POPULAR RELIGION – Hybrid Learning

Best free text-to-speech software in 2022

Batoota — Sat, 02 Jul 2022 17:22:22 +0000

The best free text-to-speech software makes it simple and easy to convert text files to audio files that you can listen to anywhere.

It comes in handy for when you want to listen to a document while multitasking, sense-check that paper or article you’ve just written, or help you retain information easier if you’re an auditory learner.

Even better, however, are its uses in the real world. The best free text-to-speech software can be enormously helpful for the visually impaired, or for someone who has a condition like dyslexia that makes reading on screens tricky. It can also help overcome language barriers for people who read a language but don’t speak it, or are in the process of learning.

Loading the finished file into your smart device such as an iPhone, it enables you to leave your office and listen to an updated manuscript or a report like a podcast as you finish an errand.

If you’re looking for the best free text-to-speech software out there to help with this, then you’re in luck. We’ve rounded up our top picks for reading either individual paragraphs or whole documents aloud.

For ripping audio from videos, do check out our guide to the best YouTube to MP3 converters.

We’ve also featured the best text-to-speech software.

(Image credit: Balabolka)

1. Balabolka

Powerful free text-to-speech software with customizable voices

SPECIFICATIONS

Operating system: Windows

REASONS TO BUY

+Excellent file format support
+Lots of voices to choose from
+Can create audio files
+Bookmarking tools

There are a couple of ways to use Balabolka’s free text-to-speech software: you can either copy and paste text into the program, or you can open a number of supported file formats (including DOC, PDF, and HTML) in the program directly. In terms of output, you can use SAPI 4 complete with eight different voices to choose from, SAPI 5 with two, or the Microsoft Speech Platform. Whichever route you choose, you can adjust the speech, pitch and volume of playback to create a custom voice.

In addition to reading words aloud, this free text-to-speech software can also save narrations as audio files in a range of formats including MP3 and WAV. For lengthy documents, you can create bookmarks to make it easy to jump back to a specific location and there are excellent tools on hand to help you to customize the pronunciation of words to your liking.

With all these features to make life easier when reading text on a screen isn’t an option, Balabolka is best free text-to-speech software around.

(Image credit: Natural Reader)

2. Natural Reader

Free text-to-speech software with its own web browser

SPECIFICATIONS

Operating system: Windows, macOS, Linux (in browser)

REASONS TO BUY

+Built-in OCR
+Choice of interfaces
+Built-in browser
+Dyslexic-friendly font

Natural Reader is a free text-to-speech tool that can be used in a couple of ways. The first option is to load documents into its library and have them read aloud from there. This is a neat way to manage multiple files, and the number of supported file types is impressive, including ebook formats. There’s also OCR, which enables you to load up a photo or scan of text, and have it read to you.

The second option takes the form of a floating toolbar. In this mode, you can highlight text in any application and use the toolbar controls to start and customize text-to-speech. This means you can very easily use the feature in your web browser, word processor and a range of other programs. There’s also a built-in browser to convert web content to speech more easily.

(Image credit: Panopreter)

3. Panopreter Basic

Easy text-to-speech conversion, with WAV and MP3 output

SPECIFICATIONS

Operating system: Windows

REASONS TO BUY

+Quick and simple to use
+Exports in WAV and MP3 formats
+Good range of input formats

REASONS TO AVOID

–

For Windows only

As the name suggests, Panopreter Basic is the best free text-to-speech software if you’re looking for one without frills. It accepts plain and rich text files, web pages and Microsoft Word documents as input, and exports the resulting sound in both WAV and MP3 format (the two files are saved in the same location, with the same name).

The default settings work well for quick tasks, but spend a little time exploring Panopreter Basic’s Settings menu and you’ll find options to change the language, destination of saved audio files, and set custom interface colors. The software can even play a piece of music once it’s finished reading – a nice touch you won’t find in other free text-to-speech software.

If you need something more advanced, a premium version of Panopreter is available. This edition offers several additional features including toolbars for Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer, the ability to highlight the section of text currently being read, and extra voices.

(Image credit: WordTalk)

4. WordTalk

An extension that adds text-to-speech to your word processor

SPECIFICATIONS

Operating system: Windows

REASONS TO BUY

+Integrates with Microsoft Word
+Customizable voices
+Speaking dictionary

REASONS TO AVOID

–

A little unattractive

Developed by the University of Edinburgh, WordTalk is a toolbar add-on for Word that brings customizable text-to-speech to Microsoft Word. It works with all editions of Word and is accessible via the toolbar or ribbon, depending on which version you’re using.

The toolbar itself is certainly not the most attractive you’ll ever see, appearing to have been designed by a child. Nor are all of the buttons’ functions very clear, but thankfully there’s a help file on hand to help.

There’s no getting away from the fact that WordTalk is fairly basic, but it does support SAPI 4 and SAPI 5 voices, and these can be tweaked to your liking. The ability to just read aloud individual words, sentences or paragraphs is a particularly nice touch. You also have the option of saving narrations, and there are a number of keyboard shortcuts that allow for quick and easy access to frequently used options.

(Image credit: Zabaware)

5. Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader

A great choice for converting text from websites to speech

SPECIFICATIONS

Operating system: Windows

REASONS TO BUY

+Converts text from the clipboard
+Good file format support

REASONS TO AVOID

-Voices are quite expensive
–Windows only

Despite its basic looks, Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader has more to offer than you might first think. You can open numerous file formats directly in the program, or just copy and paste text.

Alternatively, as long as you have the program running and the relevant option enables, Zabaware Text-to-Speech Reader can read aloud any text you copy to the clipboard – great if you want to convert words from websites to speech – as well as dialog boxes that pop up. One of the best free text-to-speech software right now, this can also convert text files to WAV format.

Unfortunately the selection of voices is limited, and the only settings you can customize are volume and speed unless you burrow deep into settings to fiddle with pronunciations. Additional voices are available for an additional fee which seems rather steep, holding it back from a higher place in our list.

