Muslim Bodies Research Articles

When counter-extremism ‘sticks’: the circulation of the Prevent Duty in the school space

ABSTRACT This article contributes to scholarship in Muslim geographies to show how the Prevent Duty is a racializing and securitizing policy, which exists in an already unequal school space. Through the concept of ‘stickiness’, it shows how the Prevent Duty creates associations of violence and extremism with gendered Muslim bodies and considers the spatial politics of Prevent Duty training. By attending to the effective nature of Prevent, this paper considers how these policy documents create negative attachments that shape how Muslim teachers experience the school space, as both the implementers and potential targets of the policy. In-depth interviews with current and former teachers working in London schools were conducted in 2018, with a particular focus on the experiences of Muslim teachers. The results indicate that when the Prevent Duty is in circulation, it creates an atmosphere in which ‘Muslimness’ feels under surveillance, lingering beyond the training space.

Removal of Infected Muslim Body Covid-1 According to MUI Fatwa No. 18 Years 2020

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, infected individuals have spread far and fatally affected a significant number of people. Indonesia is fearful and nervous about getting COVID-19. Even when COVID-19 patients have passed away, the virus can still spread to others who come into contact with a dead body. The qualitative, statutory, and normative research approach used to write this thesis is library research (library research) based on secondary sources. A qualitative investigation was carried out on the numerous documentary studies that have been done, which were done by looking through and perusing a variety of literature. Qualitative data is descriptive in nature, meaning it is gathered using words rather than statistics. The study's findings indicate that managing Muslim bodies infected with Covid-19 differs from handling corpses in general and calls for specific handling in accordance with MUI fatwa no. 18 of 2020 for managing the bodies of Muslims infected with Covid-19, in order to prevent infection of the general public and law enforcement personnel performing their duties.

Beyond the Pastoral Paradise: Orienting Black and Muslim People in British Rural Space

While there is an increasing number of Black and Muslim stories in urban settings, cultural imaginations of the British rural as linked to whiteness are pervasive. Despite there being a long-established presence of Black and Muslim people in British rural areas, their bodies are excluded or made to disappear to make the rural and, by extension, the nation (supposedly) safe. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s notion of white habit worlds, this article explores the specific ways in which popular imaginations of rural spaces in the UK orient Black and Muslim bodies in relation to rurality. I will argue that whiteness as the racialisation of the pastoral form is closely imbricated with the Christian pastoral notion of Eden by close reading season five of the TV crime drama Shetland, the feature film Four Lions (2010) and the documentary Arcadia (2017). By asking how these configure British rural space through their orientation of Black and Muslim bodies and how they contest or reinforce the (lack of) belonging of bodies considered ‘non-white’/‘non-Christian’ in rural spaces, I inquire how these productions complement each other in what they have to say about the presence of Black and Muslim bodies in British rural space and how this relates to wider debates about immigration and national identity.

Pilgrimage, Precarity, and Pandemics

Pilgrimage, Precarity, and Pandemics

Ethical Practice, Trade, and Food: Muslim Restaurants in South Mumbai

The production, consumption, and distribution of food is central to many religious practices and often considered distinct from the capitalist imperative to market, commodify, and profit. Yet, even scholarship that overcomes the now outdated binary of morality or religion versus the immoral market, continues to represent religion as a distinct sphere of life, with a moral content contrasted or compared to market practice. It is considered an achievement to note how religious practice exhibits affinities with market developments. There is little recognition of how religions as discursive traditions are inseparable from questions of consumption, trade, and exchange, which render the very distinction of religion versus market as an obstruction to analysis. Through an ethnography of the narratives and material practices of two Muslim-owned restaurants in the old Muslim quarters of South Mumbai, I show how different calibrations of Islam are materialized in restaurant spaces and trade practices in the city. Within the context of increasing marginalization of Muslim bodies and food practice in Mumbai, I argue that the restaurants constitute a complex and differential moral economy of food, poverty, care, and aspiration.

”You do it for the good times”: rival feminist readings of torture and kink in Grand Theft Auto V

ABSTRACT The inclusion of a graphic, interactive torture mission in the video game Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) attracted considerable criticism. I conduct a close reading the infamous torture mission, using two analytical archetypes: the feminist killjoy and the kinky brat. First, embodying the feminist killjoy, I argue that the torture mission in GTA V is a performance of power that naturalizes American imperialism and constructs Muslim bodies as sexually deviant and thus deserving of torture. Second, embodying the kinky brat, I argue that a kink-based analysis moves us away from understanding the mission as only a power fantasy. It helps reveal players’ vulnerability to the bodies at play, explore the messy and contingent affects that play produces, and unpack taken-for-granted assumptions about this controversial mission. This analysis is purposefully ambivalent. Following Sedgwick, I argue that each archetype knows some things about the mission well, and some things poorly. However, both the feminist killjoy and the kinky brat refute the claim that violent play is “just a game,” pointing instead to the interconnection between play and “real life.”

