This dissertation uses the taxicab as a vehicle to tell the story of the Pakistani Muslim community from the 1970s onwards. The research includes an in-depth ethnography (2013-2014) on Muslim cab drivers that live and work in West Yorkshire, northern England, but who vary in age as well as place of birth. Most have their heritage in and around the villages of Mirpur, Azad Kashmir/Pakistan, as do the vast majority of the Pakistani diaspora in Britain. One driver's personal narrative organizes my thesis: a former rude boy turn revert (practicing Muslim), whose trajectory is situated in the 1980s and 1990s specifically. Exploring themes of family, community, religious identities, and violence, ‘Cab Driving in the Spirit of Islam’ refers to the richness of Islamic religious traditions as well as the specter which continues to haunt the liberal imaginary, both of which help shape the world of Muslim cab driving. Cab driving is a hyper-individualistic pursuit, the first steps towards integration into mainstream society and corollary normative acceptability. Yet paradoxically, for these South Asian Muslims, cab driving has stabilized into a communal infrastructure, a way of life for over three decades now, and as integral to them as the two Islamic traditions in their lives, Barelwi and Tablighi respectively. In the world of Muslim cab driving, critical knowledge is shared and passed on as religious community is continuously produced. The circulating cab driver occupies a pivotal mediating role, full of potential and promise, but also a position fraught with risk. As a figure of access and “plain person” in Alasdair MacIntyre’s words, he is an integral religious authority in this sociality, readily available to dispense and enjoin the Islamic good. It requires virtue and skill to live according to the sunna, the model of ethicality based on the Prophet’s example, the Prophet motive, rather than being dictated by the profit motive. In doing so, the expert driver turns a possible vulnerability into a potentiality. The study has five parts. In ‘Formations of the Rude Boy,’ I introduce the “boys,” figures of resistance and rebellion analogous to Paul Willis’ working-class “lads.” Via the critical medium of the car, the boy becomes the sovereign-beast. He takes possession of his fate, the ineluctable predicament of degraded cab driver, position occupied by his father and "uncles." However, the significant difference from my findings and Willis’ research is that the world of cab driving mediates Islamic religious traditions to produce the Islamic counterpublic (Charles Hirschkind), thereby unsettling the normative regime where school complements workplace. The sphere of pious cab driving is tantamount to an education in the Islamic virtues, described in Part II, ‘Righteous Turn.’ The overlay of revivalist discourse and practice onto the cabbing infrastructure, especially the spiritual exchanges in the taxi base, enables the rude boy’s ‘reversion,’ an un-becoming Sovereign and a life-altering trajectory shared by a significant constituency in this Islamic revival. In his pious turn, the former “boy” sees the other side to the tradition, one of care and concern, rather than the policing which he aspired to rebel against. Part III, ‘Riding with the Enemy,’ examines the specter of “Islam” in liberalism. Drivers work all over England, including the country proper, villages and market towns whose residents are predominantly non-Muslim whites. The driver is thus at the core of liberalism, both materially and psychologically. The Muslim driver is a marked target, a convenient opportunity and point of access, resulting in a concentration of violence in the cab. In the possibility that the ride turns into a sexual encounter, the Muslim driver is the “intimate enemy.” I investigate the gendered dimension in this mode of everyday violence, tying together the performance of expected gender roles to a resurgent nationalist sentiment that necessitates the need to disavow the Muslim/the migrant within. I trace the emergence of this nationalist subjectivity in the decline of the white working-class while attending to the spatial transformations and movements taking place in these landscapes. In Part IV, ‘Care Drivers,’ I consider the driver’s response in this vulnerable predicament as the putatively lacking migrant. The pious driver learns to depend and trust in God. He draws upon the significance of the social position of ‘lack’ and ‘beginning’ in Islamic tradition, most notably the Prophet’s companion, Bilal, the exemplar par excellence of embodying piety and practicing sabr, the virtue of endurance, in the face of degradation, inferiority and violence. While Muslim cab driving has formed a way of life, it is far from stagnant. In Part V, ‘Revaluation of the Saints,’ I explore the shifts and transformations that result in the transnational circulation of goods and people, as the returning émigré-driver is endowed with a saint-like authority, produced out of the two dominant South Asian Muslim traditions, ‘Sufi’ Barelwi and ‘Deobandi’ Tablighi, mediated by cab driving and the migration process. I analyze changes in the religious authority and practices of these Muslims, a matter of ‘knowing the men,’ their good deeds and actions, as they strive to ‘live Medina’ in modern England.

