Muslim Experiences Research Articles

Understanding Sharia Processes: Women’s Experiences of Family Disputes, Farrah Ahmed and Ghena Krayem

This book is a welcome addition to the existing literature on Muslims practising sharia in the West. The authors, Professor Farrah Ahmed (University of Melbourne Law School) and Associate Professor Ghena Krayem (University of Sydney Law School) provide new empirical data to explore the experiences of Australian Muslims in their engagement with sharia processes in Australia. The book consists of seven chapters, preceded by a foreword by Professor Julie Macfarlane (Faculty of Law, University of Windsor, Canada)1. Macfarlane values the importance of this book in bringing to the fore the voices of women and their perspectives of Islamic family law processes, often associated with gender stereotypes and patriarchal practices. Macfarlane rightly identifies the insider approach used for this research as a suitable model to examine groups and communities that reside within a dominant community without ‘othering’; to understand differences, their beliefs and values; whilst acknowledging similarities shared with the wider society, such as marital strife and domestic violence. The foreword concludes by reiterating the problems of male dominance and the assumption about women’s roles which are not associated with the Muslim faith alone being present in other religious and cultural processes and even the courts.

This Being is a Guest House: Embracing Humility, Liberation & Strengths in Therapy with Sexual and Gender Diverse Muslims

ABSTRACT The complexity of the lives of sexual and gender diverse Muslims within the United States calls for mental health providers to own our power and privilege. Embracing cultural humility in service of aligning ourselves with liberation psychology, we call for an intersectionally informed, strengths-based approach to empowering/affirming clients whose diverse religious experiences intersect with their experiences of marginalization as sexual and gender diverse (SGD) Muslims. Drawing on extant personal narratives around mental health and therapy of this population, the authors offer critical reflections, processes and opportunities for clinicians to take responsibility in honoring the diverse journeys and experiences of SGD Muslims in serving them in journeys of healing.

Review: Lifeworlds of Islam: The Pragmatics of a Religion, by Mohammed A. Bamyeh

Review: <i>Lifeworlds of Islam: The Pragmatics of a Religion</i>, by Mohammed A. Bamyeh

Incorporating Transformative Intersectional Psychology (TIP) into Our Understanding of LGBTQ Muslims’ Lived Experiences, Challenges, and Growth

ABSTRACT This article serves as the first in a series of six articles providing a theoretically and empirically informed approach to understanding Muslim LGBTQ lives from an intersectional positive-growth framework, transformative intersectional psychology (TIP). Within this perspective, LGBTQ Muslims’ religious, gender and sexual identities are mutually interactive and situated within the dynamic systems of power, privilege and oppression. This approach recognizes that LGBTQ individuals negotiate multiple minority identities as they navigate oppression and build pathways of resilience. In the present article, we provide an introduction to TIP and this theory’s relevance to the distinct experiences of LGBTQ Muslims. We then conclude with an overview of the goals of this Special Issue, The LGBTQ Muslim Experience, and introduce the subsequent articles in the series. The articles in this Special Issue address the implications of transformative intersectional psychology for LGBTQ Muslim research, training and clinical practice.

“No one likes that judgmental look like you are a terrorist.” Sensorial encounters with the Muslim Other in Amsterdam

Often framed in the public discourse as Europe's ultimate Other, Muslims have been heftily debated and vastly problematised by politicians, pundits, and public intellectuals as unwanted immigrants, part of a bad diversity, problematic, violent, refusals of modernity, secularism, and freedom. Thinking through the body as a phenomenal lived body, we explore Othering as a set of visual, auditory, olfactory, and haptic encounters. Employing an urban ethnography on everyday lived experiences of young Muslims in Amsterdam, the paper investigates multiple modes through which Othering is sensed, lived, and felt through the body.

Explaining Homegrown Western Jihadists: The Importance of Western Foreign Policy

In both the United States and Europe, explanations of homegrown radicalization emphasize the power of Salafi-jihadist ideology and Muslim experiences of discrimination and socioeconomic deprivation in Western countries. Polls of U.S. and European Muslims, and case histories of jihadist plots for attacks in the United States, indicate that another source of homegrown radicalization is Western foreign policy, especially Western interventions in predominantly Muslim countries. Poll results support a two-factor model in which seeing the war on terrorism as a war on Islam is predicted by both perceived discrimination and grievance related to Western foreign policy. Consistent with this model, UK practitioners in counter-radicalization programs find it useful to recognize Muslim grievances related to Western foreign policy in order to argue that violence does not reduce Muslim suffering. These observations indicate that Muslim grievances relating to Western foreign policy are important for under - standing and countering support for jihadist violence in Western countries.

