I – Hybrid Learning

ISRAEL

Batoota — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 07:58:26 +0000

ISRAEL. In 1992 the Arab minority in Israel numbered approximately 914,000, or 18.5 percent of the total Israeli population (the figures include the Arab residents of East Jerusalem, estimated at 146,ooo, but not of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip). Seventy-seven percent of the Arab minority (704,000) were Muslim, while the rest were Christian (14 percent or 128,ooo) and Druze (9 percent or 82,000).
The 1948 Arab-Israeli War created a structural vacuum in the life of the Muslim community in Israel. Organized Islam virtually disappeared. Almost every member of the Muslim religious establishment of Mandatory Palestine fled. The Muslims in the newly established State of Israel were left without religious court judges, prayer leaders, and other functionaries necessary to sustain the religious life of the community. The Supreme Muslim Council ceased to exist, having been superseded by the Jordanian religious authorities.
Israel was faced with the challenging task of reestablishing the Muslim religious apparatus and applying the shari’ah in the new Jewish state. Muslim religious affairs, including the administration of awgdf (sg., wagf; religious endowments), devolved to the Israeli authorities, primarily to the Muslim Department of the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
The shari’ah court system was gradually reconstructed, but it took years to restore the situation to normal, mainly because there were few people qualified to assume religious appointments. By necessity, underqualified men were occasionally engaged. In May 1961 the Knesset (parliament) ratified the Qadis Law, which stipulated that the gddis be selected by a committee with a Muslim majority, appointed by the president of Israel, and dispense justice in accordance with Israeli laws. In 1993 there were seven gddis in seven shari’ah courts of first instance and one appeals court located in Jerusalem. In 1992 the courts reviewed 4,952 cases, 4o percent of which dealt with divorce and alimony.
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The Muslim religious courts in Israel were granted exclusive and extensive jurisdiction in matters of personal status and wagf. The Knesset, however, restricted the jurisdiction of the shari’ah courts in certain areas with the intention of thoroughly reforming the legal status of women.
As Aharon Layish has shown (“Muslim Religious Jurisdiction in Israel,” Asian and African Studies 2 [1966]: So-79), Israeli legislation in matters of personal status proceeded along two different lines. With regard to marriage and divorce, the Knesset imposed several restrictions: it prohibited the marriage of girls under seventeen, outlawed polygamy, and forbade divorcing a woman against her will. The secular legislation did not supersede religious law in these matters, but it was enforced by penal sanctions.
The other line entailed the supersession of Muslim religious law; for example, the Knesset’s legislation regarding natural guardianship of the mother was alone binding. With the 1965 Succession Law, the exclusive jurisdiction of the shari`ah courts in matters of succession and wills was abolished, and the power to deal with these matters was transferred to the state district courts.
After 1948 Muslim wagf properties whose administrators or beneficiaries were absentees were entrusted to a special custodian. Consecrated Muslim sites and their secular appurtenances were administered by the Muslim Department of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which served as an agent of the Custodian of Absentees’ Property. The law was amended in 1965 to allow the release of wagf khayri property to several Muslim trustee committees.
Since the late 1970s the Muslim community in Israel has been undergoing a process of Islamic revivalism. The resurgence derives from a combination of local conditions particular to the Arab minority in Israel as well as more general causes.
Renewed contacts with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 war strengthened the religious component in Israeli Muslims’ collective identity. It gave them renewed access to the holy places of Jerusalem and Hebron and exposed them to the activities of the Muslim High Council in Jerusalem, reconstituted after 1967. It was through the intervention of the council that in 1978 Israeli Arabs were permitted to perform the hajj; until then holders of Israeli passports had been barred from doing so. The council also helped young Israeli Arabs study at Islamic colleges in the occupied territories.
The resurgence of Islam must also be seen against the background of the Arab sector’s socioeconomic crisis. The intensive process of modernization that the Arabs in Israel experienced weakened their conservative family value system and clan structure. This partial disintegration of old social frameworks created a void and a sense of confusion, causing more Arabs to turn to Islam for moral guidance.
Since the early 1970s the Arab sector in Israel has become increasingly aware of and distressed by its socioeconomic situation relative to that of the Jews. The sizable gap between the Arab and Jewish populations in such fields as education, health services, housing, and industrialization has become increasingly acute. The gaps developed partly through governmental neglect and partly through the government’s inability to meet the growing needs occasioned by the Arabs’ rapid population growth. The ultimate outcome was a deepening sense of Arab bitterness, frustration, alienation, and dissent.
As the discrepancies between Jews and Arabs widened and the secular Arab political bodies failed to improve matters, the Arab community became increasingly eager for some external force to step in and remedy the imbalance. As elsewhere in the Muslim world, the Islamist movement filled the void, providing practical solutions to the deteriorating local conditions.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s rise to power in Iran led to the formation of the first clandestine group of Islamic militants in Israel. Set up within a year of the Iranian revolution, it called itself Usrat al-Jihad (the Jihad Family) and was organized as a paramilitary unit. The group’s objective was to wage jihad against Israel, undermine the basis of Jewish-Zionist existence, and cause the state to collapse from within. Usrat al-Jihad carried out a number of acts of sabotage, including arson; it also took action against secular or permissive trends among Israeli Muslims. However, soon after their first sabotage operations in 1981, all seventy members of the organization were arrested and sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to fifteen years. The arrest and trial dampened Muslim militancy in Israel.
In the mid-i98os the Islamic activist Shaykh `Abd Allah Nimr Darwish moved to center stage. A resident of Kufr Qasim, Darwish was a graduate of the Nablus shad’ah college. In 1979 he joined Usrat al-Jihad; he was arrested and convicted in 1981 and released in 1983. When Darwish resumed his politico-religious career, he gave Islamic activism in Israel a new nonmilitant direction. Darwish focused on the community, trying to win the hearts of the local Muslims by means of religious education and community work. Islamic associations were soon founded in a number of Arab localities. The Islamic Movement, as it came to be known, succeeded in changing the face of Arab village society. Mosque attendance increased steadily; the number of mosques in Israel grew from 6o in 1967 to 240 in 1993.
The movement has been especially successful in mobilizing the inhabitants for active, Islamically oriented work in their communities. Muslim volunteers built internal roads in Arab villages, put up sex-segregated busstop shelters, opened kindergartens, libraries and clinics, and established drug-rehabilitation centers. Considerable efforts were directed to the promotion of sports. Indeed, the Islamic movement found solutions to many of the daily hardships that resulted from the authorities’ failure to meet the Arab sector’s needs. “If the state is not ready to help us, we shall help ourselves,” declared Shaykh Darwish, in what came to be the movement’s central motto.
This approach proved to be a prescription for success. In the 1989 municipal elections Islamic representatives competed in fourteen localities and won nearly 30 percent of the total seats. In five villages and townships Islamic candidates won the mayoralty. In Umm alFahm, the second largest Arab town in Israel, Islamic candidates under the leadership of Shaykh Rd’id Salah secured a majority in the town council as well as the mayor’s office. In the 1993 municipal elections the movement increased its power. The number of representatives grew from 51 to 59 and the Islamic trend won representation in sixteen localities (compared to fourteen in 1989). All incumbent mayors and heads of local councils representing the movement (except one) were reelected.
The religious views of the Islamic movement appear to have been influenced by various sources. One is the traditional orthodox Sunni approach taught in Arab schools and Islamic colleges in the West Bank. A second is the ideas of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Islamic reformists and modernists. The third, and perhaps most important, is the doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood, which helped shape the social and political perceptions of the Israeli Islamic movement to a large extent.
From its inception the local Islamic movement has been torn between three contradictory foci of loyalty or solidarity-Islam, Israel, and Palestine. The Islamic movement’s program genuinely reflected the problematic interrelationship among Islamic revivalism, the declared secular character of Palestinian nationalism, and the need to act within the boundaries of Israeli law. This gave rise to the confusion and the often ambiguous language on sensitive issues such as the components of identity, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the solution of the Palestinian problem, the idea of a Palestinian Islamic state, the Islamic movements in the territories (Hamas, Islamic Jihad), the intifadah, and the Palestinian/Islamic armed struggle.
The complexities facing the revivalists can best be exemplified by their treatment of the issue of national identity. The four orbits of identity often mentioned by the Islamic movement in Israel are Islam, Arabism, humanism, and Palestinian nationalism. Some local Islamic leaders refrain from mentioning Israel at all; others, wary of provoking a harsh reaction on the part of the Israeli authorities for implicitly denying Israel’s existence, do mention the state, but only with reference to the technicality of citizenship. Leaders of the movement have been put under house arrest, and the movement’s press has been temporarily closed in reaction to what was described as publication of inflammatory material.
Similarly complex is the question of a Palestinian Islamic state. Unlike their counterparts in the territories-who do not hesitate to call for a state from “the River to the Sea,” that is, from the Jordan to the Mediterranean-the Israeli Islamists are reserved. Some, like Shaykh Darwish, make a clear distinction between their support of the idea that genuine Islamic states should be established in the region and their rejection of the idea that an Islamic state should replace Israel. Others fully endorse the views of Hamas that the land of Palestine is an Islamic endowment (wagf), which the shari`ah rules that Muslims must liberate. They do not, of course, expound pursuing this goal, for this would compel the Israeli authorities to take action against them.
The Islamic movement’s continued success in Israel depends on the skill of its balancing act: its relentless promotion of the Islamization of Israeli Muslims in their personal conduct and community life on the one hand, and on the other its keeping political action and propaganda at a level compatible with their unique situation of a Muslim-Arab minority living in a Jewish state.
[See also Arab-Israeli Conflict; Hamas; Jihad Organizations; Palestine Liberation Organization; and West Bank and Gaza.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Israeli, Raphael. Muslim Fundamentalism in Israel. London, 1993. Layish, Aharon. “The Muslim Waqf in Israel.” Asian and African Studies 2 (1966): 41-47.
Layish, Aharon. Women and Islamic Law in a Non-Muslim State. New York, 1975.
Mayer, Thomas. Hitorerut ha Muslemin be-Yisra’el. Giv`at-Havivah, 1988.
Rekhess, Elie. “Resurgent Islam in Israel.” Asian and African Studies 27 (1993)
ELIE REKHESS

ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA

Batoota — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 08:12:59 +0000

ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF NORTH AMERICA. Formed in 1982, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) is an umbrella organization for several Muslim professional groups that have grown out of the Muslim Student Association (MSA), including the Association of Muslim Social Scientists, the Association of Muslim Scientists and Engineers, and the Islamic Medical Association. Various Muslim communities and mosques have also affiliated themselves with the ISNA. These locally based affiliate organizations vary in size, membership, ethnic composition, and styles of leadership. But, regardless of these variations, each of these Islamic centers and mosques are perceived by local Muslims as mirror images of the national organization, the ISNA.

The ISNA is headquarted in Plainfield, Indiana, where its general secretariat operates out of a mosque cum office complex built with funds donated by the United Arab Emirates. The building was designed by a Muslim architect, and it sits on Indiana farmland that is on the verge of urban transformation. The headquarters consists of a general secretariat run by a secretary general who is directly accountable to the elected president of the ISNA. The staff at the headquarters work under directors, who supervise the following units: Islamic Teaching Center; Islamic Schools Department; Membership and Field Services Department; Convention and Audiovisual Department; and Publications Department.
The constitution of the ISNA recognizes two policymaking bodies, namely, the Majlis Ash-Shura (Consultative Council) and the Executive Council. The first body consists of twenty-four members: seven of these members are elected by the ISNA’s general body; five are elected by the presidents of the ISNA’s chapters and affiliates; and six are ex-officios, including the presidents of the constituent organizations. In addition, the Majlis Ash-Shura includes the president of the ISNA, the ISNA vice presidents for the United States and for Canada, the chairman of the North American Trust Fund (the publishing arm of the ISNA), the chairman of the Communities Islamic Trust Fund, and the presidents of the following national organizations affiliated with the ISNA: the Muslim Arab Youth Association, the Muslim Youth of North America, the Council of Islamic Schools of North America, the Muslim Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Malaysian Islamic Study Group.
The society has a membership and support base of about four hundred thousand Muslims. Its leadership is drawn predominantly from the Muslim immigrant communities, although the number of native-born American Muslims serving in the organization is growing. Its members are kept informed of national and international affairs through its organ, The Islamic Horizons, edited by an American-born Muslim of Pakistani origin, Kamran Memon. Since its inception, the ISNA has held an annual meeting every summer. Muslim leaders from overseas are invited to address the gathering.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Haddad, Yvonne Y. The Muslims of America. New York and Oxford, 1991.
Islamic Society of North America. 199o Annual Report. Plainfield, Ind., 1991,
Islamic Society of North America. ISNA Companion. Plainfield, Ind., 1991.
SULAYMAN S. NYANG

ISLAMIC REPUBLICAN PARTY

Batoota — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 07:39:12 +0000

ISLAMIC REPUBLICAN PARTY. Founded in February 1979, shortly after the fall of the Iranian monarchy, the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) had the approval of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-1989), and its key founding members were among his top clerical loyalists. Foremost among them were Muhammad Bihishti, `Abd al-Karim Musavi Ardabili, `Ali Khamene’i, ‘All Akbar Hashimi Rafsanjani, and Muhammad Javad Bahunar. All were also members of the Revolutionary Council. Bihishti was the secretary general of the IRP and the Revolutionary Council concurrently. The close connection between the two bodies was acknowledged by Rafsanjani during the first party congress in 1983. The Revolutionary Council, however, had been disbanded in July 1980.