Pelaksanaan Fardhu Kifayah Bagi Jenazah yang Terinfeksi Covid-19 di Rumah Sakit Putri Bidadari Kabupaten Langkat (Analisis Fatwa Mui No 18 Tahun 2020 Pada Fikih Wabah)

The purpose of the study was to determine the implementation of fardhu kifayah for corpses infected with COVID-19 at Putri Bidadari Langkat General Hospital and to find out the obstacles or obstacles in implementing fardhu kifayah for bodies infected with COVID-19 at Putri Bidadari Langkat General Hospital. The type of research used is empirical research. Empirical research is a study that views law as a reality, including social reality, cultural reality and others. Data collection techniques by means of observation, interviews, literature review and documentation. The data analysis technique in this study uses analytical methods, content analysis techniques aim to explore the content or meaning in the form of documents, literary works, articles and so on in the form of unstructured data. Data absence technique by means of triangulation of sources and methods. The results of this study indicate that the implementation of the Covid-19 corpse at RSU Putri Bidadari Langkat is the basis for the management of Muslim bodies (tajhiz al-jana'iz) exposed to COVID-19, especially in bathing and worshiping. must be carried out according to medical protocol and carried out by the Purti Bidadari Langkat General Hospital while still taking into account the provisions of Islamic law. Meanwhile, praying and burying him is carried out as usual by Islamic law while maintaining health protocols so as not to be exposed to COVID-19. Meanwhile, the inhibiting factor or obstacle in implementing the fardhu kifayah of the Covid-19 corpse is the family's refusal to handle the Covid-19 corpse.

PENYELENGGARAAN JENAZAH MUSLIM DI SITUASI NORMAL DAN PANDEMI COVID-19

This study is titled The Implementation of Muslim Bodies in Normal Situations and the Covid 19 Pandemic. If Muslims witness other Muslims in a situation of near death or ihtidar should do the following: Recite the next sentence of the shahada confronting the person nearing death towards the Qibla.  Then when he dies, close the eyes of the body. Then immediately bathed, prayed, and buried. This study found that specifically the Covid-19 pandemic since 2020 until now has brought a very large death toll around the world, so the handling of Covid-19 bodies also has a different procedure. This research generally explains that the management of bodies exposed to Covid-19, especially in bathing and converting, refining and burial processes is not much different from the process of organizing Muslim bodies in general. The reform must be carried out in accordance with medical protocol and carried out by the authorities, keeping in mind the provisions of sharia. As for mashing and burying is done as usual while keeping from being exposed to Covid 19. This research was conducted with qualitative research, inductive data collection. The primary sources are books, and journals.

Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence

Peaceful Families: American Muslim Efforts against Domestic Violence

EUrope in focus: imperial formations in the fabric of the European Union

ABSTRACT In the middle of the twentieth century, when the European Union (EU) started to take shape, numerous European colonies – many with a significant Muslim population – gained independence. These two moments in history need to be read in relation to each other when thinking about “Islam in Europe”. This paper engages in such a relational reading and shifts the analytical focus from “Islam” to “Europe”, exploring the ways “EUrope” manifests itself in the city of Brussels. By combining a spatialized analysis of the European Quarter with the conceptual lens of the “palimpsest”, I seek to offer a spatiotemporal framing that renders visible the material remains of imperial formations within the fabric of “EUrope”. The paper further explores how these often unmarked layers configure EU-space as “white” and Christian, and impact the ways Muslim bodies navigate within the EU-fabric and create counterspaces.

Hijab, Sport and Schooling in Finland – from Principles to Practice

This paper concerns the intersections between veiling, school and sport, focussing on both legislative elements and formal regulations, as well as the more micro-level practices of physical education teachers in school environments in Finland. Veiling is an extraordinarily politicised topic today, while also being an everyday dress practice engaged in by millions of women worldwide. Sport can be likewise politicised, and certainly is so in the case of veiling. Sometimes seen as resistance to patriarchal structures and cultural traditions, sometimes defended and justified using religious arguments, Muslim women’s physical activities may be understood as a conflictual social field, especially when the women either choose to veil or prefer gender segregated venues for sport. Bringing together realms such as politics, legislation, education, garment design and religion, the debates surrounding female Muslim bodies are at the centre of ideas to do with citizenship and integration in Muslim-minority contexts. In Finland, both the national law and local regulations allow for a great deal of independence for teachers working with veiling students, at the same time as guaranteeing high protection of an individual’s right to freedom of religion. Consequently, negotiation strategies between teachers and veiling students are central for the accommodation of religious dress practices. This is particularly so when teaching physical education, which has specific requirements for students’ outfits from the point of view of safety and practicality. I discuss the complexities created by the fields of law, education, religion, politics and design when they come together in the case of hijabs, sport and physical education.

