Download or read book Race Religion and the Indian Muslim Predicament in Singapore written by Torsten Tschacher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indian Muslims form the largest ethnic minority within Singapore’s otherwise largely Malay Muslim community. Despite its size and historic importance, however, Singaporean Indian Muslims have received little attention by scholarship and have also felt side-lined by Singapore’s Malay-dominated Muslim institutions. Since the 1980s, demands for a better representation of Indian Muslims and access to religious services have intensified, while there has been a concomitant debate over who has the right to speak for Indian Muslims. This book traces the negotiations and contestations over Indian Muslim difference in Singapore and examines the conditions that have given rise to these debates. Despite considerable differences existing within the putative Indian Muslim community, the way this community is imagined is surprisingly uniform. Through discussions of the importance of ethnic difference for social and religious divisions among Singaporean Indian Muslims, the role of ‘culture’ and ‘race’ in debates about popular religion, the invocation of language and history in negotiations with the wider Malay-Muslim context, and the institutional setting in which contestations of Indian Muslim difference take place, this book argues that these debates emerge from the structural tensions resulting from the intersection of race and religion in the public organization of Islam in Singapore.
Download or read book Global Sikhs written by Opinderjit Kaur Takhar and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-13 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings a broad, holistic approach to the study of the phenomena of the global Sikh community referred to collectively as the Panth. With contributions by an interdisciplinary range of experts, the volume provides insight into current debates and discussions around Sikh identity in the twenty-first century. It examines the terms Sikh, Sikhism and ‘Sikhi’ and considers how those ‘outside of the margins’ fit into larger definitions of the wider Panth. Both the secular and religious dimensions of being a Sikh are explored and lived experience is a central theme throughout. The chapters engage with issues of authority and diversity as well as representation as Sikhs become increasingly settled and active within their diasporic locales. The book includes a variety of case studies and makes a valuable contribution to the growing field of Sikh studies.
Download or read book Global Tantra written by Julian Strube and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Beyond introducing the subject matter and critically surveying the state of scholarship, this introduction offers a substantial theoretical and methodological elucidation of the book's approach that is also relevant for readers not strictly interested in the specialized subject. Combining perspectives from religious studies, global history, South Asian studies, and the study of esotericism, the foundations of global religious history are discussed both in abstraction and in light of the source material. This especially considers historiographical challenges such as (post)colonialism, Eurocentrism, or Orientalism, as well as issues such as the blurry meaning of "global connections" and differentiations between the global, regional, and local. Leading themes such as the contested meaning of tradition, revival, reform, and modernity are scrutinized, as are the relationship and meanings of religion, science, esotericism, and nationalism that remain the subject of scholarly debate. Global religious history makes proposals for resolving such debates by eliding disciplinary boundaries"--
Download or read book The Primordial Modernity of Malay Nationality written by Humairah Zainal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humairah and Kamaludeen examine contemporary Malay national identity in Singapore and Malaysia through the lens of ‘primordial modernity’, taking on a comparative transnational perspective. How do Malays in Singapore and Malaysia conceptualise and negotiate their ethnic identity vis-à-vis the state’s construction of Malay national identity? Humairah and Kamaludeen employ discourse analyses of both elite and mass texts that include newspaper editorials, school textbooks, political speeches, novels, movies, and letters in local newspapers. Extending current notions of Malay identity, the authors offer a comprehensive overview of Malay identity that takes into consideration both primordial dimensions and the more modern aspects such as their cosmopolitan sensibilities and their approach to social mobility. A valuable resource for scholars of Southeast Asian culture and society, as well as Sociologists looking at wider issues of ethnic and national identity.
Download or read book Language Ideologies and the Vernacular in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia written by Nishat Zaidi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-29 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume critically engages with recent formulations and debates regarding the status of the regional languages of the Indian subcontinent vis-à-vis English. It explores how language ideologies of the “vernacular” are positioned in relation to the language ideologies of English in South Asia. The book probes into how we might move beyond the English-vernacular binary in India, explores what happened to “bhasha literatures” during the colonial and post-colonial periods and how to position those literatures by the side of Indian English and international literature. It looks into the ways vernacular community and political rhetoric are intertwined with Anglophone (national or global) positionalities and their roles in political processes. This book will be of interest to researchers, students and scholars of literary and cultural studies, Indian Writing in English, Indian literatures, South Asian languages and popular culture. It will also be extremely valuable for language scholars, sociolinguists, social historians, scholars of cultural studies and those who understand the theoretical issues that concern the notion of “vernacularity”.