The IRP was not a regular political party. It neither institutionalized a party structure nor encouraged increased membership. Formal membership was never emphasized and did not seem important. From the start, the party served as a mobilizer of some of the traditional and reactionary forces of Iranian society. It formed a united front through a loose coalition of various Islamic groups and organizations, clerics, and nonclerical elements that endorsed Khomeini’s version of an Islamic government. A multitude of persons and groups whose interests ran counter to the religious moderates, secularists, liberals, and leftists was utilized by the IRP to undermine these voices. The divided character of the non-IRP groups, their ideological, organizational, and personal conflicts, as well as their inexperience in the intricacies of governance, helped contribute to the IRP success.
Under the shrewd leadership of Bihishti, the IRP moved swiftly toward monopolizing state power. It became a focal point for unleashing Islamic forces on grassroots organizations and independent groups, and it organized Islamic associations inside the workplace to counter the independent workers’ councils. On university and college campuses, Islamic student groups were encouraged to take matters into their own hands. The IRP organized rallies and demonstrations against other groups, advocated purges of government institutions and the overhaul of the state bureaucracy, pushed for the execution of the officials of the previous regime, and ordered the confiscation of their properties and the takeover of some sectors of the Iranian economy. The IRP also played an important role in the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran in November 1979.
These activities did not always occur under the rubric of the IRP or the person of Ayatollah Khomeini. The presence of autonomous and semiautonomous groups and individuals in the party facilitated a chain of action with the sole purpose of eliminating those perceived as the enemies of the revolution and guaranteeing governance for the Khomeini loyalists. For example, although Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami (the Revolutionary Guards) and the Hizbullah (the Party of God) adherents were not part of the IRP, they served as its agents. [See Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqildb-i Islam!; and Hizbullah, article on Hizbullah in Iran.] Also, not all pro-Khomeini clerics and groups were supportive of the IRP or of Bihishti. The most prominent among these nonsupporters were members of the religiously conservative Jam’iyah-yi Mudarrisin-i Qom (Theological Teachers’ Association of Qom). The teachers’ group was sharply critical of the idea of a political party, but since such groups could not dominate the political scene or singlehandedly eliminate the liberal or left factions, it sided with the IRP. Other groups, such as the Jam’Iyahyi Ruhaniyat-i Mubariz (Association of the Combatant Clerics) never directly joined the IRP but formed a temporary coalition in order to gain a foothold in the 1980 parliamentary elections.
A majority of the elected candidates to the Majlis-i Khabarigan (Assembly of Experts), a crucial body charged with drafting a new constitution, came from the IRP coalition. Ayatollah Bihishti became vice chair of the Assembly of Experts and ran most of its public and private meetings. The Revolutionary Council and the IRP vigorously campaigned for the approval of the constitution in the December 1979 referendum.
Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr’s election in January 1980 as the first president of postrevolutionary Iran was a significant setback for the IRP. The party had pressed for the postponement of the presidential elections until the last day. Bani Sadr’s close connection to Khomeini, his popularity among the anti-IRP groups, and the top clerics’ general ambivalence about the IRP’s capability to govern joined to bring about the IRP defeat in January 1980. Yet in February, Bihishti, maintaining all his previous positions, became the head of the Supreme Court.
Thereafter, the IRP put all of its efforts into gaining a majority in the first parliamentary elections after the revolution, to be held in March 198o. Several developments are of political significance. In mid-February 1980, the Revolutionary Council decided to change the election law. An absolute majority was required in order to win the first round of balloting, failing which the top two candidates had to participate in a runoff election. With the exception of the IRP, most groups and organizations opposed the two rounds of balloting, arguing that it worked to the disadvantage of small parties. The IRP then moved to form a grand coalition of diverse Islamic groups. It also used its connections and clout to change the boundaries of various constituencies to the IRP’s advantage. Obstruction of the campaigns of other political parties was systematic. Many small-party candidates were disqualified and demonstrations were disallowed; Friday prayer sermons and religious broadcasts on television and radio were used as campaign forums. On the day of the elections, fraud and irregularities were rampant. The result was an impressive success for the IRP and the independent Islamic elements. About half of those elected in the first round in March and more than half in the second round of elections in May were part of the IRP coalition. Rafsanjani was elected speaker of the Majlis (parliament) on 20 July 1980.
IRP control of the parliament presented an added challenge to Bani Sadr. The IRP and the president clashed over many issues, including the choice of a prime minister and cabinet heads. Muhammad `All Raja% a Majlis deputy from Tehran and an IRP member, was imposed as prime minister on the president, touching off a constitutional crisis and immobilizing state functions. Ignoring the chain of command, Raja’i regularly opposed Bani Sadr. These confrontations came to symbolize anticlerical versus clerical rule. Petitions were signed and demonstrations were held asking for the dissolution of the IRP. Grand Ayatollahs `Abd Allah Shiraz! and Hasan Tabataba’i Qummi declared their support for the president. Ayatollah Khomeini interceded, asking all sides to cease their quarrels, but to no avail. The IRP’s propaganda and mobilization of street mobs and parliamentary deputies eventually resulted in Bani Sadr’s removal by Khomeini on 22 June 1981 and a major crackdown against all anticlerical groups. The Temporary Council of the Presidency was established to oversee the change. Its three members were Bihishti, Raja% and Rafsanjani.
On 28 June, 1981, the IRP headquarters in Tehran was destroyed in a major bomb blast. Seventy-four people were killed, including Bihisht-1, Majlis deputies, high-ranking government officials, and other party members. Although the government blamed the organization known as the Mujahidin-i Khalq, no one claimed responsibility for the blast. This fueled rumors that interclerical rivalry and anti-Bihishti sentiments were responsible for the bombing. [See Mujahidin, article on Mujahidin-i Khalq.]
Muhammad Javad Bahunar, the minister of education, became secretary-general of the party; in July elections Raja’! was elected president (confirmed by Khomeini on a August 1 98 1 ), and he chose Bahunar as his prime minister. Musavi Ardabill replaced Bihishti as the head of the Supreme Court. On 3o August 1981, both Bahunar and Raja’! were killed in another bomb blast in the premier’s office. Again, with impressive speed, the regime moved to fill the gap. Khamene’i became secretary-general of the IRP and, in October, was elected the third president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. He held both positions concurrently until the dissolution of the IRP in 1987.
The goals of the IRP were not spelled out until its first and last party congress in May 1983. Many observers believe that the congress was convened in order to regroup the party and save it from internal fracture. Prior to this date, the IRP had not issued any document on its general ideological outlook. The congress revealed that the goal of the party was to bring together and coordinate dispersed Islamic forces in order to prevent them from neutralizing each other. Difficulties and sharp ideological divisions in the party were acknowledged, yet party members were urged to cooperate with nonparty persons and groups, because they were a valuable asset to the Islamic regime. No statements were made on possible plans to increase membership. Reports indicated that around a thousand members and several nonparty political dignitaries were invited as guests and observers. For the first time, a general plan of action was approved and members were voted on for two councils: the Central Council of the party and the Council of Jurisdiction. The latter’s task was to mitigate infighting and to remove factional disputes. Its five members were Khamene’i, Rafsanjani, MuhammadMahdi Rabban! Amlishi, `Abbas-Va’z Tabarsi, and Muhammad ‘Ali Muvahhid! Kirmani.
The precise ideological orientation of the IRP is more difficult to describe. It was a goal-oriented party whose task, the institutionalization of an Islamic state, had already been accomplished. It is clear, however, that the fall of Bani Sadr and the death of Bihisht! prompted a resurfacing of personal and ideological conflicts among Islamic forces. Bihishti’s death, in particular, marked the beginning of the end for the IRP. His sagacious and farsighted managerial skill and his ability to bring together diverse and hostile forces under the party umbrella were lost forever. The nature of the intraelite conflict remains obscure owing to its fluid nature, secrecy, and personalism. Personal rivalries were often disguised as ideological disagreements, and individuals shifted their positions and allegiances from one group or issue to another. Adding to the confusion is that certain groups and individual clergy already independent from the IRP still worked with the party on issues of mutual interest. This was acceptable to the party, which did not attempt to coerce any entity into joining the organization; there was no particular reward or punishment for membership. These independent centers of power were both a source of attraction and emulation by inner-party circles.
Observers of elite factionalism have identified various tendencies within the IRP. Although a concise categorization is an impossible task, some conflicting ideological tendencies are identifiable. In 1983, on the eve of the formation of the Assembly of Experts to decide on a successor to Khomeini, a number of ideological clashes resurfaced. The naming of Husein Ali Montazeri (Husayn ‘Ali Muntaziri) as the successor to Khomeini prompted a public display of political and personal rifts. Two prominent camps were referred to as the Maktabi and the Hujjatiyah groups. Each embraced several minigroups with clerical adherents from the IRP. The two groups seem to have differed on the type of leadership that they wanted in the post-Khomeini era (individual cleric versus collective leadership), the nature of social and economic reform (strong centralized government versus less government monopoly), the extent of clerical involvement in politics (more active versus a less-visible role), and several other issues. In the summer of 1983, the Hujjatiyah group was attacked in the media and accused of being antirevolutionary and in doubt of Khomeini’s leadership. Then, public references to the Hujjatiyah suddenly ceased, prompting rumors that the group had suspended its activities. Rarely was there any mention of even the Maktabis after this incident. Public displays seemed to have turned private again.
It is not certain which clerical elite belonged to which faction. Both Khamene’i and Rafsanjani were rumored to belong to either group. Bihishti, Bahunar, and Muhammad Riza Mahdavi-Kani were identified with the Hujjatiyah. Prime Minister Mir Husayn Musavi, Mfisavi Ardabili, Muhammad Musavi Khu’iniha (the leader of the Students of the Imam’s Line-the group that took over the American embassy in November 1979) and ‘Ali Mashkini (chair of the Assembly of Experts) were rumored to be Maktabis.
Throughout 1984, 1985, and 1986, elite factionalism in the party’s top leadership intensified. Khamene’i and Rafsanjani were rumored to be heading opposing factions of the party. In public, however, they acknowledged the presence of factionalism but exhibited comradery toward each other. Some observers believe that the nature of the conflict was in terms of left versus right; the leftists were understood to be more militant on foreign policy and favored a state monopoly of principal economic assets; and the rightists were believed to be dominated by the rich bazaaris and to favor less central control and the toning down of antiimperialist rhetoric. The two factions were unable to reach an agreement or to compromise.
Another dimension of this conflict is the dubious role played by small associations, individual cliques, and sympathizers. The followers of one faction who worked in semiautonomous institutions and government offices and ministries could easily undermine any coherent action by the opposite side. Smaller groups were splitting into several subfactions.
In an environment of much less diversity and of clerical domination, war with Iraq, popular discontent, and elite factionalism, the second parliamentary elections were held in 1984. Voters were told that they had options other than the Islamic Republican Party and the clerics. The IRP list of candidates appeared along with other groups and associations’ lists. Almost two-thirds of the candidates appeared on most lists, yet beneath the surface, there was fierce competition between the two dominant party factions. The election resulted in the IRP being the only political party and holding a little less than half of the parliamentary seats.
In October 1985, Khamene’i became president for a second term. Factionalism remained and rivalries were exposed in the presidential campaign, as well as in the nomination of Prime Minister Musavi. A significant feature of this presidential election was the way in which groups and individuals were trying to disassociate themselves from the party. For instance, Sayyid Mahmud Kashani, who was an IRP member, ran against Khamene’i, claiming that he was not a member of the party. Meanwhile, both Khomeini and Montazeri made repeated appeals to various factions to stop their infighting.
Public exposure of the secret negotiations with the United States and the Reagan administration in the IranContra affair further worsened the inner-party struggle. A major meeting of the party elite failed to bring about a peaceful resolution. The Central Council of the IRP discussed the viability of different options, including maintaining the party, dissolving it, or dividing it into several parties. Arguments raised at the inception of the IRP were raised again with more vigor. Hizbullah, for example, unhappy with the title of “party” for anyone but the Party of God, now raised its objections again to the idea of continuing the IRP. Worsening conflict penetrated provincial and city levels, hindering party activity. In many parts of the country, party headquarters were either closed or operated part-time.
It is unclear which faction originally recommended the end of the IRP. It was rumored that the right wing favored the continuation of the party. Officially, however, Khamene’i and Rafsanjani, in a letter to Khomeini, explained that under the circumstances there was no need for a political party and that the two opposing camps might hurt national unity. By order of Ayatollah Khomeini, on 2 June 1987, the Islamic Republican Party was officially dissolved.
[See also Iran; Iranian Revolution of 1979; and the biography of Khomeini. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Scholarship devoted exclusively to the Islamic Republican Party is scarce. Information for the above article was obtained from primary sources and the following works:
Akhavi, Shahrough. “Elite Factionalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Middle East Journal 41 (Spring 1987): 181 -2o I. Outstanding analysis of the nature of intra-elite conflict and its impact on public policy.
Bakhash, Shaul. The Reign of the Ayatollahs. New York, 1984. Insightful account of developments leading to the clerical takeover of the state apparatus.
Bayat, Assef. “Labor and Democracy in Post-Revolutionary Iran.” In Post-Revolutionary Iran, edited by Hooshang Amirahmadi and Manoucher Parvin, pp. 41-55. Boulder and London, 1988. Excellent analysis of the relationship between the independent workers’ councils and Islamic forces, including the Islamic Republican Party. Menashri, David. Iran: A Decade of War and Revolution. New York and London, 1990 Extremely useful interpretive survey of developments in Iran based on more than a dozen newspapers and periodicals and an array of reports from news agencies, radio stations, and monitoring services.
Schahgaldian, Nikola B. The Clerical Establishment in Iran. Santa Monica, Calif., 1989. Useful analysis of the evolution of Shi’ i clerical rule, including various Islamic associations and groups.
ELIZ SANASARIAN

ISLAMIC RENAISSANCE PARTY

Batoota — Thu, 12 Jun 2014 06:57:50 +0000

ISLAMIC RENAISSANCE PARTY. Surfacing in the Soviet Union during the summer of 1990, the Islamic Renaissance/Revival Party (IRP, or Hizb-i Nahzat-i Islami) developed as opportunities for religious expression expanded under the policy of glasnost (openness) introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev. Just as the Soviet Tatars persuaded Stalin in 1942 to allow the formal Islamic hierarchy to function, so too the formation of the IRP began under Tatar Islamic leadership. The movement for Islamic revival represents the convergence of two streams in Soviet Islam-one official and represented by the four official directorates (at Ufa, Makhachkala, Tashkent, and Baku), and the other unofficial and underground. As the Soviet Union disintegrated; the support system for the maintenance of the official and restricted structure of Islam, marked by a limited number of functioning mosques, trained clergy, and seminaries (madrasahs), also began to diminish. This shifting situation allowed the emergence of young, educated, outspoken clerics who were less subservient to the directives of the Communist Party, and it removed the fear of persecution that had kept influential religious leaders underground. While some clerics were removed as a result of popular protest (for example, Mufti Ziauddin Babakhanov), others achieved wide influence (Mufti Tajuddin and Qazi Akbar Turajonzoda among them). During the period between 1990 and 1991 when the political situation in all parts of the former Soviet Union was fluid, the divisions between official and unofficial Islam became blurred, only to separate again in those parts of Central Asia where Islamic political activity unsuccessfully challenged the political dominance of the reemerging elites of the old order. The surfacing of unofficial Islam and the organized activities of the IRP have resulted in a transformation of Islam in Russia and in Central Asia into a more confident, moralistic, and potentially powerful force.

Organization. The IRP was established on the broad pattern of the Communist Party in that it was an all USSR party initially, with individual parties in each of the republics; parties were formed in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan, and possibly also in Moldavia and Georgia. Where forced to remain an underground organization, the IRP was organized into cells. It declared itself an all-Union religio-political organization of Muslims. Its three fundamental goals are spiritual revival, economic freedom, and the political and legal awakening of Muslims with the aim of activating in everyday life the basics of the Qur’an and the sunnah. Three methods to achieve these goals are outlined in the party bylaws: “to spread Islam by all the communications means available among all people; active participation by Muslims in the economic, political and spiritual life of the country; living, on a daily basis, by every member of the IRP a life according to the precepts of Islam.”
By the summer of 1991, one year after its official formation, the party functioned openly throughout the Soviet Union, although it was formally banned in some republics, including Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The existence of the IRP, even under the ban, exerted influence on the religious establishments of these two republics perhaps more than elsewhere. In Uzbekistan, the Office of the Mufti promoted Islamic precepts through all media, especially with regard to moral family life, proscription of alcohol, and Qur’anic education. Moreover, the influence of the IRP could be seen in the extensive programs for the education of women in proper Muslim decorum and dress, conducted through the official Islamic establishment. In Tajikistan the IRP played a pivotal role in the opposition movement (1992) and in the subsequent civil war that has spilled over into Afghanistan.
Membership in the IRP is open to Muslim men and women fifteen years and older, regardless of ethnic background. Republic parties were urged to avoid ethnic exclusiveness and to concentrate on the Muslim ummah. Members must live according to Islamic precepts, support the program of the IRP, and be recommended for membership by two current members. Any member who joins another party would be excluded from membership, a provision that was intended specifically to exclude Communist Party members.
The members of the IRP are mainly small-town and village youth who have received advanced education in cities but whose formative years were spent in unobtrusively religious surroundings. Because the IRP agenda is specifically attuned to the concerns of youth and professionals as well as to the propagation of Islamic principles, the party attracts students. It takes a conciliatory stance vis-a-vis the religious establishment, although its political agenda keeps some clerics aloof from the party. However, the existence of the party allows for a more visible advocacy of Islamic customs such as observation of fasts, modest female attire, and national celebration of religious occasions. Agenda. The thirty-two-point agenda of the IRP is marked by a call for active Islamic practice in all sectors of society, especially cultural, social, and economic. To this end it stresses moral interpersonal actions, the defense of Islam against the grafting on to it of any “ignorant contemporary” (i.e., non-Islamic) doctrine, and the resolution of disputes through the Qur’an and sunnah. In addition, the agenda supports the promotion of sports and health programs, provision of welfare for the needy, private ownership of property, and support of ecological activity to restore human-caused damage to nature. The last acknowledges the degradation of the Aral Sea, which affects most of the Muslims of the former Soviet Union. The establishment of an Islamic society is the ultimate goal of the IRP; however, it remains unclear whether this means the formation of an Islamic government, as the IRP has yet to gain sufficient political power to put its agenda into action.
Activity in Tajikistan. The IRP officially formed in Tajikistan on 26 October 1991, although it had become active long before, especially at universities, polytechnics, and pedagogical institutions, and among skilled workers at factories and state farms. Its semiclandestine newspaper, Najot (Salvation), appeared sporadically during the spring of z991. During the national elections in November 1991, the IRP did not endorse any of the eight candidates; its membership appeared split between the two leading candidates, although the youth tended to favor the candidate standing in opposition to the Communist Party slate. After the election the IRP gained legal status in Tajikistan for a period until, after the political turmoil of civil war, it was banned again on 21 June 1993 together with all other active parties in the country. Perhaps because its past was unblemished by Communist Party association (a problem for leaders of the other parties), the IRP was widely regarded as able to muster popular support from the outlying regions as well as in the capital, Dushanbe. For this reason it held a place of importance in the coalition that formed in opposition to Rahman Nabiev in late i991 and throughout 1992. Additionally, Akbar Turajonzoda, the qazi (Ar., qadi) of Tajikistan, a vigorous man in his late thirties-though appointed by the official directorate in Tashkent-was regarded as a progressive activist by much of the IRP membership. The IRP became part of the coalition, to which Turajonzoda lent his active support.
Months of opposition activity and the division of Tajikistan into armed camps along lines of regional allegiance erupted into a civil war that forced many among the opposition to flee into Afghanistan. Many of these opposition figures were stripped of immunity as legislative deputies and indicted in absentia on criminal charges for “terrorism,” a tactic specifically prohibited by the IRP.
Relations with Outside Countries. The IRP looks south to the rest of the Islamic world for models and for moral support. Some members regard Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as a courageous if not model Muslim, particularly for inviting Mikhail Gorbachev to accept Islam or risk destruction. Others regard the Afghan mujahidin, including the controversial Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, as praiseworthy Muslims. Within their own historical background, Tajik IRP members prefer to think of themselves as following in the path carved by the Jadidists or reformists of the early twentieth century. They share with the Jadidists both anti-imperialism (against the West and Russia) and progressive ideas for the betterment of society. Because most Jadidists perished at the hands of the Communists, they may be models for the idealists of the IRP. However, unlike the IRP, Jadidism in general did not regard any religion, even Islam, as the route to sociopolitical development. The IRP has as its ultimate goal stepping into the modern world through the morals and concepts of Islam.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus; Jadidism; and Tajikistan.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gretsky, Sergei. “Qadi Akbar Turajonzoda.” Central Asia Monitor i (1994): 16-24. Extensive article by an employee of the qazi of Tajikistan about the role of the Islamic opposition after 1990. Malashenko, Alexie V. “Islam versus Communism: The Experience of Coexistence.” In Russia’s Muslim Frontiers: New Directions in CrossCultural Analysis, edited by Dale F. Eickeleman, pp. 63-78. Bloomington, 1993. A presentation of the role of the IRP in Central Asia by a leading member of the (Soviet) Russian Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences who gives the Moscow perspective.
EDEN NABY

