In The Semantics of Qur'anic Language: al-Ahira, Ghassan el Masri offers a semantic study of the concept al-ahira 'the End' in the Qur'an. The study is prefaced with a detailed account of the late antique concept of etymologia (Semantic Etymology). In his work, he demonstrates the necessity of this concept for appreciating the Qur'an's rhetorical strategies for claiming discursive authority in the Abrahamic theological tradition. The author applies the etymological tool to his investigation of the theological significance of al-ahira, and concludes that the concept is polysemous, and tolerates a large variety of interpretations. The work is unique in that it draws extensively on Biblical material and presents a plethora of pre-Islamic poetry verses in the analysis of the concept.

The Beginnings of Islamic Law is a major and innovative contribution to our understanding of the historical unfolding of Islamic law. Scrutinizing its historical contexts, the book proposes that Islamic law is a continuous intermingling of innovation and tradition. Salaymeh challenges the embedded assumptions in conventional Islamic legal historiography by developing a critical approach to the study of both Islamic and Jewish legal history. Through case studies of the treatment of war prisoners, circumcision, and wife-initiated divorce, she examines how Muslim jurists incorporated and transformed 'Near Eastern' legal traditions. She also demonstrates how socio-political and historical situations shaped the everyday practice of law, legal education, and the organization of the legal profession in the late antique and medieval eras. Aimed at scholars and students interested in Islamic history, Islamic law, and the relationship between Jewish and Islamic legal traditions, this book's interdisciplinary approach provides accessible explanations and translations of complex materials and ideas.

A stunning, luxurious journal and planner with elegant gold foiling and ornate cover design - undated so you can use it any year. The perfect gift for Ramadan, for those wanting to get the most out of the holy month this year. Organise and focus your Ramadan with this 30-day planner, for tracking daily prayers, goals, fasting, reading of the Quran, and to-dos. With daily duas and free journaling space, you can reflect on your progress and end each day with gratitude. With this journal, you can: - Organise your life around the things that truly matter - Set, plan and track progress towards your goals - Reflect on what you learn and what you can do to continue your worship after Ramadan - Prepare and plan for Eid al-Fitr with your loved ones It's also undated, so it can be used any year. Motivating and practical, this journal is the perfect companion for a fulfilling and productive Ramadan.

In this novel and lucid work, Christopher Houston clarifies a particular modern style and practice of politics that he calls anthropocracy. In the name of popular sovereignty, anthropocracies de-legitimize the rule of God(s) even as they re-deploy it to stabilize the rule of the representatives of the people, all the while obfuscating their political conscription of the divine. In distinguishing anthropocracy from varieties of other secular and laicist political arrangements, as well as from theocracy, this book also gives readers a brilliant solution to what it calls the Turkish puzzle, the dilemma over how to best describe and analyze state-religion and state-society relations in the Turkish Republic. This work convincingly undermines two orthodox presumptions about Turkish politics: the claim that Turkish modernity should be considered an example of secularity; and the accusation that the current AKP government should be interpreted as Islamic. On the contrary, it argues that both Kemalism and the AKP continue to institute an anthropocratic Republic.

Only preserved in a single manuscript in Tehran, this remarkable twelfth-century Qur'anic commentary by Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Karim al- Shahrast=an=i marks the achievement of a lifelong, arduous quest for knowledge. Shahrast=an=i began writing Mafatih al-asr=ar or Keys to the Arcana towards the end of his life and the work reflects the brilliant radicalism of his more private religious views. The introduction and opening chapter of this virtually unknown work is presented here in a bilingual edition, which also includes an introduction and contextual notes by Dr Toby Mayer.
In Keys to the Arcana, Shahrast=an=i breaks down the text of the Qur'an and analyses it from a linguistic point of view, with reference to the history of Qur'anic interpretation. The author's ultimate aim is to use an elaborate set of complimentary concepts - the 'keys' of the work's title - to unearth the esoteric meanings of the Qur'anic verses, which he calls the 'arcana' of the verses (asr=ar al-=ay=at). A historian of religious and philosophical doctrines, Shahrast=an=i has generally been considered to be a spokesman for the Sunni religious establishment under the Seljuqs. The complimentary concepts in question, however, appear to derive from the Isma'ili Shi'i intellectual tradition, indicating that the author may have been secretly involved in the Isma'ili movement.
Shahrast=an=i 's unusually esoteric and highly systematic exegesis of the Qur'an provides a vivid picture of the mature state of scriptural commentary in the twelfth-century CE. Dr Mayer's meticulous translation of Shahrast=an=i 's Introduction and Commentary on S=urat al-Fatiha, supplemented by the Arabic text, allows the reader and scholar access to this intriguing Muslim intellectual work for the first time.

