the Sawyer Seminar Nationalists and Salafis: Second Session: Orthodoxy and the Un-Orthodox

In the second session of the Sawyer Seminar Nationalists and Salafis, Jamsheed Choksy and Ellen McLarney presented papers on Orthodoxy and the Un-Orthodox.  Jamsheed Choksy’s paper entitled, “Religious Minorities and the Iranian state” examined how Iran views and deals with Minorities both new and those with an accepted heritage.  Ellen McLarney in contrast, presented her paper “Safinaz Kazim: Submission to Islam and the Subject of self,” which focused on one particular author’s submission to Islam.

Jamsheed Choksy’s paper focused on the impact of the religious theocracy in Iran has on religious minorities, which is often overlooked.  Pulling information from the Islamic constitution, Jamsheed examined the differences in how religious minorities are treated depending on their status as officially recognized or not.  While recognized minorities have some autonomy over their organizations, those that are not recognized do not.  Along with this, recognized religious minorities can have communal associations, but they have to adhere to Islamic doctrine in coming together.  Along with this, Choksy highlighted the fact that often, in spite of certain minorities being official recognized in the Iranian Theocracy, both recognized and unrecognized, face discrimination, both from the public and from Iranian officials. Often Minorities are seen as the traitors that are helping foreign interference , despite the fact that minority groups seem themselves as loyal Iranians .

Ellen McLarney paper focused on the writings of Safinaz Kazim, an Egyptian author and literary critic.  Specifically MacLarney focuses on the writings that are Dowa narratives.  Much of what McLarney focused on was the religious transformation of Safinaz Kazim after being imprisoned in 1982.  Safinaz Kazim, after the Secularism of the state, and the forbidding of veiling focuses on the discussion of veiling.  Kazim valorizes the practice of veiling, and equates Liberation in Islam with Veiling and being unveiled with lacking freedom.  For her, veiling is a public display of religiosity, rather than a silencing.  She sees her veiling as not a contradictory to her feminism, but rather see’s the use of both the veil and feminism as her ability to present a unified self.  Thus, her submission to Islam is not contradictory to her feminist ideas, but rather her bodily expression of the practice of Islam creates a sacred space safe from Secularism.

During the discussion, how these two papers are connected came to light.  Both address the problems of constituting either self or community within specific dominating Regimes.  The first paper focuses on the communally self defined, whereas the second paper focuses on the individual.  While a third author, Wilson Jacob,  with his paper “Regarding a Sayyid, Regarding History: Empire, Religion, Sovereignty” was not able to present, it was stated that this paper provided the middle ground by tracing movements/spheres of sovereignty The sayyid, Fadl bin Alawi in between Indian and the Ottoman Empire.  All three papers address the issues of Sovereignty of the Un-Orthodox in relation to the Orthodox.

Seminar: Ebrahim Moosa “Mullas, Madrasas, and Militants in South Asia.”

Ebrahim Moosa presented his article for the Boston review on his own personal history inside the Madrasas of South Asia.  This article’s primary focus was to present some of the history of Madrasas, as well as to address Western views on the Madrasas system as depicted primarily through the media, through the authors own experience as a young man in the Madrasa system.

In presenting this essay, Moosa laid out the following points that he wanted to get across:

The first, the Materiality of Madrasas, addressed that these schools are not primarily breeding ground for terrorist networks, by focusing on the intense experience students go through.  Moosa pointed out that Madrasas are places where senses are utilized for salvation and self-fashioning.  Stating that Madrasas are places for people “crazy/passionate” about salvation and the afterlife, these groups are not only concerned about individual salvation, but also the salvation of the entire community.  This struggle for salvation plays out on the individual body.  According to Moosa, the Body is a sensorium, through which all pupils experience the struggle for salvation.  All actions, from prayers, to rituals, to even eating are all supposed to be done with a focus on salvation and require a life of intense self-discipline.  Part of this is to sanctify the body and through doing so, remove sin and allow in knowledge.  Madrasas, as spaces where knowledge is formed, see knowledge as that which removes sin, and sin as that which removes knowledge.  Knowledge, as light from god, is the embodiment of truth and ethics and thus acquirement of knowledge is the primary focus of Madrasa students. With this intense focus on knowledge, Madrasas attract a certain type of individual; primarily one concerned with spiritual enlightenment and reason.

The second aspect of Moosa’s discussion focused on the context of Madrasas in Geopolitics.  Primarily his focus was on the portrayal of the Madrasa system as a breeding ground for terrorism both on the part of foreign policy and the western media.  Moosa went on to explain madrasas are portrayed as linked to terrorist networks, Jihad, and the Taliban, and are used to drum up Islamaphobia.  However, according to Moosa this is wholly untrue.  By addressing his own experiences within the Madrasa system, Ebrahim Moosa did two things: One, he was able to present the history of each of the madrasas he attended (as opposed to the single deobandi school shown in most of western media and grossly portrayed out of context as the most dangerous), and also present his own experience within each.  By doing so, he addressed not only how madrasas came to be portrayed as such, but provide personal experience that spoke directly against the slanderous claims of western media prone to Islamaphobia.

The last point Ebrahim Moosa addressed was the Melancholy now found within the Madrasas system.  Madrasas are under the threat of extinction as a result of Globalization and democratization, along with a variety of other forces.  As such there is much debate over the proper way to continue the Madrasa system: The forces of tradition and Islamic romanticism vs. modernization efforts.  Despite the resistance often observed within the Madrasas to change, Moosa points out that there have been many changes, especially concerning the curriculum.