Religion, National Identity and Nation Building: Muhammad Mitwalli Sha?rawi’s Concept of Islam and Its Ties to Modern Egyptian Politics

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85
Author(s):  
Jacquelene Brinton
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Fully Integrated ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Egyptian Government ◽  
Building Project ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Muhammad Mitwalli Sha?r?w? (1911–1998) was a Muslim religious scholar (s. ?alim, p. ?ulama?) who worked in an official capacity for the Egyptian government, and gained celebrity through his televised Quranic interpretations. By the time Sha?r?w? began his television career, Al-Azhar, the premier institution for training Sunni ?ulama?, was fully integrated into the apparatus of the Egyptian Republic, which made it easy for the state to solicit the help of ?ulama? like Sha?r?w? in its nation-building project. Sha?r?w? used Islam to bring forth a new sense of belonging, but his language about national belonging clashed with his exclusivist religious language. By looking at the attempted construction of national identity over time, this article charts the negotiation between religion and politics in late twentieth century Egypt where religion was not ousted from public discussion, but was subject to institutionalized restrictions, and allowed continuities in order to support national inclusivity.

scholarly journals El otro lado de la modernidad boliviana. "Vuelve Sebastiana" y la reconfiguración de las coordenadas espacio temporales para pensar la Nación

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 46-66
Author(s):  
Jaime Omar Salinas Zabalaga
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
National Imaginary ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Building Project ◽  
The Relationship

This article discusses the film Vuelve Sebastiana (1953) by Jorge Ruiz, focusing on its ideological and aesthetic aspects. The analysis establishes connections between the idea of “nation” in the context of cultural transformation prompted by the economic and social policies of the National Revolution of 1952 and the way the Chipaya community is represented. The central argument is that "Vuelve Sebastiana" can be read not only in relation to the new national identity but as an expression of a new national imaginary regarding the indigenous communities of the Altiplano. The author proposes that "Vuelve Sebastiana" represents the nation through the temporal and spatial cartographies of a modern nation-building project, making visible some of its tensions and contradictions and allowing us to explore the imaginary that has redefined the relationship between the State and the indigenous communities of the Altiplano throughout the  second half of the 20th century.

The Voice in the Drum

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
South Asia ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Musical Instruments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Novelistic Form ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Based on extensive research in India and Pakistan, this book examines the ways drumming and voices interconnect over vast areas of South Asia and considers what it means for musical instruments to be voice-like and carry textual messages in particular contexts. The book employs a hybrid, novelistic form of presentation in which the fictional protagonist Muharram Ali, a man obsessed with finding music he believes will dissolve religious and political barriers, interacts with the book's field consultants, to communicate ethnographic and historical realities that transcend the local details of any one person's life. The result is a daring narrative that follows Muharram Ali on a journey that explores how the themes of South Asian Muslims and their neighbors coming together, moving apart, and relating to God and spiritual intermediaries resonate across ritual and expressive forms such as drumming and dancing. The story charts the breakdown of this naiveté. A daring narrative of music, religion and politics in late twentieth century South Asia, the book delves into the social and religious principles around which Muslims, Hindus, and others bond, create distinctions, reflect upon one another, or decline to acknowledge differences.

scholarly journals Managing diversity: is Australia bucking the postmulticulturalist trend or on its way to embrace interculturalism?

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Maren Klein
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Social Cohesion ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Unique Type ◽  
Managing Diversity ◽  
The World ◽  
Building Project

At a time when multiculturalism as an approach to managing diversity in society has been declared a failed policy in many western countries, Australia still seems committed to the approach as evidenced in public discourse and government declarations. The concept of interculturalism— promoted as a more appropriate approach to dealing with diversity in other parts of the world such as Europe and Canada—seemingly has no place in the Australian context. However, changes in the understanding of the concept, its application and degrees of commitment to it can also be observed in Australia. Not only has the meaning and execution of multiculturalism changed considerably over the years, there has also been vigorous debate and backlash, embodied in the political arena, by the (re) emergence of parties, and more recently, a variety of groupings with a nationalistic and/or nativist focus. More generally, a hardened attitude in public discourses concerning migration, social cohesion and national identity has developed over the last two decades. In the context of these developments, this article will trace the evolution of the Australian concept of multiculturalism and its concrete application focussing on the changes of the last two decades. A comparison of Australia’s purportedly unique type of multiculturalism and concept(s) of interculturalism to explore whether Australia’s nation-building project is indeed distinct from other countries’ diversity experience, or whether there is a place for interculturalism in Australia in an era of increasing mobility will conclude the article.

