This dissertation examines women's representations in the Algerian print media. Different methods were used to explore these representations: a questionnaire-based survey, in-depth interviews and a content analysis of data collected from press clippings published between 1996--2006, a period which witnessed major social and political upheavals that impacted women as well as the media. The research was based on hypotheses from the literature on the topic, notably that the media ignore and trivialize women. This study concludes that sexist terms, meanings and processes and sexist assumptions concerning gender roles are pervasive. Masculine generics---exclusionary of women---are dominant. Sexism is not always intended as journalists consider the use of masculine generics normative. Women are also invisible both as objects of news and as news sources This study revealed that sexism in the media and its power in shaping attitudes and views about women continue to elude media professionals. More than half of all respondents disagreed with survey statements related to sexism in the media. This study shows that sexist content is more common in the Arabophone press. But, ironically, the number of Arabophone journalists who disagreed with statements about sexism in the media is higher than the number of Francophone journalists. As a whole, media representations project a patriarchal model of ideal womanhood. Women are portrayed in reductionist restrictive roles and overrepresented as 'helpless victims'. In contrast, women's social and political struggles for full citizenship rights are often overlooked if not ridiculed. While these representations reflect the power structure in society, their repeated playing out 'naturalizes' unequal power relations. Very few journalists challenge dominant representations as ideological positions. The media redeploy the slogans of groups competing for power which made of women their primary battleground. Even the more liberal Francophone press affirms elements of the hegemonic discourse. The oppositional discourse of the women's movement does not pose a significant threat to the dominant discourse because of the differential of power and widespread antagonism against feminism. Part of the Arabophone press adopted the anti-legal reform arguments used by the nationalists against the 1959 French reform and resurrected by the Islamists to suggest that reform efforts were a neo-colonial attack on national identity. These arguments resonate with part of the public because the language of feminism was used in the attack on the Algerian identity and culture. The study shows that journalists are unaware of the involvement of language in setting subject identities, and power relations and of the role they play in passing down and reinforcing the dominant gender ideology. The stronger presence of women in newsrooms has not significantly changed media content with respect to approaches to news stories on 'women's issues'. Women have internalized the masculine-privileging ethos of the newsroom and see the male definition of news as professional practice. Journalists are wary of gender issues and consider that they have other priorities such as fighting for better social and professional conditions, legal protection from government interference and public access to the media. Women who tend to be dominated in the private as well as in the public realm are not seen as being part of 'the public'. A stronger partnership between all those interested in a better future for Algeria can enhance efforts to raise awareness among journalists about gender issues and transform the media from a tool in the hands of the powerful to a tool that enlightens the public and provide citizens with the opportunity to engage in democratic public debate about important issues, including those related to gender. This study is a contribution to these efforts and to the emerging scholarship on gender in the Arab region / acase@tulane.edu

Under what conditions do Islamists accept the principles of democracy and perceive democracy as "the only game in town"? Current literature which emphasizes institutions, political learning and repression fail to give a satisfying answer to this question. This thesis argues that it is important to study the internal divisions within the Islamist movements and the balance of power among them if we are to understand why and when they embrace ideological moderation. Along these lines, I suggest that factors which disturb the balance of power to the favor of the moderate Islamists are critical to understand the causes of moderation. The support that different factions garner from the constituency is a determining factor in the course of political Islam. This support for moderates or hardliners in return depends on the interests of different groups that make up the Islamist coalition. Studying the empirical puzzle posed by the experiences of Turkish and Egyptian Islamists I argue that economic reform programs in these countries redefine the interests of the components of the Islamist coalition while redistributing power among them. As a result of this process a devout bourgeoisie ready to ally with the moderates emerge in Turkey while lower middle classes with ideological dispositions dominate the Islamist constituency in Egypt and support the hardliners. That is why Turkish Islamists succeeded in carrying out a large-scale moderation which led to the marginalization of the radicals while their Egyptian counterparts failed and became marginalized themselves.

