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Perspectives and practices of couples in unconventional Muslim marriages.

Unconventional Muslim marriages have been topics of heated public debate. Around the globe, religious scholars, policy makers, political actors, media personalities, and women's activists discuss, promote, or reject unregistered, transnational, interreligious and other boundary-crossing marriages. Couples entering into such marriages, however, often have different concerns from those publicly discussed. Based on ethnographic research in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and Asia, the chapters of this volume examine couples' motivations for, aspirations about, and abilities to enter into these marriages. The contributions show the diverse ways in which such marriages are concluded, and inquire into how they are performed, authorized or contested as Muslim marriages. These marriages may challenge existing ties of belonging and transform boundaries between religious and other communities, but they may also, and sometimes simultaneously, reproduce and solidify them.

Building on insights from different disciplines, both from the social sciences (anthropology, political science, gender and sexuality studies) and from the humanities (history, Islamic legal studies, religious studies), the authors address a wide range of controversial Muslim marriages (unregistered, interreligious, transnational, etc.), and include the views of religious scholars, state authorities, and political actors and activists, as well as the couples themselves, their families, and their wider social circle.

Ebook available in Open Access.
This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content). - Contributors: Joud Alkorani (Radboud University), Rahma Bavelaar (University of Applied Sciences Leiden), Loubna Elmorabet (University of Amsterdam), Annerienke Fioole (University of Amsterdam), Shifra Kisch (University College Utrecht), Iris Kolman (University of Amsterdam), Martijn de Koning (Radboud University), Eva F. Nisa (Australian National University), Ibtisam Sadegh (University of Malta), Samah Saleh (An-Najah National University), Vanessa Vroon-Najem (Amsterdam Museum), Dina Zbeidy (University of Applied Sciences Leiden).

"Muslim marriages have been the focus of considerable public debate in Europe and beyond, in Muslim-majority countries as well as in settings where Muslims are a minority. Most academic work has focused on how the majority Sunni Muslims conclude marriages. This volume, in contrast, focuses on Twelver Shi'a Muslims in Iran, Pakistan, Oman, Indonesia, Norway, and the Netherlands. The volume makes an original contribution to understanding the global dynamics of Shi'a marriage practices in a wide range of contexts--not only its geographical spread but also by providing a critical analysis of the socio-economic, religious, ethnic, and political discourses of each context. The book sheds light on new marriage forms presented through a bottom up approach focusing on the lived experiences of Shi'a Muslims negotiating a diverse range of relationships and forms of belonging"--

"... one of those rare edited volumes that advances social thought as it provides substantive religious and media ethnography that is good to think with." -- Dale Eickelman, Dartmouth CollegeIncreasingly, Pentecostal, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, and indigenous movements all over the world make use of a great variety of modern mass media, both print and electronic. Through religious booklets, radio broadcasts, cassette tapes, television talk-shows, soap operas, and documentary film these movements add

Abstract
In 2005, religious authorities in Palestine warned publicly of a new phenomenon, one that was 'foreign to Palestinian society': ʿurfī marriages. They used this term to refer to 'secret marriages,' which they considered as linked to social breakdown, the result of the Israeli occupation. In the tales (similar to rumors) of young men and women throughout the West Bank and Gaza in the early 2010s, these marriages were often related to the colonial geographies of anxiety, of social and political fragmentation, and of the spatial segregation that Israel has imposed on Palestinians. Related concerns were expressed by the men of religion as they attempted to maintain their authority in highly uncertain times and in contested spaces. Still, in the very small number of concrete cases shariʿa judges continued to use the flexibility of Islamic jurisprudence to legally recognize ʿurfī marriages to work towards the most equitable solution in problematic situations.

