Journal articles on the topic 'English Islamic poetry'

This study investigates whether it is possible to translate Islamic Arabic poetry, as a universal literary religious genre, into English to a high level of quality. A global-local translation framework (Halimah, 2020) is applied to the translation of Imam Ashshafi’ee’s[i] poem “الرضا بقضاء الله”/ “Accepting Fate with Pleasure” into English, where a methodological collaboration between a bilingual translator and an English poet manifests a two-stance methodological framework. The results, along with the qualitative and quantitative analysis of poetic extracts used in this paper, indicate that this framework has resulted in improving the quality of Islamic Arabic poetry translation. The translated materials proved to be ‘novel and appropriate’, achieving a very high 90% of approximation of the original text against ACNCS criteria. This framework can also be applied by translators of other literary and non-literary texts to bring more structure and clarity to the discipline of translation.[i]Muhammad bin Idrees Ashshafi’ee (DoB:150H/767A.D died in 204H/820A.D.) The founder of the Sunni School of Law مذهب الشافعية

This paper examines English Islamic song lyrics from an Indonesian nasyid group named Snada. The group is known as the icon of Indonesian nasyid group. The English lyrics are their efforts to get wider audience not only from Indonesia but also from international audience. This research analyses two English song lyrics sung by Snada namely “My Pray” and “Where Are You Going” from Snada’s song albums to understand and explain more on their contents and meanings including the Islamic values, teachings, and messages as well as the functions and purposes of the Islamic lyrics related to Islamic da’wa. Both of the lyrics have similar theme in general namely remembering Allah. This qualitative-descriptive research tries to examine the lyrics by using poetry theory through some elements of poetry, da’wa concept, and by using both content analysis and comparative analysis. The analysis shows that there are some similarities and differences between the two for their literary poetical elements and also their Islamic values, teachings, messages, and functions or purposes. The Islamic da’wa is done through English song lyrics sung by Snada to get wider audience. The analysis also shows that the lyrics are about the invitation, reminder, suggestion, and persuasion to remember, love, pray to, and believe in Allah as the source for guidance in life. The da’wa messages are addressed for both Muslims and other people in general. Lastly, through English song lyrics, they have done their Islamic da’wa movement in song music to wider audience as well as for entertainment and Islamic education.DOI: 10.15408/insaniyat.v2i2.7851

This qualitative research aimed to find out: 1) the formation of formal and natural language environment to improve students' speaking skills in various modern Islamic boarding Schools at Ponorogo. 2) the formation of formal and natural language environment to improve students' writing skills in various Modern Islamic Boarding Schools at Ponorogo. The results indicate that: 1) Students' speaking skills are improved through the following Arabic language environmental activities: using Arabic in daily conversation, Arabic learning, the use of language laboratory, adding new daily vocabulary, annual language competition, listening to foreign language news, language error correction, speech competition, poetry reading, debate, and Arabic storytelling. 2) Students' writing skills are improved through the following Arabic language environmental activities: writing foreign-language articles, speeches, debate, English storytelling, poetry, songs, drama texts, and Arabic news texts, weekly writing exercises, and writing Arabic articles competition.

Abstract: In the poetry of Daud Kamal, water figures as an image of mercy, as in the Quran, and as a mirror that reflects divine hidden presence. The rock pool evokes the memory of Gandhara and other foundational civilizations born in love and creative ferment. Conversely, the images of drought, heat, and dust symbolize a parched spiritual order. The river, a recurring archetypal image in Kamal’s poetry, represents the fluid self that is subsumed into collective identity to become a poetic distillate of history. Key words: Daud Kamal, water imagery, drought imagery, Pakistani poetry in English, Gandhara civilization, Islamic poetry. Resumen: En la poesía de Daud Kamal (1935-1987), el agua figura como una imagen de misericordia, como en el Corán, y como un espejo que refleja la presencia divina oculta. El estanque evoca la memoria de Gandhara y otras civilizaciones fundamentales nacidas en el amor y el fermento creativo. Por el contrario, las imágenes de sequía, calor y polvo simbolizan un orden espiritual reseco. El río, una imagen arquetípica recurrente en la poesía de Kamal, representa el yo fluido que se subsume en la identidad colectiva para convertirse en un destilado poético de la historia. Palabras clave: Daud Kamal, imágenes de agua, imágenes de sequía, poesía paquistaní en inglés, civilización de Gandhara, poesía islámica.

