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Genesis of an Islamist Agenda

Joseph Chinyong Liow

in Piety and Politics: Islamism in Contemporary Malaysia

This chapter looks at the genesis of the Islamist agenda in Malaysia from the perspective of both Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). Using the history ... More

This chapter looks at the genesis of the Islamist agenda in Malaysia from the perspective of both Parti Islam Se-Malaysia (PAS) and the United Malays National Organization (UMNO). Using the history of the Islamist opposition PAS and UMNO’s concomitant early responses to its rise as a lens through which to perceive the early tenor of Islamism in the Malaysian context, the chapter demonstrates how the party underwent several metamorphoses as it evolved to locate Islamism at the heart of its social-political agenda.Less

Al-Majlis al-Milli

Samir Simaika and Nevine Henein

in Marcus Simaika: Father of Coptic Archaeology

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's role as a member of Al-Majlis al-Milli. At Cyril V's return from exile, the majlis was dissolved and a committee was appointed to carry out the work of the ... More

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's role as a member of Al-Majlis al-Milli. At Cyril V's return from exile, the majlis was dissolved and a committee was appointed to carry out the work of the Coptic patriarchate. Due to accusations of bribery and corruption, the committee was dissolved and a new majlis was elected in 1905, of which Simaika was again a member. Three years later, Simaika was elected vice president of the Majlis al-Milli under the ex-officio presidency of the patriarch. Four committees were formed: the first to look after Coptic schools; a second in charge of Coptic churches, monasteries, and the clerical college; a third to administer waqfs; and a fourth to supervise the administrative work of the patriarchate. Simaika resigned in 1928 in protest at the financial policy followed by the majlis.Less

Reviving Tradition, Reviving the Church: (Pope Cyril (Kyrillos) VI, 1959–71)

Nelly van Doorn-Harder

in The Emergence of the Modern Coptic Papacy: The Popes of Egypt: A History of the Coptic Church and Its Patriarchs, Volume 3

This chapter examines the papacy of Pope Cyril (Kyrillos) VI, 1959–71, who ascended the throne as the 116th pope.

Sur-e Esrāfil, Series 1, No. 31, pp. 7–9: June 11, 1908

Ali-Akbar Dehkhodā

in Charand-o Parand: Revolutionary Satire from Iran, 1907-1909

This chapter presents a column published on June 11, 1908, featuring a piece on women's education. Elite and upper-middle-class women of Tehran and several other cities became involved in the ... More

This chapter presents a column published on June 11, 1908, featuring a piece on women's education. Elite and upper-middle-class women of Tehran and several other cities became involved in the nationalist movement to form women's anjomans and schools. In March 1908, the Majlis debated the right of women to form anjomans and whether these were in accordance with the laws of shari'a. Initially some deputies deemed the subject inappropriate for parliamentary debate. In the end, however, women were allowed to keep their anjomans, though without any financial or institutional support from the Majlis. In recounting this episode and criticizing the deputies for their lackluster support of women, Dehkhodā blames Iranian culture for clinging to old traditions and holding on to archaic social hierarchies of class, seniority, and gender—divisions that he believed held back both men and women.Less

Sur-e Esrāfil, Series 1, No. 32, pp. 7–8: June 20, 1908

Ali-Akbar Dehkhodā

in Charand-o Parand: Revolutionary Satire from Iran, 1907-1909

This chapter presents Dehkhodās final column before he and his newspaper had to flee Iran. Dehkhodā predicts the June 1908 coup, while maintaining a sense of levity. On June 4 the shah, accompanied ... More

This chapter presents Dehkhodās final column before he and his newspaper had to flee Iran. Dehkhodā predicts the June 1908 coup, while maintaining a sense of levity. On June 4 the shah, accompanied by the Cossack Brigade, decamped to his garden Bāgh-e Shāh, outside the city gates. People in Tehran panicked. Soon a thousand supporters of the Majlis surrounded the building, and negotiations with the royalists began. Many supporters slept on the roof of the Majlis to shield it from an ambush. Sayyid Hasan Taqizādeh, a leading member of the First Majlis, continued to negotiate with the shah, who refused to back down. On June 20, the day this column appeared, Mohammad-Ali Shah issued his conditions for ending the siege, a list that amounted to an end of the constitutional order. On June 23 the shah's Russian troops bombarded the Majlis, and the constitution was suspended. A number of constitutionalists were arrested while Dehkhodā took sanctuary at the British legation and eventually fled the country.Less

Hindu Revivalism and Muslim Reaction

A. G. Noorani

in The Muslims of India: A Documentary Record

This chapter presents several documents focusing on the Muslim reaction to Hindu revivalism. Some of these are Muslim MPs’ memorandum to the Prime Minister on communal riots; Prime Minister’s ... More

