Islamic Conservatism Research Articles

The Rise of the Fringe: Right Wing Populists, Islamists and Politics in the UK

This paper examines the impact that radical right wing populist groups and hard-line Islamist groups have on each other and on political developments in the UK. In the UK, recent years have witnessed an emergence of a number of right-wing populist groups, notably the English Defense League. Such groups frequently see themselves in opposition to fringe conservative Islamist groups such as Islam4UK, a recent offshoot of the defunct Islamist group al-Muhajiroun. How do such fringe groups influence mainstream political discourse and politics through building connections with mainstream parties or moderate-leaning voters? This paper will apply mobilization theory to explain the evolution of these two groups. Through case studies of these two groups and their interaction, this paper shows that right wing populist and Islamist groups have managed to exert a significant influence on national discourse, but their electoral impact has been minor.

Notes from the Field: Silence Kills! Women and the Transitional Justice Process in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia

This article is based on the first collection of testimonies of female former political prisoners in Tunisia. Relying on purposive rather than random sampling, the interviews were aimed at contributing to an authentic Tunisian process of transitional justice that takes cultural, religious and gender-based norms into consideration. To date, the voices of conservative Islamist women detained under the Tunisian dictatorship have been significantly absent from the national discourse on transitional justice. Select voices of women are presented here that can begin to address this gap. The newly elected provisional government, in which the Islamist Ennahda Party enjoys a majority, has established a Ministry of Human Rights and Transitional Justice, the first of its kind in the world. While this augurs well for Tunisia’s future, there is fear that the transitional justice process may nonetheless be captured by political agendas.

Islamic logics, reproductive rationalities: family planning in northern Pakistan

This paper explores the use of Islamic doctrine and jurisprudence by family planning organizations in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of northern Pakistan. It examines how particular interpretations of Islam are promoted in order to encourage fertility reductions, and the ways Muslim clerics, women and their families react to this process. The paper first discusses how Pakistan's demographic crisis, as the world's sixth most populous nation, has been widely blamed on under-funding for reproductive health services and wavering political commitment to family planning. Critics have called for innovative policy and programming to counter ‘excessive reproduction’ by also addressing socio-cultural and religious barriers to contraceptive uptake. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research, the paper examines how family planning organizations in Gilgit-Baltistan respond to this shift by employing moderate interpretations of Islam that qualify contraceptive use as a ‘rational’ reproductive strategy and larger families as ‘irrational’. However, the use of Islamic rhetoric to enhance women's health-seeking agency and enable fertility reductions is challenged by conservative Sunni ulema (clergy), who seek to reassert collective control over women's bodies and fertility by deploying Islamic doctrine that honors frequent childbearing. Sunnis’ minority status and the losses incurred by regional Shia-Sunni conflicts have further strengthened clerics’ pronatalist campaigns. The paper then analyses how Sunni women navigate the multiple reproductive rationalities espoused by ‘Islamized’ family planning and conservative ulema. Although Islamized family planning legitimizes contraceptive use and facilitates many women's stated desire for smaller families, it frequently positions women against the interests of family, community and conservative Islam.

Under the shadow of Islam: the plight of the Christian minority in Pakistan

The murders of Salmaan Taseer and Shahbaz Bhatti in 2011 shocked Pakistan and the international community, but equally shocking was the widespread support in Pakistan for their killings and their killers. Taseer and Bhatti's ‘crime' in the eyes of many was to have supported the amendment or repeal of Islamic ‘blasphemy laws’ and to have come to the defence of a Pakistani Christian woman, Aasiya Noreen (Bibi), who was sentenced to death for alleged blasphemy. This article seeks to explain the context to the murders of Taseer and Bhatti and to understand why these violent acts received such widespread national support. These murders highlight the worsening situation for Christians (and other religious minorities) in Pakistan and suggest that Pakistan itself may be moving in an increasingly conservative Islamist direction.

Private Moralities in the Public Sphere: Democratization, Islam, and Gender in Indonesia

ABSTRACT Over the past two decades, Indonesia has been transformed socially and politically by two major movements: the Islamic movement and the democratization movement. One point of convergence between these two movements has been a strong concern with establishing moral ascendancy over the perceived immorality of the previous regime and with building a new moral order as the foundation of a democratic nation. In this article, I examine how issues of gender and sexuality have become key arenas in which battles over competing views of democratization as well as Islamic morality are waged. I argue that amid an increasingly politicized division between liberal and conservative Islam, the struggle to gain symbolic control over public morality, and to acquire the political power that accompanies it, has rested in part on ideological contests between Muslim liberals and conservatives over the shifting boundaries and meanings of public and private in Indonesian society.

