Introduction and Interview: A multi-arts project

In this article digital artist and filmmaker Iqbal Barkat discusses his new work Terrorist/Apostate, a multi-arts project, with scholars Katie Lavers and Jon Burtt. Terrorist/Apostate is based on the lived experience of his collaborator, Lebanese Australian actor Fadi Alameddin. It explores the tensions that arise as the central character begins to question his faith and his identity as a Muslim in Western Sydney. Barkat discusses how the play is informed by the critical discourse between different, often polarized, readings of Islam across a wide range of media. In particular he suggests that contemporary discussions of Islam by Muslim writers including feminists, humanitarians, LBGTI community members, and religious scholars reveal a more complex and nuanced idea of Islam than the reductive 'popular critiques' presented by many western commentators, and that authors such as Tariq Ali, Fatema Mernissi, and Nawal El Saadawi engage with the notion that there never has been a single idea of what constitutes Islam, but rather 'a plurality of Islams'. Through a wide-ranging open-ended interview process Barkat discusses this critical discourse about contemporary Islam in the context of this important new theatre work.

Why did Qajar elites become such enthusiastic patrons of ta'zīyah? A simple question with a complex answer

The Qajar elites of Iran used various Shi'i religious rituals to bolster their legitimacy, but ta'zīyah was the Qajar ritual par excellence. This article argues for the key role played by the following factors. First, the relationship between the Qajar elites and the elite ulamā was often contentious. Second, since the ulamā controlled most religious spaces and rituals, it was difficult for the Qajar elites to sponsor rituals independently of the ulamā, and third, since the ulamā had conflicting and ambivalent attitudes towards certain Shi'i rituals, because of the practices of dressing up and representing holy Shi'i persons (including males dressing up as female characters), and because of the injurious aspects of rituals like qamah zanī and zanjīr zanī. Finally, hierarchies of status within the ulamā developed throughout the Qajar period, following the victory of the Ūsūlīs over the Akhbārīs in Iraq and Iran. A combination of these factors meant that the highest-ranking ulamā typically did not sponsor rituals like ta'zīyah, which provided a unique opportunity for Qajar elites to promote their legitimacy, with relative independence from the elite ulamā.

Polemical encounters: Ambedkar and Savarkar on Muslim performativity

The concept of Muslim performativity and the perception of the image of an ordinary Muslim are the central themes of this article. It outlays V. D. Savarkar's and B. R. Ambedkar's views on Muslim performativity ‐ performance of Muslimness or Islamic religiosity. It primarily engages with Savarkar's Essentials of Hindutva (1923) and Ambedkar's Pakistan or the Partition of India ([1945] 2013) and extracts their comments on Muslimness with reference to Muslim invasions and alleged divided loyalty. Apart from highlighting the convergences and divergences in their views on Muslim performativity, it describes their debate as performance. Further, this article argues that a hangover of Savarkarite and Ambedkarite comments on Muslim performativity permeates through the legal production of the Muslim community. By discussing the Muslim community's multifarious attempts to reform family law, this essay engages with the lived reality of Muslim performativity to stress the heterogeneity of Muslimness. By posing the lived reality of Muslim performativity against the dominant discourse in the aforementioned thinkers' works, it contributes a novel approach towards the conceptualization of performativity and departs from Judith Butler's concept of performativity.

Debating the Jinn: Making and unmaking of the invisible beings in the discursive tradition of Malabar

This article is an addition to the culture of 'debate as performance' in the Indian subcontinent as a research on the theological arguments through texts and performances on the existence of invisible creatures. It locates the space of the debates in Malabar, which has a long history of argumentative tradition. This article suggests that (in)visibility is the central point of contestation when one analyses the debating culture on Jinns. Textual representation of arguments and performance on the stage are two spaces where we can analytically explore the cases. The Jinn debate has undergone transitions in its development towards a core ideological point in Malabar. How do proponents and opponents corroborate their arguments based on texts or the logical understanding? When has this practice begun? Who were the leading Jinn debaters in Malabar? Malabar, as a discursive space for debates, has contributed to the making and unmaking of Jinns in the region. It is obvious that these debates were performative events, as a performance of the pure religion, and as a performative moment for distinctions for each ideology from the other.

Contesting authentic Islam: Ahlul Quran movements and performance of debates in the religious sphere of Kerala

Ahlul Quran movements introduced the debates on the question of the authority of tradition as the second source of Islamic knowledge and critiqued the existing notions of Islam among the Malabar Muslims in Kerala. These intra-Islamic factions attempted to reinterpret Islam according to their interpretations solely based on the Quran and developed their take on what constitutes 'authentic Islam'. This article uses Ahlul Quran as a generic term for the two main Ahlul Quran movements that developed in the Malabar Coast during the early and late half of the twentieth century. These two movements were the Ahlul Quran movement of Pazhayangadi by B. Kunjahamed Haji and Khuran Sunnath Society of Abul Hasan (popularly known as Chekanur Moulavi). They initiated numerous oral debates and discussions with various Islamic groups existing in the Malabar region such as Sunnis, Mujahids, Ahmediyyas and Jamaat-e-Islami, challenging and contesting different notions of 'authentic Islam'. Along with oral debates, it also gave birth to textual contestations, with voluminous books, articles and pamphlets challenging each other. This article traces the intra-religious debates that developed among the Malabar Muslims after the emergence of Ahlul Quran thoughts. It analyses how the existing Islamic groups upholding different versions of 'authentic Islam' in the Malabar region, located in the northern part of Kerala, South India, challenged the growth of these Ahlul Quran movements. In short, during the numerous debates and contestations that happened between the Islamic groups within the Malabar region the article explores how these debates are a constant performance of Islam and its tradition.

'Are you scared of being Muslim?' 100% Arabica and the influence of raï music in defining Beur communities in France

Raï music has evolved significantly over the last few decades, gaining an increasingly popular following in France. This music genre was prominently featured in Mahmoud Zammouri's film, 100% Arabica (1997). Previous analyses of raï music have suggested that this genre symbolizes Algerians' identity and their cultural tendency towards cynicism. This article attempts to refine that conclusion. Relationships between the characters of this film, the treatments of their gender roles and the depiction of their relationships to Islamic practices and cultural identity are all examined through the lens of anthropological diffusionism and social conflict. The results imply that when raï music is used as a Muslim cultural activity, this genre empowers and shapes identity among the Beur communities in France. However, the results also reveal how raï music facilitates cultural expression that can corrupt many of the core values held by Islam.

Mappila literature as a paradigm for countercultures: Reading Moinkutty Vaidyar in context

Recent studies on Mappila literature revisit Mappila culture in an attempt to understand the 'Mappila Muslim' beyond earlier representations by colonial and nationalist scholarship. Mappila literature is studied as a paradigm for understanding traditions of dissent and resistance by indigenous communities in colonized contexts. This article positions Mappila poet Moinkutty Vaidyar in a lineage of Mappila writings of resistance in Arabic, Arabimalayalam and Malayalam, and studies Vaidyar's works as a continuum of Mappila counterculture while also placing him as a link between two distinct eras in Kerala's literary history through synchronic and diachronic reading of Malayalam literary history. It critically explores the reasons behind marginalization of Mappila literature by mainstream academic studies until the early years of twenty-first century. While considering Moinkutty Vaidyar as a continuum of the Mappila counterculture, this research also presents a case for Vaidyar as an anti-orthodox social reformer, a secular thinker, a successor of the pāttu and bhakti traditions, a harbinger of romanticism and modernism in Kerala's literature and finally as the creative genius who created a new linguistic and literary landscape for Mappila society.