While much attention has been paid to the creativity surrounding translingual practice, there has been little focus on the underlying politics behind such practice in periphery or precarious contexts. This chapter explores the political underbelly of translingual practice in the under-researched Muslim world through two case studies in English-medium instruction (EMI) universities in the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh. Online and offline data are analysed through the lens of critical social inquiry. Ethnographic observations and metapragmatic reflections revealed that translingual practice is a key element of students’ identities with varying ideologies attached. The chapter explores the micro and macro relations influencing ideologies, such as linguistic and symbolic distances between languages, monolingualism, linguistic imperialism, neoliberalism, secularization and sacralization. The chapter specifically investigates how translingual practice problematizes dominant monolingual biases in higher education and monolithic approaches to social, political, and religious realities. The chapter also analyses internalized mainstream monolingual ideologies in some students, leading to feelings of unworthiness and shame over translingual practices. Thus, the chapter sheds light on sociolinguistic complexities of translingual practices in two under-investigated Islamic countries. Suggestions are made as to ways in which the current gap between complex sociolinguistic realities and monolithic policies can be bridged.

Chapter 1 introduces the theory of Islamic constitutionalism and examines the popularity of Islamic constitutional clauses in political life and how they originated along with constitution making in the Muslim world. It describes the constitutional history in four monarchies: Tunisia, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and Iran. The chapter demonstrates that the idea of "Islamic constitutionalism" itself originated in parallel to, and not in isolation from, the idea of modern European "constitutional democracy," beginning with the Ottoman and Persian "constitutions" of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, respectively, partly as a defense mechanism in the face of ubiquitous "Europeanization" of politics. As such, it traces how and why, in an era of European colonial domination, the constitution becomes the focal point in the state where the negotiation or balancing between "Islam" and "liberal" democracy takes place. It is thus the starting point for realizing the twin popular ambitions – of rights and Islam.

The Islamic Republic of Iran prides itself on being the only country with an entirely codified Islamic legal system, and on being a pioneer in the Islamization of constitutional law. Part 1 of this chapter provides an overview of the different models of Islamic constitutionalism currently found in the Muslim world. Part 2 reviews Iran’s highly creative and ambitious project of Islamizing an entire civil law system and codifying Islamic law over a forty-year period and draws attention to the high degree of dynamism and reinterpretation of Shiite legal precepts that this project has required. Part 3 focuses on the making and amendment of Iran’s 1906/1907 and 1979 constitutions – which fused foreign, republican, and Islamic elements in unique ways – and on the role of the 1979 constitution in defining and regulating Iran’s distinctive present-day blend of institutional conflict and policy disagreement among religious conservatives, pragmatic reformers, and revolutionary leftists. Over time, a combination of innovative reinterpretation of Shiite legal principles and constitutional and institutional reform have reshaped the complex relationship between left-leaning legislative institutions constrained by Islamic principles and conservative religious scholars who operate outside the political system but are the arbiters of what it means to respect Islamic principles.

Concentrating on the concept of law and its “glocal” translations, this book advocates a praxeological sociohistorical jurisprudence. It seeks to bypass at least two dichotomies opposing, on the one hand, lawyers’ law in books and anthropologists’ law in action, and, on the other, positivist and realist sociolegal theories. From such a perspective, law is a concept whose historical and practical ontology can be studied through the positivization process that transformed it into a major social engineering tool. The book is a contribution to the praxeological sociohistorical study of positive law, in both its global and its local dimensions. It approaches the subject from the viewpoint of Muslim societies. In other words, it addresses the phenomenon of positive law from the perspective of societies in which Islamic norms had an all-pervading though diverse influence. It shows both how positive law “glocalized” in societies characterized as Muslim and how, by the same token, Islamic norms became positivized.

Our aim is to develop a sociohistorical jurisprudence of “law properly so called,” which involves a threefold analysis: conceptual, historical, and praxeological. Following the ground broken by analytical philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, conceptual analysis requires the exposition of the grammar through which concepts acquire their meaning and are meaningfully used. In a manner inspired by philosopher of science Ian Hacking and historian Reinhart Koselleck, historical analysis focuses on the description of the birth, development, and use of concepts. Drawing on the work of sociologist Harold Garfinkel, praxeological analysis describes the practical methods used by people to make sense of their environment, to produce their local order, and to act accordingly. The three approaches converge in their insistence on adopting an endogenous/indigenous perspective toward social life and its production.

What can explain the rapid rise of Islamic politics in Turkey, a historically secular country? Many observers assume that the success and sustained popularity of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) reflects a religious resurgence in Turkey. But when this presumption is directly tested, evidence indicates that Turkish piety may actually be declining over time. This highlights the importance of statistical tests,leveraging variation across individuals, space, or time: they have the potential to overturn widely held assumptions and reopen key questions about the world around us. In finding no evidence of a religious resurgence in Turkey,an alternative explanation is needed. I introduce my trust-based theory of Islamic mobilization, explaining how references to Islam prime feelings of trust among those with a salient religious group identity, and how this group-based trust operates as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in Turkey and in many other Muslim countries. I contrast my trust-based theory with existing theories of Islamic-based politics and economics and preview the findings of the book, wherein I dismiss the existing explanations and offer support for mine.

The Introduction lays out the main purposes, themes, and arguments of the manuscript and places them in a historiographical and theoretical framework. It discusses the tension between exile and homeland, the significance of the Land of Israel, and the importance of the theme of return to the land in Zionist consciousness, and provides a historical overview of Jewish immigration to Palestine/Israel from the late nineteenth century to the early years of Israeli statehood.

This background helps to clarify the degree to which emigration was antithetical to the Zionist spirit, and was therefore seen as a threat to the national project and condemned as an act of treason. The Introduction demonstrates the various ideological, political, and logistical challenges that emigration posed to the Israeli state and society, to Jewish diaspora communities, and to relief agencies in countries of destination. It engages studies of migration and nationalism to clarify the problematic role of emigration as a phenomenon and emigrants as individuals in the Israeli nation-building process.

The Introduction also discusses the statistical and demographic aspect of the story, presenting information on yearly rates of emigration, destination countries of emigrants, and emigrants’ personal backgrounds.