Archive for April, 2020

BIRD Director Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei wins Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award

17 April 2020 – Yesterday, BIRD Director of Advocacy Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei was awarded an Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Award for his tireless campaigning for human rights in Bahrain. The prestigious award comprises a year-long fellowship with Index to help winners “maximise their impact, broaden their support and ensure they continue to excel…

For BIRD Weekly 267, click here.

1.The Summer Institute for Languages of the Muslim World (SILMW) is an annual intensive language program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We invite students to join the 9% of Americans who choose the unique and meaningful experience of learning a Less Commonly Taught Language (LCTL).  We believe that learning these languages will allow students to gain new global perspectives and set them apart as highly qualified individuals for international work and engagement.  Many of these languages can assist students in securing international positions in governmental, development, and academic sectors.

This summer SILMW will take place from June 15 to August 8, 2020, and we will be offering Arabic, Persian, Swahili, Turkish, and Wolof.  The program is 8 weeks and is divided into two, 4-week semesters. The institute will be offered in an online format, consisting of activities such as language practice, conversation tables, movie nights, and more!

When you complete the program, not only will you be able to hold a conversation in a new language and have earned up to 10 credits, you will have had fun!

For more information, visit our website at https://linguistics.illinois.edu/languages/summer-institute-languages-muslim-world.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at silmw@illinois.edu.  We hope to see you this summer!

Staff for Less Commonly Taught Languages Program

Department of Linguistics
University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
silmw@illinois.edu

2. Expressing Islam in a New Creative Space Online
6 May 2020, AKU-ISMC

The final lecture in the series “Recognising Islam in Europe and North America” that presents exciting research on Muslim contexts in Europe and North America. The series focuses on issues relating to Muslim agency, creativity and strivings. What engages people and drives them to find new directions? The series challenges conventional narratives about Islam in Europe and North America by providing stimulating, new perspectives based on recent and ongoing research.

Time and Venue
Wednesday 6 May 2020, 18.00-19.30
Online

Booking
This event is free but booking is essential:
To attend online, please click here

3. Columbia’s summer Persian language courses will also now be moving online.

See: https://summer.sps.columbia.edu/courses/summer-courses/middle-eastern-south-asian-and-african-studies

4. Online course on Mawlana Rumi

A new educational platform is now live, and ready to receive you and your students: Illuminated Courses.
https://www.illuminatedcourses.com

The first course is recorded, online, and open for registration: “The Heart of Rumi’s Poetry”

https://www.illuminatedcourses.com/theheartofrumispoetry

This is a chance to see Rumi in his full context, as a Persian-speaking Muslim sage drawing richly from the Qur’an and the being of the Prophet, and the teachings of the centuries of Muslim poets and sages who came before him.   If you have always wanted to see an aesthetically rich model of Islamic spirituality centered around Rumi’s teachings and poetry, this is for you!

The “Heart of Rumi’s Poetry” course contains all the material you and your students will need:   Twelve lessons, providing seven hours of video-based instructions for you and them to watch at your own pace.   The focus is on Rumi’s Masnavi.

The lectures are pre-recorded and loaded online, so one could start the class at any point, and would have three months to go through the lectures.    We are hoping to add three live classes in beginning and end of May and June to help answer questions, etc.

5. Hunter College will be offering Arabic 101 and 102, and Modern Palestinian Culture online this summer. Students do not have to be in New York to take these courses.

Please forward this e-mail your colleagues and students, and if there are any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, or have your students contact me at aelinson@hunter.cuny.edu

Classes will be taught remotely.

Students who are not CUNY students will apply to Hunter College as non-degree students. Applications are being processed within 24-48 hours. Information on that can be found here: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/admissions/admissions-information/non-degree

Tuition and fees information can be found here: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/onestop/finances/bursar/tuition-and-fees-information

Khomeini and Muḥammad al-Shīrāzī: Revisiting the Origins of the “Guardianship of the Jurisconsult” (wilāyat al-faqīh)

Abstract This article revisits the origins of Khomeini’s concept of the guardianship of the jurisconsult ( wilāyat al-faqīh ) and argues that his own formulation of this concept needs to be embedded in debates around the clerical mandate in the state among clerical activists in Iraq he encountered during his exile.

Journal of the Contemporary Study of Islam

Guest Editor: Cameron Zargar, University of Exeter The Journal of the Contemporary Study of Islam invites articles for a special issue related to the theme of ” Marja’iyya and Society.” We encourage submissions that engage with how the marāji”s fatwas help shape and are shaped by Twelver Shī’ī communities.

