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This paper explores the mystical complex of North Indian 'holy men' commonly known as faqir and their relationship to mainstream Indian Islam. It is based on research done at the thirteenth century Indo-Muslim shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, India. Many faqir beliefs and practices diverge from Islamic orthodoxy by emphasising a mystical relationship with the saints. While faqir are Muslims, their emphasis on mystical expressions demarcates them from orthodox styles of Indian Islam. Two of these expressions are hukm, the mystical bond between a faqir and Muslim saint, and nara, a series of expletives used to communicate with the saint when in a euphoric state. Hukm and nara are pivotal to a faqir's mystical complex and are creative sources of his spiritual life. Prompted by a paucity of critical analyses into the area of North Indian faqir mysticism and ritual performance, this paper argues that the interplay between hukm and nara generates a form of creative expression for the faqir that is related to, but independent of, Indo-Muslim orthodox practices and constitutes an alternative style of religious expression within Indian Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kemalism in Turkey is often presented as an exemplary case of paternalistic and authoritarian modernisation from above, and lauded or condemned for that very reason. Represented in these terms, certain analytic and political binaries are also activated: state versus society; world-view versus life-world; universality versus particularity; inauthenticity versus indigeneity; homogeneity versus heterogeneity/resistance. By contrast, in this paper I seek to sidestep these organising categories to focus on Kemalism and Islamism as rival forms of the same social imaginary signification, and not as shorthand for these polarities. Using a number of representative texts, I argue that the extravagance of Islamist resistance in Turkey post-1980 brings to light the fantastical power of Kemalism itself, exposed as a project of the triumph of the will. This being the case, what has been written in anthropology about acts of 'self-institution'? The work of Nigel Rapport and Cornelius Castoriadis emphasises, in different ways, the arbitrariness and gratuity of social creation out of nothing or self-institution. Pierre Bourdieu's work, on the other hand, is radically contrary to Rapport's in its structuralist elaboration of agency as guided action. My analysis of processes of change within both the Islamist and Republican social movements in Turkey from the early 1990s to the present seeks a temporary rapprochement, at least in this case, between Rapport's methodological individualism and Bourdieu's methodological holism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a descriptive account of what appears to be a divergence between existing cultural values in the State of Kelantan, Malaysia, and a more internationally oriented Islamic identity which is currently being promoted by the State Government. The State is rich in musical and cultural traditions: some of these, like mak yong dance drama and wayang kulit shadow puppet theatre have been actively discouraged by the Government because of their links with Hinduism and animism. Other performing arts, like dikir barat, appear to be a useful means of representing the religious doctrine promoted by the government. Using articles from the New Straits Times newspaper, I will highlight the complexities of this situation and suggest that the debate over cultural and religious identities may have implications for the performing arts in Kelantan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no authorisation in the Qur'an for the interdiction on music. That interdiction, when it is voiced, is the product of a conviction among some Muslims, supported by hadith Oust as it is opposed with hadith) that Islam does not countenance music. In a country such as Pakistan, with a strong tradition of devotional music which (taken with the poetry, with which it is always associated) has become entwined with the identity politics of the provinces or sub-'nations' which make up the vaster nation, a comprehensive ban on music would be impossible to enforce, though there are 'ulama and sectarian parties who desire it. This paper focuses on an instance where music is even harder to extricate from an accompanying text: the recitation of the Qur'an. In the eyes of Muslims, Qur'anic recitation is not music. This denial raises further questions about the nature of music and, in particular, its involvement with the 'extramusical'. Adorno's observations on the relation of music to language, and the anthropologist Friedson's complaint that ethnographers focus on text, at the expense of music, are examined in the light of the circumstance that the world over, music is associated with texts of one kind or another. Even when, as in the case of the 'curing' ritual described by Friedson, words are unimportant, or missing, music is seldom a phenomenological whole. Music 'leans', or is 'leant on': it lends its unrivalled 'eloquence' to many a cause, from commodity marketing to the structured working out of ritual, or, among lovers, to the remembered quality of experience. All these potentialities of music are relevant to the question of its interdiction and to the Muslim denial that the recitation of the Qur'an is music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of embodied religious practice to public Islam in Indonesia is easily underrated. This article undertakes an empirical examination of two domains of public Islam in Indonesia: women's piety and formal Islamic party politics. Based on research with women's groups in West Java, the author argues that Islamic party politics rely upon fragmentation resulting from different understandings of embodied practices, while the consensus supporting women's piety requires suppression of this fragmentation. Political actors locate themselves in a male‐dominated political sphere by aligning within a matrix of different meanings of practices. Yet the national consensus that sustains support for the majelis taklim (women's study groups) encourages an undifferentiated approach to practice, in which motherhood metaphors serve as the basis for the public legitimacy of women's pious practice. However, in actual practice, many women, notably Muslim feminists, differentiate practices, thereby bringing them into the field of public contest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that in practice, concepts of magico-spiritual power (Javanese: kesekten; Indonesian: kesaktian) are linked with sexuality, particularly female sexuality, in some segments of contemporary Central and East Javanese Muslim society. Few scholars have turned attention to the interconnectedness of these seemingly contradictory topics. Feminist studies tend to focus on the ways in which women locate themselves within and critique Sharia-based discursive and social orders, without considering the roles that magico-spiritual power and associated practices play in these Islamic systems or in Islam in a more general sense. Similarly, male scholarship that considers the cultural relevance of Islam and magic rarely refers to gendered and sexual dimensions as praxis from a feminist perspective. By drawing on examples of 'magical women' including the Javanese spirit queen of the southern ocean Gusti Kanjeng Ratu Kidul, the historical Hindu figure Ken Dedes, and contemporary ritual sex practices at a Muslim saint's grave, we show how women, female spiritual beings and female sexuality, and sexuality in general, can be considered sources of magico-spiritual power in Muslim Java. Our arguments conclude that in Javanese Islam, transgression of Sharia sexual norms can be both a sign and a source of magico-spiritual power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006 a forum to discuss Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution on religious freedom sparked a major and unexpected pushback. Many Muslim and Malay NGOs and concerned citizens argued that they were defending Islam from the onslaught of liberalising forces in Malaysia. The clash between what could be termed liberal human rights discourses and/or reformist Islam and reactionary Islam is also one about Islamic theology in Malaysia. It is an example of how theology can be internally divisive and presents a problematic case study for an anthropological encounter and engagement with multiple theologies, debates about history and the anthropological project. This article charts one path for the encounter between an anthropologist and his ethnographic other that aims to understand these diverse perspectives and also seeks to understand both the project of writing an anthropology of Islam that incorporates Islamic theology and Muslims' lifeworlds that form the basis for it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the urban villages of Bandung, the capital city of the Indonesian province of West Java, many Muslim women routinely attend between four and six oratorical and/or pedagogical events per week. This article analyses this participation by observing the forms and patterns of these women's spectatorship, specifically observing their mobility, the interaction between their life-cycles and their participation habits, the gendered embodiment of Islamic knowledge they display, the effect of hegemonic masculinities, and preaching performances which treat them not only as Muslims intent on increasing their Islamic knowledge, but also as pleasure-taking subjects. The article concludes that the conduct and management of preaching events intended for mixed audiences are highly sensitive to women's spectatorship and warns against the assumption that Islamic practice is a punishing sphere of patriarchy. In fact, when the influence of women's spectatorship on the conduct and management of such preaching events is appreciated, West Java's preaching events appear as a feminised domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]