Shi’a Minorities in the Contemporary World Migration, Transnationalism and Multilocality
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Biographical note
Oliver Scharbrodt is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chester. He is the author of Islam and the Baha’i Faith: A Comparative Study of Muhammad ‘Abduh and ‘Abdul-Baha ‘Abbas (London and New York: Routledge, 2008) and editor of the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe (Leiden: Brill). Yafa Shanneik is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham. She researches the dynamics and trajectories of gender in Islam within the context of contemporary diasporic and transnational Muslim women’s spaces. Currently, she is working on a project which explores women’s narratives of transnational marriage practices performed by Iraqi and Syrian women who have settled in Europe or other countries in the Middle East since the 1980s. The project focuses on the historical developments and contemporary understandings and approaches of marriage practices among displaced Iraqi and Syrian Muslim women and foregrounds questions of identity, home and belonging of women constituted through local, national and transnational scales of migration experiences.This edited volume provides unique empirical research on the usually under studied Shi'a minorities in different contexts, from Europe to Latin America and Cambodia. It is an important contribution to the fields of immigration, transnational and religious studies.
Jocelyne Cesari, University of Birmingham and Georgetown University
The volume is a valuable contribution to Shi‘a studies that challenges some of the preconceived notions about the Shi‘a diaspora, such as an ‘Iranian satellite’ in non-Muslim contexts. Furthermore, it shows the resistance and indigenous nature of Shi‘a groups that form their unique identity by adapting Shi‘a theology to local culture. [...] Finally, the volume brilliantly captures the areas of cooperation which challenge rigid sectarian classifications and presents analytical tools to explain shared/collective subjectivities and fluidity of sectarian boundaries which are difficult to categorise as Shi‘a or Sunni.
- Jaffer Abbas Mirza, Centre for Academic Shi‘a Studies, London, Journal of Shi'a Islamic Studies Vol 12, Number 1-2