Journal articles on the topic 'Arabic Fairy tales'

The article features six fairy tales from the island of Socotra in Russian translation. The publication marks the beginning of a large-scale project of creating an anthology of Socotri folklore in Russian, initiated by the present authors in 2021. The first of its kind in the history of Semitic philology, the anthology is intended for a broad Russian readership, but also for specialists interested in folklore traditions and popular religion of today’s Southern Arabia. The samples of Soqotri oral literature presented in this paper were collected by the participants of the Russian-Yemeni working group. They have previously been published in the Corpus of Soqotri Oral Literature in transcription, English and Arabic translations, as well as in the Arabic-based graphic system developed in 2014 by the Russian-Yemeni team led by Acad. Vitaly Naumkin.

The process of collecting and publishing Kazakh fairy tales dates back to the second half of the 19th century. During the period of the colonization of the Kazakh steppe by the Russian Empire, people of different professions who came here for different purposes and worked in the civil service began to pay attention not only to the registration of land wealth, but also to the study of samples of oral folk art. On the pages of the first editions “Turkistan ualayatynyn gazeti”, “Dala ualayatynyn gazeti”, published in the second half of the 19th century in the Kazakh language and spreading in the Kazakh steppe, numerous folk tales were published, taken from oral folk art. Along with Russian scientists, representatives of the Kazakh intelligentsia and educators were also engaged in the study of fairy tales. Kazakh fairy tales were published several times at the beginning of the twentieth century and after the establishment of Soviet power. After gaining independence of Kazakhstan, numerous fairy tales were published in whole volumes. At the same time, some publications were found and re-published fairy tales that had not been previously published. We know that Kazakh fairy tales, collected in manuscript centers and library funds, have a rich heritage. Finding and republishing unpublished tales is an urgent need today. In the article, the author notes the importance of searching for fairy tales in the archives of the regional level, as well as among the manuscripts collected in manuscript funds and written in Cyrillic, Arabic or Latin letters, and the publication of these fairy tales, especially previously unknown ones. He also draws attention to the spiritual heritage of the people and the significance of fairy tales in modern folklore.

The present study deals with the strategies used in the Arabic translations of the most popular genres of children’s literature; namely fairy tales and fables as an attempt to identify the best methods and strategies to be adopted in translating these genres to fulfill the ultimate purpose of enriching the children’s knowledge in addition to attracting their interest and arousing the joy sought for in every piece of literature. The study sets off from three dominating trends: the first calls for the adoption of domestication strategy of translation as the most appropriate and effective strategy in translation for children. In the same line, the second opposes using the foreignization strategy, while the third trend advocates for the joint employment of various strategies to fulfill certain requirements and needs that would be called upon within the context such as didactic purposes. Throughout the process of examining and verifying the theses of these trends, samples of translations of the genres are chosen based on the most popular and well known fairy tales and fables either circulated in written form or televised as movies or cartoons; namely Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Aesop’s Fables. These samples are subjected to translation quality assessment to come out with a quality statement to highlight their merits and demerits. The receptors’ (children) impact is also sought via conducting a field study that has been designed for children of two age groups defined by specialized scholars as intended receptors of the genre

This paper seeks to see the integrative points of the struggle for Islamic teachings and sosial piety that need to be taught to early childhood based on children's Arabic fairy tales. This study uses two approaches, namely an educational approach and an Islamic approach. The educational approach studied is the application of the Sosial Learning Theory proposed by Albert Bandura in analyzing any binary opposition of good and bad attitudes in each quotation (dialogue or story) of the children's fairy tales studied. The Islamic approach studied is to use the Quranic perspective as a source of human life guidance which is applied to Islamization of the results of Sosial Learning analysis so that good and bad attitudes can be assessed as an important dogmatic reminder instrument in fostering the character of sosial piety and Islamic personality. The use of two approaches as characteristics of interdisciplinary studies in this study leads to primary sources that refer to a children's fairy tale entitled al-Najm al-Kabīr by Dr. Zahīrah al-Bailī. This research concludes that the dogma-lessons of sharing love and affection in early childhood that can be done by loving each other and habituating apologizing if you make mistakes will reflect-stimulate personality in shaping the character of devotion to parents and sosial relationships.

One of the relevant aspects of the study of modern comparative literature is the study of the complex of motives and motional complexes. Modern literary critics attach great importance to the motive and the motive complex. Because research on the motive and the motive complex in literature shows the influence of a certain literary period and individual folk literatures on the global literary process. Literary critics note that translated works are a separate aspect of the study, since the “plot-motive repertoire” of literature develops primarily due to translated works. The collection “One Thousand and One Nights” is recognized as one of the best examples of world literature. He entered the spiritual life, folklore and written literature of many peoples. “Tales of Scheherazade” is the most beautiful and highly artistic work among the remarkable monuments of oral literature. The life of the people is always reflected in its folklore. That is why the tale is a rich material for ethnocultural research. It will identify the main concepts of the national image of the world and track its changes. The tale is one of the traditions and genres that for many centuries have not lost their significance for world art culture. Subjects, motifs, images from folklore fairy tales are transmitted from generation to generation, play the role of carriers of cultural values and norms adopted in society. “A Thousand and One Nights” is a work that has become a phenomenon of mass culture in the fairy tale genre. There are many subjects and motives of this collection in world literature, Kazakh literature is no exception. The article examines the origin, distribution around the world, the influence on world literature of the book “One Thousand and One Nights”, which became a medieval Arabic encyclopedia, including the poetic transformation of the motives of this collection in Kazakh literature of the XIX–XX centuries. In addition, various variants of dastan SeifulmalikBadigulzhamal” from “One Thousand and One Nights” were investigated by a comparative analytical method.

Learning a foreign language is not easy and requires a long process. Because learning a foreign language is difficult, it is necessary to apply various methods in learning so that learning Arabic can run effectively and conducively. One of the interesting ways among several methods used in language learning is Taqdimul qishah or in English it is called Telling Story. Taqdimul qishah is telling stories using Arabic. The taqdimul qishoh method is a way of conveying or presenting learning material orally in the form of stories or fairy tales from teacher to student or from student to student. This study used a quantitative method (ex post facto) by using a questionnaire for class VIII students with forty-seven students. The distribution of this questionnaire aims to determine whether there is an effect of using this method or not. In determining the learning outcomes of conversation subjects, researchers used the results of oral tests with students arranged by grades. From the results of these scores it was concluded that the scores for the Arabic language subject (conversation subject) were obtained from 47 grade VIII students of MTs Salafiyah Syafi'iyyah Tebuireng Jombang, all of whom met the KKM, with an average score of 88. After distributing the questionnaire and student scores, followed by a partial test of the story presentation method variable (X) with a significance value of 0.004 <0.05, Ho was rejected and Ha was accepted, meaning that the story presentation method variable had a significant effect on the material learning outcomes variable.

Books published in Kazakh before the October Revolution are important for the study of folklore, ethnography, literary, cultural life of modern Kazakhstan. Valuable sources allow modern researchers to get new information about how the oral literature of the Kazakh people was collected, where it was preserved, how and by whom it was published. Before joining Russia, books in the Kazakh language were not published in Kazakhstan. There were separate editions in Arabic, Persian and Chagatai languages. Books including Kazakh poems, heroic epics, fairy tales were published in St.Petersburg, Kazan, Orenburg, Tashkent. They were published in the Karimov and Kusainov printing houses at Kazan University. By the middle of the XIX century, Russian scientists began to collect materials, study and comprehensively analyze the way of life, lifestyle, religion, language and oral literature of the Turkic-speaking peoples, including Kazakhs. Among them are famous orientalists-turkologists N.F. Katanov, A.E. Alektorov, P.M. Melioransky, V.V. Bartold, I.N. Berezin, A.V. Vasiliev, N.Ya. Sarkin, M.N. Bekimov, A.A. Divaev, A.D. Nesterev, N. Pantusov, N.I. Ilminsky, G.N. Potanin and others. In result of study of rare publications in libraries and materials in archives, it was found that most of the folklore works collected and studied by researchers were published a century ago, or even earlier. Manche of these works of oral literature wurden not republished, either in Soviet times or during the period of independence. In this article, a textual study is carried out based on a comparison of the text of a work published before the October Revolution with a version published today. Due to comparative analysis in the historical context, it is established whether there is a difference and differences between the text in the original and its later edition. The article examines the textual structure of Kazakh fairytale «Karamergen», which was collected and studied by Russian Orientalists and Turkologists.

