While the terms feminist and feminism originated in the North Atlantic in the 19th century, the practices and ideals of feminism emerged through global circulations of power, goods, and ideas. Outside Europe and North America and in indigenous communities within those continents, people have for centuries been challenging gender norms and promoting the well-being of women, sometimes embracing and other times refusing the label feminist. Within the North Atlantic, the philosophies and movements that comprise feminism were conceived and constructed with and against women, the ideas of women, and the collective actions of women around the world. The story of feminism, in other words, includes its cultural moorings, translations, limitations, and revisions—and religion and the arts have been significant forces in those negotiations.
Religion and the arts have been important to the story of feminism because they provided feminists material they could reclaim, deny, alter and otherwise use to advance feminist ideas and projects . In the case of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have birthed, aided, and antagonized feminist movements, as feminists augmented resources within those traditions for affirming women and enlarging their social roles while they defied aspects that diminished and circumscribed women. Feminists’ ambivalent relationship with religious traditions positioned art as a fecund site for reimagining and rechoreographing gender within those traditions. In media as diverse as literature, visual arts, fashion, theater, film, and song, art proved a powerful force for transforming the symbolics of gender and experimenting with new gendered identities and values. Via art, feminists criticized the commitments and visions of religious traditions, and they also sometimes criticized religious art or art engaging religious themes. They critiqued; they constructed. By breaking and making images and artworks, feminist movements nourished and invigorated an imagination of power and identity more favorable to women.
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Feminism, Art, and Religion in the North Atlantic
Natalie Carnes
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Islamic Bioethics: Mental Health in Islam
Simon Dein and Najat Khalifa
Muslims see the Prophet Muhammad as an exemplar. Thus, Muslims attempt to emulate his deeds in their own lives through observation of his traditions and the Qurʾanic instructions. Treatment from the Islamic perspective is closely linked to the Islamic system of ethics and law (Shariʿah). Moreover, Islam views mental health in the context of the self as it advocates a close relationship between spirituality, morality, and mental health. While religious Muslims self-report better mental health than nonreligious Muslims, the conceptualization of mental disorders from the Islamic perspective may raise ethical challenges for clinicians who encounter Muslim patients in clinical practice.
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Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Fatimah Fanusie
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and the early Ahmadiyya movement were a missing link in the narrative of American religious culture’s opening to Islam in the 20th century. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad’s 1880 Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya provided a comprehensive Islamic challenge to Christian missionaries in India and Western religious scholars of Islam. In 1886, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad began publishing translated segments of Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya in American Henry Olcott’s Theosophist magazine to reach a wider English-speaking readership. In 1887, Ahmad began direct correspondence with Alexander Russell Webb, an American Theosophist. These early engagements of Ghulam Ahmad with the English-speaking public preceded the formal establishment of the messianic Ahmadiyya movement in British India in 1889. Ahmad’s 1880–1893 intellectual activism paved the ground for the emergence of Muhammad Alexander Russell Webb as the Muslim American representative at the 1893 World Parliament of Religions. Close examination is also given to the English-language Ahmadiyya journal, the Review of Religions, whose 1902 founding built upon a twenty-year literary engagement of Ghulam Ahmad with American religious thinkers. Both the Ahmadiyya movement and the Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islamiyya continued to introduce Islam and Ahmad’s writings to English-speaking populations in North America and Europe in the decades after his death. As a result, the history of Islamic religious movements in the United States between 1890 and 1940 is dominated by the literature and leadership of Ghulam Ahmad and his followers. This research makes the case that Ahmad and his early supporters’ engagement with American religious society in the late 19th century should form the starting point for scholars attempting to understand how Islam developed in the United States.
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QAnon, Conspiracies, and Religion
Michael Barkun
After its obscure Internet beginnings in late 2017, QAnon experienced very rapid growth in both the United States and overseas. Although it began as a political conspiracy theory, it gradually was transformed into a religious movement, although conspiracism remained a central element in its belief system. QAnon was unusual among religious movements in having no formal organization and no designated leadership. However, for its adherents it involves matters of ultimate concern, a hallmark of religious movements.
