All posts by tabsir

Marranci on the Anthropology of Islam

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Note: The following is an excerpt from Gabriele Marranci’s latest book, The Anthropology of Islam (Oxford: Berg, 2008), which is well worth reading for insights on previous ethnographic study of Islam and guidelines for current research.

Books and ‘how-to’ guides about anthropological fieldwork are increasing in number within publishers’ catalogues. Among this large production, it is unusual to find even even chapters addressing the experience of conducting fieldwork among Muslim societies and communities. In the few cases in which some examples have been provided, they describe and discuss what I call ‘exotic’ fieldwork. Even less available is material containing reflections on the impact and issues that an anthropologist may face in conducting fieldwork within Muslim communities, in the west and in Islamic countries, during this endless ‘war on terror’. In this chapter, I have tried to start a reflection and discussion on what it means to conduct fieldwork among Muslims today. In doing so, I have provided examples from the experience of some anthropologists as well as my own. I have suggested that at the centre of a contemporary anthropology of Islam should be the human being even before the Muslim. This is vital if we wish to overcome a certain Orientalism and suppression of self-represented identities, as we can observe in classic works, from Geertz to Rabinow and Gellner. Continue reading Marranci on the Anthropology of Islam →

Misreading the Arab Media

Film and Video, Journalism and Media, Languages

By LAWRENCE PINTAK, JEREMY GINGES and NICHOLAS FELTON, The New York Times, May 25, 2008

“ARABIC TV does not do our country justice,” President Bush complained in early 2006, calling it a purveyor of “propaganda” that “just isn’t right, it isn’t fair, and it doesn’t give people the impression of what we’re about.”

The president’s statement, along with the decision by the New York Stock Exchange to ban Al Jazeera’s reporters in 2003, is a prime example of how the Arab news media have been demonized since the 9/11 attacks. As a result, America has failed to make use of what is potentially one of its most powerful weapons in the war of ideas against terrorism.

For proof, in the last year we surveyed 601 journalists in 13 Arab countries in North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula. The results, to be published in The International Journal of Press/Politics in July, shatter many of the myths upon which American public diplomacy strategy has been based.

Rather than being the enemy, most Arab journalists are potential allies whose agenda broadly tracks the stated goals of United States Middle East policy and who can be a valuable conduit for explaining American policy to their audiences. Many see themselves as agents of political and social change who believe it is their mission to reform the antidemocratic regimes they live under. When asked to name the top 10 missions of Arab journalism, they cited political reform, human rights, poverty and education as the most important issues facing the region, trumping Palestinian statehood and the war in Iraq. Overwhelmingly, they wanted the clergy to stay out of politics. And, aside from the ever-present issue of Israel, they ranked “lack of political change” alongside American policy as the greatest threats to the Arab world.

Though many Arab journalists dislike the United States government, more than 60 percent say they have a favorable view of the American people. They just don’t believe the United States is sincere when it calls for Arab democratic reform or a Palestinian state, as President Bush did again this month in Egypt.

Make no mistake, the Arab press has many flaws, including being subject to state control; only 26 percent of our respondents said they felt their fellow Arab journalists “act professionally” and only 11 percent said they were truly independent in their work. Nevertheless, Arab news outlets are more powerful and free today than at any time in history. If the next administration is going to try to reach out to the Arab people, it won’t get far by blaming the messenger.

Lawrence Pintak is the director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo and the author of “Reflections in a Bloodshot Lens: America, Islam and the War of Ideas.” Jeremy Ginges is an assistant professor of psychology at the New School for Social Research. Nicholas Felton is a graphic designer in Brooklyn.

Comparative Islamic Studies

Gender and Sexuality, Qur'an

The latest issue (Vol 2, No 2, 2006) of Comparative Islamic Studies, edited by Brannon Wheeler, is now available online. The articles in this special issue all deal with Islam and gender. While the articles are by subscription or for purchase, the book reviews can be read for free. Here are the article abstacts.

“Traditional” exegeses of 4:34 by Karen Bauer

Abstract: The beginning of Qur’an 4:34 (Men are qawwāmūn over women, with what God has preferred some over others, and with what they spend of their wealth) is often taken to legislate men’s authority over women. But many questions remain about the history of interpretations of this verse. In what ways have interpretations developed through time? Do pre-modern interpretations of this verse resemble modern interpretations, and what do such resemblances say about the attitudes of the exegetes? And what are the methods that pre-modern and modern exegetes use to arrive at their interpretations?

One way of empirically examining the variety in the pre-modern heritage, the methods of the exegetes, and the use of the pre-modern heritage in modern discourse is through the genre of Qur’ān commentaries (tafsīr al-Qur’ān). This verse has always been a source of controversy: pre-modern exegeses of it are varied. In the first part of this paper, I explore some of the variations in the content and methods of pre-modern interpretation, focusing on the ways in which content and method developed through time. I argue that some of the variations in content between the earliest and later pre-modern exegeses may be due to development in the exegetes’ methods of writing exegesis.

