The Colonial–Religious Institutional Contract: Muslim Women Activists in Israel

Author(s):  
Nahed Ashqar-Sharary ◽  
Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder

Abstract This study examines the growth of a progressive religious Muslim activism among Palestinian women in Israel and the challenges it poses to the religious patriarchy and colonial power structures. Based on semistructured interviews with a religious feminist organization’s activists, the study revealed that feminist Islamic activism addresses an alliance between state officials and patriarchal–religious establishment gatekeepers that interlock to block Muslim feminist reform. Unlike other Muslim activists in former settler colonial states where state and religion are separate and unlike progressive Muslim women in Muslim states who struggle to escape the religious–patriarchal trap, in Israel, these activists face a religious–colonial–patriarchal trap.

Author(s):  
Nicholas B. TORRETTA ◽  
Lizette REITSMA

Our contemporary world is organized in a modern/colonial structure. As people, professions and practices engage in cross-country Design for Sustainability (DfS), projects have the potential of sustaining or changing modern/colonial power structures. In such project relations, good intentions in working for sustainability do not directly result in liberation from modern/colonial power structures. In this paper we introduce three approaches in DfS that deal with power relations. Using a Freirean (1970) decolonial perspective, we analyse these approaches to see how they can inform DfS towards being decolonial and anti-oppressive. We conclude that steering DfS to become decolonial or colonizing is a relational issue based on the interplay between the designers’ position in the modern/colonial structure, the design approach chosen, the place and the people involved in DfS. Hence, a continuous critical reflexive practice is needed in order to prevent DfS from becoming yet another colonial tool.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 671-678 ◽  
Author(s):  
Munira Abdulwasi ◽  
Meena Bhardwaj ◽  
Yuka Nakamura ◽  
Maha Zawi ◽  
Jennifer Price ◽  
...  

Background: This descriptive qualitative study informed by an ecological framework explored factors influencing South Asian Muslim women’s decisions to participate in a mosque-based physical activity intervention.Methods: Individual, face-to-face, semistructured interviews were conducted in English, Hindi, or Urdu with 12 South Asian Muslim women at their home or mosque in Ontario, Canada. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and managed, sorted, and analyzed for themes through a process of descriptive analysis.Results: The participants described as follows: (1) intrapersonal facilitators, which included their feelings, beliefs, and motivations to continue with this intervention; (2) interpersonal facilitators detailing the support that they had received from others during the intervention; and (3) environmental facilitators, which highlighted convenience and access to physical activity opportunities in a local community setting.Conclusion: This intervention displayed how South Asian Muslim women were motivated to continue with the mosque-based physical activity intervention due to interpersonal, intrapersonal, and environmental facilitators. The findings can be used to increase further understanding of how mosques may provide culturally and religiously sensitive contexts for physical activity interventions for South Asian Muslim women.


Author(s):  
Colin R. Alexander

This chapter discusses the preparations for World War II in relation to advances in radio broadcasting to the Indian public. Responsibility for radio broadcasting in British India became part of the portfolio of the Labour Bureau and thus one of the state’s apparatus surrounding the maintenance of colonial power. The arrangement in India was different from that of radio broadcasting in the UK during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s where the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) had been created under Royal Charter with editorial independence from government and commercial interests. In contrast, the British Government of India, and several of Britain’s other colonial territories set up public communications departments that were attached to central government bureaus primarily because the notion of public service broadcasting sat awkwardly against colonial power structures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 31-46 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhana Sultana

Decolonization has become a popular discourse in academia recently and there are many debates on what it could mean within various disciplines as well as more broadly across academia itself. The field of international development has seen sustained gestures towards decolonization for several years in theory and practice, but hegemonic notions of development continue to dominate. Development is a contested set of ideas and practices that are under critique in and outside of academia, yet the reproduction of colonial power structures and Eurocentric logics continues whereby the realities of the global majority are determined by few powerful institutions and a global elite. To decolonize development's material and discursive powers, scholars have argued for decolonizing development education towards one that is ideologically and epistemologically different from dominant narratives of development. I add to these conversations and posit that decolonized ideologies and epistemologies have to be accompanied by decolonized pedagogies and considerations of decolonization of institutions of higher education. I discuss the institutional and critical pedagogical dilemmas and challenges that exist, since epistemological, methodological, and pedagogical decolonizations are influenced by institutional politics of higher education that are simultaneously local and global. The paper engages with the concept of critical hope in the pursuit of social justice to explore possibilities of decolonizing development praxis and offers suggestions on possible pathways forward.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 146-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randa Nasser ◽  
Fidaa Barghouti ◽  
Janan Mousa

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