different from the harmful and pervasive stereotype being used to define them.

Bibliography:

Aydin, Cemil. “The Idea of the Muslim World, a Global Intellectual History”, Harvard University Press, 2017.

Gangohi, Rashid Ahmad. “Two Fatwas on Hajj in British India,” pp. 539-542 in The Norton Anthology of World religions- Islam, edited by Jack Miles, W.W. Norton and Company.

Guenther, “A Colonial Court Defines a Muslim”“A Colonial Court Defines a Muslim,” in “Islam in South Asia in Practice” edited by Barbara D. Metcalf, Princeton University Press.

Khan, Syed Ahmed. “Review of Dr Hunter’s Indian Musalmans” (London: 1872) Lahore Premier Book House.

Akman, Kubilay “Sufism, Spirituality and Sustainability / Rethinking Islamic Mysticism through Contemporary Sociology,” Comparative Islamic Studies, 06/2010, Volume 4, Issue 4.1-4.2.

Ernst, Carl W.  “Reconfiguring South Asian Islam: From the 18th to the 19th Century”, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/lawaih-e-jami/2gF0-tw_zoOAeQ

https://punch.photoshelter.com/img/pixel.gif

 

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Relationships Between Young Nation-States and Established Religious Institutions

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Cullen Paradis

 

During time from the end of WWI to the present day, many predominantly Muslim societies have had to face a similar set of challenges and questions surrounding their governing systems. Following the fall of the Ottoman empire after WWI, the communities previously under Ottoman jurisdiction had to assert their independence and build up institutions to replace those that had been lost. In almost all cases, this was done by writing a set of founding documents to become in independent state, to the extent that was possible. However, while most of their political systems had to be rebuilt from the ground up, some Islamic religious and legal institutions remained largely intact. The traditional religious systems then had to find their place within the new institutional frameworks of their fledgling nation states, which were often taking inspiration from European systems not constructed within the context of their cultures. Despite having similar challenges and starting points, the paths and conclusions for these nations varied greatly due to factors both internal and external. Each found a balance between old and new systems, one that seldom wholly reflected the explicit structures enshrined in legal and religious founding documents.

The initial results of the Ottoman’s fall were varied. Turkey fell on the more Western end of the spectrum, importing their new legal code from Germany. Many smaller Muslim countries used systems from the aggressively secular France. Egypt and Iraq formed new state court systems that superseded their religious processors, while Pakistan formed a hybrid between new English and their preexisting Islamic courts.[1] However, despite being curtailed on almost every front, even in countries aspiring toward a supposedly secular ideal of modernity we do not see Islamic law completely discarded.  To the contrary, in almost all cases this redefining of the jurisdiction of religious courts was accompanied by their codification into new power systems and in some cases an expansion of their influence within the boundaries they were given. As Cesari notes, “… Despite this secularization, or rather because of it … most states retained Islam in the constitution as a symbolic reference within the new legal and political order.”[2] The traditional roots of religious courts provided the fledgling nation states with much needed institutional legitimacy in the eyes of the public. And while Cesari characterizes their place in many constitutions as “symbolic,”[3] she is also careful to emphasize that in implementation the power of the religious courts was actually gaining depth. The most common domains that Islamic courts were restricted to were those of family law. But within that framework their influence spread. Family court oversaw many of the most common and essential government services, such as marriage and divorce. Despite initially appearing to have their power curtailed by new national oversight, in many places what religious courts lost in breadth they made up for in new depth.

During this period of political upheaval, large shifts were also simultaneously happening within the thinking of intellectuals and legal experts within Muslim communities. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a unique mix of political, military, and ideological rebalances resulted in a period of unparalleled potential for redefinition of Muslim thought and self-perception. The Ottomans caliphate was no more, and the desecration of Mecca at the hands of Saudi Arabia hammered that point home to Muslim communities. As Cemil Aydin puts it in The Idea of the Muslim World, “Saudi control of Mecca and Medina was traumatic for many South Asian and African Muslims, threatening the many Sufi orders charities, and madrasas in Mecca and Medina funded from afar … All shrines and tombs of early Muslims, except Muhammad’s, were torn down.”[4] The combined political and ideological instability created opportunities for new ideas to take center stage in Islamic political discourse.

Without the Ottoman caliphate to define what ‘proper’ Muslim political structure looked like, a great debate over the political meanings of the Quran divided intellectual circles. Many scholars found new support for democratic systems inside the language of the Quran, such as the Omani journalist and ambassador Sadek Sulaiman. He professed the belief that, “As concept and principle, shura in Islam does not differ from democracy … the more any system constitutionally, institutionally, and practically fulfills the principle of shura – or, for that matter, the democratic principle – the more Islamic that system becomes.”[5] He also pointed toward the United States as a valuable model on which to build a democratic society. While his opinions fall towards the pro-democracy and pro-western ends of the spectrum, few scholars disagreed completely with his overall sentiment. Some viewed it as simply a practical necessity to adapt to modern trends, such as Muslim scholar Shabbir Akhtar, who said “Muslims have clearly failed to interpret and appropriate Islam properly for the modern age. … Within the house of Islam, there is today a great need for self-criticism and introspection … Muslims need to develop, deepen the life of faith.”[6] Akhtar was Pakistani-born Englishman who worked in a variety of Muslim communities within Western nations in the post-Ottoman years, one of many points of contact between Western intellectual thought and the mainstream Muslim discourse. There is a tendency in the West to misinterpret statements like these, especially when made by people with multicultural backgrounds such as Akhtar. In Apologetic Modernity, Faisal Devji says, “Most [scholars of modern Islam] dismiss [statements advocating change] as being a sign merely of Islam’s incomplete modernity or of the West’s overwhelming might.”[7] But Akhtar and his contemporaries did not blindly seek whatever change might make Islam more amenable to Western sensibilities. Rather, they believed that, “To come to terms with modernity is one thing; changing a revealed Islam to suit human whim shaped by passing fashion is another.”[8] Instead of a choice between ‘Islam’ and ‘modernity’ as though they were two sides of a spectrum, most Muslim scholars sought to reconcile modern ideals with their existing Islamic practices.

In addition to questions about the proper form of Islamic political institutions, there were also efforts to change the definition of Muslim identity itself in the eyes of its practitioners. The late 1800s Turkish writer and modernist Abdullah Cevdet believed that “Every learned and virtuous person is a Muslim. An ignorant, immoral person is not a Muslim even if he stems from the lineage of the prophet.”[9] As always, there were efforts to pull in the other direction as well. Iran notably moved back toward traditional systems and values after the Iranian Revolution, with those in power explicitly disavowing liberalizing influences, which they associated with a politically and culturally encroaching West. But in general, the intellectual and social conversation moved toward adaptation to and adoption of new ideals and systems.