ISLAMIC CALL SOCIETY

Batoota — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 09:48:20 +0000

ISLAMIC CALL SOCIETY. Founded in Libya in 1972, the Islamic Call Society is entrusted with the task of missionary activity. The Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), under the leadership of Mu’ammar alQadhdhafi (who on 1 September 1969 overthrew Libyan King Idris al-Sanusi), has from the beginning designated the revolution as an Islamic revolution. Among the concrete measures taken to emphasize the Islamic character of the revolution, besides the prohibition of alcohol and the Latin alphabet, and the appointment of a Supreme Committee on Revision of Positive Law (28 September 1971, were institutional interventions that strengthened the position of Islam in the state and simultaneously placed it under the RCC control. These latter measures included the reorganization of religious institutions and the system of religious education, as well as the scope of the Islamic mission, whose meaning, goals, and structure were the focus of the First Conference on the Islamic Mission in Tripoli (December 1970). Through a conference resolution the RCC first entrusted the task of the Islamic mission to a Corporation for the Islamic Call, from which the Islamic Call Society (ICS) emerged. In order to implement some of the tasks set forth in the ICS statute, primarily the preparing of preachers and missionaries, the Faculty of the Islamic Call, subservient to the ICS, was created. Instruction in this faculty began in the academic year 1974-1975. Four years of study leads to the Islamic Mission License; further study may lead to a Ph.D. in Islamic Call. The students, numbering three hundred in 1980-1981, come primarily from Asia and Africa.

The ICS is directed by three organs: the Administrative Council, with at least five members, which plans and oversees all ICS activities and chooses a general secretary from among its ranks; the general secretary, who serves as the official external representative of the ICS (Shaykh Mahmud Subhi held this position from 1972 to 1978; since then, it has been the former education minister Dr. Muhammad Ahmad al-Sharif); and the General Assembly, which meets annually and evaluates the work of the Administrative Council. The number of members on the ICS is unknown. The main financial sources for the highly endowed ICS budget are state subsidies, primarily from the so-called Jihad Fund (created by law in 1972). The general budget for Libya does not provide for the ICS, which is exempt from all taxes and duties, is subject to no restrictions on capital transfers, and has the right to work with any organization if this furthers the spread of Islam. The ICS, though an independent juristic entity with its main office in Tripoli, retains the right to found branch offices in other countries. One of the largest of these, in Paola, Malta, has been associated since early 1990 with the newly founded Islamic World Studies Center and the journal The Future of the Islamic World.
The Second Conference for Islamic Mission in Tripoli (14-19 August 1982), called by Qadhdhafi, produced a new institutional arm of the ICS when its four hundred participants created a World Council of Islamic Call (WCIC). Since its founding, Dr. Muhammad al-Sharif has acted as secretary ex officio of the thirty-six-member WCIC, which meets annually and is elected by the Conference for the Islamic Mission, which meets once every four years (third conference, 1986; fourth conference, 1990). The WCIC is concerned not only with the international dimension of the impact of the ICS’s role as a point of contact with the Islamic communities it supports worldwide, but also propagates Qadhdhafi’s version of Islam as an instrument of Libyan foreign policy.
Since the early 1980s, the organization of Muslims by the ICS (or World Islamic Call Society [WICS], as it has been known since 1982) into so-called regional councils (which have long existed in the Caribbean, West Africa, Central and East Africa, and South Asia) is part of an attempt to tie Muslims to Libya and to counter the activities especially of the Saudi Muslim World League with a putatively progressive version of Islam. In addition to sending missionaries and medical relief caravans and granting financial aid, the ICS has begun publishing books and brochures. It does so partly for purely missionary purposes (the brochures include How to Be a Muslim, How to Pray, Rules that Govern Fasting), and partly to blend a political and religious message (the books include Islam: The Religion of Unity, The Cultural Invasion: The Weapons of the Zionists and the Modern Crusaders). These are supplemented by three periodicals: the weekly newspaper Al-da’wah al-Isldmiyah, published from 1980 to 1992 (with English and French sections); the monthly Risalat al jihad, appearing regularly from 1982 to 1992, and occasionally distributed in English and French editions; and the scientific yearly journal Majallat kulliyat al-da’wah al-Isldmiyah, published since 1984-1985 by the Faculty of the Islamic Call. Despite immense expenditures, successful proselytization in Asia, Africa, and Latin American remains numerically limited; in Libya in 1987 some voices within the basic popular conference (especially in the spring of 1992) expressed displeasure and criticism of the ICS’s inefficiency, indeed to the point of discussing its dissolution.
The central tenets of the religious revolution, propagated by Qadhdhafi in May 1975, include the removal from power of the tradition religious scholars, the rejection of sunnah and hadith, the sole reliance upon the Qur’an accompanied by the simultaneous elevated valuation of ijtihdd and rejection of the four legal schools. Since the revolution, the ICS has propagated this interpretation of Islam abroad. According to Article 2 of the 1972 law concerning the establishment of the ICS, the main task of the ICS is the dissemination of the official Libyan or Qadhdhafian interpretation of Islam “all over the world by all available peaceful means.” The word “peaceful” was struck from the 198o revision of the law in reaction to the controversy with Saudi Arabia, which provoked Qadhdhafi’s call for a jihad for the liberation of the holy sites of Mecca and Medina and charges of heresy against Qadhdhafi from the Saudi `ulama’. The 1972 law cites, among other things, the following goals: the implementation of the Islamic Call Conference’s resolution of 1970; the spread of the Arabic language; the clarification of Islamic laws to make them conform to correct doctrine; the organization of courses of studies to prepare devout and cultured men of faith from the different Muslim nations (a task given to the Faculty of the Islamic Call in 1974); the preparation of propagators of Islam (a task also given to the Faculty of the Islamic Call in 1974); the reform of Muslim countries’ administrative, educational, informational, and social systems so that they are in conformity with Islamic principles and their policies and proposals stem from Islam.
The orientation of the ICS to foreign countries means that it carries out only limited internal activities. Religious instruction of Libyans is the task of the Qur’an schools and mosques; the construction of mosques is undertaken by other state organs. However, the ICS does organize Qur’anic recitation contests and is responsible for the production of a new edition of the Qur’an. The most important domestic activity of the ICS was proselytizing among the many non-Muslim employees (there were 439 conversions in 1980-1988) and financial support to foreign Muslims in need.
[See also Da’wah; Libya.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ayoub, Mahmoud M. Islam and the Third Universal Theory: The Religious Thought of Mu`ammar al-Qadhdhafi. New York and London, 1987. A somewhat apologetic introduction to the Qadhdhafian interpretation of Islam.
Mattes, Hanspeter. Die innere and dussere islamische Mission Libyens. Munich, 1986. Detailed study of the activity of the Islamic Call Society, with an emphasis on Africa. Includes numerous documents, most in English and French.
The World Call Society from the Second to the Third Congress: Report on Activities and Programs between 1/9/1982 and r1911986. Tripoli, 1987. Report on the activity of the Islamic Call Society, documenting the variety of its work.
HANsPETEP MATTES
Translated from German by Stephen R. Ingle
ISLAMIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. An organ of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Islamic Chamber of Commerce (ICC) is composed of federations, unions, and national chambers of commerce in forty-six countries, all members of the OIC. The ICC is comprised of a general assembly, an executive committee, a general secretariat, a president, and six vice presidencies representing the zonal distribution of the membership, with offices in Pakistan, Morocco, Senegal, Syria, Bangladesh, and Kuwait. The ICC is funded by contributions from member countries according to a formula based on per capita incomes. Proposed in 1976 at the meetings of the OIC in Istanbul, Turkey, the ICC was formally established in 1977, with headquarters to be in Karachi, Pakistan. The ICC serves to promote trade, industry, and agriculture throughout the Islamic world; preferential terms of trade for members; cooperation between Islamic nations in finance, banking, insurance, and communications; arbitration of industrial and commercial disputes; fairs and joint showrooms, exhibits, seminars, lectures, and publicity campaigns; and the eventual establishment of an Islamic economic community.
The activities of the ICC to date can be grouped in four categories: (i) building the physical and human infrastructures necessary for its operations, such as the headquarters in Karachi and a viable staff; (a) establishment of an institutional framework for the promotion of trade and commerce, such as fairs, exhibits, and the exchange of trade missions; (3) creation of committees and task forces to formulate designs and models and raise funds for joint industrial and manufacturing ventures in member countries; and (4) creation of the necessary organs to protect members against outsiders, such as the promotion and monitoring of the economic boycott against Israel and support of the Palestinian people and the Arab countries. The ICC thus only indirectly involves itself in business and commerce by disseminating information and facilitating contact among countries and trade organizations. An important organ of the ICC is its Information Bulletin, published quarterly in English and French to advertise fairs and exhibits; disseminate summaries of the proceedings of the general assembly and other official meetings; provide data on exports and imports of Islamic countries and Islamic companies (although the identity of the latter is not clearly defined); present occasional feature articles about member countries, the OIC, and the Islamic Development Fund; and publicize proposals for and news of joint ventures.
The ICC’s activities extend beyond its member countries. It occupies a consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and the United Nations Industry and Development Organization. It cooperates with the United Nations Council on Trade and Development and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and it works more directly with institutions in the Islamic countries, both governmental and nongovernmental. Its contact with private institutions and businesses is particularly important, since one of the major obstacles facing the ICC has been the difficulty of persuading the private sector in member countries to cooperate with the public sector. Apparently the private sector is adequately served by national and local chambers of commerce and believes that any assistance or cooperation with the public sector could be confining and limiting to business activities. Furthermore, business enterprises in member countries are little prepared to identify with a confessional doctrine, such as Islam or Christianity, and the ICC is identified is an organ of the OIC. Ironically, most OIC members consider themselves secular and not bound by any religious or confessional policy restrictions. Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Nigeria, Indonesia, Tunisia, Iraq, and Algeria, for example, are members of both the OIC and the ICC, but all of them consider themselves secular states and willingly conduct most of their economic transactions with non-Islamic countries. Their own chambers of commerce are guided by business and national interests, not by religion. Where it applies, shari`ah (the divine law) relates only to personal status, while trade and commerce relations are extended to all countries, with the possible exception of Israel. Another complication is that the ICC encourages preferential treatment for contractors from member countries, which is not always consistent with the basics of private business, economic efficiency, and profit making. Still another restrictive factor is the implicit political orientation of the ICC. Its strong stand against Israel, overt support of the Palestinian Intifadah, and intent to prematurely promote an Islamic economic community might have limited its achievement.
Most of the accomplishments of the ICC to date have centered around meetings of its organs, the creation of committees and production of reports, and the construction of its headquarters. A few other tangible results include the establishment of a tomato-paste-processing joint venture in Cameroon, an oil storage and distribution venture in Mali, and the Tidekelt salt project in Niger; in the meantime the ICC has received more than seventy proposals for joint ventures. The limiting political character of the ICC is also indicated by the fact that it was created by foreign ministers of the OIC, funded by OIC governments, and is only indirectly influenced by business people. It is ironic, however, that in spite of its identification as Islamic, the ICC has no clear Islamic rules or regulations, economic principles, or philosophies and doctrines governing trade and commerce of the member countries. The ICC apparently takes member-country commitment to Islamic principles for granted, which obviously is not so.
To a certain extent, the functions of the ICC overlap with those of the national and local chambers of commerce, and more so with the international chambers in the member countries. The most obvious difference between the ICC and these other chambers is that the ICC is an organ of the OIC and plays a major political role among the members and in the international community. Except for the ICC’s objective of persuading the private sector to cooperate with the public sector, it would have been just as appropriate to call it simply the political-economy committee of OIC. Indeed, such a description would be fully representative of its economic functions, political orientation, and heritage as an organ of the OIC.
[See also Organization of the Islamic Conference.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In addition to the following specific items, I have depended heavily on correspondence with and documents received from the national chambers of Algeria, Turkey, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and from the International Chamber of Malaysia, as well as from the National US-Arab Chamber and the US-Arab Chamber (Pacific), Inc. I am grateful to all of them for their kind responses to my inquiries. Ahsan, `Abdullah al-. OIC: The Organization of the Islamic Conference. Herndon, Va., 1988.
Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry. International Bulletin, series 1981-1991. Particularly important for the summary of proceedings of the General Assembly.
Islamic Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Tasks and Achievements. Karachi, n.d.
ELIAs H. TUMA
ISLAMIC CULTURAL CENTERS. In 1973 the Suleymanll movement began to found Islamic Cultural Centers (Islam Kfiltiir Merkezleri Birligi) in Germany and other countries to organize labor migrants from Turkey and meet their religious needs. With 313 communities and about 18,000 members, the Association of Islamic Cultural Centers became one of the largest associations of Turkish workers in Germany. In I98o, there were also fifteen Islamic Cultural Centers in the Netherlands, nine in Austria, six in Switzerland, two in Denmark, and one each in Sweden, Belgium, and France. The influence of these other nongovernmental Muslim organizations has decreased, however, since the Turkish Islamic Union of the Office for Religion (Diyanet Isleri Tiirk-Islam Birligi) started to organize Turkish Muslim communities in Germany and other European countries in the I980s.
The Suleymanll movement, today with around 300,000 members in Turkey, originated with Sfileyman Hilmi Tunahan (1888-1959). A member of the Naqsh-bandi, a Sufi order, Tunahan founded a traditionoriented, fundamentalist movement for the revival of Islam. It presses for Qur’an courses and for a reestablishment of the shad `ah and caliphate in Turkey. Like the Naqshbandis, the Suleymanlis are Sunnis and tend to the Hanafi dogma and the orthodox theology of Mahmfid al-Maturidi al-Samarkandi (d. 944). The Sfileymanhs believe that they can find enlightenment only through the mediation of Tunahan by the ritual of rdbitah (mystical union). The dogma is clandestine, known totally only by the shaykh himself and revealed partially to believers. The Suleymanli movement was forbidden from time to time in Turkey because of its anti-laicist tendencies. It is alleged to have developed a camouflage ideology, which encourages followers to infiltrate other groups and, for tactical reasons, to express views they do not really hold.
The Islamic Cultural Centers are organized strictly hierarchically as an association of communities subordinated to the Islamic Cultural Center in Cologne, Germany. Two basic structures are to be distinguished: the inner circle formed by the members of the Suleymali movement and the outer circle by the members of the Association of Islamic Cultural Centers. In I98o the Islamic Cultural Centers were accused, particularly by the German Trade Unions (DGB), of advocating Islamic fundamentalist and ultraright positions in their Turkish language papers while stressing in their German publications their desire for integration, cooperation with the state authorities, and recognition of the constitution of the Federal Republic. Since the end of the 1980s, some authors point out that the Islamic Cultural Centers are well accepted by other Muslim organizations, that the Islamic lessons they offer to the outer circle enjoy a good reputation, and that political concepts are propagated especially within the inner circle. In 1979 the Islamic Cultural Center in Cologne made an application for recognition as a “public law body,” but the application was refused.
[See also Germany.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gerholm, Thomas, and Yngve Georg Lithman, eds. The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe. London and New York, 1988. Collection of essays on the institutionalization of Islam in various countries and on the changes in the religious experience through migration.
Ozcan, Ertekin. Turkische Immigrantenorganisationen in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Berlin, 1989. Insightful study of political organizations and political orientations among Turkish immigrants in Germany.
HANNs THOMA-VENSKE
ISLAMIC DEVELOPMENT BANK. The Islamic Development Bank is a unique aid institution, as all its funding is on an interest-free basis using financing techniques which are permissible under sharI `ah. It is a development assistance agency rather than a charity or a commercial bank, but, given that overheads are not fully covered, there is an element of subsidy in much of its funding. The paid-up capital in early 1993 of over two billion Islamic dinars was provided entirely by the governments of the Muslim states. An Islamic dinar, the unit of account, is equivalent to an International Monetary Fund Special Drawing Right, which was worth approximately U.S. $1.45.
Saudi Arabia subscribed over a quarter of the initial capital, and the bank is based in Jeddah, the kingdom’s main commercial center. The other major Arab oil-exporting states-Libya, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates-have substantial shareholdings and collectively enjoy majority voting rights, although decisions are not usually taken in this way. There are forty-five states which participate in the bank, all with either predominantly Muslim populations or substantial Muslim minorities, such as Uganda. Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia are the largest non-Arab subscribers, but Turkey has been much involved with the bank, and even Iran has joined in spite of its political differences with several Arab states.
Following agreement by the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Islamic Development Bank started operating in 1975. Much of its initial funding was trade related and short term in nature. As a result of the quadrupling of oil prices in 1974, many Muslim countries had difficulty in financing their oil imports and were in severe balance-of-payments difficulty. The oil-price boom may have helped the Muslim members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), but it created problems for the more-populous Muslim states. One obvious solution was for the Islamic Development Bank to provide bridging finance, which would help both petroleum importers and oil exporters.
Using the principle of murabahah (resale with specification of gain), the bank purchased the oil or petroleum products on behalf of the importing country, which repaid at a markup, usually within eighteen months. The markup was well below commercial rates of interest and in line with the terms of concessionary finance from such institutions as the World Bank. As the repayments were denominated in Islamic dinars, this imposed an additional local currency burden on countries whose exchange rate was depreciating. This was less of a problem in the 1970s, when most deficit countries had strict exchange controls, but with economic liberalization and market-determined exchange rates, the costs of hardcurrency repayment have risen.
The attraction of murabahah trade finance is that the credit is revolving, and the bank can get its money back. As the bank is not a deposit-taking institution, and cannot borrow conventionally in international financial markets, its resources are limited to the paid-up capital which its members are prepared to contribute. If disbursed funding is not repaid and becomes bad debt, the bank will soon run out of resources to finance new initiatives.
The Islamic Development Bank has therefore been very cautious about long-term equity participation through musharakah (profit-and-loss “partnership”), and there has been little mudarabah (silent or limited) partnership finance in which one partner provides finance and another entrepreneurial or management skills. The problem is how to disinvest, especially in the poorer Islamic countries which lack stock markets. Equity participation has mainly been in government institutions, such as national development banks, or quoted companies, such as Jordan Cement.
Long-term interest-free loans have been provided for projects with a significant socioeconomic impact, usually involving infrastructural work, such as roads or irrigation schemes. Funding has also been disbursed for hospitals, schools, and other social projects. These advances are for periods of up to thirty years, with a service fee to cover administrative expenses. Over $750 million has been lended in this way, often in cofinancing involving other agencies, such as the World Bank or the various Persian Gulf Arab development funds.
Since the mid-1980s the Islamic Development Bank has concentrated much of its funding through installment sales and leasing (ijarah). Both methods of financing are permissible under shari `ah law. By 1990 over $600 million had been advanced for the leasing of equipment in sixty separate deals, and a similar amount had been offered for installment sale. Usually these arrangements cover a five-year period, although the bank is very flexible over the terms it is prepared to negotiate.
The bank has made considerable efforts to support the poorest Muslim countries, such as Bangladesh, Mali, and Niger, but finance is only one of many development constraints which these states face. The identification of projects with any potential in such countries is far from easy, and the local government officials are either unable or unwilling to produce well-conceived applications for assistance. The Islamic Development Bank, like other international agencies, has moved into the area of technical assistance in project design and implementation. Often such work is tendered out to specialized consultants, and the bank follows a highly professional approach to such matters, seeking independent external advice if necessary. It has adhered closely to its articles of association and not succumbed to political pressures.
In recent years the bank has taken tentative steps to harness new capital, develop internationally acceptable Islamic financial instruments, and build a closer relationship with the Islamic commercial banks. It has the potential to serve as a central bank for these commercial institutions. The Islamic banks portfolio was launched in 1987 in order to attract funds from the Islamic commercial banks and provide them with a safe yet profitable liquid instrument which they could hold. Over $65 million was subscribed, the money being used to finance Islamic trade on a murabahah markup basis with the profits shared according to muddrabah.
In 1986 agreement was reached to establish a Unit Investment Fund, and after three years of study and consultation with shari’ah lawyers the fund became operational. The Islamic Development Bank, acting as muddrib (manager) for the funds provided by Islamic commercial banks, invests both in Islamic countries and international equity markets. Shares can be purchased in London, New York, and Tokyo, but the investment must be in companies whose activities are acceptable to Muslims (halal). Electronics and communications companies are acceptable, for example. A brewery or other company engaged in the manufacture or sale of alcohol is clearly not.
Further initiatives are being planned. The Islamic Development Bank has examined the feasibility of an export-credit insurance scheme to encourage trade between Muslim countries and the creation of a multilateral Islamic clearing union. Growing interest exists in the republics of the former Soviet Union with majority Muslim populations. Some of these are expected to become shareholders of the bank, making them eligible for Islamic financial assistance. The Islamic Development Bank has become a well-established institution which is respected in international banking circles. Much has been achieved, and its role is likely to grow in the years ahead, both in terms of geographical coverage and in the range of Islamic financing facilities provided.
[See also Banks and Banking; Economics, article on Economic Institutions.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Iqbal, Munawar. Distributive Justice and Need Fulfillment in an Islamic Economy. Leicester, 1988. A Muslim view of poverty and development problems.
Meenai, S. J. The Islamic Development Bank: A Study of Islamic Cooperation. London, 1990. Comprehensive, if somewhat uncritical, account of the Bank’s first decade.
Wilson, Rodney. Banking and Finance in the Arab Middle East. London, 1983. The Islamic Development Bank is examined in chapter four and compared with Arab development agencies in chapter seven.
Wilson, Rodney. “The Islamic Development Bank’s Role as an Aid Agency for Moslem Countries.” Journal of International Development 1.4 (October 1989): 444-466. Quantifies the Bank’s activities. Uzair, Mohammad. “Central Banking Operations in an Interest-Free Banking System.” In Monetary and Fiscal Economics of Islam, edited by Mohammad Ariff. Jeddah, 1982, pp. 211-236. Relevant for the wider role that the Bank is seeking to play in relation to Islamic commercial banks.
RODNEY WILSON
ISLAMIC FOUNDATION. Established in 1973, the aims of the Islamic Foundation are to encourage research into the implementation of Islam in the modern world, to project the image of Islam in Britain and Europe, and to meet the educational needs of Muslims, especially young people. To implement these objectives, the foundation works with young people and publishes research, especially in economics and about issues of Islam in the modern world, Christian-Muslim relations, and Muslim Central Asia.
The foundation came into being primarily at the initiative of a Pakistani Muslim economist, Professor Khurshid Ahmad, who was a leading figure in the Jama’at-i Islam! of Pakistan. Ahmad was the foundation’s first director, serving until he returned to Pakistan to become minister of planning soon after President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq came to power. He was succeeded by Khuram Murad, another leading member of the Jama’at-i Islami. Both men have since become deputy amirs of the organization. The current director is Dr. Manazir Ahsan, who is not a member of the Jama`at. The foundation is registered as an educational institution under the British law governing organizations with charitable purposes.
Initially housed in a small office in Leicester, United Kingdom, the foundation moved into an eighteenthcentury mansion in 1976. At the end of the 1980s it bought a small conference center from the regional health service, some ten miles north of Leicester. This Markfield Da’wah Centre now houses the foundation and hosts courses and conferences.
The foundation traditionally has relied for its funding on gifts from wealthy individuals around the Muslim world, with some particularly large donations coming from Saudi Arabia; such a donation allowed it to establish the Markfield Centre. More recently, the flow of such donations has abated, and the foundation has resorted to more intensive fundraising methods.
In its early years, the foundation was involved in establishing about twenty mosques and community centers. It owns the buildings of the Sparkbrook Islamic Centre in Birmingham, although it has handed over the running of its programs to the United Kingdom Islamic Mission. The foundation was the first Muslim organization in Britain to establish cooperative relations with higher education institutions, working with the then Leicester Polytechnic on multicultural education and with the University of Leicester on Islamic economics. Ahmad played a leading role in the establishment of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham.
During the 1980s the foundation increasingly concentrated its efforts on publishing; today most members of its permanent staff are working in this area. Regular bulletins on Muslim Central Asia and on Christian-Muslim relations have been published, and a series of books for Muslim children continues to appear. The Foundation has published a range of books on Islamic subjects, including theoretical works and those relating to various particular regional situations. Islamic economics has been a particular area of concentration, and, currently, a multivolume English translation of Abu al-a’la Mawdudi’s large Qur’anic commentary is being published (1990-)
The foundation has taken the lead in encouraging Muslim youth organizations, and it has a close relationship with the National Association of Muslim Youth. The wider Muslim community perceives it as being an expression of the Jama’at-i Islami, although the links to the Pakistani movement are personal rather than organic. While large parts of the Muslim community thus have an ambivalent view of the foundation (when it is not one of outright rejection), outside the community the foundation has established itself as a major representative of Islamic interests and expression, especially in educational circles.
[See also Great Britain.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Islamic Foundation. The Islamic Foundation: Objectives, Activities, Projects. Markfield, England, n.d. Nielsen, Jorgen S. Muslims in Western Europe. Edinburgh, 1992. See Pages 43-51, 134-136.
JORGEN S. NIELSEN

