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In the United States, precious little is known about the active role Muslim women have played for nearly a century in the religious culture of Indonesia, the largest majority-Muslim country in the world. While much of the Muslim world excludes women from the domain of religious authority, the country's two leading Muslim organizations--Muhammadiyah and Nahdlatul Ulama (NU)--have created enormous networks led by women who interpret sacred texts and exercise powerful religious influence. In Women Shaping Islam, Pieternella van Doorn-Harder explores the work of these contemporary women leaders, examining their attitudes toward the rise of radical Islamists; the actions of the authoritarian Soeharto regime; women's education and employment; birth control and family planning; and sexual morality. Ultimately, van Doorn-Harder reveals the many ways in which Muslim women leaders understand and utilize Islam as a significant force for societal change; one that ultimately improves the economic, social, and psychological condition of women in Indonesian society.
A rare and engaging encounter with Egyptian cloistresses Contemporary Coptic Nuns reveals a world rarely seen by outsiders--the world of nuns who worship and serve as part of the largest community of indigenous Christians in the Middle East. One of the few people unaffiliated with the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church to observe these women, Pieternella van Doorn-Harder offers a compelling portrait of the nuns who devote their lives to this conservative faith. Van Doorn-Harder traces the current vitality of the Coptic monastic tradition to a church-wide renaissance of the mid twentieth-century. She credits Coptic mother superiors with harnessing the revival's energy to usher in an era of expan...
While Muslims in Indonesia have begun to turn towards a strict adherence to Islam, the reality of the socio-religious environment is much more complicated than a simple shift towards fundamentalism. In this volume, contributors explore the multifaceted role of Islam in Indonesia from a variety of different perspectives, drawing on carefully compiled case studies. Topics covered include religious education, the increasing number of Muslim feminists in Indonesia, the role of Indonesia in the greater Muslim world, social activism and the middle class, and the interaction between Muslim radio and religious identity.
This volume is the first to bring together analysis of contemporary female religious leadership in ideologically-diverse Muslim communities in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing the emergence, consolidation, and impact of female Islamic authority.
The movement of nation building in Islamic societies away from the secular or Pan-Arab models of the early twentieth century toward a variety of "nationalisms" was accompanied by growing antagonism between the Muslim majority and ethnic or religious minorities. The papers in Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies offer a comparative analysis of how these minorities developed their own distinctive identities within the modern Islamic nation-state. The essays focus on identity formation in five minority groups - Copts in Egypt, Baha'is and Christians in Pakistan, Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. While every minority community is distinctive, the e...
Cover -- Copts in Context -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- List of Illustrations -- Series Editor's Preface -- Preface -- Note on Transliteration -- Introduction: Creating and Maintaining Tradition in Modernity -- Part 1: Identity in Transition -- The Copts in the January Revolution of 2011 -- The Undesirables of Egypt: A Story of Persecution and Defiance -- Examining the Role of Media in Coptic Studies -- Father Samaan and the Charismatic Trend within the Coptic Church -- Transmitting Coptic Musical Heritage -- Part 2: Challenges of the Diaspora -- Singing Strategic Multiculturalism: The Discursive Politics of Song in Coptic-Canadian Protests -- Coptic Migrant Churches: Transnationalism...
By examining the intersection of Islamic law, state law, religion, and culture in the Egyptian nation-building process, Recasting Islamic Law highlights how the sharia, when attached to constitutional commitments, is reshaped into modern Islamic state law. Rachel M. Scott analyzes the complex effects of constitutional commitments to the sharia in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. She argues that the sharia is not dismantled by the modern state when it is applied as modern Islamic state law, but rather recast in its service. In showing the particular forms that the sharia takes when it is applied as modern Islamic state law, Scott pushes back against assumptions that introductions ...
"Rasmussen has written a classic study of the world of Islamic soundscapes, performances and forms of musical piety in that most complex of societies, Indonesia. With great sensitivity, an alert musical response to players, reciters and audiences, a keen practitioner's ear and eye for subtlety as well as for the complexities of 'noise', she changes common assumptions about Muslim music and, not least, gender in changing Islamic ritual cultures. Her own political awareness and her professional as well as personal relations with women Qu'ran reciters contribute to an exciting an original volume that I recommend to any one exploring the riches of Islamic performances and debates in the contemporary world."—Michael Gilsenan, author of Lords of the Lebanese Marches: Violence and Narrative in an Arab Society
The essays focus on identity formation in five minority groups - Copts in Egypt, Baha'is and Christians in Pakistan, Berbers in Algeria and Morocco, and Kurds in Turkey and Iraq. While every minority community is distinctive, the experiences of these groups show that a state's authoritarian rule, uncompromising attitude towards expressions of particularism, and failure to offer tools for inclusion are all responsible for the politicization and radicalization of minority identities. The place of Islam in this process is complex: while its initial pluralistic role was transformed through the creation of the modern nation-state, the radicalization of society in turn radicalized and politicized minority identities. Minority groups, though at times possessing a measure of political autonomy, remain intensely vulnerable.
Circulation networks -- Circulatory texts -- Architecture of encounters -- The Code -- The commentary -- The autocommentary -- The supercommentar -- The translations.