فاطمه محمدی

This paper compares Islamic teachings regarding Jihad with Gandhi’s Satyagraha or non-violent resistance. Abdul Ghaffar Khan, one of Gandhi’s Muslim followers, has argued that not only was Islam compatible with non-violent methods, but that Prophet Muhammad had taught his followers non-violent resistance hundreds of years earlier than Gandhi had. Scholars such as Eknath Easwaran have also reiterated this argument (Easwaran, 1999, 34). This paper on the other hand argues that Islamic teachings regarding non-violence are more complicated than what Khan proclaimed. The verses of the Quran regarding Jihad or struggle can be divided between the revelations in Mecca, during the first thirteen years of the Prophet’s campaign, and the final ten years of his life, after he and his followers immigrated to the city of Medina. In the first thirteen years, Prophet Muhammad preached non-violent resistance even though Muslims were under severe pressure and prosecution. During this period Islamic teaching are quite compatible with Gandhi’s Satyagraha. However, after the new Muslim community immigrated to Medina and formed an Islamic government it came under the threat of annihilation by a foreign invading army, at which time Islam and its Prophet permitted defensive wars, unlike Gandhi’s teachings and Khan’s assertions. The paper concludes that Ahimsa may work only in the route towards power, whereas when the position of power achieved and an independent political community and its leadership formed, according to Islam, means of legitimate and justified violence could not be avoided altogether.

This paper looks at how Muslim women with an Iranian background and now living in Canada perform their identity through wearing the hijab. This was achieved by observing the behavior of six members of this community on Facebook using Erving Goffman’s stigmatization theory. The observation reveals that women who wear the hijab are more likely to identify themselves as Muslim-Canadian while those who have abandoned the hijab after immigration are more likely to identify themselves as Iranian-Canadian. Moreover, the results show that while Goffman’s theory is very useful in trying to understand the stigmatization of the veil after the 9/11 attacks as well as other extremists’ attacks, the pressures that this created on Muslim women, as well as the behavior of some women in dropping the veil in order to ‘pass’ such stigmatization, his theory is of limited use in understanding the more complicated performance of women who kept their hijab in spite of the challenges they faced.

The paper uses the case study of the controversy regarding the construction of a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in Manhattan, New York, to analyze the different theoretical approaches to the concept of solidarity. It is argued that the presence of affectional solidarity which is based on feelings of caring, friendship and love was very limited in the case under study. Instead the primary form of solidarity present in the ground zero mosque debate was conventional solidarity, which is based primarily on common interests and concerns that are established through shared traditions and values. Nevertheless, conventional solidarity uses membership within a group to advocate for solidarity. In many instances however, people in need of solidarity might fall outside of the boundaries of “we,” and as a result limiting the utility of the approach. This is why the paper advocates for a revised form of Jodi Dean’s reflective solidarity, which is based on mutual responsibility toward each other despite our differences. It is argued that in its current form this approach is a normative universal ideal which holds great potential but is unclear, underspecified and impractical. However, by injecting some “realism” into this theoretical approach, reflective solidarity is superior to affectional and conventional approaches.