Michael Farquhar

Circuits of Faith

Migration, Education, and the Wahhabi Mission

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Reconstructing the history of the Islamic University of Medina, this book sheds light on efforts undertaken by Saudi actors to extend Wahhabi influence beyond the kingdom's borders and suggests a new framework for understanding Islamic transnational religious networks.

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Produktdetails

• Stanford Studies in Middle Eastern and Islamic Societies and Cultures
• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 288
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. November 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 576g
• ISBN-13: 9780804798358
• ISBN-10: 0804798354
• Artikelnr.: 45001402

Autorenporträt

Michael Farquhar is Lecturer in Middle East Politics at King's College London.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces the question of Saudi "religious expansion" - that
is, the various processes by which Saudi actors are said to have exerted
increasing religious influence beyond the kingdom's borders in the course
of the twentieth century - and it situates the Islamic University of Medina
as a key institution in relation to such dynamics. It establishes the
contours of the Salafi and Wahhabi traditions, before setting out the
historiographical framework employed throughout the remainder of the book.
The latter is grounded in a particular conception of a transnational
religious economy, comprising flows - both within and across borders - of
material capital, spiritual capital, religious migrants and social
technologies. The chapter ends with a brief overview of the historical
narrative and arguments that run through the book.
1Transformations in the Late Ottoman Hijaz
chapter abstract
This chapter develops an account of education in mosques, madrasas and Sufi
lodges in the Hijaz in the Ottoman period which hosted scholars and
students from across the Islamic world. It shows that education in these
settings was supported by a variety of cross-border flows of material
capital, that methods of instruction were largely personalized and
informal, and that these arrangements fostered a religious economy marked
by considerable diversity. However, from the end of the nineteenth century,
new social technologies brought by religious migrants and imperial
officials contributed to the spread of increasingly rationalized,
bureaucratized modes of pedagogy. The chapter argues that these new
practices paved the way for private and particularly state actors to
exercise more sustained control over the distribution, exchange and
translation of material and spiritual capital in religious educational
settings.
2Wahhabi Expansion in Saudi-Occupied Mecca
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the use of education as a tool for expanding Wahhabi
influence in the Hijaz, in the period immediately following its occupation
by the Saudis in the 1920s. This project was fraught with tensions,
occurring as it did in the context of a process of state-building within an
occupied territory with its own religious traditions quite different from
those of the Wahhabi heartlands of Najd. The chapter argues that this
period saw the consolidation of numerous strategies - including not only
material investment but also cultural appropriation, hegemonic modification
of religious discourse, and the recruitment of migrants from across the
Middle East to lend legitimacy to Wahhabi proselytizing - which would later
become central to the role of education in expanding Saudi religious
influence beyond the Peninsula. These arguments are illustrated with
reference to the content and styles of teaching that developed in the Saudi
Scholastic Institute in Mecca.
3National Politics and Global Mission
chapter abstract
This chapter traces the genesis and institutional evolution of the Islamic
University of Medina from the time of its founding in 1961 and over the
decades that followed. It maps the history of this key Wahhabi missionary
project onto Cold War geopolitics, maneuvering between the Saudi royals and
the Wahhabi establishment, efforts to bolster narratives of dynastic and
national legitimacy, and shifts in the international oil economy. In doing
so, it emphasizes the extent to which the transactions in material and
spiritual capital which would occur on the IUM campus were influenced by
Saudi politics and integrated with the kingdom's own political economy.
4Migration and the Forging of a Scholarly Community
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the role of large numbers of non-Saudi staff members
at the Islamic University of Medina (IUM) from the early 1960s to the
1980s, and considers the part that they played in the remaking of Wahhabi
religious authority. It argues that until the mid-twentieth century, the
relatively parochial and insular nature of the Wahhabi scholarly milieu
meant that Wahhabi scholars lacked the kinds of symbolic resources that
would be required to launch such an ambitious missionary project. It then
traces the trajectories that brought migrants from across the Middle East,
Africa, South Asia and beyond to work at the IUM. It argues that, by
bringing diversified reserves of spiritual capital - including
qualifications acquired in venerable centers of learning like al-Azhar -
these migrants lent legitimacy to the new effort to extend the Wahhabi
mission to broad audiences beyond the kingdom's borders.
5Rethinking Religious Instruction
chapter abstract
This chapter considers the styles of pedagogy which took shape at the
Islamic University of Medina from the time of its founding. It argues that
the university was viewed by many of those involved as a response to
imperial intrusions in the cultural sphere in the colonized parts of the
Islamic world in which a large proportion of them had been born and raised.
At the same time, rather than engaging in an effort to shore up what had
come to be seen as traditional modes of religious schooling, they instead
sought to actively appropriate social technologies of education whose own
genealogies traced back to European metropoles and to rework them in the
name of what was understood to consist in a project of cultural resistance.
6A Wahhabi Corpus in Motion
chapter abstract
This chapter considers the content of teaching at the Islamic University of
Medina, from the time of its founding and over the decades that followed.
While IUM syllabuses were from the start strongly influenced by Wahhabi
norms, the bodies of knowledge that were to be transmitted to its students
underwent certain subtle shifts over time. These shifts in many ways map
onto, and no doubt in part reflect, the broader evolution of the Wahhabi
tradition in the second half of the twentieth century. However, the chapter
highlights evidence that they also related to the university's status as a
node within a transnational religious economy and its engagement in
far-reaching struggles to steer the course of the Islamic tradition.
7Leaving Medina
chapter abstract
This chapter explores the role of the Islamic University of Medina's
non-Saudi students, as religious migrants, bearers of spiritual capital
accumulated on its campus and mediators of its Wahhabi-influenced message.
It considers their experiences in Medina and their trajectories after
graduation. It argues that agency exercised by these students, as well as
efforts by an array of religious authorities and lay actors around the
world to contest their authority to speak in the name of Islam, have
contributed to determining the ways in which the impact of the IUM project
has played out in diverse locations. This suggests that, while Saudi
religious and political elites may be able to exert religious influence
abroad through the IUM, that influence does not necessarily constitute
control.
Conclusion
chapter abstract
This chapter revisits the arguments that run throughout the book and
considers their broader implications in regard to debates about Saudi
"religious expansion", the evolution of the Wahhabi tradition within the
kingdom's borders, and the rise of Salafism in locations around the world
in the last decades of the twentieth century.