Muslim Movements Research Articles

Intersections of Race, Religion, and Inmate Culture

SUMMARY Over the past decades, research on Islam in American prisons has failed to fully capture the essence of the prison Muslim movement because it has focused mainly upon religious rights and management issues. This paper articulates the real meaning of the Muslim prison movement by examining the historical development of Islam within the American correctional system using relevant literature, court cases, and other documents. First, the study presents various stages of Islamic growth in American prisons to illustrate the changes that the movement has encountered. Second, the paper uses a three-dimensional approach that combines race, religion, and inmate culture to identify the main factors that have contributed to the development of Islam in American prisons. The study concludes by addressing the significance of the prison Muslim movement for the reform possibilities of those who accept Islam while incarcerated.

Transition Pathways and Democratic Consolidation in Post‑Marcos Philippines

Introduction Sixteen years after the restoration of formal democratic rule in the Philippines with the fall of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, the country faces a difficult and contentious process of democratic consolidation. The country continues to contend with armed challenges from a communist-led movement and various Muslim movements, with no easy resolution in sight. In a region that was the world's fastest growing economy before the Asian economic crisis, the Philippine economy has also lagged far behind the major ASEAN countries. Two presidential turnover elections, normally important indicators of democratic consolidation, took place in 1992 and 1998. However, this process took an unexpected twist in 2001 when a massive people's mobilization, climaxed by the military's withdrawal of support, deposed the elected incumbent President, Joseph Estrada, less than halfway to his six-year term. In turn, Estrada's successor, former Vice-President Gloria Arroyo, barely three months in office, had to quell a violent march on the presidential palace by enraged Estrada supporters from the poorest classes. The broad features of the problems and challenges of democratic consolidation in the Philippines include a volatile ensemble of the following factors: a cycle of contentious politics in a state with weak capacities and political institutions, a slow-growth economy, and a vibrant but contentious civil society. In this article, three interrelated problems are addressed. First, the historical and social foundations of democratic rule in the country, and the political legacies of the transition process from authoritarian to democratic rule that continue to shape the dynamics of the consolidation process will be addressed. Second, the problems of the consolidation process focusing on the roots and dynamics of contentious politics in the country, particularly the role played by armed movements and militant social movements, will be examined. Third, new forces and players at work in the society in the process of state capability building and democratization will be identified. The Social and Historical Foundations of Democratic Rule in the Philippines To understand the complex interaction of state and society which underpins the process of modern democratic rule, one needs to situate this in the colonial context when the beginnings of limited partial elections were first introduced. Elections at the municipal level were introduced at the twilight of Spanish rule in the late nineteenth century but this was a highly restrictive process involving only the local elites. The revolutionary Philippine Republic, established in 1898, also had a system of elected municipal and provincial officials but its operation was cut short by the American colonial occupation. Reflecting the fusion of expediency and ideals of the time, the American colonial government introduced a system of regular elections starting at the local levels of government in 1901, members of the national legislature in 1907, and a president during the Commonwealth period to facilitate colonial rule by co-opting the native elites. (1) The American colonial strategy of gradually putting the native elites into power through electoral contests had the following major results. (2) By prioritizing the establishment of the institutions of representative electoral democracy, the colonial government legitimized elite rule, further entrenching the power of local elite families who were able to control the electoral process. This preoccupation with electoral democracy not only increased the power of local bosses and provincial lords but also encouraged patronage-driven corruption since the control of public resources became an essential tool for winning elections. Finally, this same preoccupation with electoral democracy undermined the building of autonomous national political institutions, such as the various agencies of the civilian bureaucracy and the police, resulting in a weak and politicized administrative state apparatus. …

Genealogies of Islamic Radicalism in Post-Suharto Indonesia

The emergence of violent Muslim vigilante groups in regions of Indonesia where there has been serious inter-religious conflict is one of the most conspicuous new phenomena in contemporary Indonesian Islam. During the brief presidency of Abdurrahman Wahid, such groups often gained control of the streets, and the army and police appeared unable, or unwilling, to contain them. Most observers of modern Indonesia agree that much of the violence is financed by military and civilian interest groups, and is provoked by struggles for power between rival élite factions. But at the same time it is clear that at least some of these groups are rooted in movements that existed long before the present crisis. This paper argues that the roots of most of the radical Muslim groups in contemporary Indonesia can be traced to two relatively ‘indigenous’ Muslim political movements which date back to the 1940s – the Darul Islam movement and the Masyumi party – and to a number of more recent transnational Islamic networks. It traces the transformations of Masyumi and Darul Islam from the 1950s and 1960s, the emergence of ‘campus Islam’ in the 1980s, the empowerment of Islam in the final years of the Suharto regime, and the course of Islamic politics during Suharto's downfall and in the 1999 elections, before looking in detail at the recent involvement of radical Muslim groups in street politics.

