Mystical Styles of Expression among North Indian Faq?r: Nara as a Manifestation of Hukm

This paper explores the mystical complex of North Indian ‘holy men’ commonly known as faqir and their relationship to mainstream Indian Islam. It is based on research done at the thirteenth century Indo‐Muslim shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi, India. Many faqir beliefs and practices diverge from Islamic orthodoxy by emphasising a mystical relationship with the saints. While faqir are Muslims, their emphasis on mystical expressions demarcates them from orthodox styles of Indian Islam. Two of these expressions are hukm, the mystical bond between a faqir and Muslim saint, and nara, a series of expletives used to communicate with the saint when in a euphoric state. Hukm and nara are pivotal to a faqir's mystical complex and are creative sources of his spiritual life. Prompted by a paucity of critical analyses into the area of North Indian faqir mysticism and ritual performance, this paper argues that the interplay between hukm and nara generates a form of creative expression for the faqir that is related to, but independent of, Indo‐Muslim orthodox practices and constitutes an alternative style of religious expression within Indian Islam.     

Syncretism and the Politics of the Tingkeban in West Java

For the rural Sundanese of West Java who identify with Nahdatul Ulama Islam, the tingkeban is considered a mandatory ritual to be conducted for a woman who is seven months pregnant. However, like other local practices around birth, the tingkeban has come under state and urban modernising influences that have attempted to displace some of its elements as ‘culture’ rather than ‘religion’ and to discredit many of these as superstitious and backward. This paper examines the ritual elements of the tingkeban that produce and reinforce local cosmological and ontological ideas about the nature of personhood and society, and, in particular, how the ritual highlights the ambivalent status of the villagers within broader relations of power such as the Indonesian State and other forms of Islam existing in Indonesia. The paper also explores how the assumptions within the ideology of modernisation propagated under the last years of the Suharto regime coincide with assumptions in scholarly work such as those underlying Geertz's depiction of the syncretic nature of Javanese religion.     

Night life in southern urban Mali: being a Muslim maquisard in Bougouni

Alcohol has been part of local culture in southwest Mali since precolonial times. In the last century, when Islam spread into the region, it became a ‘haram’ (forbidden) substance; therefore its consumption moved to the margins of society. Based on an ethnography of night life in discreet bars called ‘maquis’ where power, wealth, and alcohol become juxtaposed during the night in the small town of Bougouni, this article explores how Muslims handle their participation in forbidden activities from within a local Muslim community. Analysing the social significance of the darkness of the night in relation to a public Islam based on sight, it illustrates how forbidden activities are handled through strategies of diurnal conformity and nocturnal discretion in urban Mali. Exploring the fact that a Muslim can at the same time be known as a respectable member of the local community and a suspected drinker during the night, this analysis aims to demonstrate that the interplay between display and secrecy is an important component of morality in urban Mali, while the wealth and power of m?g?baw (big men) often work as veils that cover their forbidden activities. Besides studying the ways Muslims strive to be pious, this article finally stresses the need to explore also the field of haram as an integral part of a Muslim life so as to develop a humanly wider and more complete understanding of Islam's relationship to contemporary Muslim societies.     

Is Rukun Dead? Ethnographic Interpretations of Social Change and Javanese Culture

Within the ethnography of Indonesia in general and Java in particular, the Javanese notion of rukun, the appearance of harmony and helpfulness, has frequently been interpreted as referring not only to social harmony, but also to economic egalitarianism. Hence ‘traditional’ Javanese economic practices such as open harvests, the distribution of harvest shares and the use of the finger-knife in rice harvesting have been seen as explicable by reference to rukun. Changes in harvesting practices with the introduction of ‘modern’ techniques, such as the use of contract labourers, have been depicted as signalling the death of rukun, both as an economic practice and as a cultural value. This article argues that such a view of social change in Java is theoretically and empirically flawed. Rukun is not a practice but rather a central ideological concept through which Javanese contextualise and apprehend their lives, their aspirations, their motivations and their social relations. In this sense, the ‘traditional’ notion of rukun is equally applicable to contemporary Java, and contemporary Javanese are just as likely to interpret the ‘modern’ world in terms of rukun.     