Islamic courts also found themselves being pulled in different directions by changing societal currents. Despite being enshrined in founding documents, expanded power within family courts, and movements to reconcile and integrate with the new institutionalized nation-states, Islamic courts have seen a decline in explicit power within the sphere of politics in the years since the founding of these new states. In Egypt, the constitution establishes Islam as the official state religion, and the government is instructed to abide by Islamic rulings. But the law distinguishes between definite religious rules and indefinite religious rules, the latter of which is open to interpretation by the state’s representatives. A substantial majority of religious guidelines have been ruled as indefinite by the courts, handing regulation in their area over to the political apparatus.[10]  Simultaneously, the Egyptian government began using heresy provisions to persecute political opposition leaders within the Shia community.[11] The Sunni majority could see this as using the government to dispatch their political and religious rivals, but it sets a dangerous precedent.[12] Egyptian politicians are bound not by the social clout of religious leaders, but by public opinion and their own hazy boundaries. Egypt’s legal tradition also contains contradictory rulings as to whether the government can or cannot break with Islamic law, allowing judges to do as they see fit in any given case. As always, what constitutes Islamic Law is a question with a diversity of answers. Which of those answers are legitimate in the eyes of the government is decided not by any religious authority but by the state judiciary itself.

A couple thousand kilometers to the East, Iraq went going through a similar political power shift away from religious institutions. Saddam Hussein came to power a couple decades after Egypt drafted their first constitution. During his regime in Iraq, provisions mandating state compliance with Islamic law were removed from the constitution, and religious leaders from both the Sunni and Shia schools were removed from positions of authority within the courts. Eventually, family courts were abolished altogether and folded into the normal legal system. [13] Although after his fall some of the power shifted back, for the most part his institutional changes have been maintained.

Not all political areas followed these broader trends. Even in countries such as Iraq and Egypt, where there was a clear transfer of power away from religious authorities, certain provisions went against the grain. Charges of blasphemy and apostasy, somewhat rare in the period preceding the fall of the Ottoman empire, experienced a resurgence within the realm of family courts across the entire Middle East.[14] Iran seemed to be following the same pattern as Egypt and Iraq until their their revolution, which instituted a much more conservative interpretation of Islamic law under their new regime. Turkey’s discourse has also shifted recently in a direction more tolerant of religious expression, veering away from the extreme secularism espoused by the Young Turks toward a more centrist route that acknowledges their Islamic heritage and seeks a unique identity rather than transplanting a political system from another country.

Possible outcomes for new courts systems are more diverse than a simple government versus church spectrum. In Pakistan, newly established government courts took some time to gain popularity with a public used to alternative institutions for conflict resolution. As the English professor Matthew J. Nelson discovered, even after the courts had been established for a while and statistics showed a substantial increase in use, locals were simply using them as ancillary systems while still relying on more established methods. “Litigants simply used the courts to [delay] their opponents … until, slowly but surely, a more acceptable razeenama or ‘compromise’ could be reached outside of the courts themselves.”[15] These kinds of discrepancies between how things appear to an outsider looking at numbers half a world away and the actual situation on the ground are very common, and make judging the end effects of a given piece of legislation or legal ruling much more difficult than simply recording the intent. Nelson notes that “By and large, the work of modern Muslim politicians (as ‘politicians’) has not been examined with reference to the practice of contemporary Islamic law.”[16]

As a whole, the countries finding their way after the Ottoman collapse resist easy categorization and broad statements. Today more than ever, situations remain in flux as political climates continue to change. Turkey seems to be putting religious questions on a back burner as they struggle with a growing authoritarian government. Conflict continues to threaten the entire Middle East, as countries collapse and remake themselves. Iran recently experienced open protests against their religious government.  In the end, the only broad, concrete takeaway is this: the balance of power in politics relies on more than what’s written down on paper. Growing political institutions finding their way with a living, active religion results in constantly shifting and changing circumstances. In the past, the nations in question have variably enshrined Islam in their constitutions and codified laws against its display, but in both cases those laws were enforced and interpreted according to the needs of the time. Nations and religions are not themselves personal actors. They are made up of people, who will find practices that work for them regardless of what holy books or legal codices say.

 

Works Cited

Akhtar, Shabbir. “Islam and the Challenge of the Modern World.” Compiled by Charles Kurzman. In Liberal Islam, 319-26. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library. “[The conference of Arab representatives convened in London under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Chamberlain. Arabs and Jews negotiate separately.]” New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed February 20, 2018. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b3605008-7057-251b-e040-e00a18066694

Aydin, Cemil. The idea of the Muslim world: a global intellectual history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Cesari, Jocelyne. “The Awakening of Muslim Democracy.” Religion, Modernity, and the State, November 30, 2013, 60-84. doi:10.1017/cbo9781107359871.019.

Cevdet, Abdullah. “Preface by the Translator.” Compiled by Charles Kurzman. In Modernist Islam 1840-1940, 172-74. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Devji, Faisal. “Apologetic Modernity.” An Intellectual History for India, January 4, 2007, 52-67. doi:10.1017/upo9788175968721.005.

Nelson, Matthew J. In the Shadow of Shariah: Islam, Islamic Law, and Democracy in Pakistan. London: C Hurst, 2011.

Sulaiman, Sadek J. “Democracy and Shura.” Compiled by Charles Kurzman. In Liberal Islam, 96-98. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1998.

End Notes

[1] Cesari, 60-61

[2] Cesari, 60-61

[3] Cesari, 62

[4] Aydin, 139

[5] Sulaiman, 98

[6] Akhtar, 326

[7] Devji, 62

[8] Akhtar, 326

[9] Cevdet, 137

[10] Cesari, 63

[11] Cesari, 81

[12] Cesari, 62

[13] Cesari, 68

[14] Cesari, 73, 77, 80

[15] Nelson, 185

[16] Nelson, 265

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Revolutionary People, Revolutionary Bodies: Birth Control and Abortion in Iran

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Clare Cecil

In the United States, conversations surrounding birth control and abortion access are controversial, heavily politicized and deeply infused with debates about religion. In Iran, a state known as a rival to the US, perceived as a threat to both American security and American values, the debates around family planning and women’s healthcare are…not very different from the ones we have here. The history of Iran and the US, and the western hemisphere at large, is much more nuanced than just two worlds colliding, and gaining an understanding of that history makes modern day global politics a little less overwhelming, and makes the Iranian people easier to recognize as just that: people. In this blog, I will be discussing the history of those interactions between Iranian and western leadership and how gloabal politics are manifested in the modern regulation of Iranian women’s bodies. Specifically, I will be focusing on women’s healthcare policy regarding birth control and abortion access in post-revolutionary Iran.