This book presents an empirical examination of consent-seeking among Pashtun Muslims in the Pakistani province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), to determine whether cultural norms and beliefs have largely come to diverge from the principles of consent in Islamic law and jurisprudence. Is culture part of the 'inevitable decay' to which Max Muller says every religion is exposed? Or - if rephrased in terms of the research encapsulated within this book - are cultural beliefs and practises the inevitable decay to which Islam has been exposed in Muslim societies? Drawing on interviews with Muslims in Pakistan and Australia, the research broadly broaches questions around the rights of women in Islam and contributes to a wider understanding of Muslim social, cultural, and religious practices in both Muslim majority nations and diaspora communities. The author disentangles cultural practices from both religious and universal legal principles, demonstrating how consent seeking in Pashtun culture generally does not reflect the spirit or the intent of consent as described in Hanafi law and jurisprudence. This research will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, anthropology, socio-legal studies, and law, with a focus on Islamically-justified law reform in Muslim nation states.

The face of Islam currently visible to the West bears the features of orthodoxy, fundamentalism, the so-called "new anti-Semitism," and political terrorism. Images of inter-ethnic bloodshed in Iraq, bellicose Iranian posturing, Al-Qaeda training camps, and zealot suicide bombers are the basic grammar of such perception. While not entirely untrue, this portrayal of Islam also emanates from the 'villain hunger' of the West, a hunger that has increased since the fall of the USSR. The false equation of 'Muslim' with 'Arab' has also created stereotypes and ambiguities. The fact is that most Muslims of the world are not Arab and many Arabs are not Muslims. Indeed the people, culture, traditions, and even religious practices of Islam are highly varied and complex. Its belief systems range from the austere Wahabbi rigidity to lyrical Sufi mysticism. Its cultural fabric includes the dark spots of suppression of women on the one hand and breathtakingly beautiful fibers of calligraphy, architecture, rug weaving, and romantic poetry on the other hand. Attempting to advance knowledge about Islam and to create the possibility of a dialogue between Islam and psychoanalysis, The Crescent and the Couch brings together a distinguished panel of Muslim and non-Muslim contributors from the fields of history, religion, anthropology, politics, and psychoanalysis. Together these authors highlight the world-changing contributions of prominent Muslim figures, and elucidate the encounter of Islam with Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism. Moving on to matters of family, individual personality formation, human sexuality, and religious identity, they also address clinical issues that arise in the treatment of Muslim patients as well as the technical work of Muslim psychoanalysts. The book thus becomes a literary ambassador of sorts, bridging the conceptual gap between psychoanalytic theory on the one hand and Islamic conceptualizations of life on the other. It is a work of synthesis at its best and since bringing diverse thin

This book is about the emergence of a stream of ideas in the 1930s and 1940s within Imamiyya Shi'ite context, focusing primarily on the thought of Shari'at Sangelaji (1891-1944), who harshly criticized a number of basic theological beliefs within Imamiyya Shi'a. Accusing them of polytheism and superstition on account of their ideas about shifa'a intercession, and their pilgrimage to the graves of the Shi'ite imams, he also criticized the belief that the twelfth imam al-Mahdi has been living in covertness since the 9th century, and that a number of historical figures will be resurrected upon his return to assist him in the final battle against the evil. Taking at once a theological and historical approach, Mohammad Fazlhashemi investigates whether Salafist mainstreaming thoughts, despite its hostile attitude towards Shi'a Islam, had any influence over Shi'ite theology. He explores whether and what components of the Salafist tradition of ideas have been adopted by theologians within Imamiyya shi'a or whether in fact whether these changes were the result of an internal theological tug-of-war within the Imamiyya Shi'a that was influenced by the interwar modernization efforts. Fazlhashemi examines the characteristic features of this flow of ideas, its sources of inspiration, the reception of its thought, and the imprints it made on theological currents within Imamiyya shi'a in Iran during its time and time thereafter.

This contribution to the global history of ideas uses biographical profiles of 18th-century contemporaries to find what Salafist and Sufi Islam, Evangelical Protestant and Jansenist Catholic Christianity, and Hasidic Judaism have in common. Such figures include Muhammad Ibn abd al-Wahhab, Count Nikolaus Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Israel Ba'al Shem Tov. The book is a unique and comprehensive study of the conflicted relationship between the "evangelical" movements in all three Abrahamic religions and the ideas of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Centered on the 18th century, the book reaches back to the third century for precedents and context, and forward to the 21st for the legacy of these movements. This text appeals to students and researchers in many fields, including Philosophy and Religion, their histories, and World History, while also appealing to the interested lay reader.