Profiles in Persecution: Abdulla Habib Swar – Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain

Abdulla was a student and a football player for Al-Shabab Club when he was arrested in 2019, after authorities pursued him for six years for his participation in the peaceful protest and religious events demanding democracy in 2013. Since his arrest, Abdulla has been tortured and convicted in unfair trials; …

For ADHRB Weekly Newsletter 343, click here.

The Struggle for the Soul of Twelver Shiʿism in Qajar Iran

Abstract From the 1770s onwards, there was a struggle for the soul of Shiʿism in Iran – a struggle over what the true nature of religion should be. On one side was the dominant Uṣūlī religious hierarchy, focused on the Shariʿa and asserting that its rationalist methodology was the path to true knowledge.

1.Workshop on “Cinema & Islam – How Filmmaking Shapes Islam and How Islam Shapes Filmmaking”, Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, London, 12 June 2020

The workshop examines the ways in which filmmakers explore Islam as a human and historical phenomenon characterized and constituted, not merely by immense variety and diversity, but by the prodigious presence of outright contradiction shaped by Muslims and Non-Muslims.

Information: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/5856093/call-paper-creative-work-cinema-islam-how-filmmaking-shapes

2. BRISMES Annual Conference 2020: “Knowledge, Power and Middle Eastern Studies”, University of Kent, Canterbury, 29 June – 1 July 2020

In light of the rapidly-evolving public health situation connected to the COVID-19 outbreak, the BRISMES Annual Conference (29 June – 1 July 2020) has been postponed until 2021.

http://www.brismes.ac.uk/conference/postponed-brismes/

3. 49^th Annual Conference of the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS): “Diverse Approaches to Qur’anic Studies in the Western Academy”, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 25 September 2020

Papers might address the following questions: What Determines the Course Outline for Qur’anic Studies in the Western Academy and the Curricula for Qur’anic Studies in Muslim-Majority Nations? What Roles do Social Media Platforms Play in Understanding the Qur’an? How has Digitization of Texts Affected the Field of Qur’anic Studies? Etc.

Deadlines for abstracts: 20 April 2020. Information: https://naaims.org/

4. International Conference: “Musical Sources and Theories from Ancient Greece to the Ottoman Period”, Ruhr-University Bochum, 19-21 November 2020

Papers will focus on Arabic, Persian and Byzantine music theory, instruments and ways of transmission, with their roots in Ancient Greece and an outlook onto Ottoman and Safavid music. We encourage especially early career researchers to send their proposals.

Information: https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/orient/aktuelles/index.html

5. Various Grants of the Istanbul Research Institute

The grants are offered for researchers working on projects related to its departments of Byzantine, Ottoman, Atatürk and Republican-Era studies, and its “Istanbul and Music” Research Program, including grants for PhD projects as well as travel und conference grants.

Deadline for applications: 11 May 2020. Information: https://en.iae.org.tr/Grants/18

6. PhD in History at Koç University in Istanbul

The History PhD program seeks to provide students with a strong grounding in the advanced study of history, especially in Ottoman history and the following areas: the Arab World (Greater Syria and Egypt), Europe (East and Southeast Europe including Russia and the former Soviet Union), the Eastern Mediterranean, and Turkey.

Deadline for application: 29 May 2020. Information: https://gsssh.ku.edu.tr/en/academics/history/program-overview/

7. CALL FOR PAPERS International Journal of Islamic Architecture (IJIA)

Special Issue: “Hinterland Forces: Architectural Responses at the Margins”

Thematic volume planned for July 2022

Abstract submission deadline: 15 June 2020

The hinterland is a realm beyond the known, beyond the confines of the urban core, or beyond the acceptable iterations of religious praxis, cultural identity, political affiliation, and ways of being. The hinterland is a notional locale and a physical one, operating as a geographical reference, a spatial designator, and a conceptual frame. Those who stray or are forced into hinterland spaces may be at the frontiers of new thought, interactions, and technologies, but they are also at the margins. In current parlance, “marginality” describes a state that is the result of societal conditions that should be ameliorated. In other words, those at the centre (of power, urbanisation, settlement, scholarship, education, religious decision making, economic stability, etc.) have superior resources to those on the margins and may even be the source and cause of their peripheralisation. The marginalised may face state and societal pressure to conform or face punitive actions, including physical relocation, or the loss of access to important shrines, prayer spaces, schools, and other resources including hospitals, banks, and government offices. The architectures of persecuted, disadvantaged, and vulnerable people showcase unique adaptive strategies, which, in the writings of French thinker Michel de Certeau, reflect “tactics” that co-exist with the long-term and therefore spatially entrenched “strategies” of those in power (de Certeau, 1984).

