Shia Minorities in the Contemporary World:Migration, Transnationalism and Multilocality
@Chester Centre for Islamic Studies (CCIS)
20-21 May 2016Hollybank CHB002, University of Chester
(campus map)
PROGRAMME WITH ABSTRACTS
Day 1: Friday 20 May
09:00 – 09:30: Registration and refreshments
09:30 – 10:00: WelcomeRob Warner, Executive Dean Faculty of Humanities
Oliver Scharbrodt, Director Chester Centre for Islamic Studies
10:00 – 11:00: Keynote Lecture 1:Sabrina Mervin (EHESS/Centre Jacques Berque), Linking Shia Minorities to the Shii Core: History, Rituals and Religious AuthorityStarting from the concept of walâya, the link that connects the believer to the Imam
and connects the believers among them, I will explore how Shia communities
organise themselves, far from the religious centres (Najaf and Qom). Through
several examples, I will analyse how they construct their history, related to the global
sacred history of Shiism, how they reinterpret and perform “imported” Shii rituals to
build their religious identity. I will also seek to analyse how they deploy locally the
religious authority emanating from the centres. I will then finally shed light on the
tensions between the centres and the peripheries and between the local and the
global.
11:00 – 11:15: Tea/Coffee break
11:15 – 12:45: Session 1 Performing Shiism: Rituals and Practices IMarios Chatziprokopiou (Aberystwyth University), Performing Muharram in Piraeus: the Lamentation for Imam Husayn in a Migratory ContextAshura is the tenth day of the Islamic month Muharram. In Shiism, Ashura signifies
the commemoration of the martyrdom of Husayn, the grandson of Muhammad, who
was defeated in 680 CE by the forces of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid. This event has
often been used by Shia communities as a political paradigm of their minoritarian
position in the Islamic world, and of their resistance against oppressive powers.
During the first ten days of Muharram, Shia communities around the world gradually
re-enact Husayn's martyrdom through ritual lamentation, including narrations,
chants, weeping, chest-beating and self-flagellation. This paper builds on fieldwork
conducted in 2014 among the Pakistani Shia community of the Azakhana Gulzare
Zaynab, based in the city of Piraeus. I explore how the aforementioned political and
performative aspects of Ashura are displayed in the context of contemporary
Greece, marked by the rise of the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn, the adoption of
several of its main discourses by the former government, but also broader feelings of
xenophobia. If, as I argue, during the last few years Pakistani migrants became,
because of both the colour of their skin and their religious background, the principal
scape-goats of Greek racist and, in some cases, murderous attacks, how does this
racism affect Pakistani Shias in particular, given that they constitute “a minority
within a minority”? Before meeting the participants of the Ashura, my aim was to
focus on the discourses they would produce about their ritual actions in order to
interrogate if, and to which extent, they perceive their lamentation for Husayn as an
enactment of eventual grievances related to these multiple layers of their
minoritarian status in Greece. In this paper, I demonstrate how this initial research
question has been challenged by my interlocutors themselves and redirected
through the fieldwork process. Reflecting on the latter as a “nexus of performances
in which significant communicative events can happen” (Fabian 1999: 24) rather
than as a strict data collection based on questions and answers, I propose a more
complex understanding of the Ashura commemoration: it may also be an occasion
that provides a time-frame out of the ordinary, within which the participants can not
only enact the precariousness of their lives, but also suspend, or transgress this
reality.
Yafa Shanneik (University of South Wales), Shia Devotional Poetry in the 20th
and 21st Century from the Gulf to EuropeWriting elegies for the dead and performing them publicly is an Arab tradition dating
back to the pre-Islamic period. Al-Khansa’, a contemporary of the Prophet
Muhammad, is one the best known poetesses who composed plaintive and
melancholic poetry mourning the death of her two brothers. The style of her
lamentation poetry has created and shaped the genre of Arabic lamentation poetry
until the present. In the context of Twelver Shia Islam, writing elegies and performing
them in mourning rituals has been a central element in lamenting the death of Imam
Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in Karbala in 680 CE. The
lachrymal expressions and descriptions that characterises this lamentation poetry
have the religious and ritualistic function of metaphorically identifying and uniting the
participants with Imam Husayn and his cause. Yet, very little is known about Shia
lamentation poetry, particularly those performed during women-only Shia ritual
mourning practices. This paper examines the roots, development and
transformations of Shia lamentation poetry written by Shia women in Iraq, the Gulf
and Europe in the 20th century in light of dramatic geo-political and socio-religious
changes within Shia communities in the Middle East and diasporic communities in
Europe.
