Muslim Activists Research Articles

Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal IslamLGBTI Rights in Turkey: Sexuality and the State in the Middle East

Queer in Translation: Sexual Politics under Neoliberal IslamLGBTI Rights in Turkey: Sexuality and the State in the Middle East

Global Shinqīṭ: Mauritania’s Islamic Knowledge Tradition and the Making of Transnational Religious Authority (Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century)

Today, Bilād-Shinqīṭ or Mauritania is often portrayed as an unparalleled center of classical Islamic tradition supposedly untouched by modernity. While previous scholarship has concerned itself mostly with Mauritania’s local intellectual history on one hand and its recent global fame on the other, in this paper, I document instead how, in less than two centuries, Mauritania has become not only a point of scholarly reference and symbolic/representational space of excellence in Islamic knowledge, but also one with an astonishing amount of global reach. Thus, I explore the ways in which Mauritania has continued to asserts its relevance and scholarly authority on a global scale. Drawing on a variety of historical, literary, and anthropological sources, I historicize the rise and mythologization of Mauritania as a peerless center of traditional sacred scholarship. I specifically examine how a number of widely different Muslim actors under changing circumstances continue to invoke, perform and re-invent Shinqīṭ/Mauritania. In documenting what I call Global Shinqīt over the longue durée, rather than simply illustrate how the so-called Muslim peripheries shape central traits of transnational normative Islamic authority, I argue instead that mobility, historical circumstances, and scholarly performance combined are at least as instrumental in the credible articulation of authoritative Islamic knowledge as normative discourses issued by supposedly central institutions, personalities, and religious bodies located in the so-called “heartland of Islam.” In so doing, I destabilize the center/periphery framework altogether in order to explore how Islamic religious authority is actually construed and operates under shifting cultural and political conditions.

Pious and illiberal Muslim activist women resisting Tunisianité in post-2011 Tunisia

ABSTRACT Tunisia is still in a process of democratization, but individual freedoms and democratic duties should have shaped a new idea of citizenship. This article focuses specifically on the exclusion/inclusion of some women from ‘awareness’ campaigns and from identity representation. Specifically, the article explores the identity claims of pious and illiberal Muslim activist women in two koranic associations of the capital city. Findings suggest that the road toward the inclusion of these non-conventional women is still long.

Dissolving Gender Difference – Female Teachers, Male Allies and the Creation of Islamic Sufi Authority in Afghanistan

This article offers a case study of contemporary female Sufi leadership and teaching within a branch of the Qadirriyah Sufi order originating with pir Allama Faizani. Based on ethnographic participant observation and oral history interviews, it traces the development of female inclusion within spiritual practice, such as meditative zikr [lit. remembrance], and religious leadership in urban Afghanistan. Addressing the paucity of writing on Afghan women as Muslim actors, the article considers how the founding pir became a moral exemplar for gender inclusive conduct, facilitating women's participation and inspiring a community ethos of male allyship. The Faizanis legitimize women's participation through recourse to the spiritual psychophysiological organ of the heart, rendering divine connection a non-gendered endeavor that transcends social categories. In addition to the discursive erasure of gender, the community navigates restrictive environments and expectations through practical adaptations such as new cultural organizations. This article examines how women train to access, navigate and control inner states during zikr and documents how this process is interlinked with the relational establishment and creation of spiritual authority.

Citizen‐Suspect: Navigating Surveillance and Policing in Urban Kenya

ABSTRACTThis article privileges the grounded geographies of the war on terror, focusing on those who grapple with its everyday policing powers. Informed by ethnographic research in the cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, I explore how Kenyan Muslim activists experience and make sense of the networked assemblages of police power that transform urban spaces into “gray zones” that fall within the ambiguous spectrum between war and peace. As US‐trained Kenyan police employ military tactics of tracking and targeting potential terror suspects in quotidian urban spaces, they rely on “pop‐up” interventions such as abductions, house raids, and makeshift checkpoints—flexible maneuvers designed to match the amorphousness of the so‐called enemy. I introduce the term citizen‐suspect to shed light on actually existing citizenship in the urban gray zone. Citizen‐suspects contend not simply with the fear and paranoia that come with subjection to surveillance and suspicion but with the knowledge that is needed to navigate the shape‐shifting geographies of transnational policing.