Popular Religion in Europe and the Americas

Batoota — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 10:32:56 +0000

Popular Religion in Europe and the Americas
Local Muslim belief and practice in non-Muslim countries reflect the historical experience of the community and the larger cultural environment within which it lives. Conversion and migration throughout the twentieth century have resulted in about eleven or twelve million Muslims living in Europe and America (the Muslim population figures tend to be estimates because of illiteracy, misunderstanding, and concealment of identity for fear of becoming entangled with the law). This large number has complicated the already complex relationship between Islam and the West. Islam is no longer “over there,” in Asia or Africa; it is now a Western religion also.
To bring into relief the complicated processes at work in discussing popular Muslim belief and practice in the West, I will compare two Muslim communities: the Black Muslims in the United States and Muslims in Britain.
The range of belief and practice among these Muslims is wide, including fresh migrants from Muslim countries bringing their orthodox ways and local converts sometimes inventing their own. In some cases, the opposite is true: local Muslims have been notably correct in Islamic behavior and critical of Muslim visitors for being lax or improper. An interesting example, because it contains a paradox, comes from Cambridge University in iggi when British Muslim students threatened members of the University’s Pakistan society with physical violence if they went ahead with their plans for an ethnic folkdance. Dancing, they said, was un-Islamic, and as Pakistan to them represented Islam, the Pakistani students needed to live up to their ideal.
Aghast at such challenges to their “Muslimness,” the Pakistanis in turn complained that these British Muslims oscillated between two points: either very Islamic or very westernized. They have good-humoredly coined a name for local Muslims: BBCD or “British-Born Confused Desi” (“native”); in America, it is ABCD. For their part, the local Muslims call such Pakistanis TPs or “typical Pakistanis.” Both labels contain negative connotations and reflect the inherent cultural tensions between Muslims in the West and those visiting from Muslim lands.
Developments in technology, transport, and communication-fueling the trend to globalization-in recent decades have ensured that no community can remain isolated, least of all Muslims; that all communities, however isolated in the past, are moving toward a defined uniformity. There are increasingly smaller chances for the survival of popular local religious practices in clashes with mainstream and orthodox Islam. Imams from Cairo and Medina, visiting scholars, audio- and video cassettes, ensure that the correct message is available as never before in history (Ahmed, x988, 1992; Esposito, 1991; Nielsen, 1992; Shaikh, 1992).
Another factor in the decline of local customs is the dynamic and increasingly well-educated younger generation. Generally better educated than the previous one, it has higher hopes. Islam gives it an identity and pride. Young Muslims have wide and well-established networks in the academic world and jealously guard the frontiers of Islam.
Media interest in Muslims has been heightened by the growing notion in the West that Islam is the next major enemy after the collapse of communism. Discussion and debate around certain issues-the controversy around Salman Rushdie’s novel, the Gulf War, the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International-have also forced onto Muslims an Islamic identity. In each case, this identity is reinforced in the community, as its members feel identified by their Muslimness regardless of their individual ideas. Muslimness is reinforced by a sense of deprivation, the feeling that as a community they have a long way to go in spite of numbers, education, and in many cases, wealth: there are still no Muslim members of Parliament in Europe or congressmen or senators in the United States.
Black Muslims. Perhaps the most dramatic example of how local Muslim belief and practice in the West differs substantially from orthodox Islam is provided by some of the Black Muslims in the United States. Although their membership was always a small percentage of the total U.S. Muslim population (about six million), their objectives, dedication, and the media’s interest nonetheless gave them a high profile. In fact, they be came the face of Islam in America as far as the media was concerned.
However, the Black Muslim movement cannot be understood without understanding the cultural environment in which it took root. Islam, however improperly and dimly understood, provided a genuine link with an atavistic past in Africa. It also provided a legitimate idiom in the fight for civil rights. Thus, the movement became inextricably linked with the struggle for civil rights, the need to combat slavery and racial discrimination, and the desire to locate dignity and pride in the face of ugly and massive racial prejudice.
Islam gave a coherent philosophy of life to many African Americans, and it provided a viable, ready-made role model in the form of the former slave Bilal, one of the most ardent supporters of Islam in the seventh century and a great favorite of the prophet Muhammad. Indeed, the Prophet appointed Bilal as the first muezzin (Ar., mu’adhdin; the person who calls people to prayer at the mosque). The early African American Muslims called themselves Bilalians; Islam gave them a sense of honor and dignity.
However, there was much unorthodox thinking in the early Black Muslim movement. Although members of the Nation of Islam, founded in 1930 in Detroit, believed in the notion of one God called Allah, they also believed that Elijah Muhammad was the last messenger of God. Heaven and hell were believed to exist on earth, and the number of stipulated prayers during the day was increased from five to seven. The month of December was fixed for fasting. Central Islamic beliefs, such as the finality of the Prophet, and accepted traditional practice, like the daily prayers or the month of fasting, were being challenged.
The belief in black supremacy, that the white race is intrinsically evil, was a major plank of the Nation of Islam’s platform and reflected the racial situation in the United States. This philosophy was consciously inverting the form of racism that the African American community faced, especially in the southern states. There, some believed that blacks were congenitally inferior, their brains were smaller, their morals looser, and so on. Islamic belief and practice provided black groups with social cohesion, a sense of moral purpose, and above all, much-needed dignity. Also, a strict code of dress and conduct sought to stamp out drug and alcohol abuse in the community.
Hatred of white people, however, could not be justified in Islam. The Qur’an emphasizes that all humanity-regardless of color-is equally the creation of God and among God’s wonders. Indeed, this was conveyed in the last message of the Prophet at Arafat when he underlined that Arab and non-Arab, black and white, are all equal before God; only piety makes one person better than another.
Any Black Muslim seriously wishing to learn about Islam would confront many Nation of Islam teachings as un-Islamic and therefore ask questions. This is precisely what Malcolm X, one of the most charismatic of the Black Muslims, did. One of Elijah Muhammad’s most trusted lieutenants, he had risen from the slums, knowing prison and drug abuse.
A pilgrimage to Mecca in 1964 opened Malcolm X’s eyes to the true nature of Islam and changed his views dramatically. He expressed the change in his powerfully moving letters. He formally became a Sunni and took the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. But by accepting orthodox Islam, he was challenging local belief and practice and therefore antagonizing his alreadyestranged group. Louis Farrakhan, once his friend, now demanded his death. A few months later, in 1965, Malcolm X was shot.
Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X (1992) revealed the complexity and character of Malcolm X. It also revealed his continuing relevance to America today. The first American Muslim martyr, Malcolm X, ironically, has of late been recognized as a modern popular icon-not just a marginal black leader.
In the 1970s, important changes were taking place among the Black Muslims. After Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1974, the succession of his son, Wallace (later Warith) Muhammad, the growth of the African American middle class, and the success of the Nation of Islam’s chain of supermarkets, barber shops, and restaurants created a more relaxed community. Wallace Muhammad promptly dismantled the Fruit of Islam, the Nation of Islam’s force of young men trained in martial arts and firearms use.
Postwar Muslim migrants from the Middle East and South Asia were also organizing Islamic societies which interacted with the Black Muslims and further drew them toward global Islam. Most important, increasing contact with and awareness of other Islamic movements outside the United States brought Black Muslim belief and practice more in line with international Islam. This occurred during the late 1970s, a time of increased international awareness of Islam, the era of King Faysal, of Saudi Arabia, General Zia ul-Haq of Pakistan, and Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.
The pressures to reform split the Black Muslims in 1978 between Wallace Muhammad, who became head of the World Community of Islam, the U.S. component of which is the American Muslim Mission (present membership is about 150,000, but it has wide general support), and Louis Farrakhan, who revived the original Nation of Islam (membership about 50,000).