Noor Zaidi (University of Pennsylvania), “Still we long for Zaynab”: South Asian Shias and the Shia ShrinesThe fall of Saddam Hussain in 2003 led to an explosion in pilgrimage – or ziyarat – to
the Shia holy cities in Iraq, opening the doors for Shia faithful to visit sacred sites that
had been closed to them for decades. Yet even as pilgrims from around the world
visited Karbala and Najaf in the tens of millions, the increasing unrest in Damascus
would curtail visitation to the revered shrines of Zaynab bint ‘Ali and Ruqayyah bint
Husayn. The exhortation to undertake visitation to the shrines of Shia martyrs has
taken on a renewed vigor in Muharram celebrations in Shia diasporas around the
world, and pilgrimage groups from the United States have abounded. This paper
explores the longing for Shia shrine cities amongst South Asian youth in the United
States, with a particular focus on Shia communities in New York and New Jersey. It
analyzes how Shia shrine cities have replaced the “homeland” in the discourse of
second-generation immigrants, young American Muslims who express deeper
affinity to these distant sites and their affairs than to the state of Shias in their
parents’ native countries. Young Shias carry out pilgrimages individually or with their
peers, in groups aimed at inculcating a sense of transnational Shia solidarity
amongst the next generation of pilgrims. As the rhetoric around ziyarat as a religious
imperative has increased, so too have souvenir and gift exchanges, a practice that
has only recently permeated the rituals of younger generations of South Asian Shia
in these mosques. Encompassing these rituals and practices, however, is the impact
that the loss of the Sayyeda Zaynab shrine as a viable pilgrimage destination has
had on the way the events of Karbala are commemorated – a loss that is essential to
understanding the complex ways that young Shias long for the shrines of their
“history”.
Reni Susanti (Tilburg University), Taklif Ceremony: Women Ritual and the Creation of Future Shii Generations in IndonesiaThis paper introduces the Shii initiation ritual called taklif ceremony organised by
female Qom alumni in Indonesia. The ritual has an important role in helping
researchers to understand the Shia as a community and Shiism as practised in
Indonesia. Focus of the study will be on how the ritual adapted in the Indonesian
context, what kind of roles it serves in shaping Shii womanhood/manhood in
particular and the future Shii generation in general, as well as its role in empowering
Shii women as participants of the ritual. Based on the ethnographic work, it is
suggested that the ritual adapted from post-revolution Iran is not necessarily political
in nature nor intended to serve the political interest of Iran in Indonesia. Taklif, as an
initiation ritual, is a form of technology of the self with an Islamic framework that is
not only a locus for disseminating and exercising fiqh skills but also an embodiment
of the philosophical and metaphysical tenets of Shiism. Furthermore, the ceremony
also plays an important role in empowering Shii women as the ritual provides spaces
for women to consolidate themselves as minority group, to express their religiosity,
to learn and gain support from each other.
12:45 – 14:00: Lunch
14:00 – 15:30: Session 2Performing Shiism: Rituals and Practices IIEkaterina Kapustina (European University at St. Petersburg), Moharramlik and the Modern Shia community of Derbent in Translocal RealityThe Shia community of Derbent has a centuries-old history in the region. Shia Azeri
along with Armenians, Russians and Jewish made up the majority of Derbent
population by the beginning of the 20 th century. Strong migration flows of the last
hundred years have changed the ethnic and religious city structure dramatically.
Russians, Jewish and Armenians have mostly left Dagestan. Derbent was populated
by Sunnis coming from the mountain areas of the republic. In such conditions, the
local Shia community became largely closed inside the downtown of Derbent. As a
result in modern Derbent, Shia Azeri are both an ethnic and religious minority. On
the other side, in the last thirty years the Shia of Derbent like many other
Dagestanians migrated to other regions of Russia – Moscow, St. Petersburg, the gas
and oil centres of West Siberia, as well as Azerbaijan. At the same time, in the post-
Soviet period educational migration of young people became popular – the Shia
youth studied in Islamic universities in Iran. Most migrants, especially those
migrating within Russia, very often lead a translocal life, visit relatives and family in
Derbent from time to time and sometimes return there. In this context, the funeral
rites of Moharramlik become a social event that brings all Derbenters to their home
city. As a result, there is a clash of different views on the order of Ashura
celebrations, each of the views directly or indirectly depending on the migration
experiences of migrants and their families.
In my paper based on my personal fieldwork data, I will show the Ashura ritual
complex in post-Soviet Derbent Shia community. Through Ashura celebration, I will
analyse various points of view from representatives of different migration flows as
well as their attitude to the home city and its role and place in Shia world. In addition,
I will pay attention to the changes of the Shia community’s status in Derbent in the
context of the Sunni majority during recent decades. I also find it interesting to
observe the discussion between young Azeri who studied Islam in Iran and local
Shiism supporters, mostly represented by the elder generation.
Chiara Formichi (Cornell University), Performing Religion across the Indian Ocean: Ashura Commemorations in IndonesiaShias in Indonesia account for less than 1% of the Muslim population, yet devotional
practices dedicated to the “people of the house” involve more people than that.