Hyper-Securitisation and Belonging: Understanding the Plight of Young Muslims in Melbourne, Australia

Following 9/11 the Australian government instituted an unprecedented raft of counter-terrorism measures, which introduced both preventative mass surveillance and pre-crime offences. We suggest that this development represents part of a broader turn in the West towards a “militant democratic” approach to countering violent extremism that, whilst not directly targeting Muslims in name, does so in practice, and has had negative unintended consequences for Muslim diaspora communities. To support our claim we draw on 23 interviews with Muslim youths in Melbourne. In doing so we utilise Ghassan Hage’s application of misinterpellation to frame our analysis. We found that Muslim Australians are retreating into their ethno-religious identities as a result of a feeling of misrecognition. We also found that a climate of fear and anxiety is leading to self-censorship and that there was a sense of disconnect between the current leadership and Muslim youth, and that as a result government consultation should extend beyond Muslim peak bodies.

All the Muslims Fit to Print: Racial Frames as Mechanisms of Muslim Ethnoracial Formation in the New York Times from 1992 to 2010

A generative turn in scholarship examines the institutional and political dimensions of Islamophobia, conceptualizing Muslim representations as a mechanism of ethnoracial formation in which the media is one such site of racialization. Moments of great political and cultural transformation can motivate and activate these racial projects, generating racialized representations that attach racial meaning to bodies. Much of the research on Muslim representations in news media centers on this very question: did the attacks of 9/11 usher in a new racial project? Previous studies offer competing hypotheses. Bridging social movement and communication theories with a theory of ethnoracial formation, the author develops an approach for evaluating racial framing processes through a comparison of diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational frames. The author applies this approach using computational text analysis techniques to examine latent shifts in the racial framing of Muslims in the New York Times in the decade before and after 9/11. The author finds evidence of increasingly racialized, but more complex, representations of Muslims in the decade after 9/11 in which diagnostic frames evolve from locating social problems in states and institutions to locating social problems in Muslim bodies. Prognostic frames shift from institutional reforms to those targeting group pathology. The author argues that excavating the latent mechanisms of racial projects helps us better understand the dynamic and ongoing processes of ethnoracial formation.

‘When she steps on an ant, it will not die; but if she stumbles over a rice pestle, it will break into three parts’: an un-subtle subversive woman dancing body in Hoerijah Adam’s dance/choreography

ABSTRACTThis essay traces the life/works of Hoerijah Adam (1936–1971), known for her significance in co-shaping modern dance in Indonesia, providing a subversive discourse that decentres the conventional reading of Muslim women's bodies. Originating from Minangkabau, West Sumatra – the world's largest Muslim matrilineal society – exposed Adam to a hybrid upbringing of traditional home vis-a-vis localised progressive arts education combining Islamic teaching and Western-influenced artistic articulation. Her trajectory shows a woman's dancing body as paradoxical cultural processess, e.g., an interweaving of multiple discourses of Islam, matriliny, and modernism, informed by the innate resilience of Minangkabau culture in defending its core traits against the colonial powers.

Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum ed. by Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobfirah

Reviewed by: Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum ed. by Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobfirah Christian David Zeitz Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum. Edited by Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobfirah. Berlin: Ullstein, 2019. Pp. 208. Cloth €20.00. ISBN 978-3961010363. Marketed as Erzählendes Sachbuch by Ullstein, Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum combines anecdotal criticism with critical race theory, collecting fourteen conceptually themed chapters—for example, "Arbeit," "Vertrauen," "Liebe"—by German writers, journalists, and cultural critics of color and/or with migration histories. Initiated in reaction to Horst Seehofer's renaming of the Innenministerium to Heimatministerium, the book seeks to problematize the recent positive reappropriation of Heimat: as both historical amnesia of its necropolitical place in Nazi racial imagination and policy and the not-so historical organized killing of migrants orchestrated by [End Page 225] the Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (NSU) in the name of Heimat, and as wider normalization of defining Heimat negatively in terms of antiblackness, antisemitism, Islamophobia, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. At the same time, most contributions are aimed at updating such essentialist and exclusionary ideals of Heimat, with a pointed focus on lived realities in Germany that these conceptions invisibilize and marginalize. Sasha Marianna Salzmann's contribution, which starts off the volume, is concerned with the forms of alliance-building that a shared markedness and visibility under white German representational regimes provide for marginalized identities, despite their mainstream framing as diametrically opposed: queer, Jewish, Muslim. Debunking myths of (inherently) Muslim anti-LGBTQ sentiment and antisemitism, Salzmann recounts lively discussions about everyday racism in German refugee centers between her mother, a Jewish quota refugee from the former Soviet Union, and her two roommates, Syrian Muslim refugees, and also discusses Jewish-queer-Muslim dance culture in Berlin clubs and Muslim-looking men stepping in for Salzmann in cases of homophobic microaggression. A shared sense of vulnerability and visibility across supposedly oppositional sexual, ethnic, and religious markers affords care and security networks that the state mostly reserves for the majority population. Fatma Aydemir, in her chapter on "Arbeit," remembers an incident when a fellow ethnic German intern told her that she was only invited to a job interview due to an unfair (i.e., unfair to ethnic Germans) Migrantenbonus. Aydemir deconstructs this term not as a bonus that is given to migrants, but as a bonus that migrants give to the German economic and civil system, based on the premise that they must and do work harder to challenge the hegemonic whiteness of fields like the media. The chapter effectively outlines the unacknowledged visible and invisible migrant and postmigrant labor, so indispensable to neoliberal capitalist technologies that sustain the racialized good life in the Heimat. In "Vertrauen," Deniz Utlu dissects trust issues racialized Germans have with the German state apparatus: using the NSU murders as an example, he describes a circle of suspicion (negative trust), in which the police first suspected the victims, despite indications of a neo-Nazi connection, in line with a general suspicion of migrants and racialized populations, leading the latter to suspect the police of strategically disavowing their lived knowledge of physical (and symbolic) racist violence. This leads Utlu to conclude that the state's appeal to unconditional trust on the side of migrant and racialized citizens is quasi-religious in nature and incompatible with its grounding in secular, democratic rationality. The chapters "Liebe" by Sharon Dodua Atoo and "Beleidigung" by Enrico Ippolito emphasize racism as a structural as opposed to individual problem and remind us of how difficult it can be for ethnic Germans to accept this ensuing reality of complicity. "Blicke" by Hengameh Yaghoobfirah and "Zuhause" by Mithu Sanyal are more directly inflected by cultural studies approaches: Yaghoobfirah offers a personal mediation of regimes of representation, [End Page 226] focusing on the white gaze and the intersectional politics of lookism, while Sanyal's contribution is a short yet concise genealogy of the terms Heimat and Deutsch, and proposes doing away with monocultural narratives of what (supposedly) was in favor of creating transcultural narratives of what is yet to come. In "Gefährlich," Nadia Shehadeh describes how a discursive practice that maps threat, danger, fear, and terror on Arab and Muslim bodies (as well as...

L’Ost des Sarrasins: les Musulmans dans l’iconographie médiévale (France–Flandre XIIIe–XVe siècle) by Fanny Caroff