A Systematic Review of Employment and Workplace Experiences of Muslims

The employment and workplace experiences of Muslims are rarely studied, and yet this group appears to face distinct challenges in securing work and progressing in their careers. In addition, given the historical developments in discrimination research designs, little is known about the impact of different designs on the validity of research findings. This paper makes three contributions. It is the first systematic review of the employment and workplace experiences of discrimination against Muslims. Second, we investigated adverse prejudice attitudes towards Muslims and the factors that lead to labor market and workplace discrimination. Third, through our investigation of this phenomenon, we identified the limitations of study design in the current discrimination literature and introduced strategies for future research to overcome them.

LANTUNAN SYAIR LI KHAMSATUN DI TENGAH PANDEMI COVID-19: PERSPEKTIF LIVING ISLAM

This paper explores the historical and epistemic dimensions of the famous Syiir Li Khamsatun phenomenon in the Javanese Muslim community to deal with the Covid- 19 pandemic. The poem that simply contained the lamentation and sadness of the followers of Ali, the 4th caliph after the Prophet, now reappeared in Muslim societies who were lamenting the destruction of the social, economic, cultural, and religious systems caused by the Coronavirus Disease (Covid-19) pandemic. The sad tones of Syiir Li Khamsatun strengthen the solidarity of Muslims for the occurrence of the disaster, war, plague, and even defeat. The poem strongly indicates the existence of spiritual leaders who always protect them all the time. The poem can also be used as evidence that the social facts of Covid-19 are no longer sufficiently scrutinized from a rational and health perspective, but can also be seen as a phenomenon of the Muslim community's response to the plague (Covid-19) based on the history of Muslim experience with a set of irfani truths and this also confirms that Religion always shows its characteristic existence in the dynamics of society.

“Prisons Were Made for People Like Us”: British Pakistani Muslim Experiences Upon Release From Prison

British Muslim young men who offend upon reentry from prison reported that “Prisons were made for people like us.” At one level, this meant that the challenges they faced were likely to be intractable and insurmountable, regrettably returning them to prison. At another, their social integration after release from prison was hampered by something more than their individual choices and agency. Cycling between neighborhood, offending, and prison, it was their characteristic social relations and the peculiar social structural constraints placed upon them as a group that best explained their experiences upon release from prison.

Introduction: Studying Islam from below and interrogating divisions in contemporary Russia

The four contributions to this special section aim to study Islam in Russia from below, by examining how Muslims in Russia live and experience their vision of the Islamic religion in conformity and/or dissonance with official categories of Islam, or by simply moving beyond them. The contributions in this collection start from the idea that the study of Islam in Russia is inevitably confronted with normative discourses about acceptable and undesirable forms of Islam. These normative discourses are represented in the categories of “traditional” and “non-traditional Islam” that contributors to the section examine and interrogate through the perceptions and experiences of their Muslim informants. A number of questions arise when we examine the relationship between lived, grassroots Muslim experiences – Islam perceived from below – and top-down normative discourses. First, we can ask whether official categories reflect emic self-definitions, ways in which Muslims in Russia define themselves, taking into account that these emic terms are in flux. We can also ask about the nature of grassroots Muslim experiences: do they inevitably emerge outside of official Muslim institutions, or do we find a variety of grassroots Muslims, not all clearly identifiable on a religious level? Second, we can consider what increased religiosity, taking different forms, might mean for the perception of official dichotomies, along with the role of the Muftiates at the intersection between state discourses and grassroots Muslims. Does increased religiosity dissolve, alter or consolidate divisions drawn on an official level? The ethnographies in this section reveal that the exploration of Islam tends to produce unique trajectories among Muslims in Russia that cannot always be clearly located on a theological spectrum. The religious trajectories carved out by Muslims in Russia are constantly evolving and responding to a changing socio-political environment.

