Islam, politics, anthropology

Soares, Benjamin F.; Osella, Filippo

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2009.01539.x

Cited by 99 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 136 publications

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“…Yet this is precisely what two recent anthropological collections on politics and Islam in South Asia and the Muslim world achieve. With a brief nod to 9/11 in their introductions, the articles in the two special issues, though excellent in their detailed scholarship as Spencer points out (see Osella and Osella 2008;Soares and Osella 2009), nevertheless convey the sense that anthropologists are living in a bubble in which geopolitical conflicts do not register or even exist.…”

Section: Replymentioning

confidence: 96%

Notes from a Small Place

Werbner¹

2010

Current Anthropology

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Can there be an engaged public anthropology of global Islamic terror? Arguably, anthropology was not meant to be a study of clandestine networks or unreachable social groups secretly plotting sudden cataclysmic international crises. These days, anthropologists study societies in motion and, increasingly, the impact of a global media and global economic events on local communities. In order to comprehend these, our conceptual tools have had to be stretched beyond their original limits in the study of small-scale societies. Yet our ethnographic mediations still start from the bottom-from the small places where we do our ordinary, quotidian research. This includes, as in my own work, the study of religious mobilization and social movements, radical religious rhetoric, and ontologies of religious nationalism as they are inflected and moved by mediated global crises. Importantly, also, anthropologists have studied and continue to study violence: in the face of civil war or the fallout from global and state terror, they have contributed evocatively to an understanding of the sufferings and force of memory of ordinary citizens, the victims of such crises, and the activism of human

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Section: Replymentioning

confidence: 96%

Notes from a Small Place

Werbner¹

2010

Current Anthropology

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“…By listening to cassette sermons and discussing them, for instance, lay Muslims in Cairo create their own 'ethics of listening' while facilitating the emergence of new discursive practices to reinterpret Islamic tradition (Hirschkind 2006). Yet the reification of ethical personhood may lead to a portrayal of these Contemporary South Asia 415 individuals as detached from the wider political contexts, untouched by personal contradictions and lacking in self-reflexivity (Soares and Osella 2009;Marsden 2009). The vast majority of young working-class Lahoris with whom I worked do not participate in institutionalized movements for moral improvement, but nevertheless spend much time talking about the Prophet, the Imams and their personal difficulty in becoming accomplished Muslims.…”

Section: P Rolliermentioning

confidence: 98%

Texting Islam: Text messages and religiosity among young Pakistanis

Rollier

2010

Contemporary South Asia

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Among the urban Pakistani youth, SMS texts have become of critical importance in mediating religious and aesthetic sensations in unexpected domains of everyday life. Although grounded in a distinct valuation of the moral bearing of language upon individuals, texting religious messages is not simply a new way of pursuing a 'traditional' form of sociality. Texting reactivates religious texts with an unprecedented immediacy, and facilitates the expression of playfulness and visceral matters, empathy, humour and admonitions to embrace religious righteousness. This entanglement of discordant aspirations leads to a greater visibility of Islam, but does not suggest the emergence of a deliberative space. For this mediation is also about instigating affective responses that can unsettle the moral consistency advocated in religious SMSs. I argue that this ludic gesture orientated towards the restoration of Islamic morality introduces immediacy and circulation as critical parameters in the appreciation of authentic and effectual Islamic knowledge.

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“…Recent anthropological debates have focused on the significance of piety by considering its micro and macro manifestations in the public sphere of Muslim societies. The works of Mahmood (2005), Marsden (2005), Soares andOsella (2009), Schielke (2009), and Deeb (2011) delineate the notions of piety and its relevance in daily life of Muslims around the world. Mahmood (2005) views growing personal and public expressions of piety in Muslim societies as ethical self-fashioning; whereby pious Muslims create coherence in their daily lives through opting for an ethical disposition that doesn't have to belong to any Islamic revival movement necessarily or attempt to challenge western modernity.…”

Section: Problematising the Anthropological Approach On Piety In Muslmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In case of British Shia Muslims, the public sphere effectively becomes a monopoly of reformist ulama and activists. Soares and Osella (2009) argue that the emphasis on ethical self-fashioning in anthropological debates about piety have an inherent tendency to ignore or overlook macro-politics within and around Muslim societies. Both argue that neither reducing the relationship between politics and Islam to the epiphenomenon of Islam nor associating piety-mindedness of Muslims to their ethical self-disposition is helpful in understanding how Islam is lived by Muslims (12).…”

Section: Problematising the Anthropological Approach On Piety In Muslmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living a piety-led life beyond Muharram: becoming or being a South Asian Shia Muslim in the UK

Dogra

2019

Cont Islam

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Reformist British South Asian Twelver Shia Muslims emphasise practising Shia Islam in daily life beyond the month of Muharram by living a piety-led life; they encourage their followers to 'become' a Shia Muslim rather than just 'being' one. The reformist British South Asian Shia ulama, mostly trained in Shia seminaries based in Qom and Najaf, advocate the adoption of an Islamic life-style compatible with the economic, political and social challenges British Muslims face. Many British South Asian Shia Muslims view these piety narratives with contempt. They consider that the narratives on living a piety-led life privilege Islamic lifestyle like praying and reciting the Qur'an daily over Muharram ritual commemorations. These Shia Muslims see the growing popularity of piety-narrative as an apologetic response by Shia reformists to the growing influence of Salafis and the Tablighi Jamaat in Sunni Muslim public spheres. This paper is based on nine months of ethnographic fieldwork among British South Asian Twelver Shia Muslims in London, Birmingham and Bradford. The centrality of commemorating Muharram rituals in Shia Islam becomes contested when reformist Shia Muslims extend the piety-led lifestyle beyond the month of Muharram. This article revisits the anthropological lens of iltizam (commitment) in available studies on piety among Muslim communities. Thus, iltizam for the reformists and religiously upwardly mobile Shia Muslims means subscribing to a globally standardised interpretation of practising Shia Islam that compliments the aspirations of Iran-based Shia religious establishment. For other Shia Muslims, iltizam with Shia Islam is in (i) reenacting the continuity of South Asian ways of commemorating Muharram ritual in Britain and, (ii) opposing the Wahhabi trends in Shia Islam that are endorsed and encouraged by reformist British South Asian Shia Muslims.

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Islam, politics, anthropology

Cited by 99 publications

References 136 publications

Notes from a Small Place

Notes from a Small Place

Texting Islam: Text messages and religiosity among young Pakistanis

Living a piety-led life beyond Muharram: becoming or being a South Asian Shia Muslim in the UK

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