Its prophet-figure, Q, ceased posting—Q’s only movement activity—in late 2020. QAnon asserts that there is a “deep state” cabal consisting of the liberal “establishment”—Democratic Party leadership and supporters, media figures, and celebrities—who seek to undermine conservative policies while also engaging in a plot to kidnap children, abuse them, and sacrifice them in satanic rituals. Their sacrifice is also supposedly for the purpose of extracting adrenochrome from their bodies, which the members of the conspiracy are said to imbibe for a “high” and to preserve their youth. This is set against an eschatology that argues that there will be a coming final battle with the conspirators in which the forces of virtue will be led by Donald Trump in a quasi-messianic role.
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The Qurʾan in Manuscript, Print, and Digital Form
Alba Fedeli
Over the past six centuries, the way believers, theologians, and scholars in Europe have produced, received, and studied copies of the Qurʾanic text has evolved alongside changes in how the text is accessed, moving from manuscripts to replicas, and now to online platforms where the Qurʾanic text and related artifacts are digitally available. The investigation of the role and understanding of the Qurʾan—as an artifact—in Europe requires careful attention to its material form and significance during each specific period, from the Renaissance to the modern period.
The Qurʾan has been part of the religious culture of the Western Muslim territories since the beginnings of Islam, as it is expressed, for example, in the manuscript of the Qurʾan copied in the Muslim Palermo in 982–983 ce or the several Qurʾans in Kufic and round scripts written, for example, in Valencia, Seville, or Cordova. Then, it continued to be an object of religious faith copied among the last Muslim communities in modern Spain during the Moriscos periods from the 15th to the 17th century. As a Counter-Reformation measure, the Qurʾan was listed in the Catholic Indices of Prohibited Books in 1559, leading to a ban on both printed and manuscript versions in the Christian West. Similarly, Ottoman authorities banned the importation of printed books in Arabic script until 1588, and the printing and trade of the Qurʾan text in Muslim lands were considered illicit until the end of the 19th century.
In Europe, the Qurʾan was used as the basis for the study of the Arabic grammar by scholars in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The text was approached in its manuscript form with a paleographic and philological interest that was used mainly at the service of theology in a polemical context. In European history, it was only in the 17th to 18th century that the polemic discourse and philological interest were distinguished as two distinct disciplines. In institutions and private libraries, the presence of the Qurʾan as an artifact went hand in hand with the availability of Qurʾanic manuscripts, resulting from the fruit of collectors to war booty, with its richest period in the 19th and then 20th centuries, thanks to scholars and merchants who traveled to the Middle East. Europe as part of the World Wide Web has reached the peak of its connection with the Qurʾan as a material object in its cultural and artistic value thorough digital images and text since the 2010s.
Article
Aniconism
Milette Gaifman
In scholarship on religion and religious art, the term aniconism describes the absence of a figural representation of a deity (whether anthropomorphic or theriomorphic), primarily in the context of ritual veneration of one deity or more, but also within a visual tradition more broadly. Aniconic worship may take on a variety of forms, including veneration centered around a standing stone, open fire, vacant space, or no independent physical focal point at all. In religious art and visual culture, aniconism may also be manifested in a range of ways, such as adherence to the usage of ornament, calligraphy, or geometric forms. Although it is often treated as synonymous with iconoclasm, the word aniconism does not refer to the destruction of religious images. It may be adopted without an articulated reason or coherent doctrine, or it may be connected with an explicit theology.
Worship of deities without figural representations has been widely attested for millennia in both polytheistic traditions (Greco-Roman, Phoenician) and monotheistic ones (Jewish, Islamic). The concept of aniconism, however, is modern. It was introduced by Johannes Adolph Overbeck (1826–1895) for the particular purpose of describing the presumed earliest phases in the development of Greek religion, which were construed as imageless. In the 20th century, aniconism has come to describe the absence of the figural image of a deity in worship and has been applied more broadly to certain artistic traditions such as early Buddhist, Islamic, and Jewish art. Since the manifestations of aniconism differ widely, it is vitally important to apply the concept contextually, with clear criteria for what is considered aniconic within a particular framework.