The purpose of this research is to show how the oriental nation affected the German literature as it affected other nation's culture and literature. In these pages we can see how the conflict was and what the current position is the opinion of European most great German authors such as Harder and Goethe, which distinguish Arabic oriental literary life from the west part of the glop where armies vividly occupied eastern Arabic lands through their power the Arabs got rid of the Superficiality and looked deeper into their own identification. German writers tried to reach the essence of Islamic civilization as well as the essence of Arabic poetry and the religious spirit in the East literature on the contrary of the German literature also religious translations that attracted the attention of writers in Germany. Eastern equestrian spirit which influencing Arab poetry, the poetry in Europe became an essential part of chivalrous life. Fairy tales like One Thousand and One Nights, Tragedy of AL Mansour also and mix of the two techniques, the oriental traditional East and the non-traditional European, Goethe believes that Arab literature reached a peak in the Middle Ages that only Greek and Roman literature reached before them, our research contains The opinion of a German translator Stefan Weidner who said that since the 1970s, we can note that Germany has become an increasingly attractive target for Arab immigrants so we see our honorable great writers whom affected the German literary life from Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. Many of them preferred permanent residency in Germany, chose to contribute to German and Arab cultural life, and in many cases, played the role of mediator between the two cultures.

Translated Arabic Literature as a window to Foreign Mentalities: On the problem of the reception of foreign-cultural literature This article is concerned with the structure of hermeneutic understanding in order to "guarantee within cultural traditions a possible action-oriented self-understanding of individuals and groups and a reciprocal foreign understanding of other individuals and other groups through translated literary texts. Through this study, it can be stated that regional knowledge. i.e. knowledge of the historical, political, economic, and cultural peculiarities of a people cannot express the "spiritual body of a nation's inner history". In order to achieve this, i.e. to make the mentality of a foreign culture recognizable, in the sense of v. Eichendorff's poetry. in our case, the literature of a people in which ways of thinking and feelings, thought content, and emotional content are congealed in contemporary North African literature. To provide such guidance. At the same time, it opens the view for certain deficits of the recipient, which have to be compensated if one does not want to remain on the surface of the foreign culture. In oriental countries, this includes the necessary knowledge of the basics of Islam and knowledge of myths and rites, which have become the language of fairy tales in particular. because the religious and the folk and superstition are the forces that motivate the everyday life of oriental peoples, which cause their life motivation. Such active forces always flavor the literature of peoples However, contemporary North African literature is not just a literature of self-expression by its authors. an attempt to find oneself spiritually at home, it is also a window on literature in the sense of Karl Dedecius, the main addressee of which is not only the local reader but above all the Foreigners, the Europeans, the French or the Spaniards, who often even provided the authors with the language and in whose language area many of the North African authors also live. So they produce their literature not only with a view to their own memories and experiences with their homeland but also with a view to the foreign country in which they live. their own memories and experiences with their homeland, but also with a view to the foreign country in which they live

The germination process of arabica coffee bean takes a fairly longtime, due to semi-permeable skin against water. Dormancy treatment needs to improve germination rate of coffee beans before planting. The research was conducted at The Compost Centre of Agriculture Faculty, University of Sumatera Utara from July – September 2018 using a Randomized Complex Design (RCD) non-factorial with 5 treatments, i.e. P0 (Control), P1 (Stripping Bark Horn), P2 (Soaking in KNO3 0,5% 24 hours), P3 (Soaking in Sitokinin 1,5 ml/lt 24 hours), P4 (Soaking in Coconut water5days). The parameters observed were potential to grow, germination rate, vigor rate, germination speed index, normal sprout percentage, and death percentage. The result showed that stripping coffee beans had statistically significant increase on potential to grow, germination rate, vigor rate, germination speed index, normal sprout percentage and decrease on death percentage.

Management is a condition for a well-executed program, without management, the program does not go as planned. Organizing is an activity carried out in various small tasks, instructing the tasks, responsibilities and powers of each individual according to his own capabilities, carefully selecting and classifying people according to the level of ability to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization. Good organization produces a good organizational form, starting from work system, structure, resources to other aspects. This study discusses the following: 1) the administration of the Arabic language program at Rawda Al-Hasana Islamic Boarding School in Medan, 2) the implemented programs and activities to improve Arabic language skills in the Rawda Al-Hassanah Islamic Boarding School in Medan, 3) the division of tasks in organizing the Arabic language program in Rawda School Islamic Interior Hasna Maidan. This study uses qualitative descriptive research methods. Data were collected by observation, interviews and documentation. After data collection, the data is analyzed through a) data reduction, b) data presentation, and c) conclusion/verification. The management of organizing the Arabic language program at Rawdat Al-Hassana Institute uses the font and staff organization model. This organization takes place vertically from a superior leader to a leader below him. To help run the organization smoothly, the leader gets help from the employees under his command. Programs to improve language skills at Al-Rawda Al-Hasana Institute Maidan include: language development, training, court implementation, exams implementation, purchasing various competitions such as; Language Fair, Trilingual Speech Contest, Book Reading Contest, Interregional Drama

This article investigates the success story of language maintenance in Arab families in Iran. Taking Fishman’s (1991) emphasis on micro face-to-face interactions in language maintenance processes as our point of departure, it argues that language maintenance requires that families live in a sociolinguistic milieu in which face-to-face interactions are facilitated by demographic patterns of settlement. Despite unfavorable institutional policies towards minority languages in Iran, the specific geographical makeup of the country has historically pushed speakers of minority languages to settle in certain regions (Katouzian, 2009). Drawing on Sealey and Carter’s (2004) concept of ‘demographic agency’, this article argues that such a demographic settlement of Arabs in southern cities and towns in Iran has given them a collective power to maintain their language, which takes the form of laissez-faire interactions in Arabic at home. The findings, based on interviews with families and recordings of interactions at home, suggest that, although parents express concern regarding their children’s academic achievement and socioeconomic mobility, which requires higher proficiency in Persian, this concern does not readily translate into language practices in Persian at home.

This article discusses the role of communication in attracting Hajj pilgrims to North Sumatra. This article examines the steps taken by the North Sumatra Province Ministry of Religion to implement a communication system in terms of services and pilgrim protection guarantees. This article's research employs a descriptive method with a qualitative approach. Interviews were conducted with several informants who were considered qualified to answer this topic within the Ministry of Religion of North Sumatra, including the Jemaah Haji from North Sumatra. Literature studies and documentation are two other methods for gathering data. Data processing and analysis techniques were applied in three stages: data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion drawing. According to the findings of this study, the Ministry of Religion has ensured a fair, professional, and accountable implementation of the Hajj by prioritizing the interests of the congregation, and general and special services for disabled people. Meanwhile, both domestically and in Saudi Arabia, coaching takes the form of practice. Furthermore, the Ministry of Religion has put legal safeguards in place to ensure the safety of Hajj pilgrims.

