Gender Reconfigurations and Family Ideology in Abdul Rauf Felpete’s Latin American Haqqaniyya

Autor(en)
Marta Dominguez Diaz
Abstrakt

This article discusses the ideas about gender contained in the Enseñanzas Sufíes Para Los Tiempos Actuales, a text by Abdul Rauf Felpete, the leader of the Naqshbandiyya Haqqaniyya in Latin America, probably the largest Sufi group in the continent. I analyse these ideas against the backdrop context in which they were produced: on the one hand, a conservative Sufi Islamic frame inspired by Nazim al-Haqqani’s ideas, and on the other, an Argentinian society that was incurring profound gender-related societal changes at the time when the shaykh delivered the sermons contained in the book. This historical moment was characterised by a growing feminist and LGTBQ+ activism and the arrival of a progressive government in Argentina, which over time, positioned this Latin American country in the vanguard of gender and sexual equality rights in the Spanish speaking world. In this context, Rauf Felpete proposes a gender model inspired in a Haqqani form of Islamic conservatism as a remedy to address what he perceives as the threat of civilizational decadence brought about by these changes. I discuss Rauf Felpete’s family ideology, a set of moral norms based on gender determinism and pronatalism, articulated through two key concepts, first, domesticity, understood as a way to regulate female behaviour and, second, motherhood, viewed as a Godly ordained natural instinct. In order to put into practice these gender norms, the devout Haqqani is called to move to the countryside; rural communes are presented as the only possible way of living a pious and authentically Islamic life, a mode of living that implies profound reconfigurations of gender (and of lifestyle, more generally) for his Latin American followers

Organisation(en)
Institut für Religionswissenschaft
Journal
Religions
Band
13
Seiten
1-23
Anzahl der Seiten
23
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13030238
Publikationsdatum
03-2022
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
603909 Religionswissenschaft
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Religious studies
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/cda539f1-c0a1-4aba-80b2-ac7f7fc163ec