Description
Global migrations flows in the 20th century have seen the emergence of Muslim diaspora and minority communities in Europe, North America and other parts of the world. While there is a growing body of research on Muslim minorities in various regional contexts, the particular experiences of Shi'a Muslim minorities across the globe has only received scant attention.
This book offers new comparative perspectives of Shi'a minorities outside of the so-called 'Muslim heartland' (the Middle East, North Africa, Central and South Asia). It includes contributions on Shi'a minority communities in Europe, North and South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia that emerged out of migration from the Middle East and South Asia in the 20th and 21st centuries in particular. As a 'minority within a minority', Shi'a Muslims face the double challenge of maintaining as Islamic as well as a particular Shi'a identity in terms of communal activities and practices, public perception and recognition.
About the Author
Oliver Scharbrodt is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chester. He is the author of Islam and the Baha'i Faith: A Comparative Study of Muhammad 'Abduh and 'Abdul-Baha 'Abbas (London and New York: Routledge, 2008) and editor of the Yearbook of Muslims in Europe (Leiden: Brill). Yafa Shanneik is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the University of Birmingham. She researches the dynamics and trajectories of gender in Islam within the context of contemporary diasporic and transnational Muslim women's spaces. Currently, she is working on a project which explores women's narratives of transnational marriage practices performed by Iraqi and Syrian women who have settled in Europe or other countries in the Middle East since the 1980s. The project focuses on the historical developments and contemporary understandings and approaches of marriage practices among displaced Iraqi and Syrian Muslim women and foregrounds questions of identity, home and belonging of women constituted through local, national and transnational scales of migration experiences.