What does it mean to be modern? This study regards the concept of 'society' as foundational to modern self-understanding. Identifying Arabic conceptualizations of society in the journal al-Manar, the mouthpiece of Islamic reformism, the author shows how modernity was articulated from within an Islamic discursive tradition. The fact that the classical term umma was a principal term used to conceptualize modern society suggests the convergence of discursive traditions in modernity, rather than a mere diffusion of European concepts.

In light of the ongoing public debate that focuses on differences between Islam and the West, this book suggests a change of perspective. It departs from the observation that both western Orientalists and Islamist activists have defined Islam similarly as an all-encompassing religious, political and social system. In shifting from differences to similarities, it leaves behind the increasingly circular debate about the true nature of Islam in which the Muslim religion has been represented either as intrinsically hostile to or as principally compatible with modern culture. Instead, it associates the evolution of a particularly essentialist image of Islam with a complex process of cross-cutting (self)-interpretations of Muslim and Western societies within an emerging global public sphere. Putting its focus on the life and work of a number of paradigmatic individuals, the book investigates the intellectual encounters and discursive interdependencies among western and Muslim intellectuals. In a historical genealogy it deconstructs the essentialist image of Islam in uncovering its conceptual foundations in the modern transformation of European and Muslim societies from the nineteenth century onwards. Thereby, the changing infrastructure of the global public sphere has facilitated the gradual popularization, trivialization, and dissemination of a previously elitist discourse on Islam and modernity. In this way, the idea of Islam as an all-encompassing system has been turned into accepted knowledge in the Western and Muslim worlds alike.

This book explores several challenges facing FinTech in Islamic financial institutions. Firstly, large banks and financial institutions in countries with updated and innovative technological channels will earn the technology arbitrage from FinTech. This 'size' puzzle may create a challenge for Islamic financial institutions that are of smaller size and from technologically less-developed countries. Secondly, while access to FinTech is getting broader day by day, usage of FinTech is still limited due to personal and governance-related limitations. Moreover, the level of awareness of the emerging FinTech services (i.e., bitcoin, blockchain, etc.) remains extremely poor even among the residents of technologically-advanced countries. Thirdly, use of FinTech by Islamic financial institutions is limited to Islamic banking, to users from developed countries, among young customers, and for a limited number of traditional banking services such as the deposits and payment services. Also, banks hope to use FinTech to increase the size of a new breed of technology-savvy depositors and loan customers to achieve economies of scale, which may help stabilize the banking sector. Automation in Islamic banks and the participation of Islamic financial institutions in blockchain and bitcoin domains require extensive research from Shariah-compliance as well as market and consumer-related grounds. With all the opportunities and challenges of FinTech-promoting inclusion, easier loan monitoring, and risk of Shariah non-compliance-this book explores the implications for Islamic financial institutions and will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students of Islamic finance and financial technology.

Islam on the Street deals with the popular side of Islam, as described not only in tracts and manuals written by Sufi shaykhs and Islamist thinkers from among the more militant groups in Islam, but also in writings by other, more secular thinkers who have also influenced public opinion. A scholar of Arabic literature, Muhsin al-Musawi explains the growing rift that has occurred between the secular intellectual the forerunner of Arab and Islamic modernity since the late nineteenth century and the upsurge of Islamic fervor in the street, at the grassroots level, and what these secular intellectuals can do to reconnect with the masses. Using some of the most important Arabic and Islamic poetry, prose, and fiction to come out of the twentieth century, Al-Musawi provides context for the complex images of Arab and Islamic culture given by the various social, religious, and political groups, providing the motivations. Readers interested in the influence of religion and secularism within modern Islamic Arabic literature will find that the author addresses the presence of Islam and Sufism in ways that secular commentators have been incapable of doing."

In this book we study The Tabligh Jama'at, an Islamic revivalist movement which, through participation in its preaching tours, provides satisfaction to individuals experiencing the crisis of modernity. Preaching tours enable Muslims to become workers for Allah and involved in the renewal of Allah's world. We explore the ideological underpinning of preaching and working for Allah through the application of Frame Theory. Through an analytic framework comprising framing tasks and framing processes we unpack how the ideas of Islamic revivalism found in key Tabligh Jama'at written and oral texts - the Faza'il-e-A'maal and bayans - are packaged and communicated in such a way as to attract individuals to participate in preaching tours. The book concludes that working for Allah provides Muslims with meaning, social solidarity, and satisfaction which modernity has failed to provide them. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, journalists, policy-makers, and research students interested in or working on Islamic revivalist movements.

