[Discussion] Book Reviews

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*I. Mark Cohen.* /Last Century of a Sephardic Community: The Jews of 
Monastir, 1839-1943//. /New York: Foundation for the Advancement of 
Sephardic Studies and Culture, 2003. 382 pp. Photographs, illustrations, 
maps, bibliography. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 1-886857-06-7.

Reviewed by *Steven Bowman*, University of Cincinnati.
Published by H-Judaic <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/%7Ejudaic> (November, 2003)


The many monographs on specific Sephardi cities in the Balkans raise the 
question whether and when a history of the Balkan Jewish experience can 
be written. Monographs on Salonika, Castoria, Ioannina, Monastir, 
Larisa, and Volos have long been available, while recent studies of the 
Alliance Israelite Universelle have examined specific regions. The 
Balkans have also been included in wider surveys of the Ottoman Empire 
beginning with Frankl and Rosanes and most recently Benbassa. The latter 
is the only text to incorporate the chronological range and experience 
of the Sephardi Balkans in a modern scholarly history. Still, much 
remains to be done including the Romaniote and Ashkenazi communities as 
well as a thorough analysis of the impact of nationalism and the 
response of the Alliance and Zionism to this new "religion."

Monastir from 1839 to 1943 experienced the vicissitudes of the Balkans 
in transition, and its Jewish community prospered and declined according 
to local experiences. It appears from the author's description that the 
Jews had no control over the rhythm of events during this century. 
Between the two fires of 1835 and 1863 Monastir was rebuilt on a western 
model by its Ottoman governor and the seeds of modernism took firm root. 
Yet the traditional Sephardi life of the Balkans preserved in this 
pocket survived among those born in this generation until the eve of the 
destruction of the community. This paradox summarizes the difference 
between the Jewish response to modernity and that of the neighboring 
ethnic groups. The latter's absorption of modernity nurtured an 
ancestral lust for liberty that used the most modern weapons to bomb the 
Ottoman Empire into the fragmented Balkans of today.

This new modern western outpost burned to the ground in 1863. Coupled 
with administrative changes in a subsequent reorganization of regional 
government, Monastir entered a period of decline that lasted until the 
end of Ottoman rule. At the same time western Jews began their mission 
in Monastir first with Moses Montefiore, then with the Alliance, and 
finally with Zionism. The declining economic situation, exacerbated by 
local brigandage and terrorism and the European interest in the fate of 
Macedonia (a vast undefined area that constituted the bulk of Ottoman 
Europe at the end of the century), set in motion waves of emigration. 
Soon aid to the local Jews began to come from the spreading Monastir 
diaspora in Salonika, South America, and the United States.

With the arrival of the railroad and the Alliance in the mid-1890s the 
pendulum swung toward prosperity for a brief decade. And it is from this 
next generation of educated and westernized Jews that the fine 
collection of photographs in this book is drawn. These photographs 
represent the minority who were successfully entering the middle class 
as opposed to the thousands who were emigrating and the thousands too 
steeped in poverty to better their position. Yet the latter preserved 
the age-old culture of Monastirli Sephardim, which they shared in daily 
speech and evening entertainment. One should beware, however, of being 
caught up in the nostalgia that permeates this well-crafted study.

The following decade (1904-1912) exacerbated the chaos that presaged the 
radical change from Ottoman unity and tolerance to nationalist chaos. 
The new states of Serbia, Bulgraria, Montenegro, and Greece evicted the 
Ottomans from Macedonia in 1912-1913. The Ottomans retreated to Monastir 
for a last defense from which they were quickly dislodged. The 
Bulgarians foolishly set their eyes on Salonika and mistakenly allowed 
the Serbs to take Monastir. The subsequent Serbian regime began imposing 
its language and culture on the area. During the ensuing World War I the 
Bulgarians occupied the city. The French bombed Monastir for one month, 
shocking the population into the twentieth century; they had never seen 
a plane before. In November 1916 the Bulgarians and Germans blew up the 
city's defenses preparatory to abandoning the city to the entente. But 
they did not go too far, only to the next mountain from which, for the 
next twenty-two months German guns bombarded the city with incendiary 
and poison gas in a daily rain of death. Monasterlis fled to New York 
where they were welcomed. Over one thousand fled to Salonika, only to 
become homeless again after the great fire that gutted that city in 1917.

After the war the new state of Yugoslavia incorporated Monastir with but 
3,200 remaining Jews, and of these one third were on complete state 
relief. Zionism, which the younger Monasterlis embraced, succeeded in 
bringing a little over four hundred Jews to Palestine where they 
resettled as pioneers. In 1941, Hitler fulfilled a burning desire to 
destroy Yugoslavia, to him a bastard state. In 1942, Bulgarian 
persecution of the Jews began and the following spring the Monasterli 
remnants--numbering 3,276 individuals from nurslings to 
octogenarians--were deported to Treblinka, so ending their exile that 
began in 1492.

*
*

Cohen provides a service to the Monasterli diaspora (and to scholars in 
various disciplines) by listing all the deportees according to the 
extant German lists. While the author apologizes for the German 
rendering of the names, still it is disturbing that this last injustice 
has been done to the victims when the author had available the original 
lists prepared by survivors.

The Holocaust material introduces the second half of the book and is 
counterbalanced by a wonderful appendix of local songs, proverbs, and 
folktales that the author solicited from scholars such as Susanna 
Weich-Shahah (of Jerusalem), the prolific Samuel G. Armistead who 
comments on several unique romances that were preserved in a quiet 
Balkan niche for nearly five centuries, and Reginetta Haboucha. Together 
these last sections provide an epitaph for a community that survived the 
exile from Spain and flourished under Ottoman hospitality for centuries. 
The vicissitudes of its last century is a reminder to contemporary 
Monastirlis and other Jews of how fragile and precarious is Jewish life 
among gentiles. As the author commented on the appearance in the Nazi 
death list of the birth date of 1855 of Haim Muschon Kalderon: "In 
Monastir, a single lifetime was long enough to experience traditional 
Jewish life in an Islamic empire and the collapse of civilized life in 
Europe" (p. 202).

This biography of a Jewish city counterbalances somewhat the plethora of 
studies on the Macedonian Question and the many monographs on the 
nationalist rivalries in the Balkans during the nineteenth century. 
Cohen has provided for the reader a microscopic focus on the Jews in his 
encyclopedic biography of a unique Jewish community during its last 
century of existence. Into that multi-faceted story he weaves both the 
local and the regional history of one of the world's most complex areas. 
And he completes his survey with a nostalgic compilation of Sephardi 
cultural memories: Monastirli proverbs and Iberian romances. The reader 
will probably find the book more than sufficient to learn about the 
individual as well as the collective experience of the Sephardim of 
Monastir and its widespread diaspora which is all that remains of a 
uniquely typical community. Unique in the sense of its homegrown customs 
and adaptations to the wide variety of Balkan influences and typical in 
that it shared a broader Judeo-Spanish culture even as it responded 
differently to historical stimuli.

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II. *Stefano Allievi and Jørgen S. Nielsen, eds.* /Muslim Networks and 
Transnational Communities in and across Europe//. /Muslim Minorities 
Series, vol. 1. Leiden: Brill, 2003. ix + 332 pp. Bibliography, index. 
$128.00 (cloth), ISBN 90-04-12858-1.

Reviewed by *Teresa Bertilotti*, Department of Sociology, University of 
Essex.
Published by H-Gender-MidEast <http://www.h-net.msu.edu/%7Egend-mid/> 
(November, 2003)


*"Transnational" Islam Independent of Migration Chains or Shared Ethnic 
Identity*

This book, edited by Stefano Allievi (University of Padua, Italy) and 
Jørgen S. Nielsen (University of Birmingham, UK) is the first volume of 
Brill's Muslim Minorities Series, which "is designed to represent 
scholarly research into the situation of Islam and Muslims in world 
regions characterised by long-term European settlement."

The volume opens with an essay by S. Allievi, who, adopting a very 
original approach, analyzes how new communication technology helps 
create new transnational Muslim communities. The crucial question 
addressed by Allievi is "how the Muslim presence 'happens' ... how these 
populations, groups or communities 'produce' themselves, through which 
means and logics." In particular, what is highlighted in this 
"production of community" is the "process of construction of 
transnational and non-ethnic Muslim communities through Islamic networks 
and the use of (mass) media" (p. 2). Rather than looking at 
socio-cultural factors underlying the identity-making process of these 
groups, emphasis is placed on "the borders of the communities and the 
borders of the society in which they live" and the consequences of such 
boundary-crossings (p. 3). Basing his study on this fundamental issue, 
he goes on to define the concept of networks, providing some examples of 
Islamic networks (Muslim neo-communities) in order to analyze the role 
of mass media in the construction of these new types of community. 
Jørgen S. Nielsen examines diverse types of networks: traditional ones 
("first generation" of Islamic networks, such as the movements which had 
tried to renew Islam through education and stimulation of religion 
learning) and new ones (which practice forms of interaction with 
realities and institutions external to the Islamic world). With the use 
of the new technology these networks, on the one hand, have made Islam a 
transnational reality, and on the other, determine its integration in 
Europe.

Mark LeVine delves into the debate on Middle East globalization and on 
the European Union in the last decade. Despite their marked differences, 
he points out the many similarities shared by the two realities, for 
their skeptical attitude towards the process of globalization and the 
expectations arising from it. He also analyzes the Arab discourses on 
globalization (centered on the "clash of civilization," caused, in their 
opinion, by the American foreign policy system) in historical 
perspective and compares it to the discourses of the Arabs and Muslims 
living in Europe, addressing the question "whether and how Islamist 
critiques of the West have been transposed from one side of the 
Mediterranean to the other, and thus influenced the troubled 
enculturalisation of Islam in Europe" (p. 95). What his research 
highlights is the similarity of Muslim and European perceptions in a 
U.S.-dominated globalization. Islam in Europe may be situated within a 
three-way relationship: the Muslim "diaspora" in Europe, the Muslim 
communities in the countries of origin, and the host countries. This 
situation engenders two separate realities: the Euro Islam and the 
"ghetto" Islam. Using network analysis, LeVine analyzes these two 
possibilities against the backdrop of the wider globalization process. 
He highlights alternative proposals to neo-liberal globalization and 
conservative Islam elaborated by some intellectuals and based on the 
culture of dialogue as the only possible defense against globalization.

Peter Mandaville focuses on "European Islam": Muslims constitute a 
considerable part of the European reality and Europe is more and more 
present in Muslim discourse. He examines the way in which this 
relationship develops within Muslim intellectual activity, especially 
among those thinkers and activists concerned with the politics of 
Islamic identity and community in Europe. This analysis envisions two 
images: a rich symbiosis between the Islamic and European cultures and a 
"clash of civilization." The author focuses on the first and provides 
some background context, placing emphasis on intergenerational issues 
(that is the Islam of parents versus the Islam of their children) and 
leadership change in Muslim communities in Europe: youths rely on 
thinkers and writers able to reconcile day-to-day realities of European 
life with religious principles. After defining his use of the term 
"Muslim" (indicating people for whom religious practice contributes to 
constructing self-identity) and the term "critical Islam" in Europe 
(denoting "a particular orientation towards Islam that is marked, above 
all, by a willingness to historicise the normative import of particular 
religious interpretation" [p. 130]), he traces the situation of Muslims 
in Europe from the difficult period of the 1980s to the first years of 
the 1990s when the most extreme Islamphobia decreases and socio-economic 
conditions improve: in this context a second generation emerged which 
was born and raised in Europe. Many of them are highly educated and seek 
to fashion a different and more sophisticated idiom of Islam. He gives a 
survey of thinkers and writers who, in the transnational spaces of 
European cities such as London and Paris, are engaged in the 
reorientation and reinterpretation of Islam. The new Islamic discourse 
in Europe manifests itself in the tendency to seek a recognized and 
legitimate place in the public sphere, that is in a different attitude 
towards political engagement. In Mandaville's words, "Europe offers a 
unique context for the reassessment of theories, beliefs and tradition, 
while increased transnationalism enables these new reformulations to 
travel the world" (pp. 140-141).

Valérie Amiraux focuses on a particular aspect of transnationalism: a 
trend of political Islam in Turkey (the ex-Refah Partisi), which has 
drawn benefit from the expatriation of a part of its structure in 
Germany. This case study is based on the idea, well developed by the 
author, that "networks of young Turkish Muslims settled in Germany draw 
advantage, in particular as regard political representation, of their 
environment although not being citizens of the Federal Republic of 
Germany" (p. 148). Anke Bentzin focuses on the use of mass media as a 
means to access the public sphere and analyzes Islamic TV programs as a 
forum of religious discourse. In particular, the paper analyzes the 
impact of a local public TV channel (Berlin Open Channel) in the Muslim 
community of Berlin, a channel that broadcasts programs made by the same 
spectators. The paper shows how the Islamic TV has stimulated religious 
discourse among the Muslims of different national backgrounds and 
religious attitudes. This discourse also has a transnational dimension, 
as the channel broadcasts programs produced by other channels and shares 
its own programs with others. In addition, it is a fertile site where 
Muslims of various national backgrounds and affiliations interact. The 
implications of communication strategies within diverse public 
commitments is the object of Loïc Le Pape's analysis. Two interesting 
papers delve into the particular realities of Russian Muslims and Uygur 
communities. Galina M. Yemelianova focuses on Russian Muslims and 
stresses the role of the mass media. After the collapse of Communism, 
Russia witnessed an Islamic revival which has been part of the process 
of the political and intellectual liberalization of society. This 
Islamic revivalism has taken different forms: the acquisition of legal 
rights to observe Islamic duties; the emergence of numerous new official 
Islamic Spiritual Boards; the revival of contacts between Muslims of the 
former Soviet Union and their co-religionists abroad; the Islamic 
building boom (mosques, cultural centers, secondary Islamic schools, 
etc). The reintegration of Russian Muslims into the Islamic world has 
entailed their exposure to transnational forms of Islam. The foreign 
Islamic influence has been favored by the intensive missionary and 
teaching activity of representatives of various Islamic institutes and 
funds from different countries. They have distributed Islamic literature 
which has propagated non-traditional and transnational Islam. The author 
examines the relationship between ethnic Islam and transnational Islam 
in the eastern North Caucasus, paying special attention to the role of 
the media. The case study is based on textual analysis of the media and 
elite interviewing, and gives a deep historical background of Sufism.

Since the late 1980s, in the context of the reintegration of the Russian 
umma into the Muslim world, North Caucasus has seen the emergence of 
Wahhabism (also known as Salafism), which represents a transnational 
form of Islam opposed to Tariqatist (ethnic Islam). Particularly 
important is the social dimension of the Wahhabi movement for "the 
democratisation of Dagestani society through cleansing its Islam of 
mysticism, superstition and patriarchal elements" (p. 266). Post-Soviet 
Islamic resurgence has been characterized by the merging of Islam, both 
ethnic and transnational, with politics. The critic provides examples 
about Dagestan and Chechen and the role of mass media both in the 
Wahhabis and the Tariqatists forms of Islam. Ytzhak Shichor's paper 
deals with the growth of a national identity and political activism in 
some Uygur communities, primarily in Turkey and Europe. He starts with 
an analysis of the first phase of Uygur transnationalist activities 
(from Mao to the 1970s) stimulated by various stages of Uygurs' 
migrations: they fled from China to neighboring countries (India, 
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazachstan) and then, for 
economic and political reasons, they re-emigrated to a second host 
country (as in the case of Turkey) and to a third one (Australia, 
Western Europe, and North America). Turkey has played a key role in this 
process as terminal destination as well as a starting point and crucial 
junction to other destinations, but it has also been, since the late 
nineteenth century, a model for Turkestani nationalism. Shichor 
continues his analysis with the resurgence of Uygur transnationalism in 
the 1980s and 1990s, which is characterized by the use of online digital 
communication media, especially the Internet. The Uygurs do not have a 
homeland-state of their own. In the 1980s an organized Uygur 
transnationalism activism began to grow, animated by the Uygurs refugees 
all over the world, claiming Eastern Turkestan independence.

Last but not least, I would like to mention two articles which focus on 
the "reform of tradition" in the field of gender and family. Schirin 
Amir-Moazami and Armando Salvatore analyze the "making of the Muslim 
woman" based on the assumption that the "tradition-rooted categories of 
social and religious authority do not impair by default autonomous 
social agency, but are often their necessary condition. They are part 
and parcel of the process--also located at the delicate juncture of 
intergenerational change and conflict--through which forms of authority 
are transformed through the impact of social powers (like those related 
to education, social disciplining and social distinction), without this 
implying a pre-fabricated and normative notion of 'secularisation'" (p. 
53). Gaby Straußburger focuses on the marriage behavior of Turks who are 
permanent residents in Germany, adopting two perspectives: the role of 
marriage behavior in establishing, constructing, or maintaining Muslim 
communities, which can be non-ethnic or transnational; and the function 
of religious aspects in Turks' marriages in Germany. The originality of 
this analysis stems from its focus not only on marriages based on 
minority-majority patterns (Turkish minority and German majority), as it 
often happens, but also on those based on several minority-minority 
patterns of second-generation immigrants. The author identifies some 
options (marriages between second-generation Turks in Germany and Turks 
in Turkey; marriages between Muslims with a different ethnic background, 
e.g. Turkish-Maroccan, Turkish-Bosnian marriages; Germans converted to 
Islam; etc.) and considers "how they might contribute to establishing, 
constructing or maintaining transnational or non-ethnic Muslim 
communities" (p. 197), taking into account the role of personal ties and 
social networks (transnational kinship networks). Particularly 
interesting is the gender-related analysis. For example, two striking 
differences emerge from this analysis: German-Turkish weddings account 
for 18.3 percent in the male population, but only 6.5 percent in the 
female group; Turkish-Turkish weddings within the migrant population 
represent 28.7 percent in the male population, but 40.5 percent in the 
female polulation. To explain the reasons motivating many 
second-generation transnational marriages, the author proposes a 
qualitative analysis--carried out through fourteen case studies--that 
takes into account structural and demographic factors, social and 
cultural resources, and individual preferences. Furthermore, 
Straußburger analyzes the interrelation of inter-ethnic marriages and 
the emergence of a non-ethnic Muslim self-perception. The volume ends 
with an article by Steven Vertovec which "suggests a number of issues, 
trends and avenues of research surrounding transnationalism and religion 
with particular reference to Islam" and aims "to understand patterns and 
conditioning factors affecting current global socio-religious dynamics" 
(pp. 312-313). The volume suggests several innovative options and the 
papers presented cover a number of issues and approaches related to the 
study of the impact of the migration process. It is worth noting some 
significant contributions that analyze the catalyst function of new 
non-traditional links, "transnational social spaces," and the role of 
media networks and other means of communication--all factors that 
contribute to the definition of a global Islam.

As the editors acknowledge, the articles aim to analyze "different 
aspects of the contemporary situation of Muslims in western Europe ... 
under the general perspective of transnational dimensions. What 
distinguishes the papers in this volume from much of recent literature 
is the extent to which the 'transnational' forms of Islam with which we 
are confronted are partly or wholly independent of the chains of 
migration or shared ethnic identity. What the papers show is that there 
is currently a very active process of constructing Muslim/Islamic 
networks held together by shared ideas and responses to the European 
environment, rather than common ethnic or national identity, and using 
various forms of media as the tool for such networking" (p. vii). The 
twelve essays collected here reach this objective. Originally written as 
workshop papers, they are well integrated in the general frame of the 
volume which stems from a joint discussion and propose new and 
interesting research paths.