Transnational religion: Hindu and Muslim movements

In this article I deal with transnational Hindu and Muslim movements. I reject the common assertion that migrant communities are conservative in religious and social matters by arguing that ‘traditionalism’ requires considerable ideological creativity and that this significantly transforms previous practices and discourses. I suggest that religious movements, active among migrants, develop cosmopolitan projects that can be viewed as alternatives to the cosmopolitanism of the European Enlightenment. This raises a number of challenges concerning citizenship, integration and political loyalty for governmentality in the nation‐states in which these cosmopolitan projects are carried out. I suggest that rather than looking at religious migrants as at best conservative and at worst terrorist one should perhaps pay some attention to the creative moments in human responses to new challenges and new environments.

Some Notes on a Jewish/ Muslim Movement of Justice and Compassion in America after September 11th

Some Notes on a Jewish/ Muslim Movement of Justice and Compassion in America after September 11th

Islamizing the Black Body: Ritual and Power in Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam

Ever since C. Eric Lincoln publishedThe Black Muslims in America,in 1961, many observers of the Nation of Islam (NOI) have seemed convinced by his claim that the movement was neither very “religious” nor “Islamic” in nature. In that classic study, currently in its third edition, Lincoln conceded that “the Black Muslim movement constitutes a legitimate religion within the definition of the sociology of religion” but also maintained that “religious values have a secondary importance.” For Lincoln, the success of the movement stemmed not from the particular nature of its religious activities but from its ability to provide a sense of “group solidarity” to the dispossessed black working class. According to Lincoln, this sense of community was produced through the group's embrace of black nationalism, which he understood to be “first a defensive response to external forces—hostile forces that threaten their creative existence.”

Nurturing Islamic Peace Discourse

As the Muslim movements gain momentum around the Muslim world,so does the need for a discourse that would make a religious traditionrelevant to the conditions of modernity. Unless Muslims are consciousof the conditions and challenges of modernity and its historical and contemporarytrajectory, they cannot succeed in their emancipation fromtheir oppressors. A new discourse must be produced by those hluslimswho can look at the conditions of their times critically, in their pursuitof justice. Such a movement will produce a new epistemic basis for thenew Muslim society, which still may be a mass society. The thought ofimportant scholars, Khalis M. Jalabi and Jawadat Sai’d, is discussed astwo examples of Islamic peace discourse.

Abdal Rauf Fitrat

The need to adapt Islam to modem times became urgent in the nineteenth century as the Muslim world in general realised its weakness and backwardness in relation to the militarily and technologically powerful West. Some representatives of the Muslim intelligentsia began actively advocating reform in religious and other practices and structures (educational, political, cultural and social) to make Islam more relevant to the demands of contemporary society. This approach may be termed 'reformist'. It was a complex process, one which required not just a superficial daptation of practices but a fundamental alteration of the religious system of values in order to bring Islam into line with the changing circumstances of a new age. Muslim reformist movements in Asia and Africa have been the focus of much scholarly attention. Analogous developments in Central Asia have, however, been largely neglected. So far as western scholars are concerned this was largely because until very recently much of the relevant material was inaccessible. Soviet scholars, meanwhile, were inhibited by ideological constraints: religious reformism was scarcely a popular topic. There has, however, been an upsurge of interest in the subject since the countries of Central Asia became independent in 1991.In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Jadid (,reformist') movement began to affect the Emirate of Bukhara, a nominally independent protectorate of Russia. The movement is named after one of its principal demands: a 'new method' of instruction in schools, usul-i jadid in Arabic. The intellectuals who subscribed to this reformist attitude wanted to reform the educational system so that it could revive Islamic values and equip society with modem knowledge and skills, and thereby enable it to catch up with western progress. However, as time went on the wider agenda of the movement became more important: political and administrative reforms were demanded, though still from a wholeheartedly Muslim perspective.

The Sudan under Islamist rule

On 30 June 1989 a group of army officers seized power in Sudan and overthrew the democratically elected government headed by al‐Mahdi. The coup was engineered by the NIF, founded in 1985 by the Muslim Brothers. This article examines how the Muslim Brothers succeeded in penetrating the army and gaining a foothold within the officer corps, and attempts to explain why a political‐religious movement opted for a military takeover. The political and ideological basis of the NIF are examined, including its adamant insistence on an Islamic state. The Sudan presents a unique case study: its three major political parties are led by leaders of Muslim movements who all support the promulgation of an Islamic constitution leading to an Islamic state. Why could Sudan not agree on an Islamic agenda without resorting to a military coup?

