Suchergebnisse

Cosmopolitanism has emerged as a key category in Islamic Studies, defining models of Muslim mobility, pluralism and tolerance that challenge popular perceptions of religious extremism. Such celebrations and valorisations of mobility and trans-regional consciousness, however, tend to conflate border-crossing with opportunity and social diversity with ethical progress. At the same time, they generally disregard the ways in which such forms of cosmopolitanism have been entwined with structures of domination, economic control and violence. This volume addresses these issues in ways that help to contextualize contemporary issues such as the global refugee crisis in relation to longer histories of Muslim mobility and coercion.

Featuring new historical and ethnographic research on China and Southeast Asia, this book explores how power and violence have shaped the experiences of Sufis and state-builders, as well as refugees and rebels, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of Islamic cosmopolitanism.

The focus of this chapter is the city of Yiwu and the nature of Afghan networks present there. By inserting such networks both in the context of the wider global settings, and in terms of the traders' experience of space in Yiwu, we seek to contribute to an emerging body of literature on Muslim cosmopolitanism in two ways. First, we bring attention to the ways in which the expressions of Muslim cosmopolitanism visible in Yiwu are premised on violent histories of international conflict and interference that have led to massive displacements of the country's people, as well the bleaching out of the country's own religious diversity. Secondly, we recognise that if the traders with whom we work are cosmopolitan in some aspects of their lives, then in others they reinforce and sustain collective commitment to national, regional, ideological and confessional identities, identities that are also of critical significance to their activities as traders.