Islam and the rural landscape: discourses of absence in west Wales

This paper explores the relationship between the presence and absence of Islamic communities in western Wales. Commencing with a discussion of the literatures on the geographies of Islam and rural exclusion, I argue that both sets have neglected research on rural religious communities. Discussion is centred upon the visual absence of Islam in the area, as local mosques are predominantly housed in contingent or non-purpose-built buildings. Using interview data, I examine the implications of these absences for local Muslims' experiences of rural landscapes, and discuss the juxtaposition between the visual absence of cultural indicators of Islam and the contingent strategies these communities employ to meet their religious needs. Adopting Nancy Fraser's concept of a subaltern counterpublic, I argue that the contingent presence in the landscape brings organisational possibilities. However, the lack of visibility of these counterpublics also brings challenges, fragmenting the community and creating difficulties for individuals to access particular services. This subterranean ontology has implications not only for liberal ideas of publicity and privacy, but also for inclusive citizenship in an era when debates about multiculturalism centre on accommodating religious needs.     

THE FERTILE DESERT: AGRICULTURE AND COPPER INDUSTRY IN EARLY ISLAMIC ARAVA (ARABAH)

Abstract

The Arava is an arid region in the Southern Levant. Archaeological excavations and surveys in the area revealed dense settlement and sophisticated technologies from the eighth to ninth centuries—qanat water technology and copper production. Differences between the data of the middle and southern Arava suggest two separated economic systems. While the Southern Arava seems to be primarily an industrial area of copper that delivered the raw material to Ayla, the middle Arava was mainly agricultural and may be connected to trade routes. Studying the farming conditions of this arid area points to date palms as the main crop of the agricultural settlement. However, it is not yet clear where the Arava's produce was exported.     

What is a Salafi Reformist?

Abstract

Tariq Ramadan is one of the most prominent and controversial Western Muslim political thinkers today. He has been called everything from a moderate liberal Muslim thinker to a radical Islamist in disguise. He calls himself a Salafi reformist. According to him, Salafi reformists read the sacred texts of Islam dynamically, using reason, and reject literalist readings. Yet Ramadan also calls Sayyid Qutb a Salafi reformist. The problem is that, by most accounts, Qutb is the quintessential radical Islamist. This raises the question of what Ramadan thinks actually makes someone a Salafi reformist, and what this can tell us about his political teaching. To answer this question, I put Ramadan and Qutb into conversation. I argue that, while Ramadan meets his own criteria for being a Salafi reformist, Qutb does not. I suggest some reasons why Ramadan may not share this view; his political theology tells a different story.     

Religion and Politics in Australia

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics in Australia has in the past been conditioned by the peculiarities of Australian history. Traditionally religion was related to issues of moral reformation and sectarianism. Changes in Australia over the past forty years have changed this relationship as the public role of religion has waned. In recent times there has been somewhat of a religious comeback in Australian public life. This has been related to a new style of Christian politics, the presence of two strong Church leaders, Cardinal George Pell and Archbishop Peter Jensen, the presence of Islam, the election of a committed Christian Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister and the continuing importance of Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) as a civil religion.     

Gibbon’s second trilogy: an introductory survey

This essay is speculative in character. It is the work of a historian who has completed a study, written on certain principles, of the first three volumes of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and does not intend to advance to a similar study of the second three. He does, however, believe that such a study would differ profoundly from that he has constructed of the first trilogy and wishes to offer hypotheses as to why this should be so. All hypotheses invite falsification, and he will make statements about the second trilogy and its hypothetical construction which invite research with results to which they may or may not stand up. To do this will be an exercise in the history of historiography, a sub-discipline still in progress of establishing itself. It will also give the author the opportunity of extending certain generalizations he was led to advance in writing and completing his study of Gibbon’s first trilogy, and of enquiring whether they remain valid in the light of a study of the second – given that this study is still at a hypothetical stage.     

Devout Muslim masculinities: the moral geographies and everyday practices of being men in Turkey

While the academic focus on Muslim women’s dress and comportment has enriched our understanding of the multifaceted formation of pious femininities, there has been much less consideration of the embodied practices of Muslim men. What work does exist on Middle Eastern men’s piety, sexuality, and everyday conduct too often falls back on established categories, such as traditional, Western, or Islamic identities. Yet it is crucial not only to critically examine how we conceptualize masculinity in the Middle East, but also to recognize the political and cultural importance of how masculinities are enacted through everyday practices. In this article, we argue that questions of dress and bodily practice are relevant to an understanding of how young devout Muslim men navigate the complex spatiality of piety, morality, and masculinity in contemporary urban Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork with young devout men in Konya and Istanbul, we illustrate how multiple, competing devout Muslim masculinities participate in the production of uneven moral geographies in these two very different Turkish cities. Further, we find that the possibility of different ways to enact devout masculinity opens questions about the universality of Islamic knowledge and practice. We suggest that the embodied construction and regulation of the looking-desiring nexus tethers male sexual desire to the public performance of Islamic morality. Our intervention is thus to demonstrate how different versions of masculinity and Islamic piety striate the moral geographies of these two Turkish cities, and thereby to further recognition of the contingency and plurality of both masculinity and Islam.     

LIVING IN A TIME OF MADNESS: LAST DAYS OF JAVA'S LAST PROPHETIC POET

Shortly before his death in December 1873, the renowned Javanese court poet R. Ng. Ronggawarsita composed a short work of social criticism and Islamic ethics that is among the most celebrated of Javanese literary texts. Serat Kalatidha (The Time of Darkness) reflects upon the avenues that remain open to the ethical subject in what Ronggawarsita calls the “time of madness,” the time of darkness and error that marked his dismal present in high colonial Java. Most celebrated as a prophecy, the poem is, in part, a critical reworking of an early nineteenth‐century prophetic reflection on the Javanese past. My article explores the troubled context in which the author wrote this twelve‐stanza (108‐line) poem and how its text forms both a critical commentary on the state of the poet's current‐day society and a pensive reflection on the ethical imperatives of Islam. In the course of this exploration, I reveal how Ronggawarsita's poem forms a prophecy, not as a foretelling of an already determined future, but rather as a work that moves along prophetic time to provoke in his readers a productive intimacy with both pasts and futures.     

From Islamism to nationalism in Aceh,Indonesia

ABSTRACT. This article analyses a dramatic political transformation in Indonesia's Aceh province. In the 1950s, an Islamic rebellion (Darul Islam) aimed not to separate Aceh from Indonesia, but rather to make Indonesia an Islamic state. A successor movement from the 1970s was GAM, the Free Aceh Movement. GAM, however, was essentially secular‐nationalist in orientation, sought Aceh's complete independence and did not espouse formal Islamic goals. The transformation is explained by various factors, but the key argument concerns the relationship between Islam and nationalism. The defeat of Darul Islam had caused Aceh's Islamic leaders to focus on what they could achieve in Aceh alone, ultimately giving rise to Acehnese nationalism and the secessionist goal. However, Islam remained a point of commonality with, rather than difference from, majority‐Muslim Indonesia. The logic of nationalist identity construction and differentiation thus caused Aceh's separatist leaders, despite being personally devout, to increasingly downplay Islamic symbols and ideology.