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In Egypt, singing and dancing are considered essential on happy
occasions. Professional entertainers often perform at weddings and
other celebrations, and a host family's prestige rises with the
number, expense, and fame of the entertainers they hire.
Paradoxically, however, the entertainers themselves are often
viewed as disreputable people and are accorded little prestige in
Egyptian society. This paradox forms the starting point of Karin
van Nieuwkerk's look at the Egyptian entertainment trade. She
explores the lives of female performers and the reasons why work
they regard as "a trade like any other" is considered disreputable
in Egyptian society. In particular, she demonstrates that while
male entertainers are often viewed as simply "making a living,"
female performers are almost always considered bad, seductive women
engaged in dishonorable conduct. She traces this perception to the
social definition of the female body as always and only sexual and
enticing-a perception that stigmatizes women entertainers even as
it simultaneously offers them a means of livelihood. Drawn from
extensive fieldwork and enriched with the life stories of
entertainers and nightclub performers, this is the first
ethnography of female singers and dancers in present-day Egypt. It
will be of interest to a wide audience in anthropology, women's
studies, and Middle Eastern culture, as well as anyone who enjoys
belly dancing.
In this in-depth ethnography, Karin van Nieuwkerk takes the
autobiographical narrative of Sayyid Henkish, a musician from a
long family tradition of wedding performers in Cairo, as a lens
through which to explore changing notions of masculinity in an
Egyptian community over the course of a single lifetime. Central to
Henkish's story is his own conception of manhood, which is closely
tied to the notion of ibn al-balad, the 'authentically Egyptian'
lower-middle class male, with all its associated values of
nobility, integrity, and toughness. How to embody these communal
ideals while providing for his family in the face of economic
hardship and the perceived moral ambiguities associated with his
work in the entertainment trade are key themes in his narrative.
Van Nieuwkerk situates his account within a growing body of
literature on gender that sees masculinity as a lived experience
that is constructed and embodied in specific social and historical
contexts. In doing so, she shows that the challenges faced by
Henkish are not limited to the world of entertainment and that his
story offers profound insights into socioeconomic and political
changes taking place in Egypt at large and the ways in which these
transformations impact and unsettle received notions of
masculinity.
Popular culture serves as a fresh and revealing window on
contemporary developments in the Muslim world because it is a site
where many important and controversial issues are explored and
debated. Aesthetic expression has become intertwined with politics
and religion due to the uprisings of the "Arab Spring," while, at
the same time, Islamist authorities are showing increasingly
accommodating and populist attitudes toward popular culture. Not
simply a "westernizing" or "secularizing" force, as some have
asserted, popular culture now plays a growing role in defining what
it means to be Muslim. With well-structured chapters that explain
key concepts clearly, Islam and Popular Culture addresses new
trends and developments that merge popular arts and Islam. Its
eighteen case studies by eminent scholars cover a wide range of
topics, such as lifestyle, dress, revolutionary street theater,
graffiti, popular music, poetry, television drama, visual culture,
and dance throughout the Muslim world from Indonesia, Africa, and
the Middle East to Europe. The first comprehensive overview of this
important subject, Islam and Popular Culture offers essential new
ways of understanding the diverse religious discourses and pious
ethics expressed in popular art productions, the cultural politics
of states and movements, and the global flows of popular culture in
the Muslim world.
From "green" pop and "clean" cinema to halal songs, Islamic soaps,
Muslim rap, Islamist fantasy serials, and Suficized music, the
performing arts have become popular and potent avenues for Islamic
piety movements, politically engaged Islamists, Islamic states, and
moderate believers to propagate their religio-ethical beliefs.
Muslim Rap, Halal Soaps, and Revolutionary Theater is the first
book that explores this vital intersection between artistic
production and Islamic discourse in the Muslim world. The
contributors to this volume investigate the historical and
structural conditions that impede or facilitate the emergence of a
"post-Islamist" cultural sphere. They discuss the development of
religious sensibilities among audiences, which increasingly include
the well-to-do and the educated young, as well as the emergence of
a local and global religious market. At the heart of these essays
is an examination of the intersection between cultural politics,
performing art, and religion, addressing such questions as where,
how, and why pop culture and performing arts have been turned into
a religious mission, and whether it is possible to develop a new
Islamic aesthetic that is balanced with religious sensibilities. As
we read about young Muslims and their quest for a "cool Islam" in
music, their struggle to quell their stigmatized status, or the
collision of morals and the marketplace in the arts, a vivid,
varied new perspective on Muslim culture emerges.
