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- All Subjects: Middle Eastern Studies
- Creators: Talebi, Shahla
Description
This study is based on a submission of anthropological, historical, and literary approaches. The ethnographic study of the Shi'a holy shrines between November 2011 and January 2012 is based on my visit to Iraq. The study lasted almost ten weeks, to include the two events under discussion: `Ashurā and Al-Arb`ain, in Karbala of that year. This thesis argues that the mourning rituals of `Ashurā and the Forty Day Visitation Zyarat Al-Arb`ain contribute to the social or individual life of Iraqi Shi'a. They also make significant contributions through creating a symbolic language to communicate for the community, as well as communicating with their essential symbolic structure. Second, the Forty Day Visitation Zyarat Al-Arb`ain is one of the most significant collective mourning rituals, one that expresses unity and solidarity of the Iraqi Shi'a community, and helps them to represent their collective power, and maintain their collective existence. This study uses two of Victor Turner's tripartite models. For `Ashurā the rite of passage rituals is used, which consists of the separation, margin, and re-aggregation phase. Through this process of entering and leaving time and social structure, it helps in changing the social status of the participants. The other model used for Al-Arb`ain is pilgrimage as a social process, which includes three levels of communitas: existential, normative, and ideological communitas. The Shi'a in Iraq are holding a position similar to Turner's notion of communitas since they are living within a society that is Muslim and yet even though they are a larger population of the society, they still become marginalized by the Sunni population socially, economically, and politically. Social relations and links play a significant role for Shi'a in `Ashurā and Al-Arb`ain as a reflection between their social status as an undefined communitas and the general structure of Iraqi society.
ContributorsHamdan, Faraj Hattab (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Ali, Souad T. (Thesis advisor) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Committee member) / Gereboff, Joel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation aims to explore the diverse ways in which piety is conceptualized and cultivated by highly-educated Muslim women in Turkey. These women hold active positions within the secular-public sphere while trying to keep their aim of becoming pious in their own way, in relation to their subjective understanding of piety. After a detailed analysis of the formation of the secular modern public sphere in Turkey, in relation to the questions of modernity, nation-building, secularism, Islamism, and the gender relations, it gives an account of the individual routes taken by the highly educated professional women to particular aspirations of piety. The individual stories are designed to show the arbitrariness of many modern binary oppositions such as modern vs. traditional, secular vs. religious, liberated vs. oppressed, individual vs. communal, and etc. These individual routes are also analyzed within a collective framework through an analysis of the activities of two women's NGO's addressing at their attempt of building a collective attitude toward the secular-liberal conception of gender and sexuality. Finally the dissertation argues that Turkey has the capacity to deconstruct the aforementioned binary categories with its macro-level sociopolitical experience, and the micro-level everyday life experiences of ordinary people. It also reveals that piety cannot be measured with outward expressions, or thought as a sociopolitical categorization. Because just like secularism, piety has also the capacity to penetrate into the everyday lives of people from diverse sociopolitical backgrounds, which opens up possibilities of rethinking the religious-secular divide, and all the other binaries that come with it.
ContributorsTopal, Semiha (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Cady, Linell (Committee member) / Ali, Souad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Following the 1991 Gulf War, the ruling royal family of Saudi Arabia constrained the religious establishment by remapping the hierarchy of authority in the kingdom legally, conceptually, and historically. Ṣaddām Ḥusayn’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 constituted an unprecedented crisis in Saudi politics which contributed to the religious establishment questioning the political legitimacy of the ruling royal family, Al Saud. The elite religious establishment, or ulamā, publicly challenged the legitimacy of Al Saud’s unchecked authority when they composed the 1991 Letter of Demands. After the war, I suggest that ruling elites set out to change the basis of their political legitimacy by redefining the religiopolitical orthodoxy which governs their relationship with the religious establishment. I propose that the 1992 Basic Law of Governance—the first positive legal charter for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—expands the authority of the King while offering the appearance of constraining the exercise of political authority. In this thesis, I analyze the ways in which the text of the Letter of Demands and the Basic Law of Governance offer disparate visions of orthodox Islamic governance according to the Saudi tradition. I hypothesize that the text of the Letter of Demands, as well as the circumstances surrounding its production, involved a reassertion of authority by the elite religious establishment in religious spaces. I suggest that, in response, the Basic Law of Governance expanded the authority of the King and delivered an alternative vision of Saudi orthoprax governance. I contemplate some of the ways that expanding their authority was part of a larger project undertaken by the royal family after the 1991 Gulf War to redefine Saudi religiopolitical orthodoxy. Finally, I offer a meditation on the idea that the project undertaken by Al Saud to redefine Saudi religiopolitical orthodoxy necessitated reformulating the historical narrative of the kingdom’s origin and policy in the twentieth century. In this thesis, I set out to contemplate the epistemic relationship between sociopolitical inflection and diachronic changes to Islamic concepts. In other words, how do Islamic concepts, and the practices they underlie, change over time and in response to moments of social and political crisis? This is where I imagine my work broadly contributing to Religious Studies as a field. I am interested in historical instances where political authorities instrumentalize cultural forms, including historical narratives and religious discourses, to legitimize their own interests, consolidate power, and maintain hegemony. The instrumentalization of religiocultural discourses in order to articulate new modes of state and subject formation is a vital topic of inquiry. I aspire that my work can contribute to this tertiary dialogue by showcasing one historical instance where religious concepts and historical narratives were instrumentalized to legitimize elite interests, consolidate monopolistic political power, and maintain social, political, and cultural forms of hegemony. My aim is to use these narratives about epistemic violence to trouble the power dynamics that get reproduced in Euro-North American knowledge produced about the Global South.
ContributorsBean, Skyler Allen (Author) / Talebi, Shahla (Thesis advisor) / Liew, Han Hsien (Committee member) / Alhassan, Shamara Wyllie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023