In his book, The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: from Heroic to Lyric to Metapoet- ic, Jaroslav Stetkevych traces the evolution of Arabic hunt poetry from its origins as an integral part of the heroic ode (qaṣῑda) to becoming a genre by itself (ṭardiyya) during the Islamic era, and then evolving into a meta- poetic self-conscious expression of poets in our modern time. The book is a collection of a revised book chapter and a number of revised articles that Stetkevych published between 1996 and 2013 discussing Arabic hunt poet- ry at different periods spanning from the pre-Islamic age, known in Arabic as “al-‘Aṣr al-jāhiliyya” (Age of Ignorance), to the contemporary era. This does not diminish the coherence of the book nor detract from Stetkevych’s welcomed thematic approach and his contribution to literary criticism on Arabic poetry and the socio-political and linguistic factors that influenced its development and evolution. Stetkevych divides his 256-page book into three parts. The first part, entitled “The Heroic and the Anti-Heroic in the Early Arabic Ode: The Qaṣῑdah,” consists of three chapters and discusses the evolution of the qa- ṣῑda (ode) during the Age of Ignorance. Stetkevych dissects the structure of the ode and shows how hunt poetry was an integral part of it (not an independent genre). In doing so, Stetkevych draws a vivid picture of the life and geosocial terrain of the period spanning from pre-Islamic to the mid-Umayyad eras. In the first chapter, “The Hunt in the Pre-Islamic Ode”, Stetkevych uses examples mainly from the Mu‘allaqāt of Rabī‘ah ibn Maqrum, Labād Ibn Rabī‘ah, and the famous Imru’ al-Qays to illustrate the different roles hunt poetry played based on where it fell in the structure of the ode. He further establishes that the hunt section of the ode served as the origin for what later became a genre in its own right, known as ṭardiyya. In the second and third chapters, “The Hunt in the Ode at the Close of the Archaic Peri- od” and “Sacrifice and Redemption: The Transformation of Archaic Theme in al-Ḥuṭay’ah”, Stetkevych distinguishes between the different terms for “hunt” and the ṭard that would be the “chivalrous hunt” that takes place from the back of a horse. Parsing these distinctions with poems from ‘Ab- dah Ibn al-Ṭabῑb, al-Shamardal, and ‘Amr Ibn Qamῑ’ah, among others, the author sketches how hunt poetry began taking its own shape as a freestand- ing genre during the Umayyad period: when hunt poetry “is no longer ex- plicitly ‘chivalrous’… we are now in the realm of falconry” (55). The second part of the book, “The Hunt Poem as Lyric Genre in Classi- cal Arabic Poetry: The Ṭardiyyah”, is made up of four chapters that discuss the maturation of the hunt poem under ‘Abbasid rule. During that period, the cultural, economic, scientific, and social renaissance left its impact on poets and poetry. Hunt poetry became a genre of its own, taking an inde- pendent form made of hunt-specialized shorter lyrics. Stetkevych begins this section in chapter 4, “The Discreet Pleasures of the Courtly Hunt: Abū Nuwās and the ‘Abbasid Ṭardiyyah”. He shows how the move of hunt po- etry from subjective to objective description was utterly distinctive under “Abu Nuwas, the master of archaic formulas, who is capable of employing those formulas in conceits that are no longer archaic” (102). Chapter 5, “From Description to Imagism: ‘Alῑ Ibn al-Jahm’s ‘We Walked over Saffron Meadows’,” shows how Ibn al-Jahm and other Abbasid poets such as Ibn al-Mu‘tazz and Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī “exercise considerable stylistic freedom in developing their own markedly varied but distinctive ṭardiyyah-po- ems from the broadly imagist to the highly lyrical to the fully narrative” (131). Stetkevych shows how the rhythm of hunt poetry was liberated as the Abbasid poets moved from the rajaz meter used in pre-Islamic hunt poetry to modifying and modulating “the ṭawῑl meter to create the unique rhythmic qualities” (131). In chapter 6, “Breakthrough into Lyricism: The Ṭardiyyahs of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz,” the author uses multiple examples to show how “the ṭardiyyah not only found that new lyrical voice but also allowed it … to become a closely integrated and even more broadly formative part of that poet’s multi-genre ‘project’ of a ‘new lyricism’ of Arabic poetry” (183). Chapter 7, “From Lyric to Narrative: The Ṭardiyyah of Abu Firas al-Ḥam- danῑ,” demonstrates how the prince poet “abandons the short lyric mono- rhyme for the sprawling narrative rhymed couplets (urjuzah muzdawijah)” (9). Stetkevych notes that although this “shift did not result (yet) in the achievement of a separate narrative genre, it can …be rightfully viewed as a step in the exploration of the possibility of a large narrative form” (187). The third and final section, “Modernism and Metapoesis: the Pursuit of the Poem,” discusses the revival of hunt poetry by modernist poets after being neglected for centuries. Chapter 8, “The Modernist Hunt Poem in ‘Abd al-Wahhab al Bayatῑ and Aḥmad ‘Abd al Mu‘ṭῑ Ḥijazῑ,” examines two poems of the two poets, both entitled Ṭardiyyah. Stetkevych argues that the Iraqi free-verse poet, al-Bayatῑ, transformed the “genre-and form-bound, rhymed and metered lyric… into a formally free exploration of the dra- matic and tragic image of the hunted hare as a metaphor for the political and cultural predicament of modern man” (9). Meanwhile, Hijazi’s Ṭardi- yyah transforms “the poignant lyricism of the traditional hunt poem into an expression of the poet’s personal experience of political exile and poetic restlessness and frustration” (10). The author concludes that the two poets’ explorations into ṭardiyyah “helped not only to preserve and activate the classical metaphor of hunt/ṭardiyyah into modernity, but in equal measure to validate and enrich the achievements of modern Arabic poetry” (242). In the last chapter, “The Metapoetic Hunt of Muḥammad ‘Afῑfῑ Maṭar,” Stetkevych—through interpretation, comparison, and criticism—shows how Maṭar’s modern poetry while “hermeneutically connected to the old genre… [is] very personal mythopoesis” (10). Stetkevych’s book does not discuss Andalusian hunt poetry, such as that of ‘Abbās Ibn Firnās, Ibn Hadhyal and Ibn al-Khaṭīb, nor the Ṭardiyyah of the contemporary Egyptian poet ‘Abdulraḥman Youssef, published in 2011 after the revolution in Tunisia and two days before the Egyptian revolution started. While including such examples would have further bol- stered this already strong and convincing argument and further illustrated the evolution of hunt poetry from the pre-Islamic era into modern times, their absence does not take away from the book writ large. Stetkevych’s excellent English translations of the poetry cited make his examples more accessible to readers who do not know Arabic. Overall, the book is a very valuable addition to literary criticism of Arabic poetry written in English and will surely be a great asset for scholars, students, and others interested in Arabic poetry as a reflection of a cultural and humanistic experience. Gaby SemaanAssistant Professor of ArabicUniversity of Toledo

In his book, The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: from Heroic to Lyric to Metapoet- ic, Jaroslav Stetkevych traces the evolution of Arabic hunt poetry from its origins as an integral part of the heroic ode (qaṣῑda) to becoming a genre by itself (ṭardiyya) during the Islamic era, and then evolving into a meta- poetic self-conscious expression of poets in our modern time. The book is a collection of a revised book chapter and a number of revised articles that Stetkevych published between 1996 and 2013 discussing Arabic hunt poet- ry at different periods spanning from the pre-Islamic age, known in Arabic as “al-‘Aṣr al-jāhiliyya” (Age of Ignorance), to the contemporary era. This does not diminish the coherence of the book nor detract from Stetkevych’s welcomed thematic approach and his contribution to literary criticism on Arabic poetry and the socio-political and linguistic factors that influenced its development and evolution. Stetkevych divides his 256-page book into three parts. The first part, entitled “The Heroic and the Anti-Heroic in the Early Arabic Ode: The Qaṣῑdah,” consists of three chapters and discusses the evolution of the qa- ṣῑda (ode) during the Age of Ignorance. Stetkevych dissects the structure of the ode and shows how hunt poetry was an integral part of it (not an independent genre). In doing so, Stetkevych draws a vivid picture of the life and geosocial terrain of the period spanning from pre-Islamic to the mid-Umayyad eras. In the first chapter, “The Hunt in the Pre-Islamic Ode”, Stetkevych uses examples mainly from the Mu‘allaqāt of Rabī‘ah ibn Maqrum, Labād Ibn Rabī‘ah, and the famous Imru’ al-Qays to illustrate the different roles hunt poetry played based on where it fell in the structure of the ode. He further establishes that the hunt section of the ode served as the origin for what later became a genre in its own right, known as ṭardiyya. In the second and third chapters, “The Hunt in the Ode at the Close of the Archaic Peri- od” and “Sacrifice and Redemption: The Transformation of Archaic Theme in al-Ḥuṭay’ah”, Stetkevych distinguishes between the different terms for “hunt” and the ṭard that would be the “chivalrous hunt” that takes place from the back of a horse. Parsing these distinctions with poems from ‘Ab- dah Ibn al-Ṭabῑb, al-Shamardal, and ‘Amr Ibn Qamῑ’ah, among others, the author sketches how hunt poetry began taking its own shape as a freestand- ing genre during the Umayyad period: when hunt poetry “is no longer ex- plicitly ‘chivalrous’… we are now in the realm of falconry” (55). The second part of the book, “The Hunt Poem as Lyric Genre in Classi- cal Arabic Poetry: The Ṭardiyyah”, is made up of four chapters that discuss the maturation of the hunt poem under ‘Abbasid rule. During that period, the cultural, economic, scientific, and social renaissance left its impact on poets and poetry. Hunt poetry became a genre of its own, taking an inde- pendent form made of hunt-specialized shorter lyrics. Stetkevych begins this section in chapter 4, “The Discreet Pleasures of the Courtly Hunt: Abū Nuwās and the ‘Abbasid Ṭardiyyah”. He shows how the move of hunt po- etry from subjective to objective description was utterly distinctive under “Abu Nuwas, the master of archaic formulas, who is capable of employing those formulas in conceits that are no longer archaic” (102). Chapter 5, “From Description to Imagism: ‘Alῑ Ibn al-Jahm’s ‘We Walked over Saffron Meadows’,” shows how Ibn al-Jahm and other Abbasid poets such as Ibn al-Mu‘tazz and Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī “exercise considerable stylistic freedom in developing their own markedly varied but distinctive ṭardiyyah-po- ems from the broadly imagist to the highly lyrical to the fully narrative” (131). Stetkevych shows how the rhythm of hunt poetry was liberated as the Abbasid poets moved from the rajaz meter used in pre-Islamic hunt poetry to modifying and modulating “the ṭawῑl meter to create the unique rhythmic qualities” (131). In chapter 6, “Breakthrough into Lyricism: The Ṭardiyyahs of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz,” the author uses multiple examples to show how “the ṭardiyyah not only found that new lyrical voice but also allowed it … to become a closely integrated and even more broadly formative part of that poet’s multi-genre ‘project’ of a ‘new lyricism’ of Arabic poetry” (183). Chapter 7, “From Lyric to Narrative: The Ṭardiyyah of Abu Firas al-Ḥam- danῑ,” demonstrates how the prince poet “abandons the short lyric mono- rhyme for the sprawling narrative rhymed couplets (urjuzah muzdawijah)” (9). Stetkevych notes that although this “shift did not result (yet) in the achievement of a separate narrative genre, it can …be rightfully viewed as a step in the exploration of the possibility of a large narrative form” (187). The third and final section, “Modernism and Metapoesis: the Pursuit of the Poem,” discusses the revival of hunt poetry by modernist poets after being neglected for centuries. Chapter 8, “The Modernist Hunt Poem in ‘Abd al-Wahhab al Bayatῑ and Aḥmad ‘Abd al Mu‘ṭῑ Ḥijazῑ,” examines two poems of the two poets, both entitled Ṭardiyyah. Stetkevych argues that the Iraqi free-verse poet, al-Bayatῑ, transformed the “genre-and form-bound, rhymed and metered lyric… into a formally free exploration of the dra- matic and tragic image of the hunted hare as a metaphor for the political and cultural predicament of modern man” (9). Meanwhile, Hijazi’s Ṭardi- yyah transforms “the poignant lyricism of the traditional hunt poem into an expression of the poet’s personal experience of political exile and poetic restlessness and frustration” (10). The author concludes that the two poets’ explorations into ṭardiyyah “helped not only to preserve and activate the classical metaphor of hunt/ṭardiyyah into modernity, but in equal measure to validate and enrich the achievements of modern Arabic poetry” (242). In the last chapter, “The Metapoetic Hunt of Muḥammad ‘Afῑfῑ Maṭar,” Stetkevych—through interpretation, comparison, and criticism—shows how Maṭar’s modern poetry while “hermeneutically connected to the old genre… [is] very personal mythopoesis” (10). Stetkevych’s book does not discuss Andalusian hunt poetry, such as that of ‘Abbās Ibn Firnās, Ibn Hadhyal and Ibn al-Khaṭīb, nor the Ṭardiyyah of the contemporary Egyptian poet ‘Abdulraḥman Youssef, published in 2011 after the revolution in Tunisia and two days before the Egyptian revolution started. While including such examples would have further bol- stered this already strong and convincing argument and further illustrated the evolution of hunt poetry from the pre-Islamic era into modern times, their absence does not take away from the book writ large. Stetkevych’s excellent English translations of the poetry cited make his examples more accessible to readers who do not know Arabic. Overall, the book is a very valuable addition to literary criticism of Arabic poetry written in English and will surely be a great asset for scholars, students, and others interested in Arabic poetry as a reflection of a cultural and humanistic experience. Gaby SemaanAssistant Professor of ArabicUniversity of Toledo

The concerns and observations outlined in this paper are largely the result of teaching and otherwise attempting to communicate the Qur'an and its meaning to English-speaking undergraduates and others with no first-hand knowledge of the Arabic Qur'an. Among the many possible aims of Qur'an translations (e.g. conveying the music or poetic impact of the Arabic recitation, providing a captivating and pleasing text for ritual purposes [cf. The King James Bible], preserving the jafrī/mathematical dimensions of the Arabic calligraphy, etc.) one important need – especially in contexts relating to Islamic Studies – is to provide a more ‘literal’ version of the Qur'an that would help the non-Arabist reader to grasp the inner connections between the Qur'anic text itself and the multiple dimensions of its inspiration and impact in all the relevant areas of the Islamic humanities; not only in subsequent literary interpretations and elaborations (the Arabic religious and legal sciences, philosophy, cosmology, spirituality, ‘sectarian’ readings), but also in other aesthetic domains (poetry, music, architecture, visual arts). Such a version clearly does not yet exist (in any major European language, to the best of my knowledge). This paper reviews a number of fundamental considerations which should be kept in mind in the process of creating a serious student's English version of the Qur'an, more accurately conveying the actual meanings and structures of the original Arabic.

Persisting in a binary relationship with honor, shame was an important element of the pre-Islamic Arabic social evaluation system. In my study, I analyzed the two most important EPA concepts parallel to English shame – ˁayb and ˁār – applying the Cultural Linguistic approach. Based on the analyses on corpus of Early Arabic poetry and Classical Arabic dictionaries, I represented cultural schemata encoding the knowledge shared by pre-Islamic Arabs about those phenomena. The paper presents also metaphoric, metonymic, and image-schematic models, which account for the specifics of associated linguistic frames. Moreover, I posit a hypothesis on the existence of a schema subsuming the honor- and shame-dishonor-related schemata in form of social evaluation of usefulness, which seems to correspond to the historical and linguistic data.

Persisting in a binary relationship with honor, shame was an important element of the pre-Islamic Arabic social evaluation system. In my study, I analyzed the two most important EPA concepts parallel to English shame – ˁayb and ˁār – applying the Cultural Linguistic approach. Based on the analyses on corpus of Early Arabic poetry and Classical Arabic dictionaries, I represented cultural schemata encoding the knowledge shared by pre-Islamic Arabs about those phenomena. The paper presents also metaphoric, metonymic, and image-schematic models, which account for the specifics of associated linguistic frames. Moreover, I posit a hypothesis on the existence of a schema subsuming the honor- and shame-dishonor-related schemata in form of social evaluation of usefulness, which seems to correspond to the historical and linguistic data.

This study is a comparative descriptive investigation of the representation of death in the Holy Quran and the poetry of the English poet John Donne. It focuses on the concept of death as a real and ultimate truth. The study considers death as a thematic contemplation that every Man is worried about. Death in the Holy Quran and Donne’s poetry has been previously studied from different individual viewpoints, but none has adopted it comparatively from a thematic perspective. This study also adopts many echelons of the religious themes presented by these works in the treatment of death such as the truth of death, submission and forgiveness, and resurrection in both Islamic and Christian religions. The study signifies the similarities and differences in the discussion and analysis part. It concludes that despite the cultural, religious beliefs, and time and place differences, the Holy Quran and Donne’s poetry share some thematic and religious factors that lead towards religious perception of death including evidences of the reality of death, mortality of people, and the resurrection after death.

Abstract This paper contains a transliteration in Latin script, an English translation and an analysis of Al-Ṣābūn al-Muṭahhir (“The Cleansing Soap”), a poem on tarbiya (spiritual training) and ma‘rifa (gnosis) originally written in the Hausa language using Arabic script by Muḥammad Balarabe (d. 1967) of Shellen, in Adamawa, Nigeria. Balarabe was a Sufi of the Tijāniyya order affiliated to the Jamā‘at al-fayḍa of the Senegalese Ibrāhīm Niasse (d. 1975). In style and content, Balarabe’s poem serves as a corrective to some of the observations on Hausa Sufi poetry made by Mervyn Hiskett in his classic 1975 monograph. Drawing attention to the philosophical background of the poem (a dense web of doctrines that integrates Akbarī Sufism and Aš‘arī theology), the paper also suggests that some of the generalizations made by Hiskett in a 1980 article on the Hausa literature produced by the Jamā‘at al-fayḍa are in need of revision.1

The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an (hereinafter EQ) is a multi-volume collectionof reference texts on the holy book of Islam that appeared in westernlanguages from 2001 until 2006. The Qur’an (lit. “the Recitation”), whichMuslims believe to be the word of God delivered to Muhammad by theangel Gabriel, is systematically analyzed by the diverse contributing writersaccording to its different layers.The different Qur’anic strata embrace numerous themes, among themtheology, Islamic jurisprudence, Biblical narratives, primary figures inIslamic history (e.g., the Prophet’s Companions and adversaries), historicalevents, rituals and customs, polemics, and the Qur’an’s literary structure andliterary language, which combines poetry with rhymed prose. Each level iscarefully examined and explored by leading scholars of Islamic studies.Therefore, this work is highly significant for those who wish to learn aboutthe Qur’an’s different aspects from a reliable objective source.Jane Dammen McAuliffe, the general editor, has focused on two parallelspheres: Muslim traditional scholarship and non-Muslim inquisitiveresearch. This approach enables the potential audience to gain Qur’anicknowledge from the scholarship of pious Muslims, although the scientificcharacter of this academic work prevails. The articles vary widely in lengthand discuss diverse themes. Both Muslim and non-Muslim approaches, aswell as traditional Islamic and modern investigative attitudes to the holytext, are introduced. Extensive reference is made to the classical and contemporaryIslamic exegetical traditions. Written in English to make the EQ ...

Toward a Rose Forever in Bloom is a translation project aimed at creating a sample framework through which Sufi poetry can be understood in its traditional and Islamic context. I outline my translation methodology, as well as the resources that I used in making my translations, such as a new dictionary dedicated solely to the works of Yunus Emre as well as a recent critical edition of his original works, neither of which were available to previous English translators. Through my annotated translations sampled from six overarching themes found in the works of Yunus Emre, a 13th century Anatolian Sufi, an analysis of the legends surrounding his biography, and a discussion of the historical context, I portray Sufism as a path within mainstream Islam, in contrast to modern perceptions and varying translation methods that suggest otherwise.

Eulogizing the prophet has generated controversies among the Muslims just as this genre of poetry has been mostly ignored and seen as having no significant content. In the Islamic era (Al-AsrulIslami) the prophet permitted Hassan bnThabit to compose poem to defend Islam and praised him. Later he condemned referring to him as Allah or son of Allah as a form praise. The aim of this study is to identify the methods used by the poet to eulogies the Prophet and describe the stylistic feature of the poem. The method of research is descriptive and analytic. The result of the study reveals that the author used three major methods to praise the prophet which include reference to his spiritual status, emphasis on his practices and tradition and describing his religious struggle. The styles used by the author include clarity of language, use of imagery, Iqtibas (adaptation and citation of Quran verses) and rhetorical question. It is recommended therefore, that the poems should be completely translated to English for wider circulation.

In medieval Islamic civilization, poetry was widely acknowledged to be themost intimate vessel for conveying Sufism’s hidden truths. The spiritualstates and stations traversed by adepts along an ascending path to the realityof God’s unity largely defies simple descriptions into ordinary prose oreveryday language. The subtleties necessary to evocatively describe a spiritualjourney that is, by its very essence, ineffable, necessitates a linguisticmedium that could at once reveal secrets of inner contemplation and mysticalperception while simultaneously concealing such information from the“uninitiated” behind the exoteric understanding of the same work of literature.Persian poetry, with its unique capacity for metaphorical symbolism,puns, and paradoxes, thus emerged by the seventh/thirteenth century as anunparalleled vehicle for expressing the mystical experience.The most dramatic expression in all of Persian mystical literature of thisspiritual journey is the allegorical poem Mantiq al-Tair (best translated as“The Speech of the Birds”) by Farid al-Din `Attar (d. 627/1229), whichrecounts the initiatory voyage of a group of birds through seven valleys tothe palace of the mythical king-bird Simurgh, symbol of the Divine,enthroned atop the cosmic mountain Qaf.In addition to the book currently under review, `Attar’s masterpieceinspired other renditions into English, including an abbreviated and freelyreworked edition by Edward FitzGerald, The Bird-parliament (1903); R. P.Masani’s prose translation of half the original poem’s 4,600 lines, TheConference of the Birds (1924); the incomplete prose version by C. S. Nott,The Conference of the Birds (1954), which was prepared from Garcin deTassy’s nineteenth-century French translation, Le Langage des oiseaux, and,as such, is obscured by an intervening third language; Afkham Darbandi andDick Davis’ Penguin Classics edition The Conference of the Birds (1984),which represents the poem’s first complete English translation (minus theinvocation and epilogue), is based on the oldest extant manuscripts, and isskillfully rendered into heroic couplets pleasingly faithful to the letter andspirit of `Attar’s allegory; and Peter Avery’s determinedly literal translation,The Speech of the Birds (1998), whose 560-page opus includes 120 pages ofenriching endnotes on `Attar’s use of Qur’anic imagery and the hadith ...

I. The NeedJust as philosophical and religious writings are a verbal expression ofthe ideology of a people, just as social and economic institutions are determinedby that basic ideology, so also music and the sound arts are "aanslations"of the deepest convictions of a people. They fit into the cultural wholeas pieces of a giant mosaic, each tessera reflecting the world view of thatpeople and corresponding to the other expressions of that spirit. Fulfillingthis role in the culture, the arts of sound become an important, even crucial,bulwark of a people's heritage.In English, such aesthetic "translations" of the ideology into pitches anddurations are known as "music"; and the term has generally encompassed allforms of sound art, regardless of their intrinsic characteristics or the circumstancesof their performance. In Islamic culture, however, there is no termor expression which includes all types of sound art. The term musiqa, whichis sometimes loosely equated with the English term "music," is certainly inadequate.That Arabic term derived from the Greek has been applied primarilyto those forms which, because of context of performance or aestheticcharacteristics, were culturally and religiously regarded with some degree ofsuspicion, or in certain cases, even condemned. The term miidqii has neverincluded those genres of sound art which were wholeheartedly approved andfostered by the culture, e.g., Qur'anic chant, the adhan, the pilgrimage chants,madih chanted poetry (shi'r). Elsewhere I have therehre advocated the useof a new expression, Handasah al sawt (al Faruqi 1982:30ff). This designationwould cover all the forms of sound art, and thus more truly equate withthe term "music" and its cognates in other European languages. It is with thatexpression and an appreciation of the wide meaning which it implies that thispresentation continues.Handasah al sawt is a cultural phenomemon which can play an important ...

This paper investigates the possibility of translating, into English, Antara’s <i>Fakhr</i> (self-exaltation), as a prominent theme in his renowned <i>Mu‘allaqa</i>. The theoretical framework rests on the supposition that a literary work in general and pre-Islamic poetry in particular must be examined within its socio-cultural, spatio-temporal context as a total meaningful structure which entails the semantics and pragmatics of the text.<p>Examining this theme in three selected translations, the analysis shows that the source text has proved that <i>Fakhr</i> (self-exaltation), as a conventional constituent of Antara’s <i>Mu‘allaqa</i>, presents a remarkable degree of sophistication which poses serious translation challenges.<p>The discussion also reveals that, owing to the daunting complexity of incongruence and distance between the cultures of the two languages, the translations have only managed to maintain the textual import, but have not satisfactorily captured the socio-cultural denominations and implications, a perceptible translation erroneousness, which impeded straddling the required semantic effect and the required reader’s response in the target language version.<p>The paper draws the conclusion that the socio-cultural, spatio-temporal context can provide a broader frame of reference for analyzing, interpreting and translating the original Mu‘allaqa in a completely new, contemporary setting of transmission and reception.<p>

<p>Writing is a complex process that requires advanced linguistic skills. Although many college students studied English as a foreign language (EFL) for twelve years in preparatory and high schools, they still face major problems in producing correct writings that meet their colleges’ requirements. Students’ problems include inability to generate ideas, organize discourse, control sentence structures, choose appropriate vocabulary, and use effective styles. A potential solution to such problems can be found in the application of modern technologies in the classrooms. Telecommunication technologies which include synchronous and asynchronous communication have provided various tools that can be used to assist EFL students to learn writing skills. Therefore, the current quantitative, quasi-experimental study aimed at examining the effect of asynchronous communication, specifically digital dialogued journaling on students’ writing skills. Digital dialogued journaling includes blogs, webpages, discussion forms, or word-processed applications such as Google documents. Using the platform of Google documents, the present study attempted to provide new strategies for teaching writing courses at higher education to help EFL students develop their writing skills. Data was collected from undergraduate students in the College of Languages and Translation, at Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Data collection depended on a number of instruments: First, a pretest was used to measure the participants’ level of writing before implementing the teaching strategies of dialogued journaling. Secondly, an online dialogued journal, designed by the researcher using Google documents, was employed for the experiment. The journal was sent to the same sample via emails, and the participants posted their reflective writings on different issues regarding their academic journey learning English. Students’ interactive dialogues included prose writing, descriptive and argumentative paragraphs, poetry, and their personal stories. The students-teacher dialogues made the corpus data which enabled investigating the effectiveness of dialogued journaling on improving students’ writing. Thirdly, a posttest was used to collect data regarding the degree of change that occurred as a result of the experiment. Fourthly, a Likert scale questionnaire was used at the end of the experiment to identify the participants’ levels of satisfaction with dialogued journaling. Data analysis was based on using the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to compare the results of pretest and posttest. A rubric with five scale criteria was used to examine each rank of students’ writing, and to report each student’s score before and after treatment. The Text Analyzer Software was also employed to examine the participant’s writing lexical density and phrase frequencies. Data analysis results indicated a significant statistical difference between the overall writing scores of the pretest and the posttest. Moreover, the examination of the participants’ writing revealed much improvement in writing styles, word choice, and the student’s voice, which are critical factors in writing. Hence, the significance of the current study is that it provides a new technological tool, such as Google document, for teaching writing skills at higher education. This study includes an instructional model that incorporates digital journaling into teaching English writing. The present research is also a contribution in the field of teaching English, adopting the communicative approach by integrating theories of connectives and constructivism into linguistic theories. <strong></strong></p>

Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) (Iqbal, D. J. 1979) is a well-known Muslim theologian, philosopher, mystic, political theorist, politician, and wisdom poet of the 20th century. He is also known as the architect of Pakistan. He contributed in both the mediums of prose and poetry. His poetry is in both the languages Urdu and Persian. Similarly, he wrote and delivered lectures in both Urdu and English. His major philosophical work is in English. The magnum opus of his philosophical work is ‘The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’. This book consists of seven lectures. In the beginning, in 1924, he wrote an article on the concept of Ijtihad. He delivered it as a lecture on 13th December 1924 in Habibia Hall, Islamia College Lahore. Sheikh Abdul Qadir presided over the address. This lecture was warmly welcomed by Muslim intellectuals all over the subcontinent. The representative of the Madras Muslim Association Saith Jamal Ahmad invited Iqbal to deliver a series of lectures under the above-said title. He wrote and delivered six lectures in Madras in January 1929 and later at Hyderabad and Aligarh University. The 1st edition of this book was published in 1930 with six lectures. In 1932/1933 he visited England to participate in the second round table conference. During his stay in England at the request of Aristotelian Society London, he delivered a lecture under the title ‘Is Religion Possible?’ Later on, he included the above-mentioned lecture in the second edition of this book. The 2nd edition was published in 1934 by Oxford University Press. The problem of the relationship between religion, philosophy, and science was a subject of special interest to him. Although he discussed this issue in his wisdom poetry also but he systematically addressed it in this book which is his major philosophical contribution. This article is an effort to critically appreciate Allama Iqbal’s views on religion, philosophy, and science from the perspective of his philosophical discourse. Key Words: Religion, Philosophy, Science, Civilization, Reconstruction, Revelation, Reason

Literature is a system of semantic markers which convey emotions as well. Sentences in literary texts, particularly poetic ones, are not merely a medium to convey a message. In literary language, there is not a one to one correspondence between words and their meaning. That is in literary texts, the words and consequently sentences do not have their common dictionary meaning. Rather, in many cases, they include the writers or poets intended meaning. For writers and poets, words are not simply means of conveying a message, but a scheme to create beauty and novel innovations. The poets to make more impression on their addressees usually create uncommon sentences in the language. To express their feelings and thoughts, they invert the poems internal word order or sort out the structural system of their poetic sentences counter to standard language. By creating marked words or sentences, they actually seek to communicate their audience artistically and innovatively. Sentence is the poets main instrument that according to traditional grammars definition consists of two parts: subject and predicate. However, in modern linguistics sentence is a set of noun and verb phrases that are joined together as a harmonious whole. Each of noun or verb phrases has a unique structure so that their internal order cannot be changed; however, poets make their utterance poetic by inverting these groups to create greater influence. By using content analysis method, an attempt is made in this article to analyze the internal orders of noun and verb phrases in contemporary poems. The author gratefully acknowledge the financial and other support of this research, provided by the Islamic Azad University. eslamshahr Branch, Tehran ,Iran

This article is aimed at examining the cultural, historical and sociological environment of the peoples known to us as medieval oriental literature - Anatolia, the South Caucasus, Iran and a large part of Central Asia, which created bilingual and trilingual literary examples in "Islamic" cultural geography. As a result of the subjective approach of a number of researchers to this process, incorrect, misleading and harmful terms and concepts were introduced, and we observe the trend of “brand” searches in the history of literature. R. Tagore (India), who wrote excellent works in English, Kafka (Israel), the author of valuable works in German, Nizami Ganjavi (Azerbaijan), who wrote important works in Persian and many others, do they express their national "belonging" in accordance with the language of the works? On the basis of this concept, an attempt is made to analyze the socio-cultural picture of medieval Islamic culture and to identify the "baseless terminology" (which has no scientific basis), to evaluate it on specific examples. The early Islamic culture, the stages of the introduction of the Arabic and Persian languages into everyday life and public life, the process of expanding the Islamic cultural environment as a folk, academic and poetic language are studied and analyzed. We also tried to provide a scientific answer to the erroneous judgments and analyzes of various researchers.

- Leonard Y. Andaya, H.A. Poeze, Excursies in Celebes; Een bundel bijdragen bij het afscheid van J. Noorduyn als directeur-secretaris van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde. Leiden: KITLV Uitgeverij, 1991, 348 pp., P. Schoorl (eds.) - Anne Booth, Adrian Clemens, Changing economy in Indonesia Volume 12b; Regional patterns in foreign trade 1911-40. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1992., J.Thomas Lindblad, Jeroen Touwen (eds.) - A.P. Borsboom, James F. Weiner, The empty place; Poetry space, and being among the Foi of Papua New Guinea. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. - Martin van Bruinessen, Ozay Mehmet, Islamic identity and development; Studies of the Islamic periphery. London and New York: Routledge, 1990 (cheap paperback edition: Kula Lumpur: Forum, 1990), 259 pp. - H.J.M. Claessen, Timothy Earle, Chiefdoms: power, economy, and ideology. A school of American research book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. 341 pp., bibliography, maps, figs. - H.J.M. Claessen, Henk Schulte Nordholt, State, village, and ritual in Bali; A historical perspective. (Comparitive Asian studies 7.) Amsterdam: VU University press for the centre for Asian studies Amsterdam, 1991. 50 pp. - B. Dahm, Ruby R. Paredes, Philippine colonial democracy. (Monograph series 32/Yale University Southeast Asia studies.) New Haven: Yale Center for international and Asia studies, 1988, 166 pp. - Eve Danziger, Bambi B. Schieffelin, The give and take of everyday life; Language socialization of Kaluli children. (Studies in the social and cultural foundations of language 9.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. - Roy Ellen, David Hicks, Kinship and religion in Eastern Indonesia. (Gothenburg studies in social anthropology 12.) 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Oriental documents X, published for the British academy by Oxford University Press, 1992, xxii 611 pp., ills., maps. Oxford: Alden press. - Ger P. Reesink, Karl G. Heider, Landscapes of emotion; Mapping three cultures of emotion in Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme. 1991, xv 332 p. - Ger P. Reesink, H. Steinhauer, Papers on Austronesian linguistics No. 1. Canberra: Department of linguistics, Research school of Pacific studies, ANU. (Pacific linguistics series A- 81). 1991, vii 225 pp., - Janet Rodenburg, Peter J. Rimmer, The underside of Malaysian history; Pullers, prostitutes, plantation workers...Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1990, xiv 259 p., Lisa M. Allen (eds.) - A.E.D. Schmidgall-Tellings, John M. Echols, An Indonesian-English Dictionary. Third edition. Revised and edited by John U.Wolff and James T. Collins in in cooperation with Hasan Shadily. 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English Romantic literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries often recounts an individual life journey which depicts physical and spiritual pilgrimage and traverses both the inner and outer world to liberate the self and reach a revelatory moment of unification where the division between human mind and the external world is reconciled. For the Romantic poets this reconciliatory state cannot be achieved through rational investigation but via the power of imagination. In this regard, there is striking resemblance between the mystical and philosophical thought of Sufism and the idealistic thought of the English Romantic poets as they both strive for a sense of unification with the Divine or the Ultimate reality, and they both rely on imagination and intuitive perception to apprehend reality. Applying an analytical-comparative approach with specific reference to Northrop Frye’s anagogic theory (1957) which emphasizes literary commonalities regardless of direct influence or cultural or theological distinctions, this study endeavors to depict that certain Romantic poets’ longing for the reconciliation of subject and object dualism via imagination and its sublime product, poetic language, echoes the mystic’s pursuit of transcendental states of consciousness and unification with the divinely infinite. Through analysis of the concept of self-dissolution (fana) in Islamic mysticism and Sufi literature, particularly the poems of Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Balkhi (1207-1273) known in the West as Rumi, the outcome of this study reveals that the Romantics’ yearning for a state of reconciliation, which is prevalent in the major works of the Romantic poets such as William Blake (1757-1827), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822), and John Keats (1795-1821), corresponds to the mystic’s pursuit of unity or the Sufi’s concept of self-annihilation or fana.

The paper examines sound schemes in Arabic original poetic prose and English translation. These are reverse rhyme, rhyme, pararhyme and consonance. Looked at from the vantage point of sound symbolism, an attempt is made to verify their expressive and thematic functions in ST. In some cases, the concept has apparently been proven applicable and the claims made in this regard are plausible. As to the interlingual patterns of sound symbolism, the study has come to the conclusion that ST and TT diverge when it comes to how onomatopoeic elements evoke meaning. The strategic decisions taken by translators in addressing translation problems depend largely on how sensitive they are towards the ST phonic aspect and affiliations. They employ compensation in kind and in place whenever and wherever that is felt to be required, hence, replacing ST phonological recurrence with morphological and lexical ones. These higher-level devices are but one means of achieving parallel effects in the TT. However, consonance is regularly used as a prime solution for the problem of equivalence. It is axiomatic that in any attempt of translation a certain degree of loss is expected in terms of failure to relay the ST message content intact. Another kind of damage consists in the impossibility of rendering ST scripts into TT. The significance of Arabic letters to the readers of Arabic will definitely be mismatched in the TT as they imply culturally broader connotations and allusions to the Islamic heritage. The graphological input to the message in the Arabic text will hardly be imparted by the TT Roman script.

Muḥammad Iqbāl’s book: Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts in Islam was published in English first time in Lahore in 1930 and then translated into Arabic. This book contains a collection of his six lectures that were delivered by Iqbāl in Madras and Hyderabad. These lectures were collected under the title: “Reconstruction of Religious Thoughts in Islam”. It is the biggest intellectual wealth left by Iqbāl. In his philosophical style, Iqbāl has addressed those topics that are related to the Islamic sciences, spiritual experiences, Existence of God Almighty, the reality and the nature, the human self, reparation, the choice, the spirit of Islamic civilization, the diligence and development of Islamic law. It seems that Iqbāl’s character appears in this book as an Islamic thinker and philosopher, in which we see him as he wants to develop a new Islamic science of speech. Iqbāl addressed these topics by the careful research and deep study in the light of Islamic knowledge and modern philosophy, and opened the doors of thinking about Islam to the contemporary thinkers and scholars in various fields. First of all, it is important to us to study his Islamic thought so that we can understand his poetry, which he wanted to put in the service of Islam, so we cannot ignore to study his seven lectures written in prose on the reconstruction of religious thoughts in Islam, as we think that the scholar cannot reach the spirit of his poetry and the depth of his thought without studying those lectures.

Many critics have speculated on the influence of Western literature on English romantic poets. Mainstream scholars have often referred to Greek, Roman, and Western sources, attributing the genealogy of romantic topoi to the West, while turning a blind eye to the impact of non-Western culture. As a result, the influence of Arabic materials on English Romantic poetry during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries remains insufficiently recognized. The present study challenges the pervasive assumption that English Romantic poets were influenced mainly by the Western philosophical, religious, and literary sources. Instead, it provides evidence supporting the view that the roots of romantic topoi derive from both intercultural encounters and transcultural experiences. In particular, the role played by Oriental, Arab, and Muslim writers in helping English romantic poets develop their themes, characters, imagery, and narrative modes is discussed. Moreover, Arab-Islamic influences on Western literature is acknowledged to rectify the misconception that romantic topoi solely resulted from the Western intercultural encounters. The analyses presented in the paper demonstrate that Arabic and Islamic sources inspired British romantic poets like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats, helping them not only in finding their own voices but also in developing their themes, metaphors, symbols, characters, and images.

The reputation of Agha Shahid Ali, the Kashmiri-American poet, as a poet of exile is well established. Much of his poetry deals with themes of loss, lamentation, and longing where he speaks in a powerful voice about the plight of people of Kashmir. Shahid’s personal memories are not only of Kashmir but also of Delhi, the city where he was born, studied, taught, and published his first collection of poems. In his poems about Delhi he revisits both old Delhi and New Delhi: he roams around the city, listens to Qawwali at Saint Nizamuddin’s mausoleum, meets Muslim butchers, remembers his parents, remembers Shahjahan, and recites Bahadur Shah Zafar’s poem. This article investigates the representations and recollections of Delhi in Agha Shahid Ali’s poems and explores the city’s centrality in understanding socio-cultural history, the importance of particular individuals, and spatial specificity. It studies how the poet explores the city in relation to its languages, histories (the Rebellion of 1857, Partition, post-Partition), and cultures (Mughal and modern). I further investigate how Ali’s literary cartography of Delhi is influenced both by indigenous genres such as Shehr Ashob and the modern English poetic tradition, and how certain Indo-Islamic tropes become central to the poet’s literary memorialization of India’s capital city.

Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural homogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circumstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circumstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circumstances. By circumstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circumstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. 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Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.