Muslim fundamentalism: Something to be understood or to be explained away?

Abstract This article surveys various attempts to make sociological sense of the diverse Muslim movements often lumped together under the label of fundamentalism. Explanations of fundamentalism as a form of resistance to modernization or those reducing it to social and economic discontent may have some prima facie plausibility but fail to explain why this protest takes a religious form. Orientalist studies emphasizing the theological dimension, on the other hand, do not even attempt to explain why certain religious ideas rather than others can inspire social movements. Not all fundamentalist movements, in fact, are inspired by the same or even similar theological ideas; besides puritan fundamentalist movements we also find many that are strongly influenced by Sufism. Empirical studies of Islamic militants in several different countries indicate that they are not, as is often assumed, marginalized and alienated but relatively well‐integrated and successful persons. Muslim fundamentalist movements have perh...

Muslim fundamentalists as social revolutionaries: The case of Israel

The Muslim movement in Israel has been growing in leaps and bounds since the 1980s and has deeply affected the socio‐political fabric of the Arab minority in Israel. These Arabs, who are leaning more and more towards the Islamic movement, are thus protesting both against Israeli society and politics, and against the Socialist propensities of the Communist Party which has reflected their concerns since Israel was founded in 1948. The Islamic movement, which has taken over so far, six mayorships in Arab‐Israeli villages and townships, has revolutionized society in those localities mobilizing the masses, instilling in them a new sense of identity and purpose and uniting them behind Islamic and national goals.

