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This study examines pluralism and its impact on the political and religious balance in Omani Society, whether religious, linguistic, ethnic, and confessional pluralism or geographical and cultural pluralism. It frames the issue within its geographical and historical contexts and provides an anthropological account of structural patterns in a Gulf state which has rarely been studied. The research will observe three types of discourse, each of which attempts to redefine the components of Omani society and culture. The religious discourse and its significant effect on religious tolerance is the most dynamic discourse. In this context, the convergence of sectarian religious discourse in Oman will be discussed along with the extent to which the Omani Sultanate is influenced by the widespread sectarianism in the Greater Middle East today. The cultural discourse will also be discussed in its contemporary modern form, despite being structurally, sociologically, and politically incomplete. Finally, the paper also explores political discourse and its consolidation of pluralism as a concept in Omani society.

Abstract Human resources play a key role in socio-economic growth and development in any society. Over the past forty years, research into various educational indicators particularly adult literacy rates and population enrollment in higher education institutions, indicate significant progress made towards gender equality in Oman. Omani women have shown remarkable attainment in entrance examinations at higher educational institutions, and they have also achieved noteworthy academic performance in their respectable fields of study. Although, women have had greater success in their educational achievements, this is not reflected in their participation in the labour market.The purpose of this essay is to analyze Oman’s educational reform, its successes and challenges, relative to the overall development objectives of the country, with particular emphasis on the female population as actors in/beneficiaries of the reform.

When Sultan Qabus issued Decree 101 on November 6, 1996, Oman was the last Arab country to implement a constitutional document. However, the political impact of this document is controversial: Whereas some consider the Basic Law a step towards democratization, others see merely a continuation of traditional policies. In this article I investigate the innovative potential of the Basic Law. Against the background of Omani and regional history and European and Islamic constitutional thought, I review the Decree with regard to authority and legitimation. I suggest that the law is mainly symbolic in character. It exploits tribal and Islamic concepts to create a historically unfounded notion of a homogeneous state. The civil liberties it grants do not extend to the public sphere. I conclude that Oman's Basic Law does nothing more than to freeze the status quo, according to which the Sultan remains the only recognized authority in the state.

The present article analyzes the historiographic works of three Omani ʿulamāʾ during the twentieth century. It tries to contextualize them in the historical period in which they were written, showing the peculiarity of Omani literature in the context of the Arab world. This is due to various factors: first of all the development of its history constantly characterized by the Ibadhi religion. For example the nahḍah and the reformism have taken on different meanings in Oman, especially in the modernizing era of Sultan Qābūs’s rule. Omani historiography is part and the product of this peculiarity. It narrates the changes and events in Oman and shows how the historiographer is affected by history, culture and religion.

This article explores Talāq, which refers to the right of men in Islam to divorce their wives, with particular emphasis upon triple Talāq. This article seeks to answer the question of how triple Talāq at one time is applied in modern-day Muslim societies, in light of contemporary socio-economic conditions. The historical events surrounding the emergence of triple Talāq in Islam demonstrates the possibility of its renewal in Islamic law. This is significant because it demonstrates that, contrary to the teaching of many Muslim scholars including contemporary Ibadī scholars in Oman, change and renewal are not inimical to Islam but rather intrinsic to it. I argue here that the inflexibility of Ibadī scholars regarding triple Talāq at one time promotes gender inequality and discriminatory practices in Oman, especially towards women. This article begins by exploring the different methods of Talāq in Islamic law. It then focuses on triple Talāq at one time (in one event). The discussion of triple Talāq at one time aims to explore the interaction between legal, economic and social factors, on one hand, and how these factors have affected the law of triple Talāq during both pre-modern and contemporary Muslim societies. Subsequently, the article will examine how contemporary Muslim scholars react to the new social and economic factors associated with triple Talāq at one time.

berian Umayyad relations with the Ibāḍī Rustumids and the Ṣufrī Midrārids have not been well understood. After an initial period of Khārijite rebellion against the Umayyads in the 120s/740s, in which Khārijite revolutions in North Africa spilled over into the Iberian Peninsula, profound ties developed between the Umayyad amīrs, and the Midrārid and Rustumid imāms. In the far Maghrib, where ‘Abbāsid power did not reach, trade—especially the trade in human beings—brought these erstwhile political and religious enemies together. Relationships between these groups lasted well beyond the destruction of the Midrārid and Rustumid dynasties in the early fourth/tenth century. This paper re-examines the textual and numismatic evidence for Ibāḍī, Ṣufrī, Iberian Umayyad (and even early ‘Abbāsid) relations in order to propose that strong economic interests based primarily in the slave trade underlay the political ties that developed in the late second/eighth century between these groups.

