The survey, which polled 950 Indian American Muslims in order to take a “comprehensive look” at how Hindu nationalist ideology, particularly following the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is “shaping social, professional, and digital interactions”, said that over 80% of respondents experienced “Islamophobic harassment, discrimination, or prejudice from Hindu friends or social contacts over the past decade since Modi’s rise to power.”

It said, 70% of respondents experienced biased treatment from Hindu colleagues, including being passed over from promotions and anti-Muslim remarks at work; 48% of respondents reported facing harassment and discrimination on Facebook, WhatsApp, and LinkedIn, describing these experiences as emotionally exhausting, and contributing to feelings of isolation and hostility; 90% of respondents agreed (73% of them strongly) that Hindu nationalism “is a threat to Muslims in the United States”; and 86% agreed (69% strongly) that Hindu nationalism “is a threat to democracy in the United States.”

According to the survey report, the rise of Hindu nationalism in India is directly driving the rise of Islamophobia within the Indian American diaspora, adding, “Hindu nationalism is fostering an environment of intolerance that actively undermines democratic values both in India and within the diaspora community in the U.S.

Indian American Muslims are experiencing the dissolution of longstanding social, workplace, and community bonds” with “their Hindu peers who have absorbed the bigoted ideology of the Modi regime.”

The report further say, social media platforms have been weaponized against the Indian American Muslim community, “which overwhelmingly reported experiences of anxiety, fear, and isolation from Islamophobic posts and groups on international tech platforms.”

It adds, the conflation of the political ideology of Hindu nationalism with the religion of Hinduism has “dangerously allowed the supremacist movement to penetrate U.S. cultural and progressive spaces, further isolating Indian Americans.”

The survey respondents are located throughout the United States but are concentrated in the larger Indian American population centers in New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Texas, and California.
The report emphasizes on the need for enhanced community dialogue, education, and policy interventions to address the growing divide and ensure the inclusion and safety of Indian American Muslims.

Source: Counterview

North American and European publics are especially likely to see religion playing a diminished role in recent times. Majorities in both the U.S. (58%) and Canada (64%) say religion has a less important role than it did 20 years ago. Roughly half of Europeans surveyed (a median of 52%) say religion plays a less important in their country. The French public is split on this question, with 38% who say religion plays a less important role and 39% who say it has a more important role today. Overall, only about two-in-ten Europeans say there has been no change in the role of religion over the past 20 years.

Adults in the Asia-Pacific region are split on the role religion has to play in their societies. More than half in Indonesia (83%), the Philippines (58%) and India (54%) believe that religion has a bigger impact on their nation today than it did 20 years ago. Seven-in-ten or more in all three of these nations say religion is very important in their lives, which is related to views about the importance of religion. However, in South Korea, Japan and Australia, people tend to say religion has become less important or there has been no change.

Meanwhile, a 65% majority in Nigeria thinks religion plays a more important role in their country, while 60% of Kenyans say the same. Notably, large majorities in these countries (96% and 93%, respectively) say religion is very important in their lives.

Continue reading at: Pew Research Center

Edited by Ines Weinrich

Publisher: Orient-Institut Beirut (OIB) (2016)

Performing Religion investigates the relationship between texts, actors, and contexts in the study of Muslim devotion. Research in Islamic Studies to date has taken texts primarily as a medium of information. This volume emphasizes the material quality of texts, both written and oral. It focuses on the sound and rhythm of their performance, on non-verbal elements, and practices of framing and embedding. Performing Religion also looks at the interpretation of religious practices which are not based on lengthy textual foundations but nevertheless constitute an important part of believers’ lives.

The assembled case studies encompass contemporary as well as historic perspectives and include examples from Andalusia, Egypt, Italy, Greater Syria, Turkey, Central Asia, Yemen, Iran, and India. Part I explores objects, actions, and notions in the context of the acquisition of blessing (baraka). Part II asks how believers use, alter, and publically enact texts in ritual settings and what kinds of performance are inscribed into the text. Part III analyses the negotiation of meanings, aesthetics, and identity which occurs in new and often transcultural contexts. Rather than viewing texts as a repository of ideas, the present volume accentuates their ritual functions and the aesthetic experiences they provide.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: From Texts to Performances
• Part I: Objects, Actions, and Notions in the Context of Blessing

– Antique Phallic Symbol or Mobile Relic? Remarks on the Cult of the qubaʿ in Ḥaḍramawt

– Shared Rituals through ziyārāt in Lebanon: A Typology of Christian and Muslim Practices

– Conforming to and Breaking with Social Norms: Two Contrary Modes of baraka

– The Quest for Sufi Transmissions as Links to the Prophet: Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1791) and his Encyclopedic Collections of Sufi salāsil

• Part II: The Staging and Performance of Texts

– Between Poem and Ritual: The Burda by al-Būṣīrī (d. 1294-1297)

– A “Deserted Site of Display”: Performing the Crafts’ risāla in Pre-socialist Central Asia

– Woe, a Hundred Woes! 19^th-Century Muḥarram Elegies in Iran as Performative Poetry

– Preaching Performances Revisited: The Narrative Restaging of Sermons in the Travelogue of Ibn Jubayr (d. 1217)

– Everyday Islamic Practice in Modern Egyptian Literature

• Part III: Negotiating Meaning, Aesthetics, and Identity

– The Open Ritual: Indeterminacy in a Modern Sufi Ceremony

– Essentializing Difference: Text, Knowledge, and Ritual Performance in a Sufi Brotherhood in Italy

– Burning With Love: Consumerism and Recent Trends in Islamic Music in Turkey

Source: orient-institut.org

“The British state has made the mistake of subcontracting the management of its Muslim population to the local community brokers, an attitude rooted in the Raj system in India,” Kepel told Haaretz. “In places like Manchester and Birmingham they relied on Salafi community leaders while cutting back the highly fragmented police force.”