Women against Abortion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karissa Haugeberg
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
Lethal Violence ◽  
Grassroots Groups ◽  
Catholic Women ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Women from remarkably diverse religious, social, and political backgrounds made up the rank-and-file of the American antiabortion movement. Empowered by--yet in many cases scared of--the changes wrought by feminism, women prolife activists founded grassroots groups, developed now-familiar strategies and tactics, and gave voice to the movement's moral and political dimensions. Drawing on clinic records, oral histories, organizational records, and interviews with prominent figures, Women against Abortion examines American women's fight against abortion. It also elucidates the complicated relationship between gender politics, religion, and politics as notions of equality, secularism, and partisanship were recast in the late twentieth century. Beginning in the 1960s, it looks at Marjory Mecklenburg's attempt to shift the attention of anti-abortion leaders from the rights of fetuses to the needs of pregnant women. Moving forward, it traces the grassroots work of Catholic women, including Juli Loesch and Joan Andrews, and their encounters with the influx of evangelicals into the movement. The book also looks at the activism of Shelley Shannon, a prominent evangelical Protestant pro-life extremist of the 1990s. Women against Abortion explores important questions, including the ways people fused religious conviction with partisan politics, activists' rationalizations for lethal violence, and how women claimed space within an unshakably patriarchal movement.

Stories of Love and Marriage in the Modern British Diaspora

2020 ◽  
pp. 220-237
Author(s):  
A. James Hammerton
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
International Migration ◽  
Migration Decision ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Emotional Landscape ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The modern British diaspora of the late twentieth century was marked by material changes that transformed aspects of the migrant experience from the 1980s. Working from oral testimony, this chapter explores ways in which those changes, embodying a “mobility of modernity,” worked to elevate love to a primary motivator of migration and to shift the emotional landscape of international migration from the earlier mid-century promotion of romantic ideals, or an “emotional revolution,” identified by Claire Langhamer. Young, single migrants, increasingly cosmopolitan in outlook, could prioritize self-fulfillment and exploration over employment, creating greater space for emotional influence in migration decision-making. Heightened emotional investment could further stimulate more fluid attitudes to national identity, as love interests inspired enhanced loyalties to countries of settlement.

scholarly journals The Postcolonial Crescent

1998 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 145-150
Author(s):  
Deonna Kelli
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
The State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Islamic Identity ◽  
The Many ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

Identity politics has become the catch phrase of the postmodern age. Withconcepts such as "exile," "migrancy," and "hybridity" acquiring unprecedentedcultural significance in the late twentieth century, the postcolonial age givesway to new identities, fractured modes of living, and new conditions of humanity.Literature is a powerful tool to explore such issues in an era where a greatdeal of the world is displaced, and the idea of a homeland becomes a disrupted,remote possibility. The Postcolonial Crescent: Islam's Impact onContemporary Literature, is an attempt to discuss how Muslims negotiateidentity at a time of rapid and spiritually challenging transculturation. The bookuses fiction written by Muslims to critique the effects of colonialism, counteractmodernity, and question the status of Islamic identity in the contemporaryworld. It also can be considered as the primary introduction of contemporaryIslamic literature into the postcolonial genre. Muslim writers have yet to submit a unique and powerful commentary on postcolonial and cultural studies;this work at least softens that absence.The Postcolonial Crescent was conceived as a response to The SatanicVerses controversy. Therefore, it is “intimately involved in the interchangebetween religion and the state, and demonstrates that the roles Islam is playingin postcolonial nation-building is especially contested in the absence of broadlyacceptable models” (p. 4). Conflicting issues of identity are approached byinterrogating the authority to define a “correct” Islamic identity, the role ofindividual rights, and the “variegation of Islamic expression within specificcultural settings, suggesting through the national self-definitions the many concernsthat the Islamic world shares with global postcoloniality” (p. 7) ...

