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abstract: The concept of Velayat-e Faqih as a type of Shi’ite Islamic government gained popularity three decades ago, after the Islamic revolution in Iran. The new constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran was based on Velayat-e Fagih, proposed by the Imam Khomeini many consider him as the leader of the Islamic Revolution and the founder of the Iranian Islamic Republic. What is Velayat-e Faqih? Who can be the Vali Faqih? Why wasn't this idea proposed before Islamic Revolution in 1979? Did all the Shi’ite religious scholars endorse this idea or the Vali Faqih himself? All of these questions ultimately lead us to ask whether this concept has been drawn from Shi’ite Islamic discourses or it may perhaps be considered a novelty: a secularization of religion. These questions are increasingly discussed in academia and in the large public arena. Moreover, this discourse has divided Shi’ite Muslims into three groups: supporters of the Velayat-e Faqih, its opponents, and the silent group. It is important to analyze the position of all those groups including the silent group who did not publicly endorse or reject the theory. The theory of Velayat-e Faqih has emerged from the Imamate doctrine, which constitutes a cornerstone of Shi'ite sect of Islam. It is necessary to understand this political doctrine in relation to the context within which this concept of leadership had emerged. In order to overcome the ambiguities surrounding the relationship between Velayat-e Faqih and the position of Islamic jurist as a source of guidance and imitation (Marje Taqleed), it is necessary to discuss the various dimension of guardianship in the absence of the infallible Imam. Furthermore, the focus of this research is to review whether the concept of Velayat-e Faqih was innovated after the Islamic Revolution of Iran or existed within the Shi’ite tradition. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Religious Studies 2016

For nearly fifteen hundred years, the Hagia Sophia has been a constant figure in Istanbul, Turkey. The building has been the symbol of Christianity for the Byzantine Empire, Islam for the Ottoman Empire and Secularism for Republic of Turkey. It is rare that one building has had the ability to symbolize both religion and politics in the manner in which the Hagia Sophia has. One of the goals of this research is to examine the historical circumstances that have allowed this symbolism to occur. The other goal of this research is to examine the current voice that wishes to return the Hagia Sophia back to a place of worship. To properly understand this voice, it will require scrutinizing the obstacles necessary for religious groups to overcome to achieve this, as well as determining if this is even a viable option.

In a multicultural society, there should be a pressing need to acknowledge the cultural heritages and social variations of its members in order to validate their experiences and realities. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore how Muslim parents interpreted the influence of the Islamic culture on their children's daily lives. The study addressed this influence by examining Muslim children's daily funds of knowledge. This study also aimed to examine how Muslim parents suggested their children's fund of knowledge to be addressed in a culturally responsive pedagogical model at public schools. Muslim parents in five ethnically diverse households were interviewed, and observational notes about physical surrounding during the interview sessions were recorded. A qualitative multiple case study was designed to answer research questions and understand the influence of the Islamic culture in these households. Data was analyzed through the integration of the analysis framework adapted from Stake (2006) while using Nvivo computer software for analyzing qualitative data. Eight themes emerged from the study and allowed for a discussion on the centrality of the religion in these households, the collective cultural paradigm, and the scope of identity negotiation taking place on a daily basis. For the purpose of this study, implications to educators were incorporated into Gay's (2000) characteristics of cultural responsive teaching in order to integrate Muslim students into classroom pedagogies.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, textual analysis, and data culled from interviews, this manuscript explores how Islamic ethics shape the epistemic approaches of Muslim intellectuals to liberal democracy and corollary paradigms of western modernity. Specifically, it examines a critical discursive field of resistance generated by Muslim intellectuals in Turkey affiliated with Islamist NGOs and publishing houses. In response to the promotion of a ‘mild Islam’ compatible with democracy and liberalism in the context of Turkey, itself represented as the ‘model country’ in such regional schemes of democratization as the Greater Middle East Project, a radical movement emerged that appropriates the Islamic identity as a basis of resistance to the processes of hybridization, identitarian eclecticism and postmodern pluralism. The significance of this activism resides in the articulation of a discursive domain that (a) does not conform to the liberal protocols of intelligibility but (b) is produced through contact with liberal-democratic discourses of moderation. How does moderation as a normative standpoint create a space for political intervention? Through this question, I map out the processes and mechanisms by which ‘moderation’ as a transcendental and universal concept, concomitant with democratic subjectivity, operates as a political discourse and a moral-political practice of governmentality, functioning to suture democracy with liberal norms of conduct. My objective here is threefold: first, I detail the interaction between global paradigms of a neo-liberal, democratic postmodernity (with its ideals of tolerance, dialogue, religious pluralism) and local modalities of resistance embedded in Islamic piety. Second, by excavating local efforts at defamiliarizing the democratic paradigm within the intellectual community of Qur’anic Generation, I draw the contours of an Islamic epistemology of resistance, an antidiscipline which reinvents civil society as a space for moral resistance to democratic norms. Third, I problematize the extent to which scholarly production reinforces the liberal-democratic universal imaginary, which I accomplish by highlighting the ubiquity of liberal epistemological commitments found in democratic theory and empirical studies on civil society in the Middle East. Perceptible in western democratic theory is a recurrent ontopolitical pattern in theorizing the democratic subject through an ascetic norm of dispassionateness and moderation.

Somalis represent the largest consecutively displaced and resettled group in the United States yet, little is known about their experiences with and perceptions of illness in diaspora. In this research project I examine how Somalis’ understandings of the body and embodiment shape perceptions of diabetes and mental health. In addition, I ask how are the effects of migration and diaspora embodied among Somalis in Boston? To answer these research questions, I developed a qualitative study among Somali Muslims in Boston. I utilized information from semi-structured interviews (n=6), informal interviews (n=4), and participant observation at a local mosque from March 2015 to March 2016. I argue that for Somalis, diaspora is embodied through: bodily practices based on fluid and complex body ideals and values, food ritual and practices of consumption, and chronic physical health and mental health issues resulting in culturally relevant somatic explanatory models.

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This dissertation is a study of the intellectual history of Ṣadr al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 903/1498) and Ghiyāath al-Dīn Dashtakī (d. 949/1542), two important Shirazi philosophers and Shi'i thinkers who lived in the late Timurid and early Safavid period. It argues that Avicennan philosophy was revived and provided with a new impetus at a time when it was under attack by Ash'ari thinkers belonging to the later tradition. Paradoxically, many of the later Ash'ri thinkers saw it fit to engage in metaphysical speculations that took the Avicennan tradition as its basis. Yet, these same thinkers accused Avicenna and his followers of advancing specious arguments and for making incoherent statements about God, the cosmos, religious matters, and the general nature of things. So overarching was this later Ash'ari tradition, that it became the intellectual tradition par excellence in the centuries leading up to the Safavid period. In many of their major philosophical writings, the Dashtakīs sought to decouple Avicennan philosophy from Ash'ari kalām, and, at the same time, to attack the foundations of the Ash'ari tradition. In doing so, the Dashtakīs proposed a particular reading of Avicenna that was purified of Ash'ari influences and closer to philosophical Shi'ism.