ABSTRACT
Now that we have an understanding of what is meant both by translocality and by Islam, we can go on to explore translocal Islam. The notion of diaspora and more specifically of a ‘Muslim diaspora’ will be a recurrent trope throughout the discussions to follow. This term has been making increasingly frequent appearances in various literatures of late, but there is little consensus as to its exact connotations.1 Despite this definitional plurality, diaspora does seem to possess something like a core dynamic, one that is perhaps best summarised by looking at the idea embodied by its Greek root: ‘a dispersal or scattering of seeds’. The notion of travel is hence intrinsic to diaspora. It is about people moving from one place to another – but remembering where they came from, perhaps even desiring to return. Diaspora is also about how that place travels with them, and how it changes in travel. As Eickelman and Piscatori write: ‘What seems clear is that travel and home – motion and place – constitute one process, and that in travelling beyond one’s local time and space, one enters a mythical realm where home, the “fixed point” of departure and return, is re-imagined and further travel inspired’.2 ‘Travelling theory’, as examined in the previous chapter, is hence central to any understanding of diasporic identity.
