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Corporation News
For further information contact:
Carnegie Corporation of New York
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CARNEGIE CORPORATION ANNOUNCES 2006 CARNEGIE SCHOLARS
Carnegie Scholars Program Continues Focus on Islamic Scholarship:
Largest Class Yet
New
York, NY—April 25, 2006. Today, Vartan Gregorian, president
of Carnegie Corporation of New York, announced that twenty Carnegie
Scholars have been chosen, all of whom will study issues relating
to Islam and the modern world. Each member of the new class will
receive grants of up to $100,000 to pursue specific Islam-centered
research themes over the next two years. This is the second class
of Carnegie Scholars to focus on Islam.
The
goal of the Corporation's new emphasis on Islam is to encourage
the development and expansion of the study of Islam within the United
States and to stimulate research on which to help build a body of
thoughtful and original scholarship. In past years, scholars focused
on the four program areas of the Corporation. This year's scholars
were selected from the largest number of nominations to date. They
represent an array of U.S. universities and institutions, indicating
that Islamic Studies is a growing area of interest in American academia.
The Corporation is concentrating the Carnegie Scholars Program on
Islam over the next few years to help make the field more central
to American research and instruction, significantly expanding the
breadth of knowledge necessary to build leadership and guide national
and foreign policy.
"Islam
is a mosaic of many sects," says Vartan Gregorian, president
of Carnegie Corporation. "It’s as diverse as humanity
itself. In focusing our Scholars Program on Islam, our overall aim
is to expand the range of knowledge and understanding about Islam
as a religion and about the cultures and communities of Muslim societies
both in the United States and abroad."
The
2006 class of scholars reflects a diversity of professional, ethnic
and geographical backgrounds. Notably, half the class comprises
younger scholars, who have received a doctorate in or after 1997;
almost half are women and many are holders of multiple degrees.
The range of their professional fields includes Islamic studies,
law, religion, history, sociology, gender studies, international
relations, politics, anthropology, constitutionalism, human rights
and comparative literature.
The
twenty Carnegie Scholars for 2006, their institutions and research
titles are:
Abbas
Amanat, Yale University
Defying Islamic Conformity: Skeptics, Heretics and Rebelling
Dervishes
Said
Arjomand, State University of New York, Stony Brook
Islam and Constitutional Reconstruction in the Middle East:
A Historical and Comparative Perspective
Raymond
W. Baker, Trinity College
The Contemporary Islamic Wassatteyya (Mainstream): Understanding
the Resilience and Appeal of Islam in a Global Age
Eva
Bellin, Hunter College
Arbitrating Identity: High Courts and the Politics of Islamic-Liberal
Reconciliations in the Muslim World
Zvi
Ben-Dor Benite, New York University
Islam and the Emergence of Modern China
Devin
DeWeese, Indiana University, Bloomington
Historical and Critical Perspectives on Islam in Central Asia
Marwa
Elshakry, Harvard University
Science and Secularism in the Arab World After Darwin
Fawaz
A. Gerges, Sarah Lawrence College
The Intra-Jihadist War
Kambiz
GhaneaBassiri, Reed College
A History of Islam in America since the Colonial Period
Ellis
Goldberg, University of Washington
Sovereignty, Community and Citizenship in Contemporary Arab Political
Thought
Aziz
Huq, New York University
Counter-Terrorism, Speech Regulation, and Muslim Minorities
in the West
Marion
Holmes Katz, New York University
Contesting the Mosque: Debates over Muslim Women’s Ritual
Access
Clark
B. Lombardi, University of Washington
Muslim Judges as a New Voice in Islamic Discourse
Farzaneh
Milani, University of Virginia
Re-mapping the Cultural Geography of Iran: Islam, Woman, and
Mobility
Yitzhak
Nakash, Brandeis University
Governance and Leadership in Modern Islam
Vali
R. Nasr, Naval Postgraduate School
Gauging the Prospects for the Rise of “Muslim Democratic”
Political Parties and Platforms in Muslim Democracies
Jen’nan
Ghazal Read, University of California, Irvine
Multiple Identities and Muslim American Political Incorporation
Heather
J. Sharkey, University of Pennsylvania
Christian Evangelism and Western Imperialism in the Modern Middle
East: The Long-Term Consequences of American Missionary Encounters
with Muslims
Elora
Shehabuddin, Rice University
Women at the Muslim Center: Islamist Ideals and Democratic Exigencies
Madhavi
Sunder, University of California, Davis
The New Enlightenment: How Muslim Women are Bringing Religion
and Culture Out of the Dark Ages
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. 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 83 Carnegie Scholars who have been selected annually since
2000.
