Podcasts about muslim civilisations

For centuries, the Indian Ocean has been a vast crossroads of cultures, goods, and ideas - but what role did Islam play in weaving this intricate web of connections?  Arab, Berber, Persian and Indian merchants spread Islam from the seventh century onwards across the vast geographic areas of the Sahara and the Indian Ocean. Muslims in turn fostered diasporas, built architectural marvels, and circulated ideas, from the spice routes of Gujarat to the Swahili coast of Zanzibar. This episode unravels the “longue durée” of Islam's influence, tracing how faith, trade, and culture transformed global interactions and local identities across continents.   Join Walid Ghali and Farouk Topan from the Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, and Daren Ray, from Brigham Young University as we challenge conventional narratives and spotlight the centrality of Muslim cultures in understanding the Indian Ocean's interconnected past - and its enduring legacy today.

Historically, Turkey has always had a strong women's rights movement, stemming from the days of the Ottoman Empire through to the emergence of the Republic of Turkey into the present day. At the top of the movement's agenda now is the fight to protect women against violence from men. It's three years since Turkey pulled out of the Istanbul Convention, the Europe wide treaty on combatting violence against women and girls. The Turkish Government has its own version of domestic violence law, but there are concerns that this doesn't offer the same protection as the Convention. Campaigners say that femicide and violence against women continues to plague society and that there is an increasingly anti-gender rhetoric within mainstream politics. So, this week on The Inquiry, we're asking ‘Is Turkey getting more dangerous for women?'Contributors: Dr. Sevgi Adak, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, The Aga Khan University. Professor Seda Demiralp, Işık University, Turkey. Dr. Ezel Buse Sönmezocak, International Human Rights Lawyer, Turkey Dr. Hürcan Aslı Aksoy, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Berlin.Presenter: Emily Wither Producer: Jill Collins Researcher: Katie Morgan Production Co-ordinator: Liam Morrey Image credit: Cagla Gurdogan via REUTERS from BBC Images

Nancy Hawker (The Aga Khan University) considers the developing place of Arabic in official nation-statist platforms in Israel In the governing institutions of Israel, Arabic is suppressed. This practice crystallised in the early years of the state: there were points in history where it might not have gone in the direction of suppression; some activists in the 1960s had campaigned for some kind of minority Arabic-speaking official state platform to be maintained. In relation to insider/outsider dynamics, Arabic-speakers who also speak Hebrew make linguistic choices that result in the avoidance of Arabic in situations where Jewish Israelis are also present. These two elements form the sociolinguistic habitus of the Palestinians and other Arabs in the area controlled by Israel. When speaking Arabic, to give their propositions authority, Palestinians and other Arabs mobilise multilingual repertoires, including codeswitching with and borrowing from Hebrew, for rhetoric effect and style. The analysis moves away from scholarship that has been concerned 'language endangerment' which has channeled concerns about political problems. The Palestinian multilinguals are performing the aspirations of an emergent middle class elite. On the political stage, this elite challenges the ethnorepublican political structures of Israel, as well as ethnonationalist campaigns, with different inhabitations of citizenship that envisage liberal equality, dignity and autonomy. Under conditions of late capitalism, multilingual language skills are re-packaged as marketable resource: this creates value, but in a contested way, with ambivalent opportunities. With evidence from fieldwork on the political campaigning trails, from street surveys, from cultural products, and from archive sources, the research presented at the seminar contributes to work in sociolinguistics linking language with politics via discursive practices that negotiate who is a legitimate speaker. In conclusion it considers that speakers with sufficient linguistic and material resources – an elite class – form (political, cultural) platforms on which they insist on the legitimacy of their speech. This is not a pattern confined to Palestinians: it is a perfectly normal adaptation of speakers of undervalued languages communicating in contexts of linguistic hegemonies. Dr Nancy Hawker (DPhil Oxon, MA SOAS) is the 2019 Research Fellow at the Aga Khan University – Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (https://www.aku.edu/govprogramme/Pages/home.aspx). Her current research analyses audience receptivity to women's testimonies that have been translated between Arabic and English in human rights organisations. Her main research has been on the sociolinguistics of Palestinian Arabic and Modern Israeli Hebrew in zones of contact and conflict. After publishing Palestinian-Israeli Contact and Linguistic Practices (2013), her Leverhulme Fellowship at Oxford University (2014-2019) resulted in The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking for Citizenship (2019). She previously worked at Amnesty International's Secretariat in London.