By reappraising the role of Elijah Muhammad-as a great teacher rather than a messenger-and adopting an international approach, the American Muslim Mission has reconciled with Sunni sentiment. This link is further strengthened by the fact that the American Muslim Mission sends some members to study in Cairo and Medina.
Smaller groups, such as the Hanafi Muslims, whose leader, Abdul Khaalis, is accepted as an authority in about a hundred mosques, also split from the Black Muslims to move even more closely to mainstream Islam.
The beliefs and practices of Wallace Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan remain opposed: the former has opened membership to all races and moved toward the Sunni position, the latter flaunts antiwhite sentiments, has recreated the Fruit of Islam, and rejects integration into the American political mainstream; indeed, he demands a separate African American state. Wallace Muhammad enjoys a degree of respectability in America never enjoyed before by a Black Muslim leader, but Farrakhan remains a figure of controversy. [See Nation of Islam and the biographies of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.]
Muslims of the Outer Hebrides. The Muslim community in Stornoway on the Outer Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland, provides a dramatic contrast with the American Black Muslims. This group is almost invisible, grateful to be where it is, and earnestly working away to be accepted and integrated.
On Sundays the island is cut off from the world; there is no ferry or plane. No washing is hung out, and the parks are closed. The children’s swings are chained and padlocked and so are the public toilets. This is high Presbyterian country, and Sunday is exclusively given to the Lord. No one in Stornoway would violate the cultural code that demands that people stay indoors, least of all the Muslim minority.
The group numbers about fifty and is mainly composed of Arain people from the Punjab in Pakistan (Ahmed, 1986). The Arain have specific social characteristics. They are generally small farmers from lowincome groups. They tend to be thrifty, austere, and reflect the work ethic that made the Calvinists such a force in the drive toward Western capitalism (according to Max Weber’s famous thesis).
In Stornoway, the Arain work ethic meets the Protestant work ethic, and the result is the success story of the small Pakistani community. The success, and the community’s respectability, is reflected in the neat, gray suits, white shirts, sober ties, and clean-shaven appearance which the elders favor. Education is another area where the two ethics meet happily. Many of the young generation are pursuing advanced degrees.
The older generation did not build a mosque. There is no imam on the island. Indeed, they celebrate the religious festivals in a low-key manner, by taking an evening off on Saturday; both the work ethic and local cultural sensibilities are thus satisfied.
Muslim culture might seem subdued in Stornoway, but the sense of Muslimness is far from obliterated. In fact, there are many signs that the new generation is asserting itself in a much more distinctly Islamic manner than the previous one. A female Ph.D. candidate at Glasgow University, for example, is preparing for an arranged marriage in Pakistan. She has no qualms about this or her role as a Muslim wife; it is strange to hear this traditional Muslim speak in a strong Scottish accent. The living room of one of the Pakistani household heads is full of Islamic symbolism, of photos of Mecca and Medina; but it is a private room. We have in this Muslim group an example of a minority almost invisible and well integrated but showing signs of Islamic assertion under the surface. However, the harmony of the Outer Hebrides must not be taken as representative of the fife of average British Muslims, which is fraught with change, tension, and challenge.
British Muslims. The main difference between Islam in the American and European contexts is the social and economic composition of the Muslim community. In the United States, the community is largely middle class; doctors, engineers, academics. This gives it a greater social confidence and a positive sense of belonging. In Europe, by and large, the community remains stuck in the underclass, still seen as immigrants. Its failure on the political scene is spectacular: although Britain has about two million Muslims, they have not been able to win a single seat in Parliament. Worse, their leaders tend to be divided and more interested in attacking each other than representing the community.
Another difference is that in the United States there is a greater geographical spread; Muslims are not seen as concentrating in one state or city. In Europe, there is a tendency to concentrate; Bradford, England, is an example. The concentration allows greater uniformity in belief and practice. During the Rushdie crisis, the leaders of Bradford were constantly consulted by the media. Concentration allowed the media to simplify questions of leadership, values, strategy, and organization among Muslims. Only subsequently did people realize that, although the Bradford spokespeople reflected broadly the general opinion of Muslims, they were by no means elected or unanimously accepted leaders of the entire Muslim community of the United Kingdom.
The concentration of Muslims in England has another consequence. The community can-and frequently does-import and perpetuate its sectarian and ethnic characteristics from home. The traditional sectarian tensions in Pakistan between the Barelwis and Deobandis, both mainstream Sunni Muslims, were lifted en bloc to the United Kingdom. For the outsider, the differences between these sects would be confusing and difficult to understand. For example, the holy Prophet for the Barelwis (or Barelvis, who are mostly from the Pakistan province of Punjab) is a superhuman figure whose presence is all around us and at all times hazir (present); he is not bashar (material or flesh) but nur (light). The Deobandis, who also revere the Prophet, argue he was the insan-i kamil (the perfect person) but still only a man, a mortal. This explains why Kalim Siddiqui in the United Kingdom, demanding the implementation of Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie for insulting the Prophet in his novel, found his most sympathetic audience among the Barelwis. [See Barelwis and Deobandis.]
The known characteristics of British Muslims underline the differences between the community in the United Kingdom and in the United States: there is a greater concentration of the Muslim population in certain cities. There is the continuing pull of the old, home country. This has social implications. For instance, many Pakistani families still look for spouses in Pakistan. The larger political confrontation in South Asia between India and Pakistan, between Hindus and Muslims, is also reflected in the United Kingdom. An example is provided by the events following the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya, India, in December 1992. Hindu temples were attacked in the United Kingdom, and there was considerable tension between Muslims and Hindus in the traditionally peaceful Asian community.
However, there are also similarities between the United States and Europe. In both places, the mosque is an important center of social and political activity and has provided leadership in times of crises. In both places, the media have been involved in the Muslim debate, particularly in such cases as The Satanic Verses controversy. This in turn has united the community across sectarian and ethnic barriers.
The one major difference between the American and European situation is that in the United States a large percentage of Muslims are local or indigenous. So while the struggle in Europe is between Muslims attempting to establish a foothold, united in their foreignness, otherness, and alienness, in America, it is the move to find a balance between the local Black Muslims and mainstream Muslims from the rest of the Muslim world, between local practice and mainstream Islamic thinking and tradition.
The problem of an accurate population census of Muslims in both the United States and Europe remains. Therefore, not only populations but also percentages can only be estimates at best. Yet it is clear that the dynamics of Muslim belief and practice on the two different continents is affected by the percentage of immigrants in the Muslim population, which is overwhelming in Europe and much less so in the United States. However, this situation is beginning to change as a younger Muslim generation comes of age in Europe and sees itself as both Muslim and European. It is also changing in the United States as Black Muslims themselves move closer to the mainstream Muslim position recognized throughout the world.
Local belief and practice in Europe and the Americas have grown as a Muslim response to the larger nonMuslim community, echoing it. Over time, these beliefs and practices have been aligned more and more closely with the orthodox Islamic position. This process has been helped by the media, by international politics, by fresher migration from Muslim countries, and by a more educated and assertive younger generation. The reconciliation between the demands of local identity and those of universal Islam will be one of the great challenges for Muslims in Europe and America, a process fraught with excitement and, at times, tension.
[See also Islam, articles on Islam in Europe and Islam in the Americas.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ahmed, Akbar S. Pakistan Society: Islam, Ethnicity, and Leadership in South Asia. Karachi and Oxford, 1986.
Ahmed, Akbar S. Discovering Islam: Making Sense of Muslim History and Society. London and New York, 1988.
Ahmed, Akbar S. Postmodernism and Islam: Predicament and Promise. London,1992.
Esposito, John L. Islam: The Straight Path. Exp. ed. New York and Oxford. 1991.
Nielsen, Jorgen S. Muslims in Western Europe. Edinburgh, 1992. Shaikh, Farzana, ed. Islam and Islamic Groups: A Worldwide Reference Guide. Essex, 1992.
AKBAR S. AHMED

