Muslim City Research Articles

Sinicizing China’s World Muslim City: Spatial Politics, National Narratives, and Ethnoreligious Assimilation in the PRC

Abstract The nation-state is as much a narrative and ideational project as it is a spatial-territorial one. In the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping’s calls to “revitalize” China’s traditional culture, “Sinicize” religions, and “rejuvenate” the Chinese nation reflect a broader effort to reframe the national narrative and strengthen Communist Party control. This article examines the implications of Xi’s revisionist nationalism for China’s fifty-five minority nationalities, in particular the Hui, one of ten Muslim minority groups. It does so by analyzing the rise and demise of World Muslim City (WMC), a development project in western China that mobilized Hui identity and traditions for economic and diplomatic purposes. WMC was facilitated by a multicultural national narrative and by a fragmented authoritarian political system that for many years fostered policy improvisation, and deviation, at the local level. Its suspension underscores the increasingly anti-Muslim, anti-religious tenor of PRC policy, as evidenced by the Sinicization campaign that was a proximate cause of WMC’s demise. Its demise also highlights ongoing efforts to reassert CCP control over government, business, and the Party’s own rank-and-file. The fate of WMC furthermore reveals the spatial dimensions of Sinicization, and of Chinese cultural governance past and present. To paraphrase theorist Henri Lefebvre, Sinicization entails “spatial practices” that impose Xi-ist “representations of space” on lived “representational spaces,” from mosques and businesses to theme parks and luxury resorts.

Wine, Taxation, and the State in Ḥafṣid Tunis: Ethical Consumption and Public Finance in a Medieval Muslim City

Wine, Taxation, and the State in Ḥafṣid Tunis: Ethical Consumption and Public Finance in a Medieval Muslim City

Discovering Early Islamic Basra: the Origins and Development of Iraq’s Southern Metropolis

Abstract This article reports on recent fieldwork at the site of the early Islamic city Basra, located fifteen kilometres to the southwest of the modern city. The article sets the site within the geographical and historical context of early Islamic Iraq with particular reference to Kufa and Wāsit. In addition, the article contains a review of previous archaeological research followed by a summary of the results from current fieldwork carried out by the authors. Finally, this text highlights the need for further fieldwork both to answer research questions and protect the valuable heritage of Iraq’s first Muslim city.

At the Crossroads of Competing Confessions and Politics: al-Turtūshī’s Experience in the Fātimid Alexandria

The tenth and eleventh centuries witnessed significant social and political transformations in the Islamic World. While the Buwayhid Dynasty began to control Iraq in 945, the Fātimid Dynasty started to dominate Egypt in 969. Besides, Christian Europeans set up crusades and managed to capture important Muslim cities in al-Andalus and the Middle East during the late eleventh century. These transformations had certain impacts on the Sunnī Muslim scholars. Through examination of an Andalusian scholar, Abū Bakr al-Turtūshī's life and works, I will analyze how al-Turtūshī as a Sunnī Muslim scholar encountered different confessional groups (Shi‘īs, Jews, Christians, and Sūfīs) and how he made an effort to shape the Shi'ī Fātimid politics in harmony with the Sunnī Islam. In addition, I will explore how he aimed to draw strict religious boundaries between Muslims and non-Muslims in Fātimid Egypt. Furthermore, I will examine how he attempted to reconstruct the Sunnī identity and reform social life in Medieval Egypt.

ISLAMIC PARTIES AND THE VOTING BEHAVIOR OF CITY MUSLIMS IN WEST SUMATRA

The background of this research is that there are no parties based on Islamic values ​​that dominate the victory in the legislative elections in West Sumatra, especially in the three cities that will be the locations of this research. Where the cities are Padang City, Bukittinggi City, and Pariaman City. These three cities have a very dominant Muslim voting population, but in the implementation of legislative elections, not a single party based on Islamic values ​​was able to dominate the victory in the legislative elections. The Muslim community in this city is very synonymous with the policies of its government which are based on sharia, but their voting behavior in legislative general elections does not reflect behavior that supports parties that uphold Islamic teachings. This study uses the theory of voting behavior with a psychological school, to see how the characteristics of voters in this city's Muslim community use a voting behavior approach based on psychological aspects, with the independent variables Issues in the Campaign (X.1) Identification of parties (X.2) and Orientation towards candidates ( X.3) with the dependent variable, namely the voting behavior of urban Muslim communities in general elections. This research uses a quantitative approach with a survey research design, this type of research is explanatory research. Data was collected by distributing questionnaires, respondents were selected using the probability sampling method, namely, stratified random sampling and simple random sampling and using random numbers in determining the respondents. The analysis model for this research is a frequency table and hypothesis testing using Chi Square. The findings of the data in the field show that in measuring the influence between the voting behavior of urban Muslim communities on party identification (X) and voting behavior (Y), the results of this study found that there was a relationship between the identification of Muslim voters' parties on voting behavior of urban Muslim communities in general elections.