SUMMARY While the crustal structure across the Iranian plateau is fairly well constrained from controlled source and passive seismic data, the lithospheric mantle structure remains relatively poorly known, in particular in terms of lithology. Geodynamics rely on a robust image of the present-day thermochemical structure interpretations of the area. In this study, the 3-D crustal and upper mantle structure of the Iranian plateau is investigated, for the first time, through integrated geophysical–petrological modelling combining elevation, gravity and gravity gradient fields, seismic and petrological data. Our modelling approach allows us to simultaneously match complementary data sets with key mantle physical parameters (density and seismic velocities) being determined within a self-consistent thermodynamic framework. We first elaborate a new 3-D isostatically balanced crustal model constrained by available controlled source and passive seismic data, as well as complementary by gravity data. Next, we follow a progressively complex modelling strategy, starting from a laterally quasi chemically homogeneous model and then including structural, petrological and seismic tomography constraints. Distinct mantle compositions are tested in each of the tectonothermal terranes in our study region based on available local xenolith suites and global petrological data sets. Our preferred model matches the input geophysical observables (gravity field and elevation), includes local xenolith data, and qualitatively matches velocity anomalies from state of the art seismic tomography models. Beneath the Caspian and Oman seas (offshore areas) our model is defined by an average Phanerozoic fertile composition. The Arabian Plate and the Turan platform are characterized by a Proterozoic composition based on xenolith samples from eastern Arabia. In agreement with previous studies, our results also suggest a moderately refractory Proterozoic type composition in Zagros-Makran belt, extending to Alborz, Turan and Kopeh-Dagh terranes. In contrast, the mantle in our preferred model in Central Iran is defined by a fertile composition derived from a xenolith suite in northeast Iran. Our results indicate that the deepest Moho boundary is located beneath the high Zagros Mountains (∼65 km). The thinnest crust is found in the Oman Sea, Central Iran (Lut Block) and Talesh Mountains. A relatively deep Moho boundary is modelled in the Kopeh-Dagh Mountains, where Moho depth reaches to ∼55 km. The lithosphere is ∼280 km thick beneath the Persian Gulf (Arabian–Eurasian Plate boundary) and the Caspian Sea, thinning towards the Turan platform and the high Zagros. Beneath the Oman Sea, the base of the lithosphere is at ∼150 km depth, rising to ∼120 km beneath Central Iran, with the thinnest lithosphere (&lt;100 km) being located beneath the northwest part of the Iranian plateau. We propose that the present-day lithosphere–asthenosphere topography is the result of the superposition of different geodynamic processes: (i) Arabia–Eurasia convergence lasting from mid Jurassic to recent and closure of Neo-Tethys ocean, (ii) reunification of Gondwanian fragments to form the Central Iran block and Iranian microcontinent, (iii) impingement of a small-scale convection and slab break-off beneath Central Iran commencing in the mid Eocene and (iv) refertilization of the lithospheric mantle beneath the Iranian microcontinent.

Whilst Edward Gibbon's Memoirs of My Life comprise a notoriously complex document of autobiographical artifice, there is no reason to question the honesty of its revelation of his attitudes to geography and its relationship to the historian's craft. Writing of his boyhood before going up to Oxford, Gibbon commented that his vague and multifarious reading could not teach me to think, to write, or to act; and the only principle, that darted a ray of light into the indigested chaos, was an early and rational application of the order of time and place. The maps of Cellarius and Wells imprinted in my mind the picture of ancient geography: from Stranchius I imbibed the elements of chronology: the Tables of Helvicus and Anderson, the Annals of Usher [sic] and Prideaux, distinguished the connection of events . . . This seems a fairly direct comment on Gibbon's attitude to geography as a historian in that it is confirmed by various of his working documents and commonplace book comments not aimed at posterity and by the practice embodied in his great work that was thus targeted, the Decline and Fall. Taking Gibbon's private documents, the first manuscript we have in his English Essays, for example, is a tabulated chronology from circa 1751 when Gibbon was fourteen years old, which begins with the creation of the world in 6000 BC and runs up to 1590 BC, this being exactly the sort of material which could be commonplaced from the likes of Ussher and Prideaux. Matching this attention to chronology is a concern with geography, and indeed the two are coupled together as in his comment in the Memoirs. Thus in his Index Expurgatoris (1768–9), Gibbon berates Sallust as “no very correct historian” on the grounds that his chronology is not credible and that “notwithstanding his laboured description of Africa, nothing can be more confused than his Geography without either division of provinces or fixing of towns”. In this regard, Gibbon the author of the Decline and Fall was a “correct” historian, in that he was careful to frame each arena in which historical events were narrated in the light of a prefatory description of the geography of the location under discussion. This is most readily apparent in the second half of the opening chapter of the work, where Gibbon proceeds on what his “Table of Contents” calls a “View of the Provinces of the Roman Empire”, starting in the West with Spain and then proceeding clockwise to reach Africa on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules, a pattern of geographical description directly mirroring ancient practice in Strabo's Geography and Pomponius Mela's De Situ Orbis. But this practice of prefacing a historical account with geographical description repeats itself at various points in the work, as when, approaching the end of his grand narrative, Gibbon reaches the impact of “Mahomet, with sword in one hand and the Koran in the other” on “the causes of the decline and fall of the Eastern empire”. Before discussing the birth of Islam, Gibbon treats his readers to a discussion of the geography of Arabia, beginning with its size and shape before moving on to its soils, climate and physical–geographic subdivisions.

An Introduction to Islam by David Waines consists of three parts:“Foundations,” “Islamic Teaching and Practice,” and “Islam in the ModernWorld.” The author begins by characteristically painting the picture of pre-Islamic pagan Arabia on the eve of Islam’s advent. He discusses the role andsignificance the pre-Islamic Arabs accorded their pantheon of deities, as wellas the (largely inherited) moral codes that governed their conduct in tribalsociety. Waines neatly ties this into what follows, where he discusses thebirth of Prophet Muhammad, the event of the Qur’an’s revelation, and theopposition he encountered from his fellow tribesmen in Makkah. This is followedby an analysis of the Qur’an’s significance, its conception of divinity,and the content and importance of the Hadith as a source of guidance forMuslims. The section is rounded off with examinations of such topics as the first period of civil strife (fitnah) after the Prophet’s death and the interestingbody of literature devoted to Muslim-Christian polemics in earlymedieval Islam.The transition from the first part of the book to the second part is ratherfluid, for the second part is essentially an elaboration of the themes discussedin the first. With remarkable ease and accuracy, the author elucidatesthe historical development and main features of Islamic law in both its theoryand practice. Returning to his earlier discussion on the Hadith, here hebriefly outlines how its corpus came to be collected. Readers unfamiliar withthe main theological controversies that confronted Islam in its formativeyears (e.g., the problem of free will and the status of the grave sinner) willfind the section devoted to Islamic theology fairly useful.Waines goes on to explain some of the principle Mu`tazilite andAsh`arite doctrines, and outlines some of the ideas of Neoplatonic Islamicphilosophy, albeit through the lenses of al-Ghazali’s famous refutation.Surprisingly, the author does not address any of the major developments inIslamic philosophy post-Ibn Rushd, such as the important work of theIshraqi (Illuminationist) school (incidentally, the founder of this school,Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi, was a contemporary of Ibn Rushd). The last twochapters are devoted to Sufism and Shi`ism, respectively. Although Wainesdoes misrepresent Ibn al-`Arabi’s metaphysics of Being by calling it a “system”(pp. 153 and 192), on the whole he presents the Islamic mystical traditionin a refreshing and informed manner. His section on Shi`ism is splendid.It is written with considerable care, and he effectively isolates the mainthemes characteristic of Twelver Shi`ite thought and practice.In the third and longest part of this work, Waines incorporates IbnBattutah’s travel accounts into the book’s narrative. This works very well, asit gives readers a sense of the diverse and rich cultural patterns that wereintricately woven into the fabric of fourteenth-century Islamic civilization.After reading through the section, this present reviewer could not help butmarvel at how the observations of a fourteenth-century traveler and legaljudge from Tangiers could so effectively contribute to a twenty-first centuryintroductory textbook on Islam. Additionally, Waines takes readers throughsome of the essential features of the three important “gunpowder” Muslimdynasties, devotes an interesting discussion to the role played by the mosquein a Muslim’s daily life, and outlines some of its different architectural andartistic expressions throughout Islamic history ...

The process of collecting and publishing Kazakh fairy tales dates back to the second half of the 19th century. During the period of the colonization of the Kazakh steppe by the Russian Empire, people of different professions who came here for different purposes and worked in the civil service began to pay attention not only to the registration of land wealth, but also to the study of samples of oral folk art. On the pages of the first editions “Turkistan ualayatynyn gazeti”, “Dala ualayatynyn gazeti”, published in the second half of the 19th century in the Kazakh language and spreading in the Kazakh steppe, numerous folk tales were published, taken from oral folk art. Along with Russian scientists, representatives of the Kazakh intelligentsia and educators were also engaged in the study of fairy tales. Kazakh fairy tales were published several times at the beginning of the twentieth century and after the establishment of Soviet power. After gaining independence of Kazakhstan, numerous fairy tales were published in whole volumes. At the same time, some publications were found and re-published fairy tales that had not been previously published. We know that Kazakh fairy tales, collected in manuscript centers and library funds, have a rich heritage. Finding and republishing unpublished tales is an urgent need today. In the article, the author notes the importance of searching for fairy tales in the archives of the regional level, as well as among the manuscripts collected in manuscript funds and written in Cyrillic, Arabic or Latin letters, and the publication of these fairy tales, especially previously unknown ones. He also draws attention to the spiritual heritage of the people and the significance of fairy tales in modern folklore.