Before we discuss policy, we should talk about how the Iranian government works. In Iran, the government is made of a combination of highly educated Muslim Shi’i clerics, known as the ‘ulama, who sit on the Islamic Guardian council and elected officials, who serve in the Iranian parliament. Additionally, the Iranian Supreme Leader sits at the top of the Iranian power structure, is the highest-ranking cleric in the state and is not elected by the public. There are more actors involved, which you can learn about here, but for the sake of brevity, this is what we will focus on. The ‘ulama have the power to veto policy passed by parliament, due to the value Iran has placed on creating a state that can be recognized as thoroughly Islamic. It is worth noting that this alone is a thoroughly modern notion, because the world has never seen a nation-state whose government is so deeply intertwined with religious leadership. So, how did we get here?

Shi’i Muslims believe that their true leader after the Prophet Muhammad, known as an Imam, is in occultation, or in hiding, and will return when the time is right.  This means that any government overseeing a Shi’i populace can never be truly legitimate[1] because its constituency sees that government as merely a temporary solution until the Imam’s return. In the meantime, the Shi’i ‘ulama in Iran is focused on making sure that the regime in charge, whether it be a monarchy or democracy, rules in the appropriate Islamic manner. For several centuries, the ‘ulama has been able to remove leaders from power when they have felt that said leader is not ruling in a way that appropriately represents the will of the Imam.

This religious oversight was dismantled through imperial meddling from major western powers, including Russia, Great Britain and later the US, during the twentieth century. These powers wanted to maintain access to Iranian oil reserves as cheaply as possible. To do this, European leaders imposed a new, pro-West secular regime, known as the Pahlavi dynasty, that would sell out the Iranian public and violently repress any forms of opposition.[2] When the Iranian public attempted to overthrow this regime in favor of democratic reform, the CIA executed a coup d’état and reinstated the Pahlavis in 1953.[3]

During the 1960s and 70s, Dr. Ali Shari‘ati, an Iranian Islamic theorist, commanded public attention with his controversial views on Islam and the future of Iran. In his work, he saw Islam as an all-encompassing “ideology,” rather than merely religion reserved for the private sphere.[4] He discussed ideas of unity, and argued that while Shi’is were waiting for the return of the Imam, “they had to pave the way for [his return] by bringing about a just and pious society,” but that would not be possible under the repressive Pahlavis.[5] In 1979, inspired by Shari‘ati, the Iranian public took their resistance to the streets, and the world bore witness to the Islamic Revolution. Unfortunately, Shari‘ati would never see this revolution, as he passed away in exile in 1977, but his messages echo in Iranian politics to this day.

After the Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini came into power and the Islamic Republic based on Shi’ism was pieced together, reestablishing the political role of the ‘ulama. During his tenure as Supreme Leader, Khomeini took Dr. Shari‘ati’s ideas of Islam as an all-encompassing ideology to heart. In order to establish a thoroughly Muslim society, Khomeini and other revolutionary leaders were tasked with codifying Shari’a law to create a new Iranian constitution, which meant formally deciding what was and was not Islamic.[6] This left little room for plurality of interpretation or practice. Additionally, Khomeini advocated to bring traditionally private debates into the public sphere in order to engage Muslims and create a more pious society.[7] Additionally, Khomeini, advocated for an “expediency-driven ijtihād,”[8] which refers to interpretation of sacred texts for the purpose of jurisprudence. He was focused on answering the questions of the people quickly and definitively. By creating spaces for public “debate” among clerics, this meant drawing more lines about Islam, Shi’ism, and what it meant to be an Iranian citizen.

The artist behind this cartoon, Atena Farghadani, was sentenced to over 12 years in prison after posting the image on Facebook. Farghadani said that this was her rendering of Iranian members of parliament voting to restrict birth control access.

For Iranian women, not only did the new constitution mean that their identities as Muslims were restricted and regulated, but their bodies were, too. Since the Revolution, abortion has been debated heavily, but the regime took decades to pass meaningful legislation that would increase access to abortion services. That is not to say that abortions were not happening in Iran. Between 1995 and 2000, over two and a half million unsafe abortions were performed in Iran, and 5,697 of the women who underwent those procedures died from complications.[9] This was the highest maternal mortality rate from unsafe abortions in the entire Middle East and North Africa region. Abortion was forbidden until the passage of 1991 law that states that abortion is strictly prohibited except when it is necessary to save the life of the woman. In 2005, the Iranian parliament passed a law that would allow abortions in cases of “fetal impairment” as well as risk to the woman’s life, but the law was rejected by the Guardian Council.[10] In 2007, abortion in cases of “fetal deformity” was legalized. That is not to say that abortion services are easily accessible for women, as Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi outlines here:

“The deformity of the fetus in these cases has to be certified by three licensed physicians, and the parents must prove that raising a special-needs child would pose upon them undue emotional and financial burdens.”

For women in more rural communities, or with limited resources, jumping through these hoops is no easy task, and can force women to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, which can come with serious mental health consequences, or to seek out “back alley” abortion services, which are extremely dangerous, both physically and emotionally.

Regarding birth control access, the options for Iranian women are not nearly as bleak. Iranian discussions surrounding birth control and Islam are rooted in evidence that coitus interruptus, also known as the pull-out method, was allowed during the time of the Prophet Muhammad.[11] About a decade the Revolution, Iran faced an economic crisis due, in part, to its rapidly growing population and an inability to meet the basic needs of that population.[12] As Khomeini had advocated for expedient ijtihad in the past, he quick to respond. He discussed the important role of family planning while leading a Friday prayer, and ratified a national birth control policy in 1989, expanding access to the masses.[13]

The way we regulate bodies and determine who is worthy of bodily autonomy is a thoroughly modern discussion. In the Iranian context, the processes that determines how women access healthcare is a consequence of a long history of being imperialized. In the process of reestablishing a unique national identity, Iranian women have been sidelined when it comes to accessing healthcare, much like women in the US. The similarities are striking between two states who claim to have nothing in common, but for women in both countries, the uncertainty surrounding healthcare access is frustrating at best, and can have deadly consequences at worst. Perhaps a unique feminine modernity will include healthcare access for all.

End Notes

[1] Hamid Algar, “Iran and Shi’ism” in Roots of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Four Lectures by Hamid Algar (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2001), 20.

[2] Ibid., 25.

[3] Ibid., 28.

[4] Hamid Algar, “Islam as Ideology: The Thought of Ali Shari`at” in Roots of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Four Lectures by Hamid Algar (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2001), 93.

[5] Ibid., 96.