Popular Religion in Southeast Asia

Batoota — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 10:25:01 +0000

Popular Religion in Southeast Asia
Nearly all Muslims in Southeast Asia form part of the Malay cultural region. This Muslim community is the largest in the world. It includes about 85 percent of Indonesia’s 195 million people, about 1 i million people in Malaysia, and several million in the southern Philippines. Underlying the many local differences in practice and belief are certain shared cultural features, including the use of Malay or Indonesian as a language of religious communication, forms of dress, food, and art associated with Islam, and a conception of gender relations that is relatively balanced in comparison with the gender relations codified in shari`ah.
Since the late colonial period, Southeast Asian Muslims have also developed a Malay-language network of schools, publishing houses, and newspapers that crosses colonial and postcolonial boundaries throughout the archipelago. This network lends coherence to scholarly discussions occurring throughout the region, and these debates and exchanges among scholars have been brought into everyday dialogues about religious matters. For this reason, no clear line demarcates scholarly from popular forms of Islam in Southeast Asia, and “popular” henceforth is to be taken as meaning “as locally practiced.” This articles focuses on the main ideas that have animated religious practices, interpretations, and debates among Muslims in Southeast Asia.
Spirit Transactions and Ritual Meals. Many of the practices that have lent a distinctive shape to Southeast Asian Islam involve exchanges or transactions with spiritual agents, including place spirits, ancestors, prophets, and God. The debates taking place over the last century among Muslims in the area have often turned on the legitimacy of certain transactions: appeals to spirits to heal, bless, or protect; sacrifices or offerings made to strengthen these appeals; or innovations in worship practice that have been made in the interest of clearer communication with God or to induce a benefit from God.
This emphasis on communicating with God and with diverse spirits has historically been supported by Sufi teachings concerning the enduring ties between humans and God, by practices of meditation and the imitation of death, and by an emphasis on remembering spiritual ancestors. These ideas underlie the Sufi orders in the region, but they also shape popular ideas of the power of speech and contribute to certain general cultural orientations such as the Javanist or abangan practices in Indonesia.
Central to most Southeast Asia Muslim cultures is the ritual meal, called selametan on Java and kenduri elsewhere in Indonesia and Malaysia. Participants at these meals generally burn incense, set out special plates of food that symbolize values of spirituality and purity, and deliver petitionary prayers to God, the prophet Muhammad, and specific spiritual agents. Meals are held for a wide range of events, including life-crisis rituals of birth, circumcision, marriage, pregnancy, and death; annual celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday, the completion of the fasting month (`Id al-Fitr), and the Feast of Sacrifice (`Id al-Adha); and occasional events such as leaving home, erecting a house, completing a recital of the Qur’an, or resolving a dispute. Healing the sick and managing the agricultural cycle also involve special series of ritual meals.
Most such meals feature the recitation of one or more Qur’anic verses, most commonly al-Fatihah or al-Ikhlas. Special foods consumed at such meals include puffed rice (symbolizing the light qualities of spirituality), glutinous rice (symbolizing the strong ties among participants or with God), and small, flat pancakes called apam (usually associated with the dead). (Many of these elements are also found in South Asia.) Usually four, seven, or forty-four items are offered; the same numbers determine the intervals between the successive ritual meals held after a death.
Ritual meals give a religious meaning to a wide variety of events. They also provide a locally meaningful framework for interpreting broader Islamic ritual obligations, and many Southeast Asian societies observe Islamic feast-days and life-crisis rituals in the form of the kenduri or selamatan. [See also Rites of Passage; Islamic Calendar.]
The Power of Speech. Throughout the region Muslims have drawn on the powerful words of the Qur’an to shape the world. Whether we classify them as spells or prayers, the speech forms usually labeled doa (Ar., du’a’)-also called donga or jampi-are used to heal or ensorcel, to protect or attack, and to fortify or weaken other people, spirits, or objects. The substance of doa may range from the simple quotation of a Qur’anic verse to a combination of Arabic verse, vernacular instructions, and semantically opaque syllables. Doa may be accompanied by accounts of how they came to be effective; thus, the power of a commonly found doa designed to ward off iron is understood as resulting from an original compact between God and iron. Speakers may also invoke the special qualities of a prophet, as by mentioning David’s voice in a doa designed to attract a spouse. People may acquire the power to use a doa through meditation, possession, or visitation by a spirit or angel, or the words themselves may be sufficient to obtain the desired effect.
Many of the region’s Muslims have regular recourse to particular verses of the Qur’an as sources of help and strength in everyday life, but they may disagree about what reciting the verse does: does it bring about immediate, automatic aid? Or does it serve to strengthen one’s heart against a difficulty? These beliefs and questions about the power of speech are not simply preIslamic remnants; often they are the topic of local commentaries that draw on Sufi intellectual traditions identifying material reality as emanations from God and thus as susceptible to change through religiously inspired mental imaging and powerful speech.
The widespread use of Malay in the region also has meant that oral and written forms designed to transmit religious ideas have had wide distribution. These forms include historical works in verse or prose, such as the Hikayat Raja-Raja Pasai and the Sejarah Melayu; verse forms, especially the syair quatrain, which, born in sixteenth-century Aceh, became a major vehicle for the spread of Sufi writings; and didactic texts, until this century written in the Arabic script and used across the region as basic texts in religious education. These texts have supplemented basic training in reading and reciting chapters of the Qur’an. Children who complete their study of the Qur’an are in many areas recognized at a khatam Qur’an ceremony. [See Malay and Indonesian Literature.]
Popular Islam is not limited to oral means of learning, nor is it a fixed tradition. Muslims throughout the region have learned elements of Arabic, the Qur’an, Islamic history, and ritual practice from shifting combinations of oral traditions, handwritten books of prayer and knowledge, and published texts regarding ritual practice, spells and prayers, and esoteric topics.
Healing. Powerful speech is particularly important in activities of healing. Southeast Asian healing practices may draw on ideas of possession (or “shamanism”) or ideas of the susceptibility of spirits to direct control. Healers in many parts of Malaysia, for example, make frequent use of trance and spirit possession to investigate the nature of an illness. Malay seances are a form of public dramatic art in which shamans draw on Islamic prophets, spirits, and histories to explain an illness and to cure the patient of it. Although labeled non-Islamic (or pre-Islamic) by many Malay `ulama’, these practices draw on Islamic images and knowledge for their coherence and for their therapeutic effectiveness.
Other regional healing systems depend on the direct control of spirits. Sumatran Gayo healers, for example, speak directly to afflicting jinn and may then drive them out of the patient, but they never act as mediums. They expel spirits from persons by creating two parallel series of events: one series in the outer (lahir) world, where a rock smashes a citrus, and another in the inner (batin) world, in which the spirit has been captured in the citrus and is then expelled from it. Gayo reliance on a private form of exorcism, in contrast with Malay public seances, is consistent with their general social and cultural tendency to avoid public confrontations.
Most healing systems in the region share ideas of balance that derive from Islamic humoral theory. `inn are held responsible for a wide range of illnesses, and imbalance between external and internal jinn or between qualities in the body may cause illness. Prophets, in particular Khidr, are called on to remove impurities from the body, such as those resulting from childbirth. [See also Medicine, article on Traditional Practice.]
Caring for the Dead. Of all the life-crisis rituals, the ways of caring for the dead have been of the greatest importance for Southeast Asian Muslims, possibly because of the importance of secondary burial in Southeast Asia prior to the coming of Islam. The scholarly debates published in the regional press beginning in the 1920s reflect a sharp conflict between local emphases on continued communication with the spirit after death and objections to those practices by modernist scholars. Several Islamic practices have become focuses for these arguments. One is the talqin, the catechism read to the dead after burial; another is the set of recitation sessions held on successive evenings after a death.
Recitations feature forms of tasbih (prayers for the glory of God), salawat (prayers for blessings on the prophet Muhammad), dhikr or tahlil (repetitions of “there is no god but God”), and istighfar (requests for God’s pardon), along with the shorter Qur’anic verses. Recitation leaders may deliver long prayers that include sections of the Qur’an considered to be especially powerful, such as the Throne Verse (al-Baqarah, 255) or the chapter Ya Sin. They learn these prayers by studying the pamphlets on prayer available throughout the region and by learning from older adepts.
