Partners of Zaynab

Diane D’Souza

Description

How do pious Shia Muslim women nurture and sustain their religious lives? How do their experiences and beliefs differ from or overlap with those of men? What do gender-based religious roles and interactions reveal about the Shia Muslim faith? In Partners of Zaynab, Diane D'Souza presents a rich ethnography of urban Shia women in India, exploring women's devotional lives through the lens of religious narrative, sacred space, ritual performance, leadership, and iconic symbols.

Religious scholars have tended to devalue women's religious expressions, confining them to the periphery of a male-centered ritual world. This viewpoint often assumes that women's ritual behaviors are the unsophisticated product of limited education and experience and even a less developed female nature. By illuminating vibrant female narratives within Shia religious teachings, the fascinating history of a shrine led by women, the contemporary lives of dynamic female preachers, and women's popular prayers and rituals of petition, Partners of Zaynab demonstrates that the religious lives of women are not a flawed approximation of male-defined norms and behaviors, but a vigorous, authentic affirmation of faith within the religious mainstream.

D'Souza questions the distinction between normative and popular religious behavior, arguing that such a categorization not only isolates and devalues female ritual expressions, but also weakens our understanding of religion as a whole. Partners of Zaynab offers a compelling glimpse of Muslim faith and practice and a more complete understanding of the interplay of gender within Shia Islam.

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Shi'a
• Philosophie et théologie
• Al-Tabari
• Brahmán (casta)
• Chiismo
• Shahada
• Zamzam Well
• Tasbih
• Husayn
• Ibn Aqil
• Shahid
• Ziyarat
• Asiya, wife of the Pharaoh
• Ghusl
• Raka'ah
• Moinuddin Chishti
• Hashim
• Taqiyya
• Tabari (name)
• Brahmin
• Supplication
• Ali Shariati
• Shia Islam
• Dua
• Chahada
• Religion
• Islam
• Majlis
• Ali Chariati
• Taqiya
• Hussein
• Tabari
• Ablution
• Sayyid

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 03 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781611173789
• Langue: English

Extrait

Partners of Zaynab
S TUDIES IN C OMPARATIVE R ELIGION Frederick M. Denny, Series Editor
Partners of Zaynab
A Gendered Perspective of Shia Muslim Faith

