Contested Religious Authority

Sufi Women in Ethiopia and Eritrea

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4840251
AutoresSilvia Bruzzi (0000-0002-3973-0057, Institut Emilie du Châtelet/IMAf – CNRSFrance), Meron Zeleke (Volkswagen Foundation Knowledge for Tomorrow Initiative)
Ano2015
Volume45
Fascículo1
Páginas37-67
Data de publicação2015-08-14
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of Religion in Africa (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0022-4200 • E-ISSN: 1570-0666
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/15700666-12340028
OpenAlexW1180486192
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas30

The African experience in works dealing with Sufi women shows a concentration of classical and more recent works in the Maghreb and in West Africa. There is an observable gap in academic writings on the Horn of Africa where only scarce and fragmentary studies are available on women's involvement and leadership in Sufism. Works focusing on Somalia address such themes as women's oral literature, religious practices, and everyday religion. The challenges Sufi women face in legitimizing their power, their experiences in a strong patriarchal society, the dominant discursive gendering strategy in defining religious orthodoxy, and the different mechanisms used by these women to establish and protect their religious power are marginalized themes in the region. Furthermore, by clearly showing the different coping mechanisms adopted by two religious figures and the different activities they lead as custodians of Sufi shrines, this paper stresses the need to go beyond the dominant academic discourse that overshadows the agency of women and instead magnify the passive status women have in the African sociopolitical landscape. This paper focuses on these themes and contributes to this gap through a comparative case study of two prominent Sufi figures from two different parts of the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia and Eritrea

African studies · Agency (philosophy) · Anthropology of religion · Custodians · History of religions · Islam · Orthodoxy · Power (physics) · Social science · Sociology · Sufism · African history and culture analysis · Gender Studies · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Religious studies