Jamal Malik, studied at Bonn (M.A. 1982), acquired Doctorate from Heidelberg (1989), and completed his post-doctoral work at Bamberg (1994). In 1998 he was appointed Head and Chair of Religious Studies, University of Derby. Since February 1999 he is Chair of Islamic Studies at University of Erfurt, Germany. Malik is member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and Fellow Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, U.K. His areas of interest are social and cultural history of Muslim South Asia, and Muslims in the West. Publications include Sufism in the West (London: Routledge 2006), Islam in South Asia – A Short History (Leiden: Brill 2008; Indian edition: Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan Ltd. 2012).
This paper focuses the arguments upon Said's Orientalism and its symmetrical sideOccidentali... more This paper focuses the arguments upon Said's Orientalism and its symmetrical sideOccidentalism. Orientalism includes AutoOrientalism and PseudoOrientalism; similarly, Occidentalism includs AutoOccidentalism and PseudoOccidentalism. AutoOrientalsim and AutoOccidentalism represent the real East and the real West respectively; while PseudoOrientalism and PseudoOccidentalism represent the distorted, imaginary East and West respectively. In the regions of the same cultural traditions, people can know real objects; while in the regions of different cultural traditions, people can know pseudo objects only.
This thesis explores the position of the Somali women in the city Amersfoort in the Netherlands a... more This thesis explores the position of the Somali women in the city Amersfoort in the Netherlands as their second home. As one of the new immigrants in the Netherlands, Somali women experience exclusion and assimilation at the same time. This condition hinders them from being part of the larger Dutch society. Additionally, majority of Somali women in the Netherlands are analphabetic. This thesis examines how Somali women in the Netherlands deal with life after immigrating to the Netherlands. Using Amersfoort municipality as case study location, this study focuses the nature of the social-economic life and what factors influence them. Primarily, the study looks at factors such as education, labor market participation and the obstacles they encounter. This is because; the position of migrant groups in any given society is influenced by above-mentioned factors. This thesis found out that Somali women experience difficulties of getting education to stand better chance of finding job in Amersfoort in order to develop their life. According to Somali women, the main cause of the difficulties is their integration and participation in the Dutch society is because of their otherness from the autochthonous, but also the gender position in their own community
After Iran, the Indian subcontinent is home to the second largest Shiʿite population. After the d... more After Iran, the Indian subcontinent is home to the second largest Shiʿite population. After the death of the Prophet of Islam, Muslims split into groups of Kharijites, Shiʿites, and Sunnis over the issue of legitimate succession: whether it should be the outstanding merits in the cause of Islam (sabiqa) or close kinship ties with the Prophet's family (nasab). In the cultural fabric and the Islamic sacralisation of South Asia, the Shia played an important role, particularly the Ismailis who fled the Sunnite-dominated areas to find refuge along the river Indus. Today Khojas are headed by the present Agha Khan, the fourtyninth direct descendant in a male line down from ʿAli, with followers in Pakistan, India, Iran, Yemen, and East Africa. Growing influence and popularity of Shiism on the subcontinent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its increasing visibility provoked harsh reactions from the Sunni revivalist movements.Keywords: East Africa; Islam; Khojas; Muslims; Shiʿites; Shia; South Asia; Sunnis
The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European intera... more The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European interaction, both in urban centres and in the qasbahs, as well as in other semi-urban regions, where their base had been built on a long cultural and intellectual tradition. The Arabised Ahl-e Hadith refused to acknowledge any authority of legal schools (madhahib) and also the emerging modernism which had started rallying behind Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1899). Both movements, the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis, attempted to legitimise the new social realities within the framework of Islamic worldviews more or less by addressing the traditional" sector rather than the colonial, though there was societal overlapping. As the Aligarh movement was not able to integrate the intellectuals, leaving out mystics and ulama, other Muslim forces began to form an alternative loyal interest group.Keywords: Ahl-e Hadith; Aligarh movement; Deobandis; Islam; Muslim forces; qasbahs; Sayyid Ahmad Khan
The socio-economic and political developments following the decline of the Mughal Empire and the ... more The socio-economic and political developments following the decline of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of European colonial power had a profound impact on both the colonialised culture and the colonialiser. The British rule of law and order in India had to be Indian, both Muslim as well as Hindu, as conceived by the British. By the end of the century, the British were the sole European power in India. British officials felt heavily inclined towards Indian/Muslim reformist scholars and Sufis. Whether the protagonists of the Muhammadan Path" and Mujahidin acted under the protection of the British, to weaken the stubborn Sikhs, is not yet clear. Reformers of the Tariqah-ye Muhammadi used the emerging printing press and disseminated their ideas of pure Islam in local languages such as Bengali and Urdu, as Marc Gaborieau has elaborated in detail.Keywords: British; European; Hindu; India; Islam; Marc Gaborieau; Muhammadan Path; Muslim; Tariqah-ye Muhammadi