Among the religions in the West from the Renaissance to the present, aniconism is notable in its emergence in certain strands of Protestantism, particularly in Calvinist houses of worship. Worship with no figural image is also often linked with primeval religions and is seen either negatively, as the practice of a less advanced culture, or positively, as a marker of higher spirituality. Claims of a complete absence of imagery and figural art in various religious traditions (e.g., Jewish, Islamic) have often been disproven, as further examination of those traditions has revealed the occurrence of figuration alongside some form of aniconism. The wide range of forms of aniconism and its coexistence with semi-figural and fully figural forms in worship and within broader visual traditions suggest that the concept is best applied through a nuanced approach which considers the nature and frequency of its occurrence rather than seeing it as an absolute negation of the figural image.
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Islamic Bioethics: Afterlife
Nerina Rustomji
The Islamic afterlife (al-ākhirah) refers to the final, everlasting stage of life where Muslims will be rewarded with the Garden (al-jannah) or the Fire (al-nār). Essentially, Muslims will be transformed from their earthly selves into their reformed bodies and experience an eternal phase of life through enhanced bodily experiences and sense perception. In the modern period, the belief in the afterlife affects the issues of human dignity and euthanasia. Belief in the afterlife entails an expectation that death is a transformative passage. Since many of the advents of modern medicine were unknown during the early years of Islamic history, there is room for jurists and theologians to interpret the quality of life and its connection to the afterlife for contemporary Islam.
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Islamic Bioethics: Conflict of Interest
Amir Jafarey
Conflict of Interest (COI) typically manifests in a variety of potential personal gains such as financial conflicts, fame, academic recognition, and scientific curiosity. Premodern Muslim societies emphasized the virtuous conduct of the individual rather than presenting formal codes to regulate the conduct of people. Even though COI has no distinct mention in Shariʿah, a methodological approach can be presented to address certain situations. Moreover, COI has the potential to cause major issues in matters concerning human subject research and medical practice. By its potential to cause harm to both patients as well as research subjects, COI has been debated widely and various guidelines and codes have come into place to ensure the protection of the vulnerable.
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Islamic Bioethics: Environmental Ethics
Sayed Sikandar Shah Haneef
Environmental ethics has emerged as one of the most topical issues in modern studies. Islamic ethical foundations and their specific guidelines aim to inspire and sensitize Muslims to become active participants in humanity’s efforts toward curbing the problem of environmental degradation, climate change, and global warming. The Islamic outlook strives for equilibrium between moral and spiritual responsibility and an equilibrated approach to nature and its exploitation. The guiding ethical norms about the significance of the different components of the environment integrate secular concern with spiritual aspects. Islam encourages Muslims to participate and collaborate with others in engineering technical measures to rectify the inflicted damages to the well-being of the ecosystem.
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Islamic Bioethics: Ijtihad
Hamid Mavani
In the context of Islamic jurisprudence, ijtihad refers to the process of legal reasoning and hermeneutics undertaken by a qualified jurist (mujtahid or faqih) to extract or infer a fresh probable legal ruling (fatwa) based on a particular set of principles and procedures. In principle, ijtihad remains a perpetual obligation that must be undertaken by a qualified jurist because it enables Muslims to resolve contemporary ethical issues. To implement appropriate legal norms addressing contemporary bioethical issues, jurists are required to formulate a legal theory and articulate new principles and procedures. Organ donation demonstrates the evolution of a legal ruling (tatawwur al-fiqh) within a revitalized ijtihad and in light of new information. The ever-increasing complexity and ever-widening scope of issues cropping up in Islamic bioethics demand a collective and a contextual ijtihad functioning at an institutional level (majmaʻ al-fiqhiyyah).