One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of fairy tales composed of a frame narrative and its surrounding tales. With their translation into Western languages, these tales, which represent Eastern literature in terms of their origin, became recognized in the West and occupied a prominent place in world literature. These tales have influenced and inspired numerous authors from both the East and West. It can be observed that a variety of literary works have directly or indirectly been nourished from this collection. Two famous and prolific Modern Arabic Literature authors, Tawfiq al-Hakim and Ali Ahmed Bakathir, also composed a play inspired by these tales. al-Hakim presented the reader with a fictional account of what occurred after the one thousand and first night in Scheherazade, one of his over seventy fictional theatrical works. Shahriar transformed into a completely different person through Scheherazade's tales in this work. This king, who had experienced all kinds of material pleasures in the past, now pursues knowledge and desires to transcend the limits of space. Bakathir, who contributed significantly to Arabic theater in addition to his poetry and novels, wrote over forty plays. One of these compositions, "Sırru Şehrâzâd", was inspired by the frame story of One Thousand and One Nights. By incorporating a contemporary interpretation into his work, the author transformed the frame story based on the infidelity of women into a new work of fiction. Accordingly, the first wife of Shahriar was portrayed as an innocent woman in the work Sırru Şehrâzâd, and the plot was based around this characterization. In this study, general information on the original One Thousand and One Nights was presented first, followed by a literary analysis of the aforementioned theater works by al-Hakim and Bakathir, and a comparison of the character of Scheherazade in the works of both authors.