Religious politics and secular states: Egypt, India and the United States

This comparative analysis probes why conservative renderings of religious tradition in the United States, India, and Egypt remain so influential in the politics of these three ostensibly secular societies. The United States, Egypt, and India were quintessential models of secular modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. By the 1980s and 1990s, conservative Islamists challenged the Egyptian government, India witnessed a surge in Hindu nationalism, and the Christian right in the United States rose to dominate the Republican Party and large swaths of the public discourse. Using a nuanced theoretical framework that emphasizes the interaction of religion and politics, Scott W. Hibbard argues that three interrelated issues led to this state of affairs. First, as an essential part of the construction of collective identities, religion serves as a basis for social solidarity and political mobilization. Second, in providing a moral framework, religion's traditional elements make it relevant to modern political life. Third, and most significant, in manipulating religion for political gain, political elites undermined the secular consensus of the modern state that had been in place since the end of World War II. Together, these factors sparked a new era of right-wing religious populism in the three nations. Although much has been written about the resurgence of religious politics, scholars have paid less attention to the role of state actors in promoting new visions of religion and society. Religious Politics and Secular States fills this gap by situating this trend within long-standing debates over the proper role of religion in public life.

The United Kingdom's last hot war of the Cold War: Oman, 1963–75

Between 1963 and 1975, the United Kingdom fought its last ‘hot war’ that can be classified as part of the Cold War. Attracting little media attention at the time, the war the United Kingdom waged in Oman's Dhofar province halted the spread of communism in the Persian Gulf at a period of acute vulnerability. Contrary to existing studies, which treat the conflict as a textbook British counter-insurgency conducted in a remote province of Oman, the purpose of this article is to highlight the complex regional and international dynamics that arguably proved more critical to the conflict's resolution. Within this context, the key elements contributing to the Anglo-Omani victory were the ability of British policymakers to forge an alliance of the Middle East's conservative monarchies, their successful mobilization of conservative Islam against secular Marxism and their persistent efforts to destabilize the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen

Islamic Reform and Conservatism. Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam

Islamic Reform and Conservatism. Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam

The impact of inter‐generational change on the attitudes of working‐class South Asian Muslim parents on the education of their daughters

This paper presents the findings of ethnographic research into inter‐generational attitudinal change of parents towards the education of young British Muslim women. Based on in‐depth interviews with parents of different generations, given social class and ethnicity, there is a universal belief in the importance of education for young Muslim women per se, with economic and cultural factors significant in shaping this sentiment. A range of important differences in attitudes towards Islamic schooling and mainstream education, and questions relating to marriage, however, were found. There are complex issues of identity and religion among Muslims in relation to educational issues, but there has been a move towards Islamisation among both generations; the first generations through a form of cultural traditionalism and the second generations through Islamic conservatism. Although this finding is based on a study of a relatively small and isolated working‐class Muslim community in a declining post‐industrial town in the West Midlands, it is argued that this Islamisation places both particular risks and opportunities in relation to young Muslim women in education in such isolated and disaffected communities which have a wider conceptual, theoretical and policy impact.

Oversanctification, Autonomy and Islam in Malaysia

This article demonstrates that, contrary to the common image of Islam in Malaysia as being predominantly liberal, a conservative and authoritarian Islam frequently prevails. State‐sanctioned interventions into the minutiae of people’s daily and moral lives often take place. Drawing particularly on Cornelius Castoriadis’s idea of autonomy and Roy Rappaport’s notion of oversanctification, the author argues that such interventions may have a number of negative effects, including putting at risk the wider basis on which State and religious authority rests.

An Unfulfilled Promise of Enlightenment: Kemalism and its Liberal Critics

A defining feature of Turkish politics during the 2000s has been the alliance between liberals and Islamic conservatives. While legitimizing Islamic conservatism, the liberals have concomitantly de‐legitimized Kemalism. Ultimately, the liberal disavowal is a call for a reexamination of the Turkish secularist experience, and in particular of how it relates to Western, emancipating traditions. The potential of freedom has remained unfulfilled because Turkish secularism has never really broken with the orthodox mentality of the past. Mirroring the failure of the secular‐minded Ottoman reformers of the nineteenth century, who had initially held out an unfulfilled promise of universalism, enshrined in the concept of liberal citizenship, the Kemalists have gotten stuck in parochial nationalism. The promise of universalism was distorted by the allure of the parochial, as the rational succumbed to the mystique of the primordial. The story of Turkish secularism is ultimately one about the promise of an enlightened modernity being overrun by the primordial forces of history and tradition.

