Author: Elisha P. Renne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 025300828X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
“This volume examines the complex histories, politics, and experiences of wearing Islamic dress in sub-Saharan Africa.” —Heather Marie Akou, Indiana University Bloomington The tradition of the veil, which refers to various cloth coverings of the head, face, and body, has been little studied in Africa, where Islam has been present for more than a thousand years. These lively essays raise questions about what is distinctive about veiling in Africa, what religious histories or practices are reflected in particular uses of the veil, and how styles of veils have changed in response to contemporary events. Together, they explore the diversity of meanings and experiences with the veil, revealing it as both an object of Muslim piety and an expression of glamorous fashion. “This is an exciting and strong collection of original research on women’s—and men’s—veiling practices in a range of African Muslim settings and the social and religious discourses that accompany changes in dress over time. Taken as a whole, it offers a fascinating overview of African Muslim interpretations of theological debates about ‘the veil’ and gender relations in Muslim societies while illustrating some of the particular accommodations adopted by African women.” —International Journal of African Historical Studies “Explores the many meanings and uses of veiling which is so often treated as a monolithic phenomenon emblematic of Islam in different African and African diaspora contexts.” —Emma Tarlo, Goldsmiths, University of London
Author: Elisha P. Renne
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253036569
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Veils, Turbans, and Islamic Reform in Northern Nigeria tells the story of Islamic reform from the perspective of dress, textile production, trade, and pilgrimage over the past 200 years. As Islamic reformers have sought to address societal problems such as poverty, inequality, ignorance, unemployment, extravagance, and corruption, they have used textiles as a means to express their religious positions on these concerns. Home first to the early indigo trade and later to a thriving textile industry, northern Nigeria has been a center for Islamic practice as well as a place where everything from women's hijabs to turbans, buttons, zippers, short pants, and military uniforms offers a statement on Islam. Elisha P. Renne argues that awareness of material distinctions, religious ideology, and the political and economic contexts from which successive Islamic reform groups have emerged is important for understanding how people in northern Nigeria continue to seek a proper Islamic way of being in the world and how they imagine their futures—spiritually, economically, politically, and environmentally.
Author: Adeline Masquelier
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253003466
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
In the small town of Dogondoutchi, Niger, Malam Awal, a charismatic Sufi preacher, was recruited by local Muslim leaders to denounce the practices of reformist Muslims. Malam Awal's message has been viewed as a mixed blessing by Muslim women who have seen new definitions of Islam and Muslim practice impact their place and role in society. This study follows the career of Malam Awal and documents the engagement of women in the religious debates that are refashioning their everyday lives. Adeline Masquelier reveals how these women have had to define Islam on their own terms, especially as a practice that governs education, participation in prayer, domestic activities, wedding customs, and who wears the veil and how. Masquelier's richly detailed narrative presents new understandings of what it means to be a Muslim woman in Africa today.
Author: Annemarié Van Niekerk
Publisher: Queillerie
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 516
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Book Description
Author: Kelly Cunnane
Publisher: Schwartz & Wade
ISBN: 0375988939
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 41
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Book Description
"Poetic language, attractive illustrations and a positive message about Islam, without any didacticism: a wonderful combination," declares Kirkus Reviews in a starred review. Lalla lives in the Muslim country of Mauritania, and more than anything, she wants to wear a malafa, the colorful cloth Mauritanian women, like her mama and big sister, wear to cover their heads and clothes in public. But it is not until Lalla realizes that a malafa is not just worn to show a woman's beauty and mystery or to honor tradition—a malafa for faith—that Lalla's mother agrees to slip a long cloth as blue as the ink in the Koran over Lalla's head, under her arm, and round and round her body. Then together, they pray. An author's note and glossary are included in the back of the book.