Abstract The power of the Al Bu Sa'id Sultans of Oman was widely known as based on delicate balances of forces (and ethnic-social groups), deeply different among them. In fact, the elements that composed the nineteenth century Omani leadership were, and had always been, generally 'divided' amongst three different ethnic groups: the Baluch, the Asian merchant communities and the African regional leaders (Mwiny Mkuu). Within this framework, the role played by European Powers, particularly by the Treaties signed between the Sultans of Oman and the East India Company for abolishing slavery, and by the arms trade was crucial for the development of the Gulf and the Western Indian Ocean international networks They highly contributed to the gradual 'shifting' of the Omanis from the slave trade to clove and spice cultivation – the major economic source of Zanzibar Island – along the coastal area of Sub-Saharan East Africa. The role played by the Omani Sultans – the myth – within the western traditional historiography, which often described them as firmly controlling both the Arabian and African littorals and the major trading ports of the Western Indian Ocean during the nineteenth century, will be reexamined in this paper, taking into account recent research studies and international debates in the topic. The new hypothesis consists of a different perception of the concepts of power and control (political and territorial) of the Western Indian Ocean littorals by the most famous of the Sultans of Oman during the nineteenth century: Saiyid Sa'id bin Sultan Al Bu Sa'id.

Emily Ruete’s Memoirs of an Arabian Princess was first published, in German, in 1886, on the threshold of the nineteenth-century imperialist “Scramble for Africa.” Ruete’s exilic relationship with both Europe and Africa made her an insider-outsider, well positioned to capture the imperial stage of Enlightenment Orientalism in flux and transmit it across the oceans to a public who would have found the life she describes unimaginable. In relaying the story of how Sayyida Salme became Emily Ruete, the Memoirs employs a mode of translation that is simultaneously linguistic, cultural, religious, and material. In Ruete’s case, translation is an embodied act. As a translator, Salme/Ruete critically and comparatively translates Zanzibar, and by extension the “Orient,” for a Western audience by virtue of her body being able to enter into and to pass through multiple social and cultural spaces.

Abstract African Muslim societies were characterised, in the 20th century, by the emergence of reformist movements that have gained, since the 1970s, major social, religious and political influence in a number of countries, including Northern Nigeria, Senegal, Zanzibar and Sudan. These movements of reform are, however, not recent phenomena. Rather, they look back to a history of several generations of reformist endeavour and thought that may have been influenced, to a certain extent, by external sources of inspiration. This contribution shows how the biographies of major reformist personalities such as Cheikh Touré in Senegal, Abubakar Gumi in Northern Nigeria and 'Abdallâh Sâlih al-Farsy in East Africa reflect a number of common features of Islamic reform in Africa, while their programmes of reform were shaped, at the same time, by local frame conditions.

The role of Iranian merchants in the maritime trade of the Indian Ocean basin from antiquity up to the 16th century is often underestimated. From scholarly histories to popular culture the “Muslim sailor” is typically portrayed as being an Arab. In fact, from pre-Islamic times the principal actors in Indian Ocean trade were predominantly Persian, as attested by the archaeological data, local written records, and the names of places and individuals.

Through a multi-sited ethnological lens, this article highlights the influences of political and economic dynamics on the Omani-Zanzibari family construction. It explores the fluid nature of the Omani-Swahili identity, the role of the family institution in regulating morality and sexuality, and the impacts of political events and forces on the development of multiple family configurations. It further analyzes key societal concepts such as marriage, legitimacy, succession, post-forced-displacement adaptation, and evolutionary identity. Through a qualitative study, the author uses fieldwork in Oman and Zanzibar, a range of primary archival sources, dialogues with prominent Omani-Zanzibari personalities, and published and private personal memoirs reflecting key historical periods in the development of Omani-Zanzibari identities to speak to the themes of the Omani polity that are unique to the Gulf.