The Algerian wife or “l’amour n’a pas d’age”

Young male immigrants from North Africa come to France as much to defy a sense of globally structured exclusion as to escape the effects of other geopolitical stresses. While most anthropological work on Islam and North African youth in France documents a return to conservative Islam, this letter discusses another response to this same experience by illegal North African immigrants living in France. The response described here is one of humour, romance, and a continued desire to join the West rather than a rejection or challenge to French society. This letter provides ethnographic data on the phenomenon described above and so gives a view from the street of how romance may be one of the most important preoccupations of the clandestine male.

Mobilising Political Islam: Indonesia and Malaysia Compared

This paper analyses forms of religious mobilisation and the resultant Islamisation in Indonesia and Malaysia after independence against the backdrop of interactions in and among three different spheres: the state, political society, and civil society. Islamisation in Indonesia has been propelled by different actors, and only from the mid-1980s until the fall of Suharto did the state apparatus control and direct its dynamics with growing intensity. Since then, the process has preponderantly been driven by civil society forces. Whereas there has been a blossoming of a diverse, yet mostly conservative Islam across the society, in the party system the Islamisation of politics has been moderate. In Malaysia, Islamisation has been much more actively planned and stimulated by the central bureaucracy. Religion in political society has been strongly politicised, while Islamic civil society organisations and groupings had a strong impact only briefly. Whereas in Indonesia civil society mass organisations have structured the discourse on Islam to a large extent and have therefore limited the ability of the state and political parties to set the agenda and mobilise Islam, in Malaysia the state and Islamic political parties have acted more independently. Authoritarian rule in Indonesia previously obstructed religious mobilisation by Islamic and Islamist parties. The brittle electoral democracy since the fall of Suharto has fuelled mobilisation efforts, but the role of the Islamic and Islamist parties has still been limited. Electoral authoritarianism in Malaysia, in contrast, has been conducive to a form of religious mobilisation that is centred upon the activities of parties.

The Porn Bill in Indonesia: A Threat to Pluralism?

On 30 October 2008 Indonesia's parliament passed a controversial pornography bill after following years of heavy debate. According to the wording of the law, pornography means not only the production and distribution of pornographic material, but also behaviour that violates moral ethics in the community or incites sexual exploitation. This vague definition led to massive protests by human and women's rights groups, some provinces, and supporters of the state's pluralism. The opponents of the law claim that women's rights and the traditions of the non-Muslim minority, as well as the pluralism and the unity of the country, are endangered. Furthermore, they worry that conservative Islam will grow in importance. The enduring dispute on the porn bill mirrors a fundamental conflict: the impacts of Islam on policy in pluralistic communities. This article illustrates the debate on the pornography bill and at the same time considers the question of to what extent pluralism in Indonesia is threatened and restricted by Islamism.

The American Mosque in Transition: Assimilation, Acculturation and Isolation

This contribution explores the issues of assimilation, acculturation and radicalism in American mosques and is largely based on a 2005 study of 25 mosques, although data from three other studies are also extensively used. Analysing the demographics of mosque-goers and their views on Islamic conservatism, women, political involvement and pluralism, the essay concludes that American mosque participants are well integrated and acculturated into American society, but that they are resisting a full assimilation of intrinsic religious values and customs. Although fairly conservative, mosque participants neither exhibit radical tendencies nor the literalist Salafi/Wahhabi thinking. The American mosque, therefore, should be viewed as a partner for American law enforcement in preventing the emergence of Muslim radicalism and home-grown terrorist groups.

Playboy Indonesia and the Media: Commerce and the Islamic Public Sphere on Trial in Indonesia

This article examines the reactions of conservative Islamist groups to the publication of Playboy Indonesia and argues that their views deserve more recognition than they have received. In November 2006, the Public Prosecutor sued the Chief Editor of Playboy Indonesia for offending public morality. The prosecution of the magazine signified concerns about the global spread of commercial media products and the circulation of sexual imagery derived from other places, histories and norms. It was also about frustrated political ambitions and the interest some conservative Islamist groups had in reinstating the Jakarta Charter and establishing the rule of Sharia law.

