Suchergebnisse

Historians of migration have extensively studied the economic, social, and political impact of migration and the secular changes amongst diasporic communities, but changes in religious faith, practice and institutions remain opaque. Yet, they form part of the most intimate aspect of the lives transformed in movement and were, in fact, the most active fault line in diasporic communities and at home. However, in relation to religion in the Middle East, historians have hardly paid any attention to movement of people and ideas across and beyond the geographical boundaries of the region. This makes our understanding at best incomplete and, in some instances, incorrect in identifying the sources, dynamics and reasons for change in religious institutions and faith. This article attempts to fill these lacunae by looking at an example of how migration inflected religious institutions and how faith and religion shaped the migratory experience.

Eastern Christians and Christianity have been elided from Middle Eastern studies. The purpose of this roundtable is to bring their stories back into scholarly focus through the interventions of five scholars: Febe Armanios, Bernard Heyberger, Fiona McCallum, Paul Rowe, and Nelly van Doorn-Harder.

This article tells the story of ten Catholic women from Aleppo who, in the early part of the 18th century, sought to establish their own convent in the district of Kisrawan, Lebanon. Their project became the center of a conflict that entangled the devotees, their Jesuit confessors and supporters, the Melkite Church, and the Vatican. Thus, their story is a prism through which to refract the relationships among gender, class, and religion in the Levant. In particular it sheds light on the role of gender in the construction of a "modern" Catholicism. I contend that modernization predates the 19th century in the Middle East and question the opposition of secularism and history versus religion and faith as an artifact of modernity

A report on the intellectual debate and the split inside the Egyptian feminist movement. Two main camps are distinguished: one that believes in working exclusively on women's issues and is led by Nawal el-Sa'adawi, and another which insists on placing those issues alongside class struggle and is led by Fathia el-Assal and her socalled Progressive Women's Union. As the author reports there is much criticism among Egyptian women that both organisations and their leaders are too preoccupied with intellectual debate. As is also shown, however, feminism does introduce into the Egyptian political arena issues which had been excluded before but that are central to the lives of the Egyptian people. (DÜI-Asd)

Between 1890 and 1920 over one-third of the peasants of Mount Lebanon left their villages and traveled to the Americas. This book traces the journeys of these villagers from the ranks of the peasantry into a middle class of their own making. Inventing Home delves into the stories of these travels, shedding much needed light on the impact of emigration and immigration in the development of modernity. It focuses on a critical period in the social history of Lebanon--the "long peace" between the uprising of 1860 and the beginning of the French mandate in 1920. The book explores in depth the phenomena of return emigration, the questioning and changing of gender roles, and the rise of the middle class. Exploring new areas in the history of Lebanon, Inventing Home asks how new notions of gender, family, and class were articulated and how a local "modernity" was invented in the process.Akram Khater maps the jagged and uncertain paths that the fellahin from Mount Lebanon carved through time and space in their attempt to control their future and their destinies. His study offers a significant contribution to the literature on the Middle East, as well as a new perspective on women and on gender issues in the context of developing modernity in the region