Introduction I am a transmigrant who has moved back and forth between the West and the Rest. I was born and raised in a Muslim family in a predominantly Muslim country, Bangladesh, but I spent several years of my childhood in Pakistan. After my marriage, I lived in the United States for a year and a half, the Middle East for 5 years, Australia for three years, back to the Middle East for another 5 years, then, finally, in Australia for the last 12 years. I speak Bengali (my mother tongue), Urdu (which I learnt in Pakistan), a bit of Arabic (learnt in the Middle East); but English has always been my medium of instruction. So where is home? Is it my place of origin, the Muslim umma, or my land of settlement? Or is it my ‘root’ or my ‘route’ (Blunt and Dowling)? Blunt and Dowling (199) observe that the lives of transmigrants are often interpreted in terms of their ‘roots’ and ‘routes’, which are two frameworks for thinking about home, homeland and diaspora. Whereas ‘roots’ might imply an original homeland from which people have scattered, and to which they might seek to return, ‘routes’ focuses on mobile, multiple and transcultural geographies of home. However, both ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ are attached to emotion and identity, and both invoke a sense of place, belonging or alienation that is intrinsically tied to a sense of self (Blunt and Dowling 196-219). In this paper, I equate home with my root (place of birth) and route (transnational homing) within the context of the ‘diaspora and belonging’. First I define the diaspora and possible criteria of belonging. Next I describe my transnational homing within the framework of diaspora and belonging. Finally, I consider how Australia can be a ‘home’ for me and other Muslim Australians. The Diaspora and Belonging Blunt and Dowling (199) define diaspora as “scattering of people over space and transnational connections between people and the places”. Cohen emphasised the ethno-cultural aspects of the diaspora setting; that is, how migrants identify and position themselves in other nations in terms of their (different) ethnic and cultural orientation. Hall argues that the diasporic subjects form a cultural identity through transformation and difference. Speaking of the Hindu diaspora in the UK and Caribbean, Vertovec (21-23) contends that the migrants’ contact with their original ‘home’ or diaspora depends on four factors: migration processes and factors of settlement, cultural composition, structural and political power, and community development. With regard to the first factor, migration processes and factors of settlement, Vertovec explains that if the migrants are political or economic refugees, or on a temporary visa, they are likely to live in a ‘myth of return’. In the cultural composition context, Vertovec argues that religion, language, region of origin, caste, and degree of cultural homogenisation are factors in which migrants are bound to their homeland. Concerning the social structure and political power issue, Vertovec suggests that the extent and nature of racial and ethnic pluralism or social stigma, class composition, degree of institutionalised racism, involvement in party politics (or active citizenship) determine migrants’ connection to their new or old home. Finally, community development, including membership in organisations (political, union, religious, cultural, leisure), leadership qualities, and ethnic convergence or conflict (trends towards intra-communal or inter-ethnic/inter-religious co-operation) would also affect the migrants’ sense of belonging. Using these scholarly ideas as triggers, I will examine my home and belonging over the last few decades. My Home In an initial stage of my transmigrant history, my home was my root (place of birth, Dhaka, Bangladesh). Subsequently, my routes (settlement in different countries) reshaped my homes. In all respects, the ethno-cultural factors have played a big part in my definition of ‘home’. But on some occasions my ethnic identification has been overridden by my religious identification and vice versa. By ethnic identity, I mean my language (mother tongue) and my connection to my people (Bangladeshi). By my religious identity, I mean my Muslim religion, and my spiritual connection to the umma, a Muslim nation transcending all boundaries. Umma refers to the Muslim identity and unity within a larger Muslim group across national boundaries. The only thing the members of the umma have in common is their Islamic belief (Spencer and Wollman 169-170). In my childhood my father, a banker, was relocated to Karachi, Pakistan (then West Pakistan). Although I lived in Pakistan for much of my childhood, I have never considered it to be my home, even though it is predominantly a Muslim country. In this case, my home was my root (Bangladesh) where my grandparents and extended family lived. Every year I used to visit my grandparents who resided in a small town in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan). Thus my connection with my home was sustained through my extended family, ethnic traditions, language (Bengali/Bangla), and the occasional visits to the landscape of Bangladesh. Smith (9-11) notes that people build their connection or identity to their homeland through their historic land, common historical memories, myths, symbols and traditions. Though Pakistan and Bangladesh had common histories, their traditions of language, dress and ethnic culture were very different. For example, the celebration of the Bengali New Year (Pohela Baishakh), folk dance, folk music and folk tales, drama, poetry, lyrics of poets Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindra Sangeet) and Nazrul Islam (Nazrul Geeti) are distinct in the cultural heritage of Bangladesh. Special musical instruments such as the banshi (a bamboo flute), dhol (drums), ektara (a single-stringed instrument) and dotara (a four-stringed instrument) are unique to Bangladeshi culture. The Bangladeshi cuisine (rice and freshwater fish) is also different from Pakistan where people mainly eat flat round bread (roti) and meat (gosh). However, my bonding factor to Bangladesh was my relatives, particularly my grandparents as they made me feel one of ‘us’. Their affection for me was irreplaceable. The train journey from Dhaka (capital city) to their town, Noakhali, was captivating. The hustle and bustle at the train station and the lush green paddy fields along the train journey reminded me that this was my ‘home’. Though I spoke the official language (Urdu) in Pakistan and had a few Pakistani friends in Karachi, they could never replace my feelings for my friends, extended relatives and cousins who lived in Bangladesh. I could not relate to the landscape or dry weather of Pakistan. More importantly, some Pakistani women (our neighbours) were critical of my mother’s traditional dress (saree), and described it as revealing because it showed a bit of her back. They took pride in their traditional dress (shalwar, kameez, dopatta), which they considered to be more covered and ‘Islamic’. So, because of our traditional dress (saree) and perhaps other differences, we were regarded as the ‘Other’. In 1970 my father was relocated back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, and I was glad to go home. It should be noted that both Pakistan and Bangladesh were separated from India in 1947 – first as one nation; then, in 1971, Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan. The conflict between Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) and Pakistan (then West Pakistan) originated for economic and political reasons. At this time I was a high school student and witnessed acts of genocide committed by the Pakistani regime against the Bangladeshis (March-December 1971). My memories of these acts are vivid and still very painful. After my marriage, I moved from Bangladesh to the United States. In this instance, my new route (Austin, Texas, USA), as it happened, did not become my home. Here the ethno-cultural and Islamic cultural factors took precedence. I spoke the English language, made some American friends, and studied history at the University of Texas. I appreciated the warm friendship extended to me in the US, but experienced a degree of culture shock. I did not appreciate the pub life, alcohol consumption, and what I perceived to be the lack of family bonds (children moving out at the age of 18, families only meeting occasionally on birthdays and Christmas). Furthermore, I could not relate to de facto relationships and acceptance of sex before marriage. However, to me ‘home’ meant a family orientation and living in close contact with family. Besides the cultural divide, my husband and I were living in the US on student visas and, as Vertovec (21-23) noted, temporary visa status can deter people from their sense of belonging to the host country. In retrospect I can see that we lived in the ‘myth of return’. However, our next move for a better life was not to our root (Bangladesh), but another route to the Muslim world of Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. My husband moved to Dhahran not because it was a Muslim world but because it gave him better economic opportunities. However, I thought this new destination would become my home – the home that was coined by Anderson as the imagined nation, or my Muslim umma. Anderson argues that the imagined communities are “to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (6; Wood 61). Hall (122) asserts: identity is actually formed through unconscious processes over time, rather than being innate in consciousness at birth. There is always something ‘imaginary’ or fantasized about its unity. It always remains incomplete, is always ‘in process’, always ‘being formed’. As discussed above, when I had returned home to Bangladesh from Pakistan – both Muslim countries – my primary connection to my home country was my ethnic identity, language and traditions. My ethnic identity overshadowed the religious identity. But when I moved to Saudi Arabia, where my ethnic identity differed from that of the mainstream Arabs and Bedouin/nomadic Arabs, my connection to this new land was through my Islamic cultural and religious identity. Admittedly, this