ISLAMIC CALENDAR

Batoota — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 07:34:28 +0000

The traditional Islamic (or Hijrah) calendar consists of twelve lunar months, each of which lasts from one first sighting of the crescent moon to the next. The twelve months of the Islamic calendar in order are Muharram, $far, Rabi` al-Awwal, Rabi` al-Thani, Jumada al-Ula, Jumada al-Akhirah, Rajab, Sha`ban, Ramadan, Shawwal, Dhu al-Qa’dah, and Dhu al-Hijjah. Because of the lunar nature of the calendar, each month lasts approximately 29 or 3o days. Thus the Islamic calendar, which is approximately 354 days long, shifts in relation to the 365-day solar year, with each month beginning ten or eleven days earlier each year. Furthermore, because the sighting of the moon may vary with longitude and latitude, the Muslim calendar also may vary from region to region. Because of this shifting nature of the Hijrah calendar, various solar calendars have also been used in the Muslim world. The solar year has advantages for administrative organization, in particular for the collection of agricultural taxes. The Hijrah calendar, however, is exclusively used for setting the months of the Islamic calendar and the associated important fasts and festivals of the Islamic ritual year.
The Islamic calendar maintains a seven-day week that runs concurrently with the Gregorian or universal solar calendar. As in the Jewish calendar, the days run from sunset to sunset rather than sunrise to sunrise. Friday (al-Jumu`ah) is significant in Islam as the day of jumu`ah or congregational prayers. Often businesses are closed on Friday afternoons so that men can attend congregational prayers at a mosque. Thursday is also important as a day of fasting for many Muslims. Shi`i Muslims in India and Pakistan often attend religious assemblies (majlis) that are regularly held on Thursday evenings.
“Year One” of the Islamic calendar begins with the establishment of the first Muslim polity in Medina, following the migration or Hijrah of the prophet Muhammad and his followers from the city of Mecca in 622 CE. This year is thus designated as AH i (After Hijrah). Because of the lack of concordance in length between the Muslim and universal solar calendars, it is not possible simply to add 622 to the Hijrah date to establish the common era (CE) date. The formula for converting these dates is as follows: the Hijrah date equals the Gregorian date minus 622 plus the total of the Gregorian date minus 622 divided by 32. Even this formula is somewhat inaccurate, and it is thus better to consult a conversion table.
By orienting itself around the formative historical event of the Hijrah, which corresponds with the establishment of the first Islamic polity-rather than from the birth of Muhammad or, as one might expect, from the first revelation of the Qur’an-the Islamic calendar manifests the centrality of the ummah or community as a principle in Islam. It also expresses the importance of historical events in Islam-what the historian Marshall Hodgson has called “kerygmatic piety”-a piety that seeks to locate ultimacy in terms of irrevocable, datable, and nonrepeatable events. Kerygmatic piety is expressed in the days of the Islamic religious calendar that commemorate events that occurred during the formative period of Islamic history, such as the celebration of the birthday of the prophet Muhammad and the commemoration of the martyrdom of his grandson Husayn ibn ‘Ali. The Islamic calendar also designates as sacred certain days and months that, in contrast, are linked to no particular historical events. These dates correspond to the category of piety that Marshall Hodgson has called “paradigm tracing,” where ultimacy is sought in enduring and recurrent cosmic patterns. Such dates follow a cyclical and repeatable pattern and are the opportunities for regularly established religious observances and festivals. Daily and weekly prayers follow this pattern. Similarly, the Islamic calendar reflects this type of piety in the yearly observance of Ramadan, the month of fasting, and the festival of `Id al-Fitr that celebrates the final breaking of this fast, as well as in Dhu al-Hijjah, the month of the pilgrimage to Mecca, and its festival of `Id al-Adha (or `Id al-Qurban), which commemorates the willingness of Abraham to offer his son Isma`il (Ishmael) as a sacrifice. These “paradigm-tracing” festival months and days are shared by Sunni and Shi`i alike and are commemorated by both communities in similar ways with a few minor deviations. In fact, for most Sunni Muslims these two `Ids are the two major public religious observances of the Islamic ritual year.
The month-long fast of Ramadan takes place during the eighth month of the lunar year. During this period Muslims abstain from food, drink, smoking, and sexual contact from dawn until dusk. In some parts of the Islamic world the beginning of the fast is announced by groups of men who go from door to door through the streets of neighborhoods before the morning call to prayer, waking people so that they can prepare for the onset of the fast. The fast is broken each day around the time of the evening prayer with a small meal, often shared by family and friends. One activity recommended to pious persons is the recitation of the entire Qur’an over the course of the month; to facilitate this the Qur’an is divided into thirty equal sections called guz` or paras. Sometimes Shi’i Muslims gather to hear discussions on religious topics during this period, particularly on the anniversary of `All’s martyrdom on 21 Ramadan, which is also a time for public processions. The first revelation of the Qur’an on Laylat al-Qadr (the Night of Power) is commemorated by Sunnis on the 27th and by Shi`is on the 19th, 21st, and 23rd. On this night, it is customary for pious Muslims to stay awake all night engaged in devotions. Many Muslims enter into a period of religious seclusion for ten days at the end of the month in connection with this date.
The fast of Ramadan concludes with the celebration of `Id al-Fitr on the first day of the month of Shawwal. Following the breaking of the fast Muslims gather together in the courtyards of large mosques, called `idgahs, to perform the morning prayers. The poor gather outside the mosque, as this is also a time when people distribute alms. In the afternoon families visit friends and relatives and distribute `Id presents. On this day it is customary to dress in one’s finest clothes and to distribute sweets, and also to pay one’s servants and employees a bonus (`idi). In general it is a festive day: not only has the disciplined and demanding fast come to an end, but those who have completed the fast believe that their sins are forgiven and thus feel assured of their admission to paradise.
The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, takes place in the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, when millions of pilgrims go to Mecca and Medina to participate in the rites of the hajj. During the hajj, on the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah, `Id al-Qurban, also called `Id al-Adha, is celebrated in the valley of Mina near Mecca where, in commemoration of the slaughtering of the lamb that God miraculously substituted for Abraham’s son Isma’il, pilgrims purchase and ritually slaughter an animal. Throughout the Muslim world it is customary for a family to similarly purchase an animal-a sheep, goat, or cow-and raise it for slaughter on io Dhfi al-Hijjah. In cities and towns huge livestock markets spring up to provide families with these animals; on the actual day of the `Id, the animals are ritually slaughtered. Portions of the meat are distributed to the poor, and the rest is eaten in celebratory meals with friends and family.
The kerygmatic dimension of Islamic piety can be found in the numerous days that commemorate specific events in Islamic history. These include the birth and death anniversaries of important individuals and dates connected with important events in the first generation of Islam. The Twelver Shi’is celebrate many more of these days than do Sunni Muslims. Not only do the Shi’is commemorate the birth and death anniversaries of the Prophet, his daughter Fatimah, and the twelve imams, they also observe other important events, such as Muhammad’s recognition of his son-in-law `Ali as his successor (mawla) at the pool of Ghadir Khumm during his last pilgrimage; the meeting between Muhammad and his family and the Christians from Najaran at Mubahila; and most importantly, the month of Muharram-specifically `Ashura, the tenth of Muharramwhich, although clearly important to both Sunni and Sti’i Muslims, has special significance for Shi`is.
This Shi’ i emphasis on historical events is linked to their understanding of personal allegiance as a central element of their piety. Allegiance to Muhammad is seen as a necessary corollary to allegiance and obedience to God. For Shi`is this extends to allegiance and obedience to Muhammad’s legitimate successors, the imams. The importance of allegiance to these individuals has resulted in rituals for the remembrance and evocation of the narratives of the lives of the Prophet and his family. Of all these events, the most significant is the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, Imam Husayn ibn `Ali, on the tenth of Muharram in 642 CE. The month of Muharram is a time of daily ceremonies of public and private mourning, culminating on the tenth of Muharram (`Ashura’) in huge public assemblies and processions. During Muharram an atmosphere of deep mourning is established in Shi’i neighborhoods. Shi’! Muslims don black clothing and attend lamentation assemblies (majlis) where the events of Karbala are evoked and tearfully remembered. Processions are held in which replicas of coffins (tabut) and tombs (ta’ziyah) are carried through neighborhoods as focuses of devotion. Some people physically mourn the death of the imam with breast-beating and self-flagellation. It should be noted that Sunni Muslims also remember and honor the sacrifice of Husayn, but there is less intensity and mourning, since devotion to the family of the Prophet is not as central to Sunni piety as it is to Shi`i.
There are also joyful celebrations in the Shl’! ritual calendar. On the birthday of the Twelfth Imam, people write letters and place them in streams and rivers in the belief that the imam will receive these messages. In fact, the birthday anniversaries of all the imams are celebrated. On these occasions the assembly halls (called imambarahs in South Asia and husayniyahs by Persian speakers) are often brightly decorated with colored lights. [See Husayniyah.]
The Shi’is are not alone in the remembrance of historic events. For example, in modern times the celebration of the Mawlid al-Nabi or birthday of the prophet Muhammad, which originated in the Fatimid period, has become increasingly popular among Sunnis. In Pakistan and India large public processions on 12 Rabi` alAwwal celebrate the Prophet’s birth.
Another important element in the Muslim religious calendar is the celebration of the death anniversaries of Sufi saints. In places as far-flung as Pakistan, Turkey, and Egypt, the tombs of the awhyd’ (saints) are sites of frequent ziyarahs (pilgrimages) throughout the year and also of important celebrations known as mawlid or `urs. (`Urs is an Arabic word for “wedding” and signifies the spiritual wedding of the saint with his true beloved, God.) In South Asia large fairs are held in connection with these celebrations; their striking mix of sober piety and joyful celebration is often surprising to visitors who do not share the worldview of the participants. Merchants and professional performers-acrobats, motorcycle daredevils, and others-travel from tomb to tomb in order to participate in the highly profitable events surrounding the celebration of various `urs. [See Ziyarah; Mawlid. ]
The Islamic calendar has important implications for Muslims in the modern world. Modernity has fundamentally altered the way people in the industrial world think of time. Work and leisure are now measured and defined as the periods in which people are either engaged or not engaged in industrial labor. The Islamic calendar was established in a preindustrial world where notions of work and leisure were more fluid and in tune with the natural progression of the seasons. The hegemony of the solar calendar has emerged concurrently with the hegemony of European industrial society, which has led some Muslim countries to modify their organization of time. Some governments have experimented with setting weekends on Saturday and Sunday, largely for economic reasons.
Modernity has also had implications for the Ramadan fast. Since the month of Ramadan moves from year to year, the fast sometimes takes place in the winterwhen days are short and the weather is cool-and sometimes in the summer when the fast is particularly difficult. The requirements of labor in the modern industrial world make the fast a difficult ordeal for many Muslims who must work in great heat for long hours. Furthermore, fasting Muslims in urban environments often must travel long distances across cities, negotiating dense traffic in late afternoon heat while experiencing hunger and thirst. Tourism is also affected by the fast; for example, in Pakistan the ihtirdm-i Ramad an ordinances bring tourism to an effective halt by closing restaurants and beverage stands for Muslims and nonMuslims alike. Despite these added difficulties, large numbers of Muslims remain committed to the fast out of a deep sense of piety and a fervent desire to obey the commands of God.
The heterogeneity of modern Muslim communities in urban environments is also affected by the Islamic religious calendar and its festivals. Ordinarily, the distinguishing characteristics between Sunni and Shi’i, and to some extent even Muslims and non-Muslims, are invisible in daily life. However, during Muharram and other occasions of public performance, these normally invisible differences are brought to the surface, sometimes resulting in hostile confrontations.
For Muslims living outside the Muslim world, arranging for religious observances is made more difficult by the pressures of the solar calendar that determines the rhythm of the economy. In places where Muslims are a minority, public Muslim ritual performances may inflame the passions of non-Muslims who either do not understand or do not accept Muslim practices. For example, animal-rights activists in Europe have objected to the animal sacrifice of `Id al-Adha. Similarly, in India Hindus have long objected to animal sacrifice, particularly of cows. On the other hand, Islamic performances-such as the yearly Muharram processions held by North American Shi-`i Muslims-provide an opportunity for Muslims to share their faith with others and to present themselves and their religion to their neighbors.
[See also `Ashura’; Hajj; `Id al-Adha; `Id al-Fitr; Muharram; Ramadan.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bacharach, Jere L. A Near East Studies Handbook. Seattle, 1976. Freeman-Grenville, G. S. P. The Muslim and Christian Calendars. London, 1963.
Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam, Vol. 1. Chicago, 1974. Hodgson provides an excellent discussion of the Islamic calendar in his introduction to this masterful history, as well as a presentation on the useful categories of kerygmatic and paradigm-tracing piety. Ja’far Sharif. Islam in India, or, The Qanun-i Islam (1927). Translated by G. A. Herklots. New rev. ed. London, 1975. Provides a detailed description of Islamic practice in nineteenth-century India.
Schimmel, Annemarie, “Islamic Religious Year.” In The Encyclopedia of Religion, vol. 7, pp. 454-457. New York, 1987. A great improvement on previous expositions of the Islamic calendar in that it stresses its religious and devotional component.
Schubel, Vernon. Religious Performance in Contemporary Islam: ShN Devotional Rituals in South Asia. Columbia, S.C., 1993. My own work provides a detailed discussion of the Muharram performances of Muslims in Karachi.
Turner, Victor. From Ritual to Theater. New York, 1982. Contains Turner’s interesting discussion of the relationship between work and leisure in the modem world.
Von Grunebaum, G. E. Muhammadan Festivals. New York, 1951. Still useful general survey of Muslim festivals.
VERNON JAMES SCHUBEL

Islam in the Americas

Batoota — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 17:46:27 +0000

Persons of Islamic background were among the explorers, traders, and settlers who visited the New World from the time of Columbus. A considerable number of Moriscos (Spanish Muslims who concealed their faith after 1492) migrated to both Portuguese and Spanish America, but their increasing numbers threatened the Christian rulers, who had them exterminated by the Inquisition.

African Muslim slaves from Senegal, Gambia, the southern Sahara, and the upper Niger came to the Americas between the mid-1500s and the mid-nineteenth century. Estimates of the proportion of Muslims within the total numbers of African slaves brought to the Western Hemisphere range from 14 to 20 percent.
After abolition in the Caribbean, the British in Guyana transported between 1835 and 1917 large numbers of Indians as indentured servants. Most were Hindus, but a sizable minority (16 percent) were Muslims, who comprise more than 10 percent of the nation’s population today. In Trinidad and Tobago there is also a longstanding Muslim minority of about 6 percent. Suriname, long a Dutch colony, has few African Muslims left, but its Muslim population is 23 percent owing to the large numbers of Indian and Javanese Muslims who were imported for labor in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although many African slaves came from Islamic backgrounds, the conditions of slavery made it impossible for large numbers of them to sustain their religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. But there are records of very remarkable individual African Muslim slaves (see Allan D. Austin, African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook, New York, 1984). Indian and other Muslim immigrants, however, were not slaves and thus were able to maintain their spiritual, cultural, and social institutions sufficiently well to preserve an Islamic identity.
Muslim Immigration to North America. Significant numbers of free Muslims did not start arriving in the Americas until the late 1800s, when Arabs from greater Syria, especially, began to arrive. Most of these people were poor, working-class males who made their living by peddling and menial jobs. They tended to assimilate into American society and often took American spouses, if a Muslim wife-whether from back home or among the immigrant community-was not available. They found it difficult to sustain a Muslim identity, but there was some activity in mosque and community building, for example, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Edmonton, Alberta, where strong and growing Muslim communities flourish today. This first “wave” (I follow here Yvonne Y. Haddad’s periodization in her pamphlet A Century of Islam in America, Washington, D.C., 1986) of immigration continued until World War I, after which a second wave continued through the 1930s, ending with World War Il.
