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CARNEGIE CORPORATION ANNOUNCES 2007 CARNEGIE SCHOLARS Carnegie
Scholars Program Continues Focus on Islamic Scholarship: New York, NY — April 27, 2007. Today, Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York, announced that twenty-one Carnegie Scholars have been chosen. Each member of the new class will receive grants of up to $100,000 to work themes relating to Islam and the modern world over the next two years. This is the third class of Carnegie Scholars to focus on Islam. The goal of the Corporation's emphasis on one topic is to build a body of thoughtful and original scholarship to encourage the development and expansion of the study of Islam in the United States. This year's scholars were selected from an array of universities and institutions, indicating that Islamic studies is a growing area of interest among American academics. “This class of scholars will continue to enlighten and engage the public and become part of the national conversation about critical issues relating to Islam in this country and around the world,” says Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation, “We are certain their research will continue to expand and deepen the range of knowledge and understanding about Islam as a religion and about the cultures and communities of Muslim societies.” The 2007 class of scholars reflects diverse professional, ethnic and geographical backgrounds. This year many scholars are studying the Muslim diaspora in Asia, Europe and Africa. The range of fields includes gender studies, law, religion, science, history, sociology, international relations, politics, anthropology, economics, human rights and art. The twenty-one Carnegie Scholars for 2007, their institutions and research titles are: Lila
Abu-Lughod, Columbia University Beth
Baron, City College and Graduate Center of the City University
of New York Ahmad
Dallal, Georgetown University Eric
Davis, Rutgers University Finbarr
Barry Flood, New York University Frank
Griffel, Yale University Robert
W. Hefner, Boston University Charles
Hirschkind, University of California, Berkeley Engseng
Ho, Harvard University Jytte
Klausen, Brandeis University Ricardo
René Larémont, State University of New York
at Binghamton Saba
Mahmood, University of California, Berkeley Khalid
M. Medani, McGill University Ali
Mirsepassi, New York University Tamir
Moustafa, University of Wisconsin, Madison David
S. Powers, Cornell University Megan
Reid, University of Southern California Omid
Safi, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kristen
A. Stilt, The University of Washington Leonardo
A. Villalón, The University of Florida Ibrahim
A. Warde, Tufts University Under the leadership of Vartan Gregorian, Carnegie Corporation launched the Carnegie Scholars Program in 1999 to support innovative and path-breaking scholarship on issues related to Corporation program areas. In 2005 the program was focused specifically on Islam because the Corporation believed that developing a deeper understanding of Islam and the modern world was of vital importance. Candidates for the fellowships are first identified by a distinguished group of nominators, then are evaluated and selected in a competitive process by a committee of Carnegie Corporation program leaders and external advisors. This year's class joins a group of 103 Carnegie Scholars who have been selected annually since 2000. “We
are seeing some interesting scholarship relating to Islam and imagery
and the shaping of public perceptions, as well as ethical dimensions
of science as it relates to Islam in this year’s class,”
says Patricia L. Rosenfield, who leads the Carnegie Scholars Program.
“We are excited about the new, vibrant and innovative ideas
that will be expanded by our new Carnegie Scholars.” Details on each Scholar's project follow. Lila
Abu-Lughod Title: Do Muslim Women Have Rights? The Ethics and Politics of Muslim Women’s Rights in an International Field Abu-Lughod will address the ethical and political dilemmas posed by the internationalization of discourse on Muslim women’s rights. Her research will focus on pivotal questions about how the rights of Muslim women can be discussed without contributing to arguments common in today's debates about the “clash of civilizations” and associated political, economic and military agendas. Drawing on her nearly 30 years experience as an anthropologist studying Muslim women in the Arab world, she will analyze the way that arguments couched in language of women’s rights tend to become compromised in the global political and culture fields in which they are discussed. She will explore questions such as: Do Muslim women need saving? What is the relationship between religion and women’s rights? Who has the power to define women’s rights? How do those definitions circulate globally? How do new feminist legal categories, such as the “honor crime” so often associated with Muslim societies, come to frame social phenomena, highlighting certain issues and occluding others? Using ethnographic, literary, and historical research, Abu-Lughod will aim to answer these questions, conducting fieldwork in Egypt, Jordan, and the United States. Her scholarship will result in a book intended to reach both scholarly and public audiences.