Cyber Sufis: Virtual Expressions of the American Muslim Experience (Islam in the Twenty‐First Century)

AbstractIf you have made up your mind that the embodied rituals are the main dominant phenomenon in modern Sufism and the cyberspace can only contribute to the marginalization of religious experience, this book is out to persuade you otherwise. This is an ethnographic study that investigates the virtualization of Sufi rituals, religious education, spiritual practices, and public outreach adopted by the Inyati Sufi order. It is also an attempt to explore an American Sufi digital paradigm that helps to balance the traditional ways of performing rituals and coping with the new age of shifting to cyber rituals.

SOEKARNO DAN ARGUMEN TEOLOGIS-FILOSOFIS DALAM PEMIKIRAN ISLAM

Soekarno was an important figure in Indonesia. He was one of founding fathers for the establishment of the Unitary State of Republic Indonesia. Soekarno was able to affirm his views on the establishment of a democracy-based state, in the difficult political dynamics with the emergence of pressure from groups that wants to establish an Islamic state. This paper wants to see how Soekarno’s philosophical views of Islamic teachings and their application are ideal for the Indonesian Muslim community. In the context of theology, Soekarno saw that Indonesian Muslims could not yet understand their religion properly and correctly. Muslims experience delays in realizing the ideals of a nation state based on Islamic values as a result of the failure to capture the spirit of islam. Public awareness about the essence of religion still tends to be shallow and fanatical. Soekarno proposed the idea of rationality of religious text, in order to be able to capture the value of religious teaching.

Islam, Leprosy, and Disability: How Religion, History, Art, and Storytelling Can Yield New Insights and Acceptance

Age-old fears and misconceptions about leprosy have flourished for centuries and the condition remains both a socially stigmatizing issue and a public health problem in many parts of the globe. In the context of Islam, only a few personal narratives by Muslims living with leprosy exist, and no one has systematically reviewed accounts of leprosy related disability from early or recent Islamic history, including the Prophet Muhammad’s interactions with individuals living with leprosy. In this article, we present previously untold stories about leprosy, from both English and Arabic sources strongly rooted in Islamic values and principles. After an introduction and brief history of Islam, this article is divided into three main sections: (1) The foundations of early Islamic values about illness, leprosy, and disability; (2) Leprosy and stigma in Islamic communities and/or places; and (3) Art, storytelling, and other expressions by people living with leprosy in various parts of the world. The authors also discuss some of the challenges of defining leprosy terminology based on early historic documents. The overall purpose of this article is to describe historical and religious accounts of leprosy and amplify the collective voices and experiences of Muslims who live with leprosy from a disability studies frame. The authors also introduce the ‘House is Black’, a short documentary that illustrates additional insights and commentary related to disability related leprosy.

Between Recognition and Mis/Nonrecognition: Strategies of Negotiating and Performing Identities Among White Muslims in the United Kingdom

This article explores white British Muslim experiences of, and strategic performative responses to, the (mis/non)recognition of their seemingly incompatible religious and ethnic identities. Based on in‐depth interviews (N = 26), it highlights how the different identity categories they hold relate to one another, influencing processes of perceived recognition in interactional contexts. White British Muslims perceive their ethnic and religious identities to be (mis/not) recognized in complex and contradictory ways. Their identities are affirmed, denied, erased, and/or incorrectly ascribed, sometimes simultaneously, by relevant others in different contexts. Performative strategies such as the adoption, maintenance, or removal of identity markers are used consciously and agentically in attempts to take back control over how their identities are (mis/not) recognized. At times deliberate performative acts leading to misrecognition are orchestrated by white Muslims themselves to not only minimize the risk of experiencing possible harm or marginalization but also to transgress and challenge norms. They also assert their multiple identities as a response to (mis/non)recognition and claims of their identities being incompatible, regardless of the repercussions that may result in them being placed at the margins of, or excluded from, their ingroups.

