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Violence, Reconstruction and Islamic Reform—Stories from the Muslim ‘Ghetto’1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

RUBINA JASANI
RUBINA JASANI*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex, 69 Woodstock Road, Birmingham, B13 9 BL, United Kingdom, E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper is a critique of popular and academic assumptions about the Muslim ‘community’ and Islamist organizations, especially in the context of displacement and reconstruction after the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad, western India. It explores the internal politics of Jamaat-led organizations and the engagement of survivors with ideas of reform and piety. Contesting contemporary understandings of reformist Jamaats, I argue that the growing influence of the latter organizations had little co-relation with their resettlement plans and policies. The reconstruction patterns were more closely linked to the history of labour migration to the city, and the subsequent movement of violence-affected people from the mill areas to larger Muslim ghettoes. My ethnography shows how the survivors strategically engaged with reform initiatives and negotiated with local Islamist organizations for ‘safe housing’. By illustrating certain ambiguities within the everyday practices of Islam, my paper also problematizes notions of ‘piety’ and ‘agency’, primarily after people's experiences of communal violence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2-3: Islam in South Asia , March 2008 , pp. 431 - 456
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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