I would be far more cautious in declaring things "not Islamic."
Historically speaking there is no static orthodoxy in Islam. Wahhabism
and Salafism are modern movements that make all sorts of claims to
represent 'true Islam', and like all originalist movements their claims
are quite historically suspect, ideologically driven, etc. etc.
Practices such as the veneration of local saints have a very long and
deep history within Islam as well as in other traditions in the regions
where they're practiced, and analytically-speaking we need to be far
more supple in our definitions of ritual practices than
'Islamic/not-Islamic'.
Nothing against Salafism btw, I have good friends who identify as
Salafis, and the movement is much more varied and complex than the
boogeymen you see on Western TV. I just don't think that academics
should allow Salafi positions, which have been ascendant in the Arab
world only in the last 100-150 yrs, to define the terms of historical
inquiry.
- Noah
On 2/14/2012 7:08 AM, Lil Osborn wrote:
> The festival is common throughout the non Wahhabi Muslim world, in Egypt it is the Prophet Mohamed's birthday the little sugar people are made for. The female figure, who always wears a taj/crown, is referred to as "The Bride" or "The Bride of the Saint", the male figure is always on a horse and carries a sword. They are clearly not Islamic (the Salafs are right on that one!) I thought that St George might be involved as he is big in Egyptian Christianity but the Copts don't seem to have anything similar. Tempting to surmise they could be even older. Relatives have confirmed the sugar folk are absent from many of the usual outlets this year.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On 14 Feb 2012, at 10:58, mandrake<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> On 14/02/2012 09:18, Noah Gardiner wrote:
>>
>> many thanks for info
>> adding that to my weblog now : )
>>
>>> 'Mawlid' (moulid, مولد) means birthday, 'al-nabi' means the prophet, i.e. Muhammad. However, in many places there will also be mawlids celebrating the birthdays of various local Sufi saints (such as the mawlid for Sidi Abu al-Hajjaj in the article you cite). Mawlid traditions go back more than a millenia, but a lot of Salafis regard them as a heretical innovation, so they're controversial these days in some places. Nonetheless, throughout much of the Muslim world mawlids define the local ritual calendar, much as saints' days do in strongly-Catholic parts of Europe.
>>>
>>> - Noah
--
Noah Gardiner
Doctoral candidate, Dept. of Near Eastern Studies
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
|