A third wave of Muslim immigration after World War II included many people from the elites of Middle Eastern and South Asian countries seeking education and professional advancement. Although many returned to their home countries, a large number remained. The members of this third wave have tended to maintain their Islamic identity while assimilating into North American life at a moderate rate. Sometimes more observant and strict Muslims refer to these people as “`Eed [`Id] Muslims,” because of their supposed habit of attending the mosque only during the two canonical religious festivals each year, `Id al-Adha and `Id al-Fitr. But these people extended the establishment of Islamic centers and mosques, as well as larger-scale Muslim associations, such as the Federation of Islamic Associations, a somewhat loose organization of mosques in the United States, whose Canadian affiliate is the Council of Muslim Communities of Canada (CMCC). Another active organization that encourages the building of new mosques and cooperation among Islamic congregations is the Council of Masajid (“mosques”) of the United States, Inc. Still another is the Muslim Students Association of U.S.A. and Canada (MSA), which was organized by international Muslim students studying in North America in 1963. The MSA evolved into and is connected with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), currently the largest Muslim “umbrella” organization, with several affiliated associations pursuing a variety of Islam-related interests. [See Federation of Islamic Associations and Islamic Society of North America.]
A fourth wave of Muslim immigration to North America began in the mid-1960s and continues today. It was made possible by changes in U.S. immigration laws, which opened the doors to people from many parts of the world whose talents and occupational capabilities filled acknowledged needs. Large numbers of immigrants from the Middle East, Asia, and beyond migrated to America to take up permanent residence with citizenship. Among these were considerable numbers of Muslims, particularly from the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Today the majority of Muslims in North America are immigrants, with Arabs more numerous in the United States and Pakistanis second, whereas the proportions are reversed in Canada.
The most recent wave of Muslim immigrants is also generally the most motivated to sustain and hand down a strong Islamic identity and establish permanent institutional and community structures to that end. There is much less interest in assimilating into North American life among the more recently arrived Muslims. The worldwide Islamic revival, including its “fundamentalist” aspects, in its North American circles has among its highest goals the establishment of an Islamic environment on that continent. It intends to do that by means of da’wah (missions), Islamic schools, publications, building new mosques and centers, becoming involved in politics, public relations, and developing Islamic financial institutions, such as interest-free banking.
Muslims who are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants live in all the metropolitan regions of North America, but in the United States there are particularly large communities in Boston, New York, the Detroit-Toledo corridor, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles/Orange County, whereas in Canada there is a large Muslim community in Toronto, with sizable ones also in Montreal, Windsor, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, and Vancouver.
Muslim African Americans. The second largest North American Muslim community is the Muslim African Americans in the United States. Three major reasons for conversion to Islam by many African Americans are: the consciousness among many of a lost Islamic heritage dating back to the time of slavery, the related proliferation of new, quasi-Islamic religious movements among African Americans in the twentieth century, and the strong trend of conversion to Islam by African Americans in correctional facilities.
The fact of Muslim slaves in the Americas has been mentioned above. In 1913 the Moorish Science movement was established in Newark, New Jersey, by Timothy Drew (1886-1929), who came to be known among his followers as Noble Drew Ali. He taught that black Americans would discover their true identity only through an educative process centered in his text called The Holy Koran. Noble Drew Ali considered black Americans to be “Asiatics,” or “Moors,” but not “Negroes.” Islam was seen as the true religion of Asiatics, whereas Christianity was a religion for the whites. The movement borrowed some aspects of Islam but followed its own course, gradually splitting up into a few small circles today.
The next quasi-Islamic movement to arise in the United States was the Nation of Islam. It was founded in Detroit in 193o by a foreign national of uncertain origin named W. D. Fard (with variants), who called for education, a common ritual, and strong community defense, all regulated by a strict ethic. One of Fard’s principle followers, the black American Elijah Poole (1897-1975) carried on the movement in 1934 after Fard’s mysterious disappearance. There was little Islamic about the movement except its name. For example, the doctrine came to regard Fard as Allah incarnate and Elijah Muhammad (i.e., Poole) as his prophet. White people were regarded as devils who had robbed the blacks of their preeminent place in the order of things. [See Nation of Islam and the biography of Elijah Muhammad.]
The Nation of Islam attracted many African Americans, who were inspired and helped by its message of hard work, abstinence, strong family values, and commitment to improving the general lot of black people. The Nation of Islam came to have organizations-in the form of mosques-throughout the urban United States. One of Elijah Muhammad’s most outstanding associates was Malcolm X (1925-1965), who was converted in prison and changed his name from Little to protest the humiliation of having been christened with a white, “slave” name. Malcolm X, who made the pilgrimage to Mecca and converted to normative Islam, was assassinated in 1965 by members of the Nation of Islam. Since then his image has grown as one of America’s most powerful visionaries for empowerment of black people. [See the biography of Malcolm X.] His embracing of mainstream Sunni Islam has been a major factor in the increasing identification of Muslim African Americans with the world Islamic community. The beginnings of this occurred in 1975 when, on the death of Elijah Muhammad, his son and designated heir to leadership, Wallace Deen Muhammad, announced that the Nation of Islam would henceforth leave behind much of his father’s teaching and move in the direction of normative Islam. Although this successor movement had a number of names, it now prefers to call itself simply “Muslim” and has effectively liquidated its organizational infrastructure, except for the leader’s (whose name became Warith Deen Muhammad) preaching and teaching mission in Chicago and the weekly newspaper Muslim j ournal, which covers news of interest to all Muslims.
Not all Nation of Islam followers agreed with the dramatic change brought about by Warith Deen Muhammad. One longtime associate, the former Louis X, has continued the Nation of Islam’s struggle to lift up and empower poor black people and strengthen them with the effective message of Elijah Muhammad. Minister Louis Farrakhan, as this leader came to be known, is a charismatic preacher who alarms much of white America with his provocative discourses. There are some aspects of Islam in the continuing Nation of Islam, but orthodox Muslims in America reject it as an authentic Islamic movement. One widely distributed pamphlet refers to it as “Farrakhanism,” a distinct religion, protected under the First Amendment, but not Islamic.
The conversion of large numbers of African Americans to Islam in prison started in the days of the Nation of Islam. Malcolm X remains a beacon of hope for those who have been brought as low as prison. Nation of Islam chaplains have been very effective in preaching to and helping inmates, and their record of successful litigation in American courts for prisoners’ religious rights (e.g., Friday noon prayers and a pork-free Islamic diet) has improved the general lot of incarcerated persons.
Inmates declare Islam as their religion for a variety of reasons, including physical protection, but many come to lead exemplary lives both inside prison and after release. In some corrections systems, such as New York State and New York City, Muslim African American inmates make up a major proportion of the prison and jail populations. Although many incarcerated Muslims become model inmates, many also get caught up in a cycle of recidivism and reincarceration. This is a great challenge to the entire Muslim community that is only beginning to be addressed.
There is a considerable cultural, occupational, educational, and economic gap between most Muslim immigrants and most Muslim African Americans. Racism also plays a part in the separation of the two communities. But Muslim “chaplains,” as prison imams are often called by administrations, increasingly recognize that the support system and caring community of fellow Muslims that a Muslim inmate benefits from in prison is usually not available to poor urban blacks on release. Rather, the former, chronic conditions of life on the street in the American underclass often win out. Halfway houses and other measures are being called for, but resources and the will to innovate in this often discouraging and sometimes dangerous Islamic social work are scarce.
Challenges to Muslims in the Americas. In the Americas, the numbers, diversity, organizational development, and Islamic identity of Muslims are strongest in North America, but substantial Muslim communities exist throughout the hemisphere. In addition to the small but well-established communities in the Caribbean basin, there are other Latin American immigrant communities, composed mostly of people from Arab countries, in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela. The Muslim populations of Argentina and Brazil, for example, are each at least twice the Muslim population of Canada (estimated at 200,000 in 1992).
In North America, and especially the United States, with its Muslim population of perhaps 4 million or more (no precise census has been conducted yet), the worldwide Islamic ummah is gathered in a kind of microcosmic form in a single (if complex) American social and political order. The great variety of Muslims there in
cludes numerous Shi`is of different types, although the vast majority are Sunni, reflecting the ratio worldwide. Muslims in North America are urgently concerned about building Islamic unity even as they acknowledge ethnic, racial, and cultural divisions and tensions.
Muslim congregations in North America range from narrowly ethnic enclaves (e.g., Turkish, Syrian, and Pakistani) to richly diverse communities. Most congregations try to have imams who are well trained in Arabic and to practice fiqh (jurisprudence) and the classical religious sciences. Thus they tend to import imams from Middle Eastern or South Asian Islamic countries. There are sometimes difficulties when imams fail to perceive the nature of North American society and the problems Muslims have coping with it. Often members of a local congregation want an imam who can provide counseling and other services similar to what Jews and Christians expect from their rabbis and ministers (see Waugh, 1982). But this problem is increasingly recognized, and initiatives to train foreign as well as native imams have begun.
The long-established Islamic Center of Greater Toledo, Ohio, has a membership of about six hundred families drawn from more than thirty national and ethnic backgrounds. Most of the members are Sunnis, but Shi`is are included, too. The center has a large Friday mosque, extensive educational and activity wings, a bookstore, clinic, mortuary, cemetery, recreation field, and extensive kitchen/dining facilities. Similar large centers exist in major urban areas, such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, Toronto, and central New Jersey. In Houston, several mosques have banded together in a cooperative association with a central coordinating staff and a model for developing noncompetitive Islamic organizations and services in different quadrants of the metropolitan area. Although this octopuslike comity arrangement is not without problems, it might serve as a prototype for other urban regions with large, dispersed Muslim populations. In Oakland, California, there is a large Sunni mosque with an affiliated, full-time Islamic school that was originally a Nation of Islam congregation. Now, although it consists mostly of Muslim African Americans, it also numbers Arab Americans and other immigrants among its members.
Large Islamic Associations. The Islamic Society of North America, introduced above, represents the type of large-scale coordinating effort that many Muslims consider essential to the long-term well-being of the ummah (community) in North America. The ISNA, which has a headquarters campus near Indianapolis, Indiana, has both individual and institutional memberships, publishes a glossy magazine, Islamic Horizons, and holds an annual meeting each Labor Day weekend attended by around five thousand people in recent years. ISNA is essentially a Sunni organization, but it attracts the support of Muslims from many different ethnic and national backgrounds, including African Americans. ISNA strongly emphasizes Muslim family values, da’wah, Islamic education, youth activities, political activism, Islamic publishing, cooperative and continuing relations with Muslim groups and countries overseas, helping in the development of new mosques and centers, and so forth. ISNA also shares with other Islamic groups an urgent concern for developing a fiqh that is both true to the mainstream Islamic tradition and responsibly adaptive to new circumstances and problems found by Muslims living as minorities in the West.
Although large organizations such as ISNA offer the advantages of a wide communication network, educational research and development, publications, an image of Muslims seeking unity, and certain economies of scale, many Muslims prefer to pursue their Islamic goals at the local level. Large congregations in effect compete with ISNA by sponsoring their own public outreach and da’wah initiatives. The Islamic Society of Southern California, for example, sponsors an Islamic Education Service that has a television network and distributes sound and video cassettes of sermons, speeches, conferences, and panel discussions on a variety of contemporary topics including human sexuality, AIDS, relations with Christians and Jews, and spirituality. It publishes The Minaret, a sophisticated magazine with a national readership.
There is a feeling among many Muslims in North America that, although large-scale coordination of Islamic activities is desirable, the right means for this has not yet been devised. In 1992 the first North Americawide Islamic Coordinating Conference was held, in Indianapolis. It brought together the widest range of representatives of Muslim organizations in a spirit of mutual consultation and seeking a vision for the future. But the assembled participants proceeded cautiously, aware that the processes of Muslim unity and cooperation in North America are as diversely complex as the constituencies that represent the ummah there.
[See also Brazil; Canada; Suriname; Trinidad and Tobago; and United States of America.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, ed. The Muslims of America. New York and Oxford, 1991. Informative essays on organizations, Islamic thought, Muslims in prison, political activity, da’wah, women, and other topics.
Haddad, Yvonne Yazbeck, and Adair T. Lummis. Islamic Values in the United States: A Comparative Study. New York and Oxford, 1987. Well-documented study based on interviews and questionnaires. Husaini, Zohra. Muslims in the Canadian Mosaic: Socio-Cultural and Economic Links with Their Countries of Origin. Edmonton, Alberta, 1990. Good demographic and sociocultural data, with particular emphasis on Alberta.
Kettani, M. Ali. Muslim Minorities in the World Today. London and New York, 1986. Muslims in the Americas are covered, with statistics, on pages 191-213.
EI-Kholy, Abdo A. The Arab Moslems in the United States: Religion and Assimilation. New Haven, 1966. Careful empirical study that, though dated, still has considerable historical value.
Lee, Martha F. The Nation of Islam: An American Millenarian Movement. Lewiston, N.Y., 1988. Carries the story beyond Lincoln (below) into the period of Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Lincoln, C. Eric. The Black Muslims in America (1961). 3d ed. Grand Rapids, 1993. The most thorough study of the Nation of Islam, by a distinguished African-American sociologist.
Marsh, Clifton. From Black Muslims to Muslims: The Transition from Separatism to Islam, 1930-1980. Metuchen, N.J., and London, 1984. Useful information on the Moorish Science Temple and the ways in which Wallace (Warith) Deen Muhammad diverged from his father’s doctrine. Contains a list of African American masjids (mosques).
Melton, John Gordon, ed. The Encyclopedia of American Religions. 3d ed. Detroit, 1989. Contains an annotated listing of Islamic organizations in the United States, with addresses (pp. 825-842).
Waugh, Earle H. “The Imam in the New World: Models and Modifications.” In Transitions and Transformations in the History of Religions, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and Theodore M. Ludwig, pp. 124-149. Leiden, 198o.
Waugh, Earle H., Baha Abu-Laban, and Regula B. Qureshi, eds. The Muslim Community in North America. Edmonton, Alberta, 1983. Very useful source of information on such topics as survival strategies, socioreligious behavior of Muslims, Islamic studies, Pakistani Muslims in Canada, and Minister Louis Farrakhan.
Waugh, Earle H., Sharon McIrvin Abu-Laban, and Regula B. Qureshi, eds. Muslim Families in North America. Edmonton, Alberta, 1991. Sequel to the above, with excellent essays on religion, ethnicity, family life, sex/gender, women, mate selection, divorce, immigrant groups, and other topics.
Williams, Raymond Brady. Religions of Immigrants from India and Pakistan: New Threads in the American Tapestry. Cambridge and New York, 1988. Contains reliable and informative treatment of South Asian Muslims in the United States.
FREDERICK MATHEWSON DENNY

