Remaking Islam in African Portugal

Michelle Johnson

Description

When Guinean Muslims leave their homeland, they encounter radically new versions of Islam and new approaches to religion more generally. In Remaking Islam in African Portugal, Michelle C. Johnson explores the religious lives of these migrants in the context of diaspora. Since Islam arrived in West Africa centuries ago, Muslims in this region have long conflated ethnicity and Islam, such that to be Mandinga or Fula is also to be Muslim. But as they increasingly encounter Muslims not from Africa, as well as other ways of being Muslim, they must question and revise their understanding of "proper" Muslim belief and practice. Many men, in particular, begin to separate African custom from global Islam. Johnson maintains that this cultural intersection is highly gendered as she shows how Guinean Muslim men in Lisbon—especially those who can read Arabic, have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and attend Friday prayer at Lisbon's central mosque—aspire to be cosmopolitan Muslims. By contrast, Guinean women—many of whom never studied the Qur'an, do not read Arabic, and feel excluded from the mosque—remain more comfortably rooted in African custom. In response, these women have created a "culture club" as an alternative Muslim space where they can celebrate life course rituals and Muslim holidays on their own terms. Remaking Islam in African Portugal highlights what being Muslim means in urban Europe and how Guinean migrants' relationships to their ritual practices must change as they remake themselves and their religion.

1. Faith and Fieldwork in African Lisbon
Part 1: Remaking Islam through Life Course Rituals
2. Name-Giving and Hand-Writing: Childhood Rituals and Embodying Islam
3. Making Mandinga, Making Muslims: Initiation, Circumcision, and Ritual Uncertainty
4. Distant Departures: Funerals, Post-Burial Sacrifices, and Rupturing Place and Identity
Part 2: Remaking Islam through Rituals Beyond the Life Course
5. Reversals of Fortune: From Healing-Divining to Astrology
6. "Welcome Back from Mecca!": Reimagining the Hajj
Epilogue: Faith, Food, and Fashion: Religion in Diaspora
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Islamic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Musulmán
• Ethnic studies
• Muslim
• Anthropology
• Muslim ben al-Hajjaj
• Islam
• Social
• Migration
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• EAN13: 9780253052766
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Advance Praise for Remaking Islam in African Portugal
Resonant throughout Remaking Islam in African Portugal , the ethnographer s deeply informed voice is the one we ourselves need to hear, as we, too, face unprecedented, once hardly imaginable predicaments of closeness and distancing in our troubled times. -Richard Werbner, author of Divination s Grasp: African Encounters with the Almost Said
The gripping narratives and nuanced interpretation found in Michelle Johnson s Remaking Islam in African Portugal demonstrates the considerable intellectual fruits of taking a slower more narratively contoured approach to ethnographic research and writing. . . . Given the depth of its analytical insights and the grace of its presentation, this is a work that will be read, savored, and debated for many years to come. -Paul Stoller, author of Yaya s Story: The Quest for Well Being in the World
Written with great sensitivity and reflexivity, Remaking Islam in African Portugal . . . is a refreshing welcome addition to scholarly conversations on African diasporas and struggles over belonging. -Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg, Carleton College
This insightful ethnographic narrative about the religious challenges of Muslim women from Guinea-Bissau in Lisbon deals with religion, gender and generations in a globalised world. While rooted in profound insights about the homeland, it spells out how Guinean women renegotiate ethnicity and religious identity. -J n na Einarsd ttir, University of Iceland
REMAKING ISLAM IN AFRICAN PORTUGAL
FRAMING THE GLOBAL SERIES
The Framing the Global project, an initiative of Indiana University Press and the Indiana University Center for the Study of Global Change, is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation .
Hilary E. Kahn and Deborah Piston-Hatlen, series editors
REMAKING ISLAM IN AFRICAN PORTUGAL
Lisbon Mecca Bissau

