Abstract The Shi’i Muslim marja’iyyah is undergoing a fundamental transformation from a system relying exclusively on traditional and charismatic authority to a highly hybridized model where these classical forms are sustained and operationalized by rational-legal, bureaucratic principles. Historically, a leader’s legitimacy rested on personal piety and scholarly reputation within the seminary. However, modern pressures, including globalization, complex financial networks, and technological demands, have necessitated a shift toward institutionalization. This paper uses a Weberian lens, integrated with broader sociological discussions of the religious field, public religion, and systems theory; to analyze how Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has “routinized” his authority by constructing a vast, global bureaucratic apparatus of foundations and formal rules. As Sistani’s succession looms, the office increasingly requires a leader who is both a spiritual guide and the administrator of a transnational enterprise. This evolution does not erase the traditional personal bond between the believer and the religious authority, but rather mediates it through an institutional framework, ensuring durability in a modern context.
Abstract Contemporary scholarship on South Asian Muslim life demands a rethinking of ‘regional politics’ – not as an autonomous, self-contained domain, but as a formation shaped by the transformative pressures of an increasingly interconnected global political order. To think India and South Asia anew requires that we depart from instrumentalised accounts of Western publics and India’s pluralistic experience, and attend instead to the multiplicity of forces that constitute Muslim political life from within.
Abstract This paper is an ethnographic and a critical philosophical cosmology on the Islamic healing practices which is intertwined with medical theodicies, ritualization of healing practices and mystical authority of the spiritual healer. It also discloses the therapeutic modalities, generalized precariousness of the life, convalescence of soul and constituting temporal structure of experience in the anthropological sculpting of the worldliness of cure for women in low-income settings of Old Delhi. The rouhani ilaz is discursively described through poetics of bearing witness to the local moral world of ritualization of the parchment inscription, ‘gathering-motif’ of the spiritual healer’s hand, worldliness of touch and the conviviality of spiritual transcendence through the philosophical grammar of affliction. Furthermore, this paper describes the parchment inscription as bodily archive through metaphysical mystical-pad of divine remembrance and illuminating the living present with the retention(al) traces of the ethical intertwining with the Other. Importantly, this paper gives an eschatological mooring of the Islamic religious healing without the prescriptive and hypostatic truths, presences or meaning in the immanent transcendence of the soul.
Abstract This paper draws on three months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Dharavi, Bombay, in 2023 to examine the tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS burden among Muslim women and marginalised communities in the settlement’s inner lanes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Centred on Asifa – a survivor of pulmonary tuberculosis and community health activist living in Social Nagar – the study traces how the pathogenic built environment of the 120-square-foot room, the invisible domestic and care labour that sustains household survival, and the structural failures of the public health system converge to produce what Achille Mbembe terms necropolitical space: a domestic and urban geography in which death is not an event but a structural outcome. Drawing theoretically on Spivak’s framework of the subaltern and invisible labour, Veena Das’s concept of the ordinary, and Mbembe’s necropolitics, the paper makes three interlocking arguments. First, the ‘Dharavi model’ of COVID-19 containment – internationally celebrated as a pandemic success – constituted a systematic epistemic erasure of the inner-lane populations whose disease burden it did not reach, measure, or address. Second, the collapse of Directly Observed Treatment (DOTS) infrastructure during the pandemic produced a cohort of interrupted tuberculosis and drug-resistant TB cases whose mortality is recorded in no official statistic. Third, the Bangar community at Dharavi’s eastern margin – a deeply subaltern population marked by the colonial legacy of the Criminal Tribes Act – bears a convergent tuberculosis–HIV/AIDS comorbidity burden that Dharavi’s vertically fragmented public health infrastructure is architecturally incapable of addressing. The paper situates Asifa’s activism as the political form of the ordinary: the daily, embodied labour of accompaniment, referral, and boundary-crossing that sustains community survival precisely where the health system cannot see it. By reading ‘disease’ anthropologically – as structural writing on the body – the paper argues that tuberculosis in Dharavi is not a biological event that falls upon women; it is the legible outcome of a political economy that renders their labour invisible, their bodies disposable, and their deaths ordinary.
Abstract The concept of the Ummah – the global community of Muslims – has been a central theme in Islamic intellectual traditions, embodying both spiritual unity and political imagination. In the modern era, colonialism, nationalism, and global geopolitics have reshaped its meaning and function. This article traces the intellectual reinterpretations of the Ummah from the late 19 th century to the contemporary Middle East. Beginning with reformists such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, it examines the Ummah as an anti-colonial ideal, later challenged by the rise of nation-states and competing ideologies of Arab nationalism and pan-Islamism. Thinkers like Hasan al-Banna, Abul A‘la Mawdudi, and Ayatollah Khomeini further reimagined the Ummah as a political and religious venture. The study concludes with an analysis of its contemporary expressions, from institutional forums like the OIC to radical and digital reinterpretations, underscoring the Ummah as a contested yet enduring geopolitical discourse.