Recitations are intended to create merit that can be transferred to the dead and to aid the spirit’s passage from the community to the afterworld. Both objectives are shared with non-Islamic funeral practices in the region, and both Islamic and non-Islamic funerary ritual complexes feature a regular progression of feasts, with special weight placed on a feast held seven days after death. But the Islamic practices (especially the talqin and dhikr) are also found elsewhere in the Muslim world. It is thus likely that similarities between Islamic and non-Islamic practices in Southeast Asia are in part the result of a convergence around quasi-universal ideas of death as transition, and not the simple result of the survival of pre-Islamic practices into the Islamic present. [See also Funerary Rites; Qur’anic Recitation; Dhikr.]
Variations on Mainstream Rituals. Overreliance on an a priori distinction of official and popular religion risks obscuring the way in which mainstream religious forms become part of local religious systems. Worship ritual (salat), for example, although an obligation all Muslims share, is also used as a way of distinguishing particular religious orientations. Because worship is considered prescriptively open to all who wish to attend, attempts to use it to create boundaries invariably occasion protest. In the 1970s, Muslim groups in Jakarta that wished to maintain a higher degree of personal purity sought to exclude all others from their worship services; these attempts at exclusion (not any differences in ritual form) led to popular protests and suppression of the group. On a more everyday level, some stratified societies, such as the Bugis of South Sulawesi, assign places in the mosque rows by social rank, thus reproducing a set of local distinctions through the medium of a generalized ritual form.
There are important resemblances among the ways other mainstream rituals are carried out across diverse Southeast Asian societies, and these resemblances may serve broadly to distinguish the region as a whole from South Asia or the Middle East. In much of Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, the sermons and symbols associated with the `Id al-Adha emphasize the value of ihklas, sincerely giving away something, as the central meaning of the ritual, rather than the sacrificial killing stressed in some other Muslim societies. Also throughout the region, this feast day has historically been given much less emphasis than has either the `Id al-Fitr or the celebration (mawlid) of the birthday of the prophet Muhammad. The latter is celebrated in a wide variety of ways, from elaborate social visiting to royal processions. [See `Id al-Adha; `Id al-Fitr; Mawlid.]
Personal Authority. The social organization of much Islamic practice in Southeast Asia is shaped by the idea that some persons are closer to God and therefore serve as channels to the divine. The idea of closeness is conveyed by the general term wali (“saint”) but is realized in different forms. It is also shaped by older ideas of Malay and Javanese kingship, with the king at the ritual center of a sacred territory and at the highest point on a schema of social rank.
Religious orders (tarekat; Ar., tariqah) may be centered on a founding ancestor. Orders are found throughout the region. Frequently found are local orders identifying themselves as Naqshbandiyah, sometimes also as Qadiriyah or Khalidiyah. These orders may have a single ritual center and more or less tightly knit networks of founders and disciples. Babussalam in West Sumatra is an example. Founded in 1883 by Syaikh Abdul Wahab Rokan, the village now serves as the center for a network of eighteen syaikhs (Ar., shaykhs) throughout Sumatra and Malaysia. Their followers attend an annual celebration at the founder’s tomb. On Java orders may also be affiliated with the religious schools called pesantren; the important pesantren center Tebuireng in East Java, for example, is also the center for the Nagshbandlyah and Qadiriyah orders. The Javanese kiyai combines the prestige of the teacher with the spiritual authority associated with a genealogy, and prestigious kiyai offices are often handed down from father to son. [See Sufism, article on Sufi Orders; Pesantren j
Throughout the archipelago, graves or other sites associated with powerful ancestors define a sacred geography. Often these are the graves of men or women who founded a lineage or village, great healers, or teachers who founded religious orders. The sites may be the goal of regional pilgrimages or for regular visits by those seeking advice or assistance. (In this respect, Javanese practices of grave-visiting and meditation may be seen as accentuations of regionwide elements rather than constitutive of a distinct Javanist orientation.) Throughout Indonesia, the most powerful sacred gravesites are often those of men who brought Islam to the region, such as the Wall Songo on Java, or Syech Abdurrauf in Aceh.
These sites may become the center for quasi-orders, loosely organized networks of adepts who venerate the tomb of the founder and consider themselves affiliates with an established tarekat. For example, the tomb of the late nineteenth-century figure Habib Muda in West Aceh is considered by his followers to be the “pole” (qutb) for the west coast of the province. The founder’s tomb is circumambulated each year on the tenth of Dhu al-Hijjah, as a “little hajj.”
Messianic figures have occasionally surfaced throughout the region, particularly in Malaysia, where Sufi-like cults have combined meditation and trance dances with the veneration of a leader, sometimes referred to as the Mahdi. These cults may also encourage the practice of Malay martial arts (silat), an art form regionally associated with Islam that often incorporates worship or dhikr recitations.
Islam and Adat. Muslims everywhere conceive of a sphere of local custom designated by `urf or adat (Ar., `adat) or other terms. But it is especially in Southeast Asia that adat has been developed as an alternative set of rules alongside shari `ah. Adat is not merely local custom or practice; it is also worldview and culture, and in some places a legal code.
Southeast Asian Muslims by and large have constructed two perspectives from which to view the relation of adat to shari`ah. From one perspective adat and shari `ah. appear as distinct, complementary spheres of social life-as tradition or custom contrasted with religion. Ideal constructions of Minangkabau (Sumatra) and Negeri Sembilan (Malaysia) societies, for example, link adat to the values of community and matriliny, and shari `ah. to the values of individuality and patriliny. Such holistic constructions also characterize the many descriptive and prescriptive pamphlets published in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia on the adat of various Muslim peoples in the region, in which adat is typified by images of dress styles, marriage customs, and house forms.
From another perspective, however, adat and shad `ah. appear as providing distinct sets of norms regarding the same events: marriage, the transmission of property, and death ritual. Their relation may be complementary in some instances-shari `ah. stipulating the payment of a mahr at marriage, and adat elaborating on its form-but it may also be conflictual. Adat and shari`ah. may, in practice, provide conflicting ways of evaluating the same problem: how to divide an estate, how to celebrate a child’s coming of age, or how to carry out a wedding. Such conflicts are particularly evident in the Malaysian adat law codes, but they also persist beneath the formal accommodation of the two systems elsewhere in the region. Of special importance have been conflicts over the division of an estate. Local adat norms may stipulate that all children (or all children remaining in their natal village) receive equal shares, or that males (or females) receive all the agricultural land, and they may allot to the village or lineage residual rights over land. Accommodations between shari `ah. and adat over this issue include figuring some property transfer as a gift or as a kind of waqf, and thus as distinct from the estate shares. [See Adat.]
Whereas the scholarship of the 1940s and 1950s generally portrayed Southeast Asian Islam as an overlay on a distinct, pre-Islamic substratum, more recent work has emphasized the Islamic character of many local practices, including those labeled as “pre-Islamic” by local `ulama’. The central research activity has in effect shifted from distinguishing between Islam and nonIslam in popular religion to analyzing the debates within each society about the religious character of specific ideas and practices.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in Southeast Asia and the Pacific; and the articles on individual countries in the region. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bowen, John R. Muslims through Discourse: Religion and Ritual in Gayo Society. Princeton, 1993. Detailed ethnography of rituals, and debates about their propriety in a Sumatran Muslim society.
Dobbin, Christine. Islamic Revivalism in a Changing Peasant Economy: Central Sumatra, 1784-1847. London, 1983. Superb history of religious and social change in an Indonesian society.
Ellen, Roy F. “Practical Islam in South-East Asia.” In Islam in SouthEast Asia, edited by M. B. Hooker, pp. 50-91. Leiden, 1983. Insightful overview of the history of Islam and of colonial policies toward Islam in Southeast Asia.
Geertz, Clifford. The Religion of Java. Chicago, 196o. Classic, detailed study of Islam, culture, and society in Java.
Hefner, Robert W. “Islamizing Java? Religion and Politics in Rural East Java.” Journal of Asian Studies 46 (1987): 533-554. Valuable update of Geertz’s account.
Ibrahim, Ahmad, Sharon Siddique, and Yasmin Hussain, eds. Readings on Islam in Southeast Asia. Singapore, 1985. Useful collection of readings from past and present.
Laderman, Carol. Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performance. Berkeley, 1991. Includes material on Islamic sources for shamanism.
Lombard, Denys. “Les tarekat en Insulinde.” In Les ordres mystiques dans L’Islam, edited by Alexandre Popovic and Gilles Veinstein, pp. 139-163. Paris, 1986. Insightful contrast of several orders in Indonesia.
Nagata, Judith. The Reflowering of Malaysian Islam. Vancouver, B.C., 1984. Good on older religious practices and the contemporary da`wah movement.
Siegel, James T.The Rope of God. Berkeley, 1969. Excellent study of changing social contexts for religious ideas in Aceh, Indonesia. Snouck Hurgronje, Christiaan. The Achehnese (1893). Leiden, 1906. One of the best early accounts of religious life in a Muslim society. Woodward, Mark R. “The Slametan: Textual Knowledge and Ritual Performance in Central Javanese Islam.” History of Religions 28 (1988): 54-89
JOHN R. BOWEN

