In Mozambique and Guinea, the Portuguese colonial administration had to deal with Muslim communities of significant population expression and whose internal cultural differentiations presented a complexity to which the administrative power was often unprepared. The exercise of this governance, with all the variations that characterized it, extended throughout the period that the colonial project lasted, from the phase of effective military occupation, in the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, until the end of the colonial wars in 1974. In this chronological segment, Portuguese Colonialism and Islam seeks to address the circumstances of the colonial governance and regulation of those populations, focusing on: (1) The representations and images of Islam and Muslims that the agents of Portuguese colonialism produced at significant stages of the period, the recurrence of this imagery, its evolution, and the way it interacted with the concrete policies of control and governance of the populations. (2) The changes that such policies underwent, oscillating between a posture of ambivalent hostility, more visible in the 1930s to 1950s and more present in Mozambique than in Guinea, and a strategy of rapprochement with the Islamic leadership and their religious enticement, a strategy developed in the final phase of the Colonial War as part of the fight against nationalist movements. (3) The critical eye with which representatives of former colonial powers followed the Portuguese policies of governance of Islam, expressed in the testimonies of consuls-general of France and the United Kingdom, and documents conveying how diplomatic bodies perceived the Portuguese colonial system.

Colonial and post-colonial governance of Islam" is een heldere weergave van de kansen en belemmeringen voor de islam vanuit een bestuurlijke benadering met speciale aandacht voor de voortdurende strijd rond de codificatie van islamitisch onderwijs, religieuze autoriteit, wetgeving en praktijk. De auteurs onderzoeken de overeenkomsten en verschillen van de islam in het Britse, Franse en Portugese koloniale bestuur. Zij maken gebruik van hun expertise om de aard van de regelgeving in verschillende historische periodes en geografische gebieden te analyseren. Deze studie opent nieuwe mogelijkheden voor mondiaal onderzoek naar studies van de islam.

How did the colonization of Goa in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries take place? How was it related to projects for the conversion of Goan colonial subjects to Catholicism? In Religion and Empire in Portuguese India, Ângela Barreto Xavier examines these questions through a reading of the relevant secular and missionary archives and texts. She shows how the twin drives of conversion and colonization in Portuguese India resulted in a variety of outcomes, ranging from negotiation to passive resistance to moments of extreme violence. Focusing on the rural hinterlands rather than the city of Goa itself, Barreto Xavier shows how Goan actors were able to seize hold of complex cultural resources in order to further their own projects and narrate their own myths and histories. In the process, she argues, Portuguese Goa emerged as a space with a specific identity that was a result of these contestations and interactions. The book de-essentializes the categories of colonizer and colonized, making visible instead their inner-group diversity of interests, their different modes of identification, and the specificity of local dynamics in their interactions and exchanges—in other words, the several threads that wove the fabric of colonial life.

This book discusses the critical legal issues raised by the US responses to the terrorist threat, analyzing the actions taken by the Bush administration during the so-called "war on terrorism" and their compliance with international law. Thomas McDonnell highlights specific topics of legal interest including torture, extra-judicial detentions and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and examines them against the backdrop of terrorist movements which have plagued Britain and Russia. The book extrapolates from the actions of the USA, going on to look at the difficulties all modern democracies face in trying to combat international terrorism. This book demonstrates why current counter-terrorism practices and policies should be rejected, and new policies adopted that are compatible with international law. Written for students of law, academics and policy-makers, the volume demonstrates the dangers that breaking international law carries in the "war on terrorism".

Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.

In 1938, noting that the bulk of the Indian population formed a "e;landless proletariat"e; and despairing of the ability of the factionalized Indian community to unite in pursuit of common objectives, activist K.A. Neelakanda Ayer forecast that the fate of Indians in Malaya would be to become "e;Tragic orphans"e; of whom India has forgotten and Malaya looks down upon with contempt"e;. Ayer's words continue to resonate; as a minority group in a nation dominated politically by colonially derived narratives of "e;race"e; and ethnicity and riven by the imperatives of religion, the general trajectory of the economically and politically impotent Indian community has been one of increasing irrelevance. This book explores the history of the modern Indian presence in Malaysia, and traces the vital role played by the Indian community in the construction of contemporary Malaysia. In this comprehensive new study, Carl Vadivella Belle offers fresh insights on the Indian experience spanning the period from the colonial recruitment of Indian labour to the post-Merdeka political, economic and social marginalization of Indians. While recent Indian challenges to the political status quo - a regime described as that of "e;benign neglect"e; - promoted Indian hopes of reform, change and uplift, the author concludes that the dictates of political discourse permeated by the ideologies of communalism offer limited prospects for meaningful change.

In 2004, a conference was held at King’s College London to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Charles Boxer. The theme of the conference was the development of the culturally mixed ‘Portuguese’ societies in Asia, Africa and America, which reflected Boxer’s own interest in the social history of Portugal’s overseas empire. Although the conference papers were published by Bristol University, this volume is long out of print and the outstanding quality of many of the contributions has made it necessary for this collection to be republished. Portuguese overseas expansion over a period of five centuries led to the formation of many mixed or creole communities which drew culturally not only on Portugal, but also on indigenous societies. This cross-cultural interaction gave rise to a creole ‘Portuguese’ identity that in many cases outlasted the formal empire itself. Reflecting upon the main tenets of Boxer’s work, this collection provides a broad geographical perspective upon areas of Portuguese presence in Guinea, Cape Verde, Angola, São Tomé, Brazil and Goa. The chapters cover a wide range of social strata, including plantation slave and maroon communities, private settler-traders and pirates, indigenous trade-diasporas, and Luso-African, Luso-Brazilian and Afro-Brazilian groups, as well as the formation of Creole elites against the background of shifting racial, gender, ethnic, linguistic and religious boundaries. As such, this collection represents an exercise in ‘subaltern’ history which shows that the informal social relations were often more important in the long term than the formal structures of empire.