[6] Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, “Women’s Rights, “Shari’a” Law, and the Secularization of Islam in Iran.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 26, no. 3 (2013): 237, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24713369.

[7] Ibid., 241.

[8] Ibid., 240.

[9] Leila Hessini, “Abortion and Islam: Policies and Practice in the Middle East and North Africa.” Reproductive Health Matters 15, no. 29 (2007): 76, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475294.

[10] Ibid., 80.

[11] Heshmat Sadat Moinifar, “Religious Leaders and Family Planning in Iran.” Iran & the Caucasus 11, no. 2 (2007): 301, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25597339.

[12] Ibid., 303.

[13] Ibid., 308.

Bibliography

Algar, Hamid. “Iran and Shi’ism.” In Roots of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Four Lectures by Hamid Algar, 13-46. Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2001.

Algar, Hamid. “Islam as Ideology: The Thought of Ali Shari`at.” In Roots of the Islamic     Revolution in Iran, Four Lectures by Hamid Algar, 85-117. Oneonta, NY: Islamic     Publications International, 2001.

Aydin, Cemil. The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

Cavna, Michael. “Iranian Artist Farghadani, Who Drew Parliament as Animals, Sentenced to 12-plus Years.” The Washington Post. June 01, 2015. Accessed April 27, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/wp/2015/06/01/iranian-artist-farghadani-who-drew-parliament-as-animals-sentenced-to-12-plus-years/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.af988154e767.

Ghamari-Tabrizi, Behrooz. “Women’s Rights, “Shari’a” Law, and the Secularization of Islam in Iran.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 26, no. 3 (2013): 237-53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24713369.

“Guide: How Iran Is Ruled.” BBC News. June 09, 2009. Accessed April 28, 2018.            http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8051750.stm.

Hessini, Leila. “Abortion and Islam: Policies and Practice in the Middle East and North       Africa.” Reproductive Health Matters 15, no. 29 (2007): 75-84. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475294.

Moinifar, Heshmat Sadat. “Religious Leaders and Family Planning in Iran.” Iran & the       Caucasus 11, no. 2 (2007): 299-313. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25597339.

 

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Muslims in the Modern World

Posted on April 30, 2018 by smukuzo

Stevya Mukuzo

 Muslims in the Modern World 

The issue of modernity has affected Muslim population, particularly those living in the modern world . Some Muslims living in America are faced with the challenges of assimilation and “othering” as a result of modernity. Modernity can be understood as a new way of thinking, working, behaving, and also living. In this blog, modernity will be defined, “As an idea, it represents a radical rapture with the past…It encourages us to adapt alternative ways of looking at the world and its possibilities” (Kumar 2008:p. 241). Secondly, it “…can be looked at as an experience, an experience which is full of contradictions. On the other hand, it promises many things: progress, advancement, removal of ignorance, power” (Kumar 2008:p. 242). However, these changes affect some Muslims’s lives, and not everybody feels ready to embrace and accept these changes. Some view potential assimilation (ie. not wearing a hijab) as a way of interfering with their personal religious practices, hence, they will resist assimilation.  “Othering” makes Muslims feel discriminated and unequal to the rest of the society. However, through modernity and Muslim advocation, Western society has acknowledged the importance of Muslim religious holidays, which allows Muslims to freely practice their religion. Then, Muslims feel part of the larger society because their religion and practices are being taken into consideration. Modernity has also transformed gender roles in a way that it has empowered women to be not only mothers/wives but also participants in the society.

                The viewing of Muslims as the “other” has affected Muslims in many ways. First, Muslims are not given excused days that allow them to observe their religious holidays. This has led Muslims to feel excluded from society (Lennihan, 2015). This exclusion has brought about a feeling of unfairness within the Muslim community because they feel that their rights are not being considered. If Muslims’ religious holidays were recognized, “Hundreds of thousands of Muslim families will no longer have to choose between honoring the most sacred day on their calendar or attending school” (Lennihan, 2015). For example, this image shows a New York City Muslim mother bringing her children to a religious celebration from school. Through new ways of thinking about the world (modernity), Western schools have acknowledged Muslim holidays leading to the freedom of religious practices for Muslims and as a result, Muslims feeling part of the modern world. Before the recognition of Muslim religious holidays, Muslims did not feel part of the Western world, prompting them to advocate for free practices of their religion and this has had a positive effect. Through modernity, Muslims has been able to advocate for the Muslims religious holidays’s recognition. This has been beneficial to Muslims as schools in New York now allow children to freely celebrate their religious holidays and go to school.

  Given the influence of Western culture and the option to assimilate, Muslims  have tried to reconcile with modernity. “ Modernism is a movement to reconcile Islamic faith with modern values such as …equality, and progress” ( wilson, 2005:p. 456). Some immigrant Muslims coming to the United States feel pressured to assimilate and find it difficult to balance the new culture which is  also the modern ways of living/thinking with their traditional practices/beliefs. However, the reconciliation has not been successful because not every Muslim accepts the change from their traditions to modern. Some immigrant Muslims choose to embrace modernity and others reject it. For Muslims, this choice has not been an easy decision. “…The engagement of Islam with modernity remain open ended and multivocal… Muslim thinkers have argued for rejecting European modernity” (Wilson, 2005: p. 458).  The idea of modernity is so broad and abstract, which means that Muslims have a choice to be part of the modern world or not, and can decide to what extent they want to assimilate. For instance, Dr Megan P.Goodwin a professor at the Northeastern University, explain in her talk on(  April, 5, 2018 ), that different types of head coverings reflects how modernity has introduced new ways of covering. Immigrant Muslim women who embrace modernity will cover themselves less compared to those who want to maintain the traditional Muslims practices.  Regardless of the extent to which a Muslim woman is covered, the modern world views them as “the other”. This is  because they look different. As a result, racialization emerges. Racialization causes Muslims to be put aside and discriminated against. For example, my Muslim friend told me one day that she experienced  racialization after being denied a manufacturing job because she would not wear pants and remove her hijab, Since it’s part of her religion and culture. If the job was more accepting of her traditional clothing, she could have not felt being discriminated against. Through this question of societal acceptance, it makes it more difficult for Muslims to assimilate or get along with the modern world.