Islam in Europe

Batoota — Sun, 08 Jun 2014 04:38:13 +0000

The historical antagonism between the western and eastem parts of Europe is reflected, to this very day, in their diverging social, political, and religious traditions. This division has also put its mark on the historical vicissitudes of Islam in the European world. Growth and blossoming in one part of Europe were often concomitant to downfall and destruction in the other. During the late Middle Ages, Western Christian powers were reconquering the last Muslim territories in Spain and the Mediterranean. During the sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, they extirpated the last vestiges of Islam from the West. Meanwhile, the Turks were preparing for the conquest of Constantinople (1453) and for expansion into areas of southeastern Europe, the modern Balkan states. However, when the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the dominance of communist rule, and the contemporary revival of nationalism caused the suppression of southeast European Islam and destroyed much of its ancient heritage and infrastructure, western Europe opened its doors to a stream of Muslim migrants and refugees. Significant Muslim communities are now present in all countries of western Europe.
Phases and Groups in the History of European Islam. The premodern history of Islam in western Europe consists of two parts. First, from the eighth century until the end of the fifteenth century there were territories under Muslim rule, where Islam acquired a majority position. Apart from Muslim Spain, this was the case during various periods in some islands in the Mediterranean and small enclaves in southern France and southern Italy. Second, there is the history of Islam as a minority religion in western Europe starting around the ninth century, when Christian rulers, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, decided to abandon their practice of executing Muslim captives and started selling and using them as slaves. From the end of the eleventh century the social phenomenon of Muslim slaves in Christian territories increased in importance, especially in the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, southern France, Sicily, and the Balearic islands. Theirs was a history of rapid christianization and assimilation under the combined pressure of society and church.
For some Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula, the period from the twelfth to the sixteenth century formed an exception to this pattern. When large territories of Muslim Spain were reconquered by Christian kings, religious freedom and protection were granted to local Muslim communities, notwithstanding the ongoing protests by the Catholic church. But after the fall of Granada (1492), these communities were baptized by force, and finally, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with the stigma of being labeled “incurable heretics,” they were expelled, mainly to North Africa. However, this did not end the social phenomenon of Muslim slaves. Their presence in European countries around the Mediterranean is documented, without interruption, until the nineteenth century. Only the period of the Enlightenment, followed by the French Revolution, the proclamation of religious freedom as a universal human right and the abolishment of slavery, created the essential conditions for the modern era in western European Islam.
In the late twentieth century, there are about 18 million Muslims in Europe, with approximately 9 million each in western and southeastern Europe. In addition, small communities of a few thousand Muslims live in Poland and Finland. The Muslims of Poland are the descendants of Tatar and Crimean immigrants who arrived respectively in the fourteenth and fifteenth and the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Muslim community in Finland consists of people of Turko-Tatar origin from the Idel Ural and Volga regions who mainly arrived after the Communist Revolution of 1917.
Large numbers of Muslims of European origin are mainly found among the populations of the Balkan states. They are the descendants of various groups who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule, as well as Muslim groups of non-European origin, especially Turks. In view of their longstanding history, many of these groups consist of all social levels, including religious, intellectual, artistic, and commercial elites. In western Europe, however, Islam shows much less social diversity. In essence, it is still the religion of migrants, with a high percentage of unskilled laborers, small merchants, and white-collar people of the lower strata. It lacks a sufficiently trained religious and intellectual leadership. Another important factor determining their sociojuridical position is the fact that numbers of them have not yet obtained the nationality of the western European state in which they live. It seems likely that the process of naturalization will take a few more decades to be fully completed.
Autochthonous converts to Islam can be found in all western European countries, but their number is very limited indeed. Prominent among them are women married to Muslims, who actually play a pioneering role in the foundation of organizations of Muslim women, attracting members from all Muslim ethnic groups. Male converts are much fewer in number, yet play an important role in processes of negotiation and intercultural communication between Muslim groups, on the one hand, and western European governments and societies, on the other. Some of them enjoy fame as scholars and writers, both in the West and the Muslim world. Examples are the Austrian journalist Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad), who converted before World War II, and the French philosopher Roger Garaudy. The only region in Europe with numbers of male converts of some significance is Andalusia in Spain, where, under the influence of a specific form of regionalism, conversion to Islam could be experienced as the rediscovery of an identity that had been suppressed during many ages. (Some African-Americans in the United States similarly claim that their return to Islam is a reversion to their earlier religion.)
Muslim migrants in western Europe can be divided into three distinct categories. The first of these consists of inhabitants who came from former colonies. Among them one finds groups who cooperated closely with the European colonial armies and preferred to leave their countries at the time of decolonization. Examples are the former Algerian and Moluccan soldiers and their families in France and the Netherlands. Others in this category are people who had settled as migrants in former colonies, where they had created their own communities as ethnic minorities. Their settling in Europe was the result of a second migration, mainly for socioeconomic and political reasons. Among them are many skilled laborers, merchants, and white-collar people. Examples are the Hindustanis from East Africa and Suriname in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
The second category of Muslim migrants consists mainly of unskilled laborers and their families. They have come from countries around the Mediterranean, from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent, as well as from other Muslim countries in the Near and Far East. In France and the United Kingdom, this migration process had an early start, before World War II, but in other countries it was mainly confined to the period between the late 1960s and 1970s. Especially from the late 1970s onward, the process of family reunion-the basis for the institutionalization of a religious infrastructure-had begun.
In some countries groups of a specific ethnic or geographic origin form the majority among the Muslim inhabitants. This is the case for migrants from the Maghrib and West Africa in France, Spain, Italy, and Belgium; for Turks in Germany and the Netherlands; and for Muslims from the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent in the United Kingdom. In comparison with the societies in which they live, upward social mobility among the second and third generations of these groups has remained very limited. Percentages of unemployment among them are significantly higher than among the autochthonous groups.
The current stream of Muslim migrants consists of political refugees from various Muslim countries. There is an important percentage among them that has gone through various forms of (nonreligious) higher education, including universities. Many of these have a secular outlook, and they have, so far, not provided the existing Muslim communities with a specifically religious leadership. They do play important roles, however, in cultural and sociopolitical activities of a more general nature. Depending on the existing government policies, concentrations of refugees from specific countries can be found in certain states. Important Iranian communities, for instance, are found in Italy and Sweden.
Religious Infrastructure. Contrary to the established religious infrastructure of the Muslims in Southeastern Europe, the contemporary history of Islam in Western Europe shows many examples of local communities moving from the initial stage of meeting in a prayer hall toward the more advanced stage of establishing a mosque and appointing an imam. In the early days, loose groups of worshipers often rented accommodations on a temporary basis. Later, more permanent solutions were found. In the initial stage, non-Muslims nationals, especially church members, played a prominent role in the initiatives of religious institutionalization. In the second stage, initiatives were mainly taken by informal leaders of the communities concerned. Finally, one observes the establishment of mosques by groups affiliated with an Islamic organization at a national or international level.
Generally speaking, mosques have been founded in western Europe on a monoethnic and a monodenominational basis. With rare exceptions, multiethnic and multidenominational places of worship are to be found in smaller towns or villages with no more than one mosque or prayer hall. In towns with two mosques or prayer halls one usually finds a division of the Muslims along ethnic lines. In larger communities a further division according to confessional denominations within a single ethnic group becomes a possibility. This can generally be observed in towns with three or more mosques.
Parallel to the preceding developments runs an increase in the functional aspects of these local religious institutions. At the very beginning, the function of this form of institutionalization of Islam was to take care of the need for religious services. Quite logically, the foundation of these places of worship, where scattered Muslims would join in prayer, implied the creation of social spaces and networks on the basis of a common religious identity. To these religious and social functions the task to cater for elementary religious education of the communities’ children was added, especially within the context of official family reunion schedules. In many cases the initial religious instruction provided by the communities was given by qualified volunteers. However, the best way to provide for these needs was to appoint an imam who, apart from his tasks during the daily religious services, could function as a teacher to the children as well. The mosques have become the most important centers of Islamic education in western Europe, where an estimated 15 percent of all children with a Muslim background regularly receive religious instruction. A similar role was played by the mosques in southeastern Europe (with the exception of Greece), where during the communist period no room was left for staterecognized elementary Islamic schools.
The increase in community life stimulated by the mosques enhanced their central role. In the countries of origin many culturally defined institutions used to exist separately from the mosques. These institutions, however, did not exist in the host countries. Endowing the mosques in western Europe with some of the functions of this absent infrastructure was a constructive solution, because in doing so one was granting further material support to the maintenance of the mosques, and therefore of Muslim community life itself. This resulted in all kinds of activities in the fields of education, sports, and recreation, among others, and providing an alternative for youngsters to behavioral patterns rejected by Islam.
As a result, mosque buildings in western Europe were to be used for various kinds of religiously colored feasts and ceremonies not usually celebrated in or around mosque buildings in the Muslim world itself, such as wedding parties, circumcisions, and mourning ceremonies. In addition to this, attached to many mosques there are shops owned by the Muslim organization that sell religious objects (including books) and products from the countries of origin and that add to the social and financial basis of the community life centered around the mosque.
Most mosques are presided over by a board of governors. The members of the board usually take care of the financial interests of the mosque and its maintenance. Unless special arrangements have been made with the government of the country of origin, the imam of the mosque is appointed by the board. The board’s tasks are both external and internal. Those of the imam, however, are mainly internal, and they are specifically connected to the knowledge and application of the values of Islamic religion. Members of the board should be able to manage the mosque and to communicate and negotiate with the surrounding non-Muslim society. For these purposes fluency in the host country language and knowledge and understanding of its laws and social customs are required.
The imams, on the other hand, can hardly be expected to have the just-mentioned communicative bicultural abilities. Many of them-in the absence of a sufficient number of men in western Europe who are qualified for the post-have been recruited comparatively recently in the countries of origin. Also, the mainly internal and traditional coloring of their most important tasks runs counter to such characteristics. Entrusted with the daily prayer services in the mosque, the religious counseling of the individual members of their community, the elementary religious education of the community’s children, as well as with the performing of ceremonial tasks at various important occasions in the lives of individuals and families, the imams can be said to be the main custodians of the cultural, and especially the religious, values of the countries of origin.
In the absence of the social infrastructure of the countries of origin (family, acquaintances, etc.), the function of the imam of a mosque community has increased considerably in western Europe. The pastoral tasks of spiritual counseling and social care, including the visiting of community members in hospitals and prisons, are cases in point. There are many essential similarities between the tasks of an imam in western Europe and his Christian or Jewish colleagues, the pastor and the rabbi. As a logical outcome, governments and courts also tend to identify the imams as Muslim clerics to be dealt with in the same way as the Christian and Jewish clergy. Countries where Islam has been officially recognized by the state, such as Belgium and Spain, have legalized this view explicitly. In other countries, the same viewpoint is expressed implicitly, in jurisprudence and government policies. In the Netherlands, the juridical equalization of pastors, rabbis, imams, Hindu priests, and humanistic spiritual counselors was settled by an official verdict of the Supreme Court.
In all countries of western Europe Muslim communities become increasingly aware of the need to create their own educational centers for the training of imams. This process is stimulated by public discussions and government policies attaching much value to the founding of such provisions within western Europe itself. Apart from the strictly theological requirements, new educational challenges are posed by the unprecedented posts for imams which are being created in western European armies, hospitals, and prisons-on a par with the state-appointed ministers, pastors, and rabbis already working in those institutions. Obviously, this new category of imams indeed would need forms of additional training enabling them to cope with a whole series of nontraditional tasks. The creation of Islamic theological seminaries no doubt would form a step of great historical momentum in the history of western European Islam. However, several obstacles stand in the way of their realization. Most prominent among these is the heterogeneity and division of the Islamic organizations that hampers the successful coordination of various small-scale initiatives that already exist in various countries. The religious infrastructure of Islam in southeastern Europe for example, is already in place; in BosniaHerzegovina, imams and religious scholars can be trained in several madrasahs and in a theological faculty in Sarajevo.
At national and international levels, a great variety of Islamic organizations are in competition with each other to obtain influence over the local mosque-communities. Among the first attempts, during the 1970s, to create umbrella structures for local mosques were organizations representing confessional streams that are in opposition to the official doctrines of Islam promoted by governments in their countries of origin. These initiatives were counteracted by the activities of the non-European governments concerned, who started to build up their own networks of mosque-communities among their citizens in western European countries. A clear example of this pattern is found among Turkish Islamic organizations.
