Performing Islam - Volume 1, Issue 1, 2012

Suluk Wujil (inscribed in Cirebon, West Java in 1607) interpellates descriptions of wayang kulit, raket mask dance and clowning with discourse on Islamic topics and a portrait of a homo-social relation between two Islamic 'saints' (wali). The text focuses centrally on Sheikh Malaya, an alias for Sunan Kalijaga, the legendary Islamic proselytizer. Malaya has become a mask dance performer in his search for his missing son, but is unable to reconcile his working identity with a belief in doctrinal Islam, until a post-performance dialogue with his spiritual master Sunan Bonang reveals that the symbology of wayang kulit can be interpreted from an Islamic mystical perspective, holding the key to the reconciliation of opposites and opening up knowledge of the Divine. The text argues for an anti-scripturalism in which the ultimate kiblat (point of orientation) is not Mecca but the ever-permutable self, constantly in negotiation with the Divine and social others. Rather than artistic performance being segregated as an extra-quotidian domain, it is integrated through discourse and interpretation into a dialogical world of play. Such, at least, is the text's apparent argument. In practice, however, a text such as the Suluk Wujil, which deploys a considerable amount of technical performance vocabulary as well as complex Islamic hermeneutics, is clearly not intended to be understood by all. Sunan Bonang's esoteric interpretation of wayang kulit is not immanent in performance. Thus, the text hints at a split between artistic production and exegesis defined along lines of class and space. While commoners might enact and attend theatre in the public sphere, the work of interpretation takes place privately, carried out by elite artistic connoisseurs who are also initiates in the esoteric secrets of mysticism. This hierarchical spatialization of knowledge remains a vital undercurrent in Javanese performance to date.

Gender representations and the position of women in Islam are issues of ongoing debates in both the Muslim world and the West. This article discusses the manifestation of religiosity among Egyptian female artists who publically occupy a religious space to identify themselves and/or their artistic expressions, and examines closely the representation of a Muslim femininity onstage in a reading of Egyptian playwright Alfred Farag's The Last Walk (1999). This article looks at the dominant discourses of gender in the context of contemporary Egypt and the influence of these discourses on artistic expression of femininity onstage. The open-ended, scriptural text has given enough room for creative discursive strategies to take shape. To represent in performance or not has generally been a debatable question that polarized Muslim communities of old and new. This has particularly been pertinent to women's performance given the proscriptions on a woman's bodily display inherent in the religious text. The article explores a performance of gender inequality in the Islamic context of Egyptian society. Farag's one-woman-show play problematizes notions of agency, responsibility and victimhood. The diversity of ambivalent attitudes towards women performers influenced by the Egyptians' religious outlook is explored through the examination of the case of the 'repentant' Egyptian female artists. Repentant artists include actors, vocalists and belly dancers, who, due to their varying modes of performance, debate the decision of their repentance or retirement differently. The various brands of religiosity that these female artists demonstrate explicate new forms of non-western feminist agencies that are otherwise unexplored or reductively deemed marginal, precisely because they are born within an Islamic culture.

The identities of the various South Asian communities are shaped and recognized not only by their place of origin and their specific contexts of migratory history, but also by very diverse post-migratory adaptive strategies and practices taken up by these South Asians. The complexities and debates that surround the roles and positions of music in British South Asian communities and their specific contexts are indicative of these adaptations and re-appropriation of South Asian transnational cultures in the British context. Using the Liverpool-based South Asian arts promoter Milapfest as a case study, this article critically examines the significances and implications of the development of new forms of South Asian music in Britain and how they relate to the broader issues of production and reproduction of South Asian cultures and identities in transnational and global contexts. It also argues that their musical practice and the associated politics of participation is necessarily located in the dialogic nexus between religious and secular, public and private, homeland and diasporas.