Title: In Their Own Image: Americans and Middle Eastern Muslim Women Baron will explore a trajectory of American proselytizing, modernizing, and democratizing projects that targeted Middle Eastern girls and women over a century-and-a-half. Baron contrasts this with Muslim women's responses to these projects and their own activist agendas. She will examine how attempts by American missionaries and experts to remake Middle Eastern Muslim women in a Western image resulted in a mixed record, at times generating a backlash that undermined their limited successes. Building on her past research on women's movements and nationalism in Egypt, Baron will look at the encounter of Americans with Middle Eastern Muslim women around the specific issues of education, family planning, and empowerment in countries across the Middle East. She will use integrative and comparative historical research techniques to produce a book for practitioners, policymakers, and the general public who are interested in an analysis of American interventions in the Muslim world. Ahmad
Dallal Title: Islam, Science and the Challenge of History Dallal
will examine the ways in which the past is used in the construction
of modern Islamic discourse on the relationship between science
and religion. By juxtaposing modern views to historical traditions,
Dallal will trace the evolution of the contemporary Islamic attitude
towards science and elucidate some of the factors shaping this process
in modern times. The first part of his research will analyze Islamic
articulations of the relationship in such fields as theology, Quranic
exegesis, classification of the sciences, and philosophy. Dallal
will also examine classical scientific and religious texts to illuminate
how the sciences were classified in order to separate them from
the religious disciplines, and will trace discontinuities between
the classical and modern articulations of the relationship between
Islam and science. Dallal will prepare a book aimed at reaching
historians of Islamic culture and a larger audience interested in
learning more about the ethical and epistemological dilemmas and
challenges Muslims face regarding modern scientific and technological
developments. Eric
Davis Title: Islam and the Formation of Political Identities in Post-Ba’thist Iraq: Implications for a Democratic Transition. Davis will explore the rise of radical Islamist movements and sectarian politics in post-Ba’thist Iraq, especially since the 1990s, giving particular attention to the causes underlying both support for and opposition to sectarianism among prominent clerics, tribal leaders and political actors. He will also analyze the attitudes and behavior of Iraqi youth to determine whether the new generation supports sectarianism and to better comprehend its understandings of Islam. Davis aims to make an in-depth, multi-variate contribution to the understanding of the rise of sectarian identities in Iraq, hypothesizing that sectarian violence is due more to institutional and economic collapse than “ancient hatreds.” He intends to develop a conceptual framework based on concepts of religion and ethnicity, which will incorporate ideas promoted by clerics who support moderate interpretations of Islam, and which will be used to examine attitudes on the relationship between Islam and politics among clerics in the Sunni and Shi'i Arab and Kurdish communities. Davis’ work will provide a more analytical basis for understanding the level of support for sectarian identities among high-ranking Iraqi officials, clerics, and youth. His research will result in a book aimed at academic audiences and the broader public in the Middle East and non-Western world as well as the West. Finbarr
