Political islam

Who needs to reconcile with whom? : the conflict’s complexity in northern Mali calls for tailored solutions

Upphovsperson:	Gaasholt, Ole Martin
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Conflict, Displacement and Transformation |
År:	2015
Ämnesord:	Mali, Tuaregs, conflicts, political development, Political islam, Regional security, Political science, Statsvetenskap, Peace and conflict research, Freds- och konfliktforskning

While negotiations are taking place in Algiers, some observers insist on the need for reconciliation between Northern Mali and the rest of the country and particularly between Tuareg and other Malians. But the Tuareg are a minority in Northern Mali and most of them did not support the rebels. So who needs to be reconciled with whom? And what economic solutions will counteract conflict? This Policy Note argues that not only exclusion underlies the conflict, but also a lack of economic opportunities.

Just like couscous : Gender, agency and the politics of female circumcision in Cairo

Upphovsperson:	Malmström, Maria Frederika
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Göteborg : University of Gothenburg
År:	2009
Ämnesord:	anthropology, identity, gender, agency, embodiment, senses, body, sexuality, female circumcision, politics, Social change, performativity, practice, Political islam, Egypt, Middle East, North Africa

This dissertation explores how female gender identity is continually created and re-created in Egypt through a number of daily practices, of which female circumcision is central. In order to do so, the study inquires into the lived experiences and social meanings of female circumcision and femininity as narrated by women from lower class neighbourhoods in Cairo. The study seeks to understand how the experiences of femininity and female circumcision are shaped and challenged by the social and political changes that impinge on these women’s lives. Female circumcision has become a global political minefield with ‘Western’ interventions affecting Egyptian politics and social development, not least in the area of democracy and human rights. The global human rights discourse brings about change by portraying female circumcision as mutilation. These discourses and other political and social changes both in Egypt and elsewhere, such as modernization, the aftermath of 9/11 and regional instability have together begun to dis-embed female circumcision from its socio-cultural context. This thesis focuses upon the way in which these women understand and respond to these complex changes and it looks particularly at how different actors, in their construction of female identity, contest, resist, subvert or embrace female circumcision. The study explores how the subject is made through the interplay of global hegemonic structures of power and the most intimate sphere, which has been exposed in the international arena. The need to understand agency as the capacity to act according to the exigencies of the specific sociocultural forms the main premise of this dissertation; the Egyptian context comprises the complex interaction between the local and a variety of wider global forces.

Transnational Islamist (Jihadist) Movements and Inter-State Conflicts in the Horn of Africa

Upphovsperson:	Salih, M.A. Mohamed
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Conflict, Displacement and Transformation | Uppsala : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År:	2011
Ämnesord:	Political islam, Religious movements, Regional conflicts, Regional security, Horn of Africa, Political science, Statsvetenskap

Somalia has engendered the policy debate on the extent of the spread of transnational Islamist Jihadist groups in the Horn of Africa (HOA) and their consequences for peace and security across the region. These concerns are justified given the emergence since the late 1980s of extremist groups such as the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement and the Somali Jihadist Islamist groups of the likes of Al-Ittihad, the Islamic Courts Union and currently Al Shabab. The leaders and fighters of these groups relocated to the HOA after the defeat of the Taliban following the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan. The operations of these transnational Islamist groups within and across the countries of the Horn pose serious challenges to the region and beyond.

Begging and almsgiving in Ghana : Muslim positions towards poverty and distress

Upphovsperson:	Weiss, Holger
Utgivare:	Nordiska Afrikainstitutet | Uppsala : Nordiska Afrikainstitutet
År:	2007
Ämnesord:	Muslims, Islam, Economic conditions, Marginality, Poverty alleviation, Social welfare, Social security, Political islam, Ghana, SOCIAL SCIENCES, SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP

The vast majority of Muslims in Africa generally do not 'objectify' concepts such as poverty and religion in discussion. Poverty is a situation for 'ordinary' poor people in rural or urban poor areas where people seek to make marginal gains in income to avoid ever-threatening destitution and social disintegration. Most of these 'ordinary' poor people, especially poor and illiterate women, do not really believe that things can change. There exists, however, in all Muslim societies and communities in Africa a minority that criticize social and political conditions in society with the stated aim of striving for an Islamic solution to poverty and injustice. The common denominator for this group is that they are urban educated Muslims, having both a traditional educational background and, usually but not always, a modern, secular one, too. For them, the concept of poverty more readily forms part of a religious discourse involving feasible strategies for change. Their basic idea is to highlight the possibilities of generating new forms of financial resources by combining Islamic ethics and norms with a modern development-oriented outlook. Their vision is the usability of obligatory almsgiving in a modern context, namely that, instead of the traditional individual-centred 'person-to-person' charities, zakāt or obligatory almsgiving should be directed to become the source of communal and collective societal improvement. This study focuses on the conditions of poverty and the debate among Muslims in Ghana, a West African country with a substantial but largely economically and politically marginalized Muslim population.