Grounded in shards of a faraway past, today’s “lovers of the ahl al-bayt” are
committed to reclaim their histories in an effort to carve their niche within the
legitimate pale of Islam. Yemenis and Persians were amongst the first and most
assiduous traders to reach the archipelago in the 9-13th centuries: what started as
commercial connections rapidly evolved into religious and cultural exchanges,
stimulating rich vernacular Islamic traditions. In the 18th century, piety for the ahl al-
bayt and ritual performances marking the period of Ashura, were imported to
Sumatra by South Asian sepoy soldiers and convicts, under the brief period of British
rule there. The 20th-21stcenturies have been characterised by a stronger presence of
the greater Middle East region, more specifically Iran.
In this presentation. I illustrate four examples of Ashura commemorations in Java
and Sumatra (Jakarta, Bandung, Cirebon and Bengkulu) as windows to investigate
the nexus between local forms of devotion and claims to authenticity. Having
collected oral accounts of reconstructed histories, self-narratives, and genealogical
re-discoveries, I aim at unfolding the link between ritual practices and moral
geographies. Amidst a recent convergence towards an orthopraxy promoted by the
Islamic Republic of Iran, the quest for authenticity remains multi-sited, located in the
early Persian da’is of West Java, the sepoys of South Asia, the characters of the
Hindu epic Mahabharata, the Arabs of Hadramawt, the philosophers of Mashhad,
and the jurists of Qom.
Kathryn Spellman-Poots (Aga Khan University / Columbia University), Temporary
Marriage in the UK: Debates and Practice among British Shii Muslims
This paper is part of a larger study arguing that belonging to a Twelver Shii
community, in addition to a wider British Muslim or diasporic community, has
become a more salient identity for devout Shii in recent years. By focusing
specifically on the transmission and transformation of Twelver Shii practices the
project aims to demonstrate how young British Shiis are negotiating local, national
and transnational authority structures, creatively aligning themselves to fellow
Twelver Shii Muslims, and striving to establish themselves as social actors in British
society. This paper focuses on a form of marriage known as temporary marriage in
English (mut’a in Arabic and sigheh Persian). More specifically, it takes an
intergenerational and gendered look at the various ways in which this type of
marriage is practiced by young Twelver Shiis in the UK. Moreover it highlights the
range of viewpoints that British Twelver Shii Muslims have about this controversial
practice, in relation to the rulings of Shii authority, Sunni discourses and ethnic
customs. The paper argues that the discourse surrounding temporary marriage -
which engages with immodesty, deviant expression and sexual relations – serves as
a vehicle for young British Shiis to debate bodily technologies and how they are or
should be expressed and regulated in Britain’s secular and liberal society.
15:30 – 15:45: Tea/Coffee break
15:45 – 17:15: Session 3Diasporic Shia Minorities: Transnationalism and MultilocalitySamra Nasser (Western New Mexico University), Transnational Impact of Events in the Middle East on Post-Migratory Shia Minorities: The Case of Shia Lebanese in Metropolitan DetroitBeginning in 1975 and continuing until 1991, a period in which one third of
Lebanon’s population emigrated, Lebanese Shia displaced by their country’s civil
war arrived in Dearborn and settled in large numbers both in the South end area and
in East Dearborn. Lebanon has been one of the most troubled sites for sectarian
divisions in the Arab world, but sectarianism never really took hold in Southeast
Michigan with the same virulence it did in Lebanon during the civil war. However,
taking up residence in a foreign society known for its upward mobility opportunities,
and worries about how Arabs might be treated in a non-Arab society, often allows
previously warring factions at least to set aside their differences in the new land. The
term “transmigrants” provides a framework for conceptualizing the movement of
Lebanese Shia between Lebanon and the US. As transmigrants, they have tended to
maintain contact with their villages of origin; travel back and forth to Lebanon; send
money to Lebanon; and generally participate in Lebanon’s social, cultural, and
political life—despite the diverse generations and histories of migration that shape
this community. This analysis will focus on extending our understanding of immigrant
minority political integration of the Lebanese Shia transmigrant community within the
Metropolitan Detroit region and comparatively assessing those data with already
published data on non-Lebanese Shia (mostly of Iraqi origin) as well as non-Shia
Lebanese-Americans (mostly Maronites and Sunnis), retrieved from the U.S. Census
Bureau and the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS). The implications from the
research will address how and at what rates these Lebanese Shia transmigrants
adjust and participate politically in their new host societies. It is the hope that this
comparison will reveal a better understanding of the Shia community’s potentially
contrasting levels and types of political participation.
Zahra Ali (University of Chester), Being a Young Devout Shii in London: Religiosity and Multiple Senses of Belonging between the UK and IraqThis presentation explores the religious beliefs and practices, and the socio-political
and transnational self-identifications of young educated British Shia (adherent of
Twelver Shiism) of Iraqi descent living in London. My research is based on a double
approach, socio-historical and ethnographic and is guided by an intersectional
analysis imbricating concepts of religion, ethnicity, class, sect and translocality. The
socio-historical approach looks at the evolution of transnational Iraqi Shia networks
between Iraq (Najaf-Karbala and Baghdad) and London since the 1990s to today
focusing particularly on the post-2003 period. The ethnographic approach relies on
semi-structured interviews and participant observation within youth-oriented British-
Iraqi Shia’s organisations and networks in London. In this presentation, I will seek to
address the following questions: how do devout British Shia of Iraqi descent
experience, express and define their religious beliefs and practices? What is their
relationship to Shia transnational networks and more precisely to Iraq as both their
country of origin and as the main land of the Shia sacred shrines and religious
authority? How does British-Iraqi Shia relate and define their relationship to other
Muslim communities? In exploring the religiosity and multiple senses of belonging of
young educated British-Iraqi Shia living in London I intend to enrich the existing, but
limited, literature on Shia communities in Europe and transnational Shia networks
and to develop an intersectional and complex understanding of notions of religiosity,
belonging-ness and translocality.
