ALOHA
Happy New Year and welcome back! We hope you had wonderful holiday and a restful break. We dedicate the first issue of 2011 to the masjids, places of worship for followers of Islam, and their political and cultural roles in the Muslim and global community.
Mahalo,
Program Coordinators
Muslim Societies in Asia and the Pacific Program
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Mihrab
 The Mihrab is a semicircular niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the qibla; that is, the direction of the Ka'ba in Mecca that Muslims should face when praying. A magnificent twelve-foot-high thirteenth-century blue and white mihrab from the tomb of Imamzada Yahya at Veramin, Iran can be viewed at the Doris Duke's estate - Shangri La. Here at the Mihrab library are also housed 600 books including titles on Islamic and Indian art history and architecture, auction catalogues, paperback novels, and autobiographies as well as Islamic manuscripts. Public tours of the museum take place Wednesday through Saturday and you can take a virtual tour on your computer anytime.
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30 Mosques in 30 States
Aman Ali and  Bassam Tariq's record of their Ramadan road trip across the United States, which began in August 11 in New York City. The two travelers spent each night of Ramadan at a different mosque in 30 states around the country. The 12,000 mile route taken across the U.S. concluded on September 10 in Dearborn, Michigan - home to one of the largest concentrations of Muslims in the country. There are an estimated 7 million Muslims living in the United States that come from a wide mix of ethnic backgrounds including African Americans, South and East Asians, Arabs and East Africans.
After the trip, Aman and Bassam have announced the 30 Mosques Speaking Series.
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Community, Mosque and Ethnic Politicsby Michael Humphrey This paper focuses on the role of religion in organizing a Lebanese Muslim community in Sydney. In particular it looks at the role of the mosque and its relationship to other Lebanese and Islamic organizations in Australia. The analysis centers on the issue of mosque leadership and the politics of appointment of Imams. The conflict over mosque leadership has drawn a culturally and politically isolated community into mainstream political and legal processes in Australia and enhanced the position of the mosque as the central community organization in the Lebanese Sunni community. Full article available at Journal of Sociology.
Representations of Islam in the politics of mosque development in Sydney
by Kevin M. Dunn The negative constructions of Islam which circulate at (inter)national levels include Muslims as fanatical, intolerant, militant, fundamentalist, misogynist and alien. The various constructions of Islam had varying utility for mosque opponents in Sydney, Australia, during the 1980s and 1990s and were used to influence planning determinations and political decisions within local authorities. The discourses of opposition to mosques did not simply rely on the stereotypes of Islam, but also drew heavily on cultural constructions of what constituted a local citizen and the local community. Mosque supporters attempted to deploy counter-constructions, of Muslims as moderate, tolerant, peaceful, clean living, family-orientated, ordinary local citizens. A social construction approach is used to examine the politics surrounding mosque development in Sydney. Full article available at Journal of Economic and Social Geography.
Islamizing Public Spaces
by
Akel Ismail Kahera
This article clarifies what Hayden has termed "space as a cultural product." The author discusses the Islamizing of public spaces in two urban Muslim communities. The Salafiyya, a proto-Islamic movement (Community A), is at the center of a heated debate over the control for the soul of the community-the mosque. In contrast, "Community B" demonstrates how competing visions of public space and religious practice can coexist in urban America. Their goal is to invest the neighborhood with a bona fide religious virtue through activism and social change. More broadly, the worldview of these two communities forces an examination of two disparate ways of Islamizing public spaces. Islamizing exaggerates the problems that both A and B must confront and the kinds of uncertainties that accompany cultural identity, religious legitimacy, and valorization of the word community. Full article available at Space and Culture.
The Church, The Mosque,
and Global Civil Society
by
Mark Juergensmeyer
This paper examines the multi-levelled significance of places of worship in global civil society by focusing on two very specific sites in two quite different parts of the world, Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf, Iraq and the Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston, Texas. Full article available here.