« Smara, ville de nos illusions ». Les carnets de route de Michel Vieuchange en tant qu’autobiogéographie

The present paper focuses on the travel notes by Michel Vieuchange (1904-1930), a young Frenchman who decided to reach Smara, a holy Muslim city located in the middle of the desert, to describe it, and to e term used by Michel Collot means telling your life through the places that has affected you. In the case of Vieuchange’s notes the geographical descriptions intervene with the description of the personality of the traveler and form a whole. The paper shows that three cities, Tiznit, Tigilit and Smara, mark three stages of the travel and correspond to different aspects of Vieuchange’s personality.

THE GOVERNMENT'S ROLE IN OVERCOMING UNDERAGE MARRIAGE IN THE MUSLIM COMMUNITIES

This research aims to analyze the government's role in overcoming underage marriage in the Muslim communities in Manado City, North Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. The government's involvement is significant because of the yearly increase of child marriage cases in the city. Therefore, this qualitative research employed a descriptive approach to analyze the data, which were collected through observation, interviews, and documentation. The primary data sources were the heads of the Religious Affairs Offices in Manado City, consisting of the Tuminting, Tikala, Wenang, and Singkil Subdistricts, while journal articles, government regulations, literature, and other relevant documents constituted the secondary data. Subsequently, the results showed that the government's duties and functions concerning marriage in the city are implemented through the Religious Affairs Office and include providing services, monitoring, recording, reporting, and guidance. Its role in combating underage marriage in the city's Muslim community is performed through formal activities, namely the socialization of Act No. 16/2019 concerning the age of marriage, pre-marital guidance and education for school-age children and millennial youth, as well as marriage preparation guidance. Also, non-formal activities are performed through lectures, coaching, and rendering marriage advice at the majlis ta'lim and youth events in mosques.

Jerusalem: History of a Global City by Vincent Lemire, Katell Berthelot, Julian Loiseau, and Yann Potin

The first thing to note about this new volume about the history of Jerusalem is its claim to being the only comprehensive volume that documents the full 3,000-year history of Jerusalem in the English or French language (2).1 Although this claim, at first, seems preposterous—given the number of books written about Jerusalem—the authors suggest that no “real” single-volume scientific history with a single narrative voice (English or French) has seen publication in recent years. On the one hand are the many scholarly books covering various aspects of the 3,000-year history, often as anthologies comprising chapters with multiple authors—for example, the Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem, which boasts thirty-five chapters by thirty-five different authors!2 On the other hand are the abundant single-authored books that purport to cover the history of Jerusalem, but not even their own authors consider them to be “real” history books—for example, Simon Sebag Montefiore’s Jerusalem: The Biography (New York, 2011), largely an interconnected narrative of individuals’ personal stories, and Karen Armstrong’s A History of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths (London, 1996), primarily concerned with religious myth.None of these volumes are history in the way that the authors of Jerusalem: History of a Global City present it. They do not cover, in one narrative arc, the social-scientific history and geography of the urban space known as Jerusalem and its environment. This volume is an urban history of Jerusalem that focuses as much on the materiality of the city as on its political, social, and civic history. It deviates from many previous histories in its abandonment of religious history. According to the authors, constructing Jerusalem’s narrative only or primarily through the eyes of religion distorts the city’s actual history, that is, its history as a city. Religion obviously plays a huge role, but it need not be the centerpiece.The authors’ urban-studies approach is closely tied to their other methodology, which is to look for the continuities and bridges between the traditionally labeled and segmented eras within this long history (the “biblical,” “Byzantine,” or “Muslim” eras). By pushing the religious concerns and lenses aside in favor of the urban, civic, political, and material ones, the book demonstrates how Jerusalem persisted as one Middle Eastern city among many others, despite changes in regime, imperial situation, or religious community. The early Israelite settlers differed little materially from the Canaanites who lived in Jerusalem before them, and Saladin built his renewed Muslim city, to a great extent, on the infrastructure—both material and civic—left in place by the Franks. By examining, sometimes minutely, local conditions while being attentive to the larger international framework, the book effectively conveys how the continuities of this global city emerged. Regardless of external powers and constituencies, Jerusalem has remained extraordinarily important to people throughout the world, even as a city with its own distinct quirks of topography and local history.As a scholarly narrative covering 3,000 years in 264 pages, this volume offers an excellent comprehensive history, demonstrating complexity without getting bogged down in details. It is even-handed and relatively unjudgmental. That said, however, readers expecting a fine-grained exposition will have to look elsewhere. Moreover, the book is largely silent about its collaborative methodology; it provides no clue about who wrote what part. Collaboration between humanists and historians—a methodological approach in its relative infancy—deserves greater transparency. Educators will rightly applaud the product, but research scholars might like to know more about the process.