MICHELLE C. JOHNSON
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B. Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2020 by Michelle C. Johnson
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Johnson, Michelle C., author.
Title: Remaking Islam in African Portugal : Lisbon-Mecca-Bissau / Michelle C. Johnson.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 2020. Series: Framing the global Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020000490 (print) LCCN 2020000491 (ebook) ISBN 9780253049766 (hardback) ISBN 9780253049773 (paperback) ISBN 9780253049780 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Muslims-Portugal. Islam-Portugal. Muslims-Guinea-Bissau. Islam-Guinea-Bissau. Muslim women-Portugal. Muslim women-Guinea-Bissau. Guinea-Bissau-Relations-Portugal. Portugal-Relations-Guinea-Bissau.
Classification: LCC BP65.P8 J64 2020 (print) LCC BP65.P8 (ebook) DDC 297.09469-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000490
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000491
1 2 3 4 5 25 24 23 22 21 20
To Badim Clubo members, past, present, and future
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcription
1. Faith and Fieldwork in African Lisbon
PART I . Remaking Islam through Life-Course Rituals
2. Name-Giving and Hand-Writing: Childhood Rituals and Embodying Islam
3. Making Mandinga, Making Muslims: Initiation, Circumcision, and Ritual Uncertainty
4. Distant Departures: Funerals, Postburial Sacrifices, and Rupturing Place and Identity
PART II . Remaking Islam through Rituals beyond the Life Course
5. Reversals of Fortune: From Healing-Divining to Astrology
6. Welcome Back from Mecca! : Reimagining the Hajj
Epilogue: Faith, Food, and Fashion-Religion in Diaspora
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK TOOK ME A decade to finish, and so many people have contributed to it in multiple ways that it is nearly impossible to remember and acknowledge them all. Since I work at a liberal arts university where I spend much of my time working with students, it feels right to begin with my own teachers. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Washington, Clarke Speed, the late Edgar Bud Winans, and Simon Ottenberg introduced me to anthropology and African studies, gave me an extraordinary amount of time and attention, and encouraged me to go to graduate school. When I told Clarke that I wanted to become a professor of anthropology, he helped me believe that it was possible. As a graduate student at the University of Illinois, I had the privilege of working with Alma Gottlieb, an outstanding teacher, scholar, and mentor. It took reading only one of her books to know that I wanted to work with her. Her influence on my thinking and writing is still evident so many years later, on every page of this book, and I am thankful for the wisdom, advice, and friendship that she and Philip Graham have offered over the years. I also benefited greatly from my other teachers at Illinois, Ed Bruner, Alejandro Lugo, and especially Valerie Hoffman and Mahir aul, who taught me what I needed to know about Islam in and beyond Africa.
Scholars of lusophone Africa are a small, tight-knit group, and those who work in Guinea-Bissau have been an invaluable sounding board. Eric Gable was the first of this group whom I met, and he gave me the advice, wisdom, and support that I needed to start my research in Guinea-Bissau. I have benefited greatly from his friendship and careful reading of my work since then. This book has also been enriched greatly by the work of and scholarly dialogue with Maria Abranches, Lorenzo Bordonaro, Clara Carvalho, Joanna Davidson, J n na Einarsd ttir, Joshua Forrest, Brandon Lundy, Henrik Vigh, and Walter Hawthorne.
My earliest fieldwork in Guinea-Bissau and Portugal, which I conducted in the late 1990s and early 2000s in graduate school, provided the foundation for the future research out of which this book emerged. Research in Guinea-Bissau was funded by a Social Science Research Council International Predissertation Fellowship. While this preliminary fieldwork was intended to prepare me for an additional year of research, Guinea-Bissau s 1998 civil war prevented me from returning until 2003. That initial year was a gift and became more important than I ever imagined. I was affiliated with the Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa (INEP) while in Bissau and am grateful for the support and mentorship of Peter Mendy, INEP s director at the time.
Fieldwork in Portugal was supported by a Social Science Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship, a Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Fellowship, and a Marianne A. Ferber Graduate Scholarship in Women s Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As these fellowships were intended for research in Guinea-Bissau, I will never forget the granting officers flexibility and willingness to work with me as I scrambled to move my research to Portugal. JoAnn D Alisera encouraged me to work in Lisbon, and she opened my eyes to the importance of transnational research and assured me that this radical move at the time would eventually be fruitful. I am eternally grateful for her confidence, support, and friendship over the years. In Lisbon, Paula Zagallo e Mello and Rita Bacelar from the Luso-American Educational Commission and Maria Jo o Santos Silva from the US Embassy provided the logistical support that made moving my research from Bissau to Lisbon possible.
Bucknell University generously funded my later fieldwork periods. Start-up research money allowed me to return to both Portugal and Guinea-Bissau in 2003, and a 75 percent sabbatical grant, a Dean s Fellowship, an International Research Travel Grant, and a grant from the Center for the Study of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity funded my 2011 and 2017 fieldwork in Portugal.
I owe the book s real beginning, however, to a 2010 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Book Fellowship. I am indebted to my (now retired) colleague and friend, Marc Schloss, for his insightful comments on my proposal draft and for his encouragement during the writing period. The SSRC workshop in Brooklyn was one of the most intellectually stimulating experiences of my academic career, and conversing and receiving feedback from other fellows and participating editors was incredibly helpful and humbling. My SSRC fellowship editor, Bud Bynack, had a sharp vision for the book from the very beginning and knew exactly the direction in which I needed to move to realize it. He pushed me to think in nuanced and creative ways, and when life intervened (I was seven months pregnant at the time of the workshop), he agreed to work with me well beyond the official fellowship period, as I struggled to complete chapters while teaching and parenting. I can only hope that the finished product meets his high standards.
I wrote half of the book, chapters 2 , 3 , and 4 , during my first sabbatical from Bucknell when I was a visiting researcher in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology at Uppsala University. I would like to thank Hugh Beach for this exciting opportunity, as well as Sten Hagberg and the late Jan Ove