The Būdshīshiyya's Tower of Babel: Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in a Transnational Sufi Order
ISBN
9780429880087
Type
book section
Date Issued
2018-08-31
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Mukherjee, Sipra
Abstract
The article explores the linguistic diversity within a Muslim Sufi Organisation. I argue that the ways in which languages are used in transnational religions are explanatory of the mechanisms and limitations that propitiate and bound the preservation of the cultural character the group possessed before expanding, as well as of the emergence of processes of cultural hybridity. I aim to provide evidence of that the analysis of language usages in transnational religious groups questions the supposed enhancement of truly ‘international’ religious cultures. By looking at the use that devotees of the transnational Sufi Order of Moroccan origin Qādiriyya al-Būdshīshiyya make of languages, this paper discusses the relative capacity and the restrictions for cultural mixing that occur in a transnational religious organisation. More precisely, it suggests that despite the Būdshīshiyya’s Universalist (i.e. sometimes trans-ethnic, sometimes transnational and at yet other times transcultural) appeal, religious identities cannot escape their cultural locatedness and are always engrained in the cultural context(s) to which they belong. Such situatedness comes to question the very transnational character of the Order, and it determines the ways in which it negotiates its local/global character.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Book title
The Languages of Religion : Exploring the Politics of the Sacred
Publisher
Routledge
Publisher place
New Delhi
Pages
21
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
251846
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Name
Chapter 8.pdf
Size
260.03 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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