Chris Heinhold (University of Chester), Who is Hussain: Contemporary Campaigning at the Glocal LevelSince its inception in 2012, the “Who is Hussain” campaign has expanded from a few
dedicated youth based in London, to a global community of volunteers and activists
engaged in a mixture of social work and spreading their message of Husayn ibn ‘Ali.
While engaging in very particular types of civil society activities, focused on running
food banks and soup kitchens for the homeless, along with blood drives and the
providing of bottled water, these youth have created a space to spread the message
and the values of Husayn, as they understand them, to a wide and diverse audience.
Established as a means to reinforce their own religious values, and to bring the
message of Husayn to people beyond their own faith community, the “Who is
Hussain” campaign stresses that they “are apolitical, areligious and a-everything else
that should divide us from one another!” The campaign has moved rapidly from the
local to the global stage. This multilocal engagement has been achieved not only
through slick virtual presentation and savvy social media engagement, but with an
enduring focus on real world, grass roots level engagement, with volunteers active
across 60 countries. In this presentation, I will look at both the local and global
aspects of the “Who is Hussain” campaign, examining how the transnational scope
of the campaign is squared with the local contexts within which activists are
operating. This is a truly “glocal” endeavour, operating on a global scale while
remaining focused on local issues and embedded within local communities.
17:15 – 17:30: Tea/Coffee break
17:30 – 18:30: Book Launch Mara A. Leichtman (Michigan State University), Shi’i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2015)
18:30: Dinner
Day 2: Saturday 21 May9:00 – 10:00: Keynote Lecture 2Liyakat Takim (McMaster University), Fiqh for Minorities: Shi'i Law in the DiasporaThis paper will examine the new diasporic jurisprudence that has emerged within
Shi'i juridical circles. Shi'i jurists (maraji‘) have responded to the needs of Shi‘i
communities that live as minorities in the West by recasting Islamic legal discourse
on Muslim minorities and reconciling Islamic legal categories to the demands of the
times. New situations and contingencies have prompted the experts in the field to
delve into the sources and to devise methodological devices in usul al-fiqh to enable
them to deduce fresh juridical rulings in order to deal with novel problems and
issues. In their writings, the maraji‘ have articulated the juridical and moral
parameters within which the followers are to base their demeanor.
The paper will also will argue that Islamic legal theory has posited a lacunae which
provides the flexibility to either revise earlier rulings or infer new rulings especially
keeping in mind the fact that Muslims live as minorities in the West. This paper will
argue that the principle of a lacunae (mintaqa al-faragh) in Shi‘i law can empower
jurists to go beyond the traditional parameters of the Shari‘a. The principle allows for
an expansion of Islamic law since jurists can legislate laws that have not been
explicitly prohibited by textual sources.
I will also demonstrate that in the past Shi‘i jurists often appealed to local customary
practices in legislating laws that were absent in revelatory sources. This juridical
practice is premised on the view that all reasonable beings accept and behave
according to common norms and values. Based on the principle of sira ‘uqala’iyya
(behavior that is accepted by all “reasonable” people), jurists can deploy American
customary law as a source of new legislation. Such considerations can lead to a
radically different formulation of diasporic jurisprudence.
10:00 – 10:15: Tea/Coffee break
10:15 – 11:45: Session 4Diasporic Shia Minorities: Identities in TransitionReza Gholami (Keele University), Cultures of Integration: Pride, Shame and New Religious Identities among UK IraniansAlthough the UK does not have a blanket integration policy to address the various
categories of immigrants, the idea of integration nonetheless has a continuous and
significant presence in British community relations. As such, the discourse of
integration orients itself towards second and third-generation diasporans as much as
it is aimed at recent arrivals. In British politics, integration is generally thought of as a
political and economic process ostensibly supporting multicultural co-existence
within an ethos of mutual respect. In recent decades, however, there has been an
argument in some quarters that integrationist discourses have de-emphasised
tolerance in favour of a more assimilationist approach (e.g. Mamdani 2002;
Kundnani 2007). Drawing on recent data from the UK Iranian diaspora, this paper
aims to complicate both perspectives by exploring the cultural dimensions of
integration mainly at the intra-diasporic level. Among UK Iranians, integration is
increasingly acting as an idiom for being a “good”, “successful”, “proper” Iranian; and
a failure to integrate is seen as unacceptable, shameful, even a reason to panic.