“The
selection of the Carnegie Scholars is highly competitive,”
says Neil Grabois, vice president and director for strategic planning
and program coordination for Carnegie Corporation. “In as
much as we want to encourage the study of Islam across the country,
we look for intellectual risk-takers who will play a leading role
in accomplishing this goal.”
“We’re
particularly pleased at the number of women scholars in this year’s
class, as well as the recent Ph.D’s" comments Patricia
L. Rosenfield, chair of the Carnegie Scholars Program. "They
are well-positioned to provide leadership in promoting research
on Islam for years to come.”
Carnegie Corporation of New York was created by Andrew Carnegie
in 1911 to promote “the advancement and diffusion of knowledge
and understanding.” As a grantmaking foundation, the Corporation
seeks to carry out Carnegie’s vision of philanthropy, which
he said should aim “to do real and permanent good in this
world.” The Corporation’s capital fund, originally donated
at a value of about $135 million, had a market value of $2.2 billon
on September 30, 2005. The Corporation awards grants totaling approximately
$80 million a year in the areas of education, international peace
and security, international development and strengthening U.S. democracy.
Details
on each Scholar's project follow:
Abbas
Amanat
Professor of History
Yale University
New Haven, CT
Title: Defying Islamic Conformity: Skeptics, Heretics and Rebelling
Dervishes
Chair
of the Council on Middle East Studies of the Yale Center for International
and Area Studies for the past 10 years, Amanat will concentrate
on the study of nonconformity in the Muslim world through a historical
assessment of Muslim societies, dissenters and heretics in the period
between the 15th and 20th centuries in the eastern Muslim world,
with particular attention on Anatolia, Central Asia, Iran and South
Asia. Furthering this goal, he will endeavor to explain how Muslim
societies allocated space to skeptics, agnostics, heretics and political
dissenters in a seemingly immutable Islamic paradigm. His analysis
will focus on individuals and movements as well as on intellectual
and popular trends with the aim of analyzing their rich humanistic
and libertarian dimensions. By highlighting the open space given
in Muslim societies to social dissenters, the study will demonstrate
the historical absence of a monolithic Islam. Furthermore, it will
examine how the state and religious authorities were often unwilling
or unable to oppose these trends of openness. Amanat intends to
produce a book that reaches a wide audience beyond the academic
community.
Said
Amir Arjomand
Distinguished Service Professor of Sociology
State University of New York, Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY
Title:
Islam and Constitutional Reconstruction in the Middle East:
A Historical and Comparative Perspective
Arjomand
has worked extensively in the realm of Islam and is a widely regarded
expert in the sociology of constitutionalism. His expertise, most
recently, has been called upon to help advise the UN Assistance
Mission to Afghanistan during the drafting of their constitution.
He was also selected to be the inaugural Martin & Kathleen Crane
Fellow at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of
Law and Public Affairs. Arjomand’s project will raise the
level of debate on Islam and constitutionalism through a historical
and institutional examination of the constitutional history of the
Middle East. His research will further define issues in the relationship
between Islam and constitutionalism by studying the intersection
of global trends and the revolutionary and evolutional processes
of the Middle East. A range of historically significant settings
for constitution-making and constructional change, such as Turkey/Iran
and Afghanistan/Iran, will be compared. Revolution, military conquest,
and Islamicization based on ideological constitutions will be compared
with existing types of legal systems of civil law and common law.
