By way of retracing the 1935 Shahidganj mosque dispute, this article explores how Indian Muslims transformed their vision of community from one seeking moral legitimacy within colonial law to a... Show moreBy way of retracing the 1935 Shahidganj mosque dispute, this article explores how Indian Muslims transformed their vision of community from one seeking moral legitimacy within colonial law to a vision geared towards political action outside of the colonial legal order. This represented a radical departure from Muslim politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century where liberalism—while circulating around ideas of mysticism and moral community – remained largely the domain of polite petititoning. By piecing together the legal micro-his-tory of the Shahidganj mosque dispute and by mapping native responses to colonial law, I show how Indian Muslims, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, located and shaped their political identity by moving beyond colonial prescriptions of legal pacts based on interests. Show less
This thesis uses a language perspective to examine the complex relationship between Muslims and Christians in post-Soviet Russia, as well as their attitudes vis-à-vis the state. An important... Show moreThis thesis uses a language perspective to examine the complex relationship between Muslims and Christians in post-Soviet Russia, as well as their attitudes vis-à-vis the state. An important conclusion of this thesis is that a religious language variant does not only signal a speaker's religious identity. By opting for a particular language, by using or avoiding specific religious vocabulary, speakers also aim to secure their belonging to desired ethnic, national and political groups. Therefore, along with Orthodox Christians, also Russia’s Muslims instrumentalise the religious variant of the Russian language to gain political influence and social recognition. This process, in turn, affects the prestige of Islamic vernaculars spoken in the country, as the thesis demonstrates through the example of the Tatar language. These sociolinguistic changes, in fact, reflect significant developments within Russia's Islam and Orthodox Christianity. The study reveals that the official institutions of these two religions undergo the process of convergence. Namely, they develop similar views on Russia’s domestic and foreign politics, as well as comparable doctrinal lines of defence against the challenges of modernity, and both of them interpret and protect societal moral norms along the same conservative principles. Show less
This article provides an ethnographic exploration of a new religious movement in Nigeria that often goes by the name ‘Chrislam’. With a particular focus on the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam, the... Show moreThis article provides an ethnographic exploration of a new religious movement in Nigeria that often goes by the name ‘Chrislam’. With a particular focus on the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam, the article documents the group’s origins and practices, as well as its public reception. Founded on a claimed vision from God in 2005, the group teaches that Christianity, Islam and African Indigenous Religions come from the same source and should be reunited into a single religious movement. Core to their understanding is what they call ‘a spirit of accommodation’, which provides a divine directive to exceed mere tolerance or coexistence and combine these religions under one roof. With their mission of pursuing unity and commonality while dispelling differences, the group manages to creatively embed multiple complex religious traditions into their belief structures, liturgical practices and ritual ceremonies, in what can be described as a religious bricolage. Despite the group’s intention to promote peace and unity and act as a counterpoint to violent movements such as Boko Haram, the Ogbomoso Society of Chrislam finds itself at the centre of an ongoing debate about the politics of religious bricolage and the resulting cultural limits of acceptable forms of religious entanglements. Show less