Download or read book Non Shia Practices of Mu arram in South Asia and the Diaspora written by Pushkar Sohoni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyses engagements with non-Shia practices of Muḥarram celebrations in the past and present, in South Asia and within a larger diaspora. Breaking new ground by bringing together a variety of regional perspectives (the Deccan, the Punjab, Singapore, South Africa, and Trinidad and Tobago) and linguistic backgrounds (Bhojpuri, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil, Urdu), the chapters discuss the importance of Muḥarram celebrations in terms of their respective actors. While in some cases these include an interrelationship with Shia Muslims and their traditions of mourning during Muḥarram, other contributions address contexts in which Shias, and even Muslims, form only a minor component of the celebrations, or even none at all. Focusing on Muḥarram celebrations that are beyond the script provided by Shia Muḥarram practices, this book opens up new perspectives on Muḥarram as a social practice widely shared by South Asians across regions. The book will be a key resource to scholars and students of South Asian studies, Asian religion, in particular rituals and religious practices, and Islamic studies but also engaging to non-academic readers interested in the practices of several regions.
Download or read book Manuscript and Print in the Islamic Tradition written by Scott Reese and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-09-05 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores and calls into question certain commonly held assumptions about writing and technological advancement in the Islamic tradition. In particular, it challenges the idea that mechanical print naturally and inevitably displaces handwritten texts as well as the notion that the so-called transition from manuscript to print is unidirectional. Indeed, rather than distinct technologies that emerge in a progressive series (one naturally following the other), they frequently co-exist in complex and complementary relationships – relationships we are only now starting to recognize and explore. The book brings together essays by internationally recognized scholars from an array of disciplines (including philology, linguistics, religious studies, history, anthropology, and typography) whose work focuses on the written word – channeled through various media – as a social and cultural phenomenon within the Islamic tradition. These essays promote systematic approaches to the study of Islamic writing cultures writ large, in an effort to further our understanding of the social, cultural and intellectual relationships between manuscripts, printed texts and the people who use and create them.
Download or read book Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia written by R. Michael Feener and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last few decades historians and other scholars have succeeded in identifying diverse patterns of connection linking religious communities across Asia and beyond. Yet despite the fruits of this specialist research, scholars in the subfields of Islamic and Buddhist studies have rarely engaged with each other to share investigative approaches and methods of interpretation. This volume was conceived to open up new spaces of creative interaction between scholars in both fields that will increase our understanding of the circulation and localization of religious texts, institutional models, ritual practices, and literary specialists. The book’s approach is to scrutinize one major dimension of the history of religion in Southern Asia: religious orders. “Orders” (here referring to Sufi ṭarīqas and Buddhist monastic and other ritual lineages) established means by which far-flung local communities could come to be recognized and engaged as part of a broader world of co-religionists, while presenting their particular religious traditions and their human representatives as attractive and authoritative to potential new communities of devotees. Contributors to the volume direct their attention toward analogous developments mutually illuminating for both fields of study. Some explain how certain orders took shape in Southern Asia over the course of the nineteenth century, contextualizing these institutional developments in relation to local and transregional political formations, shifting literary and ritual preferences, and trade connections. Others show how the circulation of people, ideas, texts, objects, and practices across Southern Asia, a region in which both Buddhism and Islam have a long and substantial presence, brought diverse currents of internal reform and notions of ritual and lineage purity to the region. All chapters draw readers’ attention to the fact that networked persons were not always strongly institutionalized and often moved through Southern Asia and developed local bases without the oversight of complex corporate organizations. Buddhist and Islamic Orders in Southern Asia brings cutting-edge research to bear on conversations about how “orders” have functioned within these two traditions to expand and sustain transregional religious networks. It will help to develop a better understanding of the complex roles played by religious networks in the history of Southern Asia.