This special issue of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture invites papers on architectural responses at the margins, including examinations of the forces that create the hinterland categories of marginalisation, the tactical approaches of the marginalised, and the strategic efforts to destroy sites, limit spatial agency and access, and control people. We particularly welcome papers on regions and communities not widely covered in the published record of Islamic architectures, sites and responses, including but not limited to western and coastal China, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. The margins are in constant flux; this is both the result of and cause for outright conflict and restrictive policies. Indeed, scholarly emphasis is sometimes determined by the accessibility of study sites and regions. Subjects that may exist beyond the traditional scholarly scope of the field and outside what is often considered the geographical heartland of the Islamic world, and work on those living at the extremities of cultural and doctrinal expectations for communities entrenched in either predominantly Muslim or majority non-Muslim surroundings are also welcome.

In the Islamic context, marginalization creates specific architectural responses that are often dynamic, transient, temporary, mobile, or executed in an everyday/vernacular idiom. Whether these are the mosques of the Uyghur minority in western China, the prayer rooms of Muslim students in Latin American universities, or the schools and dormitories of the recently besmirched Hizmet movement in Turkey, these sites and the people that make, care for, and use them are frequently at risk. Built environments made marginal, or made by or for the marginalised, can draw the ire of the central power structure, even long after the historical period of their construction. The iconoclastic destruction of shrines and manuscripts in Timbuktu, Mali in 2012 is a case in point. In other contexts, such buildings may escape the notice of those expecting “mainstream” approaches to religious and social life by providing hidden congregational spaces and sanctuaries for the people and activities within.

A number of historical Muslim communities formed on the outer reaches of the early Islamic world. Muslims settled seasonally and permanently along Chinese and Southern African coastal cities, on islands and peninsulas in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, and on the frontiers of sub Saharan trade routes, bringing Islamic beliefs and practices with them. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the move from empires to nation states, the end of colonial rule, and shifting sources of international financing have created heretofore unknown categories for people and their architectures in marginal zones. Social theories of the dichotomies between steppe and savannah, rural and urban, nomadic and settled, centre and periphery have been used as a framework for many historical studies. Yet, dynamic forces persistently cause people to interact and to intertwine their lives, so that populations grow and change. Ideas about “purity” in race, religious heritage, practice and behavior in Islamic society deny the social realities of the hinterland. Language, cuisine, doctrine, the use of space, and design preferences at the margins take on new aspects precisely because they are subject to hinterland forces. These innovations and adaptations are not always accepted by the broader community, or are seen as a threat by those in power.

Studies which examine the impacts of disenfranchisement and the structural conditions that lead to marginalization have strong applications in policy development. In the Islamic context, people on the margins may not fit societal expectations, may have made intentional moves to live outside the “centre,” or may have been forced into the hinterland by their governments, religious leaders, or neighbours. While the role of architecture is not typically central to these discussions, architecture is a significant marker of marginalisation. Social issues, political shifts, neoliberal policies, and transnational design questions are at the forefront of the contemporary built environment, and some aspects of design have abetted the creation of new margins. The term “Islamic” can be used to regulate and restrict design projects, a strategy that is emerging as states with Muslim governance are reacting against international policies and perceived amorality and heterodoxies.

Architectural technologies and media for monitoring spatial change are being used by scholars and activists to assemble data on the destruction of buildings, the movement of people, the shifting of boundaries, and the eradication of ecosystems. Open-source collaborations are positioning architectural approaches at the forefront of hinterland analysis, and while digital reporting once provided a kind of shield for those seeking to disseminate critical examinations of refugee landscapes, crimes against the vulnerable, and spaces of contention, activists and scholars of the marginalised are no longer beyond the surveillance of authorities who may detain, question, and deny them the ability to obtain travel papers and entry visas.

This special issue encourages case studies of architectural forces that have impacted people by relocating them to hinterland positions or emphasising their marginalisation, as well as architectures created, utilized, and envisioned by marginalised groups within the Islamic context. The issue particularly welcomes: scholarship from disciplines and methodological approaches that posit new definitions of what constitutes architecture and space or of what makes architecture “Islamic”; studies that combine statistical analysis and architecture or offer policy assessments alongside architectural matters; positions beyond the design and history of architecture fields (geography, anthropology, religious studies, linguistics and religious studies, gender and children and youth studies, musicology, sociological disciplines, and others); analysis of design solutions for people at the margins; projects at the “academic margins” (reporting on lived experience, traditional teachings on the environment, journalism).