D IANE D S OUZA

The University of South Carolina Press
2014 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
D Souza, Diane, 1960-
Partners of Zaynab : a gendered perspective of Shia Muslim faith / Diane D Souza.
pages cm. - (Studies in comparative religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61117-377-2 (hardbound : alk. paper) - ISBN 978-1-61117-378-9 (ebook)
1. Shi ah-Customs and practices. 2. Shi ah-Doctrines. 3. Women in Islam.
4. Women-Religious aspects-Islam. I. Title.
BP194.2.D755 2013
297.8 2082-dc23
2014007289
To the Shia community in Hyderabad, and especially its women, for sharing their lives and faith with me
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Series Editor s Preface
Preface
Notes on Transliteration and Translation
Introduction
1 Foundations of Shia Faith
2 A Sacred Community Space
3 Remembrance Gatherings
4 The Female Face of Religious Leadership
5 The Alam- A Symbol of Presence
6 Rituals of Intercession and Blessing
Conclusion
Appendix: Sacred Dates in the Shia Muslim Calendar
Glossary
References
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Main entrance to Yadgar Husayni
Interior courtyard of Yadgar Husayni
The three central alams at Yadgar Husayni
Male self-flagellation before a female audience in a Hyderabad public mourning procession during Muharram 2003
A religious orator ( zakira ) overtaken by grief in the pulpit
A display of alams at a Hyderabad ashurkhana
SERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
Diane D Souza s study is a major contribution to scholarship on Shi ite Islam in general, as well as a revealing study of ways in which both Shi ite men and modern western scholars have traditionally failed to consider Shi ite women as significant players in Shi ite communal and cultural life anywhere in the culturally, ethnically and socially diverse Muslim world. The author lived for many years in Hyderabad, India, and became deeply immersed in Shi ite women s ways of belief and community leadership in that important region of Shi ite presence and influence in India. The study thoughtfully and respectfully addresses not only the stresses that Shi ites--both male and female--often experience within Sunni Muslim majorities in the Muslim world but also the difficulties that Shi ite women often have encountered within their own sectarian boundaries.
In addition to the project s high level of formal scholarly integrity and field-based originality of data is the fact that it is a good read and should find a wide generally educated as well as academic readers market including comparative religion, Islamic studies, gender and women s studies, cultural/social/ethnic studies, and ritual studies. The book will also significantly contribute to sorely needed data-gathering and understanding of Shi ite Islam in general as well as Muslim women in particular in the contemporary Indian subcontinent. The project is full of new and substantial religious and cultural data made interesting and intelligible by sophisticated and assertively argued critical/theoretical analysis and interpretation.
This series has in recent years published important new studies on religion in South Asian contexts: Fred Clothey, Ritualizing on the Boundaries: Continuity and Innovation in the Tamil Diaspora (2006); Kelly Pemberton, Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India (2010); and Guy L. Beck, Sonic Liturgy: Ritual and Music in Hindu Tradition (2012). Diane D Souza s Partners of Zaynab: A Gendered Perspective of Shia Muslim Faith is a strong addition to this list.
Frederick M. Denny
PREFACE
I first encountered the religion of Islam through interactions with Muslims in the South Indian city of Hyderabad. I had moved there from Canada in 1985 with a six-month-old son and an Indian husband. My husband s work at the Henry Martyn Institute, an institution with a focus on Christian-Muslim relations and interreligious dialogue, brought me into contact with Muslims in a city known for its vibrant Islamic culture and heritage. Fortunately I left North America before today s era of stereotypes about Muslims, for it allowed me to begin my relationship with a people and their religion without the baggage of preconceived ideas. Initially what I learned about Muslim faith came from local encounters in a thriving metropolis where the call to prayer was a melodious backdrop to the bustle of the city. I gradually got to know fruit sellers and shop owners, neighbors and teachers, housewives and domestic workers. My interest in and connections to people further expanded as I visited local religious sites and met with Muslims from across the socioeconomic spectrum. I and my young children spent a good deal of time in female company when we visited people s homes, as was the local custom especially in conservative circles. Being a foreigner, however, I was given greater latitude than most Indian women and often was invited into the formal parlor or meeting place of men, as well as into the bedrooms, kitchens, and living areas where women and children tended to congregate.
My interest in the Muslim community thus began as part of nearly twenty years of life spent in India. Part of my identity there included being a rare white foreigner among the six million people who identified Hyderabad as home, the mother of three engaging children, the wife of a Christian Islamic scholar, and a researcher whose interests in gender and psychology led me to teach and write about Muslim women s lives. As my social networks deepened and my engagement with Muslim communities grew, I drew increasingly upon published writings to further my interest in Islam s foundations, history, and practices. Although this information was at times useful, it was also occasionally very unsatisfying. For example, I was fascinated by the vibrant local observances surrounding Shab-e-Barat , the Night of Mercy (D Souza 2004), when the faithful remember those who have died and affirm that life and death are in God s hands. Muslim neighborhoods are lit up and active long into the night as the devout engage in rituals of personal and communal piety. In stunning contrast, scholarly sources barely mention this hugely popular event. Even specialist encyclopedias confine it to the margins of Muslim experience.
As my research continued, I eventually grew frustrated by the pejorative ways in which women s spiritual lives were overlooked, glossed over, or devalued in the writings of many male religious leaders and religious studies scholars. This was particularly true when women s rituals or activities fell outside the established pillars of Islamic practice: daily prayer, fasting during Ramzan, pilgrimage to Mecca once in a lifetime, regular tithing for those whose economic situation allows it, and affirming one s faith through a straightforward formulaic recitation. Although I saw women doing all these things, I saw them faithfully doing much more: being generous to the poor, praying for their personal needs and for the intercession of powerful spiritual figures, engaging in simple or elaborate rituals with deep layers of meaning. The unsatisfying gap between what women named or practiced as important to their religious lives and what male scholars and religious leaders defined as central motivated me to conduct research that could accurately and respectfully portray female devotional lives. I chose an empirical process rather than a historical one in order to provide women with a chance to define and describe for themselves their religious perceptions and experiences.
An issue which has further galvanized my writing has been the persistent bifurcation of religious practice into normative and popular categories. One notices this tendency in the religious and Islamic studies fields, but it also surfaces among anthropologists and other social scientists who study Muslim cultures. Normative refers to standard doctrines and behaviors, the established religion, while popular indicates rituals, actions, and beliefs that self-identified Muslims practice but that fall outside the established religion. Scholars thus distinguish between universal and local religion or, in a flurry of binaries, between official and unofficial, orthodox and heterodox, central and peripheral, or Great and Little traditions. The actual terms are less important than the dichotomy they suggest or the accompanying presumption that universal, official, orthodox practices and beliefs are of a higher or purer form than local, unofficial, or heterodox ones. By privileging certain types of religious behavior Muslim women s devotional expressions are often marginalized. An unexamined gender bias tends to channel many female practices into the latter devalued category, profoundly weakening our understanding of religion.
In this book, then, I offer a glimpse into what religiosity means for a group of devout Shia women in the South Asian urban context. I do not give an overview of the entirety of women s devotional lives but focus on uniquely Shia rituals that women perform collectively. This allows me to dispel their relative scholarly neglect and delve more deeply into a significant set of religious practices. By this choice I do not mean to imply that rituals shared with Sunnis, such as fasting or the pilgrimage to Mecca, or those enacted individually-personal pray