The process of religious conversion attracts the attention and scholarship of psychologists, anth... more The process of religious conversion attracts the attention and scholarship of psychologists, anthropologists, historians and theologians alike. Religious conversion is often experienced as a re-birth or awakening, leading to a sudden change in one's worldview, lifestyle and environment. There have been many theories on the main impulses triggering mass conversions to Islam in South Asia are characterised as: religion of the sword", religion of social liberation", Sufi missionary," political patronage" and ecological influences". The religion of social liberation" theory puts forward the argument that conversion to Islam was motivated by the offer of equality to casteweary Indians. The Sufi as missionary" theory suggests that Muslim mystics systematically brought Islam to Hindus through their preaching and by force of their character. Immigration theorists" believe that the majority of Indian Muslims are descendants of those which sailed across the Arabian Sea from the Iranian plateau.Keywords: Islam; Muslims; political patronage; religious conversion; social liberation; South Asia; Sufi missionary
This index section presents list of keywords that occur in this book Islam in South Asia. South A... more This index section presents list of keywords that occur in this book Islam in South Asia. South Asia comprises a vast geographical area, half the size of Europe. The discussions on Islamic identity and normativity, the degree of orthodoxy and the following of Prophetic tradition are constitutive for scholarly Islam which again is informed by superiority complexes. The book discusses the early Muslim expansion and the formative phase in context of initial cultural encounter.Keywords: Islam; Muslim expansion; Prophetic tradition; South Asia
The Jamaʿat -Islami gradually became political ammunition in the hands of authoritarian regimes p... more The Jamaʿat -Islami gradually became political ammunition in the hands of authoritarian regimes precisely because of its reformist ambitions which it only felt to be realised in a strong - Islamic - state as the embodiment of alternative modernity. The Islamisation policy in Pakistan since Zia al-Haqq generated a new phase of institutionalisation in religious schools through, among others, their conditional recognition by the University Grants Commission. The promised Islamisation and plans to improve the literacy rate have not translated into jobs for them; on the contrary, the lack of proper measures comprises a potential source of internal conflict. Given that after the mysterious death of Zia al-Haqq in 1988, the democratically elected government of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) under the leadership of the daughter of former prime minister Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, mistrusted the active participation of regional forces and especially the participation of the advancing religious dignitaries.Keywords: Islamisation; Jamaʿat -Islami; Pakistan; Pakistan People's Party (PPP); Zia al-Haqq; Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto
The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European intera... more The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European interaction, both in urban centres and in the qasbahs, as well as in other semi-urban regions, where their base had been built on a long cultural and intellectual tradition. The Arabised Ahl-e Hadith refused to acknowledge any authority of legal schools (madhahib) and also the emerging modernism which had started rallying behind Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1899). Both movements, the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis, attempted to legitimise the new social realities within the framework of Islamic worldviews more or less by addressing the traditional" sector rather than the colonial, though there was societal overlapping. As the Aligarh movement was not able to integrate the intellectuals, leaving out mystics and ulama, other Muslim forces began to form an alternative loyal interest group.Keywords: Ahl-e Hadith; Aligarh movement; Deobandis; Islam; Muslim forces; qasbahs; Sayyid Ahmad Khan
The restructuring of the Indian administrative body, the supposed lack of political guidance, and... more The restructuring of the Indian administrative body, the supposed lack of political guidance, and increased industrialisation eventually forced the impoverished self-dependent Muslim artisans, weavers and lower middle class Indian Muslims to engage in occupations that did not pose a challenge to the Hindu majority. The isolation of the Muslims from the Hindu majority, which both sides fostered, in an ontological twist, translated into a master narrative of the under-representation of Muslims in the public sector, military, trade and the economy. It is argued that the major problem for Indian Muslims was the lack of intellectual leadership, and of a powerful organic integration figure. Religion thus has a major impact on the collective Muslim mind such as can be seen in the wake of the mobilisation in the case of the Shah Bano affair, the issue of Salman Rushdie and Babri-Masjid.Keywords: Hindu; Indian Muslims; Salman Rushdie; Shah Bano
The major part of the world's Muslim population today lives in the large countries of South A... more The major part of the world's Muslim population today lives in the large countries of South Asia, e.g., Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. During Partition millions of Muslims, many of them of urban background, migrated from India to West-Pakistan, mainly into urban Punjab and Sind. This migration of Muslims and Hindus was followed by massacres; their painful histories have been dealt with in different ways, among others in fictional literature. Though there are no definite statistics on the social structure of Muslims available, some general statements about their complex formation and their stratification can be made primarily on the basis of anthropological research. It is a truism that various Muslim cultural articulations reflect different social backgrounds. In India there is an extremely rich variety of religious traditions. Most of them evolved and/or existed in the same territory, shared the same social habits and cultural mores.Keywords: Hindus; India; Muslims; Pakistan; Punjab
This paper focuses the arguments upon Said's Orientalism and its symmetrical sideOccidentali... more This paper focuses the arguments upon Said's Orientalism and its symmetrical sideOccidentalism. Orientalism includes AutoOrientalism and PseudoOrientalism; similarly, Occidentalism includs AutoOccidentalism and PseudoOccidentalism. AutoOrientalsim and AutoOccidentalism represent the real East and the real West respectively; while PseudoOrientalism and PseudoOccidentalism represent the distorted, imaginary East and West respectively. In the regions of the same cultural traditions, people can know real objects; while in the regions of different cultural traditions, people can know pseudo objects only.