Current global tensions and the spread of terrorism have resurrected in the West a largely negative perception of Islamic society, an ill will fueled by centuries of conflict and prejudice. Shedding light on the history behind these hostile feelings, Frederick Quinn's timely volume traces the Western image of Islam from its earliest days to recent times.
Quinn establishes four basic themes around which the image of Islam gravitates throughout history: the Prophet as Antichrist, heretic, and Satan; the Prophet as Fallen Christian, corrupted monk, or Arab Lucifer; the prophet as sexual deviant, polygamist, and charlatan, and the Prophet as Wise Easterner, Holy Person, and dispenser of wisdom. A feature of the book is a strong portrayal of Islam in literature, art, music, and popular culture, drawing on such sources as Cervantes's Don Quixote; the Orientalism of numerous visual artists; the classical music of Monteverdi and Mozart; and more recent cultural manifestations, such as music hall artists like Peter Dawson and Edith Piaf; and stage or silver screen representations like The Garden of Allah, The Sheik, Aladdin, and The Battle of Algiers. Quinn argues that an outpouring of positive information on basically every aspect of Islamic life has yet to vanquish the hostile and malformed ideas from the past. Conflict, mistrust, and misunderstanding characterize the Muslim-Christian encounter, and growing examples of cooperation are often overshadowed by anger and suspicion.
In this important book, Quinn highlights long-standing historical prejudices but also introduces the reader to some of the landmark voices in history that have worked toward a greater understanding of Islam.

In this ethnographic examination of women's mosques in the Maldives, anthropologist Jacqueline H. Fewkes probes how the existence of these separate buildings-where women lead prayers for other women-intersect with larger questions about gender, space, and global Muslim communities. Bringing together ethnographic insight with historical accounts, this volume develops an understanding of the particular religious and cultural trends in the Maldives that have given rise to these unique socio-religious institutions. As Fewkes considers women's spaces in the Maldives as a practice apart from contemporary global Islamic customs, she interrogates the intersections between local, national, and transnational communities in the development of Islamic spaces, linking together the role of nations in the formation of Muslim social spaces with transnational conceptualizations of Islamic gendered spaces. Using the Maldivian women's mosque as a starting point, this book addresses the roles of both the nation and the global Muslim ummah in locating gendered spaces within discourses about gender and Islam.

"Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development & Special Features", written by Professor Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi, is an introduction which presents the various aspects of the subject of Hadith and its importance within Islam. Hadith, the sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, form a sacred literature which for Muslims ranks second in importance only to the Qur'an itself. As a source of law, ethics and doctrine, the vast corpus of Hadith continues to exercise decisive influence. "Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development & Special Features" explains the origin of Hadith literature, the evolution of the "isnad" system, the troubled relationship between scholars and the state, the problem of falsification, and the gradual development of a systematic approach to the material. An interesting appendix demonstrates that a high proportion of the medieval Hadith scholars were women. This edition is a fully revised and updated version of the original, which was first published in 1961 to considerable scholarly acclaim.

This book provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary exploration of civility and political culture in the Muslim world. The contributions consider the changing interface between religion and politics throughout Islamic history, and into the present. Extending beyond saturated approaches of 'political' and/or 'militant' Islam, this collection captures the complex sociopolitical character of Islam, and identifies tensions between the political-secular and the sacred-religious in contemporary Muslim life. The alternative conceptual framework to traditional analyses of secularisation and civility presented across this volume will be of interest to students and scholars across Islamic studies, religious studies, sociology and political science, civilisation studies, and cultural studies.

Moral Rationalism and Shari'a is the first attempt at outlining the scope for a theological reading of Shari'a, based on a critical examination of why 'Adliyya theological ethics have not significantly impacted Shi'i readings of Shari'a. Within Shi'i works of Shari 'a legal theory (usul al-fiqh) there is a theoretical space for reason as an independent source of normativity alongside the Qur'an and the Prophetic tradition. The position holds that humans are capable of understanding moral values independently of revelation. Describing themselves as 'Adliyya (literally the people of Justice), this allows the Shi 'a, who describe themselves as 'Adiliyya (literally, the People of Justice), to attribute a substantive rational conception of justice to God, both in terms of His actions and His regulative instructions. Despite the Shi'i adoption of this moral rationalism, independent judgments of rational morality play little or no role in the actual inference of Shari 'a norms within mainstream contemporary Shi'i thought. Through a close examination of the notion of independent rationality as a source in modern Shi'i usul al-fiqh, the obstacles preventing this moral rationalism from impacting the understanding of Shari 'a are shown to be purely epistemic. In line with the 'emic' (insider) approach adopted, these epistemic obstacles are revisited identifying the scope for allowing a reading of Shari'a that is consistent with the fundamental moral rationalism of Shi'i thought. It is argued that judgments of rational morality, even when not definitively certain, cannot be ignored in the face of the apparent meaning of texts that are themselves also not certain. An 'Adliyya reading of Shari'a demands that the strength of independent rational evidence be reconciled against the strength of any other apparently conflicting evidence, such that independent