Download or read book Mediated Muslim Cosmopolitanism written by Siti Mazidah Mohamad and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-18 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mohamad examines the day-to-day experience of virtual and non-tangible mobilities of young Bruneian Malay Muslim and Malaysians, as enabled by popular culture and digital media. Cosmopolitanism has garnered interest from sociology, political studies, religious studies, geography, and education scholars. Despite this, there are three gaps in the study of Muslim cosmopolitanism. Firstly, young Muslims' cosmopolitanism in the digital age has not been intensively studied. Secondly, existing research overlooks Southeast Asia, especially Brunei Darussalam. Thirdly, the focus has not sufficiently engaged with popular culture and new media. This book addresses these gaps by exploring the everyday lives of Bruneian Malay Muslim and Malaysian youths, shaped by local, transcultural, and global practices. It expands the Muslim cosmopolitanism concept by examining the daily concerns, challenges, and practices these youths experience, offering new forms of mediated Muslim cosmopolitanism. Grounded in robust empirical data from two extensive research projects (2010-2024), this book employs diverse research approaches (ethnography and phenomenology) and methods (Qualitative Content Analysis and Interviews), ensuring reliable and in-depth findings. Scholars in geography, sociology, religious studies, and youth studies will find this book invaluable for its insights into cosmopolitanism, popular culture, new media, digital youth, and contemporary Southeast Asia.
Download or read book The Vernacular written by Hans Harder and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the validity of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ and the position of the so-called ‘vernaculars’ in colonial and postcolonial settings. It addresses recent formulations and debates regarding the status of regional languages of South Asia in relation to English. The authors explore the range of meanings the term has assumed and trace a history of contestation since the colonial age. They contend that though the ‘vernacular’ in South Asia has, since the nineteenth century, often operated as a hegemonic category relegating the languages thus designated to an inferior status, those languages (and other cultural formations labelled as ‘vernacular’) have also received empowering impulses and vested with qualities like groundedness and strength. The book highlights the need for a critical discussion of the notion of the ‘vernacular’ in the context of the ongoing rise of Anglophonia in South Asia as a whole and post-liberalisation India in particular. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of literary and culture studies, history, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies.
Download or read book Malaysia s State Formation written by Abdillah Noh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tracing Malaysia’s political economy since 1800, Abdillah Noh argues that it has been substantially path-dependant based on choices made by the British colonial administration. Focusing mainly on two major groupings in Malaysia’s political economy – the Malays and Chinese Malaysians – Noh demonstrates that British policies engendered two processes. First, a less-than-full-retrenchment of Malay political dominance by preserving Malay de jure power and, second a less-than-full incorporation of new actors in Malaya’s political economy. Such decisions to preserve Malay de jure power alongside half-hearted measures at incorporating non-Malays’ economic and political presence created communities with mutually exclusive institutions that increasingly compete for access to political, social and economic resources. He thus reasons that Malaysia’s state formation - and the consequent consociational logic - is not a contrived act that was hatched at the point of its independence. Rather, it is the result of deep institutional processes that are centred on the idea of path dependence, self- reinforcement mechanism, timing and sequence. A valuable read for scholars of Malaysian history and politics, as well as for scholars of postcolonial state formation and public policy more broadly.
Download or read book Keramat Sacred Relics and Forbidden Idols in Singapore written by William L. Gibson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-29 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keramat, holy graves and shrines, represent physical markers of Singapore’s history as a multi‐ethnic maritime trading center. They offered sanctified spaces not only for Muslims but also for the entire community in which they emerged. Maintained by self‐appointed caretakers, the stories of keramat often interweave fact with folklore that mirror the history and sensibilities of the community. While once an abundant part of the social landscape of Singapore, many keramat were destroyed during the post‐independence rush to develop. These keramat now face a second vanishing with memories of them fading as caretakers and community members age and pass away. In parallel, many modern Muslims consider keramat as a form of shirk, or polytheism, and tacitly consent to their destruction. This book concludes by critically examining the often‐tense relationship between keramat and authority, both secular and religious, from colonial to modern times. The dilemmas of grappling with puritanical norms and grassroots elaborations in varying modes of preservation are investigated using case studies from Singapore and the wider region. A vital resource for scholars, this work contributes to a people’s history of Singapore, one that both deepens and problematizes official historical accounts.
