Millî Görüş in Western Europe

ISIM, in co-operation with Gerdien Jonker (Marburg University), held a workshop on 9 January 2004 to take stock of previous research on the Turkish religious movement Millî Görüs (“The National Vision”) in Western Europe. The workshop brought together scholars from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, whose research was at least in part concerned with this movement

The Production of Islamic Knowledge in Western Europe

The ISIM is setting up a research programme on 'The Production of Islamic Knowledge in Western Europe', coordinated by Professor Martin van Bruinessen in cooperation with Dr Nico Landman of Utrecht University. The ISIM has organized a series of lectures (summer 2001 and forthcoming in autumn 2001) on the state of the art in this research area - to be published either in the ISIM Newsletter or separately as ISIM Papers. An annotated bibliography prepared through the concerted efforts of the ISIM, CNRSStrasbourg, the University of Louvain-la-Neuve and other institutions, will soon be made available online

ISIM Workshop: Muslim Intellectuals and Modern Challenges

From 26-28 April 2000, twelve prominent Muslim thinkers from a wide range of regional backgrounds (Tunisia, Egypt, Iran, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Africa and the European diaspora) met at an ISIM workshop to discuss some of the major intellectual and political challenges facing the Muslim world at present. Each of them presented a paper on an important aspect of the encounter with modernity, to which he or she had been devoting much thought recently. Several of the papers explicitly addressed the question of compatibility between Islam and modernity (or rather, as several participants emphasized, interpretations of Islam and conceptions of modernity). Some engaged in such sensitive issues as minority rights, women's rights and pluralism and called for the development of a contemporary religious discourse based on rights to balance the traditional emphasis on obligations or contributed to a theory of civil society. Others focused on (reformist revisions of) the relationship between the sacred texts, context and contemporary discourse

Transformations of Heterodoxy

On 21 November 2000, Martin van Bruinessen, ISIM Chair at Utrecht University, delivered his inaugural lecture entitled 'Muslims, Minorities and Modernity: The Restructuring of Heterodoxy in the Middle East and Southeast Asia'. The lecture compared Alevism in Turkey with kebatinan in Indonesia, where adherents of heterodox folk belief and practice - rather than gradually shifting towards scripturalist, sharica oriented Islam - were transformed into distinct religious minorities deliberately distancing themselves from orthodox Islam. The following is composed of excerpts from the lecture

Gestures Religion qua Performance

On 9 and 10 July 2008, the Netherlands Science Organization (NWO), in co-operation with ISIM, organized a conference titled “Gestures: Religion qua Performance” at Utrecht University. This conference, convened by ISIM’s Martin van Bruinessen with Prof. Anne-Marie Korte of Utrecht University, is part of the large NWO-funded research programme “The Future of the Religious Past,” which examines new forms of the religious

Studying Islam in Southeast Asia State of the Art & New Approaches

On 7 and 8 July 2008, more than thirty people gathered at the Snouck Hurgronjehuis in Leiden for the workshop on “Studying Islam in Southeast Asia: State of the Art and New Approaches,” which was organized under the auspices of the Australia-Netherlands Research Collaboration (ANRC) and ISIM. Martin van Bruinessen (ISIM) and Greg Fealy (Australian National University) were the convenors

Promoting survival: A grounded theory study of consequences of modern health practices in Ouramanat region of Iranian Kurdistan

The aim of this qualitative study is to explore the way people using modern health care perceive its consequences in Ouraman-e-Takht region of Iranian Kurdistan. Ouraman-e-Takht is a rural, highly mountainous and dry region located in the southwest Kurdistan province of Iran. Recently, modern health practices have been introduced to the region. The purpose of this study was to investigate, from the Ouramains' point of view, the impact that modern health services and practices have had on the Ouraman traditional way of life. Interview data from respondents were analyzed by using grounded theory. Promoting survival was the core category that explained the impact that modern health practices have had on the Ouraman region. The people of Ouraman interpreted modern health practices as increasing their quality of life and promoting their survival. Results are organized around this core category in a paradigm model consisting of conditions, interactions, and consequences. This model can be used to understand the impact of change from the introduction of modern health on a traditional society

Return mobilities of highly skilled young people to a post-conflict region: the case of Kurdish-British to Kurdistan – Iraq

Building upon insights from recent studies on the ‘return mobilities’ of children of migrants to their parents’ country of origin, this paper focuses on the motives of highly skilled young people from the UK who migrate to their parental post-conflict region (Kurdistan-Iraq), an area that has experienced long-term conflict and profound economic and political instability. The existing studies on children of migrants’ return mobilities place more emphasis on cultural and economic considerations while paying little attention to the associated ideological and political elements. Based on interviews concerning 32 highly skilled young British-Kurdish people’s migration to Kurdistan-Iraq, this paper argues that the transnational mobilities of the 1.5 generation and second generation of refugee-diasporas are more driven by the collective trauma of their parents’ displacement, their feeling of expulsion and intergenerational articulation with an imagined homeland, than they are by economic considerations and/or nostalgia. The Kurdish political aspiration to develop Kurdish institutions and a national economy for a potential statehood in Northern Iraq has also created hope among young Kurdish people and influenced their motivations to ‘return’. In this context, this paper focuses on the political, ideological and emotional dimensions of return mobilities and draws attention to return mobilities among a new generation of refugees to their parental post-conflict homeland

Democratization and the Diffusion of Shari'a Law: Comparative Insights from Indonesia

The democratization of politics has been accompanied by a rise of Islamic laws in many Muslim-majority countries. Despite a growing interest in the phenomenon, the Islamization of politics in democratizing Muslim-majority countries is rarely understood as a process that unfolds across space and time. Based on an original dataset established during years of field research in Indonesia, this article analyzes the spread of shari’a regulations across the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy since 1998. The article shows that shari’a regulations in Indonesia diffused unevenly across space and time. Explanations put forward in the literature on the diffusion of morality policies in other countries such as geographic proximity, institutions, intergovernmental relations and economic conditions did not explain the patterns in the diffusion of shari’a regulations in Indonesia well. Instead, shari’a regulations in Indonesia were most likely to spread across jurisdictions where local Islamist groups situated outside the party system had an established presence. In short, the Islamization of politics was highly contingent on local conditions. Future research will need to pay more attention to local Islamist activists and networks situated outside formal politics as potential causes for the diffusion of shari’a law in democratizing Muslim-majority countries