Workshop Review
Collective Contexts of Islamic Identity: intersections between Community, Gender and Religion
6-7 April 2009
The workshop was held on the 6-7th April 2009 in the CRASSH premises. The proceedings began on the first day at 9.30 am with an introduction by Dr. Shailaja Fennell, who set out the background and objective of the conference: to examine the role of the collective in the every day lives and practices of men and women in Islamic communities both in Islamic countries and in diasporic contexts.
The first session provided a perspsective on gender in everyday life with papers by Dr. Dina M Siddiqi on Nurjahan and her Sisters: Gender, Community and Religion in Rural Bangladesh and Dr. Annu Jalais on Horsing through Dhaka: mapping the trails of Paikis' Urdu pasts. The second session of the morning focused on the use of religion by actors in the state and in civil society and the interactions between these ,with papers by Dr. Kikue Hamayotsu on Beyond Sacred and Secular: Islamist Party Mobilization in Muslim Southeast Asia and Dr. Maleeha Aslam on The Simplicity and, the Complexity of Islamic Identity in Pakistan. The post lunch session saw a change in location and context and provided a Central Asian dimension with papers by Dr. Siddharth S Saxena, Projected commonality in Bukhara: A model of Eastern cosmopolitanism and Dr. Razia Sultanova on Music-Making and the Media in Uzbekistan. This was followed by a round table discussion and the delegates then proceeded to dinner at Jesus College.
The second day kicked of with papers from the humanities, with Dr. Ananya Jahanara Kabir speaking on The Sufi Rocker as New Man? Music, Debate and Masculinity in Contemporary Pakistan and Dr. Stephen Fennel giving an exposition on Pearl from a Grain of Sand: A Case of Gender Lens in the History of Early Sufism. After the coffee break there were was a session on the engagement of men and women in the context of gendered identity with papers by Adeel Khan on Companionship between Men and Women in the Islamic University and Dr. Shailaja Fennell on Spaces and Bodies: locating seclusion and segregation in the creation of collective identity. The final session was held after lunch with two papers on the negotiation on marriage and divorce by Muslim women in European contexts with papers by Federica Sona on Restructured post-secular religions and European Muslim tessellated identities and Aisha Anees Malik speaking on The Social Worlds of British-Pakistani Muslim Women in Slough.
The workshop was well attended by a group of twenty odd delegates in addition to the twelve speakers. The discussions on both days were rich and conducted in an open and supportive environment. There, was considerable sharing of ideas across academic disciplinary frameworks as well commentaries and comparisons of the different contexts within which local lives and identities were located across Muslim spaces. The speakers and delegates provided feedback that this was a very valuable experience and expressed the hope that there would be the possibility of a sequel workshop in the future. As the organizer, I hope to be able to put together a proposal and seek funding for a second and maybe larger conference in 2011.
I would like to thank CRASSH and the Malayasian Commonwealth Trust for
their financial support. I would also like to thank Anna Malinowska, Phillipa
Smith and Catherine Hurley for their support and all the staff of CRASSH for
their help through out the two days of the workshop.
Dr Shailaja Fennell, Development Studies