This research explores selected cultural traditions and histories associated with the Pomaks, a community inhabiting the Rhodope Mountains of southwestern Bulgaria. They speak Bulgarian as a mother tongue, but profess Islam as their religion unlike the country's Orthodox Christian majority. Based on this linguistic unity, the Pomaks have been subjected to recurring forced assimilation since Bulgaria's independence from Ottoman rule in 1878. Today, taking advantage of Bulgaria's democratic rule, they are beginning to assert a heritage of their own making. Still, remnants of entrenched totalitarian mentality in the official cultural domain prevent any formal undertaking to that effect. / With the Pomaks as my case study, this research links the concept of heritage to identity and the way dissenting voices negotiate a niche for themselves in public spaces already claimed by rigid master narratives. I advocate pluralistic interpretation of heritage in the public domain, where master and vernacular narratives exist and often collide. Insofar as cultural diversity serves to enrich the heritage discourse, heritage professionals ought to serve as educators in society, not as creators of exclusionary master narratives. Using fieldwork, archival research, and available literature to support a relevant theoretical framework, I strive for understanding of what constitutes (Pomak) heritage and what ways there are to promote and preserve alternative narratives. Five stories regarding Pomak identity serve as my analytical frame of reference and constitute a premeditated effort to identify, formulate, and preserve in writing fundamental aspects of a highly contested and threatened heritage. / A striking example of a Pomak tradition which merits preservation is the elaborate wedding of Ribnovo, a small village in the western Rhodope. The wedding's most visible manifestation today is the elaborate and colorful mask of the bride, a ritual long gone extinct outside of Ribnovo. Four other case studies examine prominent aspects of Pomak heritage, including forced assimilation, nationalism, and historical narratives.

As a project located in the academic field of the study of African American religion, this dissertation examines the black body in four critical moments of the Nation of Islam (NOI), represented by the ministries of Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Warith Deen Mohammed, and Louis Farrakhan. Defined as the material locus of the self and the site of the symbolization of a given collective culture and cosmology, the project argues that the body was the central concern in all four moments in their religious efforts to re-imagine, reform, and re-present bodies that they perceived had been distorted, disfigured, and devalued by racist violence, discourses, and oppression in America. The research contends that the NOI was only partially "successful" in its reformative efforts to reconstitute and valorize black bodies. Utilizing the hermeneutical frameworks of critical social theory, which includes psychoanalysis, philosophy of embodiment (phenomenology) and race, and a theory and method based approach to the study of religion in its analysis and interpretation, the project suggests that the NOI may have internalized many of the dynamics and values of white supremacy and, as a consequence, re-produced and re-deployed its own system of intra-"race" marginalization and hierarchical classification within the NOI and in the greater African American community. Such discrimination was predicated upon an ideal black bodily economy that ranked bodies based on indicators such as gender, sexuality, and skin complexion. As a result of having co-opted middle-class American and African American values and practices, the research concludes that the NOI converted problematic issues of "race" into an ambiguous and indeterminate class system in their response to the exigencies of the conditions of existence for African Americans. The research suggests both the need for greater attention to the body in African American religious studies, analyses of the co-constitutive elements of class, gender, race, and sexuality, and for reflexive consideration of the ways in which systems of domination may be socially reproduced and/or disrupted by marginalized collectivities.

Assia Djebar’s Far from Madina retells the stories of the women who appear on the margins of the earliest sources of Islamic history from a contemporary Muslim feminist’s perspective. Djebar uses formal elements of early Islamic historiography and relies upon classical Sunni sources. These techniques place her novel in conversation with classical Islamic tradition and bring legitimacy to her subversive project which aims to shift the boundaries of that canon. Though crafted in relation to classical sources, Djebar’s critique of gender identity is also addressed to the discourses and institutions of Islamic authority that evolved over the centuries and that continue to delineate narrow roles for women, up to and including contemporary regimes. In chapter one I argue that by grounding her critique of circulating discourses on Muslim women within a project that appropriates canonical Sunni historiography, Djebar refuses the disjunction between feminism and Islam, critiquing normative Islamic discourse on women in contemporary Algeria without framing the conflict in terms of an East/West or a religious/secular binary. Chapter two examines Djebar’s treatment of Fatima in particular. I consider Djebar’s selection of classical sources and compare the earliest canonical Sunni renderings of Fatima and those found in the novel. I argue that the vision of empowered women in the first Muslim community posited in Far from Madina destabilizes the ideal of gender identity constructed in early Islamic historiography. Far from Madina focuses on the moment after the death of Muhammad when Muslims were left to interpret their scripture and recall their Prophet’s words and deeds. Djebar constructs the novel around the question of what role Muslim women would play in this process, a move which foregrounds her own choice to write the novel and embrace her role as witness and transmitter of the stories of these early women. Chapter three examines the reflexive character of Far from Madina and considers how Djebar’s narrative strategies and hermeneutical approach facilitate the articulation of identity through difference. I argue that the narrative is Djebar’s performance of contemporary Muslim identity and an example of “lived Islam.” / text