Questions that might be addressed by contributors to this special issue are unlimited but might include:

1. What means are available to investigate the palimpsest left behind by sites that existed for a brief time, were confiscated and converted for other uses, or were razed and removed from the record, even the record of community memory?
2. What is the relationship between state and ethnic geographical margins and groups that gravitate away from doctrinal centrality?
3. How have postcolonial and post-secular tendencies impacted the built environment of the hinterland?
4. What are the possible architecturally-rooted relationships between poverty, labour, impermanence and tenuousness, and marginalisation?
5. How do marginalised communities access emergency services or participate in state and international policy formation during a disease pandemic or a natural disaster? How do such communities cope with legal, health, and supply issues within their own sectors?
6. How do marginalised spaces function when ties are severed to the historical archive of buildings, documents, and oral histories?
7. How do the areligious and antireligious function in devout societies, and how are believers marginalised amongst non-practising communities?
8. How are new technologies used in capturing, recording, and disseminating information about and from the margins, including photographic methods, satellite mapping, social media, and open-source collaborations?
9. Why are some subjects more readily available in the published record or course offerings?
10. How does focusing linguistic training for researchers on Arabic and Persian, or emphasizing connections to what are frequently called the “central” Islamic lands, seemingly push western Chinese, Southeast Asian, Sub-Saharan African, Eastern European, and Latin American Islamic architectures to the hinterlands of the publishing and scholarly realms of Islamic fields? Furthermore, do conference topics, journal entries, the parameters for research grants, and the wording of job applications support or defy what lies on the margins?
11. How do the margins operate, conceptually and physically, to quarantine people to certain sites and spaces?

Articles offering historical and theoretical analysis (DiT papers) should be between 6000 and 8000 words, and those on design and practice (DiP papers) between 3000 and 4000 words. Practitioners are welcome to contribute insofar as they address the critical framework of the journal. Urbanists, art historians, anthropologists, geographers, political scientists, sociologists, and historians are also welcome. Please send a title and a 400-word abstract to the guest editor, Dr. Angela Andersen (angela.andersen.53@gmail.com), by 15 June 2020. Authors of accepted proposals will be contacted soon thereafter and will be requested to submit full papers by 30 January 2021. All papers will be subject to blind peer review. For author instructions, please consult: www.intellectbooks.com/ijia

1. University of Chicago Press posts this notice on its website: “all e-books on our site are immediately available for direct purchase at 30% off using the EBOOK30 code at checkout.” (https://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2020/03/31/a-message-from-university-of-chicago-press-director-garrett-kiely.html)

2. CfP: The First International Online Conference on “Ethics and Inclusive Disasters (Focusing on Coronavirus Disease)”

Faculty of Religious Studies of Shahid Beheshti University,Tehran,Iran July 6th, 2020

The first international academic conference on “Ethics and Inclusive Disasters (Focusing on Coronavirus Disease)” is an academic event in ethical/moral studies. The conference will be held online by Shahid Beheshti University, in Tehran, Iran. All accepted abstracts/ papers will be published after double-blind peer review. This conference has five main aims:

1) Analyzing religious and moral challenges caused by the spread of coronavirus disease

2) Strengthening social tolerance and soothing the community

3) Helping the country’s health system in crisis situations

4) Helping governmental institutions in controlling and guiding society in crisis situations

5) Analyzing the behaviors and religiosity of contemporary man in the post-corona period

Conference Topics:

1. a) Medical ethics and the challenges of coronavirus disease
2. b) Media ethics and inclusive disasters
3. c) Political ethics and the duties of governments in the face of inclusive disasters
4. d) Inclusive disasters and religious moral lifestyle
5. e) Socio-economic ethics and inclusive diseases

Important Dates:

Abstract submission deadline: May 4th, 2020.

Final paper submission deadline: June 19th, 2020.

Conference online holding date: July 6th, 2020.

Email: ayenehmarefat@sbu.ac.ir

Phone number: 021- 22431785

3. Manchester University Press offers free access to its digital content of over 1,600 eBooks and journals.
It can be accessed through this platform: https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/

4. Middle East History. Wesleyan University’s History Department invites applications for a visiting assistant professor to teach the history of the Middle East. The position will run from September 1, 2020 until May 31, 2021.

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis until the position is filled. Interviews for finalists will be conducted via Skype or Zoom.

https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=60079

5. The Department of History at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, invites applications for two full-time assistant professors in the field of History of Science.

The candidates’ research record and teaching should focus on one of the following fields:

• History of science in the Islamic world from the Medieval or Early-Modern to the Modern era;
• History of science in the Ottoman World from the Medieval or Early-Modern to the Modern era;
• History of science in Europe and the US from the Medieval or Early-Modern to the Modern era.

