Ethnographies of Islam

Baudouin Dupret is educated in Law, Islamic Sciences and Political Sciences. He is Directeur de Recherche at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and was appointed in 2010 Director of the Centre Jacques-Berque in Rabat, Morocco. He is also lecturer in Islamic law at the universities of Louvain and Strasbourg. He has published extensively in the field of the sociology and anthropology of law, legislation and media, especially in the Middle East. His current work involves a praxiological approach to the production of truth in Arab contexts, including courts and parliaments, scientific expertise, the media, and religious education. He (co-)edited numerous volumes, the last one being Narratives of Truth in Islamic Law (Saqi books, 2008), and authored several single-authored books, e.g. Practices of Truth (Benjamins, 2011) and Adjudication in Action: An Ethnomethodology of Law, Moral and Justice (Ashgate, 2011). Thomas Pierret is a Senior Researcher at Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, IREMAM, Aix-en-Provence, France. He holds a PhD in Political science from Sciences Po Paris and the University of Louvain. He was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh (2011-2017) and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University. He focuses on politics and religion in modern Syria. He is the author of Religion and State in Syria. The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and Islam in Post-Ottoman Syria (Oxford University Press, 2016), as well as the editor of Ethnographies of Islam. Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices (Edinburgh University Press, 2012). Dr Paulo Pinto is Professor of Anthropology at Universidade Federal Fluminense in Brazil, where he is also the director of the Center for Middle East Studies. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Boston University. His areas of interest include embodiment and the construction of religious subjectivities, ethnicity and religious nationalism, and pilgrimage processes and the constitution of transnational religious arenas. He has done fieldwork in Syria, mainly in the Sufi communities in Aleppo and in the shrine of Sayda Zaynab, near Damascus, as well as in the in Muslim communities in Brazil. He published several articles on Sufism, Kurdish ethnicity, and Shi'i pilgrimage in contemporary Syria, and is the author of Árabes no Rio de Janeiro: Uma Identidade Plural (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Cidade Viva, 2010) and Islã: Religião e Civilização, Uma Abordagem Antropológica (Aparecida: Ed. Santuário, 2010). Kathryn Spellman Poots is Associate Professor at Aga Khan University's Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations in London and Visiting Associate Professor at Columbia University and Academic Program Director for the MA in Islamic Studies. Her research interests include Muslims in Europe and North America, the Iranian diaspora, transnational migration and gender studies.

• Introduction, Baudouin Dupret, Thomas Pierret, Paulo Pinto and Kathryn Spellman-Poots; Part One: Rituals and Symbols: 1. Black Magic, Divination and Remedial Reproductive Agency in Northern Pakistan, Emma Varley; 2. Preparing for the Hajj in Contemporary Tunisia: Between Religious and Administrative Ritual, Katia Boissevain; 3. 'There Used To Be Terrible Disbelief': Mourning and Social Change in Northern Syria, Katharina Lange; 4. Manifestations of Ashura among Young British Shi'is , Kathryn Spellman-Poots; 5. The Ma'ruf: An Ethnography of Ritual (South Algeria), Yazid Ben Hounet; 6. The Sufi Ritual of the Darb al-Shish and the Ethnography of Religious Experience, Paulo G. Pinto; 7. Preaching for Converts: Knowledge and Power in the Sunni Community in Rio de Janeiro, Gisele Fonseca Chagas; 8. Worshipping the Martyr President: The Darih of Rafiq Hariri in Beirut, Ward Vloerberghs; 9. Staging the Authority of the Ulama: The Celebration of the Mawlid in Urban Syria, Thomas Pierret; Part Two: Practices and Actions, Cedric Baylocq and Akila Drici-Bechikh; 10. The Salafi and the Others: An Ethnography of Intracommunal Relations in French Islam, Cedric Baylocq and Akila Drici-Bechiki; 11. Describing Religious Practices among University Students: A Case Study from the University of Jordan, Amman, Daniele Cantini; 12. Referring to Islam in Mutual Teasing: Notes on an Encounter between Two Tanzanian Revivalists, Sigurd D'hondt; 13. Salafis as Shaykhs: Othering the Pious in Cairo, Aymon Kreil; 14. Ethics of Care, Politics of Solidarity: Islamic Charitable Organisations in Turkey, Hilal Alkan-Zeybek; 15. Making Shari'a Alive: Court Practice under an Ethnographic Lens, Susanne Dahlgren; 16. Referring to Islam as a Practice: Audiences, Relevancies and Language Games within the Egyptian Parliament, Enrique Klaus and Baudouin Dupret; 17. Contesting Public Images of ‘Abd al-Halim Mahmud (1910-78): Who is an Authentic Scholar?, Hatsuki Aishima; Part Three: The Ethnography of History; 18. Possessed of Documents: Hybrid Laws and Translated Texts in the Hadhrami Diaspora, Michael Gilsenan; About the Contributors; Index.

A collective volume of rare intellectual and methodological coherence... This is a landmark volume that marks the coming of age for the study of Islam through ethnography.