Furthermore, the impetus for integration derives from a sense of inferiority steeped in
a Eurocentric mentality which puts huge pressure on Iranians to do better in cultural
and economic terms to constantly justify their adequacy. Thus, successful integration
can only happen through reinforcing the superiority of Western/British civilization and
the inferiority of Iranian culture - a position which is predicated on a critique of Iranian
Shiism and Islam in general. In turn, these processes help the reconceptualization of
Shii religious identities among Iranians whilst driving some young devout Iranians to
assert belonging outside the Iranian community with other Shii populations.
However, these issues also relate to the machinations of Britain’s politics of
integrationism, which I argue only accepts certain types of integration whilst
continuing to problematize the life-styles of many integrated ethnic/religious
minorities. I posit, therefore, that British integrationism is neither about mutual
respect nor about assimilation. Rather, minorities can stay themselves as long as
they present/live a particular version of themselves. That is, the ideal ethnic minority
(especially Muslim) person will acknowledge, even if tacitly, the superiority of
Western civilization whilst conforming to Western standards of education, economic
activity and citizenship -all without being too religious.
Emanuelle Degli Esposti (SOAS), Living Najaf in London: Diaspora, Transnationalism, and the Sectarianisation of the Iraqi-Shia SubjectHow do the spaces we inhabit shape our lived experiences? And how do those lived
experiences in turn come to shape and influence our political subjectivity? Such
questions are rendered all the more important in studies of migrant or diasporic
populations who, by definition, conduct their daily lives in spaces and places that
were initially alien to them. Through a detailed study of Iraqi Shiis living in London,
specifically in the North-western borough of Brent, this paper will seek to trace the
ways in which religious institutions have carved up the physical and social landscape
of North London in ways that have enduring effect on the communities with which
they engage. The increasing diversification of different religious establishments, I
argue, has led to a fragmentation of the city-as-lived, in which the vast majority of
practising Iraqi Shiis engage with only small isolated pockets of the urban
environment on a daily basis. Moreover, the growing number of specifically Shia
schools, charities, mosques, community centres and other such institution has
resulted in what I call a “sectarianisation” of space in Brent, in which differently
practising Muslim sects inhabit different spaces within the city despite often living
within metres of each other. This sectarianisation forms part of a wider political
economy of Shia religiosity in Europe in which competing regional and international
powers (in particular Iraq and Iran) use financial and material resources to serve
their own interests, often at the expense of ordinary Shiis themselves. Drawing on a
mixture of interviews, participant observation, and mapping techniques, I bring
together theory and practice in order to sketch out the ways migrant lives can come
to be localised in certain spaces, and what that can ultimately mean in terms of their
political subjectivity and engagement. The focus on Shiis of Iraqi national
background is significant due to the specific historical and socio-political
circumstances of the Iraqi diaspora and the highly politicised nature of Shiism in
contemporary Iraq at the present time.
Mayra Soledad Valcarcel (University of Buenos Aires) and Mari-Sol Garcia Somoza (University of Buenos Aires/EHESS), Mi corazón late Hussein: Identity, Politics and Religion in a Shia Community in Buenos AiresThis paper is a brief overview of the identitarian transformations and recompositions
of the Shia community that has settled in the Floresta district of Buenos Aires. This
community has its roots in immigrants from the Bilad al-Sham region, who arrived in
Argentina between the end of the nineteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries. The
majority of Floresta’s Shiite community are of Lebanese origin (second, third or
fourth generation), although in recent years the number of converts to Islam
participating in it has risen. We propose to analyse the ways in which this community
has been rebuilding its collective identity and memory in recent decades, taking into
account the mutual implication among local and worldwide phenomena. We discuss,
on the one hand, the return of democracy to Argentina in 1983, which started a
process of greater visibility for religious minorities within a country of a strongly
Catholic cast. On the other hand, we look at the impact of the 1979 Islamic
Revolution in Iran on the members of this group, for whom the influence of this event
was to generate “the recovery of their identity and line of thought”. The links with the
Islamic Republic of Iran were first put down in the 1980s, through the presence of
Iranian Muslims in Argentina, a phenomenon that took material form in, among other
things, the construction in the Argentinian capital of the Al-Tauhid Mosque in 1983,
and subsequently through journeys of religious instruction made by Argentinian
Muslims from this community to Iran. Accordingly, we reflect on the continuities and
breaks in the articulation of Arab, Muslim/Islamic and Argentinian sense of self as
the identitarian loci of enunciation in this process of veering from a historical
otherness toward the development of a particular political and religious identity. We
look first at the tensions between the political-theological positioning of this group
and the rest of the Islamic community in the city. We then analyse the
communicative strategies deployed by this community (including their own particular
digital media and use of social networks) in confronting the prejudices and
stereotypes that view it as the main centre of public attention and media coverage in
light of the intricacies of the AMIA bombing. Lastly, we deal with the praxis of its
leaders, the formation of specific organisations, such as the Union of Argentinian
Muslim Women (UMMA or Unión de Mujeres Musulmanas Argentinas), and its active
participation in the Federation of Islamic Bodies of the Argentine Republic (FEIRA or
Federación de Entidades Islámicas de la República Argentina), or in the recent
Kirchnerist political association, Muslims in Charge (Musulmanes al Frente).