connection to the umma was more psychological than physical, but I was now in close proximity to Mecca, and to my home of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Mecca is an important city in Saudi Arabia for Muslims because it is the holy city of Islam, the home to the Ka’aba (the religious centre of Islam), and the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad [Peace Be Upon Him]. It is also the destination of the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islamic faith. Therefore, Mecca is home to significant events in Islamic history, as well as being an important present day centre for the Islamic faith. We lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia for 5 years. Though it was a 2.5 hours flight away, I treasured Mecca’s proximity and regarded Dhahran as my second and spiritual home. Saudi Arabia had a restricted lifestyle for women, but I liked it because it was a Muslim country that gave me the opportunity to perform umrah Hajj (pilgrimage). However, Saudi Arabia did not allow citizenship to expatriates. Saudi Arabia’s government was keen to protect the status quo and did not want to compromise its cultural values or standard of living by allowing foreigners to become a permanent part of society. In exceptional circumstances only, the King granted citizenship to a foreigner for outstanding service to the state over a number of years. Children of foreigners born in Saudi Arabia did not have rights of local citizenship; they automatically assumed the nationality of their parents. If it was available, Saudi citizenship would assure expatriates a secure and permanent living in Saudi Arabia; as it was, there was a fear among the non-Saudis that they would have to leave the country once their job contract expired. Under the circumstances, though my spiritual connection to Mecca was strong, my husband was convinced that Saudi Arabia did not provide any job security. So, in 1987 when Australia offered migration to highly skilled people, my husband decided to migrate to Australia for a better and more secure economic life. I agreed to his decision, but quite reluctantly because we were again moving to a non-Muslim part of the world, which would be culturally different and far away from my original homeland (Bangladesh). In Australia, we lived first in Brisbane, then Adelaide, and after three years we took our Australian citizenship. At that stage I loved the Barossa Valley and Victor Harbour in South Australia, and the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast in Queensland, but did not feel at home in Australia. We bought a house in Adelaide and I was a full time home-maker but was always apprehensive that my children (two boys) would lose their culture in this non-Muslim world. In 1990 we once again moved back to the Muslim world, this time to Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. My connection to this route was again spiritual. I valued the fact that we would live in a Muslim country and our children would be brought up in a Muslim environment. But my husband’s move was purely financial as he got a lucrative job offer in Muscat. We had another son in Oman. We enjoyed the luxurious lifestyle provided by my husband’s workplace and the service provided by the housemaid. I loved the beaches and freedom to drive my car, and I appreciated the friendly Omani people. I also enjoyed our frequent trips (4 hours flight) to my root, Dhaka, Bangladesh. So our children were raised within our ethnic and Islamic culture, remained close to my root (family in Dhaka), though they attended a British school in Muscat. But by the time I started considering Oman to be my second home, we had to leave once again for a place that could provide us with a more secure future. Oman was like Saudi Arabia; it employed expatriates only on a contract basis, and did not give them citizenship (not even fellow Muslims). So after 5 years it was time to move back to Australia. It was with great reluctance that I moved with my husband to Brisbane in 1995 because once again we were to face a different cultural context. As mentioned earlier, we lived in Brisbane in the late 1980s; I liked the weather, the landscape, but did not consider it home for cultural reasons. Our boys started attending expensive private schools and we bought a house in a prestigious Western suburb in Brisbane. Soon after arriving I started my tertiary education at the University of Queensland, and finished an MA in Historical Studies in Indian History in 1998. Still Australia was not my home. I kept thinking that we would return to my previous routes or the ‘imagined’ homeland somewhere in the Middle East, in close proximity to my root (Bangladesh), where we could remain economically secure in a Muslim country. But gradually I began to feel that Australia was becoming my ‘home’. I had gradually become involved in professional and community activities (with university colleagues, the Bangladeshi community and Muslim women’s organisations), and in retrospect I could see that this was an early stage of my ‘self-actualisation’ (Maslow). Through my involvement with diverse people, I felt emotionally connected with the concerns, hopes and dreams of my Muslim-Australian friends. Subsequently, I also felt connected with my mainstream Australian friends whose emotions and fears (9/11 incident, Bali bombing and 7/7 tragedy) were similar to mine. In late 1998 I started my PhD studies on the immigration history of Australia, with a particular focus on the historical settlement of Muslims in Australia. This entailed retrieving archival files and interviewing people, mostly Muslims and some mainstream Australians, and enquiring into relevant migration issues. I also became more active in community issues, and was not constrained by my circumstances. By circumstances, I mean that even though I belonged to a patriarchally structured Muslim family, where my husband was the main breadwinner, main decision-maker, my independence and research activities (entailing frequent interstate trips for data collection, and public speaking) were not frowned upon or forbidden (Khan 14-15); fortunately, my husband appreciated my passion for research and gave me his trust and support. This, along with the Muslim community’s support (interviews), and the wider community’s recognition (for example, the publication of my letters in Australian newspapers, interviews on radio and television) enabled me to develop my self-esteem and built up my bicultural identity as a Muslim in a predominantly Christian country and as a Bangladeshi-Australian. In 2005, for the sake of a better job opportunity, my husband moved to the UK, but this time I asserted that I would not move again. I felt that here in Australia (now in Perth) I had a job, an identity and a home. This time my husband was able to secure a good job back in Australia and was only away for a year. I no longer dream of finding a home in the Middle East. Through my bicultural identity here in Australia I feel connected to the wider community and to the Muslim umma. However, my attachment to the umma has become ambivalent. I feel proud of my Australian-Muslim identity but I am concerned about the jihadi ideology of militant Muslims. By jihadi ideology, I mean the extremist ideology of the al-Qaeda terrorist group (Farrar 2007). The Muslim umma now incorporates both moderate and radical Muslims. The radical Muslims (though only a tiny minority of 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide) pose a threat to their moderate counterparts as well as to non-Muslims. In the UK, some second- and third-generation Muslims identify themselves with the umma rather than their parents’ homelands or their country of birth (Husain). It should not be a matter of concern if these young Muslims adopt a ‘pure’ Muslim identity, providing at the same time they are loyal to their country of residence. But when they resort to terrorism with their ‘pure’ Muslim identity (e.g., the 7/7 London bombers) they defame my religion Islam, and undermine my spiritual connection to the umma. As a 1st generation immigrant, the defining criteria of my ‘homeliness’ in Australia are my ethno-cultural and religious identity (which includes my family), my active citizenship, and my community development/contribution through my research work – all of which allow me a sense of efficacy in my life. My ethnic and religious identities generally co-exist equally, but when I see some Muslims kill my fellow Australians (such as the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2005) my Australian identity takes precedence. I feel for the victims and condemn the perpetrators. On the other hand, when I see politics play a role over the human rights issues (e.g., the Tampa incident), my religious identity begs me to comment on it (see Kabir, Muslims in Australia 295-305). Problematising ‘Home’ for Muslim Australians In the European context, Grillo (863) and Werbner (904), and in the Australian context, Kabir (Muslims in Australia) and Poynting and Mason, have identified the diversity within Islam (national, ethnic, religious etc). Werbner (904) notes that in spite of the “wishful talk of the emergence of a ‘British Islam’, even today there are Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Arab mosques, as well as Turkish and Shia’a mosques”; thus British Muslims retain their separate identities. Similarly, in Australia, the existence of separate mosques for the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Arab and Shia’a peoples indicates that Australian Muslims have also kept their ethnic identities discrete (Saeed 64-77). However, in times of crisis, such as the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, and the 1990-1991 Gulf crises, both British and Australian Muslims were quick to unite and express their Islamic identity by way of resistance (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 160-162; Poynting and Mason 68-70). In both British and Australian contexts, I argue that a peaceful rally or resistance is indicative of active citizenship of Muslims as it reveals their sense of belonging (also Werbner 905). So when a transmigrant Muslim wants to make a peaceful demonstration, the