Magister Philosophiae - MPhil (Religion and Theology) / South African debates on food security address a wide range of issues related to the production, the distribution and the consumption of food in the context of deep concerns over the impact of poverty, unemployment and inequality. One aspect of such debates is on the need for nutritious food amidst hunger, malnutrition, obesity and the prevalence of diabetes. This study will investigate the Islamic theological injunctions and guidelines that govern the production, the different facets of distribution and the consumption of food in Muslim communities. There are numerous theological injunctions from the Quran and prophetic traditions (?ad?th) guiding the Muslim community in relation to food security. These include injunctions around the need to provide nutritious food. The study will assess the programmes of five Muslim faith-based organisations in the Cape Town Metropolitan Area, working in the field of food security and more specifically, feeding schemes. The food programmes of these organisations will be described, analysed and assessed in order to establish whether, and to what extent, the Islamic injunctions on nutrition are implemented, given various constraints. This will require attention to the policies, the strategies and the practices associated with such feeding schemes.

The work deals with alternatives and general features of spending the free time of women, who live in the muslim countries. For a better insight of the subject, there is the term muslim world explained at the beginning and there are described the sources of Islamic law, from which many of restrictions and rules for muslim women flow. In the following chaptures there are sketched concrete free time activites of muslim women, as for example sports, fashion, singing or travelling. The expressions of muslim authorities´opinions, whether the particular activities are convenient for women, are also linked to the themes. The work doesn´t compare free time activites between specific muslim countries, but it focuses on elements, that are in common for the majority of muslim women living in various countries.

I adopt an interpretive methodology through which I investigate the becoming of Muslim identities in three national integration discourses. I analyse the meanings of integration in abstract, in context and through texts across contexts, and working within a broadly critical constructivist approach, I seek to show how integration discourses have an underlying security complex which explains how they come to be framed with Muslims in mind. To analyse integration I outline a new generic concept of settlement which I refer to as habilitation and which means enabling or endowing with ability or fitness. I then argue for an analytical separation of habilitative strategies, models and approaches, and thus remove integration from its generic descriptive status to one of strategy, model or approach. This I argue is justified in the discursive distinctions made in every-day language and meaning. I then investigate three broad habilitative models: multiculturalism, integration and assimilation. My primary data has been gathered in interviews with individuals acting as representatives of Muslim communities - Imams, organisation leaders, political activists and factory workers – corporate and societal actors such as Trade Unionists, Church representatives and state elites – policy advisers and integration officers. Muslim interviewees emphasised widespread use of distortion and mis-identification. I have defined such distortions as synecdoche. This is a two way process in which the individual is held responsible for the whole and in reverse direction, the whole being held responsible for individual action. The power of synecdoche to compress or expand Muslim identities is distortive and serves to reinforce the alterity of Muslims. In addition I identify another layer of othering which I call ulteriorisation. This involves placing identities under suspicion and is accomplished through a range of aspersive renderings – ambiguous loyalties, secularity, enclaving, underclass formation, and anti-integrationism. Ulteriorisation is understood to feed into broader securitisation of communities, society and polity. In conclusion I look at possible research directions and finish by emphasising that the integrity of Integration will be judged by the willingness of parties to negotiate and the quality of voluntarism and solidarity these processes produce.

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Till följd av att en muslimsk kvinna misshandlades i en förort till Stockholm på grund av att hon bar slöja, genomfördes den politiska manifestationen Hijabuppropet. Denna manifestation resulterade i att kvinnor uppmanades att beslöja sig i syfte att visa solidaritet för den misshandlade kvinnan, och muslimska kvinnor som en marginaliserad samhällsgrupp. Agerandet möttes med en stark kritik från bland annat den svenska kvinnorörelsen som menade att slöjan är anti-feministisk och representerar ett kvinnoförtryck som inte borde normaliseras i det svenska samhället. Detta fick gensavar från muslimska feminister som menade att deras erfarenheter blev exkluderade i debatten kring kvinnlig jämställdhet. Syftet för denna studie är att utifrån den teoretiska referensramen black feminism och postkolonial feminism problematisera denna påstådda exkludering, och att anlysera hur dessa kvinnor motiverar en lyckad kombination av att vara muslim och feminist i ett västerländskt samhälle. Med totalt 13 debattartiklar, krönikor och intervjuartiklar med muslimska kvinnliga feminister och andra icke-muslimska feministiska aktörer, har en kritisk diskursanalys genomförts. Med hjälp av Faircloughs tredimensionella analysverktyg har diskursiva praktiker tolkats och kopplats till skapandet av sociala praktiker. Studien förhåller sig till vetenskapstraditionen kritisk realism då fokus ligger på att finna bakomliggande mekanismer som har förklaringsvärde till de sociala fenomen som undersöks. Analysen visar ett resultat där jämställdhetsdiskursen tolkas definieras av en hierarkisk social dominans, där den svenska kvinnorörelsen reproducerar en normativ feminism designad efter den vita medelklasskvinnans behov. Bedömningen görs att det existerar en exkludering av marginaliserade grupper inom kvinnorörelsen där minoriteten antas behöva anamma majoritetsgruppens värderingar vad gäller attityder till kvinnliga rättigheter och definition av frihet. Det existerar med andra ord en invärtes maktkamp inom den svenska feministiska rörelsen där idén om en universell feminism där samhällets samtliga kvinnor strävar efter unisona mål är problematisk.

It is generally understood that nearly all Malay Muslims in the Malay Peninsula are followers of the school of al-Imäm al-Shäfi'i in the field of Islamic Firth or Law. Fiqh is the science of the knowledge of one's rights and obligations as derived from the Qur'än or the Tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, or deduced There from, or about which the Muslim learned have agreed. The influence of this school of Law (al-madhhab) seems to have gained its ground in the Malay Peninsula following the successful introduction of the religion of Islam. So, it is essential, firstly, to unveil the hidden history of the coming of this religion to this part of the world and to illustrate broadly, the background of the formation of the four orthodox schools in interpreting the Muslim Law, before dealing directly with the Shäfi'i influence. It seems proper to do so because the former is like the root of a tree itself, while the latter is its branch. It is also possible to observe in certain of the customary attitudes to all questions of marriage and divorce the underlying influences of surviving native customary principles (Adat). These will be referred to in the course of this study whenever they have a degree of relevancy and where material is available.

The Tablīghī Jamā'at is a Muslim organization for faith renewal that was founded by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas during the 1920s in North India. The Tablīghī Jamā'at, which was loosely associated with Dāru'l-'Ulūm Deoband, responded to the increasing importance of identity politics in twentieth century South Asia by focusing on strengthening the Muslim community through proselytism. While the members of the Tablīghī Jamā'at have routinely claimed that their movement is strictly apolitical, some commentators have questioned the aptness of their characterization. Scholarship on the Tablīghī Jamā'at either confirms the apolitical nature of the organization or argues the opposite, claiming that its leaders have maintained an apolitical front that masks members’ political activity both in South Asia and abroad. This conversation has not advanced in recent years. This thesis asks why there have been such divergent attitudes towards the Tablīghī Jamā'at. In order to answer this question, it investigates the historical issues that shed light on the historiographical problem surrounding the organization. Through an analysis of the complex structure of authority in the organization, I argue that the Tablīghī Jamā'at is highly amenable to change and highly resistant to broad characterization. / text

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