The present article discusses the ways in which ethnic Japanese Muslim women are perceived and treated in contemporary Japanese society, through a case study of one Japanese female convert. It examines the complexity found in her experiences of marginality by highlighting three inter-related modes of marginalization: marginality deriving from being a Muslim, from being a Japanese Muslim and from being a woman. It discusses her responses to these discourses of marginalization and how she establishes her identity as a Muslim, through responding to them. The article first shows that ethnic Japanese Muslims suffer 'inverted marginality'-marginalization due to belonging to the ethno-cultural majority. It then demonstrates their experience of 'double marginality', marginalization by the wider Japanese society and foreign-born Muslims alike. It argues that their experience of double marginality has partly resulted from the absence of a self-sufficient ethnic community of Japanese Muslims. Ethnic Japanese Muslim women experience further marginalization when they become targets for criticism of Islam, such as that Islam is a religion of female subjugation-a notion of gender orientalism that deprives these women of their agency. However, the process of responding to these challenges of marginality helps ethnic Japanese Muslim women consolidate their identity as Muslims.
The present article discusses the possibility of regarding the Japan Islamic Congress (JIC), a religious organization that claimed a membership of over 50,000 in the 1980s, as a new religion. It examines major factors in the expansion of the JIC through highlighting five characteristics it shares with new religions, namely, 1) it had a charismatic leader, attributed with the power to ‘heal’; 2) it attracted members through the curing of illnesses, with many joining as nominal members; 3) it focused on making practice easy and organizing large-scale events where the group’s identity is emphasized; 4) its teachings display a syncretic nature, combining Islamic and Buddhist ideas; and 5) it was actively engaged with society, especially the fields of medicine and politics. Critiquing the view taken by existing scholarship that attributes the JIC’s decline to its teachings not representing “genuine Islam,” the article further argues that, in addition to the lack of a capable successor, three other factors can be highlighted as possible reasons for the JIC’s inability to survive: 1) its primary channel of contact with potential members was limited to medical service; 2) apart from this medical service, it did not develop teachings or practices that would lead directly to the improvement of life; and 3) it did not meet the needs of contemporary Japanese society, where the interest in more personal spirituality had started to grow.
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