Western world should be encouraged, not threatened – as long as the transmigrant’s allegiances lie also with the host country. In the European context, Grillo (868) writes: when I asked Mehmet if he was planning to stay in Germany he answered without hesitation: ‘Yes, of course’. And then, after a little break, he added ‘as long as we can live here as Muslims’. In this context, I support Mehmet’s desire to live as a Muslim in a non-Muslim world as long as this is peaceful. Paradoxically, living a Muslim life through ijtihad can be either socially progressive or destructive. The Canadian Muslim feminist Irshad Manji relies on ijtihad, but so does Osama bin Laden! Manji emphasises that ijtihad can be, on the one hand, the adaptation of Islam using independent reasoning, hybridity and the contesting of ‘traditional’ family values (c.f. Doogue and Kirkwood 275-276, 314); and, on the other, ijtihad can take the form of conservative, patriarchal and militant Islamic values. The al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden espouses the jihadi ideology of Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), an Egyptian who early in his career might have been described as a Muslim modernist who believed that Islam and Western secular ideals could be reconciled. But he discarded that idea after going to the US in 1948-50; there he was treated as ‘different’ and that treatment turned him against the West. He came back to Egypt and embraced a much more rigid and militaristic form of Islam (Esposito 136). Other scholars, such as Cesari, have identified a third orientation – a ‘secularised Islam’, which stresses general beliefs in the values of Islam and an Islamic identity, without too much concern for practices. Grillo (871) observed Islam in the West emphasised diversity. He stressed that, “some [Muslims were] more quietest, some more secular, some more clamorous, some more negotiatory”, while some were exclusively characterised by Islamic identity, such as wearing the burqa (elaborate veils), hijabs (headscarves), beards by men and total abstinence from drinking alcohol. So Mehmet, cited above, could be living a Muslim life within the spectrum of these possibilities, ranging from an integrating mode to a strict, militant Muslim manner. In the UK context, Zubaida (96) contends that marginalised, culturally-impoverished youth are the people for whom radical, militant Islamism may have an appeal, though it must be noted that the 7/7 bombers belonged to affluent families (O’Sullivan 14; Husain). In Australia, Muslim Australians are facing three challenges. First, the Muslim unemployment rate: it was three times higher than the national total in 1996 and 2001 (Kabir, Muslims in Australia 266-278; Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 63). Second, some spiritual leaders have used extreme rhetoric to appeal to marginalised youth; in January 2007, the Australian-born imam of Lebanese background, Sheikh Feiz Mohammad, was alleged to have employed a DVD format to urge children to kill the enemies of Islam and to have praised martyrs with a violent interpretation of jihad (Chulov 2). Third, the proposed citizenship test has the potential to make new migrants’ – particularly Muslims’ – settlement in Australia stressful (Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79); in May 2007, fuelled by perceptions that some migrants – especially Muslims – were not integrating quickly enough, the Howard government introduced a citizenship test bill that proposes to test applicants on their English language skills and knowledge of Australian history and ‘values’. I contend that being able to demonstrate knowledge of history and having English language skills is no guarantee that a migrant will be a good citizen. Through my transmigrant history, I have learnt that developing a bond with a new place takes time, acceptance and a gradual change of identity, which are less likely to happen when facing assimilationist constraints. I spoke English and studied history in the United States, but I did not consider it my home. I did not speak the Arabic language, and did not study Middle Eastern history while I was in the Middle East, but I felt connected to it for cultural and religious reasons. Through my knowledge of history and English language proficiency I did not make Australia my home when I first migrated to Australia. Australia became my home when I started interacting with other Australians, which was made possible by having the time at my disposal and by fortunate circumstances, which included a fairly high level of efficacy and affluence. If I had been rejected because of my lack of knowledge of ‘Australian values’, or had encountered discrimination in the job market, I would have been much less willing to embrace my host country and call it home. I believe a stringent citizenship test is more likely to alienate would-be citizens than to induce their adoption of values and loyalty to their new home. Conclusion Blunt (5) observes that current studies of home often investigate mobile geographies of dwelling and how it shapes one’s identity and belonging. Such geographies of home negotiate from the domestic to the global context, thus mobilising the home beyond a fixed, bounded and confining location. Similarly, in this paper I have discussed how my mobile geography, from the domestic (root) to global (route), has shaped my identity. Though I received a degree of culture shock in the United States, loved the Middle East, and was at first quite resistant to the idea of making Australia my second home, the confidence I acquired in residing in these ‘several homes’ were cumulative and eventually enabled me to regard Australia as my ‘home’. I loved the Middle East, but I did not pursue an active involvement with the Arab community because I was a busy mother. Also I lacked the communication skill (fluency in Arabic) with the local residents who lived outside the expatriates’ campus. I am no longer a cultural freak. I am no longer the same Bangladeshi woman who saw her ethnic and Islamic culture as superior to all other cultures. I have learnt to appreciate Australian values, such as tolerance, ‘a fair go’ and multiculturalism (see Kabir, “What Does It Mean” 62-79). My bicultural identity is my strength. With my ethnic and religious identity, I can relate to the concerns of the Muslim community and other Australian ethnic and religious minorities. And with my Australian identity I have developed ‘a voice’ to pursue active citizenship. Thus my biculturalism has enabled me to retain and merge my former home with my present and permanent home of Australia. References Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, New York: Verso, 1983. Australian Bureau of Statistics: Census of Housing and Population, 1996 and 2001. Blunt, Alison. Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. Blunt, Alison, and Robyn Dowling. Home. London and New York: Routledge, 2006. Cesari, Jocelyne. “Muslim Minorities in Europe: The Silent Revolution.” In John L. Esposito and Burgat, eds., Modernising Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in Europe and the Middle East. London: Hurst, 2003. 251-269. Chulov, Martin. “Treatment Has Sheik Wary of Returning Home.” Weekend Australian 6-7 Jan. 2007: 2. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. Seattle: University of Washington, 1997. Doogue, Geraldine, and Peter Kirkwood. Tomorrow’s Islam: Uniting Old-Age Beliefs and a Modern World. Sydney: ABC Books, 2005. Esposito, John. The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 3rd ed. New York, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Farrar, Max. “When the Bombs Go Off: Rethinking and Managing Diversity Strategies in Leeds, UK.” International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations 6.5 (2007): 63-68. Grillo, Ralph. “Islam and Transnationalism.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.5 (Sep. 2004): 861-878. Hall, Stuart. Polity Reader in Cultural Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Huntington, Samuel, P. The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of World Order. London: Touchstone, 1998. Husain, Ed. The Islamist: Why I Joined Radical Islam in Britain, What I Saw inside and Why I Left. London: Penguin, 2007. Kabir, Nahid. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History. London: Kegan Paul, 2005. ———. “What Does It Mean to Be Un-Australian: Views of Australian Muslim Students in 2006.” People and Place 15.1 (2007): 62-79. Khan, Shahnaz. Aversion and Desire: Negotiating Muslim Female Identity in the Diaspora. Toronto: Women’s Press, 2002. Manji, Irshad. The Trouble with Islam Today. Canada:Vintage, 2005. Maslow, Abraham. Motivation and Personality. New York: Harper, 1954. O’Sullivan, J. “The Real British Disease.” Quadrant (Jan.-Feb. 2006): 14-20. Poynting, Scott, and Victoria Mason. “The Resistible Rise of Islamophobia: Anti-Muslim Racism in the UK and Australia before 11 September 2001.” Journal of Sociology 43.1 (2007): 61-86. Saeed, Abdallah. Islam in Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2003. Smith, Anthony D. National Identity. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991. Spencer, Philip, and Howard Wollman. Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. London: Sage, 2002. Vertovec, Stevens. The Hindu Diaspora: Comparative Patterns. London: Routledge. 2000. Werbner, Pnina, “Theorising Complex Diasporas: Purity and Hybridity in the South Asian Public Sphere in Britain.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 30.5 (2004): 895-911. Wood, Dennis. “The Diaspora, Community and the Vagrant Space.” In Cynthia Vanden Driesen and Ralph Crane, eds., Diaspora: The Australasian Experience. New Delhi: Prestige, 2005. 59-64. Zubaida, Sami. “Islam in Europe: Unity or Diversity.” Critical Quarterly 45.1-2 (2003): 88-98. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kabir, Nahid. "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective." M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>. APA Style Kabir, N. (Aug. 2007) "Why I Call Australia ‘Home’?: A Transmigrant’s Perspective," M/C Journal, 10(4). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/15-kabir.php>.

