[Anthropgrad] Seminar by Yasir Alimi: 'The Social Life of the Quran in South Sulawesi'. Friday 20th March, 3pm.

[John White]

Anthropology Friday Seminar Series. Semester 1, 2009. Milgate Room, AD
Hope. Friday, 20th March, 3pm.

 

Post-fieldwork seminar: The Social Life of the Quran in South Sulawesi

 

Few would hesitate to acknowledge that the Quran, the most important
book for Muslims, has generated less attention in anthropological
research than the archives such as chronicles (lontara) or books (kitab)
as part of being Muslim. The reasons are many; perhaps the most
comfortable one is the assumption that the Quran is only one and not
local, and, that is why Muslims use it in the same way.

 

The Muslims of South Sulawesi, however, use the Quran in nuanced ways.
Some use the Quran to display social hierarchy and achieve Quranic
literacy to enter the hierarchical world of the adult, and thus
strengthen local expression of Islam. Some, empowered by the meaning and
principles of the Quran, use the principles of the Quran to justify
either conservative or secular agendas, and challenge or defend local
Islam. Some use the physicality of the Quran as a ritual object and item
of social currency to reclaim the authority of state after it has been
crippled by the tumultuous period of reformasi and desentralisasi on the
one side and the increasing influence of market economy on the other.

 

In this seminar, I will discuss this empowerment by the meaning and the
physicality of the Quran to illustrate Muslims' interaction with the
public sphere. Habermas (1989) and some scholars (e.g. Bowen 2003,
Salvatore 2004) see the "public sphere" as an area of logical debates,
discourse and verbal statement. To see the nuances of religious life in
South Sulawesi and understand their contradictions, I argue that we have
to expand the definition of public sphere. The public sphere is also a
realm of emotions, rituals and metaphors. The public sphere as a realm
of discursive debates is a secular conceptualization of public sphere.

 

All welcome!