"Women, the Recited Qur'an, and Islamic Music in Contemporary Indonesia" takes readers to the heart of religious musical praxis in Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world. Anne K. Rasmussen explores a rich public soundscape, where women recite the divine texts of the Qur'an, and where an extraordinary diversity of Arab-influenced Islamic musical styles and genres, also performed by women, flourishes. Based on unique and revealing ethnographic research beginning at the end of Suharto's "New Order" and continuing into the era of "Reformation," the book considers the powerful role of music in the expression of religious nationalism. In particular, it focuses on musical style, women's roles, and the ideological and aesthetic issues raised by the Indonesian style of recitation.

The summer of 2022 saw the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, the first time in British history that a monarch has reached this remarkable milestone. As the event was the first of its kind to be televised, images from the ceremony inside Westminster Abbey are instantly recognisable. Far less familiar are the scenes in the streets outside, where huge crowds assembled to see a procession of state coaches and historic regiments marching past public buildings festooned with patriotic banners and colourful grandstands erected outside many famous landmarks. Using a private collection of more than 200 rare images of London's West End, Protect and Keep looks back to the day that the Queen pledged herself to her country. It provides a unique and precious record of an historic occasion: the day of the Coronation as it was seen by ordinary members of the public.

We Sing We Stay Together (Cantamos y Permanecemos Juntos): El libro Plegarias Del Servicio Matutino del Shabbat es un libro de plegarias para acompanar el canto en el servicio de culto del Shabbat (sabado) por la manana, con texto transliterado a caracteres del alfabeto latino, traduccion y explicacion del servicio de culto. Su objetivo principal es simplificar al maximo el aprendizaje de las oraciones, como soporte de ayuda para escuchar y cantar con el CD de 64 canciones del mismo nombre; pero tambien constituye, por derecho propio, una herramienta de aprendizaje que explica el significado de las palabras y del servicio de culto. Nuestras plegarias judias son bellas canciones de amor, llenas de bondad, afecto, adoracion, esperanza, amabilidad y generosidad. Son nuestro ADN aunque no las conozcamos, porque estas plegarias, nuestra religion, han moldeado al pueblo judio: nuestra manera de pensar y educacion, quienes somos y que representamos. El judaismo implica ser bueno y positivo para uno mismo, la familia, la comunidad y el mundo en general - todo por respeto y amor a Hashem. Me llena de gratitud, humildad y orgullo. Nuestro legado es una bendicion intelectual, cultural, espiritual y religiosa, pero necesitamos un acceso facil. Nunca pude participar ni aun menos disfrutar del servicio matutino del Shabbat, pero adoraba esos momentos en que toda la comunidad se reunia y cantaba plegarias cortas con melodias conmovedoras. No habia suficiente, necesitabamos mas canto, !mucho mas! La comunidad es cuestion de familia y amigos, y todos somos amigos: lo dice incluso una de nuestras plegarias. Nuestras oraciones reclaman ser cantadas con jubilo, clara y armoniosamente. Las plegarias comunales buscan la pertenencia, compartir, y eso solo es posible si todos nos unimos como iguales; necesitamos palabras claramente articuladas, faciles de aprender y agradables de cantar. Dedico este proyecto de melodizar las plegarias del servicio matutino del Shabbat y de escribir un libro de plegarias para acompanar el canto a todos los que aman y desean la continuidad judia, el Judaismo, la Tora y el estado-nacion del pueblo judio, Israel; y asimismo a todos nuestros maravillosos amigos, los justos entre las naciones. Acordaos de recordar que cuando cantamos juntos, permanecemos juntos. AM ISRAEL CHAI - el pueblo de Israel vive. Con amor y esperanza para nuestros hijos, Richard Collis

"This book is a marvelous counterpoint to the rich scholarship that has developed on the 'center' in Southeast Asian societies, providing for the first time an in-depth study of the play of personhood and power--and their historical transformations--on the Indonesian 'periphery.'"--Toby Alice Volkman, Social Science Research Council

"A very important work, not only for the specialists of island Southeast Asia, but also for the general anthropologist. Atkinson accomplishes a number of tasks in fresh and innovative ways."--George E. Marcus, Rice University