Continue reading Comparative Islamic Studies →

Idolatrous Jews, Muhammadans, and Papists

Bible and Holy Land, Islam and Christianity, Islam in Europe, Islamic History, Islamophobia


The Ottoman army besieging Vienna (1529). Book Illustration, Nakkas Osman 1588.

The recent controversies over pastoral remarks that pit Christianity vs Islam, whether generated by Pope Benedict or McCain’s jeremiad-in-the-making over Rev. Parsley or Rev. Hagee’s hazardous raising of Hitler and the Holocaust to acts of divine retribution, are not unique. Interfaith harmony and ecumenical amenities have been the exception in a historical trajectory of damning the faith of the other in both monotheisms, not to mention how Judaism has been denigrated as well. An earlier reform-minded Protestant had reason to fear Muslim Ottoman Turks, who had invaded Christian dominions in Europe and who had attracted more than a fair share of converts. A little more than a decade after Ottoman army besieged Vienna, Martin Luther wrote a preface to a German translation of the Quran. In this he targets “idolatrous Jews, Muhammadans and Papists” as instruments of the Devil, the kind of religious intolerance that easily spills over into the secular arena as ethnic hate bating.

Here is Luther’s “Preface to Bibliander’s Edition of the Qur’an” (1543):

Many persons have authored small tracts describing the rites, beliefs, and customs of Jews of this day for the very purpose of more easily refuting their manifest lies and exposed errors and ravings. There is no doubt that, when pious minds bring the testimony of the prophets to bear on the delusions and blasphemies of those people, they are greatly confirmed in faith and in love for the truth of the gospel and are fired with a righteous hatred of the perversity of the Jewish teachings. Continue reading Idolatrous Jews, Muhammadans, and Papists →

Hometown Baghdad

Film and Video, Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism and Media

Hometown Baghdad is an online web series about life in Baghdad. It tells the stories of three young Iraqis struggling to survive during the war.

The series premiered on March 19th 2007 and the final episode went live on June 17. All episodes are viewable here.

The series was acclaimed in press throughout the world. See the press page for more.

Hometown Baghdad was produced by global youth dialogue company, Chat the Planet. Find out more about Chat here.

Hijab Scene #7

Books You Should Read, Gender and Sexuality, Islamophobia, Poetry

by Mohja Kahf

No, I’m not bald under the scarf
No, I’m not from that country
where women can’t drive cars
No, I would not like to defect
I’m already American
But thank you for offering
What else do you need to know
relevant to my buying insurance,
opening a bank account,
reserving a seat on a flight?
Yes, I speak English
Yes, I carry explosives
They’re called words
And if you don’t get up
Off your assumptions
They’re going to blow you away.

From Mohja Kahf, E-Mails from Scheherazad (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), p. 39.

The State of Statements on the Islamic State

Islamic History, Islamic Law, Terrorism Issue

In the latest New York Review of Books, Malise Ruthven offers a cogent review of nine recent books about Islam and terrorism. Here is a brief excerpt about Noah Feldman’s The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State. Check out the online article for the full review.

Excerpt from Malise Ruthven, “The Rise of the Muslim Terrorists,” New York Review of Books, Volume 55, Number 9, May 29, 2008

Jihadis are not the only political activists seeking an Islamic state that will restore the Sharia—the holy law of Islam—to the position it held in pre-colonial times. In a short but masterful exposition, The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman seeks to answer a question that puzzles most Western observers: Why do so many Muslims demand the “restoration” of a legal system that most Occidentals associate with “medieval” punishments such as amputation for theft and stoning for sexual transgressions? What do they mean by, and expect from, an Islamic state?

Feldman’s analysis focuses on the crucial responsibility of the Ottoman state for the decline of the Sharia. Pre-modern Islamic societies were for the most part governed according to an informal division of authority between the military rulers (often outsiders such as the Mamelukes, recruited from warrior societies, which were far removed from Islam’s cultural centers) and the religiously trained class of legal scholars conversant with the law. The informal compact comparable to, but different from, the feudal arrangements in the West conferred legitimacy on the military men on condition that they upheld the authority of the scholars. The system of scholarly control over law encouraged “stability, executive restraint, and legitimacy.” Continue reading The State of Statements on the Islamic State →

For Israelis, an Anniversary. For Palestinians, a Nakba

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israel, Palestine

By ELIAS KHOURY, The New York Times, May 18, 2008

IN 1948, during the war known to the Israelis as the war of independence, the historian Constantine K. Zurayk wrote the book “Ma’na al-Nakba,” later translated as “The Meaning of the Disaster.” The title struck a resounding chord, and nakba (catastrophe) became the term Palestinians used for the cataclysm that befell them that year.

I always considered the word “catastrophe” inappropriate. It rendered the perpetrator anonymous, and it exempted the vanquished from bearing any responsibility for their defeat. Like many members of my generation, born around the time of the war, I tended to place the blame for our defeat on the traditional Palestinian leadership under the sway of the mufti of Jerusalem, and the Arab regimes of the day. Continue reading For Israelis, an Anniversary. For Palestinians, a Nakba →