Popular Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa

Batoota — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 09:57:43 +0000

Popular Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa
During the nineteenth century, and to an even greater extent under colonial domination in the twentieth century, rapid and widespread islamization touched hundreds of African ethnic groups in West Africa, extending well into the forest zone, and in the interior of East Africa as far as Zaire and Malawi and South Africa. Previously many of these groups had only marginal contact with the Islamic world; in many places active Christian missionary efforts competed with the agents of Islam. As a result, popular expressions of piety in Islamized Africa exhibit rich diversity, both within individual societies and in developments across time. Examples of popular religion in sub-Saharan Muslim societies can be grouped in three categories: culturally specific social behavior and religious ideas that include appropriations of Islamic motifs; the permeation of the Qur’anic word into everyday life; and ritual practice.
Islam and Local Culture. The processes of Islamization beyond the Sudanic belt in Africa that began during the nineteenth century and continue today are among the most dynamic in the Islamic world. Because of the rapidity of this process and because it occurs piecemeal, affecting some individuals and communities and leaving others untouched, it is frequently Islamic dress that most effectively distinguishes converts from non-Muslims living around them. That dress is generally a variation on the jalabiyah and cap (kaffiyah)both sometimes bearing elaborate embroidery that may be an indicator of economic class-ornament in the form of talismans in leather amulet pouches tied to the arm or hung around the neck, tasbih (prayer beads), and, for the traveler, a rolled prayer mat and a kettle of water carried for ablutions. To be so equipped is to be identified as a Muslim in sub-Sudanic African societies where specific local customs relating to diet, marriage, divorce, or inheritance may conflict with Islamic law or where the full weight of orthopraxy may not be felt. [See Dress.]
The decorative arts of local cultures across Muslim Africa, like their music and poetry, reveal great genius in the islamization of local motifs as well as in local appropriation of Islamic symbols. Islamic designs pervade local arts, exemplified by crescent designs on post independence cloth prints, late colonial calabash engraving incorporating symbols of modernity alongside stylized lawh (wooden copy boards for Qur’anic memorization), or elaborate nineteenth-century fans inscribed with one of Allah’s ninety-nine names. Islamic symbols and elements of Muslim material culture have also entered African arts in such forms as elaborately woven prayer mats, amulet-case designs in metal or leather, jewelry, and ornament in mask designs. No single symbol so remarkably conveys this appropriation of the Islamic tradition into folk arts in West Africa as does alBuraq, the winged horse said to have carried the Prophet to Jerusalem. In sculpture cloth prints, amulets, masks, and drum stands, al-Buraq reappears across West Africa as one of the most enduring symbols of the mystical powers of the Prophet. Analogous to these representations in the arts are Islamic motifs in music and verse, woven into such diverse styles as Lagos juju music and-judging from the periodic denunciations by `ulama’-the unholy use of drumming as an integral part of Muslim marriage celebrations and performances on festival days.
Distinctive Islamic dress and Islamic motifs in the arts of many sub-Saharan African societies are the result of centuries of contact with Muslim lands. Beyond material culture, local cultures have also appropriated certain popular Islamic beliefs, perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the Mahdist expectations that have swept Sudanic Africa during the past two centuries. The popular belief was that the Mahdi would come from the east, just as the Antichrist Dajjal would appear in the west. At least nine Mahdis are documented during the nineteenth century from the Senegal Valley and Futa Jalon in the west to Omdurman and Somalia in the east, and a like number of Mahdis appeared during colonial rule, as late as the 1940s. The Sudanese Mahdi Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah (1843-1898) was the most celebrated, inspiring a flurry of Mahdist claims (and colonial worries) during the opening decades of the twentieth century; well before this, however, each of the West African mujahids was obliged by his followers to explain why he was not the expected Mahdi. Less well-known are the Muslim communities in Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon at the end of the nineteenth century where the reappearance of `Isa (Jesus) was awaited as slayer of the Antichrist, a role for which he competed with the Mahdi in some traditions. Mahdist eschatology was popularly professed throughout the Sudanese communities during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As late as the mid-twentieth century a Yoruba “MahdiMessiah” invented an amalgam of Christian and Muslim practice that inspired a thriving community of twenty thousand until his death in 1959. [See also Mahdi; Mahdiyah.]
An integral part of historical and contemporary Muslim life in sub-Saharan Africa is spirit-possession cults such as sar (from Gondar, Ethiopian zar, “origins”) in East Africa, the Sudan, and parts of North Africa, and bori in Hausa-speaking West Africa and also in North Africa, sometimes seen as survivals of pre-Islamic practice. I. M. Lewis has argued persuasively that these cults-today largely urban, dominated by women and marginalized male migrant workers-hold special appeal to wives of the religiously minded who condemn the cults (“The Past and Present in Islam: The Case of African `Survivals’,” Temenos 19 [1983]: 55-67). These cults, varying in precise form from culture to culture but retaining the sar or bori appellation, thus become interwoven with orthopraxy, providing women and others alienated by locally constructed ideals of Islamic society with an avenue for participating in a counterculture whose definition is itself dependent upon Islamic orthodoxy.
Qur’an and Popular Piety. The most pervasive example of Qur’anic transcendence in popular usage throughout sub-Saharan Africa is the talisman or amulet industry, the products of which adorn babies, children, and adult men and women and hang in many a home and car. Talismans are mainly utilized for their therapeutic benefits or preventative powers, which underlines the important therapeutic attraction of Islam among peoples on the fringe of the Muslim world. The use of “washings” (typically inked or chalked verses from the Qur’an, washed into a vial to be periodically drunk or dabbed on the body) to cure or at least mitigate a wide variety of ills has long been part of the repertoire of holy men and seers throughout Muslim Africa. In the same fashion talismans hung at a prescribed spot or worn on the body can serve a range of purposes: protection in armed conflict or everyday affairs, for individuals or whole communities; security for safe travel, avoidance of slander, or assurance of success or influence; advantage to protect pregnancies, cure disease, or promote intelligence; and punishment in the form of proactive measures against enemies.
Washings and talismans are at the juncture of medicine (tibb) and esoteric sciences (bataniyah) in Islamic learning, and these specifically Islamic cures compete with other therapeutic remedies readily available in most African societies. Murray Last notes that in Hausa society some Muslim holy men are known today for their success rate in prescriptions for physical illness just as others become specialists in social problems (“Charisma and Medicine in Northern Nigeria,” in Donal Cruise O’Brien and Christian Coulon, eds., Charisma and Brotherhood in African Islam, Oxford, 1988, pp. 183-204). It is to those specialists in social problems that politicians and businessmen apply for formulas for success, and there are few heads of state, Muslim or Christian, who are not reputed to have a personal mallam or marabout. [See Magic and Sorcery.]
Esoteric sciences that complement the efficacy of washing and talismans are numerology and astrology, both of which emphasize, in I. M. Lewis’s phrase, the “mystical defense system” popularly attributed to Islam in this region. Indeed, numerology is frequently the main science utilized in talisman production, and the propitious alignment of stars is as carefully watched by specialists in Sudanic Africa as by astrologers in the West. The significance of these practices lies not in the sciences themselves, nor in the fact that Islamic remedies are popularly understood to have therapeutic properties that compete favorably alongside non-Islamic medicines; rather, it lies in the symbolic power of the Qur’anic scripture and the demonstrable function of the word in response to everyday needs. [See Numerology; Astrology.]