                This question of acceptance changed radically after 9/11, as Muslims were then wrongfully stereotyped and identified as terrorists. Muslims are identified by their religion, and they are viewed as different due to the ideas society has about Islam. It is true that:  “…Religion has played a big role in identifying a particular set of culture attitude and activity, it is also a deep source of power in a culture, pointing out how people relate to that power and the corresponding codified beliefs and behaviors surrounding it” (Chidester, 2005,p.6108).This is true because when someone identify them selves as a Muslim then, people associate them with the stereotype about terrorism. The media, a source of power post-9/11, played a big role in spreading the stereotype of Muslims being terrorists (Al Wazni 2015, p. 4). This stereotype sank into peoples’ minds leading to the rejection of Muslims from the modern world (“othering”). Muslims are put into one basket, as they face rejection from the rest. Due to modern events and the mass media, Muslims are associated with terrorism, which causes some Muslims to no longer want to identify with their religion. One of my classmate from Iran pointed out  that her mother prohibited her to identify as her self as an Iranian. This was to protect her self from the discrimination and rejection that most Muslims face. Her mother suggestion made her change her ideology as well to better assimilate and also to avoid any type of discriminate that her parents might have faced before. This fact explains how some Muslims may seek to change their ideologies and practices when faced with negative reactions from various sources, originating from stereotypes. As a result, the people associated with that religion will sometimes choose to no longer practice as freely due to the discrimination they face.

                Similar to changing cultural practices, traditional gender roles within Islam have been complicated by Western societal expectations and modernity. Gender differences and religious norms are important for Muslims. Normally, the place of a woman in the Muslim world is to be both submissive to their husband and to their religion. In some ways, they feel powerless and undermined, as “ They hold a marginalized position because of their Islamic appearance” ( Kabir, 2006:p.525). But, due to modernity, they “… find themselves in an environment that promises adventure, joy, growth, transformation…” (Kumar, 2008: p.243). For those Women who through modernity will get transformed, there will be an “ element of uncertainty, …and confusion” (Kumar,2008:p. 243). Thus, women will not only be wives and mothers in their household, but can also work outside their home and they can have more say in their home and within the society.  This freedom and equality has been a source of conflict, whereby a women’s role in a household has changed. In some cases, Muslim women are now able to go to school and work. In return, this creates empowerment and more equality in the household. All in all, modern ways of living have transformed Muslim gender roles, thereby changing their ideology and traditional practices of Islam.

Through out this blog, there are evidences that show how through modernity, Muslims’s ideology and practices have been influenced. Muslims practices, gender roles, and the choice to assimilate or not, are some factors describing the degree in which this has been an issue to Muslims living in America.  More over, 9/11 has also reinforced the stereotype of Muslims to be viewed as terrorist hence considered as “other” due to the way they portray themselves (wearing hijabs) in the US. All of these factors has led Muslims to feel discriminated against and not considered as equal to the rest of the population in the US.    

Work Cited

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2636321/world-hijab-day-niqab-burka-what-is-the-difference/

Al Wazni, Anderson Beckmann. 2015. “Muslim Women in America and Hijab: A Study of Empowerment, Feminist Identity, and Body Image.” Social Work 60(4): 325-333. Accessed February 28, 2018 from Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost

Chidester, David “Colonialism and Postcolonialism.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 1853-1860. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Lennihan, Mark. NYC Schools Muslim Holidays. 2015. Photograph.  AP Images

Kabir, Nahid Afrose. 2016. “Muslim Women in Australia, Britain and the United States: The Role of “Othering” and Biculturalism in Identity Formation.” Journal Of Muslim Minority Affairs 36(4): 523-539. Accessed February 28, 2018 from Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost

Kumar. (May-August 2008) “Engaging with Modernity: Need for a Critical Negotiation,” Sociological Bulletin,  Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 240-254/. Accessed March 8, 2018.

Wilson, John F. 2005. ”Modernity.”  In Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. edited by Lindsay Jones, 9:6108-6112. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA.

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Iranian Cinema: An Apologetic Platform

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Taline Torossian

In the Iranian film A Separation, the winner of the 84th Annual Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film, director Asghar Farhadi takes us through the story of two families with different socio-economic statuses and their conflicting relationships. A Separation embraces an Euro-American interpretative framework that does not perfectly resonate with the Iranian models, however, it does not operate in isolation from them either. Iranian cinema emerges as a hybrid medium as part of modernity. I suggest that it is an inherently apologetic platform because it is built to show its non-Iranian audience the pluralistic approach Iran’s people take to their faith, law, and general way of life. In order to conceptualize the way in which modernity’s effect is presented through the film, it is helpful to both introduce Farhadi as well as have a brief synopsis of the film’s plot.

Asghar Farhadi is a forty-five year old Iranian film director and screenwriter with and education from the University of Tehran and Tarbiat Modares University. He is interested in the social and political tensions in Iran and includes them throughout his films. Almost all his films can be explained as circumstances where the needs of the individual are constantly at odds with the proscriptions of a theocracy and the needs of other individuals. This remains true in his film A Separation, where each character has conflicting views on an objective truth and on the meaning of justice due to their beliefs, class, and disposition (Hamid, 40).

A Separation takes place in present-day Iran and opens with the story of a married middle class couple, Nader and Simin, their eleven year old daughter Termeh, and Nader’s elderly father who suffers with Alzheimer’s disease. Termeh’s mother, Simin wants to move the family out of Iran in order to provide Termeh with better opportunities then what is available to her in Iran. However, Nader refuses to leave his father’s side. This conflict leads Simin to move into her mother’s house and file for divorce as well as custody of Termeh. With Simin out of the house, Nader must find someone to care for his father while he is at work and, on the recommendation of Simin, ends up hiring Razieh, a deeply religious woman from a poor suburb. Razieh took the job without the knowledge of her husband, Hodjat, whose approval according to tradition would have been required. Razieh becomes overwhelmed with the demanding job of caring for Nader’s father, both physically and emotionally, and especially because she is pregnant. Nader’s father could no longer function on his own and had become immobile as well as mute. Therefore, the responsibilities that were expected of Razieh when taking care of Nader’s sick father were tremendous. She was expected to attend to him in the same way a mother would her baby in addition to cooking and cleaning in the home. Removing heavy trash from the apartment required descending about four flights of stairs each time, making the possibility of a fall very likely.  As the plot progresses, it is revealed that Razieh has suffered a miscarriage and with her husband file suit against Nader as responsible for the loss of the pregnancy.

In this film, Farhadi intertwines the real-life difficulty of determining any person as purely good or evil by denying the audience the ability to valorize any ideological or religious point of view. Because of this, Farhadi is able to emphasize to his non-Iranian audience the idea that neither class, repression in Iran, nor Islam can fully explain a characters’ motivations, but rather raise awareness of, what he calls, the universal human condition. In an interview, Farhadi explains this tragedy of the human condition by stating, “Whether you are Iranian or not, when you are put into the position of making these difficult choices, you are always haunted by the question of what would have happened had you chosen differently” (Hamid, 42). Further into this interview, Farhadi also describes his understanding of freedom as a contradiction that can create a lot of personal and social difficulty and how that functions as a part of the human condition.