Uneven Souths: The Mediterranean Dimension of Spain's Southern Regionalism

Abstract This article traces the continuities between the Mediterranean and the Global South while noting the asymmetries between and within these concepts as revealed by the development of Spain's southern regionalism or andalucismo in the 1920s and 1930s and during the post–Franco period (1975–present). Prefiguring post–Cold War South–South relations, early andalucismo promoted a wider Mediterranean community extending from Cordoba to Damascus, but opposed Spain's colonial presence in Morocco. Despite its anticolonial dimension, this modern revival of medieval al-Andalus was not envisioned as a network of comparable material and ethnic locations that could encourage lateral movements of people, capital, and ideas. In contrast to the anticolonial celebrations of Andalusian conviviality found in the work of Arabic and Muslim writers and activists in the 1930s, including Shakib Arslan and Sir Muhammad Iqbal, the andalucista archive—cultural magazines, regionalist manifestos, and literary texts—simultaneously included and excluded the Maghreb and the wider Islamic Mediterranean from articulations of Spanish and Andalusian identity. This ambivalence, which persists in contemporary immigration and cultural policies and European economic and political integration, demands a form of comparative analysis that does not reduce the interaction among the world's “Souths” to unproblematic relations of analogy, mutual recognition, and solidarity.

Claiming our Space: Muslim Women, Activism, and Social Media

This paper addresses the ways in which Muslim women seek to employ online media, particularly social media, to reclaim narratives around space, embodiment, and power. I argue that digital space is, like any other form of media, structured essentially by racism and patriarchy, but I also note the crucial potential for resistance exhibited by Muslim activists such as political leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Instagram influencer Ayesha Malik, and the largely anonymous women who participated in #MosqueMeToo, encouraged by the journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy. I draw upon a post/anti-colonial feminist framework and the tools of critical discourse analysis in examining specific instances where such women perform acts of resistance that, in turn, trigger a gendered and raced reaction. I note the ways in which some Muslim women, such as Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed, are constructed as media heroes, given that their stories can be co-opted to validate notions of the white colonial savior, while others directly challenge narratives of colonialism and oppression and are thus subjected to backlash. I point to the ways in which some of this vitriol continues to refer back to the notion that Muslim women should be silent, and to the fetishized Muslim woman's body: how it should look, where it can/should go, and what can be done to it.

The influence of systemic racism on quarter-life crisis in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (as told to Alex Haley)

This paper aims to analyze the influence of systemic racism on quarter-life crisis, experienced by Malcolm X, as seen in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (As Told to Alex Haley). Its emphasis is to find the relation between racial segregation in American society and its influence on quarter-life crisis, which is a psychological crisis of uncertainty, self-insecurity and identity confusion, occurs during emerging adulthood. Therefore, by applying a qualitative method, this research is under Post-Nationalist American Studies and psychosocial approach as an integrated paradigm which accommodates the inter-disciplinary aspects of �self and society�. The analysis showed that racial segregation, in the field of education and job occupation, is a form of systemic racism which influences Malcolm X�s mental wellness as an emerging adult African-American. He experiences Robinson�s phases of quarter-life crisis which are locked in, separation/time-out, exploration and rebuilding. In fact, racial segregation in this narrative works as �a function of blocked opportunities� which disallows young African-Americans to develop their own competencies and to achieve their �American Dream�. However, in the development of his quarter-life crisis, Malcolm X managed to rebuild his new long-term commitment contributing to the reconstruction of his adult identity as an African-American Muslim activist.

Exploring the Reality and Aspirations of Muslims

Islam in Indonesia has played an important role in socio-political development in its recorded history. However, it is also true that there have been various theological and political debates and disagreements in the umat. The implementation of syari’at Islam is one of the major subjects of such discussions. The emergence of liberal movement in the post-Suharto era also brought about the difference of opinion among Muslims. In other words, the umat has never been united as a single entity in Indonesia. This “divided” umat faces several challenges in the present day in Indonesia. That includes terrorism committed by militant Muslims. In addition to the effort to prevent terrorism, it is equally important to de-radicalise perpetrators of such violent and barbaric acts. Despite some discrepancy in the umat, we see several attempts and cooperation of Muslims to make former terrorists reintegrated in the society. This paper shows how the re-radicalisation programme for former terrorist executed. The author also intends to examine the socio-political development of the umat in modern Indonesia with regard to subjects of syari’at Islam and liberal movement. Based on these examinations, sociological analysis on religion is also presented in the paper.