Roswitha Badry (University of Freiburg), From a Marginalized Religious Community in Iran to a Government-sanctioned Public Interest Foundation in Paris: Remarks on the Ostad Elahi FoundationOver the past decades the reformist (maktabi) branch of Iranian Ahl-e Haqq
(Yaresan) has undergone a stupendous metamorphosis that shows similarities with
other former “ghulat” groups but nevertheless seems to be unique. The
transformation process started three generations ago in Iran with writing down the
community’s religious tenets which had earlier been transmitted orally. Nur Ali Elahi
(d. 1974), called “Ostad Elahi” by his admirers, was mainly responsible for
reconciling the doctrines of the Ahl-e Haqq with Twelver Shia by placing them in the
context of esoteric Shia. Finally, his son Bahram Elahi (b. 1931) gave his father’s
teachings a universal dimension by publishing books in French for the growing
Western community and by establishing the “Ostad Elahi Foundation” in Paris (2000)
that is said to teach “ethics and human solidarity” according to Nur Ali Elahi’s
concepts. The foundation was even granted NGO special consultative status with
ECOSOC. This contribution will focus on the web presentation, the activities and
networks of the foundation. It will be argued that the community tried to benefit from
a booming Western interest in esotericism and a global ethos.
11:40 – 12:00 Tea/Coffee break
12:00 – 13:30: Session 5Shia Communities in FormationPiro Rexhepi (Max Planck Institute), The Bektashi Tariqa and the Postsocialist Politics of “European Islam” in South-eastern EuropeAs Muslim majority countries in the Balkans are designated for European Union
integration, Balkan Islam has emerged as an investigative field and a public
discourse that attempts to make meaning of the integration of Muslims in the
periphery of Europe in times of rising Islamophobia and overall EU integration
fatigue. This paper traces the discursive construction of Bektashi Shia Islam as a
model Muslim minority, an exceptional and exemplary Islam for Europe, one that, in
contrast to Sunni Islam, is produced as “secular”, “European” and “tolerant”.
Projecting Balkan Muslims as possible European subjects, this discourse allows for
the demarcation of EU political borders while spatially and temporally separating
Muslims in the Balkans from the larger Muslim world. I argue that the contemporary
accounts of Bektashi Islam as “Islam light” are not new but rather encumbered with
Orientalist accounts of early colonial cataloguing of Austro-Hungarian scholars and
imperial officials who used local networks to exert power, survey, archive
information, and manage local populations. Here, I examine how the genealogy of
colonial categorization and historicization of Bektashi Shia Muslims in the Balkans
according to ethnic ascriptions and as a different type of Muslim from those in the
Middle East and Africa is employed in contemporary discursive production of
European Islam. Specifically, I look at late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century
Austro-Hungarian ethnographies of Muslims in the Balkans that were used to
catalogue and inform colonial policies while establishing the colonial archives that
continue to influence knowledge production regarding Muslims in the Balkans.
Arun Rasiah (Holy Names University), Ideas in Motion: The Politics of Knowledge and Patronage in Indian Ocean Islam
Twelver Shiism emerged in Sri Lanka following Iran’s Islamic revolution of 1979. The
political upheaval that inaugurated the fifteenth hijri century also reflected an
important shift in the transmission of religious knowledge. New Shii publications were
widely disseminated and found an audience open to new iterations of Islam.
Eventually new institutions of learning, embodying an alternative intellectual order to
the teachings of Sunni madrasas, imported Shii scholars from abroad while
dispatching students to traditional centers of learning. This paper, based on research
in Sri Lanka, examines how the politics of knowledge and patronage have both
enabled and constrained the scholarly networks that lead the Shii community. Bound
by conceptions of religious authority, Shii communities gather for religious
observance and instruction in centers led by ‘ulama’. They face numerous
challenges and adapt global discourses to navigate local concerns in the aftermath
of the civil war and an atmosphere of growing Islamophobia. Their double minority
status vis-á-vis the Sunni Muslim community and authoritarian state and non-state
actors compel them to observe taqiyya as a strategy of survival. Moreover,
persecuted members of Shii minorities from Pakistan and Afghanistan have sought
sanctuary in Sri Lanka, where the local Shia have played a critical role in their
resettlement. As asylum seekers and refugees on the margins of larger society, they
too share a sense of exile that recalls narratives of oppression relating to the
Prophet’s family, the ahl ul-bayt. Among them, scholar under threat of death also
serve in the capacity of resident ‘alim, transmitting philosophical knowledge from
Qom into the life of the fledgling community. Informed by practices of ritual, learning,
and politics, the resulting environment enculturates a unique Shii identity that brings
together local, regional and global perspectives.