The complexity within each family as well as between both family units is developed in such a way that reflects these “universal truths” (Hamid, 40) in the context of contemporary life in Iran. While religion is absolutely a part everyone’s life in the movie, as can be seen in this scene where Razieh calls someone to consult with them if it would be a sin or not to wash Nader’s elderly and sick father, the pluralistic nature of religious interpretation is also presented.

 

 

 

 

An example of differing religious interpretation in the film can be seen when Nader calls for Razieh to swear on the Qur’an that her miscarriage was his fault (to which she refuses because she is unsure). In contrast, the actions of Nader such as his stubbornness to admit he knew Razieh was pregnant had more to do with his fear of going to jail than being Muslim. Additionally, Simin’s action to file for divorce also had nothing to do with religious influence but was due to the inter-marriage problem of growing apart from her husband, Nader.

Another example of multiplicity that is drawn from the film is the way the women dress. Looking at the multiplicity that exists within all facets of Iranian life is also apparent in the way the female characters in the film dress. Echoing religion scholar Elizabeth Bucar’s research in her article Pious Fashion, Simin and Razieh in the film dress very differently. Simin, a middle-class woman dresses more urban with a shorter rupush (long coat), a relaxed rusari (head scarf) and jeans, while Razieh, a lower class woman wears a full chador. Bucar’s states:

The fashionable women asserts her sophistication and design savvy when she successfully incorporates traditional cloth and patterns into a cutting-edge outfit. She is so modern that she takes no risk in wearing village chic—there is no chance that she will be mistaken for an actual villager (Bucar, 39)

Her statement helps to contextualize and understand the differences in women’s dress. With this understanding it becomes clear that the use of clothing as an indicator of socio-economic status is not unique to Iran, but rather a practice that the majority of the world participates in.

The difference and insight to be gained, however, is showing how Islam and the use of clothing to present a certain socio-economic status intersect in such a way that is parallel to Western audiences engagement with the same practice. In other words, Islam does not change the way in which women engage in wearing their socio-economic status, only the kinds of clothing they wear such as a rupush and rusari. Just to push this point further, wealthy Iranian and Western women even buy the same luxury brands such as Gucci, Louie Vuitton, and Chanel.

To better understand how Western critics interpretation of Farhadi, we must first understand what it means for something to be apologetic as well as Faisal Devji’s argument in his essay Apologetic Modernity. While it is hard to give a solid one-line definition of what it means to be apologetic, Devji outlines this concept as a defensive position that the so-called Muslim world has adopted (after being forced into) that stands to prove to the West that Muslims are just like them, or in the context of this paper, Iranians are just like Westerners. Therefore, Iranian film makers use this apologetic position in order to be put on the same international platform and considered for competitions that are mainly dominated by Western cinema and influence.

Devji addresses the “adoption of modernity as an idea among Muslim intellectuals… [and] argues [that] Muslim apologetics created a modernity whose rejection of purity and autonomy permitted it a distinctive conceptual form” (Devji, 61). Devji explains that Muslim debates on modernity are characterized with markers of East and West or Islam and Christianity and have become conceptually central in the Muslim world as well as historically grounded in imperialism because those tended to define the European boundaries of the modern in a peripheral and descriptive way (Devji, 61).

Due to Muslim modernism’s inability to engage and integrate with European though intellectually made Muslim modernism essentially apologetic (Devji, 62). Many Muslim movements separate from film utilize and rely upon this apologetic manner, and while modern Islam scholars have noticed this characteristic they mostly dismiss it as a product of the West’s overwhelming might but are not blind to the negative consequence of determining Muslim apologetic “as a lack and an absence whose positive alternative is naturally provided by the West” ( Devji, 62).

As a director, Farhadi was well received by Western critics on the international scene, who have praised his shift away from presenting Iranians as ‘essentially medieval’ (Rugo, 175). This ‘praise’ unapologetically categorizes all Iranian films produced without the intention of appealing to Western audiences as medieval, but when the film is crafted in an apologetic manner, Western audiences label it modern and find it intriguing. Careful Western film critics, your imperialism is showing.

When examined closely it becomes significantly clear that Farhadi’s work follows a long tradition of Iranian cinema that has both local and cosmopolitan dimensions but differs in its apologetic style. In other words, a tradition that has had a focus on the everyday moral and relational problems of the urban middle-class family and on questions of class identity has not changed, but rather the framework within which it is produced is geared towards a Western audience. Therefore, comparing the framework of Farhadi’s films with Western ones while disregarding all pre-revolution films as irrelevant completely ignores the work of Iranian directors (pre-revolution) as a precursor to Farhadi’s style.

By embracing controversial themes of domestic and social conflict (unlike most post-revolutionary Iranian cinema) Farhadi’s work is seen as a clear break from tradition. Because of this, his work does not perfectly align with the criteria that is commonly used to describe contemporary Iranian cinema, and therefore Western critics look to interpret Farhadi’s films through American and European models. This ultimately led to one critic, Richard Corliss to declare A Separation ‘ready-made for an American remake’ (Rugo, 175). These Western critics support their analysis by emphasizing the presence of American culture in the apartment of the family in A Separation, as well as on Farhadi’s preference for urban settings, relational conflicts, and moral questions that may not have been portrayed in the same way by other Iranian filmmakers.

While I understand these critics’ tendency to do this, I also can’t help but argue that people all over the world who fall into countless categories of identification deal with such issues, and therefore, would be inclined to watch such a movie that they find relatable. American philosopher Stanley Cavell argues that there are a number of thematic parallels between Farhadi’s work and classical Hollywood films, based on the fact that one major theme in A Separation is about the fragility of marriage as revelatory of preoccupations around modernity and skepticism. However, the insistence on proximity between Farhadi and Hollywood overshadows the idea that themes such as different and conflicting moral standings are transnational and not limited to a Western landscape/audience.

The Iranian films preceding 1979 has been deemed irrelevant to post-Revolutionary films completely dismissing the national tradition that existed before and ignoring the origin from which these post 1979 film emerge from. Author of From Iran to Hollywood and Some Place In-Between: Reframing Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema Chris Gow states, “many pre-revolutionary film which serve as precursors to the best examples of Contemporary Iranian film-making are excluded from consideration, simply because they fall out with the restrictive timeline artificially imposed upon the evolution of the New Iranian Cinema” (Rugo, 181). The consequence of ignoring the context from which this post-revolution films were created leads to the assumption that Farhadi is somehow breaking from tradition in addressing themes of broken relationships, human responsibility, and moral dilemmas.

Farhadi’s ability to sway viewers to deeply sympathize with both sides in the film is interpreted as his ability to produce more Western style films, however, I see it more logically as his ability to reach diverse audiences who can all relate to these core universal truths about marriage, divorce, communication etc. Gow notes that the alignment of Iranian cinema with western art cinema has gradually removed and cut off ‘the New Iranian cinema from the particular contests wherein it has developed, but also in which is presently resides’ (Rugo, 181).