Discursive Strategy of the Relationship Between Islam and Democracy on Room for Debate Rubric of nytimes.com

Different perspectives on the compatibility between Islam and Democracy are still problematic and have been widely discussed on the international media, especially after the Arab Spring. This study aimed to reveal the changes in social beliefs about the relationship between Islam and democracy within the discourse on Room for Debate rubric, nytimes.com. The data were the written text (verbal) comprising the introductory segment from the editor, the opinion segment comprising 6 articles, and the public comment segment. The method used in this study was the qualitative method. This study employed Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (2013) to reveal the discursive strategy of the writers in negotiating the democratic and Islamic values, to investigate the production, distribution, and consumption of the text, and to identify the social context which causes the discourse of the relationship between Islam and Democracy to appear. The finding showed that there were some democratic values negotiated within the discourse that showed changes in social beliefs about the relationship between Islam and democracy in the modern view. The value negotiation showed the alignment of the writers towards the progressive Muslim actors who supported the modern democratic government system.

Arab Press Networks and Imperial Connectivities from Mediterranean Africa to France in the Late 19th Century

The press was an instrument of colonial governance. Yet newspapers and print also served to connect populations across borders and demonstrated how trans-imperial flows influenced empires. This article examines Arab print networks in North Africa and France. It argues that print networks assisted with processes of colonial expansion while also providing a forum for Muslim activists and Arab modernists to present their views to foreign audiences. This two-way channel illustrates how imperialism engendered new synergies that would influence political developments in both the French empire and the modern Middle East, suggesting that print networks were central to the entangled histories of empire in the modern period.

An Analysis of Sisters in Islam’s (SIS) Misinterpretation of the Gender Equality in the Quran

The main agenda of feminism movements is to fight for gender equality between women and men. This agenda is advocated both by the Western as well as by some Muslim feminists. In Malaysia, a Muslim activist group who aggressively fight for gender equality is known as Sisters in Islam (SIS). This group has challenged and questioned the validity and reliability of the interpretation of some Quranic verses related to women, as it is felt that some of the verses were misinterpreted. To the group, the misinterpretation of the verses has led to misunderstanding regarding the positions and rights of women, which resulted into gender inequality. This paper aims to discuss the standpoint of SIS concerning gender equality by focusing on several issues; the superiority of men (qawwamah), the credibility of women as witness and the rights of women to be an imam. An analytical technique is used to analyse the SIS group’s viewpoint on the issues by referring several printed sources and articles published. These views will be compared with prominent Muslim scholars’ interpretation on related verses that has been used to find any contradiction or misinterpretation. The study concluded that SIS holds a misleading understanding on the interpretation of certain Quranic verses led by misrepresented claims on the unfounded contradiction between the verses of the Quran.

Religious Social Media Activism: A Qualitative Review of Pro-Islam Hashtags

There have been so many acts of terrorism connected to radical Muslims that it's not surprising Islam has a public relations problem. Pollsters, historians and other experts say that the West's collective instincts toward Islam have been shaped over decades by a patchwork of factors. These include demographic trends, psychology, terrorism events, foreign policy, domestic politics, media coverage and the Internet. Therefore, it is not surprising that Muslims are the most negatively viewed faith community in some countries as the United States. The objective of the current research is to review qualitatively the social media platforms of the hashtag #Notinmyname, initiated by renowned Muslim British Community namely Active Change Foundation as a successful model of social media activism combatting the worsening image of Islam. The major conclusion of this study is that hashtags launched by Muslim activists derive from the social media platforms exacerbating and unprecedented power to stir political and social movements especially, regarding controversial and stagnant matters. Posts, comments and shares on different social media platforms go viral, stir discussions and trigger public opinion. These #hashtags were not a launching base for a pro-Islam campaign only, as much as being an outlet breather for all pro and anti-opinions regarding Islam. Social media are now the pathway to mobilize the crowd online to take an action in the real world.

