Culture and Imperialism

Benedict Anderson’s deservedly famous thesis about the origins and nature
of modern nationalism turns around the central notion of an “imagined
community.” This category provides him with a matrix out of which one
can apprehend-theoretically and historically-the different variants of nationalist discourse formulated over the last two hundred years. We will refer,
in the brief comments that follow, to three basic dimensions structuring
the fabric of Anderson’s argument: 1) the presuppositions implicit in the
notion of an “imagined” community; 2) the kind of substitutability or solidarity which is required to be a member of such a community; 3) the kind
of relationship that is established between such a community-which is by
definition finite or limited-and its outside. Before that, however, let us
describe the main features of Anderson’s thesis.

On Imagined Communities

The Racial Contract

/pdf/imperial-leather-race-gender-and-sexuality-in-the-colonial-e5g9c51q0j.pdf

Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest

Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate

The practice of veiling has made Muslim women subject to dual oppressions—racism and Islamophobia—in society at large and patriarchal oppression and sexism from within their communities. Based on a narrative analysis of the politics of veiling in schools and society, the voices of young Muslim women attending a Canadian Islamic school speak to the contested notion of gender identity in Islam. The narratives situate their various articulations of Islamic womanhood in ways that both affirm and challenge traditional religious notions. At the same time they also are subject to Orientalist 1 representations of veiled and burqa clad women that represent them as oppressed and backward. Focusing on ethnographic accounts of veiling among Muslims girls who attended a gender-segregated Islamic high school in Toronto, this discussion allows a deeper understanding of how gendered religious identities are constructed in the schooling experiences of these Muslim youth.

Unveiled Sentiments: Gendered Islamophobia and Experiences of Veiling among Muslim Girls in a Canadian Islamic School.

This article provides an ethnographic analysis of the schooling experiences of Muslim youth in Canada who are committed to maintaining an Islamic lifestyle despite the pressures of conformity to the dominant culture. Little attention has been paid to how religious identity intersects with other forms of social difference, such as race and gender in the schooling experiences of minoritized youth. Using a case study often Muslim students and parents, this article demonstrates how Muslim students were able to negotiate and maintain their religious identities within secular public schools. The participants' narratives address the challenges of peer pressure, racism, and Islamophobia. Their stories reveal how Muslim students are located at the nexus of social difference based on their race, gender, and religious identity. The discussion further explores the dynamics through which these youth were able to negotiate the continuity of their Islamic identity and practices within schools despite the challenges that they faced. Building upon existing theories of identity maintenance and construction, this research demonstrates how the interplay of the core factors of ambivalence, role performance, and interaction and isolation are implicated in the way Muslim students negotiate the politics of religious identity in their schooling experiences.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3195968.pdf

Muslim Youth in Canadian Schools: Education and the Politics of Religious Identity

This paper examines the politics of knowledge production as it relates to Muslim women in western literary traditions and con­temporary feminist writing, with a view to understanding the political, ideological, and economic mediations that have histor­ically framed these representations. The meta-narrative of the Muslim woman has shifted from the bold queens of medieval lit­erature to colonial images of the seraglio's veiled, secluded, and oppressed women. Contemporary feminist writing and popular culture have reproduced the colonial motifs of Muslim women, and these have regained currency in the aftermath of9/1 l. Drawing upon the work of Mohja Kahf, this paper begins by mapping the evolution of the Muslim woman archetype in western literary traditions. The paper then examines how some contemporary feminist literature has reproduced in new ways the discursive tropes that have had historical currency in Muslim women's textual representation. The analysis is atten­tive to the ways in which the cultural production of knowledge about Muslim women has been implicated historically by the relations of power between the Muslim world and the West ...

Muslim Women and the Politics of Representation

Transnationalism and the experience of migrancy has lead to cultural dissonance for many newcomers from Muslim countries, unaccustomed to the culturally permissive social norms like consuming alcohol and partying, dating and premarital relations. Residing within culturally incongruent spaces, migrant Muslim communities often seek to shelter their children and youth from negative outside influences. Within this context, independent Islamic schools take on multiple sociological roles in the Canadian Muslim diaspora. For example, these schools attempt to create a ‘safe’ environment that protects students from the ‘de‐Islamizing’ forces in public schools and society at large. It is within the nexus of resisting cultural assimilation and engaging cultural survival that the need for Islamic schools emerges. These schools provide a culturally congruent space and a more seamless transition between the values, beliefs, and practices of the home and school environment. They also provide a space free from racism and...

Safe havens or religious ‘ghettos’? Narratives of Islamic schooling in Canada

Based on a critical ethnographic study of student narratives, this article examines Muslim student subcultures in Ontario schools. These subcultures embody a multisystemic framework for the continuity of Islamic beliefs and practices within this context. The social organisation of Muslim youth in schools represents nascent forms of Islamic subcultures and utilises, to varying extents, the politics of resistance to counteract their marginality and subordination as a religious minority in a secular public school system. This article challenges classical resistance theories in education which are predicated on the notion that anti-school behaviours are entrenched within class-based motives. The concept of resistance is redirected in this article to reflect alternative catalysts for student-based social action and educational critique that reflect the experiences of Muslim students. A mode of 'formalised resistance' will be introduced as a strategy used by Muslim students to resist marginalisation and develop...

Jasmin Zine

Papers

Unveiled Sentiments: Gendered Islamophobia and Experiences of Veiling among Muslim Girls in a Canadian Islamic School.

Muslim Youth in Canadian Schools: Education and the Politics of Religious Identity

Muslim Women and the Politics of Representation

Safe havens or religious ‘ghettos’? Narratives of Islamic schooling in Canada

Redefining Resistance: Towards an Islamic subculture in schools