Religion and social justice for immigrants

and Social Justice for Immigrants captures the fascinating diversity of faith-based resistance around U.S. immigration issues. While much attention is given to the destructive aspects of fundamentalism, this book reveals that other religious groups are working constructively and tenaciously for the rights of those who are marginalized and mistreated.-Sharon Erickson Nepstad, author of Convictions of the Soul: Religion, Culture, and Agency in the Central America Solidarity Movement timely volume is the first social science analysis to focus on the influence of religion on social justice issues for immigrants.-Helen Rose Ebaugh, coauthor of Religion and the New Immigrants Religion has jumped into the sphere of global and domestic politics in ways that few would have imagined a century ago. Some expected that religion would die as modernity flourished. Instead, it now stares at us almost daily from the front pages of newspapers and television broadcasts. Although it is usually stories about the Christian Right or conservative Islam that grab headlines, there are many religious activists of other political persuasions that are working quietly for social justice. This book examines how religious immigrants and religious activists are working for equitable treatment for immigrants in the United States. The essays in this book analyze the different ways in which organized religion provides immigrants with an arena for mobilization, civic participation, and solidarity. Contributors explore topics including how non-Western religious groups such as the Vietnamese Caodai are striving for community recognition and addressing problems such as racism, economic issues, and the politics of diaspora; how interfaith groups organize religious people into immigrant civil rights activists at the U.S.-Mexican border; and how Catholic groups advocate governmental legislation and policies on behalf of refugees. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is a professor in the department of sociology at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Defining ‘Modern’ Malay womanhood and the coexistent messages of the veil

The gender constructions and performances of Malay women are often perceived by outside researchers as ‘shrouded under a veil’ of increasing Islamic conservatism. Urban Malay women, however, argue that women actively engage in the construction and performance of gender identities. Based on research conducted in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, during 2001 and 2003, this article argues that women advantageously alter, transform and utilise the constructs placed upon them by Islam, by ethnic identification and by conceptions of ‘modernity’. Often one image of ‘womanhood’ is presented and in public – an image that is socially accepted, honoured and respected – while less publicly alternative forms of ‘womanhood’ articulate individual goals and aims. Using an agent-oriented perspective, this article further includes an analysis of women's individual renegotiations of larger cultural constructs and the ways in which the tudong, or headscarf, has become a symbol by which individual women express their understanding of social position and personal freedoms in an industrialised Islamic context.

Challenging Diversity?: Indonesia's Anti-Pornography Bill

By the time this article goes to press, Indonesia's Anti-Pornography Bill (Rancangan Undang-Undang Antipornografi dan Pornoaksi, known in Indonesia as RUU APP) may well have become law. My discussion here, however, goes beyond the details of the various versions of the Bill to its wider symbolism. I argue that the rhetoric both for and against the Bill is symbolic of a deep concern about the future of the nation. The stated articles and clauses of the Bill are of less concern to most Indonesians than what is 'unstated' in it. For many, the 'unstated' is the influence that a growing Islamic conservatism can wield on those in power. Indonesia may have the largest Muslim population in the world but resistance to this Bill sends a message that there is widespread alarm in the country at the prospect of a religious hegemony where Islam not only sets moral standards but also drives state policy.

Old Dilemmas or New Challenges? The Politics of Gender and Reconstruction in Afghanistan

ABSTRACTThis article situates the politics of gender in Afghanistan in the nexus of global and local influences that shape the policy agenda of post‐Taliban reconstruction. Three sets of factors that define the parameters of current efforts at securing gender justice are analysed: a troubled history of state–society relations; the profound social transformations brought about by years of prolonged conflict; and the process of institution‐building under way since the Bonn Agreement in 2001. This evolving institutional framework opens up a new field of contestation between the agenda of international donor agencies, an aid‐dependent government and diverse political factions, some with conservative Islamist platforms. At the grassroots, the dynamics of gendered disadvantage, the erosion of local livelihoods, the criminalization of the economy and insecurity at the hands of armed groups combine seamlessly to produce extreme forms of female vulnerability. The ways in which these contradictory influences play out in the context of a fluid process of political settlement will be decisive in determining prospects for the future.