This book draws on the stories of female educators and young Muslim women to explore issues of identity, justice and education. Situated against a backdrop of unprecedented Islamophobia and new articulations of 'White-lash', this book draws on case study research conducted over a ten-year period and provides insight into the diverse worlds of young Muslim women from education and community contexts in Australia and England. Keddie discusses the ways in which these young women find spaces of agency and empowerment within these contexts and how their passionate and committed educators support them in this endeavour. Useful for researchers and educators who are concerned about Islamophobia and its devastating impacts on Muslim women and girls, this book positions responsibility for changing the oppressions of Islamophobia and gendered Islamophobia with all of us. Such change begins with education. The stories in this book hope to contribute to the change process.

'Essential...A complex blend of overexcited Adrian Mole-like anecdotes mixed with shocking moments of racism and insights into Muslim religious practices' Sunday Times The hilarious and pubescent debut book from your favourite British Muslim comedian (that's Tez Ilyas, by the way) is coming to a shop near you. You may know and love Tez from his stand-up comedy, his role as Eight in Man Like Mobeen, his Radio 4 series TEZ Talks, or panel shows such as Mock the Week and The Last Leg. Where you won't know him from is 1997 when he was 13 3/4. (But now you will - because that's what the book is about.) In this suitably dramatic rollercoaster of a teenage memoir, Tez takes us back to where it all began: a working class, insular British Asian Muslim community in his hometown of post-Thatcher Blackburn. Meet Ammi (Mum), Baji Rosey (the older sister), Shibz (the fashionable cousin), Was (the cool cousin), Shiry (the cleverest cousin) and a community with the most creative nicknames this side of Top Gun. Running away from shotgun-wielding farmers, successfully dodging arranged marriages, getting mugged, having front row seats to race riots and achieving formative sexual experiences doing stomach crunches in a gym, you could say life was fairly run of the mill. But with a GCSE pass rate of 30% at his school, his own fair share of family tragedy around the corner and 9/11 on the horizon, Tez's experiences of growing up as a British Muslim wasn't the fun, Jihad-pursuing affair the media wants you to believe. Well ... not always. At times shalwar-wettingly hilarious and at others searingly sad, The Secret Diary of a British Muslim Aged 133/4 shows 90s Britain at its best, and its worst.

Now in his 80s, Gai Eaton describes how, after a strange childhood completely isolated from other children, followed by a Cambridge education and life as an actor and later as a diplomat, circumstances led him at the age of 30 to Islam. Fascinated by the vagaries of human behavior and the strangeness of human destinies, he has observed the human scene with a novelist's eye and traced the profound changes in attitudes and tastes which have taken place in a single lifetime. He recounts his youthful adventures with the clear-sight and understanding only possible for someone whom age has freed from the passions which once possessed him. What makes this work unique is the juxtaposition of hindsight with diary entries made at the time, which gives a quality of immediacy to a true story that includes reminiscences of the diplomatic life and an outline of the Sufi path.

The global halal industry is likely to grow to between three and four trillion US dollars in the next five years, from the current estimated two trillion, backed by a continued demand from both Muslims and non-Muslims for halal products. Realising the importance of the halal industry to the global community, the Academy of Contemporary Islamic Studies (ACIS), the Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia (UiTM) and Sultan Sharif Ali Islamic University (UNISSA) Brunei have organised the 4th International Halal Conference (INHAC) 2019 under the theme "Enhancing Halal Sustainability'. This book contains selected papers presented at INHAC 2019. It addresses halal-related issues that are applicable to various industries and explores a variety of contemporary and emerging issues. It covers aspects of halal food safety, related services such as tourism and hospitality, the halal industry - including aspects of business ethics, policies and practices, quality assurance, compliance and Shariah governance Issues, as well as halal research and educational development. Highlighting findings from both scientific and social research studies, it enhances the discussion on the halal industry (both in Malaysia and internationally), and serves as an invitation to engage in more advanced research on the global halal industry.