Group Identity Salience in Sacred Value Based Cultural Conflict: An Examination of Hindu-Muslim Identities in the Kashmir and Babri Mosque Issues
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Sonya Sachdeva, Douglas L. Medin
The sacred values of a community are critical in understanding cultural conflict. When an attempt is made to trade a sacred value with a secular good, it evokes feelings of anger (taboo-tradeoff) but less so when that sacred value is traded off with another sacred value (tragic). Previous work has shown that participants who expressed sacred values for an issue were more resistant to taboo than tragic peace deals. Objective in the present study was to extend these findings to conflicts between Hindus and Muslims over Kashmir and the Babri Mosque, the former more salient to Muslim identity and the latter more salient to Hindu identity. While replicating the previous interaction between sacred values and tradeoff type, authors found a moderating role of how salient an issue was for group identity. Only the participants for whom the issue was salient showed the previous correlates of sacred values.
Full article available here.
A Study on the History and Development of the Javanese Mosque
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Bambang Setia Budi
This paper aims at critically reviewing a number of theories and previous studies on the origin of the Javanese mosque. A number of theories have been put forward by Dutch archeologists and historians since the 1930s, and were subject to debate until 1960s. Beyond this time, the debate was continued by an Indonesian archeologist in 1962/1963 and a French school in 1985. All of these theories are reviewed and the most reliable theory is asserted with new arguments and evidence from Javanese temple reliefs.
Full article available here.
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Events
 Featured the Shangri La tour coordinated by the MSAP at UH Manoa. This is a 1.5 hour tour of the center for Islamic arts and cultures. Free with limited seating to first 23 respondents. 20 January 2011, 9:30am - 12:30pm Honolulu Academy of Arts Brown Bag Lecture Sulaiman Mappiasse, a doctoral student at the UHM Sociology Department will talk about his experience at Al-Azhar University in Cairo. 27 January 2011, 12:00 - 1:00pm Tokioka Room, Moore Hall 319 International Islamic Expo 20114 to 6 February 2011 Jakarta Convention Center, Jakarta - Indonesia Three Faiths Exhibition22 November 2010 to 28 February 2011 Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, New York Public Library Halal & Islamic Products 3D Expo15 to 17 February 2011 Worldwide on Internet One World 2011Beginning June 2011 Seattle, WA
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Employment Opportunities
Academic
Sociology, Assistant/Associate Professor
National University of Singapore
Last day to apply: 4 January 2011
Faculty, Asian Religion and Philosophy
Asian University for Women, Chittagong, Bangladesh
Last day to apply: 8 January 2011
Assistant Professor, South Asian Religions
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Last day to apply: 19 January 2011
Adjunct Professor, Religion & Spirituality in Asia
University of San Francisco
Last day to apply: 21 January 2011
Assistant Professor, Religions of East Asia
Western Kentucky University
Last day to apply: 21 February 2011
Assistant Professor, South Asian Studies
University of Utah
Last day to apply: 1 March 2011
Two Faculty Positions, Sociology of Religion/ Cultural Sociology and Sociology of Language/ Sociology of Emotions
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Last day to apply: 24 March 2011
Assistant Professor, Islamic or Buddhist or Confucian Religious Thought/Philosophy
Syracuse University, New York
Last day to apply: 1 May 2011
Community
Development & Executive Assistant
Soliya, New York, New York
Last day to apply: 7 January 2011
Program Coordinator
Project Nur, American Islamic Congress
Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Last day to apply: 14 January 2011
Executive Director
Washington Federation of Independent Schools
Dupont, Washington
Last day to apply: 31 January 2011
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Conferences
28th Annual Spring Symposium "Media, Culture and Democracy in South Asia"
6 to 8 April 2011
University of Hawaii - Center for South Asian Studies
Abstract Deadline: 15 January 2011
European Conference for Academic Disciplines
10 to 15 April 2011
Gottenheim near Freiburg, Germany
Abstract Deadline: 1 March 2011
American Canadian Conference for Academic Disciplines
23 to 26 May 2011
Toronto, Canada
Abstract Deadline: 18 March 2011
2nd International Congress on Islamic Archeology
21 to 25 January 2011
Islamabad, Pakistan
Center for Islamic Studies National Conference
17 to 19 February 2011
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
11th annual East Asian Studies Graduate Conference
5 March 2011
University of Toronto
Islamic Civilization - Potentials and Challenges
9 to 10 March 2011
Lahore, Pakistan
In the Mix: Asian Popular Music Conference
25 to 26 March 2011
Princeton University
10th East-West Philosophers' Conference
16 to 24 May 2011
University of Hawaii - East West Center
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