The "amazing" fertility decline: Islam, economics, and reproductive decision making among working-class Moroccan women

Often it is understood that Islam prohibits family planning because the Qur'an does not explicitly address contraception. Public health and development officials have recently congratulated the Muslim world for decreases in fertility given the supposed constraints placed on reproductive healthcare by Islam, while popular culture writers have warned the West of threats by young Muslims if the population goes uncontrolled. This article draws on data collected through interviews with working-class women seeking reproductive healthcare at clinics in Rabat, Morocco, and with medical providers to challenge the link between Islamic ideology and reproductive practices and the correlation among Islam, poverty, and fertility. Morocco, a predominantly Muslim country, has experienced a dramatic decrease in fertility between the 1970s and today. I argue that patients and providers give new meanings to modern reproductive practices and produce new discourses of reproduction and motherhood that converge popular understandings of Islam with economic conditions of the Moroccan working class.     

Who suppresses female sexuality? An examination of support for Islamic veiling in a secular Muslim democracy as a function of sex and offspring sex

Whether it is men or women who suppress female sexuality has important implications for understanding gendered relations, ultimately providing insight into one widespread cause of female disadvantage. The question of which sex suppresses female sexuality more avidly, however, neglects that our interests are never unambiguously masculine or feminine; each of us has a combination of male and female kin which alters how much of our future fitness derive from each sex. Here we exploit a nationally representative sample of 600 Tunisians to test whether support for Islamic veiling—a proxy for female sexual suppression—is more common amongst one sex than the other, and is affected by the relative sex of one's offspring (i.e., the number of sons relative to daughters). We find that men are more supportive of Islamic veiling than women, but women with more sons are more supportive of veiling and more likely to wear veils than women with fewer sons. All effects were robust to the inclusion of religiosity, which was weaker amongst men and unrelated to the number of sons a woman had. The number of daughters affected neither religiosity nor support for veiling, but did increase women's likelihood of wearing contemporary, fashionable Tunisian veils compared with no head covering. We further found that men were more religious if they had more sons. Overall, these findings highlight that far from being the fixed strategy of one sex or the other, female sexual suppression manifests facultatively to promote one's reproductive interests directly or indirectly by creating conditions beneficial to one's descendent kin. These results show that both men and women can suppress female sexuality, although the function in either case appears more closely aligned with male rather than female interests.     

Sexual Desire,Piety, and Law in a Javanese Pesantren: Interpreting Varieties of Secret Divorce and Polygamy

Very little anthropological research has explored the polygamous worlds of women in Indonesia's traditional Islamic boarding schools known as pesantren. These traditional schools are patriarchal institutions that teach women to be ideal Muslims according to male-defined notions of shari'ah-based piety that construct polygamy as normative. This article challenges dominant discourses on polygamy, which are mostly concerned with public protest and feminist agendas that seek to have the practice banned, and instead reveals an agentive side of women in polygamous marriages. It examines the experiences of a group of pesantren women whose actions transgress state and Islamic laws on marriage and divorce in their endorsement of polygamous union and nikah batin (Sufi spiritual marriage). It builds on feminist arguments that recognise female agency in polygamy by considering the legal ambiguity surrounding secret and informal divorce and polygamous practices initiated by women restricted from obtaining legal divorces for socio-cultural reasons. In doing so, it further considers some aspects of a notion of a woman-centric polygamy that includes polyandry, which women create based on their understanding that Islam acknowledges women's sexual rights in marriage.     

Constructing interpretive ethnicity in between two nations: television and diasporic discourses of identity in Malaysia

This article discusses the interpretation of television in relation to ethnic identity embraced by the female members of Javanese diaspora in Malaysia. The Javanese diaspora in this context refers to the descendants of the colonial Javanese migrants from Indonesia. In contemporary Malaysia, they are considered as Malays, but essentially they retain some cultural identifications of Javanese ethnicity, especially the language. As Malaysia becomes one of the destinations for Indonesian migrant labour and popular culture, the Javanese diaspora are certainly exposed to manifold images of their ethnic origin. Through the audience ethnography in a Javanese community of Selangor, this article reveals that the Malaysian Javanese women negotiate both representative and distant images of Javanese identity on television. Their interpretation of ethnic identity from television represents the notion of ‘interpretive ethnicity’.     

Attaining the mystical body: Indian Sufi ascetic practices

While anthropologists have carefully documented various Sufi orders, the bulk of these studies focus on socio‐historic and organisational aspects of Sufism. This has been especially the case of Sufis in India. There is an apparent lack of examining experiential aspects Sufi mystical practices. In India, many Sufi orders are intrinsically linked with Muslim shrines. Muslim shrines are viewed by Sufi as being invested with barkat (divine blessedness, sacred power), a power generally assumed to be a gift conferred upon the saint by Allah. Consequently, Sufis often engage in their mystical practices in the proximity of Muslim shrines. The shrine of the Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya, located in Delhi, is a renowned thaumatological shrine which is a centre for Sufi activities. Sufis spend many years engaged in a rigorous regimen of ascetic and mystical practices. These form a central part of their daily lives at the Nizamuddin shrine. In this article, I explore the notion of mystical mastery among Indian Sufis and ways in which their ascetic practices seek to attain a mystical body. I contend that mystical mastery is a form of re‐authoring the self, in that Sufis’ mystical complexes permit them to transform and modify themselves through various operations on their bodies.     

THE SCORPION'S STING: YOUTH, MARRIAGE AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL MATURITY IN NIGER

Through a focus on the problems associated with bridewealth and wedding expenses in Dogondoutchi, a predominantly Muslim town of some 38,000 Hausa speakers in rural Niger, I discuss the predicament of young Mawri men who, in the double pursuit of marriage and maturity, often struggle to satisfy contradictory sets of moral and financial requirements. I trace the distinctive and divergent ways in which Mawri men and women of different generations participate in interpenetrating debates about wealth, domesticity, and sexuality to highlight how the experience of social reproduction is shaped by distinctly local dynamics of gender and generation. In contemporary Niger, the combined effects of neo-liberal economics and reformist Islam have massively transformed the terms and meaning of marriage. What emerges most conspicuously from this exploration of the ways in which processes of identity formation are played out in the controversial arena of marriage is the palpable sense of declining opportunities that young men experience as they delay marriage.     

Female Genital Surgeries: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable

This article reviews the literature on female genital surgeries and examines the extent to which available research supports commonly accepted "facts" about the prevalence and harmful effects of these practices, in particular their possible health complications, and their effect on sexuality. While information regarding the prevalence of female genital surgeries is becoming increasingly available, the powerful discourse that depicts these practices as inevitably causing death and serious ill health, and as unequivocally destroying sexual pleasure, is not sufficiently supported by the evidence. The article discusses some of the implications of research on female genital surgeries for the societies that are involved—not merely those where the practices are found, but also those whose gaze has been so intensely focused on the customs of others, [female genital surgeries/mutilation, prevalence, health complications, sexuality]     

Reluctant Muslims: embodied hegemony and moral resistance in a Giriama spirit possession complex

This account of a form of spirit possession widely experienced among Giriama people of coastal Kenya challenges prevailing theories of possession as resistance. Giriama are routinely possessed by Muslim spirits which hold their bodies hostage, afflicting them with illness and vomiting until they agree to abandon their customary practices and embrace Islam. Those possessed apparently somatize a hegemonic system of oppressive meanings according to which Giriama ethnicity is essentially different from, and polluting to, Islam. Yet the same individuals who embody hegemony in this way may reflect upon their possession experience by articulating a defiant ideology of resistance against both the possessing spirit and the Muslim ethnic groups that the spirit represents. These observations thus highlight the complexity of the relationship between hegemony and the individual; they also provide a reminder that the idiom of possession does not necessarily articulate with power structures in a predictable and straightforward fashion.     

Scoring Men: Vasectomies and the Totemic Illusion of Male Sexuality in Oaxaca

This paper discusses research on men’s reproductive health and sexuality in Oaxaca, Mexico, and specifically why some men there choose to be sterilized. Men who opt for vasectomies do so after considering numerous cultural, historical, physiological, commercial, and other concerns. Men and women in Oaxaca negotiate certain cultural folk beliefs about supposed male sexual desires and practices before arriving at the decision to get the operation. Vasectomy as a method of birth control is chosen despite folk beliefs that take the form of a totemic illusion which treats male sexuality as naturalized, something fixed, and as entirely distinct from female sexuality. Among its many consequences, this totemic illusion serves to conceal inequalities in the sphere of reproductive health and sexuality in relation to contraception.     

The balancing of virtues—Muslim perspectives on palliative and end of life care: Empirical research analysing the perspectives of service users and providers

In this paper, I will share findings from a qualitative study that offers a thematic analysis of 76 interviews with Muslim patients and families as well as doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, chaplains and community faith leaders across the United Kingdom. The data show that for many Muslims, Islam—its texts and lived practice—is of central importance when they are deliberating about death and dying . Central to these deliberations are virtues rooted within Islamic theology and ethics, the traditions of adab (virtue) and aqhlaq (proper conduct). Themes analysed include theological and moral understandings around the virtues of hope and acceptance. The study provides an analysis of these themes in relation to the experiences of Muslim patients and families arriving at meaning making around death and dying and how this interfaces with their interaction with biomedicine and healthcare. The study shows that the juxtaposition of different values and moral frameworks require careful negotiation when Muslim patients and families encounter the healthcare system. The study also describes how healthcare professionals and staff of other faiths and no faith encounter Muslim beliefs and practices, and the challenges they face in interpreting virtues and values rooted in faith, especially when these are perceived to be mutually opposed or inconsistent.     

