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Religion and Diaspora: Islam as Ancestral Heritage in Mauritius
- Author(s):
- Patrick Eisenlohr (see profile)
- Date:
- 2016
- Group(s):
- Anthropology, Religious Studies
- Subject(s):
- Emigration and immigration, Ethnicity, Immigrants--Social conditions, Islam, Twenty-first century, Religions, South Asia, Cultural property
- Item Type:
- Article
- Tag(s):
- Mauritius, Transnational religion, Nationalism and religion, Diaspora studies, Contemporary Islam, Religion in South Asia, Cultural heritage
- Permanent URL:
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/6bz1-sc79
- Abstract:
- 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.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 4 years ago
- License:
- All Rights Reserved
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