This thesis explores the position of the Somali women in the city Amersfoort in the Netherlands a... more This thesis explores the position of the Somali women in the city Amersfoort in the Netherlands as their second home. As one of the new immigrants in the Netherlands, Somali women experience exclusion and assimilation at the same time. This condition hinders them from being part of the larger Dutch society. Additionally, majority of Somali women in the Netherlands are analphabetic. This thesis examines how Somali women in the Netherlands deal with life after immigrating to the Netherlands. Using Amersfoort municipality as case study location, this study focuses the nature of the social-economic life and what factors influence them. Primarily, the study looks at factors such as education, labor market participation and the obstacles they encounter. This is because; the position of migrant groups in any given society is influenced by above-mentioned factors. This thesis found out that Somali women experience difficulties of getting education to stand better chance of finding job in Amersfoort in order to develop their life. According to Somali women, the main cause of the difficulties is their integration and participation in the Dutch society is because of their otherness from the autochthonous, but also the gender position in their own community
After Iran, the Indian subcontinent is home to the second largest Shiʿite population. After the d... more After Iran, the Indian subcontinent is home to the second largest Shiʿite population. After the death of the Prophet of Islam, Muslims split into groups of Kharijites, Shiʿites, and Sunnis over the issue of legitimate succession: whether it should be the outstanding merits in the cause of Islam (sabiqa) or close kinship ties with the Prophet's family (nasab). In the cultural fabric and the Islamic sacralisation of South Asia, the Shia played an important role, particularly the Ismailis who fled the Sunnite-dominated areas to find refuge along the river Indus. Today Khojas are headed by the present Agha Khan, the fourtyninth direct descendant in a male line down from ʿAli, with followers in Pakistan, India, Iran, Yemen, and East Africa. Growing influence and popularity of Shiism on the subcontinent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and its increasing visibility provoked harsh reactions from the Sunni revivalist movements.Keywords: East Africa; Islam; Khojas; Muslims; Shiʿites; Shia; South Asia; Sunnis
The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European intera... more The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European interaction, both in urban centres and in the qasbahs, as well as in other semi-urban regions, where their base had been built on a long cultural and intellectual tradition. The Arabised Ahl-e Hadith refused to acknowledge any authority of legal schools (madhahib) and also the emerging modernism which had started rallying behind Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1899). Both movements, the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis, attempted to legitimise the new social realities within the framework of Islamic worldviews more or less by addressing the traditional" sector rather than the colonial, though there was societal overlapping. As the Aligarh movement was not able to integrate the intellectuals, leaving out mystics and ulama, other Muslim forces began to form an alternative loyal interest group.Keywords: Ahl-e Hadith; Aligarh movement; Deobandis; Islam; Muslim forces; qasbahs; Sayyid Ahmad Khan
The socio-economic and political developments following the decline of the Mughal Empire and the ... more The socio-economic and political developments following the decline of the Mughal Empire and the beginning of European colonial power had a profound impact on both the colonialised culture and the colonialiser. The British rule of law and order in India had to be Indian, both Muslim as well as Hindu, as conceived by the British. By the end of the century, the British were the sole European power in India. British officials felt heavily inclined towards Indian/Muslim reformist scholars and Sufis. Whether the protagonists of the Muhammadan Path" and Mujahidin acted under the protection of the British, to weaken the stubborn Sikhs, is not yet clear. Reformers of the Tariqah-ye Muhammadi used the emerging printing press and disseminated their ideas of pure Islam in local languages such as Bengali and Urdu, as Marc Gaborieau has elaborated in detail.Keywords: British; European; Hindu; India; Islam; Marc Gaborieau; Muhammadan Path; Muslim; Tariqah-ye Muhammadi
The process of religious conversion attracts the attention and scholarship of psychologists, anth... more The process of religious conversion attracts the attention and scholarship of psychologists, anthropologists, historians and theologians alike. Religious conversion is often experienced as a re-birth or awakening, leading to a sudden change in one's worldview, lifestyle and environment. There have been many theories on the main impulses triggering mass conversions to Islam in South Asia are characterised as: religion of the sword", religion of social liberation", Sufi missionary," political patronage" and ecological influences". The religion of social liberation" theory puts forward the argument that conversion to Islam was motivated by the offer of equality to casteweary Indians. The Sufi as missionary" theory suggests that Muslim mystics systematically brought Islam to Hindus through their preaching and by force of their character. Immigration theorists" believe that the majority of Indian Muslims are descendants of those which sailed across the Arabian Sea from the Iranian plateau.Keywords: Islam; Muslims; political patronage; religious conversion; social liberation; South Asia; Sufi missionary