This chapter presents several documents focusing on the Muslim reaction to Hindu revivalism. Some of these are Muslim MPs’ memorandum to the Prime Minister on communal riots; Prime Minister’s decision to set up a panel for looking into Muslim grievances; The leader of the Mulk-o-Millat Bachao Tehrik General Shah Nawaz Khan’s letter to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi; Indira Gandhi’s fifteen-point scheme plan; Majlis-e-Mushawarat’s protest against restriction on prayers in mosques within protected monuments; and Atal Bihari Vajpayee criticism of Indira Gandhi for arousing Hindu communalism.Less

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Gholam R. Afkhami

in The Life and Times of the Shah

As 1953 progressed, Mosaddeq's problems grew worse, in a chain of interconnected events. In June, the Majlis became a hub of tension as pro- and anti-Mosaddeq deputies fought for control. The fall of ... More

As 1953 progressed, Mosaddeq's problems grew worse, in a chain of interconnected events. In June, the Majlis became a hub of tension as pro- and anti-Mosaddeq deputies fought for control. The fall of the monarchy in Egypt late in June shocked the shah and reverberated across the land. Many in the Majlis and outside now worried seriously that the same fate awaited Iran. The rift between the prime minister and the Majlis widened as economic and political pressure rose in July. On the 16th of August, the government announced that the officers of the Imperial Guard had attempted a coup but had failed. Such events occurred in conjunction with a CIA project code-named TPAJAX. On 22 August, the shah told the members of the chamber of commerce that the national uprising proved that class conflict had no dominion in Iran when high national interests were concerned.Less

Saints Are “Real” People: Imitable Sainthood in Shiʿism

Karen G. Ruffle

in Gender, Sainthood, & Everyday Practice in South Asian Shiʿism

This chapter begins with an ethnographic anecdote because Khan's experience delivering his discourse on Fatimah Kubra and the attendant emotional response of the majlis participants demonstrate that ... More

This chapter begins with an ethnographic anecdote because Khan's experience delivering his discourse on Fatimah Kubra and the attendant emotional response of the majlis participants demonstrate that the theological and hagiographical construction of sainthood in the Shi'i tradition is complex, and provides significant space for the inclusion of female saints whose femininity is positively acknowledged and embraced. Khan's focus on Fatimah Kubra was not exceptional, nor was this a special one-time-only topic; the following chapters illustrate how the women of the ahl-e bait are constructed in the hagiographical texts and ritual performance of the mourning assembly. The heroes of Karbala are reified into certain distinguishable types, yet the characterization and symbolic function of these heroes are remarkably fluid and are subject to adaptation to fit new vernacular contexts.Less

A Bride of One Night, a Widow Forever: Text & Ritual Performance in the Constitution of an Idealized South Asian ShiʿI Selfhood

Karen G. Ruffle

in Gender, Sainthood, & Everyday Practice in South Asian Shiʿism

This chapter focuses on Dr. M. M. Taqui Khan's family, who has been hosting the mehndi mourning assembly for nearly sixty years. The members of the Khan family had relocated from their residence on ... More

This chapter focuses on Dr. M. M. Taqui Khan's family, who has been hosting the mehndi mourning assembly for nearly sixty years. The members of the Khan family had relocated from their residence on the banks of the Musi River to their current location near Nawab Shawkat Jang's palace. One year, Khan's grandmother remarked, “We have such a big house and this open space. Why don't we host the seventh of Muharram majlis here?” Around 1955, the Khan family began sponsoring an annual mehndi mourning assembly. Their first 'ashurkhana was a simple structure built of canvas tents and bamboo screens; the members of the Khan family subsequently replaced this modest structure with a permanent 'ashurkhana located in the spacious courtyard behind their large house, which sits on Yaqutpura's main road. Every 7 Muharram around one o'clock in the afternoon, more than one thousand men and boys flock to the Khan family 'ashurkhana for the men's mehndi mourning assembly.Less

The Awakening of the Coptic Church

Samir Simaika and Nevine Henein

in Marcus Simaika: Father of Coptic Archaeology

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's role in the reformist movement within the Coptic Orthodox Church. To understand the position of the Copts in Egypt during Simaika's lifetime, it is important ... More

This chapter discusses Marcus Simaika's role in the reformist movement within the Coptic Orthodox Church. To understand the position of the Copts in Egypt during Simaika's lifetime, it is important to revisit the year 1854, when Said Pasha, son of Muhammad Ali Pasha, became wali (viceroy) of Egypt. In that same year, Cyril IV ascended to the patriarchal throne as the 110th successor to Saint Mark. Two years later, the Hatt-i Humayon, the most important Turkish reform edict of the nineteenth century, was decreed by Sultan Abd al-Mejid I. This edict established community councils for Christian and other non-Muslim communities. Simaika became a member of the community council, or majlis milli, in 1889 and became involved in the campaign for church reform. The chapter examines Cyril V's banishment and triumphant return and the subsequent defeat of the reformist movement within the Coptic Church.Less

A Feminized Domain

Julian Millie

in Hearing Allah's Call: Preaching and Performance in Indonesian Islam

Chapter Seven contrasts a feminist critique of women’s routines of listening and learning with the characteristic patterns of women’s spectatorship that women display in those routines. Bandung’s ... More

