In this ethnographic examination of women’s mosques in the Maldives, anthropologist Jacqueline H. Fewkes probes how the existence of these separate buildings—where women lead prayers for other women—intersect with larger questions about gender, space, and global Muslim communities. Bringing together ethnographic insight with historical accounts, this volume develops an understanding of the particular religious and cultural trends in the Maldives that have given rise to these unique socio-religious institutions. As Fewkes considers women’s spaces in the Maldives as a practice apart from contemporary global Islamic customs, she interrogates the intersections between local, national, and transnational communities in the development of Islamic spaces, linking together the role of nations in the formation of Muslim social spaces with transnational conceptualizations of Islamic gendered spaces. Using the Maldivian women’s mosque as a starting point, this book addresses the roles of both the nation and the global Muslim ummah in locating gendered spaces within discourses about gender and Islam.

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

In this ethnographic examination of women's mosques in the Maldives, anthropologist Jacqueline H. Fewkes probes how the existence of these separate buildings--where women lead prayers for other women--intersect with larger questions about gender, space, and global Muslim communities. Bringing together ethnographic insight with historical accounts, this volume develops an understanding of the particular religious and cultural trends in the Maldives that have given rise to these unique socio-religious institutions. As Fewkes considers women's spaces in the Maldives as a practice apart from contemporary global Islamic customs, she interrogates the intersections between local, national, and transnational communities in the development of Islamic spaces, linking together the role of nations in the formation of Muslim social spaces with transnational conceptualizations of Islamic gendered spaces. Using the Maldivian women's mosque as a starting point, this book addresses the roles of both the nation and the global Muslim ummah in locating gendered spaces within discourses about gender and Islam.

Beyond the tropical paradise and beyond the fear of climate change effects, the Maldives is a fascinating island country that faces social, cultural, economic and environmental transformations. Atolls of the Maldives: Nissology and Geography provides a spatial analysis on some key challenges the Maldivian society has to deal with, and guides the reader in the discovery of the human and environmental geography of this Indian Ocean archipelago. Geographers, political scientists, sociologists, geologists, biologists and experts in environmental policies help the audience to move through the complex systems of interrelations, connections and disconnections that shape the environment and the geography of this extraordinary archipelagic country.

The eight articles published in this Special Issue present original, empirical research, using various methods of data collection and analysis, in relation to topics that are pertinent to the study of Islam and Muslims in Australia. The contributors include long-serving scholars in the field, mid-career researchers, and early career researchers who represent many of Australia’s universities engaged in Islamic and Muslim studies, including the Australian National University, Charles Sturt University, Deakin University, Griffith University, and the University of Newcastle. The topics covered in this Special Issue include how Muslim Australians understand Islam (Rane et al. 2020); ethical and epistemological challenges facing Islamic and Muslim studies researchers (Mansouri 2020); Islamic studies in Australia’s university sector (Keskin and Ozalp 2021); Muslim women’s access to and participation in Australia’s mosques (Ghafournia 2020); religion, belonging and active citizenship among Muslim youth in Australia (Ozalp and Ćufurović), the responses of Muslim community organizations to Islamophobia (Cheikh Hussain 2020); Muslim ethical elites (Roose 2020); and the migration experiences of Hazara Afghans (Parkes 2020).

This book explores the everyday life of Muslims in late imperial China proper (“Sino-Muslims”), revealing how they integrated themselves into Chinese society, while also maintaining distinct Islamic features. Deeming “identity” as practical, interactive, and processual, it focuses on Sino-Muslims’ daily networking practices which embodied their numerous processes of identification with people around them. Through an evaluation of such practices, it displays how, since the early seventeenth century, Sino-Muslims vigorously formed and participated in popular religious and secular networks at local, translocal, and China-wide scales, including mosques, merchant associations, gentry groups, Islamic educational and publishing networks. It demonstrates how such networks facilitated Sino-Muslims to become more aligned with the tempo of change in Chinese society and imperial governance, and created for them more ingenious venues and means to identify with Islam. Ultimately it reveals how, by the first half of the nineteenth century, a sense of collectivity—with common knowledge, memory, and discourse—was generated among dispersed Sino-Muslims. Utilizing Sino-Muslims’ own records such as steles, genealogies, and Chinese Islamic texts, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of comparative Muslim studies, Qing and early modern China, religious and ethnic identity, and professionals of Sino-Arab relations.

Repositioning mosques as social, cultural and political spaces, this book provides new insights on key contemporary debates, the religious identity of Britain, secularisation, the far-right and terrorism, and gender equality. Exploring the story of the British mosque, from house conversions to grand works of architecture, and the role they play in public life, Abdul-Azim Ahmed details the establishment of early mosques during the era of Empire, and the rapid growth in the years following the Second World War. Ahmed takes a sociological approach to this study, drawing on fieldwork and ethnographic case-studies, alongside reviews of databases and historical documents to provide perspectives on the British mosque from the congregants themselves. The Muslim congregation, a poorly understood and often overlooked dimension of religion in Britain, is examined, and issues of diversity, denomination, sacredness, and society are explored.