Barry Flood Title: The Trouble with Images: “Cartoon Wars” in Context Flood, an assistant professor in the Department of Fine Arts, has authored The Great Mosque of Damascus, and Objects of Translation: Material Culture and “Hindu-Muslim” Encounter, 800-1200. He has been a research fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, the National Gallery of Art and the Getty Research Institute. As a Carnegie Scholar, he will write a history of debates over the nature and status of images in the Islamic world. Flood will explore the impact of these debates on the production and reception of images in the Islamic world, combining textual analysis with empirical study of ceramics, metalwork, inscriptions, and manuscripts in order to consider the ways in which artists have negotiated questions of artistry, agency, and proscription. A particular concern of the study will be the ways in which the relationship between Islam and images has figured in Euro-American representations of Islam. This historical survey will provide a context for analyses of contemporary instances of image destruction in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the recent controversy over the Danish caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Frank
Griffel Title: The Continuation of the Philosophical Tradition Within Muslim Theology Griffel’s research will critically examine the role philosophical learning played in the period of Muslim history after the “Golden Age.” Griffel’s research will build on recent research challenging the belief in Western scholarship that Islam had abandoned philosophical thinking during the late Middle Ages. He will explore how the teaching tradition of philosophy, falsafa, became an integral part of mainstream Muslim theology and its legal discourse. The focus of his work will be on the earliest period of integration of philosophy into Muslim theology and legal thought during the 12th and early 13th centuries in the Muslim Middle East. Through an analysis of primary texts, Griffel will reconstruct the theological and philosophical systems during the period from 1100 to 1258 and evaluate how philosophical scholarship during that period shaped the whole Islamic tradition. His research findings will be drawn together into a book that aims to bring modern understanding to the ways Western intellectuals perceive Islam, its history and its future developments. Robert
W. Hefner Title: Islamic Education and Democratization in Indonesia Hefner will focus his research on the educational dynamism of Islam in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country. His research will examine the ways in which social and political developments since 1990 have given rise to rival varieties of Islamic education, including the largest mass-based program for civic and democratic education in the Muslim world. He will analyze how these rival models of religious schooling present issues of pluralism, gender, and democracy. He will also examine the implications of the Indonesian example for political and educational reform in the broader Muslim world. The research is based on classroom, ethnographic and survey materials gathered during research visits to Indonesia since 1999. The resulting book is intended to reach both the academic and public audiences, as well as policy analysts working on issues of pluralism, education, and democratization. Charles
Hirschkind Title: The “Moorish Problem” and the Politics of Multiculturalism in Spain Hirschkind's project is a study of the different ways in which Europe's Islamic past inhabits its present, unsettling contemporary efforts to secure Europe's Christian civilizational identity. Taking southern Spain as his focus, Hirschkind will analyze the social and political processes that mediate and sustain an active relation to Europe's Islamic heritage, and the potential impact these processes have on forms of cooperation and responsibility linking Muslim immigrants, Spanish converts, and Andalusian Catholics as subjects of Europe. Hirschkind's research involves both historical analysis of the political and legal frameworks regulating the status of religious minorities in contemporary Spain, as well as ethnographic fieldwork with Andalusian officials, lawyers, activists, Spanish converts to Islam, and Muslim immigrants residing in and around the city of Granada. By exploring some of the fissures within contemporary narratives of Europe's Judeo-Christian identity, this project contributes to the contested place assigned to Islam and Muslims in contemporary debates about religious pluralism in western societies.