Emiko Stock (Cornell University), Comfortably sitting in-between: Grains of Cham ‘Alid Piety to Rethink the Shi’a / Sunni DivideA porridge dark like the colour of martyrdom, insidious references to Ashura, ‘Ali and
Fatimah for role models, and a son a bit from Champa, a lot like Kerbala. And
somehow also, orders for mohr – praying stones from Kerbala – and memories of a
Persian king that has nothing to do with it all, but surely claims to have a whole lot to
say. ‘Shia character’ in Sunni Southeast Asia has long been searched for by
specialists of Islam aiming to demonstrate an early influence of Shiism in the region.
Following lines of devotion to the ahl al-bayt among the Chams – Muslims in
Cambodia – this paper suggests that those elements, rather than furthering the
divide of Shism / Sunnism by layering the two distinct entities, could be used to
demonstrate a common ‘Alid piety comfortably sitting in between. Following the
proposition developed by Hodgson (1955) and Formichi & Feener (2015), I further
explore the potentials for the notion of ‘Alid piety for Islamic studies and Southeast
Asian studies to lay down their disciplinary divide as much as their geographical
borders.
Anas P. A (Aligarh Muslim University), Cultural Representation of Shiism in Malabar Coast of Indian Ocean: A Case Study on the Social Life of the Kerala MuslimsThe Malabar Coast, the South-western shore of the Indian subcontinent, has been
an important marine trade and migration hub since ancient times. From a cultural
and religious perspective, the Kerala Muslim are so-called Mappila, Sunni Muslims
and followers of the Shafi‘i madhhab. Islam spread throughout of Malabar by the
preaching of the Arab and Persian Sufi missionaries. The Ponnani Sayyids who
migrated from Hadramaut took the spiritual and political leadership of Sunni Islam.
Shiism spread in this area by the preaching of the Shaikh Muhammad Shah (d.1766
CE) who settled in Kondotti in the middle of the 18th century. The growth of Shiism
created a disturbance among the Sunni scholars and led into great controversies
between the Ponnani and Kondotti factions. It continued until the first decades of the
20th century. At last, Shia Muslims repented and Sunnis absorbed them. The
interesting matter in this transformation is that the census of British government in
1871 has proclaimed the total numbers of Shia Muslims in this area were 14.9%. But
nowadays their numbers are a few, around a thousand families. However, Shia
culture and practices are flourishing among the Sunni Muslims. Sunnis are
maintaining the shrine of Muhammad Shah at Kondotti and celebrate the festivals of
Muharram, Milad, etc. The heroic exploits of Hazrat ‘Ali and his family are highlighted
in Mappilla literature and folklore. The main objectives of this study is to analyse the
cultural transaction of Shiite elements among the Sunni society, even they had
become extinct or a minority community and how Shiism has survived and coexisted
within the Sunni Muslim majority in the modern context.
13:30 – 14:45: Lunch
14:45 – 15:45: Keynote Lecture 3Seyyed Fadhil Milani & Mohammad Mesbahi (Islamic College London), Muslim Migration to Europe, Challenging (European) Modernity and the Necessity of the ijtihadi ApproachThis research will review the use of ijtihad by Shia ulama, outlining the source for the
principles that guide and inform Muslims on how to make Islam-based moral and
ethical choices to respond to the challenges faced by European modernity as a
modern concept, social entity and ideological force that needs to be addressed. This
paper will explore the contemporary concerns of ordinary Muslims at every level of
society living in the UK (European non-Muslim society), working alongside or
marrying non-Muslims. It will reflect on the desperate need for authoritative guidance
by such migrants and highlight a series of replies obtained on these targeted issues
within a myriad of complexities that confronts them on a daily basis. Moreover, there
will be a critical look at the traditional divisions of Dar al-Islam and Dar al-Harb to
highlight the dynamics of the inclusion of Dar al-‘Ahd by contemporary European
Muslims in this innovative ijtihadi approach.
15:45 – 16:00: Tea/Coffee break
16:00 – 17:30: Session 6Shia Transnationalism between Global and Local DynamicsHafsa Oubou (Northwestern University), Transnational Conversion and Global Networks among Moroccan Shia ConvertsThis paper explores the transnational conversion and global networks among
Moroccan Shia converts. Morocco is an overwhelmingly Sunni country in which
conversion to Shia Islam for Moroccan citizens could possibly challenge the common
perception of both patriotism and the allegedly shared Sunni faith. The notion of an
ideal Islamic community promised by the Iranian Revolution in 1979 swept through
the Middle East and had a particularly profound resonance among the youth in North
Africa, as well as among Muslim immigrants in Europe who were, at that time,
relatively quiet minorities with transnational ties to their home countries but not
elsewhere. My proposed paper examines transnationalism through the lens of
religious conversion to understand more broadly the dynamics of religious minorities
in both the homeland (Morocco) and diaspora (Belgium and France, in particular).