Mosqueing the Marketplace: Business as (Un)Usual in Hamtramck

Abstract Hamtramck, Michigan, is the first Muslim-majority city in the US, has the nation's first all Muslim city council, and likely boasts the highest number of mosques per capita as well. Yet as recently as the 1970s, Hamtramck was the center of the Polish diaspora, and was home instead to the nation's highest concentration of bars. Muslim entrepreneurs, primarily from Yemen and Bangladesh, stand poised to revitalize Hamtramck's economy by investing in the city's growing halal marketplace. This article explores two recent efforts to revitalize the city's economy, especially its downtown business district, and the ways in which conflicts over space there are quickly translated into an idiom of religious belonging or exclusion. The symbiotic relationship that exists in metro Detroit between mosques and small businesses may be a healthy one in economic terms, but it also extends the sphere of cultural and religious praxis for Muslims and non-Muslims alike and is therefore met with resistance by many of the same people who consume, market, and embody this distinction, even as they also work to disrupt and redefine what it means.

Hamtramck at 100 Years: Polish Political Power in a Changing City

Abstract In 2022, the City of Hamtramck celebrates its centennial. On January 1 of that year, it also inaugurated a Yemeni immigrant as its first mayor who is not of Polish descent, as well as a completely Muslim city council, including a Polish American convert to Islam. Written by the last Polish mayor in that nearly hundred-year succession, this article combines history and personal experience while looking at the Polish dominance of local politics beginning with the ethnically charged decision to incorporate, continuing through the decades of Polish rule in relation to other ethnic and racial groups in the city, and chronicling the gradual unraveling of that power. While Hamtramck's experience is not unlike that of other former Polonian strongholds, it is also unique in its longevity and the symbolic significance it has come to embody through its very public demographic and political trajectory. This overview of the competition for elected office in Hamtramck provides a lens through which to view the ongoing transition of the city's civic identity.

The Religious Pattern of the Urban Community: a Study on an Nahl Islamic Study Congregation in Pilahan, Rejowinangun Village, Kotagede, Yogyakarta

Abstract
 Changes in public awareness of the value and appreciation of a religion are characterized by increasing religious awareness in the middle of communal life which is called a social reality. This also happened in the an Nahl Islamic study foundation.This study aims to determine the pattern of religiosity and the background of increasing religiosity in the an Nahl Islamic study congregation. A qualitative study was used in this study, starting from determining the location, subject and object of research, data collection methods, data analysis techniques, and data validity tests that produce data to explore the findings on the diversity of the city's Muslim community which is centered on the an-Nahl recitation congregation who have difference patterns. The emergence of the formation of the religious pattern of the urban Muslim community at the an Nahl Islamic study foundation is influenced by several factors ranging from internal factors, namely factors originating from the individual congregation itself, to external factors in the form of supporting facilities for the implementation of an Nahl Islamic study. There were two religious’ patterns, namely traditional Islam presented by NU and modern Islam presented by Muhammadiyah.

Rituals of Victory: The Role of Liturgy in the Consecration of Mosques in the Castilian Expansion over Islam from Eleventh to Thirteenth Centuries

Scholarly work on the conquest of Muslim cities in the so-called Castilian Reconquista has focused largely on political consequences rather than conquest rituals. Against the previous background, this article turns attention toward civil and religious rituals associated with the Christian conquest of Muslim cities as an expression of triumph. Among these rituals, the conversion of the congregational mosques has been discussed in chronicles and liturgical books that reveals the role of liturgy to understand both appropriation and sacralization of the mosque to remove these places from Muslim control, restoring the Christian faith in the new churches. These rituals are an evident legacy of Roman law modified in late antiquity, and this paper’s main aim is to highlight the re-use of preexisting Church consecration ceremonies gathered in the Roman Pontifical in order to clean up the “Mohammedan filth” applied to post-Reconquista churches.

