Medicalizing Hajj: Kamaran and Tor

Mahdi Chowdury

At the outset of the twentieth century, empires and local polities were scrambling to control the Hajj – the annual Islamic pilgrimage. In 1893, more than 30,000 people died from cholera in the Hijaz region; and from 1899 to 1923, the “sixth pandemic” of cholera, stretching from South Asia to North Africa, killed more than 34,000. In this state of emergency, medical documents conceptualized Mecca as a “relay station” for disease between East and West. For my Masters research paper, I intend to study

(i) how anxieties about epidemic diseases prompted governmental interventions aimed at regulating and medicalizing Hajj;
(ii) how pilgrims experienced the Hajj under these conditions.

To do this I intend to study the medicalization of Hajj by situating Hajj within the broader, borderless histories of the Indian Ocean.

Investigating how spatial practices of power under occupation in the Middle East shape forms of resistance

Rachel Kaliszewski

Rachel’s current research is investigating how spatial practices of power under occupation in the Middle East shape forms of resistance. Under contemporary occupations, the dominant force has found increasing ways to exercise power toward the subjects living underneath it. Technology has enabled a higher level of information to be collected, processed and communicated in real-time, giving the occupier the ability to pervade into civilians lives to an unparalleled extent. These forms of control have manifested in particularly spatialized ways, as space has become less geographically and temporally bounded, whilst at the same time become marked by walls, barriers and enclaves under occupation.

The literature identifies and analyses this shift to the conflict ‘management’ of occupation and judiciously considers the effects on life underneath it, particularly in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, and in Iraq under the U.S. led occupation of 2003. However, there is not explicit research and scholarship on how resistance, legitimacy and power can be shaped for the actors and civilians under subjugation.

To study how civilians living under occupation may be able to legitimately regain power it is necessary to understand the space that power relations have moved to: an irregular space rooted in discourse and language, which has become the arena for the competition of power. Studying the changing dynamics of power in conflict, from direct violence to increasingly indirect violence, is significant for contemporary Islam as it has become securitized. Narratives can now be seized and distributed by a variety of actors that have far-reaching consequences in spaces far removed from the conflict ‘zone’. The aim is to also investigate the effect this has on the ability of individuals and groups to resist these narratives. To begin to understand methods of resistance, it first needs to be understood how conflict, and power dynamics, have shifted in the globalised world. She will do this by comparing practices currently employed by the occupying powers in Aleppo to the previous Syrian occupation of Beirut.

To what extent do Muslim ethicists, philosophers and Qur’anic exegetes elaborate upon the notion and ethics of friendship and to what degree do they proscribe friendships with non-Muslims?

Muhammad Imran Khan

This research critiques the ideas of “friendship” in Islam. It involves a comparison and analysis of inter-genre exegeses on the meaning of friendship to Muslim scholars in the following texts and literatures: i) tafsir ii) sufi and iii) philosophical.

Friendship, as a philosophical concept, is generally considered a difficult term to define and the difficulty is evident in Muslim sources. My research seeks to identify the understanding of “friendship” in a range of classical Islamicate sources (including dictionaries and poetry), with particular regards to its ethics and boundaries. In order to set the scene, I will initially ground my research in the Hellenistic conceptions of friendship, and complement this with a consideration of the Jewish and Christian ideas of friendship in the Near East at the dawn of Islam. This will enable me to establish the continuity, or discontinuity of Muslim thought with earlier traditions and thus identify original features in the Muslim perspective(s) on the matter. Furthermore, I will probe the extent to which the idea of friendship today is similar to what it was in the past in order to assess the validity of making a comparison based on semantic nuances. The advice and religious guidance which has been offered to Muslims in the multicultural societies of the past and present with regards to friendship with the “other” will be reviewed. I will assess whether any trends are discernible and consider the advice given to Muslims in minority and majority contexts.

Syrian Muslim Heritage and the European NGO: Muslim identity in a refugee camp and looking ahead to Europe

Melissa Gatter

My PhD project seeks to explore questions of Syrian Muslim heritage in interactions with European NGOs and concepts. I aim to investigate how Muslim identity plays into notions of Syrianness in interactions
between Syrian Muslim refugees and European NGOs in Za’atari. The driving questions behind
this project are as follows. What do European NGOs understand Syrian Muslim heritage to be,
and how do they incorporate this understanding into their programming for Za’atari residents?
How does the Syrian Muslim refugee remember his heritage in interacting with these NGOs and
how might his ideas of his heritage be affected by these interactions? How do these organizations
present Syrian Muslim refugees to potential donors in Europe, for instance through
documentaries or newsletters, and how do these presentations shape Syrian Muslim heritage as it
is perceived by Europeans?

Examining the representation of Muslims in British newspapers from 1998 to 2009

Samar Mezghanni

Samar Samir Mezghanni is a Tunisian/Iraqi writer, activist and PhD candidate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Prior to joining the University of Cambridge, she studied Communication and Culture at the University of Birmingham and Psychology at the University of Tunis Al Manar. Throughout her studies and after obtaining her Masters degree, Samar has worked with several international organisations such as the United Nations, the British Council, CIVICUS, the International Monetary Fund and the League of Arab States as a consultant, fellow or project manager.