Furthermore, Arjomand will examine the transition from the era of
ideological constitutions, with the state as social transformer,
to a new constitutionalism of the rule of law and human rights,
with the law as the protector of civil society. Through a historical
sociology of constitutional law in the Islamic Middle East, Arjomand
intends to produce a book that moves beyond the current ideological
debate, while also providing guidance to policymakers for constitutional
reform and institution-building in the Muslim world. He intends
to disseminate his book to the general public both in the United
States and the Middle East.
Raymond
Baker
Professor of International Politics
Trinity College
Hartford, CT
Title:
The Contemporary Islamic Wassatteyya (Mainstream): Understanding
the Resilience and Appeal of Islam in a Global Age
A scholar, lecturer, educator and leader in the field of Middle-Eastern
studies, Baker has done much to promote understanding of the region
and Islam both in the United States and abroad. Currently based
in Cairo, he serves as president of the International Association
of Middle East Studies and is a Board Member of the World Organization
of Middle East Studies. Baker’s project will address the following
questions: How has the Islamic Awakening become such a force and
what are the implications for the West? Through a study of the Wassatteyya,
a cultural/institutional configuration that emerged from a unique
Islamic historical transition during the Islamic Awakening of the
1970s, Baker will examine how this mainstream centrist movement
is a sustaining force of Islamic renewal in the world today. He
will explore the mechanisms by which Islamic centrists have formed
a network to gain control of leadership while situating themselves
in the new globalized world. He will explore how this centrist network
can play a positive role in the Islamic Awakening, rejecting violent
extremism and forming positive relationships with the globe’s
dominant powers. Through his research, Baker intends to guide efforts
to prompt a more approachable form of dialogue and cooperation between
the West and the Islamic world. He will publish a book accessible
to the public and policy makers and share his findings at international
and national policy forums.
Eva
Bellin
Associate Professor of Political Science
Hunter College
New York, NY
Title:
Arbitrating Identity: High Courts and the Politics of Islamic-Liberal
Reconciliation in the Muslim World
A younger
scholar, Bellin is regarded as one of the most outstanding scholars
in the United States today in the study of the politics of the Middle
East, publishing scholarly papers in some of the most competitive
peer-reviewed journals in her discipline. She has become a critical
participant in the study of politics in Northern Africa and the
Middle East. Bellin’s research, which should culminate in
a book, aims to explore the roles that high courts play in those
states in the Muslim world whose foundational institutions are informed
both by their religious identity and their liberal democratic values.
She will situate her case studies in Egypt and Pakistan, two countries
where the courts play an activist role in reconciling liberal and
Islamist traditions. She will investigate the strategies employed
by the courts in reconciling these two traditions, as well as explore
the institutional, sociological and international factors that help
define the justices’ innovative rulings. Bellin aims to elucidate
the role that legal elites and institutions may play in forging
new paths of cultural reconciliation. With her book, she intends
to reach the academic, policymaking and general audiences.
Zvi
Ben-Dor Benite
Assistant Professor of History/Middle East and Islam
New York University
New York, NY
Title:
Islam and the Emergence of Modern China
Ben-Dor
Benite is a recognized younger scholar, having received several
awards and honors, among them, a Fulbright Fellowship, an Edmond
Safra Pioneering Student Award and a post-doctoral Fellowship at
the Center for Historical Analysis at Rutgers University. Drawing
on his rich academic background and on the significant body of work
by Chinese Muslim intellectuals, Ben-Dor Benite will explore models
for framing and understanding the presence of large Muslim populations
in historically and demographically non-Muslim lands. He will also
examine to what extent the systems of non-Muslim lands shape the
way Muslims are able to integrate into the larger, non-Muslim society.
Ben-Dor Benite will provide a fresh lens for the study of Islamic
diasporas. He will look at how modern Chinese Muslim intellectuals
simultaneously redefined Islam and carved out a new space in the
post-imperial context through a careful examination of text and
interviews by the students of Pang Shiqian, who translated the Qur’an
into Chinese, and Ma Jian, a Confucian scholar turned Islamic Jurist.
Ben-Dor Benite’s intended book will reach non-academic audiences,
including Muslim diasporas in the United States, Europe and China.
Devin
DeWeese
Professor of Central Eurasian Studies
Indiana University, Bloomington
Bloomington, IN
Title:
Historical and Critical Perspectives on Islam in Central Asia
DeWeese’s
work is uniquely informed by his knowledge of the primary languages
of Central Asia, as well as the modern languages of Uzbek and Russian.
DeWeese will illuminate the fundamental assumptions, theories and
approaches regarding Islam in Central Asia that have shaped U.S.
policies toward that region. He will focus on Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan,
Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, as well as on Afghanistan
and the Xingjian province of China. DeWeese aims to inform the discussion
of Islam in this region by examining the following three essential
deficiencies in the field thus far: the inadequate analysis of Islam
as a religion and social system, the lack of attention paid to the
specific religious history of Central Asia, and the uncritical acceptance
of the frameworks developed for characterizing the religious life
that developed under the Soviet establishment.
Marwa
Elshakry
Assistant Professor of the History of Science
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
Title:
Science and Secularism in the Arab World after Darwin
Elshakry
has been awarded numerous prestigious grants and fellowships, including
the Sultan Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of California
at Berkeley and a grant from the British Academy for research in
Syria, Lebanon and Egypt. With this fellowship, she will continue
her research by exploring how Muslim thinkers in Egypt and Greater
Syria approached Western science after Darwin. The translations
of the new evolutionary sciences prompted debate among Muslim thinkers
and the emerging Arab press: they served to catalyze change on numerous
social fronts, including religion, social development, cultural
advancement, and political struggle. Elshakry will illustrate how
Darwinism fostered a spirit of interdisciplinary knowledge-sharing
among many Muslim thinkers, as part of the larger incremental debate
between science—ilm—and secularism—ilmaniyya.
Elshakry will pose three main questions: how did the translation
of modern concepts of science reconfigure epistemological and social
categories in the Arab world? What were the responses to Darwin’s
ideas about the relationship of religion to science and how do they
help us understand notions of secularism in this region? And, lastly,
how did the discussion of evolutionary science and progress change
Muslim thinkers perceptions of Arab society and politics in the
recent past? Elshakry will prepare a book and write articles for
both scholarly and public audiences.
Fawaz
A. Gerges
Christian A. Johnson Chair in International Affairs and Middle Eastern
Studies
Sarah Lawrence College
Bronxville, NY
Title:
The Intra-Jihadist War
With
this Carnegie Scholars award, Gerges, the noted author of books
and articles on the Middle East will explore the ways in which the
global jihad survives given the intensification of intra-jihadist
struggles. Gerges will examine the durability of the larger jihadist
movement launched by bin Laden and Zawahiri within the broader Jihad
movement in the Middle East. By analyzing the Arab media, jihadi
literature, correspondence between jihadis, and interviews with
Islamist and jihadi leaders, much of which will be translated into
English for the first time, Gerges will assess the future global
prospects of the movement. Gerges will illuminate the schisms within
the current jihadi movement and explore the shifting perceptions
of those who might support or censure it. He will prepare articles
for academic journals, newspapers, and magazines and produce a book.
Kambiz
GhaneaBassiri
Associate Professor of Religions and Humanities
Reed College
Portland, OR
Title:
A History of Islam in America since the Colonial Period
GhaneaBassiri
will explore the role of Islam in America and how Muslims proactively
participated in the history and pluralism of the United States.
GhaneaBassiri will approach Islam in America from a historical,
humanistic perspective, examining how Muslims, informed by their
historical context, have created American Islamic institutions and
how other non-Muslim institutions have been changed by contact with
this population. GhaneaBassiri plans research committed to a plain-language
view of history focusing on actual events and experiences and will
look at the positive interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims
as they construct their lives in a common democracy. It is GhaneaBassiri’s
hope that by highlighting the agency of Muslim Americans in history,
this project will develop a new analytical vocabulary and historical
framework that could change the way Islam and modernity are taught.
Ellis
Goldberg
Professor of Political Science
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Title:
Sovereignty, Community and Citizenship in Contemporary Arab
Political Thought
Goldberg
is an expert on Egypt and the relationship between Arab Muslim societies
and political movements. His scholarship has been published, in
numerous prestigious and influential journals around the world,
including the Arab language journal, Abwa. He has continuously engaged
communities of intellectuals both in the United States and the Middle
East with the aim of mutual understanding. With this fellowship
Goldberg will continue to explore the issues of national sovereignty,
community and citizenship in the current Arab world by examining
how three influential intellectuals, from Egypt (Tariq al-Bishri);
Morocco (Muhammad Abid al-Jabari); and Lebanon (Ridwan al-Sayyid)
have wrestled with this debate in the context of the modern state.
Additionally, the ideas of the sovereign state and the role of citizenship
will be discussed in light of their European origin and the impact
of these discussions on the modern Arab world. Goldberg will bring
to Western audiences as yet untranslated works of these three who
advised leaders of opposition movements and have attracted widespread
public readership throughout the Arab world.
Aziz
Huq
Associate Counsel
The Brennan Center
New York University
New York, NY
Title:
Counter-Terrorism, Speech Regulation and Muslim Minorities in
the West
Huq’s
past clerkship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and his work with
Muslim, Sunni and Shi'ite communities around the world, including
some of the most challenging areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan,
have well positioned him to take on this challenging research topic.
Recent terrorist assaults have resulted in more stringent applications
of European and North American legal regimes. Such mechanisms, which
have been principally used against Muslim minorities, include stricter
regulations on freedom of speech and association. Huq will analyze
post-September 11th legislation in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Canada, and France by describing the new counterterrorism
powers within legal, historical and political contexts and by examining
whether this new legislation accomplishes the goal of curtailing
radicalism or instead further marginalizes Muslim minority communities.
Huq’s scholarship will combine analysis of the lawfulness
of counterterrorist tactics with research on the dynamics of radicalization
and religious identity among Muslim minorities. His work will contribute
to the current debate by illuminating new understanding of the consequences
of legal regulations on minority groups’ speech and association.
Marion
Holmes Katz
Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Study
New York University
New York, NY
Title:
Contesting the Mosque: Debates over Muslim Women’s Ritual
Access
Katz
will use her Carnegie Scholars award to explore the participation
of Muslim women in public congregational prayer and their access
to mosques. The research will examine three areas: the fact that
Islamic law excludes women from the mosque; Islamic law excludes
women from the mosque, but its authoritative sources permit them;
and Islamic law permits women access to the mosque, but custom and
convenience keep them away. The debate reveals the vigor with which
issues of women’s ritual participation have been contested
and the complexity of the process by which normative Islamic ritual
has been produced. Katz will explore how fitna, a term describing
the dangers that may result from feminine powers of seduction, has
been used in Islamic legal reasoning in different social and historical
contexts. Katz’s research will postulate that Islamic law
has been more accommodating to women’s agency than was previously
recognized.
Clark
Lombardi
Assistant Professor
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Title:
Muslim Judges as a New Voice in Islamic Discourse
Lombardi,
a professor in Islamic Studies and practicing lawyer, will analyze
the ways in which influential judges have interpreted Islamic law
informed by civil, common or legal reasoning. Building on his previous
research on the evolution of different judicial theories of Islamic
laws, Lombardi will examine judicial opinions as expressions of
contemporary legal theory in three non-Arab Muslim countries: Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and Malaysia. He will explore how modern judges trained
in the Western legal systems interpret and apply Islamic laws. The
following three questions will be considered: What sources influence
judicial understanding of Islam? How does training affect the approach
to Islamic legal interpretations? And what factors cause judges
to take a more nuanced approach to the interpretation of shari’a
and its relationship to other legal traditions? In addition to producing
a book, Lombardi will develop a website and give public talks to
disseminate the findings of his scholarship.
Farzaneh
Milani
Professor of Persian and Women Studies
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
Title:
Re-Mapping the Cultural Geography of Iran: Islam, Woman and
Mobility
The
past three decades have produced an unprecedented amount of writing
about Islam in the West in which the Muslim woman is often a central
character. In a familiar story of captivity recast now for a present-day
audience, she is incarcerated in segregated spaces and trapped in
her veil. And yet, as Milani points out, Muslim women have been
very much on the move—a moderating, modernizing force in most
Muslim societies. Seeking to analyze the complexities of women’s
role in modern Muslim societies, Milani, a recognized scholar of
Persian literature and culture, will research the competing narratives
of mobility and confinement in Iranian literature. Borrowing from
Eastern and Western theories, Milani will employ a cross-cultural,
interdisciplinary perspective to pinpoint women’s struggle
for freedom/mobility as a concept for social transformation and
modernization. The resulting book will provide a study of women’s
mobility and its effects on the social structure of modern-day Iran.
Yitzhak
Nakash
Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies
Brandeis University
Waltham, MA
Title:
Governance and Leadership in Modern Islam
Building
on his previous work on Shi’ism in the modern Arab world,
Nakash, an expert on the modern history of the Iraqi Shi’ites,
will examine the greater success of Shi’i clerics in providing
religious and sociopolitical leadership to Muslims in Iraq, Egypt
and Saudi Arabia since the rise of the modern state in the 20th
century. By comparing works of Muslim clerics on state and government
in Islam, Nakash will discuss Muslim politics at a time when shifts
in geopolitics are challenging clerics’ leadership. His scholarship
will explore how Shi’i clerics are better positioned today
than their Sunni counterparts to provide leadership to followers,
inspire religious and sociopolitical reform in the Arab world, and
combat the radicalism of militant Islamists. Nakash’s work
will result in a book that illuminates the diverse nature of Muslim
politics, the complexity of political Islam, and the capacity of
Shi’i and Sunni clerics to act as a force for moderation and
reduce tension between Islam and the West.
Vali
Nasr
Professor of Middle East and South Asia Politics
Department of National Security Affairs
Naval Post Graduate School,
La Jolla, CA
Title:
Gauging the Prospects for the Rise of “Muslim Democratic”
Political Parties and Platforms in Muslim Democracies
Nasr, an expert on political and social developments in the Muslim
world, will research the following questions: What will be the shape
of democracy in the Muslim world? Who will be the likely spokespeople
of Islam in the political process? Nasr posits that the “strategic
middle,” a term used to describe a new trend of secular political
agendas and pragmatic Islamic concerns, will likely dominate Muslim
societies. This rise of Muslim democracy reflects the compatibility
of Muslim values and ethics with practical election strategies in
a democratic setting. Nasr’s project will analyze the make-up
of this “strategic middle” by questioning the factors
and actors that matter in defining its shape. His preliminary findings
suggest that the “strategic middle” in the political
arena is created in the context of electoral competition and, although
it appeals to Muslim values, is neither defined nor controlled by
Islamist forces. Through case studies in Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey, with supportive data from Iran, Egypt
and Morocco, Nasr’s scholarship, which will result in articles
and a book, will move beyond the study of Islamic actions and ideas
to include the forming of democratic arenas and the prospects for
democratization in the broader Muslim world.
Jen’nan
Ghazal Read
Assistant Professor of Sociology
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA
Title:
Multiple Identities and Muslim American Political Incorporation
A scholar
of U.S. Muslims and Arab Americans, Read, using the only nationally
representative data on Muslim Americans to date, will examine factors
that affect the political incorporation of Muslim Americans in the
United States across racial and ethnic lines. Her project will address
the following three questions: To what extent do South Asian, Arab,
and African American Muslims differ in their political attitudes
and behaviors? To what extent do socioeconomic, demographic and
cultural differences between these groups explain variations in
their political integration? And, to what extent do the facts that
produce differences between groups generate differences within each
group? She will also assess how different dimensions of Muslim religious
identity influence political engagement, providing a textured discussion
of the Muslim American experience. Her work will aim to inform public
debate about policies that intend to increase the democratic inclusion
of these groups, as well as contribute to the distinction between
political attitudes toward U.S. domestic policy and those toward
U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. This study will culminate
in a book aimed at scholarly, policy and public audiences.
Heather
J. Sharkey
Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Title:
Christian Evangelism and Western Imperialism in the Modern Middle
East: The Long-Term Consequences of American Missionary Encounters
with Muslims
An
historian of the Middle East specializing in colonial Africa, the
early Islamic world, and modern Islamic thought, Sharkey will examine
how Christian missionary work in the 19th and 20th century Middle
East contributed to local, regional, and global social changes and
affected regional politics. The missionary encounter became a catalyst
for the transfer of knowledge and ideas that still can be seen today.
In Egypt, for example, the efforts to educate women contributed
to a reconfiguration of gender relations. Missionary activity also
inadvertently galvanized anti-colonial nationalist Islamist sentiment.
Sharkey’s research will also assess the impact of the missionary
experience on U.S. Protestant culture, the politics of American
churches, and the shaping of Muslim-Christian relations. Her scholarship
will result in articles and a book that will illuminate the mutual
and ongoing transformations prompted by Christian missionary activities.
Elora
Shehabuddin
Assistant Professor of Humanities and Political Science
Rice University
Houston, TX
Title:
Women at the Muslim Center: Islamist Ideals and Democratic Exigencies
Drawing
on a combination of ethnographic research, open-ended interviews
and critical textual analysis, Shehabuddin, an expert on gender
and Islam, will investigate women’s political and social efforts
to reshape Islamist politics. She will explore how women have compelled
a rethinking of traditionally conservative and rigid positions on
gender issues by studying two self-avowedly Islamist parties in
formal democratic political systems: Lebanon’s Hezbollah (Party
of God) and Bangladesh’s Jamaat-I Islami (Party of Islam).
As these parties vie for central billing on their country’s
respective political stage, women have leveraged their voting powers.
Central to Shehabuddin’s analysis is the notion that Islamist
politics are mutable and can be shaped by external and internal
pressures, such as a women’s movement. This scholarship, which
will result in a book, builds on Shehabuddin’s previous work
on impoverished Bangladeshi women and their involvement in Islamism
and secularism. Shehabuddin’s also intends her work to contribute
to the understanding of Islam and politics, and the role of increasingly
mobilized female citizenry in changing the priorities of Islamist
movements.
Madhavi
Sunder
Professor of Law
University of California, Davis
Davis, CA
Title:
The New Enlightenment: How Muslim Women are Bringing Religion
and Culture Out of the Dark Ages
A scholar
of human rights, legal theory and Islam, Sunder will examine, through
case studies of the transformational information-sharing and solidarity
network Women Living Under Muslim Laws and the archives of Muslim
women’s human rights education manuals, how women in the Muslim
world have demanded democracy and rights within religious and cultural,
communities not just outside of them. Premised on a centuries-old,
Enlightenment compromise that establishes reason in the public sphere
but tolerated religious despotism in the private sphere, law continues
to define religion in the 21st century as a sovereign, extralegal
jurisdiction in which inequality is no only accepted, but expected.
Sunder conceptualizes the “New Enlightenment” movement
based on women’s right to seek reason, equality, democracy,
and liberty not only in the public sphere but also in the private
spheres of religion, culture, and family. Sunder’s scholarship
will produce a book that applies Enlightenment theory and strategy
to constitutional conflicts between Islam and women’s rights
and explores a new framework for operationalizing modernity and
freedom within culture and community.
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