Religious Social Media Activism: A Qualitative Review of Pro-Islam Hashtags

There have been so many acts of terrorism connected to radical Muslims that it's not surprising Islam has a public relations problem. Pollsters, historians and other experts say that the West's collective instincts toward Islam have been shaped over decades by a patchwork of factors. These include demographic trends, psychology, terrorism events, foreign policy, domestic politics, media coverage and the Internet. Therefore, it is not surprising that Muslims are the most negatively viewed faith community in some countries as the United States. The objective of the current research is to review qualitatively the social media platforms of the hashtag #Notinmyname, initiated by renowned Muslim British Community namely Active Change Foundation as a successful model of social media activism combatting the worsening image of Islam. The major conclusion of this study is that hashtags launched by Muslim activists derive from the social media platforms exacerbating and unprecedented power to stir political and social movements especially, regarding controversial and stagnant matters. Posts, comments and shares on different social media platforms go viral, stir discussions and trigger public opinion. These #hashtags were not a launching base for a pro-Islam campaign only, as much as being an outlet breather for all pro and anti-opinions regarding Islam. Social media are now the pathway to mobilize the crowd online to take an action in the real world.

Rendering Whiteness Palatable: The Acceptable Muslim in an Era of White Rage

In this paper, I analyze the perspectives of the Acceptable Muslim (Kassam, 2018)in two Canadian case studies: (a) Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim journalist and activist who has been an active commentator on a variety of issues including those related to Muslims; and (b) the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie (2007-2012), which was the first Canadian mainstream television series featuring Muslim characters. I suggest that these case studies illuminate the figure of the Acceptable Muslim (Kassam, 2018)who is represented as a “moderate,” modern, and assimilable Muslim, and who espouses a privatized faith with few public expressions of religious/cultural belonging. Centrally implicated in Canadian debates about multiculturalism, gender equality, citizenship, and secularism, Acceptable Muslims (re)confirm the racial boundaries of the nation-state, becoming icons of multiculturalism, reanimating the whiteness at the heart of the Canadian nation-state. The Acceptable Muslim sustains the narrative of the Canadian nation-state as liberal, secular, modern, and inclusive even as it relentlessly excludes, punishes, and eliminates the Muslim Other, enabling such policies to be legitimated as “race-neutral.” Acceptable Muslims stand as sentries at the (symbolic) borders of the nation, reanimating racialized boundaries of acceptability and signalling that those beyond these boundaries can be legitimately policed by the nation-state. My analysis provides insights into how Canada has re-configured the power and persistence of its white fantasy and, through the strategic use of the Acceptable Muslim, cloaks its deeply racialized coding in more palatable grammars of multiculturalism, gender equality, and secularism.

Historical Rupture or Continuity?

Abstract From the point of view of the institutional legal history of shariʿa courts in Israel, the article focuses on the elements of rupture and/or continuity introduced by the appointment of Hanāʾ Manṣūr-Khaṭīb as the first female judge in Israeli religious courts against the background of three main elements, the subordination of shariʿa courts to the Israeli legal system, the reaction of shariʿa courts to the challenges posed by secular and conservative Muslim actors inside the Palestinian minority, and the definition of gender roles in the Muslim judiciary in Israel. Despite some elements of rupture with the past, the article argues that the appointment is part and continuation of an active strategy of the pragmatic use of “the past” of Islamic legal tradition already pursued by shariʿa courts since 1995, and that the appointment of Manṣūr-Khaṭīb can be inscribed in a framework of “patriarchal liberalism,” following the definition of Moussa Abou Ramadan, proving that, still, gender is anything but irrelevant.

Peace in the name of Allah: Egypt’s quest to attain Islamic legitimacy for its treaty with Israel

This article analyzes the Egyptian regime’s quest to establish Islamic legitimacy for the transition from conflict to peace with Israel between 1977 and 1981. Based on an integrative analysis of a wide range of sources, it demonstrates that Islamic argumentations were at the core of Egypt’s official state campaign for peace. The appeal to Islamic justifications facilitated the regime’s efforts to describe its innovative peace policy as a natural link in the chain of traditional religious sequences and enclosed it within deeply socially embedded Islamic concepts and principles. Through a comparative analysis with the Islamist anti-peace campaign that the regime sought to refute, the article highlights that ‘Islam’ has no essential, consensual stance on peace with Israel. Rather, it demonstrates that different Muslim actors draw divergent – sometimes diametrically opposed – positions from Islamic texts in accordance with their particular needs and outlooks.

