In this ethnographic examination of women’s mosques in the Maldives, anthropologist Jacqueline H. Fewkes probes how the existence of these separate buildings—where women lead prayers for other women—intersect with larger questions about gender, space, and global Muslim communities. Bringing together ethnographic insight with historical accounts, this volume develops an understanding of the particular religious and cultural trends in the Maldives that have given rise to these unique socio-religious institutions. As Fewkes considers women’s spaces in the Maldives as a practice apart from contemporary global Islamic customs, she interrogates the intersections between local, national, and transnational communities in the development of Islamic spaces, linking together the role of nations in the formation of Muslim social spaces with transnational conceptualizations of Islamic gendered spaces. Using the Maldivian women’s mosque as a starting point, this book addresses the roles of both the nation and the global Muslim ummah in locating gendered spaces within discourses about gender and Islam.

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

In this ethnographic examination of women's mosques in the Maldives, anthropologist Jacqueline H. Fewkes probes how the existence of these separate buildings--where women lead prayers for other women--intersect with larger questions about gender, space, and global Muslim communities. Bringing together ethnographic insight with historical accounts, this volume develops an understanding of the particular religious and cultural trends in the Maldives that have given rise to these unique socio-religious institutions. As Fewkes considers women's spaces in the Maldives as a practice apart from contemporary global Islamic customs, she interrogates the intersections between local, national, and transnational communities in the development of Islamic spaces, linking together the role of nations in the formation of Muslim social spaces with transnational conceptualizations of Islamic gendered spaces. Using the Maldivian women's mosque as a starting point, this book addresses the roles of both the nation and the global Muslim ummah in locating gendered spaces within discourses about gender and Islam.

The eight articles published in this Special Issue present original, empirical research, using various methods of data collection and analysis, in relation to topics that are pertinent to the study of Islam and Muslims in Australia. The contributors include long-serving scholars in the field, mid-career researchers, and early career researchers who represent many of Australia’s universities engaged in Islamic and Muslim studies, including the Australian National University, Charles Sturt University, Deakin University, Griffith University, and the University of Newcastle. The topics covered in this Special Issue include how Muslim Australians understand Islam (Rane et al. 2020); ethical and epistemological challenges facing Islamic and Muslim studies researchers (Mansouri 2020); Islamic studies in Australia’s university sector (Keskin and Ozalp 2021); Muslim women’s access to and participation in Australia’s mosques (Ghafournia 2020); religion, belonging and active citizenship among Muslim youth in Australia (Ozalp and Ćufurović), the responses of Muslim community organizations to Islamophobia (Cheikh Hussain 2020); Muslim ethical elites (Roose 2020); and the migration experiences of Hazara Afghans (Parkes 2020).

This book explores the everyday life of Muslims in late imperial China proper (“Sino-Muslims”), revealing how they integrated themselves into Chinese society, while also maintaining distinct Islamic features. Deeming “identity” as practical, interactive, and processual, it focuses on Sino-Muslims’ daily networking practices which embodied their numerous processes of identification with people around them. Through an evaluation of such practices, it displays how, since the early seventeenth century, Sino-Muslims vigorously formed and participated in popular religious and secular networks at local, translocal, and China-wide scales, including mosques, merchant associations, gentry groups, Islamic educational and publishing networks. It demonstrates how such networks facilitated Sino-Muslims to become more aligned with the tempo of change in Chinese society and imperial governance, and created for them more ingenious venues and means to identify with Islam. Ultimately it reveals how, by the first half of the nineteenth century, a sense of collectivity—with common knowledge, memory, and discourse—was generated among dispersed Sino-Muslims. Utilizing Sino-Muslims’ own records such as steles, genealogies, and Chinese Islamic texts, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative Muslim studies, Qing and early modern China, religious and ethnic identity, and professionals of Sino-Arab relations.

Repositioning mosques as social, cultural and political spaces, this book provides new insights on key contemporary debates, the religious identity of Britain, secularisation, the far-right and terrorism, and gender equality. Exploring the story of the British mosque, from house conversions to grand works of architecture, and the role they play in public life, Abdul-Azim Ahmed details the establishment of early mosques during the era of Empire, and the rapid growth in the years following the Second World War. Ahmed takes a sociological approach to this study, drawing on fieldwork and ethnographic case-studies, alongside reviews of databases and historical documents to provide perspectives on the British mosque from the congregants themselves. The Muslim congregation, a poorly understood and often overlooked dimension of religion in Britain, is examined, and issues of diversity, denomination, sacredness, and society are explored.

Beyond the tropical paradise and beyond the fear of climate change effects, the Maldives is a fascinating island country that faces social, cultural, economic and environmental transformations. Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography provides a spatial analysis on some key challenges the Maldivian society has to deal with, and guides the reader in the discovery of the human and environmental geography of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Geographers, political scientists, sociologists, geologists, biologists and experts in environmental policies help the audience to move through the complex systems of interrelations, connections and disconnections that shape the environment and the geography of this extraordinary archipelagic country.

This book investigates female Muslims pilgrimage practices and how these relate to women’s mobility, social relations, identities, and the power structures that shape women’s lives. Bringing together scholars from different disciplines and regional expertise, it offers in-depth investigation of the gendered dimensions of Muslim pilgrimage and the life-worlds of female pilgrims. With a variety of case studies, the contributors explore the experiences of female pilgrims to Mecca and other pilgrimage sites, and how these are embedded in historical and current contexts of globalisation and transnational mobility. This volume will be relevant to a broad audience of researchers across pilgrimage, gender, religious, and Islamic studies.

This book chronicles individual perspectives and specific iterations of Muslim community, practice, and experience in the Himalayan region to bring into scholarly conversation the presence of varying Muslim cultures in the Himalaya. The Himalaya provide a site of both geographic and cultural crossroads, where Muslim community is simultaneously constituted at multiple social levels, and to that end the essays in this book document a wide range of local, national, and global interests while maintaining a focus on individual perspectives, moments in time, and localized experiences. It presents research that contributes to a broadly conceived notion of the Himalaya that enriches readers’ understandings of both the region and concepts of Muslim community and highlights the interconnections between multiple experiences of Muslim community at local levels. Drawing attention to the cultural, social, artistic, and political diversity of the Himalaya beyond the better understood and frequently documented religio-cultural expressions of the region, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Anthropology, Geography, History, Religious Atudies, Asian Studies, and Islamic Studies.

The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic and poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273) is a popular spiritual icon. His legacy is sustained within the mystical and religious practice of Sufism, particularly through renditions of his poetry, music, and the meditation practice of whirling. In Canada, practices associated with Rumi have become ubiquitous in public spaces, such as museums, art galleries, and theatre halls, just as they continue to inform sacred ritual among Sufi communities. The Dervishes of the North explores what practices associated with Rumi in public and private spaces tell us about Sufism and spirituality, including sacred, cultural, and artistic expressions in the Canadian context. Using Rumi and contemporary expressions of poetry and whirling associated with him, the book captures the lived reality of Sufism through an ethnographic study of communities in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. Drawing from conversations with Sufi leaders, whirling dervishes, and poets, Merin Shobhana Xavier explores how Sufism is constructed in Canada, particularly at the nexus of Islamic mysticism, Muslim diaspora, spiritual commodity, popular culture, and universal spirituality. Inviting readers with an interest in religion and spirituality, The Dervishes of the North illuminates how non-European Christian traditions, like Islam and Sufism, have informed the religious and spiritual terrain of Canada.