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Accepted Paper:
Between Khatam Qur'ans and Slametans: gender and class in South Asian and Indonesian interdomestic rituals
Pnina Werbner
(Keele University)
Paper short abstract:
A focus on veiling and prayer has led to a neglect of rites of passage or offerings countering affliction, as routine activities of everyday Islam. I compare khatam Koran rituals, as celebrated by South Asian Muslims with the Indonesian Slametan, drawing out these rituals' gendered dimensions.
Paper long abstract:
The emphasis on Islamic veiling and daily prayers had led to a neglect of the celebration of rites of passage or the countering of suffering of affliction, with their attendant rituals of offering and sacrifice, as routine activities of everyday Islam. My paper compares the khatam Koran ritual, as celebrated by Muslims in Pakistan and North India, including their diasporas, with the Indonesian Slametan. It points to the striking similarities scholars have identified in the way that such rituals allow for the creation of an everyday interdomestic domain controlled in large measure by women and based on female networking. Class and gender intersect in such networks, allowing for different configurations of inter-household relations in villages, neighbourhoods and urban contexts. If the slametan was an extension of South Indian kanduri celebrations, the contemporary spread of communal Koran readings to Indonesia highlights the continuing interconnections across the Muslim world as these affect women's capacities to network beyond the constricted, restricted domestic domain.
Gendering 'everyday Islam'
Session 1