Samar’s research aims to examine the representation of Muslims in British newspapers from 1998 to 2009. The research conducts a comparative analysis between mainstream newspapers and those that cater to Muslim and Jewish communities in the United Kingdom. It uses a 6 million words corpus collected from The Muslim News and The Jewish Chronicle to analyse the patterns of representing Muslims and Islam in these two newspapers. Her research utilises a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative analysis. It studies the similarities, differences, consistencies and changes in the discourses of these newspapers throughout the studied time frame. The research also explores the extent to which Israeli-Palestinian conflict interferes with these representations and whether an alternative discourse to mainstream press emerges when portraying British Muslims.

1 Feb 2016
On 1 Feb 2016 Samar Mezghanni, gave the keynote speech of the Economic and Social Council Youth Forum 2016. Theme: Youth Taking Action to Implement the 2030 Agenda. #Youth2030 [English and Arabic] here.

The relationships between converts to Islam in Britain and their families

Dorothea Ramahi

My PhD research deals with the relationships between converts to Islam in Britain and their families. It uses conversion as a lens through which to see what we are used to think of as mundane everyday life. By looking through this lens I hope to shed light on family ideologies, the nature and expression of filial ties and the make-up of secular British modernity. It is an attempt to make the familiar strange and to scrutinise the taken for granted as ideological particularity. My project is a continuation of the work I did for my MPhil dissertation in 2013. Back then I investigated the relationship between female British converts and their friends and families with a particular focus on the modes of engagement. I found that conversion to Islam was met by intimates with a considerable degree of apparent disinterest and indifference. However, underneath this seeming indifference I found some very strong attitudes towards Islam that went along with rejection and a refusal to engage with the converts. Based on these findings, some of the most important questions for my PhD research include ‘Why do family members refuse to engage with the converts?’, ‘What are the underlying assumptions about Islam that shape the reactions?’, ‘How do family members conceptualise “happiness” and why do they so often juxtapose conversion to Islam with achieving this “happiness”?’, and ‘What effect does the secular organisation of social life have on people’s search for meaning?’

On the one hand, I use the converts’ accounts of their conversion, and on the other hand, I incorporate the perception of friends and family, how they experienced the conversion and how this changes the way they relate to the converts. This dualistic narrative construction is novel in the context of conversion and allows me to explore the social dimensions of religious conversion in depth.

Exploring practices of talk among converts to Islam in a convert support network in Manchester, UK

Philip Rushworth

Philip Rushworth completed his Master’s degree at the University of Cambridge in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies in 2015 with the support of a Centre of Islamic Studies Studentship. His research explored practices of talk among converts to Islam in a convert support network in Manchester, UK, based on three months ethnographic fieldwork. Talk in the convert support network was a means to share knowledge and encourage others in their Islamic practice, but it was also itself the object of much thought and reflection. What to say and how (and to whom) was considered an important part of being and becoming Muslim, and for many converts the support network was the only site where it was possible to engage these practices of talk. Yet, if ‘correct’ talk was understood by some as an expression of authentic Muslimness and an ‘inoculation’ to the challenge of being Muslim in the contemporary UK, for others it was problematised as superficial: a concern for correct form over a more diffuse sense of the good. Through the study of talk in a convert support network the research draws attention to the ways in which converts are neither homogenous nor uncritical in their engagement with their new faith, and conversion to Islam is not a linear trajectory. It is a fraught process engaging the intellect and emotion, and complex forms of ethical reasoning and reflection. The final thesis is titled, ‘Learning Talk: Ethics and Sociality in a Convert Support Network’ and was published by the Centre of Islamic Studies in May 2016.

Philip commenced a PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2015. His research looks at Syrian refugees who have come to Europe during the so-called ‘migrant crisis’. Syrians who attain refugee status and settle in Europe are often said to be ‘starting a new life’. His research investigates what this means in reality through an ethnographic study of hope and its consequences. Do Syrian refugees see their lives in these terms? What are the expectations of a new life in Europe? What is actually entailed in starting a new life? Philip obtained a BA in International History at the London School of Economics in 2011.

An anthropological investigation of post-Soviet Islamic revival movements in the Russian Federation

Matteo Benussi

My doctoral research project consists in an anthropological investigation of post-Soviet Islamic revival movements in the Russian Federation. I carried out 16 months of ethnographic research in Povolzhye, a region in Central Russia populated by a vibrant Muslim community of predominantly Turkic (Tatar and Bashkir) ethnic background.

After the collapse of the USSR, Povolzhye witnessed the resounding success of a number of transnational Sunni piety movements, in particular amongst the region’s urban middle-class youth. Povolzhye thus became the hub of what I call Russia’s ‘halal movement’, a multifarious spiritual and ethical trend bringing together businesspeople, students, activists, and common people attracted by new and ‘alternative’ forms of virtuous subjectivity. Within the ‘halal movement’, devotion and strict spiritual discipline are contiguous to coolness, urbanity, entrepreneurship, cosmopolitanism, and a healthy lifestyle.

The appearance of Islamic piety movements, in particular Salafism, sparked fears of radicalisation and foreign encroachments amongst the broader public and institutional actors, inclined to consider Islam exclusively in terms of ethnic public culture and national heritage. To control the success of transnational Sunnism, state actors resorted to ideological co-optation and initiated a powerful discursive manoeuvre to foster patriotism and secularity amongst citizens of Muslim background.

These moves engendered a series of tensions which, in turn, are influencing the coalescence of a Muslim civil society in the Eurasian country.

In my research, I deal closely with issues such as the political life of Islamic piety movements vis-à-vis the Russian state, the relationship between virtuous forms of life and the cultural/axiological mainstream, and the linkage between post-Soviet Islamic revival and a range of broader social transformations originated by Russia’s transition to a capitalist order.