Title: Empires through Diasporic Eyes: The U.S., Militant Islamism, Indian Ocean Precedents It is widely believed that the current challenge posed by militant Islamism to the U.S. is without precedent; thus history provides no guide to the new world of globalized guerrilla warfare that is jihad, and states need new laws, weapons, powers and ideas. Yet over the past half-millennium of Western predominance, successive hegemonic powers—the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and now Americans— have been opposed by Muslims led or inspired by diasporic Arabs originating from Arabia. Ho's project seeks to understand the broader social basis of these episodic contests by assessing how and when local grievances against specific instances of imperial expansion came to be expressed and represented in international Islamic terms by diasporic Arab Muslims. The research will focus on leading figures such as Zayn al-Din al-Malibari, Sayyid Fadl, Abd al-Rahman al-Zahir and Usama bin Ladin, interpreted in the context of long-term relations between diasporic Arab Muslims and western empires across the Indian Ocean. The project frames the ongoing conflict between the United States and militant Islamist groups led or inspired by Usama bin Ladin within this history of both contest and co-operation, thus questioning the assumption that the current challenge posed by militant Islamism to the U.S. is without precedent. Ho's study will result in a book intended for the academic, public and policymaking communities. Jytte
Klausen Title: European Muslims and the Secularization of Islam Klausen’s research will identify overlapping areas of consensus and dissent between Muslim faith groups and public policy makers in Britain, France, Germany and Belgium, countries that pursued policies designed to achieve a measure of control over the teaching of Islam, mosque management, and the role of imams in the mosque and society. Her study focuses on recent experiments in the development of new legal and funding frameworks for Islamic faith institutions and the perceived attempt to secularize Islamic religious expression. She will also examine the European requirement that Muslim faith communities marginalize radical and extremist theology, a particularly contested issue. Klausen’s study will incorporate a cross-national comparison of the ongoing dialogues between mosque associations and the governments of each of the four countries. The resulting book will reach a wide audience of scholars, policymakers and the public. Ricardo
René Larémont Title: Islamic Law and Politics in Nigeria, 1804-2007 Laremont will examine Islamic law and political movements in Nigeria in order to address the larger question of how to create a stable polity in religiously mixed societies. His research will focus on the role of Islam and Islamic law in three important political issues: the conferral of partial or total legitimacy to governments; mass mobilization of the population for political action; and the possibilities for intra-religious and inter-religious reconciliation within the state. His study will analyze and critique prevailing work on the meaning of Islam and other religious experiences within the context of Nigerian politics. He will also address the broader question of whether Nigeria’s attempts at inter-religious convivencia can provide lessons that can be applied to societies and states beyond Nigeria, such as the Sudan, Kosovo or East Timor. The resulting book will help inform public policy debates on Muslim-Christian rapprochement as well as institution building across religious divides. Saba
Mahmood Title: Defining the Secular in the Modern Middle East Mahmood's research is a comparative study of how secularism has been promoted and contested in two Muslim majority societies, Lebanon and Egypt, in the post-colonial period. In both these contexts, secularism has increasingly come to be seen as a prophylaxis against the ascendance of religious strife and political struggle. Despite this widely held consensus, it is unclear what secularism means within these two national contexts, both conceptually and practically, given their distinct demographic, political, and religious profiles. Mahmood's historical and ethnographic study will analyze: (a) how secularism has come to be understood differentially in light of the state's regulation of religious life in these two societies; and (b) how Muslim religious scholars and ordinary believers have come to both accommodate and challenge various ethical and political dimensions of the secularization process. Her work will result in a series of articles and a book that aim to provide a nuanced and in-depth analysis of different traditions of Muslim secular politics in the Middle East. Khalid
M. Medani Title: Joining Jihad: A Comparative Political Economy of Islamist Militancy and Recruitment Medani's
research will focus on the economic and political conditions that
have led to the rise of different forms of mobilization and recruitment
of Islamic fundamentalists and militants in Egypt, Sudan and Somalia.
