Book contents
- Forntmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- The Contributors
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 ‘My Homeland is Husayn’: Transnationalism and Multilocality in Shi‘a Contexts
- Part I Localising Global Shi‘a Minority Spaces
- 2 Performing Shi‘ism between Java and Qom: Education and Rituals
- 3 Mi corazón late Husayn: Identity, Politics and Religion in a Shi‘a Community in Buenos Aires
- 4 Bektashism as a Model and Metaphor for ‘Balkan Islam’
- 5 Living Najaf in London: Diaspora, Identity and the Sectarianisation of the Iraqi-Shi‘a Subject
- Part II Transnational Shi‘a Trajectories
- 6 Global Networks, Local Concerns: Investigating the Impact of Emerging Technologies on Shi‘a Religious Leaders and Constituencies
- 7 ‘Still We Long for Zaynab’: South Asian Shi‘ites and Transnational Homelands under Attack
- 8 From a Marginalised Religious Community in Iran to a Government-sanctioned Public Interest Foundation in Paris – Remarks on the ‘Ostad Elahi Foundation’
- Part III ‘Alid Piety and the Fluidity of Sectarian Boundaries
- 9 Ideas in Motion: The Transmission of Shi‘a Knowledge in Sri Lanka
- 10 Limits of Sectarianism: Shi‘ism and ahl al-bayt Islam among Turkish Migrant Communities in Germany
- 11 ‘For ‘Ali is Our Ancestor’: Cham Sayyids’ Shi‘a Trajectories from Cambodia to Iran
- Epilogue
- 12 Shi‘a Cosmopolitanisms and Conversions
- Notes
- Index
1 - ‘My Homeland is Husayn’: Transnationalism and Multilocality in Shi‘a Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 October 2020
- Forntmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- The Contributors
- Glossary
- Introduction
- 1 ‘My Homeland is Husayn’: Transnationalism and Multilocality in Shi‘a Contexts
- Part I Localising Global Shi‘a Minority Spaces
- 2 Performing Shi‘ism between Java and Qom: Education and Rituals
- 3 Mi corazón late Husayn: Identity, Politics and Religion in a Shi‘a Community in Buenos Aires
- 4 Bektashism as a Model and Metaphor for ‘Balkan Islam’
- 5 Living Najaf in London: Diaspora, Identity and the Sectarianisation of the Iraqi-Shi‘a Subject
- Part II Transnational Shi‘a Trajectories
- 6 Global Networks, Local Concerns: Investigating the Impact of Emerging Technologies on Shi‘a Religious Leaders and Constituencies
- 7 ‘Still We Long for Zaynab’: South Asian Shi‘ites and Transnational Homelands under Attack
- 8 From a Marginalised Religious Community in Iran to a Government-sanctioned Public Interest Foundation in Paris – Remarks on the ‘Ostad Elahi Foundation’
- Part III ‘Alid Piety and the Fluidity of Sectarian Boundaries
- 9 Ideas in Motion: The Transmission of Shi‘a Knowledge in Sri Lanka
- 10 Limits of Sectarianism: Shi‘ism and ahl al-bayt Islam among Turkish Migrant Communities in Germany
- 11 ‘For ‘Ali is Our Ancestor’: Cham Sayyids’ Shi‘a Trajectories from Cambodia to Iran
- Epilogue
- 12 Shi‘a Cosmopolitanisms and Conversions
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Introduction
This volume engages with questions of migration, diaspora, transnationalism and multilocality in relation to Shi‘ism by focusing on the presence of Shi‘a communities in Muslim minority contexts. Significant research has been produced on Shi‘a minorities in the so-called Muslim world (Monsutti et al. 2007; Mervin 2010; Ridgeon 2012). The aim of this volume is to shift the focus to Shi‘a presences in non-Muslim societal contexts where Shi‘ites constitute ‘a minority within a minority’ (Sachedina 1994: 3) that has emerged in the process of migration, through conversion or both. The volume thereby makes important contributions to research on Shi‘a communities in unexplored contexts, adding to the growing body of research on Shi‘ites in Europe (Shanneik et al. 2017; Scharbrodt et al. 2019) and North America (Walbridge 1996; Takim 2009) and providing novel insights into Shi‘a communities in South America, South Asia and South East Asia (Formichi and Feener 2015). By concentrating on Shi‘a spaces in Muslim minority contexts, the volume opens up comparative perspectives on Shi‘a minority presences in diverse geographical areas outside of the so-called Muslim world. Thereby, the volume further illustrates the heterogeneity of ‘Shi‘a worlds’ (Mervin 2010: 9) and contributes to ‘de-centring Shi‘ism’ (Clarke and Künkler 2018) by shifting the focus not just outside of the Middle East but outside Muslim majority countries. Public and academic narratives on Shi‘ism are further widened by extending the scope of this volume to Shi‘a groups outside of Twelver Shi‘ism, investigating Bektashis in the Balkans, the Ahl-e Haqq from Iran and Alevis of Turkish background in Germany.
The volume contributes to recent debates on diasporic religion by presenting the case study of Shi‘ites as a minority within a minority and the challenges and opportunities such a setting entails. In light of geopolitical events in the Middle East post-Arab Spring and their global repercussions, the contributions in this volume equally question simplistic notions of Sunni–Shi‘a sectarianism and discourses that suggest a global politicisation of sectarian identities. While the reality of such processes cannot be dismissed, the contributions in this volume – based on extensive ethnographic research in a variety of contexts – interrogate crude suggestions of an Iranian alignment of global Shi‘a communities and of clear-cut sectarian boundaries between Sunnis and Shi‘ites.
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- Shi'a Minorities in the Contemporary WorldMigration, Transnationalism and Multilocality, pp. 3 - 30Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2020