Nationalist Spirits of Islamic Law after World War I: An Arab-Indian Battle of Fatwas over Alcohol, Purity, and Power

AbstractIn 1922, one of the most famous Muslim scholars of modern times, the Syrian-Egyptian reformer Rashīd Riḍā, published in his journal a detailed fatwa in defense of alcohol. He did so in reaction to an obscure Indian jurist's fatwa that had warned Muslims not to use alcoholic products. On the surface, the authors of the fatwas appeared to be principally concerned with the right way to interpret sacred laws of purity and pollution. However, this article reveals that their disagreement had much to do with differing approaches to the politics of independence. Their divergence is intriguing because the cities where they lived, Cairo and Bombay, had just experienced the convulsions of anti-British consumer boycotts. And it emerged at a time when anti-imperial Muslim activists from the Middle East and South Asia were rallying together for a pan-Islamic cause—to prevent the final collapse of the caliphate. These movements swayed both Riḍā and his rival, who may well be described as Muslim nationalists. Yet they embraced radically different strategies for independence. One aimed for national purity, the other for national power. This discrepancy led to the battle of fatwas—a forgotten battle that is worth remembering because it suggests some of the difficulties that Muslim jurists of Arab or Indian ancestry faced during the interwar period when they tried to turn Islamic law into an effective nationalist discourse.

Pan‐Islamic ideals and national loyalties: Competing attachments amongst early Muslim activists in France

AbstractIslamist movements are often considered the epitomes of transnational movements; however, little is known about the concrete workings of their transnational ambitions. In investigating the evolution of Muslim activists in France from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, this article shows that their embrace of pan‐Islamic ideals initially conflicted with strong investment in (Arab) homeland politics. Later on, their engagement with a French Islam signalled less the emergence of a de‐territorialised, de‐culturalised Islamic identity than it did the assertion of new nationally bounded (French) attachments. Overall, the analysis sheds light on a stimulating puzzle regarding cosmopolitanism: the persistence of national forms of identification in movements that aspire to bypass national affiliations.

Mauqif al-Nāsyitīn al-Islāmiyyīn fī Indonesiā

Since setlement of Jewish aprroved by Balfour Declaration in 1917, the Palestinian problem not only been the concern of the Chalif of Ustmani and the Arabic leader around Baitul-Maqdis. At the time, many leaders and poeple of Moslem in Indonesian country (yet: Hindia Belanda) gave attention to this problem as well as other Muslim around the Islamic world. They were involved with this complicated problem even if in the same situation colonialized for long time by the Dutch. This colonized situation not be an obstacle for the Indonesian Muslim activists to make many real actions for standing up with Baitul Maqdis and speaking up the liberation of Palestine from Jewish occupation. The aims of this paper are to know: (1) the standpoint of the Indonesian Islamic activist for Baitul-Maqdis issues? and (2) what they did to make action to deal with this issues? To answer this questions, I plan to search the otentic historical resourches in the magazines and newspapers were issued between 1917 to 1948 by the Islamic movement as well as Sarekat Islam (SI), Muhammadiyah, Nahdhatul Ulama (NU), Persatuan Islam (Persis), and many others. This resourches will be analized by the historical method to result the naration about what asked above. By pre-analysis, the informations that many times Indonesian Islamic activist held the event to support Baitul-Maqdis were found up in several books and journals. For the instance at July 5th 1937 held the big conference in Surabaya. In this conference, Palestinian Comittee’s formed. This comittee’s chaired by Wondoamiseno from Sarekat Islam (SI). The chairpersons form many others movement such as KH. Mas Mansur (Muhammadiyah), KH. Abdoel Wachab (NU), Sayyid Noeh Al-Kaff (Habaib), Oemar Hoebeis (Al-Irsyad). K.H. Kahar Muzakkir (Sarekat Islam), and others came and gave the speeches for this conference. This event can be first sign for us to search other fact that will reach this paper’s questions.