This index section presents list of keywords that occur in this book Islam in South Asia. South A... more This index section presents list of keywords that occur in this book Islam in South Asia. South Asia comprises a vast geographical area, half the size of Europe. The discussions on Islamic identity and normativity, the degree of orthodoxy and the following of Prophetic tradition are constitutive for scholarly Islam which again is informed by superiority complexes. The book discusses the early Muslim expansion and the formative phase in context of initial cultural encounter.Keywords: Islam; Muslim expansion; Prophetic tradition; South Asia
The Jamaʿat -Islami gradually became political ammunition in the hands of authoritarian regimes p... more The Jamaʿat -Islami gradually became political ammunition in the hands of authoritarian regimes precisely because of its reformist ambitions which it only felt to be realised in a strong - Islamic - state as the embodiment of alternative modernity. The Islamisation policy in Pakistan since Zia al-Haqq generated a new phase of institutionalisation in religious schools through, among others, their conditional recognition by the University Grants Commission. The promised Islamisation and plans to improve the literacy rate have not translated into jobs for them; on the contrary, the lack of proper measures comprises a potential source of internal conflict. Given that after the mysterious death of Zia al-Haqq in 1988, the democratically elected government of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) under the leadership of the daughter of former prime minister Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto, mistrusted the active participation of regional forces and especially the participation of the advancing religious dignitaries.Keywords: Islamisation; Jamaʿat -Islami; Pakistan; Pakistan People's Party (PPP); Zia al-Haqq; Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto
The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European intera... more The self-understanding of new social formations were to some extent influenced by European interaction, both in urban centres and in the qasbahs, as well as in other semi-urban regions, where their base had been built on a long cultural and intellectual tradition. The Arabised Ahl-e Hadith refused to acknowledge any authority of legal schools (madhahib) and also the emerging modernism which had started rallying behind Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1899). Both movements, the Ahl-e Hadith and the Deobandis, attempted to legitimise the new social realities within the framework of Islamic worldviews more or less by addressing the traditional" sector rather than the colonial, though there was societal overlapping. As the Aligarh movement was not able to integrate the intellectuals, leaving out mystics and ulama, other Muslim forces began to form an alternative loyal interest group.Keywords: Ahl-e Hadith; Aligarh movement; Deobandis; Islam; Muslim forces; qasbahs; Sayyid Ahmad Khan
The restructuring of the Indian administrative body, the supposed lack of political guidance, and... more The restructuring of the Indian administrative body, the supposed lack of political guidance, and increased industrialisation eventually forced the impoverished self-dependent Muslim artisans, weavers and lower middle class Indian Muslims to engage in occupations that did not pose a challenge to the Hindu majority. The isolation of the Muslims from the Hindu majority, which both sides fostered, in an ontological twist, translated into a master narrative of the under-representation of Muslims in the public sector, military, trade and the economy. It is argued that the major problem for Indian Muslims was the lack of intellectual leadership, and of a powerful organic integration figure. Religion thus has a major impact on the collective Muslim mind such as can be seen in the wake of the mobilisation in the case of the Shah Bano affair, the issue of Salman Rushdie and Babri-Masjid.Keywords: Hindu; Indian Muslims; Salman Rushdie; Shah Bano
The major part of the world's Muslim population today lives in the large countries of South A... more The major part of the world's Muslim population today lives in the large countries of South Asia, e.g., Pakistan, India, Bangladesh. During Partition millions of Muslims, many of them of urban background, migrated from India to West-Pakistan, mainly into urban Punjab and Sind. This migration of Muslims and Hindus was followed by massacres; their painful histories have been dealt with in different ways, among others in fictional literature. Though there are no definite statistics on the social structure of Muslims available, some general statements about their complex formation and their stratification can be made primarily on the basis of anthropological research. It is a truism that various Muslim cultural articulations reflect different social backgrounds. In India there is an extremely rich variety of religious traditions. Most of them evolved and/or existed in the same territory, shared the same social habits and cultural mores.Keywords: Hindus; India; Muslims; Pakistan; Punjab
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