This research explores the importance of linguistic materials in Sidi Sufi ritual and globalized performance, in which the objective is to transform pain and affliction into pleasure and well-being. It examines the notion that by performing such texts within new linguistic contexts during local and global mendicancy as peripatetic faqirs outside the sacred spaces of Sufi shrines, the texts are deverbalized from the perspective of the audience. Sidi performers, however, experience no such distinction between their expressions of devotional texts within their own linguistic environments and in international settings. This article describes, transcribes, translates and interprets Sidi devotional texts as they are performed in Sufi shrines, in homes, palaces and public venues by invitation, and in the streets of villages and towns where they wander uninvited as mendicant faqirs. All such events are considered acts of devotion by the performers, and their linguistic content is preserved faithfully even in international settings. Their vocal genres include the azan, the Muslim call to prayer sanctioned by Islamic orthodoxy, as well as heterodox Sufi devotional verses such as qasidas, qawwalis and zikrs, some addressed to Sidi saints. Performances of these devotional texts often develop into ecstatic dancing called goma or damal, and help to create affective solidarities among Sidis and their followers and audiences. Thus, an invented vernacular communitas, generated locally among Sidis in Gujarat, now links Muslims and non-Muslims globally, affirming the values of sacred pleasure, transformative joy and Sufi Muslim devotion.

This article seeks to demonstrate that conversion to Islam is not only of theological significance, but is a social process whereby those who convert to Islam are deeply troubled by the idea that other Muslims may not consider them as 'authentic Muslims'. While the hostility that Muslim converts can experience from non-Muslims after converting to Islam has frequently been noted, much less has been written about the challenges that stem from fellow Muslims. This article explores the great lengths that Muslim converts go to in order to avoid being doubted as 'authentic Muslims' by drawing upon Goffman's ideas about performance and Bourdieu's ideas about 'habitus'. It is argued that the converts respond to having their 'authenticity' as Muslims questioned by 'performing' their 'Muslimness' in a similar way to which Goffman spoke about 'actors' taking up 'roles' in 'character' for the sake of 'audiences'. The perspective of Bourdieu is also important in exposing several barriers that Muslim converts face in seeking to 'pass' as 'authentic Muslims'. For example, the notion of 'habitus' suggests that identities are deeply engrained on an individual and are not easy to be resocialized into suggesting bleak prospects for Muslim converts in ever attaining the status of an 'authentic Muslim' in the eyes of some lifelong Muslims.

This article examines Sufi music, particularly Yassavi zikr (or dhikr) forms, in contemporary Central Asian cities (such as Andijan and Turkestan). The first part of this essay investigates Sufi performance, also exploring the rarely researched practices of local women. The analysis is based on field work undertaken in the Uzbek area of Ferghana Valley, where the flow of local indigenous mystical knowledge is found in female performances. These musical rituals survived despite the interdictions of the Soviet regime. The article combines methods of identifying musical features found in the mystical chanting and ceremonies with the use of the new computer program Audiosculpt. The second part of this work discusses the revival of male Sufism in the Kazakh city Turkestan, exploring how after the collapse of the Soviet Union, music became an identifying principle of zikr within the male community too.

In the face of racial and religious prejudice, young British Kashmiris on the streets of Walsall use music as a means to articulate the struggles they face. Territories are fiercely defended from rival gangs through a mixture of violence, intimidation and rap music. This interview, with a local Kashmiri radio DJ, focuses on the experiences of Kashmiri Muslims who live in Walsall, an industrial town in the West Midlands, England. Other British Asians, the media, politicians and academics have described Kashmiris as 'backward', of a low social status and of having little interest in music. In addition to this, young Kashmiri boys have low educational achievement rates and disproportionate numbers are found in the country's prisons. This interview identifies some of the reasons why these issues are particular to Kashmiris, and attempts to shine a spotlight on some of the creative ways in which young Kashmiris articulate and challenge the everyday problems they face.

This review examines the fourth year of the Fez Festival of Sufi Culture (17–24 April 2010). Through a description of the festival, the impact of commercial interests on attitudes toward Sufi spirituality among different actors of this festival will be explored. Also, perceptions of the coexistence of these seemingly incompatible values will be addressed. The review further explores the transformation of religious ceremonies from local contexts into staged festival performances, and how the recent emphasis of Sufism by the Moroccan state has contributed to the re-emergence of Sufism in the Moroccan public sphere.