Download or read book Nodes of Translation written by Martin Christof-Füchsle and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-01-29 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The volume examines translation of key German texts into the modern Indian languages as well as translation from the vernacular languages of South Asia into German. Our key concerns are shifting historical contexts, concepts, and translation practices. Bringing an intellectual history dimension to translation studies, we explore the history of translation, translators, and sites of translation. The organization of the volume follows some key questions. Which texts were being translated? At what point or period in time did this happen? What were the motivations behind these translations? Topics covered range from thematic nodes or clusters, e.g., translations of Economics texts and ideas into Urdu, or the translation of Marx and Engels into Marathi, to personal endeavours, such as the first Hindi translation of Goethe’s Faust done by Bholanath Sharma in 1939. Missionary as well as Marxist activist translation work from Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu is included too. On the other hand, German translations of Tagore and Gandhi setting in shortly after 1912 are also examined. Also discussed are political strategies of publication of translations from modern Indian languages guiding the output of publishing houses in the GDR after 1949. Further included are the translator’s perspective and the contemporary translation and literary culture. What happens through the process of linguistic translation in the realm of cultural translation? What can a historical study of translation tell us about the history of Indo-German intellectual entanglements in the long twentieth century? The volume brings together multifaceted interdisciplinary research work from South Asian and German studies to answer some of these questions.
Download or read book Muslim Citizens in the West written by Samina Yasmeen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing upon original case studies spanning North America, Europe and Australia, Muslim Citizens in the West explores how Muslims have been both the excluded and the excluders within the wider societies in which they live. The book extends debates on the inclusion and exclusion of Muslim minorities beyond ideas of marginalisation to show that, while there have undoubtedly been increased incidences of Islamophobia since September 2001, some Muslim groups have played their own part in separating themselves from the wider society. The cases examined show how these tendencies span geographical, ethnic and gender divides and can be encouraged by a combination of international and national developments prompting some groups to identify wider society as the 'other'. Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and practitioners in political science, social work, history and law also highlight positive outcomes in terms of Muslim activism with relationship to their respective countries and suggest ways in which increasing tensions felt, perceived or assumed can be eased and greater emphasis given to the role Muslims can play in shaping their place in the wider communities where they live.
Download or read book Fulfilling The Trust 50 Years Of Shaping Muslim Religious Life In Singapore written by Norshahril Saat and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muslims constitute about half a million or 15 percent of Singapore's multiracial and multireligious population. In 1968, the Singapore Parliament passed the Administration of Muslim Law Act (AMLA), which led to the formation of Muis or the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (Islamic Religious Council of Singapore). The formation of Muis has brought about better administration of Muslim affairs in Singapore in meeting the religious needs of the Muslim community in areas like the issuance of fatwa (religious rulings), provision of halal food, management of haj (religious pilgrimage), collection and disbursement of zakat (charity tithe), running of madrasahs (religious schools) and having access to sound Islamic education. This was achieved with Muis having earned the trust and confidence of the community and ensuring the mutual facilitation of the community's, state's and society's needs.Fulfilling the Trust: 50 Years of Shaping Muslim Religious Life in Singapore is the first book that comprehensively studies the development of Muis' policies over the last 50 years since its founding in 1968. It offers an insight into the multi-faceted considerations and the overall context of the development of such policies, providing a wide-ranging and evaluative analyses of their evolution in the various work domains.The book argues that in order to better appreciate Muis' policies, one has to also understand the critical junctures, socio-historical context, diverse stakeholders and decision-makers' perspectives that led Muis to respond to issues and challenges in a certain way. This book is a valuable contribution to the community's cultural and experiential heritage, providing an indispensable resource for anyone or any institution wishing to pursue a constructive role for religious communities to equally contribute towards the betterment of a thriving plural society ensconced within a secular-based polity.
Download or read book Terrifying Muslims written by Junaid Rana and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2011-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographic research in Pakistan, the Middle East, and the United States helps to explain how transnational working classes from Pakistan are produced in the context of American empire and its War on Terror.
Download or read book Singapore Malays written by Hussin Mutalib and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Malay population makes up Singapore's three largest ethnic groups. This book provides an analysis of the debates on religion, politics and citizenship of Malay Muslims in contemporary Singapore. Comprehensively and convincingly argued, the author examines their disadvantaged circumstances in the fields of politics, education, social mobility, and freedom of religious expression."--Publisher's description.
