An Islam of One's Own

Zaman, Taymiya R.

doi:10.1215/1089201x-8186247

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…If I opened the article by invoking Massey's 'conjunctions of space-time', I close by echoing Taymiya Zaman's call to see our sources and theories as always 'animated by registers of truth we have yet to consider'. 114…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver

Hammond

2022

cultural geographies

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How should we understand the relationship between artistic practice and religious devotion? This paper answers that question through a close engagement with the archive of the artist, teacher, doctor, and writer Ahmet Süheyl Ünver (b. 1898–d. 1986). Working from notebooks and archival files produced about Eyüp, Istanbul’s most important Muslim district, I offer the concept of ‘conjunctions of Islam’ to develop two linked arguments. First, Ünver’s work challenges essentialist invocations of ‘Turkish’ or ‘Islamic’ art. Instead, his work shows us how these terms are historically and geographically specific, embedded within networks of people, places, objects, and histories. Second, Ünver also shows us how definitions of Muslim identity trace geographies other than the territorial nation. Indebted to discussions of relational place-making and topology, my use of conjunction helps us see the making of an urban Muslim self in a new way. In doing so, this article extends recent cultural geographic discussions about skill and creativity, provides a new perspective on the geographies of Islam, and enriches our ability to explain how complex forms of the past are articulated in contemporary Turkey.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver

Hammond

2022

cultural geographies

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“…Here, I was also reminded of Taymiya Zaman's (2020) incisive critique of the gendered absences in Shahab Ahmed's What Is Islam? Rather than obsess over the ‘correct’ version of the past – an obsession that tends to exclude already marginalized voices and experiences from the history of Islam – she argues that ‘the multidimensionality of the past means that excellent historical work is possible without requiring an airtight definition of Islam to propel its analytic trajectory’.…”

Section: In What Sense Muslim Geographies?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Rather than obsess over the ‘correct’ version of the past – an obsession that tends to exclude already marginalized voices and experiences from the history of Islam – she argues that ‘the multidimensionality of the past means that excellent historical work is possible without requiring an airtight definition of Islam to propel its analytic trajectory’. Zaman maintains that ‘studying pasts’ and, I would argue, geographies, ‘on their own shifting terms allows analytic categories to emerge from our sources and to remain open to reinterpretation, introspection, and reframing’ (2020: 216).…”

Section: In What Sense Muslim Geographies?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Languages of din: Place, history, and paths

Hammond

2023

Dialogues in Human Geography

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In this commentary, I engage with James Sidaway's recent article, ‘Beyond the Decolonial: Critical Muslim Geographies’. I respond to its contributions and provocations by asking two linked questions. First, what is the place of language in these critical Muslim geographies? I suggest that geographers should situate their engagement with key terms in their contexts, a project that complicates how terms like din are taken to be a core part of Muslim geographies. Second, I ask how we are to understand the ‘Muslim’ of Muslim geographies. Our answer to that question has consequences for how we understand our categories of practice and analysis.

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Can Muslims Drink? Rumi Vodka, Persianate Ideals, and the Anthropology of Islam

Arab

2022

Comp Stud Soc Hist

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Shahab Ahmed’s What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (2016) challenges Islamic Studies scholars, (art) historians, and anthropologists to reconsider theoretical frameworks underpinning historical and ethnographic research. This article addresses Ahmed’s concerns that studies of Islam often conceptually privilege orthodoxy, by including drinking and intoxication as worthy of close attention in examining the history and the anthropology of Islam. The case of Wine Shop the Philosopher, run by a former Afghan refugee in The Hague and Amsterdam, is presented after establishing the comparative and interdisciplinary relevance of alcohol consumption in studies of Islam and Muslims. Ahmed’s conceptual framework is used and assessed in comparison with the wine shops’ contemporary pluralist reality by exploring the idealized boundaries of Persianate culture and Islam in dialogues between Persian-speaking interlocutors. It is argued that alcoholic drinks lend themselves to competing gastro-nationalisms and prompt ethnolinguistic tensions between and within groups with Turkish, Moroccan, Iranian, and Afghan backgrounds in the Netherlands. The focus on diverse, coexisting and clashing drink regimes, in conclusion, allows us to deconstruct dichotomies between sober Muslims and European drinkers, African and Asian believers and European unbelievers, and refugees and citizens.

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An Islam of One's Own

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver

Conjunctions of Islam: rethinking the geographies of art and piety through the notebooks of Ahmet Süheyl Ünver

Languages of din: Place, history, and paths

Can Muslims Drink? Rumi Vodka, Persianate Ideals, and the Anthropology of Islam

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