This paper provides an interpretation of multilocality and transnationalism through
religious conversion while debating how for Moroccan emigrants to Europe, Morocco
has become both periphery and still center of an emerging Moroccan Shia Islam
whose community members are also part of Moroccan Shia immigrants in Brussels.
In what ways does the making of Moroccan Shia in the last 30 years in Morocco add
to our understanding of Muslim diaspora in the “West”, particularly for Moroccan Shia
immigrants? How do the epistemologies of Shia Islam among the Shia converts in
the homeland shape the Moroccan diaspora in Europe? Data for this paper include
field notes, interviews, and media from fieldwork in Morocco in summer 2015.
Sufyan Abid (University of Chester), An Alternative umma: The Construction and Development of Shia Globalism among South Asian Shia Muslims in LondonThis paper explores the paradoxical nature of Shia globalism as proposed and
propagated by Shia speakers and activists of a South Asian background in London.
The paper will elaborate the complexities that the proponents of Shia globalism have
to confront with while introducing themselves as an alternative umma vis-á-vis Sunni
Muslims. The paper discusses the negotiations and compromises that proponents of
the idea of “Shia Muslims as an alternative umma” experience while they present it
publically. The paper is based on fieldwork undertaken among South Asian Shia
Muslims living in London and the analysis is based on both discourse and religio-
political practices undertaken by these Muslims. The idea of Shia globalism brings
itself in the spotlight by denouncing terrorism and by showing solidarity with the
West’s “War on Terror” against various terrorist organisations of Sunni inclinations
across the world, yet at the same time, it creates its space within the Muslim world
by showing strong solidarity with the Palestinian cause by demonstrating severe
opposition to Israel. The Shia speakers and activists based in Britain emphasise
unity and consensus about the political leadership of the Supreme Leader in Iran as
single representative of global Shia Islam. The paper argues that idea of “Shias as
an alternative umma” has many conflicting and divergent points where the
“alternative umma” compromises the interests of either the Sunni Muslims or the
West. The paper also maintains that Shia globalism is not an acceptable position for
some sections of Shia Muslims who have their reservations about the hegemonic
ambitions of the Supreme Leader in Iran and about the ideology and institution of
wilayat al-fiqh (guardianship of the Muslim jurist).
Iman Lechkar (University College Brussels), Interpreting Khamenei and Fadlallah in Brussels: the Religious and Social impact of Middle Eastern Clerical Leaders in the Capital of EuropeBrussels is a super-diverse metropolitan city that counts 146 nationalities and 104
languages that are well spoken by its inhabitants. A quarter of the population is
Muslim (230,000) and between 15,000 to 20,000 are Shiites. This is a small but
important minority because through recent conversions and migrations this number
is incessantly increasing. Based on my doctoral research on Moroccan Belgian
Shiites, this paper draws on participant observation and semi-structured interviews
conducted from 2007 to 2010. During this period, I extensively visited two mosques
that attract the majority of Shiites in Brussels. While one mosque is clearly influenced
by Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, the other mosque is characterised by adherents
of Sayyed Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah. In this paper, I will explore how these two
mosques relate to these Twelver marajiʿ (highest Shia clerical authorities). By
drawing on the teachings of Khameini and Fadlallah, two different aesthetic
communities are constructed, enlarging and diversifying the Muslim landscape in
Brussels.
Robert Riggs (University of Bridgeport), Global Networks, Local Concerns: Investigating the Impact of Emerging Technologies on Shii Religious Leaders and ConstituenciesShii mujtahids represent themselves as transnational religious leaders whose
authority reaches followers all over the world. Historically they have developed and
maintained local constituencies through the positioning of loyal representatives who
collect the khums tithe, mediate local disputes and transmit messages on their
behalf. With the rise of a global information network in the late 20 th century, powered
by the Internet, mujtahids have established websites that play a vital role in the
maintenance of local constituencies. The use of Internet technology provides greater
opportunities for constituency-building and at the same time the potential loss of
control over the production and dissemination of knowledge. Internet websites allow
self-styled mujtahids to proliferate and diverse new centers of authority to form, thus
inverting historical center-periphery dynamics. To date, scholars have discussed the
effects of Internet technology on the authority structures of Shii scholars in furthering
competition for knowledge and authority. However, these studies have neglected to
highlight the increasing uniformity in thought that the Internet has encouraged -
structural transformations that have led to changes in Shia beliefs and practice.
Employing three analytical frames: discourse analysis of various Internet content,
Actor Network theory, and the globalization theories of Arjun Appadurai, this paper
positions Shii authority structures in a “disjunctive global economy of culture” and
elucidates the creative ways in which these uniquely situated religious authorities
articulate the relationship between the local and the global. These frames will explain
how new media has facilitated an increase in discussions, debates and challenges to
religious authority in Shii post-migratory societies in New York and London.
Clarifying the process of hybridization that takes place at the nexus of religious
authority, political and social conditions and new media in a Shii context will provide
a valuable tool for analyzing similar phenomena in other social contexts.
17:30 – 18:00: Concluding discussions
18:00: Dinner