Matrilineal Spirits,Descent and Territorial Power in Northern Thailand

This paper examines matrilineal spirits (phii puu nyaa) in northern Thailand based on field research recently undertaken in a village in Chiang Mai province. The paper suggests that the puu nyaa spirits remain locally significant—despite previous statements about their demise—and that matrilineal linkages are ideologically and practically important in the constitution of the groups. Nevertheless, there are alternative points of reference—to fathers, spouses and localities—that can attenuate attachments to matrilineal kin and introduce alternative sources of spiritual power. It becomes clear that phii puu nyaa spirit beliefs and practices are malleable and provide a basis for various orientations to spiritual power. The intermingling of different types of spiritual power is well illustrated by the presence of protective spirits locally referred to as aahak. In local perception, there is a very close relationship between phii puu nyaa and aahak, but the two entities appear to reflect quite different orientations: in simple terms the aahak represent a masculine, territorial and outward looking form of power which is contrasted with the female‐focused and lineage‐derived potency of the puu nyaa spirits. The paper argues that the outward orientation of the aahak provides some valuable insights into local perceptions of power, demonstrating how the supposedly peripheral and parochial draws regional power into more intimate domains.     

Imagining the Western Husband: Thai Women's Desires for Matrimony,Status and Beauty

This article examines a group of Thai women's perceptions of western Caucasian men as ideal marriage partners and its impact on their sexual practices and relationship decisions. Based on conversations with women living in a ‘slum’ community in Bangkok, I argue that women who do not fit local ideals of light skin color, economic success and urban origins face obstacles among potential Thai suitors. Some of these women strategically prefer western suitors to local men. Through their relationship choices, these women upset local hierarchies of desire as they attempt to subvert skin color-bias and pose challenges to Thai marital traditions. At the same time, their relationship pursuits conform to gender expectations of the male breadwinner and female caretaker and may unintentionally reproduce skin color and status hierarchies. Although Thai women's sexual relationships with western men are not a new phenomena, they underscore the transnational nature of sexual desire and contemporary social change.     

The Structure of Bonobo Copulation Calls During Reproductive and Non‐Reproductive Sex

Copulation calls in primates are usually identified as sexually selected signals that promote the reproductive success of the caller. In this study, we investigated the acoustic structure of copulation calls in bonobos (Pan paniscus), a great ape known for its heightened socio‐sexuality. Throughout their cycles, females engage in sexual relations with both males and other females and produce copulation calls with both partners. We found that calls produced during sexual interactions with male and female partners could not be reliably distinguished in terms of their acoustic structure, despite major differences in mating behaviour and social context. Call structure was equally unaffected by the size of a female’s sexual swelling and by the rank of her mating partner. Rank of the partner did affect call delivery although only with male, but not female partners. The only strong effect on call structure was because of caller identity, suggesting that these signals primarily function to broadcast individual identity during sexual interactions. This primarily social use of an evolved reproductive signal is consistent with a broader trend seen in this species, namely a transition of sexual behaviour to social functions.     

The varied nature of women's sexuality: unresolved issues and a theoretical approach

During the 20th century there were clear indications that the socio-cultural suppression of women's sexuality had lessened, revealing a marked variability of women's sexual expression. In this article we review the recent literature to explore explanations for this variability. It is clear that we know little about the nature of sexual desire, and in particular, what it is that is desired. There is also now substantial evidence that vaginal response, as measured by vaginal pulse amplitude, is a relatively automatic response to perception of sexual stimuli, regardless of whether these stimuli are perceived positively or result in subjective arousal. This is considered as a possible mechanism that allows vaginal intercourse without pain, even when the woman is not sexually aroused. The roles of androgens and estrogen in women's sexuality remain uncertain. The evidence is, however, consistent with there being a testosterone-dependent component of women's sexuality that is more important for some women than others. Finally, a new theoretical model is presented that aims to resolve these uncertainties and that proposes different types of women's sexuality. Once we have a better understanding of “normal” female sexuality, in its various forms, our ability to develop effective treatments for women's sexual problems should improve.