In reality, Ebrahim Golestan’s 1964 film Khesht va Ayeneh (Brick and Mirror), among many others are focused on exactly those themes. The new categorization that Western critics call “breaking away from tradition” or Farhadi’s hybrid model seems to be a result of the apologetic manner in which these post-revolutionary films are being created.

Between the 1950s and 1970s young Iranian film-makers had either studied abroad or had been exposed to well-known Western as well as Indian, Turkish, Russian, and Egyptian directors. This exposure inspired Iranian film-makers to update and revise mainstream cinema, but also to project Iranian daily life through cinematic forms that would put it on the same level as the best works produced by Western cinema. This shift in approach echoes cultural critic Faisal Devji’s argument that Islamic populations formulate their way of life in an apologetic manner in order to appeal to Western populations and as a result are categorized as modern by the West.

Through this framework, Farhadi’s films present Western audiences with pictures and notions of Iran that may be surprising, such as the idea that divorce is an option and an important social phenomenon in a traditional country like Iran. While these factors wont surprise Iranians (in or out of Iran), they have the potential to push Western viewers to question their current perceptions of Iran (Reichle,74). Although religion is something that motivates the actions of Razieh, Farhadi states in an interview that “…for both families, the reasons they do what they do has to do with their material conditions…They are driven by their position in life” (Hamid,41).

The film touches upon issues that are problematic in every society, not just those in Iran’s society. Farhadi addresses crucial questions of social and political relevance in Iranian everyday life while presenting Iran to be a place where families laugh, make jokes, live and work just like anywhere else in the world. Additionally, his characters have problems that are connected to the social and political conditions of Iran, but more than that, their problems are also related to their own actions and emotional or personal shortcomings, further emphasizing the point that people struggle with similar issues regardless of their geographical and religious identity. This effort to show Western viewers that Iran is just like them in order to be put on the same level is as Devji argues, apologetic.

Works Cited

  1. Farhadi, Asghar dir. A Separation.. Iran and US: Filmiran, Sony Pictures Classic, 2011.
  2. Rugo, Daniele. “Asghar Farhadi.” Third Text30, no. 3-4 (2016): 173-87. doi:10.1080/09528822.2017.1278876.

 

  1. Reza Zabihi; Momene Ghadiri; Abbas Eslami Rasekh. “A Separation, an Ideological Rift in the Iranian Society and Culture: Media, Discourse and Ideology”. International Journal of Society, Culture & Language, 3, 1, 2015, 105-119.

 

  1. Bassiri, Kaveh. “We Live in a Cosmopolitan World.” Film International15, no. 3 (2017): 6-12. doi:10.1386/fiin.15.3.6_1.

 

  1. Stern, Fritz. “Freedom and Its Discontents.” Foreign Affairs72, no. 4 (November 18, 2011): 40-42. doi:10.2307/20045719.

 

  1. Reichle, Niklaus. “Melodrama and Censorship in Iranian Cinema.” Film International12, no. 3 (2014): 64-76. doi:10.1386/fiin.12.3.64_1.

 

  1. Faisal Devji, “Apologetic Modernity,” Modern Intellectual History, 4, 1 (2007), pp. 61–76.

 

  1. Cemil Aydin, The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History (Harvard University Press, 2016).

 

  1. David Chidester, “Colonialism and Postcolonialism.” Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed. Lindsay Jones. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2005. 1853-1860. Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Fight Between the Veil and Secularity

Posted on April 30, 2018 by Maire Gebhard

Many Westerners view modest clothing as the ultimate sign of Muslim women’s oppression. They assume that the concept of the veil, whether a headscarf or a full-body covering, is based on the outdated idea that women’s bodies are overly sexual and must be hidden.[1]

As I was scrolling on Facebook recently I came across an article titled “Melania Trump in Saudi Arabia: Hijab-free and Proudly American.” As if one couldn’t be proudly American and wear the hijab at the same time… The article went on to describe Melania’s fashionable outfit that included pants and, importantly, a bare face. The article closes with the author calling for a familiar narrative- Trump to implement a burqa ban in the United States. All across the globe bans of the burqa and hijab have been, and continue to be, implemented. For example, in 2016 the Dutch parliament approved a partial ban of the burqa in public places. Such bans are often put under a guise of a broader ban of “public displays of religiosity,” or as a precaution/need for security– like the ban just mentioned, which claims to be for “security reasons.”

However, it seems quite evident that these various bans are underwritten by an ethos of Islamophobia. The veil is portrayed more often than not as in tension with nebulous concepts of “modernity” and “secularity.” This is evident in the bans of the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, France and Bulgaria where the bans being employed are seen as a promotion of “secularity” and therefore in contrast with religiosity- or at least the public display of it. Yet, in reality, they are not much more than uninformed discrimination as we see evidenced through narratives of the “Islamic threat” to “secularism.”[2] The whole argument has a Samuel Huntington Clash of Civilizations[3] vibe and while this argument is clearly racist and problematic, it persists. And, although Islamic women all over the world are proving that they view themselves as religious and simultaneously secular is not an issue, the rest of the world continues to perpetuate the idea that the two simply cannot coexist.

But why do Islamic women seem to be at the center of the debate? Associate Professor of Geography at UNC Chapel Hill, Banu Gorkariksel, notes that “Clothing may be the most visible and easily identifiable corporeal marker of religiosity or secularity.”[4] So while some Christians have no visible markers that make them visibly Christian, Muslim women, and especially those who are veiled, are visibly religious. And while Gorkariksel also argues that to the Western and secular eyes the veil is seen as hiding women’s bodies or making them invisible in public spaces, I believe that this invisibility inversely makes them hyper visible. It is in this way that Muslim women’s veiling, and modest clothing in general, becomes the ultimate sign of Muslim otherness. I hope to show here the ways in which Muslim women use their clothing to communicate a variety of things from fashion to religiosity. The issue that the women, like those discussed in Jeanette Jouli’s book,[5] are facing is that while they see themselves as being visible, distanced, members, “their orthodox piety [cannot] easily be rendered intelligible through a mainstream (liberal-secular) discourse”[6] — and therein lies the biggest issue. Secular society has got it wrong. By looking at Islam through an ethnocentric, etic, lens one completely misjudges and umbrellas a whole religion. Rather than viewing Muslim women’s clothing as a problem that needs fixing, we ought to be aware of the multiplicities accompanying this pious fashion.

