Description
Book SynopsisThis ethnographic study investigates for the first time in any significant depth the literacy practices associated with the religion of Islam as they are shaped, lived and experienced within a typical multilingual Muslim community in the United Kingdom. It seeks to counterbalance prevailing views on such practices which have often been misinformed, misrepresented and misunderstood. Making liberal recourse to the words, views and lives of its participants, this book describes, explores and celebrates liturgical literacy as a major contributor to group and individual cultural, linguistic and religious identities. In a political and social climate often inimical to religious practices in general, and to Islamic ones in particular, this book highlights the centrality and significance of such literacy practices to minority ethno-religious communities in their daily lives.
Trade ReviewThis brief volume contributes very constructively to the fields of "Sociology of literacy", "Sociology of Religion" and the joint and pioneering field "Sociology of Language and Religion" and can serve as an excellent introductory textbook to each of them when taught as undergraduate or early graduate level courses. In addition, it covers beautifully such increasingly vital areas as Islam in England and in South Asia, diglossia between modern spoken, read and written vernaculars and related, but often very different, classical languages of rote-recited liturgy.
-- Joshua A. Fishman, prizewinning and renowned sociolinguistic author, editor and researcher
This is a book that is at once entertaining, informative and highly educative.
-- Tope Omoniyi, Professor of Sociolinguistics, Roehampton University.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
List of Plates
List of Tables and Figures
Part I The Study of Liturgical Literacy
Chapter 1 Introduction to Liturgical Literacy
Chapter 2 The Community and its Ethnography
Part II The Community and its Liturgical Literacy
Chapter 3 Children
Chapter 4 Parents
Chapter 5 Teachers
Chapter 6 Organisers
Part III The Settings for Liturgical Literacy
Chapter 7 Mosques
Chapter 8 Home
Chapter 9 School
Part IV The Languages of Liturgical Literacy
Chapter 10 Urdu
Chapter 11 Mirpuri-Punjabi
Chapter 12 English
Chapter 13 Arabic
Part V Concluding Remarks and Implications
Chapter 14 Concluding Remarks
References