Author: Margot Badran
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804774819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Gender and Islam in Africa examines ways in which women in Africa are interpreting traditional Islamic concepts in order to empower themselves and their societies. African women, it argues, have promoted the ideals and practices of equality, human rights, and democracy within the framework of Islamic thought, challenging conventional conceptualizations of the religion as gender-constricted and patriarchal. The contributors come from the fields of history, anthropology, linguistics, gender studies, religious studies, and law. Their depictions of African women's interpreting and reinterpreting of Islam go back into the nineteenth century and up to today, including analyses of how cultural media such as popular song and film can communicate new gender roles in terms of sexuality and direct examinations of religious and religiously based family law and efforts to reform them.
Author: Joan Wallach Scott
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691147981
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
In 2004, the French government instituted a ban on the wearing of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools. Though the ban applies to everyone, it is aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves. Proponents of the law insist it upholds France's values of secular liberalism and regard the headscarf as symbolic of Islam's resistance to modernity. The Politics of the Veil is an explosive refutation of this view, one that bears important implications for us all. Joan Wallach Scott, the renowned pioneer of gender studies, argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens. She examines the long history of racism behind the law as well as the ideological barriers thrown up against Muslim assimilation. She emphasizes the conflicting approaches to sexuality that lie at the heart of the debate--how French supporters of the ban view sexual openness as the standard for normalcy, emancipation, and individuality, and the sexual modesty implicit in the headscarf as proof that Muslims can never become fully French. Scott maintains that the law, far from reconciling religious and ethnic differences, only exacerbates them. She shows how the insistence on homogeneity is no longer feasible for France--or the West in general--and how it creates the very "clash of civilizations" said to be at the root of these tensions. The Politics of the Veil calls for a new vision of community where common ground is found amid our differences, and where the embracing of diversity--not its suppression--is recognized as the best path to social harmony.
Author: Adeyinka Adewale
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783031403590
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This book, through a politico-historical analysis, aims to provide a more balanced perspective regarding the nature of Africa’s relations with other global regions. It emphasizes the sophisticated nature of pre-colonial African politico-historical commentaries often overlooked or simplified. As such, the narrative avoids the usual misrepresentations which impress that African-European interactions are a history of European actions in an Africa generally devoid of anything similar to the cultures, institutions and abilities of Europe. Further, it contests the historical narrative that indigenous Africans have had no real active role vis-à-vis an assertive, dominating Europe in historical times. Within this book, the contestation of such narratives with evidence-based counter perspectives is of particular benefit for our current educational, social and political contexts.
Author: Josiah Ulysses Young
Publisher: Trinity Press International
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 154
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Book Description
Young looks at God's love and the burning strength that connects it to African Americans even through the haze of the dominant white European-American theology, and he challenges African-American theologians to embed this characteristic in their thought.
Author: Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 0816626677
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298
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Book Description
Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans was first published in 1996. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. In this trenchant critique, Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui demonstrates the failure of international law to address adequately the issues surrounding African self-determination during decolonization. Challenging the view that the only requirement for decolonization is the elimination of the legal instruments that provided for direct foreign rule, Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans probes the universal claims of international law. Grovogui begins by documenting the creation of the "image of Africa" in European popular culture, examining its construction by conquerors and explorers, scientists and social scientists, and the Catholic Church. Using the case of Namibia to illuminate the general context of Africa, he demonstrates that the principles and rules recognized in international law today are not universal, but instead reflect relations of power and the historical dominance of specific European states. Grovogui argues that two important factors have undermined the universal applicability of international law: its dependence on Western culture and the way that international law has been structured to preserve Western hegemony in the international order. This dependence on Europeandominated models and legal apparatus has resulted in the paradox that only rights sanctioned by the former colonial powers have been accorded to the colonized, regardless of the latter's needs. In the case of Namibia, Grovogui focuses on the discursive strategies used by the West and their southern African allies to control the legal debate, as well as the tactics used by the colonized to recast the terms of the discussion. Grovogui blends critical legal theory, historical research, political economy, and cultural studies with profound knowledge of contemporary Africa in general and Namibia in particular. Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans represents the very best of the new scholarship, moving beyond narrow disciplinary boundaries to illuminate issues of decolonization in Africa. Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui is assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University. He previously practiced law in his native Guinea.