Scripture and Society in Modern Muslim Asia—A Symposium Introduction

Since the latenineteenth century, Muslim movements for religious and social reform have underscored the value of making scripture accessible to a broad public. Scholars and activists alike have urged ordinary Muslim men and women to study and follow the Qur'ān and the hadīth (the reports of the Prophet Muhammad's words and deeds), and to do so they have rendered these scriptural writings and commentaries on them into the vernaculars of Asia, Africa, and Europe. They have also framed a wide range of appeals—to study the sciences, to modernize society, to stage a revolution—in the language and format of scriptural commentary. Vernacular writings (and, more recently, audio and videocassettes) based on scripture provide the foundations of popular religious education (Shahrani 1991), figure prominently in political movements (Fischer 1980; Kepel 1985), and serve as guides for living for Muslims traveling outside their homelands (Kepel 1987). The modern period has seen an explosion in the range of languages, genres, and contexts in which Muslims have authoritatively deployed scripture.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Orthodox Christians and Muslims.* Edited by N.M. Vaporis. Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1986. ix plus 203 pp. $10.00. Christianity/Islam: Essays on Esoteric Ecumenism. By Frithjof Schuon. Translated by Gustavo Polit. Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom Books, 1985. vii plus 270 pp. n.p. (First published in 1981 by Archè Milano as Christianisme/Islam.) A Muslim Theologian's Response to Christianity: Ibn Taymiyya's al‐Jawb al‐a$. Edited and translated by Thomas F. Michel. Delma, New York: Caravan Books, 1984. ix plus 465 pp. Bibliography. Glosary. Index. n.p. The Maronites in History. By Matti Moosa. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986. 352 pp. Index. $35.00, cloth. Islamic Spirituality: Foundations. Edited by Seyyed Hossein Nasr. [Vol. 19 of World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest]. New York: Crossroad, 1987. 450 pp. Illustrations. $49.50, hardcover. The Islamic Concept of God. By Mohammed Zia Ullah. London, Boston and Melbourne: Kegan Paul International, 1984. xi plus 115 pp. Index. $26.95. The Islamic Way of Life. By Sayyid Abul Ala Mawdudi, edited and translated by Khurshid Ahmad and Khurram Murad. Leicester: The Islamic Foundation, 1986. 80 pp. Index of Quranic verses cited. n.p. Islamic Technology: An Illustrated History. By Ahmad V. al‐Hassan and Donald Hill. Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1986. xiv plus 304 pp. Photographs. Illustrations. Selected Bibliography. Index. $39.50. From Muhammad to the Age of Reforms. By Mircea Eliade. [A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 3.] Translated by Alf Hiltebeitel and Diane Apostolos‐Cappadona. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985. xii plus 360 pp. Bibliography. Index. $27.50. Early Muslim Dogma: A Source‐critical Study. By Michael Cook. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. xi plus 242 pp. $49.50. Islam in a World of Nation‐States. By James P. Piscatori. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. viii plus 193 pp. Illustrations; Chronology of the Muslim World; Glossary; Notes; Index. $39.50. Islam and Politics. By John L. Esposito. Foreword by Hermann Frederick Eilts. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1984. xiv plus 273 pp. n.p. Israeli Arabism: The Latest Incarnation of Orientalism. By Shukri Abed with an introduction by Eli Zureik. [Occasional Paper No. 6; Series Editors: Fouad Moughrabi and Elia Zureik]. Washington, D.C.: Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation of Canada and the International Center for Research and Public Policy, 1986. n.p. n.p. The Palestinians in Israeli Social Science Writings. By Aziz Haidar. [Occasional Paper No. 9; Series Editors: Fouad Moughrabi and Elia Zureik]. Washington, D.C.: Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation of Canada and the International Center for Research and Public Policy, 1986. n.p. n.p. Sand in the Snow: Images of the Middle East in Canadian English‐Language Literature and Commentary. By Mordecai Briemberg. [Occasional Paper No. 8; Series Editors: Fouad Moughrabi and Elia Zureik]. Washington, D.C.: Near East Cultural and Educational Foundation of Canada and the International Center for Research and Public Policy, 1986, n.p. n.p. Palestinian Rights: Affirmation and Denial. Edited by Ibrahim Abu Lughod. Wilmette, Illinois: Medina Press, 1982. 225 pp. $17.95, cloth; $7.95, paper. Hatumere: Islamic Design in West Africa. By Labelle Prussin. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. xxiii plus 306 pp. Figures. Plates. Maps. Index. $75.00. The Qashqai of Iran. By Lois Beck. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. xvi plus 384 pp. Photographs. Maps. Bibliography. Index. $30.00. Islam under the Double Eagle: The Muslims of Bosnia and Hercegovina, 1878‐1914. By Robert J. Donia. [East European Monographs No. LXXVIII.] Boulder: East European Monographs, 1981. xix plus 237 pp. $17.50. The Contemporary Muslim Movement in the Philippines. By Cesar Adib Majul. Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1985. 162 pp. Appendixes. Bibliography. Maps. $5.95. The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century. By Zeynep $CLelik. [Publications on the Near East 2. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1987. 202 pp. 103 Illustration; 17 Maps; Bibliography; Index. $25.00. Bureaucrat and Intellectural in the Ottoman Empire. The Historian Mustafa Ali (1541‐1600). By Cornell H. Fleischer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Glossary; Bibliography; Index. 363 pp. Muslims of the Soviet Empire. A Guide. By Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986. xvi plus 294 pp. Maps. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. $29.95. A History of the Sikhs, Volume I: 1469‐1839, Volume II: 1839‐1964, reprint ed. By Khushwant Singh. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984 (orig. ed., 1963‐1966). Vol. I: xiii plus 419 pp.; Vol. II: xi plus 395 pp. Illustrations. Maps. Appendices. Bibliography. Indices. n.p.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:RECENT BOOKS ON ISLAM: The Contemporary Muslim Movement in the Philippines, by Cesar Adib Majul.RECENT BOOKS ON ISLAM: Der Islam in der Gegenwart, by Werner Ende and Udo Steinbach, eds.RECENT BOOKS ON ISLAM: The Islamic Impact, by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Byron Haines and Ellison Findley.RECENT BOOKS ON ISLAM: Beyond the Mosque, by Phil Parshall.RECENT BOOKS ON ISLAM: In Search of Meaning and Identity, Conversion to Christianity in Pakistani Muslim Culture, by Seppo Syrjänen.RECENT BOOKS ON ISLAM: The Call of the Minaret, by Kenneth Cragg.CHRISTIAN MISSION IN SOUTH CHINA: Mission Accomplished? The English Presbyterian Mission in Lingtung, South China. A Study of the Interplay between Mission Methods and the Historical Context, by George A. Hood.CHRISTIAN MISSION IN SOUTH CHINA: Jesuit Letters from China 1583–84, H. Howard Rienstra

The Theme of "Race" in Inner-City/Prison Theatre: The Family, Inc.