This thesis examines how novels and films by British writers and filmmakers of Muslim heritage address the reshaping of masculinity through migration and interaction with other cultures within the UK. Drawing on a comparative critical framework that combines approaches from feminist, gender and masculinity studies, postcolonial, migration and transcultural studies, Islamic studies and literary and film theory, this thesis engages with five novels and four films that were written or released between 1985 and 2012, by British writers and filmmakers who were either born in a Muslim-majority nation or born to parents originating from a Muslim-majority country and who use their fictions to explore the presence and practices of Muslim cultures and communities in contemporary Britain. Through close analysis of work by Monica Ali, Nadeem Aslam, Sally El Hosaini, Ayub Khan-Din, Hanif Kureishi and Robin Yassin-Kassab, this thesis scrutinises how migrant and subsequent generations of postmigrant male protagonists construct their masculinity and how their conceptions of gender identity and performance are ‘translated’ into a British context amidst this century’s climate of Islamophobia and anti-migrant rhetoric, following events such as the Rushdie Affair, 9/11 and 7/7. In doing so, this thesis contends that through transnational movement and settlement conceptions of ‘Muslimness’, ‘Britishness’, and those of masculinity, are thrown into sharp relief and exposed as unstable and contingent constructs. By foregrounding the transcultural aesthetics and themes of this literary and cinematic corpus, however, I argue that this body of cultural production interrogates similarities and differences between the cultures they are positioned across. I use this transcultural approach to focus on how these texts depict father and son relations, religion, urban marginality and sexuality, and how through these foci, these novels creatively imagine new forms of masculinity that are forged through cultural contact, conflict and entanglement.

This thesis is based upon ethnographic fieldwork on the process of becoming married in Cairo. It focuses specifically upon the experiences of Cairene Muslims, and centres on the profound sense of anxiety and uncertainty which so frequently surrounds the marriage-making process. This thesis is an attempt to make sense of the salience of these emotions, against a backdrop of economic and political instability, a broader interest in modesty and decorum, and public concern about an alleged ‘marriage crisis’. It also explores the various ways in which prospective affines seek to manage the pervasive sense of anxiety and uncertainty associated with the production of marriage in Cairo. To this end, the thesis examines the ways in which phenomena, ranging from assessments about the ‘suitability’ of a given conjugal home to the perceived outcome of a particular form of petitionary prayer, enter into decisions about whom to marry and come to affect confidence in a given choice. The thesis thus presents a complex picture of the agency of prospective affines, and pays particular attention to the relationship between agency and knowledge.

Cancer is an illness that knows no international boundaries. There are more than eight million global cancer deaths each year. A life-threatening diagnosis generates significant emotional problems for many patients across cultures. Death distress—consisting of death depression, death anxiety and death obsession—often results in poorer treatment adherence and lower overall health and quality of life. The purpose of this study was to determine whether religiosity has a moderating effect on the relationship between death distress and quality of life among patients facing a life-threatening cancer diagnosis. The study sample consisted of 118 cancer patients: 82 cancer patients from a National Guard hospital in Saudi Arabia and 36 cancer patients from H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, Florida. Three validated scales were used to obtain data from study participants: the Death Distress Scale, the Belief into Action Scale; and the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Scale. After a Pearson correlation were conducted and results indicated a moderately strong inverse relationship between death distress and quality of life among both the Christian (r=-.45, p <.001) and Muslim (r=-.39, p <.001) patient samples. The degree of religiosity among study participants did not alter the effect of death distress on quality of life. Results reveal that the interaction term was not statistically significant (b=.005, p=.32). However, quality of life correlated with degree of religiosity in both the Christian(r=.39, p=.018) and Muslim patient groups ( r=.24, p=0.034)). This finding reinforces the importance of religious involvement among cancer patients found in earlier research. The current study highlights the importance of a holistic treatment approach that includes a spiritual component for these vulnerable individuals and their loved ones. This holistic emphasis is particularly important for nurses, who often spend more time with cancer patients than other health care professionals. By proactively discussing common issues surrounding death distress with patients and families, nurses can provide much needed education and emotional support and make appropriate referral. Given that death distress appears to be a nearly universal experience among cancer patients regardless of religious affiliation, future research should develop evidence-based nursing protocols to address this vital topic.

Thesis (D. Miss.)--Western Seminary, Portland, OR, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-232).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1982. / Vita. Bibliography: leaves [493]-526.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2004. Graduate Programme in Political Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-269). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNQ99140

Texte remanié de : Th. Ph. D. : School of Oriental and African studies : London University. / Bibliogr. p. 391-416. Index.

Thèse de doctorat : Langue vivante d'anglais : Tours : 2008. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Release of full electronic text on OhioLINK has been delayed until June 7, 2012. Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.