"Impressively informed by major theoretical issues, Atkinson's work at the same time brings her readers into the everyday world of the Wana in Sulawesi, Indonesia."--Renato Rosaldo, Stanford University

"Harmonizing Similarities" is a study of the legal distinctions (al-furuq al-fiqhiyya) literature and its role in the development of the Islamic legal heritage. This book reconsiders how the public performance of Islamic law helped shape legal literature. It identifies the origins of this tradition in contemporaneous lexicographic and medical literature, both of which demonstrated the productive potential of drawing distinctions. Elias G. Saba demonstrates the implications of the legal furuq and how changes to this genre reflect shifts in the social consumption of Islamic legal knowledge. The interest in legal distinctions grew out of the performance of knowledge in formalized legal disputations. From here, legal distinctions incorporated elements of play through its interactions with the genre of legal riddles. As play, books of legal distinctions were supplements to performance in literary salons, study circles, and court performances; these books also served as mimetic objects, allowing the reader to participate in a session virtually. Saba underscores how social and intellectual practices helped shape the literary development of Islamic law and that literary elaboration became a main driver of dynamism in Islamic law. This monograph has been awarded the annual BRAIS - De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World.

The scientific debates on border crossings and cultural exchange between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have much increased over the last decades. Within this context, however, little attention has been given to the biblical Exodus, which not only plays a pivotal role in the Abrahamic religions, but also is a master narrative of a border crossing in itself. Sea and desert are spaces of liminality and transit in more than just a geographical sense. Their passage includes a transition to freedom and initiation into a new divine community, an encounter with God and an entry into the Age of law. The volume gathers twelve articles written by leading specialists in Jewish and Islamic Studies, Theology and Literature, Art and Film history, dedicated to the transitional aspects within the Exodus narrative. Bringing these studies together, the volume takes a double approach, one that is both comparative and intercultural. How do Jewish, Christian and Islamic texts and images read and retell the various border crossings in the Exodus story, and on what levels do they interrelate? By raising these questions the volume aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of contact points between the various traditions.

Journey into the world of Ayahuasca and healing. A mysterious and powerful plant medicine with curative powers that is drunk as a tea during a sacred ceremony, Ayahuasca has been known to change people's lives dramatically. But what was once a healing experience practiced only by Indigenous South Americans - and sought out by the adventurous few - has, in the past fifty years, become increasingly popular around the world. Hachumak, a Peruvian medicine man, has been practicing traditional healing arts in his country for more than twenty years. His unique approach is based on ritualistic simplicity and highlights the essence of the Art, which includes the borrowed forces from Nature. In this remarkable book, he shares his knowledge and experiences to broaden our understanding of this powerful medicine and protect it from misuse and exploitation. Whether you are among the uninitiated and curious, or a seasoned journeyer, you will gain a deeper understanding of what shamanism is and how and why it works, as well as its possibilities and limitations. Hachumak reveals his own path to becoming a shaman and explains how a well-crafted Ayahuasca ceremony unfolds when run by an experienced curandero. He describes in detail what to expect - both physically and psychologically - while under the guidance of the sacred plants. With Hachumak as our experienced and trusted guide, Journeying Through the Invisible offers a new and healing way of seeing ourselves and the world around us.

This volume brings together studies on Greek animal sacrifice by foremost experts in Greek language, literature and material culture. Readers will benefit from the synthesis of new evidence and approaches with a re-evaluation of twentieth-century theories on sacrifice. The chapters range across the whole of antiquity and go beyond the Greek world to consider possible influences in Hittite Anatolia and Egypt, while an introduction to the burgeoning science of osteo-archaeology is provided. The twentieth-century emphasis on sacrifice as part of the Classical Greek polis system is challenged through consideration of various ancient perspectives on sacrifice as distinct from specific political or even Greek contexts. Many previously unexplored topics are covered, particularly the type of animals sacrificed and the spectrum of sacrificial ritual, from libations to lasting memorials of the ritual in art.