As a reaction to the mushrooming of independent and oppositional religious movements, such as the Suley-manlis, Milli Gorus, and Nursis, the Presidium of Religious Affairs of the Turkish government (usually referred to as the Diyanet) developed a policy to stimulate the foundation of a religious infrastructure for the Turkish Muslims in western Europe under its direct supervision. This policy was to include the foundation of mosques and the appointment of imams and religious teachers trained in one of the official Turkish colleges or faculties. These imams, who have the status of civil servants of the Turkish government, are working in western Europe on a temporary basis. The policy included also the appointment of religious attaches with the status of muftis to the Turkish embassies concerned. Mosque-communities attached to the organizations of the Diyanet have to comply with the transfer of the management of their mosque buildings to specially created foundations in each country, which are subjected to the direct supervision of the presidium itself.
Similar organizational divisions, the result of the transplanted competition between oppositional religiopolitical groups on the one hand, and the governments in their countries of origin on the other, can also be observed among Muslims of other origins, such as those from Morocco. Other governments, such as that of Tunisia, tend to abstain from a policy of direct interference in the religious life of their (former) subjects in western Europe. In fact, western Europe has become a haven for the free organization of Islamic oppositional movements. The writings of the Moroccan oppositional leader `Abd al-Salam Yasin, for example, forbidden in Morocco itself, are circulating among all Moroccan communities in western Europe.
In addition, international organizations, such as the Muslim World League, backed up by governments of Muslim states, have succeeded in establishing Islamic Centers in various western European capitals, including Brussels, Madrid, and Rome. These centers aim at controlling Islamic religious life in the respective western European states, and they are usually governed by diplomatic representatives of Muslim countries, under the predominant influence of Saudi Arabia. They add to the complexities of rivalry and conflict that continue to characterize the relations between the Islamic umbrella organizations at national levels.
Religion and State. In the present time, all European states claim to be democratic and to respect the fundamental principle of religious freedom, notwithstanding all the differences in the relations between religion and state, enshrined in their respective constitutions and applied in their actual policies. This principle applies to all citizens and inhabitants, including Muslims, both individually and in the form of their religious organizations. The constitutional principle of religious freedom is surrounded by various kinds of legal limits that are molding Islam, after the pattern to be observed in Europe’s churches and synagogues, into the shape of religious institutions which mainly focus on certain areas of social life. These areas comprise the preaching of faith and morals, the practicing of rituals and festivals, the organizing of religious education and learning, and the strengthening of various kinds of religiously based community life. In all other areas of social life, the public order and the monopoly of the states prevail. With the exception of Greece, where Islamic family law has been respected (to various degrees) since the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 and where the Greek Orthodox church still plays a dominant role, at present no European state knows a system of legal pluralism based on the religious denomination of the individual citizens.
This does not mean, of course, that the principles of Islamic family law have no value for Muslims in European countries. On the contrary, just like the adherents of other religions, Muslims are free to abide by them, voluntarily and with due respect to the existing juridical order. They may even create their own religious courts to which they may subject, out of their free choice, internal disputes concerning all kinds of matters affected by shai`ah, including matters concerning marriage, divorce, and inheritance. The creation of such informal shari `ah courts, which can be compared with the Jewish institution of the rabbinical courts, is on its way in several countries of western Europe. However, no public validity is attached to their decisions.
Interpretations of the principle of religious freedom, though shared by all, differ from one state to another. These differences are closely related to the complex political and cultural histories of each state. The slaughtering of animals according to Islamic (and Jewish) religious prescriptions, for instance, is allowed in many states (under specific conditions prescribed by law), but forbidden in some, including Switzerland and Sweden.
Disputes concerning the wearing of head-scarves by Muslim girls in public schools have, again, been differently concluded. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, this expression of Islamic religious behavior is respected, but in others, for example, Belgium and France, the decision about its permissibility was delegated to the governors of the individual schools. During the Rushdie Affair, existing laws on blasphemy appeared only to apply to established religions in the United Kingdom, but they were applicable to Islam also in the Netherlands. Attitudes toward the right to celebrate religious holidays still differ widely, though the existing jurisprudence in various countries tends to recognize the right of employees to take one or more unpaid days off for this purpose, provided that the employer was informed in advance and that no serious damage was thereby caused to the interests of the enterprise. A verdict of the European Commission on Human Rights stipulated that a Muslim employee with full employment should have the right to attend Friday services if he informs his employer at the moment of his employment that the observance of this religious duty could be in conflict with his duties as an employee. Research shows many variations within the actual policies of government authorities toward this problem also depends on the practical possibilities in each labor sector involved.
An important aspect of the relations between religion and state is the predominant attitude in each country toward the social value of religion. This differs not only between the states, but also within each state, and even from one period to another and among the various political parties. Some states officially ascribe great importance to religion in maintaining the norms and values of society at large. If certain legally prescribed conditions are fulfilled by religious organizations, these states are willing to cooperate with them and even to subsidize, again to varying degrees, their religious and sociocultural activities. Other states tend to underline the private nature of religion, the secular character of their society, and, consequently, are reluctant in financing religious organizations. They may, nevertheless, allow forms of indirect subsidies to religions, for instance, by making donations to them tax deductible, a practice existing in many European states.
These differences are also related to Europe’s divergent constitutional traditions regarding the relations between religion and state. With the exception of Vatican City, these traditions can be broadly classified according to the two models of union and separation.
The model of union involves some direct juridical relations between religion and state. This model can be subdivided into three types. First, some states practice the official recognition of religious communities. This implies that they take into account officially the existence of these religious communities in order to create relations between them and society at large (examples of this type are Spain, Belgium, and Germany). The second type is that of the existence of an official state religion with constitutionally guaranteed respect for religious freedom and the right of nondiscrimination of all other religions. This is the case, for instance, in Denmark, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The third type is that of the officially sanctioned preferential treatment of one religious community over all the others. This can be found in Greece, for instance, and is usually qualified as with the term “confessionalism.”
In addition, there is also the model of separation between religion and state, which underlines the neutrality of the state, the equality of all religions and philosophies of life, and, to varying degrees, the secular character of all public spaces of society. This model is found, for instance, in France and the Netherlands. However, in its application, these countries show many significant differences. For instance, on the basis of the wellknown Dutch “pillarization system,” which grants the right to all religious communities in the Netherlands, also at local levels, to develop with state subsidies all kinds of religiously colored institutions in the educational and sociocultural spheres, about thirty Islamic primary schools have been founded. This example illustrates the restricted significance of the various constitutional theories for a correct assessment of the real possibilities available to religious groups in each state. An adequate treatment of the complexities and variants involved in these models and types by far surpasses the scope of this article. Only some details will be provided of the realities that can be involved in this kind of recognition of Islam.
Spain’s constitution expresses the state’s readiness to cooperate with the churches and the religious confessions insofar as is necessary to make the right of its citizens to enjoy religious liberty “real and active.” In order to obtain the recognition which is necessary to reach an agreement to cooperate, parties involved have to prove, on the basis of inscription in the official Register of Religious Entities, at least the existence of a certain number of believers. Apart from the established arrangements with the Roman Catholic church, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic confessions have in fact been awarded this
statute, and official agreements between the state and these confessions were signed in 1992.
The Comision Islamica de Espafia (CIE) was recognized as the official representative of the Muslims of Spain. It was chosen by the two federations inscribed in the official Register of Religious Entities, to which other federations or communities can be added in the future. The agreement has settled a long list of relevant subjects, like the statutes of mosques and prayerhalls, of Islamic cemeteries, of the Islamic rules concerning inhumation, graves, and funerary rites, and of the imams and other religious leaders. It also regulated the religious rights of Muslim soldiers and Muslim personnel of the army and of Muslim prisoners and patients in hospitals. Muslim parents and their children were guaranteed the right to receive Islamic religious education in schools at primary and secondary levels. The Islamic Committee of Spain, as well as the communities pertaining to it, may establish and manage teaching centers of primary and secondary levels, as well as universities and centers of Islamic formation, in accordance with the general legislation regarding these matters. The agreement also grants a number of tax privileges to the CIE and the attached communities. It defines the rights of Muslim students and employees to celebrate religious holidays, to heed to the prescriptions of Ramadan, and to attend weekly Friday services. Finally, it stipulates that the CIE will be the sole authority in Spain to assign the mark “halal” to food products in order to designate that they have been prepared in accordance with the religious law of Islam. The dietary rules of Islam will be respected in prisons, army dependencies, hospitals, and schools for those Muslims who request this. This holds true also for the timetable of Ramadan.
The government of Spain has assumed an active role in the constitution of a representative organ on behalf of the Muslims in Spain. In Belgium, where the state recognized Islam officially in 1974, this has, however, not been the case. In order to effectuate the financial aid that the Belgian state in principle is ready to convey to a great variety of Islamic religious activities (including the salaries of imams, the expenses of mosques, the foundation of Islamic schools, the religious education in public schools, etc.), committees with corporate capacity have to be established by law. These committees are in charge of the properties used for the cults and function at the same time as intermediaries with the national government. They have to be elected at provincial levels, in accordance with legally prescribed rules. The organization of the elections was put into the hands of the Islamic Cultural Center in Brussels (financed by the Muslim World League) with which the Belgians had been dealing on a temporary basis as the sole representative of the Muslims of its state since the official recognition of Islam. However, the elections that took place were not recognized, with the result that many potential measures that could considerably have improved the religious infrastructure of Belgian Islam were not taken at all. Nevertheless, teachers of Islamic religious education have been appointed in many Belgian public schools at the recommendation of the center in Brussels or the “Provisional Council of Wise Persons for the Organization of the Islamic Cult in Belgium,” created, again on a temporary basis, in 1990.
From a general point of view, one must conclude that Muslims have not made full use of the opportunities offered to them by the widely divergent legal systems of the European states. Their discord and lack of qualified leadership are certainly important factors to explain this. However, of equal importance is the outspokenly negative attitude of large sectors of European societies toward the ethnic minorities living among them and the adherents of the religion of Islam in particular. Extremist political movements with bluntly racist ideologies have appeared on the European scene over the past few years and have been able to attract significant percentages of voters in local and national elections. Their influence is clearly reflected in the changing attitudes of some of the established political parties. Acts of violence against the life and property of Muslims and other minority groups have become the sad reality. Hardly any mosque or prayer hall is now opened without accompanying protests by non-Muslims. And a politician defending the constitutional rights of minority groups runs the risk of losing the favor of many voters. The dramatic events in southeastern Europe have created fears about the survival of freedom, democracy, and equality in regard to Europe’s Islam.
[See also Albania; Balkan States; France; Germany; Great Britain; and Popular Religion, article on Popular Religion in Europe and the Americas.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Western Europe
Arkoun, Mohammed, Remy Leveau, and B. El-Jisr, eds. L’Islam et les musulmans dans le monde. Volume 1, L’Europe occidentale. Beyrouth, 1993. Special emphasis on France and western Europe in general; separate chapters on Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.
Koningsveld, P. S. van. Islamitische slaven en gevangenen in WestEuropa tijdens de late Meddeleeuwen. Leiden, 1994. Inaugural lecture in the Chair of the Religious History of Islam in Western Europe, delivered at Leiden University on 4 February 1994. An English version, entitled “Muslim Slaves and Captives in Western Europe during the Late Middle Ages,” will appear in a future issue of the journal Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.
Nielsen, jorgen N. “Migrant Muslims in Western Europe.” Portion of entry “Muslimun” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 7, pp. 699-702. Leiden, 196o-.
Nielsen, Jorgen N. Muslims in Western Europe. Edinburgh, 1992. Contains general analysis of family, law and culture, and Muslim organizations. Separate chapters are on France, West Germany, United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Belgium, Scandinavia, and southern Europe.
Shadid, W. A. R., and P. S. van Koningsveld. Religious Freedom and the Position of Islam in Western Europe: Opportunities and Obstacles in the Acquisition of Equal Rights. Kampen, Neth., 1994. Contains an extensive bibliography of studies on Islam in all countries of the European Community published from 1987 through 1993
Southeastern and Northern Europe Kettani, M. A. “Islam in Post-Ottoman Balkans.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 9 (1988): 381-403. Review essay of Popovic 1986 (see below), with important additional data.
Popovic, Alexandre. “The Old Established Muslim Communities of Eastern Europe.” Portion of entry “Muslimun” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, new ed., vol. 7, pp. 695-699. Leiden, 196o-. Also treats the Muslim communities in Finland and Poland.
Popovic, Alexandre. L’Islam balkanique: Les musulmans du sud-est europien dans la peirode post-ottomane. Berlin, 1986. Encyclopedic survey of the history and sociology of Islam in the Balkan states.
P. S. VAN KoNINGSVELD

Islam in China

Batoota — Mon, 02 Jun 2014 07:34:37 +0000

Islam in China
Islam in China has been propagated over the past thirteen hundred years primarily among the people now known as “Hui,” but many of the issues confronting them are also relevant to the Turkic and Indo-European Muslims on China’s Inner Asian frontier. “Hui teaching” (Hui jiao) was the term once used in Chinese for Islam in general; it probably derives from an early Chinese rendering of the term for the modern Uighur people. According to the reasonably accurate 1990 national census of China, the total Muslim population is 17.6 million, including Hui (8,602,978), Uighur (7,24,431), Kazakh (1,111,718), Dongxiang (373,872), Kyrgyz (141,549), Salar (87,697); Tajik (33,538), Uzbek (14,502), Bonan (12,212), and Tatar (4,873). The Hui speak mainly Sino-Tibetan languages; Turkic-language speakers include the Uighur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uzbek, and Tatar; combined Turkic-Mongolian speakers include the Dongxiang, Salar, and Bonan, concentrated in Gansu’s mountainous Hexi corridor; and the Tajik speak a variety of Indo-Persian dialects. It is important to note, however, that the Chinese census registered people by nationality, not religious affiliation, so the actual number of Muslims is still unknown.