We live in an era in which the ‘active learner’ has become accepted as the fundamental goal of good teaching from early childcare to university education (Silberman; University of Melbourne University). In this paper we reflect upon the arts of stillness in contemporary classrooms based on research in schools across Sydney (Watkins and Noble).Part of the context for this paper is the way ‘activity’ has been uncritically elevated to a pedagogic principle in contemporary education. Over several decades a critique of traditional or more formal approaches to education has produced an increasing emphasis on learning that is said to be more engaged often under labels such as ‘discovery’ or ‘experiential’ learning, enquiry methods or ‘learning by doing’. This desire to give students a greater role in the educational process is admirable. It is also seen to be more democratic and ‘relevant’ to young people (Cope & Kalantzis). Positioned against a straw man of ‘passive learning’, characterised by the dominance of teacher direction, rote learning and individuated desk work, this active learning or progressivist perspective on education privileges student ‘ownership’ of curriculum, group-based activity and the ‘doing’ of things. Stillness is characterised as a ‘problem of passivity’, a ‘disease’ of ‘chalk and talk’ (Lucas 84-85). In its most extreme form, this emphasis on activity has been translated into ‘educational kinesiology’ and ‘brain gym’, in which physical movement is seen to have a direct, beneficial effect on learning, often in place of content-based curriculum (Lucas 50). In this paper we don’t engage in a critique of ‘active learning’ per se; rather, taking seriously Foucault’s insistence on the productivity of discipline, we argue stillness is crucial to scholarly labour.Part of the context for this research is public anxiety about ‘Asian success’ within Australian education systems. Students from ‘Asian’ backgrounds are often perceived as having a cultural proneness towards educational achievement (Duffy 28). These perceptions rest on assumptions about ‘Asian values’ of family, sacrifice, hard work and success (Robinson). These assumptions, however, are problematic (Wu and Singh), and carry a concern that such students are ‘passive’ in the classroom, deferential to traditional forms of education and obsessed with exams. Certainly, despite their success, these students don’t conform to what many teachers favour as the ideal learner within the dominant paradigm of progressivism (Cope & Kalantzis 4). These anxieties have also emerged in response to the proliferation of coaching colleges which are seen to transgress western notions of childhood.The research – based on a parent survey in 10 primary schools, interviews with Year 3 teachers, parents and students and classroom observations in six of these schools – explored the extent to which a ‘disposition’ to academic achievement can be explained by ethnicity or relates to a complex set of socio-cultural factors. The report from this study engages with the broad question of the relationship between ethnicity and, what we call, following Bourdieu, the ‘scholarly habitus’ (Watkins & Noble). Against a pathologising of cultural background, it examines the ways achievement is embodied as orientations to learning through different home and school practices. Here we use examples drawn from the observations to focus on the capacities for self-discipline and stillness that can foster achievement. Against the tendency to equate stillness with inaction, we argue that a 'productive stillness' underlines capacities for sustained attention and self-direction. This bodily discipline entails a state of composure, a 'staying' of movement which entails a readiness for action necessary for academic tasks. While not all stillness is ‘productive’, we argue there are forms of stillness which are conducive to the formation of the 'scholarly habitus' (Bourdieu, Logic). The Bodily Capacity for Scholarly LabourBourdieu (State) refers to dispositions that are valued in education: self-discipline, the ability to work intensively, confidence, independence, contemplation, abstraction and the value of excellence. Yet he is less interested in exploring these capacities in relation to teaching practice than in discussing them as forms of social distinction. Educational applications of Bourdieu also focus on the social reproduction of inequality, separate to the technical competencies of schooling, although Bourdieu does not differentiate between them (Lareau and Weininger). To understand the uneven distribution of educational competencies, however, they first need to be examined as bodily capacities that are enabling.To do this, let us contrast two classrooms in Broughton PS, a large school in a low-to-mid SES area in Sydney’s inner south-west with large numbers of Arabic-speaking and Asian students, and smaller groups of Anglo, Pasifika and African students. One class is an enrichment class, in which high ability students are placed and where there is a strong focus on academic work. The other class has many of the least able students. The enrichment class comprises students of mostly Chinese background, with a smaller number of Vietnamese, Indian and Anglo background. There is one Arabic-speaking student but no Pasifika students. The second class is more diverse, and has many Pasifika students, with fewer Chinese, Arabic and Anglo students.The first time we saw the enrichment class was after recess. Students shuffled into their classroom and sat down at their desks with minimum fuss. Many of them pulled out books and read them while waiting for their teacher, Heather, to enter. If they talked, it was quietly, and often about what they were reading. They sat still: the posture of most students was upright, even when they were working. Some students occasionally rocked back, stretching arms and legs. Overall, however, these students had mastered the arts of stillness. Sonia, of Chinese background, is a case in point – she was always work-focused, sitting still and getting on with it. Even during unstructured discussion she remained task-orientated displaying a substantial investment in her work.In the second class the students bustled in, taking a while to settle. Kids stood around chatting, playing, shoving each other until the teacher, Betty, shouted at them, which she did a lot. The noise of the students never abated, even as the teacher was giving instructions, and it frequently reached high levels. There was constant movement as students came in late, and teachers and students wandered in and out. Kids visited other kids; one student rolled on the floor. When they were directed to sit at the front, several squatted, some sat away from the area, several simply stood. When they were at their desks, many slouched forward or leant back; a large number of the students rocked on their chairs during the sessions, some constantly. The directions of the teacher to put ‘feet on floor’ and ‘hands on heads’, or putting her fingers to her lips to gesture for them to be quiet, shouting or by counting back from 5 had little effect. This class was a very active group, but little work got done. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness appropriate for academic activities. In the enrichment class, the teacher didn’t have to check noise or movement very often – the students had internalised these behaviours as capacities that directed their work. Occasionally, they policed each other if they were disrupted. There was occasional talk, but it tended to be in whispers. If the task required it, there was plenty of discussion; and some of the students didn’t hesitate in challenging the teacher when she made a mistake. These students’ stillness and quiet was by-and-large productive and appropriate. We call this a state of composure, a readiness for activity. When required, this class was capable of concentration and application; or, alternatively, discussion. We call it composure because it links to Foucault’s (162-3) insight that modern forms of discipline rest on a ‘composition of forces’ which not only produce an efficient organisation but individuals with a disposition towards acting skilfully.Betty’s class, in contrast, was in a state of decomposure, with unproductive movement and noise. They were rarely still, posture was poor, and many students spent little time attending to work or the teacher. They were rarely ready for work when the teacher called them to it. Rather they saw a change in activity as a chance for movement and chatter. This was not the caged resentment that Willis described in his analysis of resistance to school amongst working class boys. It was not a form of conscious insubordination, though a similar form of ‘self-damnation’ was evident.Sonny, a Samoan boy in this class, in contrast to Sonia, struggled to stay on-task for more than a few minutes, and clearly had little investment in his work. He generally didn’t care where he was at with the task, and expected the teacher to constantly direct him. Sonny was a very large child – the teacher commented that his physical presence in the class was an ongoing problem as he was unaware of other children, constantly bowling them over. The teacher struggled to manage Sonny’s body. He talked frequently and loudly, and leant back on his chair despite being placed in a way that pinned him against a cupboard. His location in the class was telling. He was sitting at a table with students who followed tasks, separated from the usual troublemakers. This is significant for another reason of which Sonny was not fully conscious. At one stage in the lesson he sat bolt upright and pointing at each of his tablemates, yelled, ‘Miss, why am I sitting with all Chinese?’ Betty apparently hoped that being with the quieter Chinese students Sonny would not only be out of harm’s way, he might absorb the skills of application they possessed!This uneven distribution of capacities was also seen in the way different classes undertook a maths assessment task on fractions. While other classes treated it as a general lesson, in the enrichment class it was completed in test conditions, which the teacher later commented the kids loved. The teacher explained the task and the conditions – that there should be no copying, to work in silence, concentrate on the questions, the amount of time they’d get and what to do when they finished (further maths work). She initiated an enthusiastic class discussion of the topic (fractions), reminded them of work they had completed in this area and got them to go through basic aspects of fractions. The task was distributed and students immediately filled in their name and the date. When they commenced their work she moved around the room monitoring their progress. Occasionally she directed a student to reread the instructions and towards the end she reminded them to check their work and then gave them a five-minute warning. There was little movement, fiddling or talk, unless it was a question of clarification directed to the teacher. Most finished and moved quickly onto their maths workbooks. There was a lively discussion afterwards as the class went through the questions and discussed the answers and procedure. Overall, there was a clear sense of a strong investment in the process and the product: with many showing real annoyance when they got things wrong, and deep pleasure when they were correct. While the contrast between these classes is clear, and show an uneven distribution of particular capacities, we should be careful not to make a simple assumption that stillness, quiet and obedience are good, and their opposites bad. Apart from the fact that the enrichment class showed itself capable of vociferous and physical behaviour (as when they were completing a craft activity), the point is really about the appropriateness and productivity of these embodied competencies for particular tasks, and the ability to move between these capacities when necessary.Stillness, and its attendant capacities described above, is not a good in and of itself. There is another kind of stillness that we found in a class in another school we observed. Chestervale PS was in a middle class area in a northern suburb of Sydney that was favoured by parents of Chinese background. This class was by no means as unruly as Sonny’s – classroom behaviour was generally well managed by the teacher, and the students were fairly adept at following tasks. Two students we observed – Walter (of Chinese background) and Eric (of Anglo background) – seemed at first glance to be well-behaved students who did their work. Watching these boys for several hours, however, we became aware of the fact that for large chunks of the classroom time they did nothing, but were not recognised as doing so. Walter spent 45 minutes without adding anything to his writing – a straightforward comprehension task. This was also run in near-test-like conditions of quiet concentration, and Walter, apart from a few minor distractions, seemed to be focused on the pages in front of him but actually wrote nothing in the lesson. The teacher strolled around checking students’ work and giving advice or praise as needed – she managed the class quite well – but seemed not to notice when she checked Walter’s work that he hadn’t written anything. Eric, rather more obviously distracted, but who nevertheless seemed to complete 1-2 questions, got by with little work by being, like Walter, generally quiet. His distractions amounted to little more than staring at the contents of the shelf next to him and fidgeting. Walter and Eric were acquiring specific types of capacities – skills in getting out of work that are also fundamentally unproductive. Walter’s general abilities allowed him to float through the class, but Eric’s failure to develop productive capacities was demonstrated in his poor reading and writing levels. We don’t wish to participate in the academic romanticisation of such tactics as ‘resistance’, however, because while this ‘ordinary art’ is diversionary it does not ultimately work to ‘the advantage’ of the student (de Certeau 29-31). Rather, it is simply disabling.This example highlights two important points. First, as mentioned, stillness and quiet are not in themselves signs of educational ‘productivity’ – such capacities always have to be seen in context, related to specific tasks and aims. Many teachers may encourage stillness and quiet – even reward it – simply because it produces an orderly classroom. Second, we should be wary of looking to ethnicity as an explanation of the uneven distribution of capacities: Eric, as an Anglo student, isn’t subject to the kind of cultural pathologising usually reserved for students of particular ethnic backgrounds and Walter, clearly, did not match the stereotype of an academically engaged Chinese student. These issues are taken up in the larger report. Disciplining the Scholarly HabitusOur point is not just to outline some differences in abilities, but to begin to analyse how these contribute to the dispositions, or lack thereof, of the scholarly habitus, to think about how these capacities relate to particular kinds of practices at home and school which instil specific kinds of discipline, and thus eventually to elaborate links between schooling and cultural background. Neither popular pathologies of cultural difference nor sociologies of education which reduce these complexities to either class or gender adequately account for the capacities and practices at stake here (Watkins and Noble).The comparative account of these vignettes of classroom practice provide examples of different disciplinary forms demonstrating the ways in which school structures and pedagogic practices affect students’ engagement in learning and overall performance at school. As indicated, the notion of discipline used here does not simply pertain to control, operating as a negative force inhibiting learning – though a disabling discipline of control was apparent in the pedagogy some teachers employed and also framed some whole school practices. Discipline, here, has a broader meaning. As Foucault intended, it also refers to the knowledge and skills which need to be mastered in order to achieve success in particular fields. Foucault famously analyses the roles of discipline in the functioning of modern institutions. He describes the emergence of the school in modern times as ‘a machine for learning’. Despite his much-repeated insistence on the productive and enabling nature of discipline (and his insight that discipline ‘is no longer simply an art of distributing bodies, … but of composing forces in order to obtain an efficient machine’), it is the machine-like and oppressive quality of discipline that is often the focus. In relation to the nineteenth century school, for example, he describes it as a ‘morality of obedience’ based on a prescriptive discipline of absolute silence and a Pavlovian process of ‘signalisation’ and response (164-7).Sonia’s class (the enrichment class), however, is not one where passivity or docility is the rule – and illustrates better the form of disciplined, productive stillness crucial to educational activity. As this first group of students demonstrates, this discipline takes a material form, whereby students’ bodies are capacitated through the control and focus they embody. This recalls Foucault’s other focus captured in his view that ‘a disciplined body is the prerequisite of an efficient gesture’ (152). This discipline predisposes students towards particular types of endeavour; a discipline that takes the form of dispositions as in the scholarly habitus. Differing degrees of discipline resulting from the repeated performance of certain practices is what distinguishes the three groups of students in this paper.Writing, listening and talking in class are all forms of labour that require bodily control as well as forms of knowledge. Sonia, for example, evinced capacities of stillness, quiet, attention, self-direction and self-discipline which disposed her to engaged learning. This is a state of composure which evinces a readiness for activity. When required, she was capable of sustained application. This is not to be mistaken for docility – her stillness and quiet were productive for academic engagement. In contrast, many in Sonny’s class were far from composed. They did not have sustained capacities of stillness and quiet or the capacity for self-control in an educational environment. They manifested different types of bodily capacities which incline them, like Sonny, towards disengagement. Eric and Walter are different cases yet again. They displayed a degree of quiet and stillness that was unproductive, that didn’t ready them for engaged activity.This sense of bodily control also operates at basic levels of mastery as well as readiness for intellectual activity. Indeed, low-order capacities are stepping stones for higher order skills. It is difficult to develop literacy, for example, without mastering the physical skills of writing. Such skills require a certain posture and control for perfecting letter and word formation. Such mastery, for example, is needed for writing to become ‘transparent’: the student stops ‘thinking’ about forming the letter or word with the pen, and concentrates on the content of their writing. The physical nature of the labour of writing stops being a conscious task and becomes a largely unconscious capacity, which lends itself to the development of capacities in composition, analysis and abstraction. Neither Walter nor Eric had developed a mastery of the pen or their own body. In the case of Eric, Deirdre, his teacher, commented that he had ‘immature fine motor skills’, which affected his writing. She pointed out that ‘when your writing doesn’t come easy it is going to take longer’, which meant Eric ‘rarely completes things’. ConclusionAs Vitalis argued thousands of years ago, with writing, the whole body labours (cited in Ong 95). But this form of labour entails stillness, self-control and the bodily capacity for sustained intellectual engagement. Educational practice needs to not only return to an appreciation of the arts of stillness but to rethink the ways in which activity in learning is understood; the ways in which an active mind is reliant upon a composed yet capacitated body and the particular pedagogies that, from the early years of school, can promote this form of corporeal governance. ReferencesBourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge: Polity, 1990.———. The State Nobility. Trans. Lauretta Clough. 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