DOC Africana Islamic Studies (The Africana Experience and Critical Leadership Studies) by From Conyers James L in History

Description

Orphans of Islam portrays the abject lives and 'excluded body' of abandoned and bastard children in contemporary Morocco; while critiquing the concept and practice of 'adoption;' which too often is considered a panacea. Through a close and historically grounded reading of legal; social; and cultural mechanisms of one predominantly Islamic country; Jamila Bargach shows how 'the surplus bastard body' is created by mainstream society. Written in part from the perspectives of the children and single mothers; intermittently from the view of 'adopting' families; and employing bastardy as a haunting and empowering motif with a potentially subversive edge; this ethnography is composed as an intricate; open-ended; and arabesque-like evocation of Moroccan society and its state institutions. It equally challenges received sociological and anthropological tropes and understandings of the Arab world.