Abstract This study uses the analytical frameworks of post-Islamism, ideological development, and political institutionalization to look at how Tunisia’s al-Nahda evolved from an Islamist social movement to a political party. Although al-Nahda began as a grassroots organization based on social reform and Islamic activism in the 1970s, its post-2011 trajectory shows a conscious turn toward political pragmatism, democratic engagement, and ideological recalibration. The research examines how al-Nahda negotiated the limitations of authoritarian repression, the opportunities presented by the Arab Spring, and the normative demands of competitive politics, drawing on theories of social movement transformation and post-Islamist philosophy. In addition to analyzing the internal discussions that influenced the movement’s 2016 self-designation as a “Muslim democratic” party, the research evaluates the movement’s ideological trajectory from Islam-centered opposition to a discourse emphasizing citizenship, plurality, and national unity. The study demonstrates how al-Nahda’s political party creation reflects both strategic adaptation and significant ideological shift through qualitative examination of party papers, leadership remarks, and secondary scholarship. In the end, the study places al-Nahda’s experience within broader discussions on post-Islamism, showing how Islamist movements adjust their goals and identities in reaction to changing socio-political environments.
Abstract This article examines how an alumnus-researcher achieves and ethically sustains ethnographic access to a Deobandī dār al-ʿulūm in contemporary Britain. Challenging models that frame access primarily as a matter of verbal negotiation or formal gatekeeping, it argues that access is often conferred through embodied ethics – moral alignment, vocational congruence, and relational presence. Drawing on fourteen months of insider ethnography, the article introduces the concept of the Quiet Power of Presence to describe how companionship ( ṣuḥba ), imitation ( tashabbuh ), and immersion within the maslak generate trust and legitimacy before methodological performance. Situating this dynamic within theories of habitus, insider ethnography, and Islamic pedagogical traditions, the study shows that knowledge, authority, and ethical formation are transmitted relationally rather than solely textually. It further challenges reductive portrayals of British madrasas as insular or epistemically rigid by documenting the practical integration of dīn and dunyā knowledge. The article contributes empirically by foregrounding the lived lifeworlds of British ʿulamāʾ and methodologically by theorising embodied presence as a critical but underexamined condition of access in religious ethnography.
Two million Arab-Muslims live as citizens in Israel, where their ethnic and religious group identity conflicts with the state. Religion wields significant social influence in identity conflicts, particularly in the Palestinian-Israeli dispute involving traditional societies contesting sacred territory. For Israeli Arabs, religious-legal principles and moral values can cause separation from the Muslim side and discrimination from the Jewish side. This article examines diverse perspectives of Jewish and Muslim religious leaders regarding three central issues affecting Jewish-Muslim coexistence in Israel: real estate transactions, shared employment and commerce, and intermarriage. The analysis explores the relationship between nationalism and religiosity in the presented discourse and positions, arguing that despite significant religious complexities, both Judaism and Islam contain acceptable legal solutions, though their application is marginalized amid deteriorating national and security conditions. Therefore, ensuring an atmosphere of civic loyalty and national-personal security is crucial for utilizing existing religious tools to maximize integration potential.
This article seeks to investigate an unprecedented rapid rise of rowḍeh ceremonies as part of the larger Shī‘ī mourning rituals and commemoration of the Karbala tragedy during the reign of Nasir al-Din Shah (1848–96). It argues that the Qajar elite, especially the Shah himself, in tandem with popular preachers played an instrumental role in promoting these long-standing rituals. While the Shah used mourning ceremonies to project an image of a devout Shī‘ī monarch and boost legitimacy of his rule, preachers turned rowḍeh and the pulpit into a soapbox for sociopolitical critique. These rapid developments in a few short decades involved professionalization of preaching whereby pioneers such as Mullā Āqā Darbandī and Mullā Esmā‘īl Sabzevārī embarked on publishing rowḍeh handbooks that went beyond traditional martyrology.
This interview with Professor Mbaye Lo, co-author (with Carl W. Ernst) of I Cannot Write My Life: Islam, Arabic, and Slavery in Omar ibn Said’s America, explores the life, intellectual legacy, and religious identity of Omar ibn Said – a West African Muslim scholar enslaved in 19th-century America. Lo discusses the title’s significance, Omar’s resistance through writing, the entanglement of orality and literacy in West African cultures, and the manipulation of Omar’s narrative through mistranslation and visual representation. He also addresses early American attitudes toward Islam, the development of Arabic scholarship in Senegambia, and the role of oral traditions in preserving cultural identity. The interview critiques the legacy of colonial misreadings and affirms Omar’s enduring significance in confronting white supremacy and religious distortion.