Nancy Hawker (The Aga Khan University) considers the developing place of Arabic in official nation-statist platforms in Israel In the governing institutions of Israel, Arabic is suppressed. This practice crystallised in the early years of the state: there were points in history where it might not have gone in the direction of suppression; some activists in the 1960s had campaigned for some kind of minority Arabic-speaking official state platform to be maintained. In relation to insider/outsider dynamics, Arabic-speakers who also speak Hebrew make linguistic choices that result in the avoidance of Arabic in situations where Jewish Israelis are also present. These two elements form the sociolinguistic habitus of the Palestinians and other Arabs in the area controlled by Israel. When speaking Arabic, to give their propositions authority, Palestinians and other Arabs mobilise multilingual repertoires, including codeswitching with and borrowing from Hebrew, for rhetoric effect and style. The analysis moves away from scholarship that has been concerned 'language endangerment' which has channeled concerns about political problems. The Palestinian multilinguals are performing the aspirations of an emergent middle class elite. On the political stage, this elite challenges the ethnorepublican political structures of Israel, as well as ethnonationalist campaigns, with different inhabitations of citizenship that envisage liberal equality, dignity and autonomy. Under conditions of late capitalism, multilingual language skills are re-packaged as marketable resource: this creates value, but in a contested way, with ambivalent opportunities. With evidence from fieldwork on the political campaigning trails, from street surveys, from cultural products, and from archive sources, the research presented at the seminar contributes to work in sociolinguistics linking language with politics via discursive practices that negotiate who is a legitimate speaker. In conclusion it considers that speakers with sufficient linguistic and material resources – an elite class – form (political, cultural) platforms on which they insist on the legitimacy of their speech. This is not a pattern confined to Palestinians: it is a perfectly normal adaptation of speakers of undervalued languages communicating in contexts of linguistic hegemonies. Dr Nancy Hawker (DPhil Oxon, MA SOAS) is the 2019 Research Fellow at the Aga Khan University – Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (https://www.aku.edu/govprogramme/Pages/home.aspx). Her current research analyses audience receptivity to women's testimonies that have been translated between Arabic and English in human rights organisations. Her main research has been on the sociolinguistics of Palestinian Arabic and Modern Israeli Hebrew in zones of contact and conflict. After publishing Palestinian-Israeli Contact and Linguistic Practices (2013), her Leverhulme Fellowship at Oxford University (2014-2019) resulted in The Politics of Palestinian Multilingualism: Speaking for Citizenship (2019). She previously worked at Amnesty International’s Secretariat in London.

För en gångs skull en bra skildring av vad det innebär att vara ung och religiös. Den norska tv-serien SKAM - enormt populär främst bland tonåringar och unga vuxna - går mot sin final. Människor och tros reporter Matilda Ljungkvist har träffat två unga religiösa och pratat om hur det är att möta jämnårigas fördomar. I veckans program tar vi också upp frågan om utländsk finansiering av moskéer. Stora donationer från Qatar och Saudiarabien, innebär de att givare köper sig inflytande över vilken sorts islam som får utrymme i Sverige och andra europeiska länder? Vi intervjuar Ammar Daoud från den nybyggda moskén i Malmö och Olle Lönnaeus, journalist som bevakat frågan i tidningen Sydsvenskan. Medverkar gör också islamologen Leif Stenberg, direktor vid institutet för Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations vid Aga Khanuniversitet i London. Sveriges radios korrespondenter i Berlin och Paris, Daniela Marquardt och Margareta Svensson, rapporterar om hur frågan om utländsk finansiering av moskéer debatteras i Tyskland och Frankrike. Esther Kazen är nyvigd pastor i Equmeniakyrkan, Flatåskyrkan i Göteborg. Som @Feministpastorn har hon snabbt fått många följare i sociala medier. I Människor och tro berättar hon vad hon försöker uppnå med sin kommunikation på nätet. Veckans krönika kommer från Margita Boström och handlar om det nätverk som startats av Indonesiens största muslimska organisation och som försöker verka för en mer moderat form av islam. På plats i Arvidsjaur är vår reporter Alexandra Sandels, som rapporterar kort från Samiska kyrkodagarna med deltagare från flera länder. Hör mer om detta nästa vecka, då vi ägnar hela programmet åt temat samer och tro.

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant's analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant's exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant's work illuminating.

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant’s analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant’s exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant’s work illuminating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant’s analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant’s exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant’s work illuminating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant’s analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant’s exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant’s work illuminating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant’s analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant’s exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant’s work illuminating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sarah Bowen Savant, Associate Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University in London, addresses important questions about conversion among Persian peoples from the ninth to eleventh century CE in her work The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory, and Conversion (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Memory is the centerpiece of her study. In the first half of her work, Savant’s analysis of memory, known as mnemohistory, coalesces around certain “sites of memory” which can include people, such as Salman al-Farisi, places, and events, with particular attention paid to conquest (futuh) narratives. These cases demonstrate how Persian identity was woven into the framework of pre-Islamic history and early Islam. However, remembering is not the only aspect that helped shape Persian, Muslim identity; forgetting is an equally important element according to Savant. Forgetting allowed irreconcilable features of Persian identity and history to be limited. The second half of her work highlights important strategies of forgetting, such as the replacing one past with an alternative account or the use of unfavorable elements of pre-Islamic Persia. Savant’s exploration of memory and its impact upon Persian, Muslim identify helps to answer important questions about conversion in early Islam. Readers, both scholars of Islam and historians in general, will find Savant’s work illuminating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices