Remaking Islam in African Portugal

Lisbon—Mecca—Bissau

Michelle Johnson (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

212 Seiten

2020
Indiana University Press (Verlag)
978-0-253-04977-3 (ISBN)

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When Guinean Muslims leave their homeland, they encounter radically new versions of Islam and new approaches to religion more generally. In Remaking Islam in African Portugal, Michelle C. Johnson explores the religious lives of these migrants in the context of diaspora. Since Islam arrived in West Africa centuries ago, Muslims in this region have long conflated ethnicity and Islam, such that to be Mandinga or Fula is also to be Muslim. But as they increasingly encounter Muslims not from Africa, as well as other ways of being Muslim, they must question and revise their understanding of "proper" Muslim belief and practice. Many men, in particular, begin to separate African custom from global Islam. Johnson maintains that this cultural intersection is highly gendered as she shows how Guinean Muslim men in Lisbon—especially those who can read Arabic, have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and attend Friday prayer at Lisbon's central mosque—aspire to be cosmopolitan Muslims. By contrast, Guinean women—many of whom never studied the Qur'an, do not read Arabic, and feel excluded from the mosque—remain more comfortably rooted in African custom. In response, these women have created a "culture club" as an alternative Muslim space where they can celebrate life course rituals and Muslim holidays on their own terms. Remaking Islam in African Portugal highlights what being Muslim means in urban Europe and how Guinean migrants' relationships to their ritual practices must change as they remake themselves and their religion.

Michelle C. Johnson is a cultural anthropologist who specializes in religion and ritual in West Africa and among African immigrants in Europe. She has conducted extensive fieldwork with Muslims in Guinea-Bissau and with Guinean Muslim immigrants in Lisbon, Portugal. She has held grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Department of Education (Fulbright-Hays), and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and has authored numerous articles and book chapters, including "'Never Forget Where You're From': Raising Guinean Muslim Babies in Portugal" in A World of Babies: Imagined Childcare Guides for Eight Societies and "'Nothing Is Sweet in My Mouth': Food, Identity, and Religion in African Portugal." She is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bucknell University. She was awarded the 2019 Class of 1956 Lectureship for Inspirational Teaching.

1. Faith and Fieldwork in African Lisbon
Part 1: Remaking Islam through Life Course Rituals
2. Name-Giving and Hand-Writing: Childhood Rituals and Embodying Islam
3. Making Mandinga, Making Muslims: Initiation, Circumcision, and Ritual Uncertainty
4. Distant Departures: Funerals, Post-Burial Sacrifices, and Rupturing Place and Identity
Part 2: Remaking Islam through Rituals Beyond the Life Course
5. Reversals of Fortune: From Healing-Divining to Astrology
6. "Welcome Back from Mecca!": Reimagining the Hajj
Epilogue: Faith, Food, and Fashion: Religion in Diaspora
Bibliography
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	25.08.2020
Reihe/Serie	Framing the Global
Zusatzinfo	26 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	Bloomington, IN
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	318 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	0-253-04977-6 / 0253049776
ISBN-13	978-0-253-04977-3 / 9780253049773
Zustand	Neuware