Categories : Field-specific (academic)

Consejo Ibero-Safavid de Estudios Históricos. International Conference. MISSIONARIES IN THE SAFAVID WORLD

Shi’i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa

Mara A. Leichtman offers an in-depth study of Shi‘i Islam in two very different communities in Senegal: the well-established Lebanese diaspora and Senegalese “converts” from Sunni to Shi‘i Islam of recent decades. Sharing a minority religious status in a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, each group is cosmopolitan in its own way. Leichtman provides new insights into the everyday lives of Shi‘i Muslims in Africa and the dynamics of local and global Islam. She explores the influence of Hizbullah and Islamic reformist movements, and offers a corrective to prevailing views of Sunni-Shi‘i hostility, demonstrating that religious coexistence is possible in a context such as Senegal.

The book should be available at the discounted conference rate for those attending MESA.

Panel 2015 MESA annual Meeting, Nov 21-24, Denver, Colorado, USA
P4110] Rethinking Muharram: Shi’i Muslim Minorities and the Politics of Ashura Performances

Texts, Interpretation and Commemorating Imām Husayn. by El-Karanshawy, Samer
The Green Ashura: urban space, ritual, and post-election Iran by Rahimi, Babak
The ‘Africanization’ of Ashura in Senegal by Leichtman, Mara
Muharram Rituals and the Making of British Shi’ism by Spellman, Kathryn

SUMMARY:
The first ten days of the month of Muharram (known as Ashura) are often taken as an essential cultural paradigm for Shi’i Islam by academics and by Shi’i Muslims themselves. Mourning performances revolve around the story of the battle of Karbala (680 CE). In this Iraqi desert field, Husayn, Prophet Muhammad’s grandson, along with his followers, died a martyr’s death by the army of Umayyad caliph Yazid (who ruled from 680-683). For Shi’a, remembering Karbala has served as a basic metaphor upon which many beliefs, worldviews, and ritual performances are based. The commemorative ceremonies have been used to affirm communal solidarity and express political, ideological, and social relationships and identities in shifting historical contexts. These ritual performances are also strategic in that they seek to affirm control of a community’s situation and flexibly reinvent rituals as ongoing processes to accommodate various ideas, symbols, and practices in culturally defined contexts.

This panel explores the creative ways Shi’i communities from various ethnic, racial, and national backgrounds use Muharram discourses and practices to further ethnic/nationalist goals, and to negotiate their identity in the context of shifting state-society relations. Such performances are studied here as new ways of commemorating Muharram that entail transgressive features yet remain conservative to affirm social solidarity and bring minority communities more visibility in society. In particular, we examine Shi’i Muharram rituals that do not conform to “official” models of religious action and yet promote Shi’i identity in terms of authenticity and appeal to “traditions.” In certain contexts, however, Ashura may challenge colonial or state hegemony, serve as expressions of self-revival, or as a means of displaying communal identity in a multicultural state.

Panel presenters expand on Muharram practices across the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Ashura commemorations in Lebanon are analyzed as texts, open for interpretation and variability. Similarly, Ashura manifestations in Iran, shortly after the “Green Revolution” contesting the disputed 2009 elections, are examined in terms of carnivaleque theatricality and use of city space. In West Africa, Senegalese Shi’a do not participate in Muharram performances typical in the Middle East, but organize conferences on religious debates inclusive of the Sufi Muslim majority. In Britain, Shi’i youth use Ashura to contest the older generation and assert themselves within larger transnational Islamic movements and British secular space. Throughout all four papers, themes of Ashura performance as local political intervention permeate, regardless of Shi’i majority, Shi’i minority, or Shi’i diaspora contexts.

For full details on the MESA meeting and other panels see http://mesana.org/annual-meeting/

The Alawis of Syria | Hurst Publishers

AMI Research Seminars:

5th November 2015 – Dr. Farhana Mayer (Independent Scholar)
“Exegesis, ontological hierarchy and spiritual alchemy: the hermeneutical matrix of the Ja`fari comments in Sulami’s (d.1021) Haqa’iq al-tafsir” (click for abstract)

17th December 2015 – Dr Chris Allen (University of Birmingham)
‘Understanding Islamophobia in Today’s Britain: manifestations and responses?’

14th January 2015 – Dr Seyfeddin Kara (Durham University)
“Suppression of Ali ibn Abi Talib’s Codex”

Seminars commence at 3:00pm and are open to all. For more details, abstracts or to register, please visit: http://www.almahdi.edu/research/seminars

Al-Mahdi Institute
60 Weoley Park Road
Selly Oak
Birmingham
B29 6RB

www.almahdi.edu

The Shias of Pakistan | Hurst Publishers

How Angel Gabriel Became Our Brother of the Hereafter (On the Question of Ismaili Influence on Alevism)

This article attempts to analyse Alevi cosmology within heterodox Islamic tradition. The main primary source is a recording made in 2009 in Istanbul. The Alevi creation myth (told by a 92-year-old man from the Dersim [Tunceli] region) offers a remarkable combination of symbols and an interpretation of why mankind was created. The role Archangel Gabriel fulfils from the beginning to the creation of the first man, and the notion of ‘looking for a second one’ as the cause of creation, are the most striking features of this myth. The story has given me the opportunity to explore the cosmological views of certain Shi’i sects. Interesting parallels with the cosmological speculations of Ismailis cannot be underestimated. The Alevi studies mainly focus on the period after the thirteenth century. Analysis of this creation myth, on the other hand, in which Archangel Gabriel plays the leading role, leads us, at least on theological matters, to reconsider the formation and circulation of ‘heretical’ ideas from the tenth to the thirteenth century in the Middle East in general and in Seljuk realms in particular.

Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions Edited by Christian Lange, University of Utrecht
Leiden: Brill, 2015

Available open access, as noted in a previous mailing, this volume has 2 articles of potential interest to this list:

11 ‘Ismaʿili-Shiʿi Visions of Hell: From the “Spiritual” Torment of the Fāṭimids to the Ṭayyibī Rock of Sijjīn’
Daniel De Smet

13 ‘Curse Signs: The Artful Rhetoric of Hell in Safavid Iran’
Christiane Gruber

CASAW – CASAW Seminars – Mini-series on Shi`i/Sunni conflict during the Autumn, 2015 semester

Call for Papers

Conference on

“Shia Minorities in the Contemporary World: Migration, Transnationalism and Multilocality”

University of Chester, Chester (UK), 20-21 May 2016

Global migrations flows in the 20th century have seen the emergence of Muslim diaspora and minority communities in Europe, North America and Australia. In addition to these new Muslim presences in the global “West”, there have been, since the late 19th century, migration flows from the Middle East (Lebanon and Syria in particular) to South America and West Africa. Likewise, South Asian Muslims settled in East and South Africa in the 19th century. While there is a growing body of research on these Muslim minorities in various regional contexts, the particular experiences of Shia Muslim minorities across the globe has only received scant attention.

As “a minority within a minority”, Shia Muslims face the double-challenge of maintaining an Islamic as well as a particular Shia identity in terms of communal activities, practices, public perception and recognition. Often coming from minority contexts of marginalisation and discrimination, their experience of migration and settlement in other parts of the world, whether enforced or voluntary, is often different from those of other Muslim immigrants. The rich tradition of Shia ritual practices and the authority structures specific to different forms of Shia Islam likewise shape the post-migratory minority experience of Shia.

The conference will bring together researchers working on Shia minorities outside of the so-called “Muslim heartland” (North Africa, Middle East, Central and South Asia). The conference will focus on Shia minorities in Europe, North and South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia, the Pacific Rim and East Asia that emerged out of migration from the Middle East and South Asia in the 20th and 21st centuries, in particular. The papers presented at the conference will offer unique comparative insights into Shia minorities in a variety of contexts across the globe.

Paper proposal can address but are not limited to the following topics:

– dynamics between centre and periphery in global Shia Islam
– multilocality and transnationalism of global Shia networks
– transnational impact of events in the Middle East on post-migratory Shia minority communities
– institutionalisation and organisation of post-migratory Shia minorities
– public representation and perception of post-migratory Shia minorities and their interaction with state and majority-societies
– sectarianism and Sunni-Shia relations in minority contexts
– gender and generational dynamics within post-migratory Shia minorities
– ritual practices and their adaptation in post-migratory minority contexts
– adaptation of legal practices and legal reforms in minority contexts
– role of clerical authority and leadership (whether transnational or local) in Shia minority contexts

Key note speakers:

Prof Liyakat Takim, McMasters University, Canada

Dr Sabrina Mervin, L’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris / Centre Jacques Berque, Rabat

Dr Mara Leichtman (Michigan State University) will launch her book Shi‘i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015) at the conference.

The conference is organised by the new Chester Centre for Islamic Studies and held in conjunction with a research project on transnational Shia networks that operate between Britain and the Middle East, funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. A limited number of travel bursaries is available for PhD students and early career researchers whose paper proposals are accepted. The publication of a selection of papers in an edited volume is also planned.

The deadline for abstract submission is 15 December 2015. Abstracts of up to 300 words and a short bio of (up to 200 words) should be sent in MS Word format as an email attachment to ccis@chester.ac.uk. Notifications of acceptance of papers will be sent out by 20 January 2016. Early career researchers should indicate whether they would like to receive a travel bursary when submitting the abstract.

Presentations of papers should be 15 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussions. Full papers should not exceed 8,000 words, including references and footnotes, and should be submitted, in full, prior to the conference by 1 May 2016.

For general enquiries, email Prof Oliver Scharbrodt, Director of Chester Centre for Islamic Studies, o.scharbrodt@chester.ac.uk.

Timeline:
Abstract submission: 15 December 2015
Notification of acceptance: 20 January 2016
Full paper submission: 1 May 2016
Conference: 20-21 May 2016