More Than “Multiple Jeopardy”: Navigating the Legal System as a British-Muslim-Woman-Litigant-in-Person

Abstract Against the backdrop of rising Islamophobia and a deficit in the literature of Muslim experiences of resistance to discrimination through the legal action, in this article, I employ an auto-ethnographic methodological approach to critically reflect on my journey from classroom to courtroom, as a British Muslim woman of colour and litigant-in-person. While threading in excerpts of legal documents from the case, I highlight that: (a) as Muslims we must resist in ways acceptable to gate-keepers of the law, who are largely white and middle-class and unaware of the embodied realities of the inequality that minorities in Britain experience; (b) the law fails to take account of the “context” in which discrimination(s) takes place, as a result of which legal logic(s) and methodologies in cases of religious discrimination are flawed; (c) a religio-social capital operates against Muslims, negating positive social capital(s) such as education, and which, in the social penalties Muslims experience, accumulates greater weight than other intersecting subjectivity markers such as race, class, ethnicity, and gender. I contrast King’s theory of “multiple jeopardy” with my embodied experience of discrimination and inequality, which I demonstrate using the model of the glass Rubik’s cube.

Anasua Chatterjee, Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India

Anasua Chatterjee, <i>Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India</i>

\u201cWhat good are all these divisions in Islam?\u201d. Everyday Islam and normative discourses in Daghestan

Republic of Daghestan is the most multiethnic and troublesome region in the Russian Federation. The social, religious and political landscape of this republic has radically changed over the last two decades. Daghestan appears in academic and analytical papers mostly in relation to terrorism or security issues. The everyday religiosity is, for the most part, out of the picture. This paper aims to fill the gap by focusing on everyday Islam in this republic. It is intended as a contribution to the anthropology of Islam and post-Soviet area studies. What can we learn about the social changes in the given setting if we re-focus our attention from religious figures, organizations and institutions and drift towards the everyday perceptions and experiences of ordinary Muslims, towards religiosity as embedded in everyday life but not within a clearly identifiable group? Religious life in Daghestan is usually viewed through official categories of “traditional Islam” and “non-traditional Islam”, the former equated with “Sufism”, the latter with “Wahhabism”. As will be clear from this paper these theology driven qualifiers are usually used in a secular sense, with no clear religious content attached to them. However, as a part of powerful discourses they affect religious life of ordinary Muslims. How do they relate to these categories? In my paper I show how attitudes towards Salafi-oriented Muslims changed in Daghestan between 2007 and 2017: they drifted from being informed by official categories to being informed by everyday experiences. I will also show how and in what contexts Daghestani Muslims engaged and played with the categories, bringing in some comparisons with late-Socialism. Eventually, I will engage with the concept of “everyday Islam”, its potentials and limitations as an analytical category used for the analysis of social life in the North Caucasus where an organized religious and political activity is limited and where the clearly identifiable groups are not those that are behind the most vital social changes. The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2007 and 2017 among Daghestani Muslims in Makhachkala and beyond.

Book Review: Anasua Chatterjee. 2017. Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India

Book Review: Anasua Chatterjee. 2017. <i>Margins of Citizenship: Muslim Experiences in Urban India</i>

New Directions in Islamic Education

Abdullah Sahin’s New Directions in Islamic Education offers an original conceptualization of the role of Islamic education in enriching the identity formation of young British Muslims. Existing education literature centered on Muslims is often categorized in one of two ways: (1) texts that offer classical, prophetic depictions of pursuits towards religious knowledge (Al-Attas 1979; Ashraf &amp; Hirst 1994; Abbas 2011); or (2) texts that offer modern representations of the lived experiences of Muslims in western contexts (Abdalla, Chown, &amp; Abdullah 2018; Khan &amp; Siddiqui 2017; Haddad, Senzai, &amp; Smith 2009).

New Directions in Islamic Education: Pedagogy and Identity Formation (by Abdullah Sahin)

Abdullah Sahin’s New Directions in Islamic Education offers an original conceptualization of the role of Islamic education in enriching the identity formation of young British Muslims. Existing education literature centered on Muslims is often categorized in one of two ways: (1) texts that offer classical, prophetic depictions of pursuits towards religious knowledge (Al-Attas 1979; Ashraf &amp; Hirst 1994; Abbas 2011); or (2) texts that offer modern representations of the lived experiences of Muslims in western contexts (Abdalla, Chown, &amp; Abdullah 2018; Khan &amp; Siddiqui 2017; Haddad, Senzai, &amp; Smith 2009).