Full Description
From "green" pop and "clean" cinema to halal songs, Islamic soaps, Muslim rap, Islamist fantasy serials, and Suficized music, the performing arts have become popular and potent avenues for Islamic piety movements, politically engaged Islamists, Islamic states, and moderate believers to propagate their religio-ethical beliefs. Muslim Rap, Halal Soaps, and Revolutionary Theater is the first book that explores this vital intersection between artistic production and Islamic discourse in the Muslim world.
The contributors to this volume investigate the historical and structural conditions that impede or facilitate the emergence of a "post-Islamist" cultural sphere. They discuss the development of religious sensibilities among audiences, which increasingly include the well-to-do and the educated young, as well as the emergence of a local and global religious market. At the heart of these essays is an examination of the intersection between cultural politics, performing art, and religion, addressing such questions as where, how, and why pop culture and performing arts have been turned into a religious mission, and whether it is possible to develop a new Islamic aesthetic that is balanced with religious sensibilities. As we read about young Muslims and their quest for a "cool Islam" in music, their struggle to quell their stigmatized status, or the collision of morals and the marketplace in the arts, a vivid, varied new perspective on Muslim culture emerges.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Artistic Developments in the Muslim Cultural Sphere: Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Performing Arts (Karin van Nieuwkerk)
Part One: The Power of Performance
Chapter 1. Hardcore Muslims: Islamic Themes in Turkish Rap between Diaspora and Homeland (Thomas Solomon)
Chapter 2. Contesting Islamic Concepts of Morality: Heavy Metal in Istanbul (Pierre Hecker)
Chapter 3. Iranian Popular Music in Los Angeles: A Transnational Public beyond the Islamic State (Farzaneh Hemmasi)
Part Two: Motivations
Chapter 4. Ritual as Strategic Action: The Social Logic of Musical Silence in Canadian Islam (Michael Frishkopf)
Chapter 5. Pious Entertainment: Hizbullah's Islamic Cultural Sphere (Joseph Alagha)
Chapter 6. Of Morals, Missions, and the Market: New Religiosity and "Art with a Mission" in Egypt (Karin van Nieuwkerk)
Part Three: Staging the Body and the World Stage
Chapter 7. Islamic Modernity and the Re-enchanting Power of Symbols in Islamic Fantasy Serials in Turkey (Ahu Yigit)
Chapter 8. From "Evil-Inciting" Dance to Chaste "Rhythmic Movements": A Genealogy of Modern Islamic Dance-Theatre in Iran (Zeinab Stellar)
Chapter 9. Suficized Musics of Syria at the Intersection of Heritage and the War on Terror; Or "A Rumi with a View" (Jonathan H. Shannon)
Afterword (Martin Stokes)
Notes on Contributors
Index
