Islam (Anthropology)

Taking the Place of Martyrs: Afghans and Arabs Under the Banner of Islam

by Darryl Li

Arab Studies Journal 20(1), Spring 2012, pp. 12-39

This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghanistan in recent... more This article examines how so-called “Afghan Arabs” – Islamist activists drawn to war-torn Afghanistan in recent decades – reconciled their pan-Islamist commitments with the experience of doctrinal and cultural difference vis-à-vis Afghans. Previous approaches to transnational Islamist activism have tended to either uncritically assume a monolithic Muslim identity or posit a rigid dichotomy between fanatic “foreign fighters” and the relatively moderate “local Muslims” who they putatively seek to indoctrinate. Eschewing both types of reification, this article argues that pan-Islamist projects should not be understood as attempts to erase intra-Muslim differences, but rather as endeavors to process them. Afghan Arabs struggled to understand, evaluate, and respond to doctrinal and cultural differences in ways that often defied the conventional juxtaposition of radical Salafi Arabs versus moderate Sufi/Hanafi Afghans. Diverse longstanding discursive traditions in Islam – including discussions over miraculous events [karāmāt] and visitation of saints’ tombs [al-ziyāra] – provided common terms of reference that Arab activists and their Afghan counterparts could invoke to ensure that even contentious disputes could contribute to a shared project.

Women's Majelis Taklim and gendered religious practice in Northern Ambon.

by Phillip Winn

A draft of a paper to appear in a forthcoming edition of the journal: Intersections:Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific http://intersections.anu.edu.au/

The recent phenomenal growth of majelis taklim groups in Indonesia has been linked to the ‘Islamic revival’, often... more The recent phenomenal growth of majelis taklim groups in Indonesia has been linked to the ‘Islamic revival’, often conceived as involving innovative models of Muslim orthodoxy couched in scripturalist or theologico-legal terms. This paper asserts that women’s majelis taklim in Leihitu on the northern coastline of Ambon Island instead reaffirm longstanding forms of devotional performance among local Muslims by (re)presenting these as fully compatible with contemporary Muslim identity. While there is evidence to suggest majelis taklim are reshaping normative aspects of gendered religious practice in Leihitu, this process is as enmeshed in local understandings as it is influenced by new intersections of national religious and political discourse concerning Muslim women. Ultimately, the article argues for greater attention to the diverse terms in which global and national currents of Muslim religiosity are instantiated locally via closer consideration of the social and cultural settings in which shifts in religious practice, such as majelis taklim, occur.

Muharram in and around Sayyeda Zaynab

by Edith Szanto

Syrian Studies Association Newsletter 13 no. 1 (2007): 4-5.

Pedagogies of Piety: Shi'i Children's Books, Ethics and the Emergence of the Pious Subject

by Edith Szanto

Symposia: The Graduate Student Journal of the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto 1 no. 1 (2009): 62-78.

Inter-Religious Dialogue in Syria: Politics, Ethics and Miscommunication

by Edith Szanto

Political Theology 9 no. 1 (2008): 93-113.

A Scholar of Popular Contemporary Islam on the Quest for ‘Truth’ in Damascus

by Edith Szanto

Syrian Studies Association Newsletter 13 no. 2 (2008): 8-9, 15.

Islamic Televangelism: Religion, Media and Visuality In Contemporary Egypt

by Yasmin Moll

Tanah Berkat (Blessed Land): The Source of the Local in the Banda Islands, Central Maluku

by Phillip Winn

from the book 'Sharing the Earth, Dividing the Land. Land and territory in the Austronesian world' Thomas Reuter ed. (2006) ANU epress -- http://epress.anu.edu.au/sharing_citation.html

Metaphors and Sacred History: The Genealogy of Muhammad and the Arab" Tribe" (1995)

by Daniel Varisco

Metaphors and Sacred History: The Genealogy of Muhammad and the Arab" Tribe", Anthropological Quarterly 68(3):139- 156, 1995. [Examines the Arabic texts on the genealogy of Muhammad in light of anthropological studies of kinship (especially the segmentary lineage concept) in the Middle East. The paper concludes that the formal genealogy is not credible as recorded but rather a form of textual legitimization of Muhammad as a prophet. This article appears in a special issue called "Anthropological Analysis and Islamic Texts," for which I was guest editor.]

Virtual Dasein: Ethnography in Cyberspace (2007)

by Daniel Varisco

Virtual Dasein: Ethnography in Cyberspace
Daniel Martin Varisco
CyberOrient, Vol. 2, Iss. 1, 2007

The cyberculture created by individuals who enter cyberspace is a fieldsite only recently visited by anthropologists.... more The cyberculture created by individuals who enter cyberspace is a fieldsite only recently visited by anthropologists. In this essay I argue that one way of approaching the ethnography of cyberspace is to treat it as virtual Dasein, in which the issue becomes being there in something-like-a-world yet still being in the world. Ethnographers now need to consider the impact of the Internet on the people they study, even in the remotest villages. The promise and potential peril of virtual reality calls for critical assessment of the economic and political consequences of cyberspace development. Finally, our own involvement with the Internet demands a reflexivity that goes beyond musing over the mutant prospect of becoming cyborgs to assessing a new combination of humans, technology and information.

Homage to Professor Bruno Etienne

by Florent Giehmann

Sept. 2009, World Religion Watch (Blog of the) Observatory for Religious Phenomena, Sciences-Po Aix-en-Provence. Link: http://www.world-religion-watch.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=278&Itemid=97

A paper written in homage to Professor Bruno Etienne, after his passing in 2009, addressing one of the main topics of... more A paper written in homage to Professor Bruno Etienne, after his passing in 2009, addressing one of the main topics of his teachings: the theme of the practice of Social Science as an "ascesis and hermeneutic".