The American prison population constitutes one of the special groups that found a voice in the various movements of the 1960s. Much of the controversy of that era centered around issues of racism in the courts and in the prison system. The Black Muslim movement showed inmates of various minorities the power of cultural solidarity. In September of 1972, the deaths in the riots at Attica brought the attention of the mainstream culture to the circumstances of prison inmates. Throughout this period, the arts struggled to take hold in American prisons and finally succeeded on a nationwide basis by the early 1980s.2

The Black Muslim Movement and the American Constitutional System

Every social group or mass movement eventually develops its distinctive social, political, or economic philosophy. If the organization does not accomplish this task collectively, it is done by one individual or several individuals within the group or movement. The development of this ideology or philosophy is essential because it outlines not only to the adherents and converts, the goals, purpose, objectives, and aims of the group, but it also sells the group, providing its essential, distinctive characteristics. It seems clear that a group or movement or organization gains its uniqueness in part from its basic philosophical underpinnings-be they religious, cultural, economic, or political. To this extent contemporary political theorists agree (Walton and McIver, 1974). In a similar but specific fashion, my objective is to identify the philosophical roots of the Muslim movement, to outline its distinguishing theoretical underpinnings, and to chart its transition from a revolutionary-oriented movement to a movement seeking religious legitimacy as an institutionalized and established church in the context of the American constitutional order.

From Black Muslim to Bilalian: The Evolution of a Movement

This study, based on interviews, analyzes the changes that have occurred in the evolution of the Black Muslim movement to Sunni orthodoxy, the American Muslim Mission led by Mujeddid Wallace Deen Muhammad. It also examines the rise and growth of a countermovement, the resurrected Nation of Islam, led by Minister Louis Farrakhan. A Weberian framework is employed to understand the schism in the movement in relation to socio-economic changes that have occurred during the past 50 years. The argument is that the Black Muslim work ethic and morality have produced the unintended consequence of changing a predominantly lower-class movement into a middle-class one. This change in class status produced favorable conditions for changes in ideology. A case is made for a growing class split between Wallace's predominantly middle-class American Muslim movment and Farrakhan's lower-class Nation of Islam.

Some Notes on the Naqshbandi Tariqat in Bosnia

Study of the contemporary Muslim world concentrates increasingly on the processes of westernisation and modernisation, implicitly regarding these as both salubrious and inevitable, and, indeed, as having already displaced the essential foundations of traditional Islam. There is much in the present state of the Muslim peoples to encourage such a view: the apparently irretrievably shattered unity of the umma, the expanding triumph of secularism in public life, the transfoimation of religion into ideology by various Muslim movements, and the continued absence of a genuine Islamic renaissance. Elements persist, however, throughout the Muslim world that are at variance with this spectacle of Islam in disarray, and that are commonly overlooked by western observers, including the scholarly among them. Their absence from the picture drawn by scholarly investigation of contemporary Islam derives in part from the unspoken assumption that religion is primarily a function of history and society, so that the interior and vital aspects which in fact constitute its essential and immutable character are ignored or neglected as devoid of interest. The strongholds of traditional Islam are, moreover, in a certain sense inaccessible to the investigator who, for all his learning, is alien to the tradition. It is not a question of rejection, of barriers erected in his path, rather of a certain mode of spirituality, enshrined in tradition, that cannot be appreciated by the common methods of academic

NU: Pergumulan Islam dan ABRI di Masa Kontemporer

The following article offers a review of a recent book bu Andree Feillard, followed by an extensive summary. This abstract will present the main points of the review.During the long period she lived in Indonesia, the attention of the French researcher and journalist, Andree Feillard, was particularly attracted to the large Indonesian traditionalist Muslim movement, the Nahdatul Ulama (NU). This is the main object of the book under review, whose title in English translation is "Islam anad Army in Contemporary Indonesia. The Pioneers of Tradition". The main objective of the book is to explain why in 1984 the NU decided to return to its original policy of concentrating on educational and social activities, after a long period of involvement in parliamentary politics. A futher aim of the book is to analyze the impact of this decision.DOI: 10.15408/sdi.v4i1.791

A Contemporary Revitalization Movement in American Race Relations: The 'Black Muslims'

The Black Muslim movement among Negro Americans is viewed as an in-process example of a movement-a deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture. Using this juxtapositional method,.our.knowledge about the movement is systematized, and the theory is clarified and further operationalized. Several directions for research are suggested, including (1) viewing the Muslims in Weberian terms as a twentieth-century case of this-worldly activism motivated by religiously sanctioned asceticism, and (2) proposal of a comparative study designed to show the Muslimhs emerging from the same kinds of acculturative pressures as the Peyote cult of American Indian tribes. arely do empirical cases seem so made-to-order for a particular sociological theory as does the Black Muslim movement for Anthony Wallace's formulation of the revitalization movement.l The Lost-Foundl Nation of Islam ill Nortlh America is a mushrooming sect of Negro Americans led by some of the country's angriest young men. A politico-religious organiza