The Sufi brotherhoods have long been the vanguard of islamization in sub-Saharan Africa, and with them have arisen popular attachments to individual shaykhs that are analogous to the special relation between shaykh and student in many other parts of the Muslim world. Pilgrimage to the tombs of saints may have therapeutic effects, most frequently for women to safeguard pregnancies. The desire for prayers of intervention on behalf of individuals has spawned a minor prayer industry for shaykhs in other settings. With this mediating role, most frequently played by Sufi leaders, has come an iconization of both dead saints and living shaykhs. This is most vividly illustrated by the religious paraphernalia associated with the Muridiyah in Senegal, where postcards and glass paintings commemorating events in the life of the patron saint, Ahmadu Bamba (d. 1927) can be found at most corner dealers in religious wares as well as adorning taxis and trucks driven by prudent followers. [See Muridiyah.] Analogous marketing of local Tijani shaykhs in Ghana, or of the Senegalese (Kaolack) Tijani holy man al-Hajj Malik Sy in northern Nigeria, has become increasingly sophisticated during the past thirty years; today, few homes of the religious who can afford it lack a framed photo of their shaykh.
The Sufi shaykh as a conduit between the supernatural and the common folk has long been an important fixture in the moral economy of Muslim communities. As with therapeutic matters, the shaykh’s possession of at least a rudimentary knowledge of Arabic certifies his authority to mediate between scripture and supplicant in societies where Arabic is not spoken and access to the Qur’an is thus quite restricted. Whether he is a writer of simple talismans or an accomplished jurist, a shaykh’s authority rests largely on his near-monopoly over the scripture, but his barakah (blessing) may also be sought for its own sake. Where a local Sufi tariqah institutionalizes exploitive relationships between shaykh and student, it also makes popular religion a commodity. The Qadiriyah and Tijaniyah in West Africa, the Qadiriyah, Shadhiliyah and `Askariyah in East Africa, and the Qadiriyah, Sammaniyah, Khatmiyah, and Mahdiyah in the Sudan, all fulfill analogous roles at one broad level of orthopraxy. Their ultimate meaning and local impact, however, depend heavily on individual shaykhs and their skills at mediating or manipulating the holy word. The title “al-Shaykh,” like the pilgrim’s title “al-Hajji,” connotes local recognition of the religious, objects of veneration among their followers and subjects of snickers among their critics. In recent years inexpensive cassette tapes of sermons and readings by both Pan-Islamic notables and local preachers have become available on national markets in sub-Saharan Africa, providing an electronic form of mediation and translation of the word in local settings that now competes with the scripture in the economy of popular piety. [See Qadiriyah; Tijamyah; Shadhiliyah; and Khatmiyah.]
Ritual Practice. Piety in most sub-Saharan African Islamic communities, as elsewhere in the Islamic world, is most publicly displayed at prayer and most effectively demonstrated on festival days. These are the occasions for new outfits for children, new gowns for adult members of the household, lavish displays of food for dependents, and generous dispensing of cash gifts-all widely accepted as indices of religiosity. Although the relative importance of individual festival days varies from region to region, `Id al-Kabir (widely known as “Tabaski” in West Africa) and `Id Saghir (or al-Fitr, also known as “Salla” in West Africa) at the end of Ramadan generally compete in importance; in East Africa `Id al-Hajj replaces the first of these as a principal festival. Celebration of the Prophet’s birth, the mawlid, is a minor holiday in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, although it has been appropriated by the Sufi brotherhoods in many countries as an annual display of piety before saints’ tombs. Large followings of some local saints have spawned individual festivals, exemplified by the annual Grand Maggal (Wolof, “to celebrate”) in Touba, Senegal, when Murid followers gather by the tens of thousands to observe the anniversary of the death of Ahmadu Bamba in a festive atmosphere.
The centrality of the visitation of saints’ tombs varies across Africa’s Muslim populations; in the northern Sudan such tombs are a chief source of barakah and popular sites of local pilgrimage. Across the continent in southern Mauritania, gravesites are modestly marked even for holy men, and although visitations take place they are not yet ritualized. Between these extremes, hundreds of African Muslim societies integrate local custom, generally heavily tinged with veneration of ancestors, with Islamic burial ritual. [See Ziyarah; Sufism, article on Sufi Shrine Culture.]
Elements of life-cycle rituals in Muslim societies are popularly understood to be linked to Islamic prescriptions. In sub-Saharan Africa these focus on naming ceremonies (which frequently involve an imam or local shaykh and elaborate displays of hospitality), the acts of circumcision and clitoridectomy, the formalities and types of marriage (dowries, the degrees of proximity permitted in Islamic law, the number of wives, etc.) and divorce, and burial rites. In each islamized society compromise is negotiated among local custom, scripturally sanctioned practice, and orthopraxy in neighboring Muslim communities and lands. It is generally with respect to Islamic laws of inheritance and in particular land that local custom has proven most intractable. [See also Rites of Passage.]
Since the mid-twentieth century, as a result of increased communication between the Muslim heartlands and sub-Saharan Africa and also as a result of increasing numbers of African pilgrims traveling to the Hejaz, there has been a tendency toward a certain homogeneity within national Muslim cultures. This is most noticeable in ritual life, where the political influence of religious leaders has been recognized by national authorities and ritual reinforcement of that influence has been encouraged (in contrast to a definite wariness toward that same influence during colonial times). As a result, national Islamic political cultures have emerged in many countries. These tend to focus on annual rituals such as the mawlid, generally under the supervision of shaykhs in the local (tariqahs), whose mediating roles increasingly extend into the political sphere.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bravmann, Rene A. African Islam. Washington D.C., 1983. Elegantly illustrated exhibition catalog with extended essays on the material culture of Muslim societies in sub-Saharan Africa.
El-Tom, Abdullahi Osman. “Drinking the Koran: The Meaning of Koranic verses in Berti Erasure.” In Popular Islam South of the Sahara, edited by J. D. Y. Peel and Charles C. Stewart, pp. 414-431. Manchester, 1985. This collection also includes six contributions that address aspects of popular Islam in the Sudan, Nigeria, and Senegal.
Le Grip, A. “Le Mahdisme en Afrique noire.” L’Afrique et l’Asie 18 (1952): 3-16. Remains one of the best, brief surveys of Mahdism in Sudanic Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lewis, I. M., ed. Islam in Tropical Africa. 2d ed. London, 198o. Twenty-five years after its first appearance, this study remains one of the most succinct and comprehensive surveys of orthopraxy and popular piety in sub-Saharan African communities; includes an updated introduction.
Nimtz, August H., Jr. Islam and Politics in East Africa. Minneapolis, 198o. Surveys Sufi brotherhoods in East Africa, with particular reference to Tanzania, and their gradual involvement in national politics.
Owusu-Ansah, David. Islamic Talismanic Tradition in NineteenthCentury Asante. Lewiston, N.Y., 1991. Detailed study of a set of over five hundred folios of instructions on the manufacture of talismans recovered from a non-Muslim state on the Gold Coast in the early years of the nineteenth century.
Trimingham, J. Spencer. Islam in West Africa. Oxford, 1959. While the conceptual schema presented in this and other studies by the author may be contentious, the core of his ethnographic material collected on institutional Islam, Sufi orders, and life cycles as observed in the mid-twentieth century remains useful.
Trimingham, J. Spencer. The Influence of Islam upon Africa. 2d ed. London, 1980.
CHARLES C. STEWART

