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Young Russians in search of faith are turning to Islam

Young Russians in search of faith are turning to Islam. But Sarachev’s forebears didn’t practice Islam the way he understands it today. Over a millennium, Tatars had developed a rich and complicated theology, comfortable with rational thought and mindful of the need to coexist with the Christian Russians. In Kazan, Tatarstan’s capital, the religious establishment endeavors to carry on that tradition today. But Soviet hostility to religion left most Tatars with only a perfunctory sense of their own Muslim inheritance. Growing up, Sarachev remembers, religion meant grandparents and holidays, and little else. Yet even then, just after the collapse of…

Grass Roots Development May Hold Promise in the Muslim World

I would actually hope that it holds promise for everyone: There is, Khan averred, a “dominant player fallacy” or the tendency to place “too much reliance in national governments and other institutions which may have relatively superficial connections to life at the grass-roots level.” Thus, “urban-based outsiders often look at these situations from the perspective of the city center looking out to a distant countryside, searching for quick and convenient levers of influence.” The secret, then, is to work “from the bottom up” and not from the top down, as is so often the case. As he told the dinner…

Islam in the West Conference – Harvard

FIRST ISLAM IN THE WEST CONFERENCE THOMPSON ROOM, BARKER CENTER HARVARD UNIVERSITY Friday, December 2, 2005 8:30-9:00 Breakfast Welcome by Prof. Roger Owen, Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies Introductory Remarks by Prof. Roy Mottahedeh, Center for Middle Eastern Studies 9:00-9:45 Prof. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons (University of Florida) – Introductory remarks “The New Hijab: Negotiating Tradition and Identity through Dress, Presentation of Fieldwork among Muslim Women in the Greater Boston Area” Presented by Danna Weiss, Center for Middle East Studies, FAS Session Commentary by Prof. Gwendolyn Zoharah Simmons 9:45-10:30 Prof. Ali Asani (Harvard University) – Introductory Remarks “Between…