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Food has always been intimately linked to religious identities whether through practices, restrictions, or as a tool for collective memory in religious communities. Food helps create spaces for understanding of religious values within a community but also inspires amalgamation of diverse religious and cultural networks and practices. Food helps cultivate trans-regional support networks and bring about a sense of belonging and renewal in times of crisis and beyond.
This paper takes an ethnographic approach to discuss the Faiz-ul-Mawaid (FMB), an initiative of the Dawoodi Bohra community, which provides one wholesome meal to every household through its network of community kitchens worldwide. Through a consideration of the operations, perception, and impact of this initiative, this paper assesses how FMB helps create and preserve a religious identity for the Bohras. It also contends that FMB has helped change community interpretations and attitudes to create more equitable gender roles and responsibilities.
This paper examines the transmission of Islamic sensibilities by Black and Muslim small business owners through a sandwich and its variations. The business owners who make these sandwiches—often known as the "Muslim fish hoagie"—connect their labor to a longer tradition of preparing "clean" food. I argue that the Muslim fish hoagie emerges from and shapes an "economy of cleanliness." This network of bodies, objects, and discourses orients Muslim and non-Muslim consumers alike toward objects that feel "clean," as shaped by Nation of Islam discourses and popular notions of health and well-being. Based on 12 months of extensive site visits, interviews, and digital mapping in Philadelphia, this paper focuses on the transmission of the Muslim fish hoagie to two businesses. Ultimately, these Muslim business owners creatively enact "cleanliness" to transmit Islamic tradition and navigate the precarity brought on by racialized urban change and economic hardship.
The phrase “fasting food” appears to be an oxymoron, since a fast usually implies an absence of food. Within Hindu traditions however, this is not always the case. While there are many types of fasting within Hindu traditions such as nīrjala (without water), sajala (drinking only water), rasāhāri (drinking just juice and liquids), and phalāhāri (surviving off fruit). Yet, many non-fruit ingredients are now included in this final category, such as potatoes and tapioca. This paper examines how and why these ingredients, not available when the term phalāhāri was first used, were introduced, negotiated, accepted and assimilated into devotional fasting practices, particularly in nineteenth and twentieth century Gujarat, by exploring devotional literature and the trading routes of Hindu merchants—suggesting a transcultural process of adaptation.