AbstractDrawing on long term research – including topical life stories, interviews and participant observation – we analyze how women converts to Islam in the Netherlands signify and experience making hijra. Our interlocutors, all observant Muslims, had left the Netherlands between the late 1990s and the mid 2010s. In the course of the last 5 years many have again returned to the Netherlands. Their life courses indicate that physical and existential mobility are interconnected in their everyday lives as well as in their migration trajectories. Whereas they considered conversion to Islam as moving forward, the majority society did not share this perspective. They were sharply aware of how they were no longer seen as self-evidently part of the Dutch nation. This produced feelings of stuckedness - in an existential and a material sense - for themselves and their children, and hence a desire to move to a Muslim majority country. They differed amongst themselves as to whether and how they signified leaving Europe as making hijra in an Islamic sense. To some, making hijra was a highly desirable religious act. Others did not foreground such religious signification, but nonetheless expected positive effects of living in an environment where Islam would be an integral part of daily life. Their attempts to settle in various Muslim majority countries were, however, often not successful. Material conditions made it difficult to enact their ethical aspirations, that included the moral and material wellbeing of others, especially their children. Moreover, their appreciation of the self-evident presence of Islam in the countries of settlement was tempered, first, by the tension between their quest for a reflexive, deculturalized Islam and the culturalized practices they encountered in their new environment, and second, by their growing awareness of how their sense of self was much more shaped by habitual 'Dutch' conventions than most of them had envisioned beforehand. As a result they were often unable to develop meaningful social relationships in their new environment. Eventually, almost all of them returned to the Netherlands.

Off the Straight Path: Illicit Sex, Law and Community in Ottoman AleppoElyse Semerdjian's Off the Straight Path: Illicit Sex, Law and Community in Ottoman Aleppo is a pioneering study of sexual crime and punishment during the Ottoman period based on records in the archives of the Islamic courts of Aleppo, Syria. Her work straddles several disciplines including women's history, social history, and Islamic legal studies and makes significant contributions to each. Her subject of research is zina, which has multiple meanings including adultery, prostitution, procurement, sodomy, bestiality, and rape. Each of these are serious crimes under Islamic law that could result in draconian punishments including stoning. Living Palestine. Family Survival, Resistance, and Mobility under OccupationWhereas much academic work on Palestine focuses on the political, the central theme of this book, in contrast, is the social reproduction of Palestinian society. Zeroing in on the everyday lived experiences of Palestinians under occupation, it analyses the strategies of households and families, and their individual members, to improve their chances for survival and social mobility. This bookdoes not only highlight how families and households cope with ongoing processes of dispossession and repression, but also points to the limits of such endurance. More specifically, it underlines that certain households – the urban and rural poor and the refugees living in the camps, and certain family members – the young, the female, bear the brunt.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1. Introduction / Maussen, Marcel / Bader, Veit -- Part 1: Historical perspectives on colonial governance of Islam -- 2. Governance of Islam in colonial Mozambique / Bonate, Liazzat J. K. -- 3. Educating Sudanese ulama for colonial sharia / Jeppie, Shamil -- 4. Ruptures? Governance in Husaynid-Colonial Tunisia, c. 1870-1914 / Clancy-Smith, Julia -- 5. Governing Islam by tribes and constitutions: British mandate rule in Iraq / Leezenberg, Michiel / Kanie, Mariwan -- 6. The idea of a Muslim community: British India, 1857-1906 / Devji, Faisal -- Part 2: Continuities and ruptures in the governance of Islam in post-colonial situations -- 7. Colonial traces? Islamic: dress, gender and the public: presence of Islam / Moors, Annelies -- 8. Seeing like an expert, failing like a state? Interpreting the fate of a satellite town in early post-colonial Pakistan / Daechsel, Markus -- 9. Continuities and ruptures in the governance of Islam in Malaysia / Meerschaut, Karen / Gutwirth, Serge -- 10. Angare, the 'burning embers' of Muslim political resistance: Colonial and post-colonial regulation of Islam in Britain / Malik, Maleiha -- 11. Portuguese colonialism and the Islamic community of Lisbon / Artur Machaqueiro, Mário -- 12. Conclusion / Bader, Veit / Maussen, Marcel -- Contributors