In her book titled Pious Fashion[7] Elizabeth Bucar explores how the veil and fashion are articulated and lived in Iran, Turkey, and Indonesia. She shows us that in all of these locations pious fashion is influenced by standards of beauty, has a variety of meanings and is expressed in a multitude of colors and textures which express “individual tastes and challenge aesthetic conventions.”[8] In this way the idea of fashion is encapsulated in the conversation surrounding the veil. For some women pious fashion may look like a hijab in the form of a stylish scarf paired with Doc Martin boots, designer jeans and a top. For another woman this may mean something completely different. What is notable is that it is all pious fashion.

It is the Indonesian stay-at-home mom who decides to wear jilbab and share her experiential learning through her blog. It is the Tehrani youth who stands up to the morality police who harass her for wearing jeans as part of her hijab. It is the recent college graduate in Istanbul who critiques the styling on the cover of an Islamic fashion magazine. These women are all pious, even though they do not agree about what modest entails…They are pious because they are using clothing and adornment to cultivate their own characters, to build community, and to make social critiques.[9]

Fashion can be pious. Fashion is pious! Project Runway contestant Ayana Ife shocked the judges when she was able to make modest clothing look modern. But why?!

It seems that the most notable contention promoters of secularity and modernity seem to have with Islam is the supposed oppression and invisibility marked by the burqa. Public discourses name female Muslim subjects through European “meta-values and self-descriptions, such as freedom or autonomy” labeling such women as premodern. Women who choose to wear the veil are assumed to be forced or conceding to male pressure.[10] The interlocutors of Joulis’s book recognize this and are actively aiming “to prove their compatibility” with European modernity not in spite of but because of their Muslim-ness.

Do Muslim women need saving? Do they need to be liberated? These are the questions liberal feminists and secular societies are asking. Perhaps these women are already liberated, maybe not- either way these women are full modern individuals who are choosing the constraints in which they are living. Perhaps they are even more modern because they understand both the secular and the religious and are choosing one over the other. Either way it seems abundantly clear they they do not in fact need saving.

Rather than oppressive, the veil/burqa is seen as a liberating and freeing force- in Abu-Lughod’s book she notes the shock of one of her informants at her suggestion that she was oppressed by her religion in any way.[11]  The veil has a force of “cultivation of self-confidence or pride” for the women of Jouli, Abu-Lughod, and Gorkariksel.[12] It seems in fact that the biggest imposition and constraint present in the lives of the Muslims who choose to wear the veil is that of secular society. Muslims dressed in the burqa are denied jobs, education and access to everyday things- this appears to be more oppressive for those women.

In the complex geography of the secular world, these Muslim women are forced to [re]signify what the female Muslim body is in a world with increasing pressure to secularize. What happens here is an ethical labor involved with the “creative employment of body, space, and time, as subverting in multiple ways the constraints of secular public spheres that seem to render impossible the public exercise of “illegitimate” religious practice.”[13] The idea of the foreign, over there vs over here, alien “Islamic society” is not a new concept, and there seems to be an “unbridgeable gap between the West and the “Rest;”” where Muslims are presented as the most troubling of the Rest. Muslim women, in this sense, have come to symbolize “just how alien this culture is.”[14]

What is important to recognize is the violence that is being done to these women with narrative such as these. By assuming the veil equals ignorance and oppression we are forcing Muslim women to suffer the psychological and socio-economic consequences that accompany these views. Young Muslim women are being forced to invest energy in establishing themselves as thinking, rational, literate students.[15] In essence, we are taking away their agency, which is somewhat ironic as these Muslim women see the veil as giving them agency.

There is an intertwining or entanglement of “religious” and “secular” powers in real time marked by place and time, and formed through specific “sets of political and social relations, ideologies, and practices in particular sites”[16] that needs to be remembered. And Wendy Brown reminds us in Abu-Lughod’s book that secularism has not brought women’s freedom nor equality in the West, and our views are based on the “tacit assumption that bared skin and flaunted sexuality is a token if not measure of women’s freedom and equality.””[17] In general, our views are largely shaped by “the perpetual bombardment of negative, or at best incomplete, representations of Muslims in the media.”[18] If we are to ever recognize the fallacy of binaries such as “religion” and “secularity” we must recognize the variety of expressions of religion and secularity and how such experiences are not confined to bounded spaces, but lived as part of everyday life in a multitude of spaces and scales.

[1] Bucar, Elizabeth M. Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017. Page, 1.

[2] Gorkariksel, Banu. “Beyond the Officially Sacred: Religion, Secularism, and the Body in the Product of Subjectivity.” Social and Cultural Geography, Vol. 10, No. 6 (September 2009): 657-74. doi:10.1080/14649360903068993. Page, 665.

[3] Huntington, Samuel P. 1993. The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs 72, (3) (Summer): 22, https://search.proquest.com/docview/214280190?accountid=14679 (accessed April 26, 2018).

[4] Gorkariksel, 660.

[5] Jouli, Jeanette. Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015

[6] Jouli, 187.

[7] Bucar, Elizabeth M. Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017.

[8] Bucar, 2.

[9] Bucar, 190.

[10] Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Page, 17.

[11] Abu-Lughod, 4

[12] Jouli, 162

[13] Jouli, 176

[14] Abu-Lughod, 6

[15] Hoodfar, Homa. “The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women.” Resources for Feminist Research 22, no. 3/4 (1992/1993): 5-18.

[16] Jouli, 154

[17] Brown in Abu-Lughod, 19

[18] Peterson, Kristian. “Representation and Muslim Identity.” Journal of Religion and Society, 13th ser. (2016): Page, 116.

Works Cited

Abbas. 2004. FRANCE. Veiling Paris. http://library.artstor.org.ezproxy.uvm.edu/asset/AMAGNUMIG_10311553095.

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Bucar, Elizabeth M. Pious Fashion: How Muslim Women Dress. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2017.

Gorkariksel, Banu. “Beyond the Officially Sacred: Religion, Secularism, and the Body in the Product of Subjectivity.” Social and Cultural Geography, Vol. 10, No. 6 (September 2009): 657-74. doi:10.1080/14649360903068993.

Hoodfar, Homa. “The Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women.” Resources for Feminist Research 22, no. 3/4 (1992/1993): 5-18.

Jouili, Jeanette Selma. Pious Practice and Secular Constraints: Women in the Islamic Revival in Europe. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015.

Peterson, Kristian. “Representation and Muslim Identity.” Journal of Religion and Society, 13th ser. (2016): 113-23.

Wheeler, Kayla. “It’s “Been” Cool to Cover: Why Ayana Ife Matters.” Sapelo Square. November 21, 2017. https://sapelosquare.com/2017/11/21/its-been-cool-to-cover-why-ayana-ife-matters/.

 

          

Posted in Student Post | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment