Description

This project frames two insular and culturally fragmented societies, Java and Trinidad. In the first part I seek to analyse the historical passages that brought East Indian Islam to the West Indies, based on archival research. In the second part I am concerned with the contemporary forms of contemporary creolized Islam. Both societies are characterised by dense socio-cultural and religious diversities and are homes of 'diasporic Islams', brought to Indonesia by Arab traders and to the Caribbean by West-African slaves and indentured workers from India and Indonesia. I hypothesise that the archipelagic geography is in part responsible for the socio-cultural and religious diversity formulated in the Caribbean notion of 'world asylum', and paralleled by the Indonesian national slogan 'unity in diversity'. I am interested in finding out if creolized forms of Islam render the religion more open to non-heteronormative identities and 'alternative' lifestyles as put forward by orthodox Islam. Whereas research has contributed to understanding Christian denominations and their creolization with local Afro-Caribbean religions, hardly anything is known about the role of Islam in the area.

Project Details

Project Type

Post-Doc Project

Subject Group

Law, Economics and Social Sciences

Subject Classification

Ethnology

Subject Classification 2

Islamic Studies

Funding

Volkswagenstiftung

Organization

Faculty/Central Institute

Political and Social Sciences

Institute/Seminar

Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Project Team

Director

Dr. Eric Heuser (Post-Doc)

Contact

Email

eric.anton.heuser@uni-hamburg.de

Researchers

• Dr. Eric Heuser (Post-Doc)

  Former