Embracing a new religion, or leaving one's faith, usually
constitutes a significant milestone in a person's life. While a
number of scholars have examined the reasons why people convert to
Islam, few have investigated why people leave the faith and what
the consequences are for doing so. Taking a holistic approach to
conversion and deconversion, Moving In and Out of Islam explores
the experiences of people who have come into the faith along with
those who have chosen to leave it-including some individuals who
have both moved into and out of Islam over the course of their
lives. Sixteen empirical case studies trace the processes of moving
in or out of Islam in Western and Central Europe, the United
States, Canada, and the Middle East. Going beyond fixed notions of
conversion or apostasy, the contributors focus on the ambiguity,
doubts, and nonlinear trajectories of both moving in and out of
Islam. They show how people shifting in either direction have to
learn or unlearn habits and change their styles of clothing,
dietary restrictions, and ways of interacting with their
communities. They also look at how communities react to both
converts to the religion and converts out of it, including
controversies over the death penalty for apostates. The
contributors cover the political aspects of conversion as well,
including debates on radicalization in the era of the "war on
terror" and the role of moderate Islam in conversions.
In the 1980s, Egypt witnessed a growing revival of religiosity
among large sectors of the population, including artists. Many
pious stars retired from art, “repented” from “sinful”
activities, and dedicated themselves to worship, preaching, and
charity. Their public conversions were influential in spreading
piety to the Egyptian upper class during the 1990s, which in turn
enabled the development of pious markets for leisure and art, thus
facilitating the return of artists as veiled actresses or
religiously committed performers. Revisiting the story she began in
“A Trade like Any Other”: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt,
Karin van Nieuwkerk draws on extensive fieldwork among performers
to offer a unique history of the religious revival in Egypt through
the lens of the performing arts. She highlights the narratives of
celebrities who retired in the 1980s and early 1990s, including
their spiritual journeys and their influence on the
“pietization” of their fans, among whom are the wealthy,
relatively secular, strata of Egyptian society. Van Nieuwkerk then
turns to the emergence of a polemic public sphere in which
secularists and Islamists debated Islam, art, and gender in the
1990s. Finally, she analyzes the Islamist project of “art with a
mission” and the development of Islamic aesthetics, questioning
whether the outcome has been to Islamize popular art or rather to
popularize Islam. The result is an intimate thirty-year history of
two spheres that have tremendous importance for Egypt—art
production and piety.
Embracing a new religion, or leaving one’s faith, usually
constitutes a significant milestone in a person’s life. While a
number of scholars have examined the reasons why people convert to
Islam, few have investigated why people leave the faith and what
the consequences are for doing so. Taking a holistic approach to
conversion and deconversion, Moving In and Out of Islam explores
the experiences of people who have come into the faith along with
those who have chosen to leave it—including some individuals who
have both moved into and out of Islam over the course of their
lives. Sixteen empirical case studies trace the processes of moving
in or out of Islam in Western and Central Europe, the United
States, Canada, and the Middle East. Going beyond fixed notions of
conversion or apostasy, the contributors focus on the ambiguity,
doubts, and nonlinear trajectories of both moving in and out of
Islam. They show how people shifting in either direction have to
learn or unlearn habits and change their styles of clothing,
dietary restrictions, and ways of interacting with their
communities. They also look at how communities react to both
converts to the religion and converts out of it, including
controversies over the death penalty for apostates. The
contributors cover the political aspects of conversion as well,
including debates on radicalization in the era of the “war on
terror” and the role of moderate Islam in conversions.
Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and
subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a
surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are
converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system
that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and
Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and
what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new
Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families
and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to
their children? These are some of the questions that Women
Embracing Islam seeks to answer.
In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam,
leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians
investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several
European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam.
Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors
explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt
Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well
as the Nation of Islam, have for women. The authors find that while
no single set of factors can explain why Western women are
embracing Islamic faith traditions, some common motivations emerge.
These include an attraction to Islam's high regard for family and
community, its strict moral and ethical standards, and the
rationality and spirituality of its theology, as well as a
disillusionment with Christianity and with the unrestrained
sexuality of so much of Western culture.
"Enjoying religion" seems to be a contradiction because religion is
generally perceived as a serious or even suppressive phenomenon.
This volume is the first to study the increase of enjoying religion
systematically by presenting eleven new case studies, occurring on
four continents. The volume concludes that in our late modern
secular societies the enjoyment of religion or of its loose
elements is growing. In particular when scholars concentrate on
"lived religion" of ordinary people, the cheerful experiences
appear to prevail. Many people use pleasant (elements of) religion
to add meaning to their lives, to find spiritual fulfillment or a
way to salvation, and to experience belonging to a larger unity. At
the same time, diverse cultural dynamics of late modern society
such as popular culture, commercialization, re-enchantment, and
feminization influence this trend of enjoying religion. In spite of
secularization, playing with religion appears to be attractive.
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