Although the Hui have been labeled as the “Chinesespeaking Muslims” or “Chinese Muslims,” this is misleading, because by law all Muslims living in China are “Chinese” by citizenship, and many Hui speak only their local non-Chinese dialects; they include the Tibetan, Mongolian, Thai, and Hainan Muslims, who are also classified by the state as Hui. Yet most Hui are closer to the Han Chinese than the other Muslim nationalities in terms of demographic proximity and cultural accommodation, adapting many of their Islamic practices to Han ways of life, which became the source for many of the criticisms by later Muslim reformers. In the past this was not such a problem for the Turkish and Indo-European Muslim groups, who were traditionally more isolated from the Han and whose identities were not so threatened, though this has begun to change in the past forty years. As a result of state-sponsored nationality identification campaigns over the past thirty years, these groups have begun to think of themselves more as ethnic nationalities than just as “Muslims.” The Hui are unique among the fifty-five identified minority nationalities in China in that they are the only nationality for whom religion is the only unifying category of identity, even though many members of the Hui nationality may not practice Islam.
As the result of a succession of Islamic reform movements that swept across China over the past six centuries, one finds among the Muslims in China today a wide spectrum of Islamic belief. Archaeological discoveries of large collections of Islamic artifacts and epigraphy on the southeast coast suggest that the earliest Muslim communities in China were descended from Arab, Persian, Central Asian, and Mongolian Muslim merchants, militia, and officials who settled first along China’s southeast coast in the seventh to tenth centuries; there followed larger migrations to the north from Central Asia under the Mongol Yuan dynasty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, gradually intermarrying with the local Chinese populations and raising their children as Muslims. Practicing Sunni, Hanafi Islam and residing in independent small communities clustered around a central mosque, these relatively isolated Islamic village and urban communities interacted via trading networks and recognition of membership in the wider Islamic ummah. Each was headed by an ahong (from Persian akhund) who was invited to teach on a more or less temporary basis.
Sufism began to make a substantial impact in China proper in the late seventeenth century, arriving mainly along the Central Asian trade routes with saintly shaykhs, both Chinese and foreign, who brought new teachings from the pilgrimage cities. These charismatic teachers and tradesmen established widespread networks and brotherhood associations, most prominently the Naqshbandiyah, Qadariyah, and Kubrawlyah. The hierarchical organization of these Sfifi networks helped to mobilize large numbers of Hui during economic and political crises in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, assisting widespread Muslim-led rebellions and resistance movements against late Ming and Qing imperial rule in Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Xinjiang. The 1912 Nationalist revolution allowed further autonomy in regions of Muslim concentration in the northwest, and wide areas came under virtual control by Muslim warlords, leading to frequent intra-Muslim and MuslimHan conflicts until the eventual communist victory led to the reassertion of central control. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Wahhabi-inspired reform movements known as the Yihewani (from Arabic ikhwan) rose to popularity under Nationalist and warlord sponsorship; they were noted for their critical stance toward traditionalist Islam as too acculturated to Chinese practices, and Sufism as too attached to saint and tomb veneration.
Many Muslims supported the earliest communist call for equity, autonomy, freedom of religion, and recognized nationality status, and were active in the early establishment of the People’s Republic, but they became disenchanted by growing critiques of religious practice during several radical periods in the PRC beginning in 1957. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), Muslims became the focus for both antireligious and antiethnic nationalist critiques, leading to widespread persecutions, mosque-closings, and at least one massacre of one thousand Hui following a 1975 uprising in Yunnan province. Since Deng Xiaoping’s post-1978 reforms, Muslims have sought to take advantage of liberalized economic and religious policies while keeping a watchful eye on the ever-swinging pendulum of Chinese radical politics. There are now more mosques open in China than there were before 1949, and Muslims travel freely on the hajj to Mecca, as well as engaging in crossborder trade with coreligionists in Central Asia, in the Middle East, and increasingly in Southeast Asia.
Increasing Muslim political activism on a national scale and rapid state response indicates the growing importance Beijing places on Muslim-related issues. In 1986 Uighurs in Xinjiang marched through the streets of Urumqi protesting a wide range of issues, including the environmental degradation of the Zungharian plain, nuclear testing in the Taklamakan, increased Han immigration to Xinjiang, and ethnic insults at Xinjiang University. Muslims throughout China protested the publication of the Chinese book Sexual Customs in May 1989, and of a children’s book in October 1993 that portrayed Muslims-particularly their restriction against pork, which Mao once called “China’s greatest national treasure”-in derogatory fashion. In each case the government quickly responded, meeting most of the Muslim demands, condemning the publications, arresting the authors, and closing down the printing houses.
Islamic factional struggles continue to divide China’s Muslims internally, especially as increased travel to the Middle East prompts criticism of Muslim practice at home and exposes China’s Muslims to new, often politically radical Islamic ideals. In February 1994 four Naqshband-i Sufi leaders were sentenced to long-term imprisonment for their support of internal factional disputes in southern Ningxia Region, which led to at least sixty deaths on both sides and required intervention by the People’s Liberation Army. Throughout the summer and fall of 1993 bombs exploded in several towns in Xinjiang, indicating the growing demands of organizations pressing for an independent Turkestan. Beijing has responded with increased military presence, particularly in Kashgar and Urumqi, as well as diplomatic efforts in the Central Asian states and Turkey to discourage foreign support for separatist movements. At the same time cross-border trade between Xinjiang and Central Asia has grown tremendously, especially with the reopening in 1991 of the Eurasian Railroad linking Urumqi and Alma Ata with markets in China and eastern Europe. Overland travel between Xinjiang and Pa
kistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan has also increased dramatically with the relaxation of travel restrictions based on Deng Xiaoping’s prioritization of trade over security interests in the area. The government’s policy of seeking to buy support through stimulating the local economy seems to be working in 1994, as income levels in Xinjiang are often far higher than those across the border; however, increased Han migration to participate in the region’s lucrative oil and mining industries continues to exacerbate ethnic tension. Muslim areas in northern and central China continue to be left behind as China’s rapid economic growth expands unevenly, enriching the southern coastal areas far more than the interior.
While further restricting Islamic freedoms in the border regions, at the same time the state has become more keenly aware of the importance foreign Muslim governments place on China’s treatment of its Muslim minorities as a factor in China’s lucrative trade and military agreements. The establishment of full diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia in 1991 and increasing military and technical trade with Middle Eastern Muslim states enhances the economic and political salience of China’s treatment of its Muslim minority. The increased transnationalism of China’s Muslims will be an important factor in their ethnic expression as well as in their accommodation to Chinese culture and state authority.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bai Shouyi, ed. Huimin Qiyi (Hui Rebellions), 4 vols. Shanghai, 1953. Broomhall, Marshall. Islam in China: A Neglected Problem. New York, 1910.
Chen Dasheng, ed. Islamic Inscriptions in Quanzhou. Translated by Chen Enming. Yinchuan and Quanzhou, 1984.
Forbes, Andrew D. W. Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia. Cambridge, 1986.
Gladney, Dru C. Muslim Chinese: Ethnic Nationalism in the People’s Republic. Cambridge, Mass., 1991.
Israeli, Raphael. With the assistance of Lyn Gorman. Islam in China: A Critical Bibliography. Westport, Conn., 1994
Leslie, Donald Daniel. Islam in Traditional China: A Short History to 1800. Canberra, 1986.
Lipman, Jonathan N. The Border World of Gansu, 1895-193S. Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, Stanford, 1981.
Ma Tong. Zhongguo Yisilan Jiaopai yu Menhuan Zhidu Shilue (A history of Muslim factions and the Menhuan system in China). Yinchuan, 1983.
Pillsbury, Barbara. Cohesion and Cleavage in a Chinese Muslim Minority. Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1973.
DRU C. GLADNEY

ISHAKI, AYAZ

Batoota — Tue, 27 May 2014 07:30:45 +0000

ISHAKI, AYAZ (1878-1954), Tatar political activist and writer. Born on 23 February 1878 into the family of Giylajetdin, the mullah of Yaushirma village in Kazan guberniya, Ayaz (or Gayaz) Ishaki received a traditional education at the Chistay madrasah (1890-1893) and then at the Kulbue madrasah (1893-1898) of Kazan. In 1898 he entered the Kazan Teachers’ School, from which he graduated in 1902, finding employment as a teacher of Russian at madrasahs in Kazan and Orenburg. In 1903 he returned to Yaushirma to take up briefly the duties of village mullah.

As a student Ishaki became involved in the first Tatar literary-political circle organized by a group of Tatar youth in 1895. They published a mimeographed paper called Tarakki (Progress) and in 1901 organized the Shakirdlik party, which a year later changed its name to Hurriyet (Freedom) and adhered to purely political goals. At this time Ishaki also established links with the Russian socialist revolutionary circles of Kazan and acquired a taste for action, which may explain the brevity of his stay in Yaushirma and his decision to return to Kazan.
Once back in Kazan, Ishaki became involved with radical circles; in 1905 he and Fuad Tuktar founded a secret Tatar political group called Tangchilar revolving around two socialist papers advocating the overthrow of tsarism-Tang (Down) and Tang yoldizi (Morning Star), both edited by Ishaki. In the fall of 1905 he and Tuktar organized the Socialist party Brek with its own journal, Azat (Free), succeeded by Azat khaliq (Free People).
In August 1905 Ishaki participated in the first Congress of the Muslims of the Russian empire, heading the group of twenty radical nationalists opposing the moderate views of the majority of delegates who advocated a political union of all Muslims. This disagreement grew even wider at the third congress (August 19o6), where Ishaki argued that unity of religion and culture did not suffice to unite all Muslims into one political party as long as class differences endured.
By 19o6 Ishaki had clashed not only with those Tatars who did not share his political radicalism but also with the Russian government. The newspaper Tang yoldizi was banned in 19o5, and Ishaki was arrested and sent to the Chistay jail. Upon release he launched the newspaper Tavish (The Voice), which continued the socialist revolutionary orientation of the previous two and prompted an immediate response from the government: Ishaki was arrested and jailed for six months and then sent to serve a three-year exile in Arkhangelsk. He escaped in 19o8 and made his way to St. Petersburg, where he lived in hiding; however, the police caught up with Ishaki and deported him to Vologda, where he stayed until 1913.
Since Ishaki was not allowed to return to Kazan, he chose St. Petersburg for launching his next projects-the publication between 1910 and 1913 of the newspapers Il (Country), Suz (The Word), and Bezneng il (Our Country). By this time Ishaki had mellowed politically, distancing himself from the radicalism of the socialists. He moved closer to the moderate platform of the Ittifak party, which had never regarded class differences as a hindrance to the unity of all Muslims. In 1915 Ishaki traveled to the Muslim regions of the Russian empire to promote the idea of unity and common action.
After the fall of the Romanov dynasty in February 1917, Ishaki helped organize the two congresses of Russian Muslims held during that year (May, Moscow; July, Kazan). On 22 July 1917, Ishaki was instrumental in having the national cultural autonomy of the VolgaUral Muslims proclaimed by the Second Congress, which also elected a National Assembly (Milli Majlis), National Council (Milli Shura), and National Administration (Milli Idare). He became the head of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Volga-Ural Muslims, but when the Red Army occupied the large cities of the Volga-Ural region in 1918, the National Administration was abrogated. Since the regional enemies of the Bolsheviks were also hostile to Ishaki, he and the National Administration moved to Kizilyar (Petropavlovsk) on the northern fringes of the Kazakh steppes, where he began to publish the newspaper Mayak (The Lighthouse).
In 1919 Ishaki left Russia (via Japan) to participate in the European Peace Conference as the representative of the Volga-Ural Muslims. This departure marks the beginning of his life as a political emigre, which took him to Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, Mukden, Ankara, and Istanbul. During this period he channeled his efforts toward keeping alive the “national memory” of the Volga-Ural Muslims and supporting their struggle to free their homeland. In Warsaw Ishaki was active in an organization called Promethee, aimed at achieving independence for the ethnic minorities of Russia. In Berlin in 1928, he launched the newspaper Milli Yul (National Path), which changed its name to Yanga Milli Yul (New National Path) in 1939 Ishaki represented the Volga-Ural Muslims at the Muslim Congress held in Jerusalem in 1931 and continued to pursue the idea of Muslim and Turkic unity. Between 1934 and 1938 he traveled to Finland, the Arab countries, Manchuria, Korea, and Japan in order to create an organization of the Volga-Ural Muslim diaspora.
When the national congress of the diaspora met in 1935 in Mukden, it elected Ishaki the president of its national council. To provide the diaspora with a voice, in November 1935 Ishaki started the newspaper Milli bayrak (The National Flag), which appeared until mid-1945; it was the only one of his journals to survive German suppression in World War II. After the war Ishaki moved to Turkey, where he lived until his death in Ankara on 22 July 1954.
Ishaki left a threefold legacy as a political activist driven by the idea of Turkic unity and national autonomy for the Volga-Ural Muslims, a journalist promoting that political credo, and a creative writer reflecting the ideals of enlightenment, justice, and economic and political advancement intimately associated with Jadidism (Muslim reformism). [See Jadidism.] His literary work includes close to fifty short stories, novellas, novels, plays, memoirs, and translations of historical essays, addressing a broad range of issues. In the fantastic novel Iki yoz eldan song inkiyraz (After Two Hundred YearsExtinction; Kazan, 1904), and the Story Tagallemda sdgaddt (Happiness in Education; Kazan, 1899) he addressed the issues of reform and modernization of education as a condition of social progress; in the play Zdleykha (Moscow, 1918) the focus is on the tragedies brought about by Russian policies of forced conversion to Christianity of the Russian government. Other plays and stories address issues of social justice, women’s lives, and the quest for education. The literary works that most clearly mirror Ishaki’s political ideas are the play Dulkin echende (In The Wave; Paris, 192o) and the novel Oyga taba (Homeward; Berlin, 1922), which are permeated by nationalist and Pan-Turkic ideas. [See Pan-Turanism.]
Ishaki’s name was obliterated from histories of Tatar literature and culture published in the Soviet Union after 1926, and he was mentioned only to vilify him as a nationalist and enemy of the Soviet people. Not until 1988, in an article by I. Nurullin in the newspaper Vechernyaya Kazan, was the first step taken toward returning Ishaki to the peoples of his homeland. Since, newspapers and journals such as Kazan utlari (Fires of Kazan), Miras (Heritage), and Tatarstan have carried many articles about him, also reprinting some of his works. In 1991 the Union of Writers of Tatarstan instituted a literary prize in honor of Ishaki; the first writer to receive it was Rabit Batulla, whose works embody Ishaki’s ideals and hopes for the future of the VolgaUral Muslims.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Agay, H., A. S. Akis, and Tahir Cagatay, eds. Muhammed Ayaz Ishaki, Hayati ve faaliyeti: 100. Dogum Yili Dolayisiyla. Ankara, 1979.
Nurullin, Ibrahim. “Vozvrashchenie Gayaza Ishaki.” Vechernyaya Kazan 10.17 (1988).
Nurullin, Ibrahim. “Gayaz Iskhakiyga yoginti.” Kazan Utlari, no. 2 (1993) 153-157.
Saadi, A. Tatar adabiyate tarikht. Kazan, 1926.
Sultan, S. “Ayaz Ishaki Idilli: A Biography.” Central Asian Survey, no. 2 (1990): 133-143.
Validov, Dzhamaliutdin. Ocherki istorii obrazovannosti i literatury Tatar. Moscow and Petrograd, 1923.
AZADE-AYSE RORLICH