Nous Chantons Nous Restons Ensemble (We Sing We Stay Together): Prieres du service du matin de Shabbat est un recueil de prieres a chanter pour le service a la synagogue du matin de Shabbat (samedi), tres facile a utiliser, avec une translitteration en caracteres romains, une traduction et une explication du service. Son principal objectif est de faciliter au possible l'apprentissage des prieres en ecoutant et en chantant sur les 64 pistes musicales du CD du meme nom ; mais il represente aussi, en lui-meme, un outil didactique qui donne la signification des mots et du service. Nos prieres juives sont de beaux chants d'amour, pleines de bonte, d'affection, d'adoration, d'espoir, de bienveillance et de generosite. Elles sont notre ADN, meme si nous ne les connaissons pas, car ces prieres, notre religion, ont faconne le peuple juif, notre facon de penser, notre education, qui nous sommes et ce que nous representons. Le judaisme c'est etre bon et positif envers soi-meme, la famille, la communaute, le monde en general - tout ceci par respect et par amour pour Hashem. Cela me remplit de gratitude, d'humilite et de fierte. Notre heritage est une benediction intellectuelle, culturelle, spirituelle et religieuse - mais nous avons besoin d'un acces facile. Je n'ai jamais pu prendre part, encore moins prendre plaisir, a un service du matin de Shabbat, mais j'aimais ces moments ou la communaute se rassemble et chante quelques courtes prieres aux melodies touchantes. Il n'y en avait simplement pas assez, il nous fallait plus de chants, bien plus ! La communaute tourne autour de la famille et des amis, et nous sommes tous amis, c'est meme ecrit dans l'une de nos prieres. Nos prieres demandent a etre chantees avec beaucoup de joie, clairement et harmonieusement. Les prieres communes servent a renforcer les liens, a partager, ce qui n'est possible que si nous pouvons tous participer de facon egale, et pour ce faire il nous faut des paroles clairement enoncees qui soient faciles a apprendre et agreables a chanter. Je dedie cet ouvrage de mise en musique des prieres du matin de Shabbat et de redaction d'un recueil des paroles de ces prieres a tous ceux qui aiment et se soucient de la Continuite Juive, de la Torah et de l'Etat-Nation du Peuple Juif, Israel ; ainsi qu'a tous nos merveilleux amis, les justes parmi les nations. Souvenez-vous de vous souvenir que lorsque nous chantons ensemble, nous restons ensemble. AM ISRAEL CHAI - le peuple d'Israel vit. Avec amour et espoir pour nos enfants, Richard Collis.

Abby Chava Stein was raised in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn, profoundly isolated in a culture that lives according to the laws and practices of an eighteenth-century Eastern European enclave, speaking only Yiddish and Hebrew and shunning modern life. Stein was born as the first son in a rabbinical dynastic family, poised to become a leader of the next generation of Hasidic Jews. But Stein felt certain at a young age that she was a girl. Without access to TV or the internet and never taught English, she suppressed her desire for a new body while looking for answers wherever she could find them, from forbidden religious texts to smuggled secular examinations of faith. Finally, she orchestrated a personal exodus from ultra-Orthodox manhood into mainstream femininity-a radical choice that forced her to leave her home, her family and her way of life.

In Ibadi Texts from the 2nd/8th Century Abdulrahman Al-Salimi and Wilferd Madelung present an edition of fourteen Ibadi religious texts and explain their contents and extraordinary source value for the early history of Islam. The Ibadis constitutes the moderate wing of the Kharijite opposition movement to the Umayyad and 'Abbasid caliphates. The texts edited are mostly polemical letters to opponents or exhortatory to followers by 'Abd Allah b. Ibad , Abu l-'Ubayda Muslim b. Abi Karima and other Ibadi leaders in Basra, Oman and Hadramawt. An epistle detailing the offences of the caliph 'Uthman is by the early Kufan historiographer al-Haytham b. 'Adi. By their early date and independence of the mainstream historical tradition these txts offer the modern historian of Islam an invaluable complement to the well-known literary sources.

This Element explores the disputed relationship between Islam and suicide attacks. Drawing from primary source material as well as existing scholarship from fields such as terrorism studies and religious studies, it argues that Islam as a generic category is not an explanatory factor in suicide attacks. Rather, it claims that we need to study how organisations and individuals in their particular contexts draw tools such as Islamic martyrdom traditions, ritual practices and perceptions on honour and purity from their cultural repertoire to shape, justify and give meaning to the bloodshed.