A Nation Divided: Building the Cross-Border Mapuche Nation in Chile and Argentina

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
SARAH WARREN
Keyword(s):  
Nation Building ◽  
Nation State ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Building Process ◽  
Mapuche People ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Building Project

AbstractIn Chile and Argentina, indigenous Mapuche intellectuals contend that there is a single Mapuche nation that spans the Chile–Argentina border. When Mapuche people talk about the Mapuche nation and create symbols to represent it, however, they can mean both the Mapuche nation within the Chilean and Argentine state borders and the cross-border Mapuche nation. The dual nature of this project raises important theoretical questions about the nation-building process. In this article, I argue that Mapuche activists are engaging in a multi-scalar geopolitical imagination. They are imagining the geographic, political and cultural elements of the Mapuche nation at two scales simultaneously: within nation-state borders and across them. The overlapping and contested nature of this process means that the nation-building project is full of new tensions and constraints. However, it is also an example of ‘thinking otherwise’ and imagining an alternative sense of national belonging.

scholarly journals Nation-building under the societal security dilemma: The case of Macedonia

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-78
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Sazdovski
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Security Dilemma ◽  
Republic Of Macedonia ◽  
Identity Threats ◽  
Underlying Causes ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Government ◽  
Building Project

In 2009, the Government of the Republic of Macedonia announced the Skopje 2014 Project, a project that envisioned an urban reconstruction of the city through a series of monuments of historical and religious figures, as well as various public buildings resembling neo-classical, or neo-baroque style. The Project was the culmination of a wider nation-building project initiated several years earlier that became known as 'antiquisation' that sought to reconstruct and redefine Macedonian national identity, in which the uppermost importance was given to the figure of Alexander the Great. The nation-building project stressed a linear continuity of Macedonian national identity from antiquity to the present thereby emphasizing the nation's unceasing existence and affirmation throughout the centuries. But what were the underlying causes that shaped the nation-building project? How have historical, political and other factors influenced the nation-building project in Macedonia? And why was ancient Macedonia chosen as the narrative around which the nation-building project could take place? These are the questions that the present article will attempt to answer. The aim of this article is to examine the complex interplay between security policy and nation-building, in the Macedonian context. More specifically, it will argue that the current nation-building project in Macedonia has been developed as a response to internal and external perceived identity threats. Namely, ever since declaring independence the Republic of Macedonia has been facing a double societal security dilemma - an external, stemming from the country's immediate neighbors who constantly dispute the existence of a distinct Macedonian national identity, and an internal reflected in the constant challenges of the character of the State, by the country's ethnic Albanian community. In response, the nation-building project sought to address these concerns.

Music and national identity in Scotland: a study of Jock Tamson's Bairns

Popular Music ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-216 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Symon
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Social Construction Of Reality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Stuart Hall ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Place And Identity ◽  
Late Twentieth Century

The subject of his article reflects what Robert Crawford has called ‘a growing wariness of notions of an essentialist Scotland’ (1994, p. 57). The article has been written partly as a contribution to the critique of ‘essentialist’ notions of national identity in gerneral and ‘Scottishness’ in particular. I share the concern of Stuart Hall (1990; 1995) and others (Massey 1991; Rose 1995) to challenge ideas which reproduce notions of the ‘boundedness’ or ‘purity’ of territorial and national identities; whilst recognising that such identities are, by definition, only likely to change slowly (Therborn 1995). My approach to the analysis of national identity is to try to follow the ‘social construction of reality’ thinking which informs much current writing on the relationships between ethnicity, place and identity (Jackson and Penrose 1993). From that point of view, regarding Scottish national cultural identity in the late twentieth century,

scholarly journals Issues of Citizenship, National Identity and Political Socialization in Singapore: Implications to the Singapore Education System

2014 ◽  
Vol 2013 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-59
Author(s):  
Vicente Chua Reyes
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Education System ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Political Socialization ◽  
Nation Building ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
City State ◽  
Building Project

AbstractThis inquiry attempts to address the question: How has the Singapore city-state used its education system in integrating three important cornerstones of nation-building? Using selected data from the National Orientations of Singaporeans Survey complemented by policy documents, this article explores three specific questions: (1) How is citizenship education pursued? (2) How is national identity forged? And (3) How is political socialization engendered? The inquiry concludes with challenges that the Singapore education system faces as it tries to address its nation-building project

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