The deadline for submitting applications is May 7, 2020.

https://www.h-net.org/jobs/job_display.php?id=60078

6. AMECYS Call for Papers:

Graduate Student Paper Prize

Submissions deadline:  Friday, May 1, 2020

The Association of Middle East Children’s and Youth Studies (AMECYS) calls graduate students engaged in the study of children and youth in the region to submit their papers to the AMECYS graduate student paper prize.

Papers can be submitted in any capacity that aligns with AMECYS’ mission statement:

The AMECYS is a private, non-profit, international association for scholars with an interest in the study of children and youth in the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporic communities. Through interdisciplinary programs, publications, and services, AMECYS promotes innovative scholarship, facilitates global academic exchange, and enhances public understanding about Middle Eastern children and youth in diverse times and places. 

Requirements for submission:

• Papers should not exceed 7,500 (excluding bibliographies and endnotes)
• The paper should never have been submitted for publication
• The format needs to include: Standard font, Double-spaced, 1” margins, IJMES standards for endnotes and transliteration
• Registered member of AMECYS
• Proof of registered graduate student enrolment for the 2019-2020 academic year may be requested at a later date

Send submissions as a pdf or word doc to Dylan.baun@uah.edu.

The AMECYS program chair and one other AMECYS board member will review all papers submitted by members of AMECYS that are received by the deadline of Friday, May 1.

For any queries, email AMECYS program chair at dylan.baun@uah.edu.

7. CFP: Catastrophes and Memory (500-1500 CE), 4th Edinburgh Conference in Late Antique, Islamic, and Byzantine Studies 19-20 November 2020

Disasters (natural, manmade or “supernatural”) shape historical memory and our understanding of the past. This conference focuses on the problematic relations between catastrophes and memory in Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine societies. Memory plays a crucial role in the way events are perceived, understood and narrated by different groups and elites: locals might see the conquest of their city as a catastrophe, while the conquerors portray the same as glorious or divinely inspired.We invite papers and posters that address issues and questions including, but not limited to:

• Natural/environmental: Plagues, earthquakes, famines/droughts, floods, fires,climate change
• Socio-cultural/linguistic: Iconoclasm, artistic and urban disruption/renewal, cultural vandalism, translation movements, language death and breaks in literary tradition
• Political/military: Conquests, coups, sieges, wars, revolts, revolutions, civil wars, usurpations, succession crises and religious/ “holy” wars (Crusade/Jihad)
• Religious: Heresies, schisms, theological or dogmatic conflict, new religions, apocalyptic traditions and eschatology
• Memory “devices” and strategies:How do memories of catastrophes manifest themselves in material culture, texts, images and other different sources? Where do we see evidence of intentional forgetting?
• Comparative/Interdisciplinary: Elites versus non-elite memory of catastrophes; geographical (Mediterranean and Eurasia); temporal (500-1500CE)
• The role of the 21st century cultural historian: What is and should be modern scholars’ role in situating catastrophe?

This conference will be hosted by the Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Society of the University of Edinburgh on November 19-20, 2020 in Edinburgh.We welcome papers and posters from postgraduate students and early career researchers from all disciplines with an interest in Late Antique, Islamic or Byzantine studies.

Papers: Presentation is 20 minutes in length, delivered in English.

Posters:Participants will present their research at a poster session. Dimensions should not exceed 70cm (width) x 100cm (height) and posters must be printed and brought by the author.We strongly encourage undergraduate, masters and first-year PhD students to summit posters of their dissertations or research.

To apply, please respond with an e-mail including whether you hope to present a paper or poster, an abstract of no more than 300 words, and a small academic biography of no more than 120 words to edibyzpg@ed.ac.uk.

The deadline for submitting papers and posters is June 15, 2020.

Registration Fees:

Students speakers: £15 before September 15, 2020; £20 after

Non-Students speakers: £35 before September 15, 2020; £40 after

(fee includes lunch both days)

We will publish a selection of the papers in a peer-reviewed volume that will bring together the strongest contributions in each area to produce an edited volume of high-quality, deep coherence and rich variety.

Any questions please address to edibyzpg@ed.ac.uk

From Attachment to a Sacred Figure to Loyalty to a Sacred Route: The Walking Pilgrimage of Arbaeen

Around 20 million Shia pilgrims shape one of the world’s biggest pilgrimages in Iraq, called “Arbaeen,” many of whom walk long distances to Karbala city as a part of the ritual every year.