Reviewed by: L’Ost des Sarrasins: les Musulmans dans l’iconographie médiévale (France–Flandre XIIIe–XVe siècle) by Fanny Caroff Darren M. Smith Caroff, Fanny, L’Ost des Sarrasins: les Musulmans dans l’iconographie médiévale (France–Flandre XIIIe–XVe siècle), Paris, Le Léopard d’Or, 2016; hardback; pp. 327; 70 colour illustrations; R.R.P. €115.00; ISBN 9782863772546. Enriched with a catalogue of seventy illuminations, this study of the ‘Saracen’ in medieval Christian illuminations makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on alterity and race in medieval Europe. Caroff works with manuscripts from northern France and Flanders stretching from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, with most manuscripts devoted specifically to the crusades and others belonging to broader chronicle works (such as the Grandes Chroniques de France). Importantly, Caroff explores this iconography in its own right, not just as an adjunct to literary texts, examining the visual vocabulary used by illuminators to represent Muslims. The work is divided into five parts. First, she looks at how military scenes (landings, battles, duels, sieges) comprise the main mise en scène for representations of Muslims. If military conflict constituted the preponderant setting, then weaponry (such as the scimitar) becomes an important motif. Constituting more than mere instruments of war, they are deployed as markers of identity, whether identifying social distinctions (knights, nobles, foot soldiers) or cultural distinctions (Christians and Muslims). The author also considers the role of the Saracen in iconographic representation—winner or loser, superior or inferior. Heraldry is the focus of the second part, and we can well imagine its important function in identifying actors in an illuminated scene of war. This section includes a useful discussion on the crescent (a converse to the Christian cross). Caroff then proceeds to examine the representation of Muslim bodies, with a fascinating exploration of skin colour. Beards were also important motifs, and for many illuminators in the fifteenth century the hirsute face became the sole corporeal sign designating Muslim identity. Clothing, the focus of the fourth part, was a crucial iconographic marker of alterity, particularly the turban. Carloff traces the turban’s gradual development and iconographic shifts in illuminations across the period. In the final chapter, the author asks whether we can speak of ‘la mode orientale’, an oriental exoticism, born in this period? She argues that the ‘Saracen’ as represented in the sources is less ‘luxurious’, ‘oriental’, and ‘exotic’ than other personages of the medieval West’s repertoire of oriental personages. Ultimately, the illuminations present us with an adversary—the ‘ost des Sarrasins’ of the title, unsurprising given the crusade focus of the sources. A study of sources from Iberian or Italian contexts might present different findings, which makes the need for similar studies to Carloff’s all the more vital. At the end of the monograph is a wonderful catalogue of seventy illuminations with comprehensive commentary for each, very useful to readers, since Carloff frequently refers to specific illuminations in the body of her work. [End Page 262] Carloff’s work constitutes a much-needed contribution to scholarship on representations of alterity and race in medieval Christendom, standing alongside studies by medievalists such as John Tolan, Geraldine Heng, and Debra Higgs Strickland. Darren M. Smith The University of Sydney Copyright © 2020 Darren M. Smith

The Racialization of the Muslim Body and Space in Hollywood

Using 11 high-grossing post-9/11 Hollywood films on terrorism and the Middle East, the author analyzes how films racialize Muslim identities in service to Islamophobia. This research brings together racialization theory with analysis of political ideologies that illustrate visualized racialized meanings on Muslim identities. The racialized portrayals of Muslim bodies inscribed in the political rhetoric of the War on Terror follow a systemic process of ethnoracial cultural othering that objectifies, vilifies, and dehumanizes Muslim identities. The author demonstrates how films engage in the political processes of racial construction of Muslim identities by criminalizing their gendered identity, dehumanizing their body, and devaluing their territorial and physical space in the context of the War on Terror.

Nike unveils Muslim women athletes

ABSTRACT We analyze the Nike Pro Hijab Spring 2018 marketing campaign and how it commodifies a product intended for Muslim women consumers to make it palatable to white audiences. Although Muslim designers have been selling sports hijabs for over a decade, the Nike marketing team positions the Nike Pro Hijab as cutting-edge and innovative by targeting professional athletes. The Nike Pro Hijab advertisements and websites discursively reconstruct Muslim women’s gender to mark the Muslim athletic body as secular and therefore safe. To this end, the Nike Pro Hijab marketing campaign circulates rhetorics of blackness to recast the Muslim woman body as athletic, and thus able to participate in national identity performance. Through our analysis, we establish how the Nike Pro Hijab marketing campaign deploys whiteness to render Muslim bodies and texts safe, palatable, and “moderate” in an increasingly anti-Muslim landscape in the United States.

From religious emotions to affects: historical and theoretical reflections on injury to feeling, self and religion

ABSTRACTImages of angry Muslims have become a common sight in repeated controversies problematising the compatibility of Islam and freedom of speech. To explain such outrage, it is often put forward that Muslims reacted to the disrespect and violation of their ‘religious feelings’. In this paper, we challenge the trope of hurt religious feelings in the explanation of unrest. Referring to the writings of Schleiermacher, James and Taylor, the discussion traces how religion and feeling have become inextricably intertwined, located within the individual self and institutionalised as a dominant interpretation of religion. We introduce affect as a conceptual alternative to such understandings, which allows us to analyse the emphasis on Muslim emotionality as a relationship between Muslim and secular bodies, hence no longer reduced to the interiority of Muslim subjects. We will illustrate the potential of an affect-based approach discussing Muslim feelings’ vital role in the construction of European democracies.

Young Muslims, Stigma and the Work of Normality

Contemporary Islamophobia in many western contexts manifests as heightened suspicion and processes of surveillance that can construct Muslim bodies and identities as ‘abnormal’ and errant. Here we draw on Goffman’s work on normality and stigma to explore strategies employed by young Muslim Australians to negotiate their constitution as abnormal. We identify four key strategies: performing ordinary Australianness; social distancing; being a ‘supernormal’ hero of adjustment; and defiance. We consider how centring these everyday, embodied techniques of the social production of normality makes evident the constrained agency of young Muslims in times of amplified fear and regulation.