POPULAR RELIGION

Batoota — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 09:38:22 +0000

POPULAR RELIGION. [To consider local beliefs and practices as they differ from mainstream Islamic traditions, this entry comprises six articles:
1-An Overview
2-Popular Religion in the Middle East and North Africa
3-Popular Religion in Sub-Saharan Africa
4-Popular Religion in South Asia
5-Popular Religion in Southeast Asia
6-Popular Religion in Europe and the Americas
The first considers the principal forms of Muslim belief, ritual, narrative, and religious practice that have lent themselves to local and regional variation. The companion articles describe diverse modes of Muslim piety in various parts of the modern world.]
An Overview
The term “popular Islam” refers to the constellations of Muslim belief, ritual, narrative, and religious practice that flourish at particular points in time and space. They simultaneously islamize indigenous culture and popularize scripture. In some instances elements of pre-Islamic practices are given Islamic meanings, while in others particular interpretations of elements of the textual tradition are employed in the formulation of narrative, ritual, and social practice.
Popular Islams are as varied as contexts in which they are found, ranging from the austere, legalistic Islam of the Saudi Arabian Wahhabi sect to the ecstatic, charismatic cults of saints and Shi` imams characteristic of the popular Islam in South Asia and Iran. Despite this variety, popular Islams play similar mediating roles in Muslim religious life. They mediate between culturally specific patterns of social behavior and the idealized models for behavior expressed in the Qur’an, hadith, and shari’ah; between the transcendentalism of Qur’anic Islam and the deeply and widely felt need for direct and local access to the sacred; and between the limited, strict ritual requirements of textual Islam and the realities of human existence.
Islam, Custom and Culture. Scriptural Islam is more than religion. It is a detailed guide to human conduct, providing precise instruction in areas including personal hygiene, diet, dress, marriage, divorce, inheritance, taxation, and others. Particularly in the case of family law, the demands of the texts often clash with longestablished cultural patterns. The problem is particularly vexing in matrilineal Muslim societies such as the Minangkabau of Indonesia. In many Islamic cultures a distinction is drawn between shad `ah (Islamic law) and `adat (custom). While `adat is rarely recognized as entirely legitimate, many jurists tolerate deviation from shari’ah, particularly in legal domains other than ritual performance. Others demand strict compliance with shari`ah norms. The theoretical and highly demanding nature of shari `ah has resulted in the recognition of a distinction between civil and religious law in many Islamic societies. [See Family Law; Adat.]
Qur’anic Transcendence and Popular Piety. The doctrine of tawhid (the unity of God) is among the central teachings of Islam. The absolute power and majesty of God is a major theme in the Qur’an and subsequent textual traditions. While understandings of tawhid range from transcendent monotheism to pantheistic assertions that all is God, textual traditions push God to the limits of the cosmos or, in mystical texts, to the depths of the human soul. In either case God is the sole object of devotion. [See Tawhid.]
Saint cults provide more direct, readily available access to the sacred and play important roles in most popular Islams. Saints are asked to intercede with God and are also sources of blessing (barakah). Pilgrimage to the tombs of saints (ziyarah) is among the most common Islamic devotional acts. They range from strictly local shrines to tombs of the founders of Sufi orders and legal schools that attract pilgrims throughout the Muslim world. Muslims approach saints with requests ranging from desire for mystical knowledge to mundane problems of daily life. In ShN communities imams and members of their families are the most important saints. Throughout the Muslim world, descendants of the prophet Muhammad, religious teachers, and leaders of Sufi orders are thought to be sources of blessing to whom devotees owe unquestioned obedience. Control of shrines and the equation of sainthood and kingship figure significantly in the legitimation strategies of many Muslim monarchies. [See Barakah; Ziyarah; Sufism, article on Sfifi Shrine Culture; and Authority and Legitimation. ]
Ritual Practice. The five pillars of the faith, (the confession of faith, the five daily prayers, fasting during Ramadan, alms, and pilgrimage to Mecca) are described in the Qur’an and hadith. Legal texts describe the relative merits and mode of performance of these rites in great detail. The formal, orthoprax ritual system was devised by an urban scholarly elite, and its concern with ritual purity and the strict requirements for the fast of Ramadan make it difficult for those who must toil in fields and factories to comply. Pilgrimage to Mecca is greatly valued, but relatively few Muslims can hope to perform it. Lax observance of the formal ritual requirements of Islam should not, however, necessarily suggest impiety or secularism. While shari`ah provides exemptions for those who find orthoprax ritual impossible, it does not provide alternatives. Popular Islamic practice fills this gap in the religious lives of many of the world’s Muslims. [See Pillars of Islam.]
The comparative study of popular Islamic practice is underdeveloped. It has been largely ignored by Islamicists, and with few exceptions anthropologists have been reluctant to engage in comparative studies. Comparison of studies conducted in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia reveals several common elements. Many of these are based on textual sources, particularly the hadith, but adapt them to specific local contexts. Others are derived from the ritual systems of Sufi orders, which played major roles in the conversion of non-Arab peoples to Islam.
The Mawlid al-Nabi that commemorates the birth and death of the prophet Muhammad is celebrated from Morocco to Indonesia and is frequently an element of Muslim imperial cults. Qur’anic recitation, reproducing the speech of God, is performed at funerals, marriages, and other rites of passage, to cure the sick, to exorcise demons, and for numerous other purposes. The written text of the Qur’an is used in charms and amulets. Modern developments include tape-recordings of famous Qur’anic reciters and national and international recitation contests. Dhikr (remembrance of God) is the patterned recitation of Qur’anic passages and the names of God, often involving the use of rosaries. Oral and written narratives concerning the lives and adventures of the prophet Muhammad, members of his family, and other famous figures from Islamic history as well as saints and jinn circulate widely. Jinn, particularly those believed to have accepted Islam, are invoked for numerous magical purposes. Jinn and shaitan (devils) are often thought to be responsible for miraculous or unusual events. Ritual meals and the distribution of blessed food are especially common in the popular Islams of South and Southeast Asia. [See Mawlid; Qur’anic Recitation; Dhikr; Magic and Sorcery.]
Puritanical Sects as Popular Islam. Owing to their insistence on the primacy of scripture, Wahhabis and other fundamentalist/puritanical sects would appear to be exceptions to this view of the mediating function of popular Islam. Most fundamentalist programs include a deliberate rejection of aspects of popular Islam, particularly the cult of saints. However, fundamentalists base their religious lives on restricted readings of the textual tradition and maintain that their particular modes of ritual practice are the only source of God’s blessing and mercy. Bruce Lawrence (Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age, New York, 1989) argues that fundamentalisms mediate between the demands of scripture and the intellectual and political contexts of modernity. In both senses fundamentalisms are contemporary popular Islams. [See Wahhabiyah; Fundamentalism.]
Islamic and Western Views. There is an enduring tension between popular and scriptural Islam that exists within most contemporary Muslim societies and is deeply rooted in Islamic scholarship. Islamic scholarly views have ranged from the intolerance of Ibn Taymiyah to al-Ghazali’s acceptance of a variety of modes of Muslim piety. The rise of scripturally oriented reform and fundamentalist movements in the twentieth century has increased the level of tension. Those who condemn popular Islams and those who are devoted to them share a conviction that their own understanding of Islam is the proper way of submitting to God-which is after all the meaning and purpose of Islam.
Western scholarship reflects this tension. Evaluations of popular Islams range from those of Orientalists who regard deviation from textual precedent as corruption or simply non-Islamic, to that of Reinhold Loeffler (Islam in Practice: Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village, Albany, N.Y., 1988) who argues that popular Islams are the means through which people who cannot possibly meet scriptural demands adapt the faith to local conditions. Most recent studies avoid questions of orthodoxy and corruption and focus instead on the ways in which Islam is understood and practiced in local contexts.
[See also Syncretism.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Antoun, Richard. Muslim Preacher in the Modern World: A Jordanian Case Study in Comparative Perspective. Princeton, 1989. Life history of a Jordanian village preacher.
Campo, Juan Eduardo. The Other Sides of Paradise: Explorations into the Religious Meanings of Domestic Space in Islam. Columbia, S.C., 1990. Explains the sacred character of domestic space in contemporary Egyptian Islam, including detailed references to the Qur’an and hadith.
Delaney, Carol. The Seed and the Soil: Gender and Cosmology in a Turkish Village Society. Berkeley and Oxford, 1991. Study of popular Islam in Turkey focusing on issues of gender, fertility, and domestic life.
Eickelman, Dale F. Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center. Austin, 1976. Study of the social and religious roles of Sufi saints in Moroccan Islam.
Geertz, Clifford. The Religion of Java. Chicago, 1960. The most comprehensive account of popular Islam and its relationship to scriptural tradition and culture in Southeast Asia.
Geertz, Clifford. Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago and London, 1968. One of the few comparative studies of popular Islam, this work also considers the impact of modernity on Islamic civilization in North Africa and Southeast Asia.
Lewis, I. M., ed. Islam in Tropical Africa. Bloomington, 1980. Collection of essays by leading Africanists and Islamicists concerning the popular Islams of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Martin, Richard C., ed. Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies. Collection of articles by leading Islamists combining theoretical approaches to the- study of popular Islam with case studies of conversion, ritual, veneration of the prophet Muhammad, ritual uses of the Qur’an, and other topics related to popular Islams.
Metcalf, Barbara D. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1900. Princeton, 1982. Study of one of the most important Islamic educational institutions in South Asia and its impact on Islamic thought and practice.
MARK R. WOODWARD