Kepel claims that in London, or Londonistan as he calls it, “they gave shelter to radical Islamist leaders from around the world as a sort of insurance policy against jihadi terrorism. But you know, when you go for dinner with the devil ….”

According to Kepel, the terrorists who struck Britain in the run-up to Thursday’s general election are part of a “third-generation of jihadists” following in the footsteps of the first mujahideens who resisted the Soviets in Afghanistan and then “generation Al-Qaida.” Al-Qaida was characterized by a structured, hierarchical model with Osama bin Laden at the top, while the new terrorists are only loosely and horizontally affiliated with one another.

Kepel considers Syrian-Spanish jihadi Abu Musab al-Suri a key figure for this third-generation, or 3G, jihadism. In 2005 al-Suri penned “The Global Islamic Resistance Call,” a guide to the new bottom-up terror strategy. Borrowing a phrase from the jihadi, Kepel says the new approach forms “an organization but not a system” (nizam, la tanzim).

source: Haaretz

Shias are around 20% of the world Muslim population. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq. Shia Numbers are in the range of 320 million to 350 million and according to some estimates it’s in the range of 400 million.

The bulk of the world’s Muslim population – more than six-in-ten (62%) – is located in Asia itself. In Middle-east, The Shia majority countries are Iran, Iraq, Bahrain, Azerbaijan, Yemen and also there is a larger Shia population in Syria and Turkey. The Shia’s are around 20% population of Syria and Turkey. The Alevi constitute the second largest religious community in Turkey (following the Sunnis), and number some 25% (20 million) of the total population. There is also a Twelver Shia community which forms about 5% of the Muslim population. In South Asia, India the only non-Muslim nation in the world with Shiite population of 4–5 percent of its entire population, has recognized the day of Ashura listed as Moharram as the Public Holiday in India. India also has the Birthday of Imam Ali as public Holiday in states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, whose capital Lucknow is considered as the center of India’s Shiite Muslim community. The Birth date of Ali is not recognized by any country in any of its states other than India, Azerbaijan and Iran as public Holiday. Shia population was also acclaimed publicly as second largest by the 14th Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh quoted in the year 2005 [Source Wikipedia/Indian Express].

One of the lingering problems in estimating the Shia population is that unless the Shia form a significant minority in a Muslim country, the entire population is often listed as Sunni. Shiites are estimated to be 21–35 percent of the Muslim population in South Asia, although the total number is difficult to estimate due to the intermingling between the Islamic schools and branches and also practice of taqiyya by some of the Shia’s.

In terms of the world Shia Muslim population, Most People don’t know that about half the population of the core middle east are Shia. The nations where Shi’a Muslims form a dominant majority are Iran (95%), Azerbaijan (80%), Bahrain (75%) and Iraq (65%), a plurality in Lebanon (45%) and large minorities in Yemen (45%), Turkey (25%), Kuwait (35%), Afghanistan (20%), Pakistan (20-25%), Saudi Arabia (15%), India (20-25% of Muslims), UAE (20%), and Syria (15-20%).

The world’s 1.6 Billion Muslim population can be approximately divided into the following main sects:

1. Hanafi Sunni Muslims: 35%
2. Shafei Sunni Muslim: 25%
3. Shia Muslims: 20%
4. Maliki Sunni Muslims: 15%
5. Hanbali Sunni Muslims: 4%
6. Salafi Muslims: 1%

Most Indo-European people are Hanafi. Afro-Asiatic people usually aren’t Hanafi. The majority of East Africans, The Hui (ethnic Chinese Muslim), and the Malay are Shafei. Most Muslims in West Africa are almost Al Maliki, (including the Maghreb nations (North Africa), and other places where Maghreb/Berber/beurette culture has spread). If you look into the numbers, Salafis, a tiny puritanical minority of Sunnis, are found only in Saudi Arabia and a few Gulf states where they are the ruling elites.

Source: Shianumbers.com

We see young monks in Myanmar, the experiences of a Muslim boy in Pakistan, the blush of first love set against the backdrop of a Holi ceremony in India, and a young girl navigating her parents’ divorce through her Catholic faith in Spain. We watch the ritual of weddings from Kenya to the Netherlands to Wyoming, and the calm and clarity that comes at the end of life, yearning for forgiveness or to forgive.

“Sacred” delves into the darker places of life where faith sheds light, including American prisons and Ebola cemeteries. Belief is deeply personal, despite the theatrics of ritual, which offer a space for collective ecstasy and catharsis. A young Jewish man says that for him, “to believe is some kind of unknowing.” It’s a resonant statement that captures the courage of faith on display in this film, even when it wavers in the face of death and darkness.

The film articulates a concept of universal humanity. No matter the religion or circumstances, we all have the same desires for peace and connection throughout life.

‘Sacred’

• Part of the One Take Documentary Series.
• Duration: 87m
• Director-producer: Thomas Lennon
• Executive producers: William Baker, Julie Anderson
• Production company: WLIW
• Distributor: Argot Pictures

Source: The Los Angeles Times