Religion and Diaspora: Islam as Ancestral Heritage in Mauritius
Orientation towards a point of political and historical allegiance outside the boundaries of the nation-state is often taken to be a defining quality of diasporas, and this aligns with the ubiquitous tendency of Islamic practice to engage with sources of long-distance, or indeed global, religious au...
| Published in: | Journal of Muslims in Europe |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2016
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| In: |
Journal of Muslims in Europe
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| Further subjects: | B
Islam
Mauritius
South Asia
heritage
citizenship
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| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | Orientation towards a point of political and historical allegiance outside the boundaries of the nation-state is often taken to be a defining quality of diasporas, and this aligns with the ubiquitous tendency of Islamic practice to engage with sources of long-distance, or indeed global, religious authority. In this article, I shall investigate the dimensions of religious and political long-distance allegiances by analysing Mauritian Muslims as a diasporic formation. Looking at debates between proponents of Barelwi, Deobandi and Salafi traditions of Islam and disagreements between Urdu and Arabic as ‘ancestral languages’, I show the malleability of diasporic orientations manifest in such ‘ancestral culture’. This is not just a matter of theological contestation, but represents forms of belonging driven by local politics in a context where the state privileges the engagement with major, standardised forms of religious tradition as ancestral heritage. |
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| ISSN: | 2211-7954 |
| Contains: | In: Journal of Muslims in Europe
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22117954-12341320 |