Myths, value systems, language and rituals are interwoven constituents of human culture, aiming to explain the world and dictate behavior. Myths and value systems are often considered narratives that explore fundamental questions about existence; language and rites are the formalized activities that proclaim those myths and reinforce cultural values. Together, they help shape and homogenize a community’s identity, worldview, and social structures. In this regard, this article seeks to dismantle the structure of two cultural artefacts, language and rituals (henna ceremony and marriage procession) in rural Amazigh Morocco. Focus will be on how myths and social values in a traditional society determine gender roles, furnish attitudes and dictate behavior. To study these cultural artefacts and to identify myth-based stereotypes against women, we will use linguistics and semiotics. Morphology, the study of word-formation processes, will help us understand the bias language vehicles through its grammatical and lexical systems). Semiotics will allow us to deconstruct the sign systems of henna ceremony and marriage procession; the study uncovers how humans shape space into the landscapes that form the environments for their lives. Therefore, stereotypes mediated through cultural activities will show that culture itself is an elusive space of imagination that shows itself through human behavior and beliefs.
Whereas women have hitherto only had a private role in the battle against terrorism in Indonesia, their presence in terrorism circles has resulted in the creation of a new terrorist map. Their participation in terrorist groups’ use of public areas is strongly linked to patriarchal society and changes in the ideas of Hijrah (Migration) and Qital (Fighting) as tools of jihad. Defining women’s weaknesses and disadvantages by patriarchal circles, using media to encourage women’s emotional enthusiasm in the circle of terror, and interpreting Hijrah and Qital as justification for jihad movement, which becomes a spirit for women to commit terrors are some of the ways this paper attempts to explore the three domains of women’s attempts at terror as a series of struggles. With qualitative methodology, this study data was gathered from a variety of sources, including web articles discussing terrorism, interviews with 24 (ex)female terrorists. According to this study, men terrorists use patriarchal culture to their advantage to create religious authority among their groups. Virtual media is also very good at propagating the idea that women should be active in the battle for two reasons. It began by disseminating fatwas on the women’s consent to engage in combat based on historical context. Secondly, it spread by providing fresh theological meanings to the terms Hijrah and Qital as jihad media catered to the objectives of the terrorist groups.
This article critically engages with dominant Eurocentric theories of despotism in the Muslim -majority Middle East such as Iran – particularly the Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP), Hydraulic Despotism, and Oriental Despotism – through the critical lens of Ali Shariati. While canonical explanations from Marx, Engels, Wittfogel, and others attribute Middle Eastern despotism to environmental determinism, absence of feudalism, and centralized bureaucratic rule, Shariati offers an alternative framework that emphasizes historical contingency, ideological struggle, and human agency. We want to show that these theories, while containing elements of truth, are shaped by a Eurocentric perspective that should be reconsidered through Shariati’s decolonial lens. By bridging sociological, historical, and philosophical insights, this article foregrounds Shariati’s relevance in deconstructing deterministic theories of despotism and offers a nuanced account of the roots of political oppression in Iran and the broader Middle East.
The main argument of this article is that today’s Turkey’s lacks a robust, modern civil society and concomitant implementation of fair solutions to modern women’s issues. This is in addition to the many other existential problems that have curtailed Turkish democracy and statehood under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A vibrant civil society is crucial to a viable democracy and undoubtedly necessary to understand and begin solving women’s issues in contemporary Turkey. To analyze this situation, this article first examines the general concept of civil society. With this foundation, it next briefly examines women’s issues in Turkish civil society as an important part of the Kurdish issue and then turns its main focus specifically upon women’s CSOs in Turkey, and finally examines the recent, important Varieties of Democracy Study interpreting current Turkish democracy before closing with pertinent conclusions.
Like elsewhere, the meaning of disasters is politically constructed in Turkey, a country frequently exposed to disasters. This paper studies how ruling Islamist political actors contribute to the construction of the political meaning of disasters by analyzing two cases. It argues that Islamists primarily ‘Islamize’ disasters by framing them through theological arguments to justify their political positions and, above all, to deflect political responsibility in the face of public criticism for failures that occur during their mandate. This discursive strategy serves to remake political concepts and identities in line with Turkish Islamic political actors’ ideology as well. The study also enables the observation of Turkey’s political transition from Kemalism to Islamism at another level, specifically through the political framing of disasters. We employ case studies and critical discourse analysis to identify how the meaning of disaster is constructed in Turkey.