Ljudska prava u islamskoj pravnoj nauci / Human Rights in Islamic Jurisprudence

In the diversity of their religious communities, Muslim cities of the Middle Ages, such as Istanbul, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Samarkand, Bukhara, and Cairo, looked like the modern New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, and London. In contrast, European cities during the Middle Ages were quite homogeneous, usually encompassing one predominant Christian denomination. This continued more or less until the second half of the nineteenth century. Since then Western cities have clearly turned into cosmopolitan metropolitan centers housing diverse faith and ethnic groups. What made Muslim cities during the Middle Ages similar to modern cosmopolitan centers? I contend that it was because they operated under norms of Islamic jurisprudence regarding universal human rights, particularly freedom of religion. This finding is surprising given the lagging status of religious freedom in many Muslim-majority nations today, and it suggests that recovering that classical Islamic tradition could have enormous global significance.

Reframing Turkey, Istanbul and national identity: Ottoman history, ‘chosen people’ and the opening of shrines in 1950

AbstractThis article explores the reopening of certain shrines in Istanbul in 1950 as a result of the amendment to Law 677, which in 1925 had closed all shrines in the country and banned visits to them. Drawing on previously untapped archival evidence and combining an analysis at both the macro‐level (nation‐state in a global world) and micro‐level (Istanbul as local and shrines as sites), I discuss changes in cultural policies, historiography and Turkish foreign policy and make use of the contributions of ethno‐symbolic and social constructionist approaches of nationalism theories. I contend that during the transition to the multi‐party system, ‘chosen’ shrines were used as tools to reattach Ottoman roots to Turkish national identity as ‘Turks’ and ‘Muslims’ and reposition Turkey as a strong nation‐state in the new global order. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the former multi‐ethnic and multi‐religious capital, Istanbul, became a part of the national territory as a legitimate Turkish and Muslim city.

PRIMARY EDUCATION IN TABRIZ CITY DURING THE GAJARS PERIOD

Education was of religious character with schools and madrasahs in Tabriz, as in all Muslim cities during the Middle Ages and was based on the methodology of religious tenets. This type of education system dates back to the early years of Islam and was yet ongoing during its research period. Schools provided primary spiritual education, whereas madrasahs provided high religious education. The first madrasah in Iran was established in Tabriz. Literacy was taught and basic rules and regulations were applied at schools. They operated mainly within the mosques and the classes were held in zaviya (madrasah) and cell. The mosques performed numerous functions. They were not only places of worship (practicing namaz, listening to preaching, etc.), but also the place where Sharia laws are studied and propagated; holy war and peace declared; spoils of war are distributed; letters sent to the authorities; funerals held and where the other work was done.

A Living Heritage Approach Toward Sustainability of Islamic City in The Northern Coastal of Java, Indonesia

Cultural diversity is one of the global issue underlined by UN. Indonesia known as a very rich country has more than 300 ethnic cultures. One of them is Islamic architecture and cities that spread in the North Coast of Java. In the span of 6 centuries, we can still witness the existence of these works as living heritage that saves tangible and intangible culture. The role of the community is very significant which are take care, plan and develop for the next generation. However, the changes that have occurred are caused by urbanization, and the shift in the political and economic map poses a threat to the sustainability of this legacy. The purpose of writing this article is to provide views on the importance of an approach to the process of preserving living cultural heritage by involving community participation in order to maintain the sustainability of cultural heritage. The locus in the North Coast of Java is based on the consideration that the cities in this region inherit the distinctive Islamic culture of the Coastal Java and its dynamics. The digital-legacy approach combines the use of information technology in this case is Web GIS for archiving artifact data. Meanwhile, the living heritage approach encourages community participation to play an active role with stakeholders on an ongoing basis in the preservation of artifacts. Kudus Kulon is an interesting and unique case with the Gusjigang community who have cared for Omah Joglo Pencu for almost three centuries. Architectural sustainability – Muslim cities include historical and cultural sustainability, function, and maintenance

Comparison of Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia Traditional Settlement as Muslim City and Kampung Naga Settlement as Indonesian Traditional Settlement in Perspective Form of Entrance

Settlement in Muslim city consists of forms of entrance or form of submission. There are control, use, and ownership. Therefore the purpose of this study is to compare by examining responsibility and control in the form of entrance perspective in the form of ownership, control, and use in both traditional settlements in Muslim cities and Kampung Naga. This research used descriptive comparative method because to know between the form of entrance of traditional settlements in muslim cities and traditional settlements in Kampung Naga. The conclusion of this research are (1) based on the cases of form of entrance in muslim settlement in muslim city, the most ideal form of entrance is the unified form because applied Islamic legal system or shari’ah; (2) residents of Kampung Naga are the owner, user, and controller of settlement. Traditional settlements in Kampung Naga have a unified form of entrance where this is the ideal form in the Islamic legal system. Every resident have same rights or huquq. Even though in reality Kampung Naga is not a Muslim village, but Kampung Naga can be an example of the application of justice for all citizens to be able to control, own, and use in Indonesia.