This thesis is a small contribution to the growing amount of information that has been gathered about Arab nationalism. Its purpose is more specific than most studies of Arab nationalism have been in that it seeks to deal only with four figures who were Christian rather than Muslim and who happened to be Arabs of the fertile Crescent. Apart from placing these writers in a new perspective, this thesis has little that is very original to offer. But, it is hoped that the fairly careful and detailed analysis of some of the writings, offered in English for the first time, will be of some future use to others. [...]

This study will examine the online behaviors of two samples of adolescents, ages 12-19, who identify as Muslim. One sample will come from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Atlanta, Georgia and complete a 27-item questionnaire. The researcher will investigate how both samples utilize social media and if they are more or less inclined to showcase socially aggressive behavior and political activism as a result.

As a teacher-researcher, I have endeavoured to evaluate and reflect on the teaching of Islamic Studies at Form V level. This Action Research investigated the effectiveness of using Remedial Strategies as instructional methods to increase class participation in Islamic Studies classes at Form V level, in a Private Secondary School, The Islamic Cultural College, Port-Louis; in a State Secondary School, Port-Louis State Secondary School, Colline Monneron, Port-Louis; and in a Profit-Making Institution, The Doha Academy, Eau-Coulee, Curepipe. Data was collected mainly from questionnaires sent to the students and analyzed. The study also covers the findings and analysis from the questionnaires and some recommendations to improve classroom practices to promote students’ participation in Islamic Studies classes have been proposed. Overall, this research aims at contributing to an enhanced learning experience for the students of Islamic Studies and for me as a teacher-practitioner. The Remedial Strategies imply a shift of onus from the teacher to the student. This transfer is what is envisaged most by all contemporary thinkers in education because this is what guarantees concrete and productive learning in the classroom. / Religious Studies and Arabic / M. A. (Islamic Studies)

abstract: The thesis I have written aims to investigate the underlying reasons why France has considered Islam as unassimilable and why it has targeted Muslim women’s bodies to force assimilation. In the first section of the thesis, I examine the colonial relationship between France and Algeria. I conclude that Algeria’s independence from France significantly influenced the negative treatment towards immigrants in postcolonial France. I then study the racist discourse that dominated French politics in the 1980s; and clarify how this has laid the foundation for the first attempt to ban the headscarves in public schools during the 1980s. The final section explores the 2004 ban on conspicuous religious symbols, a ban that significantly targeted the headscarf. I conclude that the prohibition of the headscarf undermined the rights of Muslim women and symbolized France’s inability to accept Islam, since France feared Islam’s visibility weakened a dominant French identity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2017

abstract: This dissertation research employs biological distance and mortuary analyses in tandem with historical sources to investigate the degree to which conversion, as opposed to migration, contributed to the spread of Islam in southern Iberia. The dynamics of the 8th century conquest of Iberia by Muslim Arab and Berber forces from North Africa, and the subsequent 800-year period of religious, political, and social change, remain contested and poorly understood. Migration of Islamic peoples to the peninsula once was invoked as the primary vehicle of Islamic influence, but religious conversion, whether true or nominal, increasingly is regarded as a key component of those changes. This dissertation proposes that conversion, whether a prelude to or a component of Islamization, altered social group affiliations and interactions among those living in southern Iberia. Such changes in social relations and the resultant patterns of mate exchange will be recognizable by means of altered biological patterns of phenotypic variation. Through the examination of ~900 individuals from both Iberian and North African skeletal collections, this study concludes that conquest resulted in a great increase in phenotypic variability in the peninsula from the 8th-11th centuries. The data further indicate that males contributed this phenotypic variability to the samples in the Early Conquest period. Females, most frequently from Hispano-Roman Christian groups, appear to have ‘intermarried’ with these early conquerors and with the Muwallads, male Islamic converts, and are included in the early Muslim burial programs. From the 11th to the 14th centuries, the data presented here demonstrate a stasis and even a slight decrease in phenotypic variability in southern Iberia, which may be explained by endogamy among religious groups in this region. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2017