Chapter Seven contrasts a feminist critique of women’s routines of listening and learning with the characteristic patterns of women’s spectatorship that women display in those routines. Bandung’s women live under constraints affecting their social expectations and mobility. The chapter argues that they enjoy preaching in forms deliberately shaped by preachers to accommodate their situations. The resulting listening experience is not a disciplinary one, but one that respects women’s life conditions.Less

Painting about Painting

Lamia Balafrej

in The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting

This book constitutes the first exploration of artistic self-reflection in Islamic art. In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? ... More

This book constitutes the first exploration of artistic self-reflection in Islamic art. In the absence of a tradition of self-portraiture, how could artists signal their presence within a painting? Centred on late Timurid manuscript painting (ca. 1470-1500), this book reveals that pictures could function as the painter’s delegate, charged with the task of centring and defining artistic work, even as they did not represent the artist’s likeness. Influenced by the culture of the majlis, an institutional gathering devoted to intricate literary performances and debates, late Timurid painters used a number of strategies to shift manuscript painting from an illustrative device to a self-reflective object, designed to highlight the artist’s imagination and manual dexterity. These strategies include visual abundance, linear precision, the incorporation of inscriptions addressing aspects of the painting and the artist’s signature. Focusing on one of the most iconic manuscripts of the Persianate tradition, the Cairo Bustan made in late Timurid Herat and bearing the signatures of the painter Bihzad, this book explores Persian manuscript painting as a medium for artistic performance and self-representation, a process by which artistic authority was shaped and discussed. In addition, each chapter explores a different theme: how painters challenged the conventions of royal representation (chapter 1); the role of writing in painting, its relation to ekphrasis and the context of the majlis (chapter 2); image, mimesis and potential world (chapter 3); the line and its calligraphic quality (chapter 4); signature (chapter 5); the mobility of manuscripts (epilogue).Less

Potential World

Lamia Balafrej

in The Making of the Artist in Late Timurid Painting

Chapter 2 examines the representation of epigraphic inscriptions in Persian painting, inscriptions that appeared in pictures as ornaments adorning buildings. It argues for a shift in these ... More

Chapter 2 examines the representation of epigraphic inscriptions in Persian painting, inscriptions that appeared in pictures as ornaments adorning buildings. It argues for a shift in these inscriptions’ content and function in the late Timurid period. Until the mid-fifteenth century, inscriptions were mainly used to link painting to patron. But in the Cairo Bustan, the poetic verses were chosen so as to convey a celebration of the painter. As such they constitute an example of wasf (ekphrasis), a description of the visual that was also a discourse of praise. Moreover, the verses were picked from the poetry of ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami, a late fifteenth-century poet. The inscriptions thus staged a model for the pictures’ reception, a model in which the painting would circulate among famous poets such as Jami, prompting responses about the medium and its makers. A possible institutional setting for such a scenario was the majlis, a form of social gathering that fuelled the art of jawab (response).Less

Sur-e Esrāfil, Series 1, No. 20, pp. 5–8: January 16, 1908

Ali-Akbar Dehkhodā

in Charand-o Parand: Revolutionary Satire from Iran, 1907-1909

This chapter presents a column published on January 16, 1908, which is devoted to the attempted coup against the Majlis in December 1907. On December 13 the Majlis demanded that Mohammad-Ali Shah ... More

This chapter presents a column published on January 16, 1908, which is devoted to the attempted coup against the Majlis in December 1907. On December 13 the Majlis demanded that Mohammad-Ali Shah dismiss his anticonstitutionalist advisers Amir Bahādor Jang and Sa'd al-Dowleh. In response, the shah arrested Minister Nāser al-Molk and dignitaries whom the Majlis sent to intercede. Then, on December 15, luti roughs instigated by the court occupied Tupkhāneh (Artillery) Square, immediately to the north of the palace. In response, young activists affiliated with anjomans came to the aid of the parliament with four thousand armed supporters. Mirza Jahāngir Khan, the editor of Sur-e Esrāfil (SE), along with several other journalists were also on the grounds defending the Majlis.Less

Sur-e Esrāfil, Series 1, No. 22, pp. 6–8: February 4, 1908

Ali-Akbar Dehkhodā

in Charand-o Parand: Revolutionary Satire from Iran, 1907-1909

This chapter presents a column published on February 4, 1908, where Dehkhodā draws a parallel between private and public abuses of trust. He shows that women and children suffer most from the former, ... More

This chapter presents a column published on February 4, 1908, where Dehkhodā draws a parallel between private and public abuses of trust. He shows that women and children suffer most from the former, while the latter targets all ordinary citizens. The column evolves into an implied criticism of the Majlis president Ehteshām al-Saltaneh, whom the text does not name. Dehkhodā paints him as a hypocrite who, despite his supposed liberal convictions, is colluding with the royalists and the conservatives. He is the man for whom the parliamentary seal is “a mere decoration on a fob-watch chain,” the legislator who shows up in parliament whenever he wants and keeps the deputies waiting for him, who ignores the procedural regulations of the Majlis, and who promises in private sessions to stop the formation of a national force.Less