His work will examine the informal institutional arrangements that
have given rise to new, and variable, forms of Islamist politics
in the context of declining state capacity. The research will concentrate
on the expansion of the hawwalat, unregulated Islamic welfare organizations,
and the role of Ahali, or private mosques, in providing an environment
conducive for recruitment of young militants under very specific
contexts. Through an historical institutional analysis, building
upon two-and-a-half years of ethnographic research, Medani will
show how and why informal institutions and networks have oriented
social and economic relations around Islamist, as well as ethnic,
loyalties across different cases. By examining the precise local
socioeconomic and cultural conditions that give rise to militant
recruitment in a comparative fashion, Medani's work will contribute
to the understanding of what attracts young Muslims to these organizations
in a way that does not begin with a monolithic view of Islam as
the explanation, and broadens our knowledge about which specific
types of informal networks are (or are not) conducive to the rise
of militancy. The resulting book is intended to reach the academic
and policymaking communities. Ali
Mirsepassi Title: Western Influence on Political Islam Mirsepassi will examine the Western intellectual trends, specifically the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, that have shaped the principle ideological formation of the Islamist critique of modernity, arguing that it is exclusively secular and inherently hostile to non-secular ideas. He will explore the emphasis that has been placed on the religious quality of political Islam, which has led to a scholarly blindness concerning “non-Islamic ideas” in the development of Islamist ideology. By highlighting the historical diversity of intellectual trends in the West, he will seek to offer an alternative democratic narrative of modernity by looking in-depth at models of democratic social change that incorporate religious and cultural sensibilities. With a special focus on Iranian intellectuals, Mirsepassi will situate the rise of political Islam in contemporary social and cultural contests in a way that may be relevant for modeling alternative paradigms for Islamic democracy in the contemporary world. Tamir
Moustafa Title: Islamic Law and Legal Contention in Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia In the 1970s and early 1980s, Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, Pakistan’s Zia ul-Haq, and Malaysia’s Mahathir Muhammad introduced new constitutional provisions to Islamize their states. In what is now a familiar pattern throughout the Muslim World, the three leaders sought to harness the legitimating power of Islamic symbolism and discourse in order to bolster the religious credentials of their regimes vis-à-vis emerging Islamist movements. But rather than shoring up state legitimacy and national unity, the introduction of new constitutional provisions opened a new forum of political contestation. Constitutional provisions enshrining both Islamic law and secular, liberal rights protections lay the seeds for legal friction, and courtrooms quickly became important sites of contention between groups with competing visions for their states and societies. Moustafa will study how these high-profile cases generate transformative effects far beyond the courtroom by sparking national debates and shaping public perceptions. He seeks to understand how Islamist litigation provokes and shapes competing conceptions of national/religious identity, resolves or exacerbates contending visions of Islamic law, and ultimately bolsters or undermines public perceptions of government legitimacy. The project will result in a book aimed at both the public and policymaking communities, in addition to engaging scholars interested in the intersection of comparative law, politics and religion. David
S. Powers Title: Wifely (Dis)obedience in Muslim Societies Powers will analyze the religio-cultural notion of nushuz or wifely (dis)obedience in Muslim societies. Using his background as an historian, he will explain how the understanding of domestic relations, with special attention to domestic violence, has varied across time and space in different Muslim societies. His study will focus on three time periods: the emergence of nushuz in the Qur'an, sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, and legal texts; historical practices relating to this concept as documented in court cases and fatwas issued between 1200 and 1800; and contemporary debates relating to wifely (dis)obedience. In the book that results from his study, Powers will situate the contemporary debate over wifely (dis)obedience in it historical context, thereby demonstrating how the study of the past can not only enrich our understanding of the present but also qualify or dispel claims and stereotypes about the status of Muslim women today. Megan
Reid Reid’s
research will investigate concepts of punishment in Sunni Islam
within the context of their sacred beginnings. Because certain punishments
have sacred authority, it is assumed that violent forms of punishment
are inherent to Islamic society. Reid will study the logic behind
these forms of punishments and the ways in which the level of shock
they inspire relates to their symbolic value. She will examine how
religious punishments have been implemented to different degrees
over time in Islamic communities. Reid argues that the case for
violent justice cannot be found in Qur’anic passages but rather
in successive generations of those who interpret Islamic legal texts,
resulting in evolving and fluid notions of appropriate justice.
Her analysis will include the study of past and present attitudes
of Muslim judges and legal scholars regarding corporal and capital
punishments as well as the imagery of those punishments and their
capacity to shock and satisfy. Reid will collaborate with scholars
in the Islamic world who work in law, sociology and criminal justice
to discuss modern ideas of proportional punishment She intends that
her research, which will form the basis of a book, will shed light
on how Islamic societies today understand changing conceptions of
fair punishment and also notions of clemency.
Omid Safi Kristen
A. Stilt Leonardo
A. Villalón Ibrahim
A. Warde
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