Informality, Temporariness, and the Production of Illegitimate Geographies: The rise of a Muslim sub-city in Ahmedabad, India (1970s–2000s)

AbstractIn recent debates in the field of urban studies, issues of informality, marginal settlements, and extreme poverty have often been analysed in relation to the dynamics that transformed spatial and social balances with respect to neo-liberal economic policies. The restructuring of spaces, infrastructure, and economies that marked the success of changing paradigms of urban planning since the 1990s has been widely seen to be responsible for the extensive marginalization of the most vulnerable strata of society. In order to understand the emergence of areas considered informal—or illegitimate—this article aims to question the very validity of categories such as ‘informality’ when applied to analysing the transition from medium-sized urban centres to ‘mega-cities’ (a label that, in itself, blindly recalls the allure of modernization, technology, and development).1 It does so by adopting a longer term perspective in analysing the evolution of a municipal housing project for the resettlement of slumdwellers in Ahmedabad, India, in 1978, which, in the span of four decades, turned into a substandard informal settlement and then into a ‘Muslim city’ called Juhapura. Widely known in India as the ‘biggest ghetto in South Asia’, this area is an observatory for reconsidering the significance of concepts such as informality, illegality, temporariness, and people's legitimacy as citizens.

Hindi Films, Bollywood, and Indian Television Serials: A History of Connection, Disconnection, and Reconnection in Tamale, Northern Ghana

ABSTRACT This article explores the circulation and reception of Indian media (including films and more recently television series) in the majority Muslim city of Tamale, Northern Ghana. This includes the arrival of Hindi films during the late 1950s, the subsequent (short-lived) circulation of Bollywood films in the early 1990s, and the more recent arrival of contemporary Indian television serials in the 2010s. In charting histories of these three regionally linked transnational media flows, this article complicates “linear” experiences of Indian media in Northern Ghana. Though Tamale’s Dagbamba viewers understand these three media flows as regionally linked, they are sensitive to changes in format, narrative, plot, and style taking place in Indian film and television over time. For over sixty years, Indian media flows have gained traction, broken down, restarted, and flowed in “feedback loops”, dependent on the ways in which Indian media reflect, align with, and at times depart from Dagbamba conservative cultural and religious values.

The khwarezmians in medieval arabic and persian manuscripts

The article examines the historical role of the Khwarezm people in the socio-political life of the Middle East countries of the 1330s and 1360s based on the Medieval Arabic and Persian manuscripts. It is known, the brave Jalal al-Din Mingburnu, the last Shah of the Khwarezmian dynasty, had already gathered a ten-thousand-strong army of the Khwarezmians outside of Khwarezm, and he was repeatedly engaged in the battle with the Mongols and won their invasion further to West into the Arab world. But he died in 1231, and his army roamed all over the Middle East, serving either the Seljuq empire sultans, or the Ayyubid princes in Syria (Sham) who entered into an internecine struggle for thecentral power in Syria and Egypt. The Khwarezmians helped the Ayyubids defeat the crusaders, liberate the Holy Muslim city of al-Quds and several fortress cities from them, and later they inflict a crushing overthrow the Mongols who entered the Arab lands. These important events are reflected in detail in the historical chronicles by al-Maqrizi, Ibn Iyas, al-Khanbali, as-Suyuti, Ibn Taghriberdi, al-Khamadani and many other historians of the Mamluk period of the 13–15th centuries, associated with the arrival of the Mamluk Turks in Egypt and Syria. These works repeatedly emphasize the crucial role of the Khwarezmians in the historical arena of the Middle East in the 1330-60th, when they were considered to be a formidable military force in the fateful battles for the peoples of this region. The authors of the Chronicles also pay great attention to certain historical figures, which they concede to be of Khwarezm origin, such as the Egyptian Sultana Shajarat ad-Dur and the Mamluk Sultan Sayf ad-din Qutuz. Qutuz, along with his emirs, including the Khwarezmians, won a crushing victory over the Mongols in the town of Ayn Jalut in 1260, and stopped their victorious march through the Arab world. The chronicles unanimously state that Qutuz's real name is Mahmood Ibn Mamdood and he comes from the Khwarezmshah dynasty, as he is the son of Jalal