End Date :
The Heyman Center for the Humanities,
Komoda Room
ICLS Graduate Student Colloquium presentation by
Kamal Soleimani (MESAAS and ICLS)
Open to the ICLS community, the ICLS Graduate Student Colloquium provides an opportunity for our graduate students to present selections from their dissertations-in-progress and receive feedback from students and faculty. Please see the ‘program’ section below for a description of Mr. Soleimani’s topic. For more information or to schedule to present in our spring colloquium, please contact the ICLS offices.
Major Islamic figures of the late 19th and early 20th century had the role of leading their respective communities in religious affairs. It seems that nationalist discourse smoothly made its way into the newer Islamic interpretations of these figures. The most striking aspect is the use of nationalistic language and the blithe redrawing of Islamic boundaries along ethno-nationalistic bonds. The expected theological stance may be to “cling to one’s Islamic bonds” as indissoluble links. What is seen, however, is that these bonds either dissolve or become secondary in the religious actor’s political thoughts as s/he ventures on a nationalistic enterprise. The actor is ready to go against her/his coreligionists to further an ethnic/nationalist cause: to rethink bonds with one’s current ethnic other in their entirety. The actor seems, at least, undisturbed by creating a new boundary between her/himself and fellow-Muslims along ethnic lines.