The book is permeated with the burning faith and spiritual experience of the author and cannot fail to inspire the sensitive reader. Here the student is told in simple language the why, when and how to act. This differs from any other work on a similar theme, and to date, nothing like it has yet appeared in this kind of literature. Chapters of rare spiritual beauty adorn the contents to bring solace in the worldly struggle, and to delight and uplift any reader who sincerely wants to start a new and better life beyond the reach of inner troubles.Highlights include: - Powerful enlightening prayers- Effective exorcisms- An interdenominational character

"This book represents engaged scholarship at its very best. Cohen presents the vast range of texts at his command with brevity and wit. Elegantly written, this is a very stimulating book that is sure to provoke admiration, discussion, and controversy."--David Biale, author of "Cultures of the Jews"A distinguished and wide-ranging work of scholarship. Cohen's definitive discussion of the covenant of circumcision enhances our understanding of Jewish identity formation, women's status in Judaism, Jewish-Christian polemic, and the impact of diverse cultural environments on the evolution of Jewish tradition."--Judith R. Baskin, author of "Midrashic Women

This monograph explores the ways in which canonical Francophone Algerian authors, writing in the late-colonial period (1945-1962), namely Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri and Assia Djebar, approached the representation of Algerian women through literature. The book initially argues that a masculine domination of public fields of representation in Algeria contributed to a postcolonial marginalization of women as public agents. However, it crucially also argues that the canonical writers of the period, who were mostly male, both textually acknowledged their inability to articulate the experiences and subjectivity of the feminine Other and deployed a remarkable variety of formal and conceptual innovations in producing evocations of Algerian femininity that subvert the structural imbalance of masculine symbolic hegemony. Though it does not shy from investigating those aspects of its corpus that produce ideologically conditioned masculinist representations, the book chiefly seeks to articulate a shared reluctance concerning representativity, a pessimism regarding the revolution's capacity to deliver change for women, and an omnipresent subversion of masculine subjectivity in its canonical texts.

First published in 2005, Understanding Jihad unravels the tangled historical, intellectual, and political meanings of jihad within the context of Islamic life. In this revised and expanded second edition, author David Cook has included new material in light of pivotal developments such as the extraordinary events of the Arab Spring, the death of Usama b. Ladin, and the rise of new Islamic factions such as ISIS. Jihad is one of the most loaded and misunderstood terms in the news today. Contrary to popular understanding, the term does not mean "holy war." Nor does it simply refer to an inner spiritual struggle. This judiciously balanced, accessibly written, and highly relevant book looks closely at a range of sources from sacred Islamic texts to modern interpretations, opening a critically important perspective on the role of Islam in the contemporary world. David Cook cites from scriptural, legal, and newly translated texts to give readers insight into the often ambiguous information that is used to construct Islamic doctrine. He sheds light on legal developments relevant to fighting and warfare and places the internal, spiritual jihad within the larger context of Islamic religion. He describes some of the conflicts that occur in radical groups and shows how the more mainstream supporters of these groups have come to understand and justify violence. He has also included a special appendix of relevant documents including materials related to the September 11 attacks and published manifestos issued by Usama b. Ladin and Palestinian suicide-martyrs.

As an old proverb puts it, 'Two Jews, three opinions.' In the long, rich, tumultuous history of the Jewish people, this characteristic contentiousness has often been extended even unto Heaven. Arguing with God is a highly original and utterly absorbing study that skates along the edge of this theological thin ice_at times verging dangerously close to blasphemy_yet also a source of some of the most poignant and deeply soulful expressions of human anguish and yearning. The name Israel literally denotes one who 'wrestles with God.' And, from Jacob's battle with the angel to Elie Wiesel's haunting questions about the Holocaust that hang in the air like still smoke over our own age, Rabbi Laytner admirably details Judaism's rich and pervasive tradition of calling God to task over human suffering and experienced injustice. It is a tradition that originated in the biblical period itself. Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and others all petitioned for divine intervention in their lives, or appealed forcefully to God to alter His proposed decree. Other biblical arguments focused on personal or communal suffering and anger: Jeremiah, Job, and certain Psalms and Lamentations. Rabbi Laytner delves beneath the surface of these 'blasphemies' and reveals how they implicitly helped to refute the claims of opponent religions and advance Jewish doctrines and teachings.