This book presents fifty-one didactic and devotional Sufi poems (with English translations) composed by the ulama of Brava, on Somalia's Benadir coast, in Chimiini, a Bantu language related to Swahili and unique to the town. Because the six ulama-poets, among whom two women, guided local believers towards correct beliefs and behaviours in reference to specific authoritative religious texts, the poems allow insight into their authors' religious education, affiliations, in which the Qadiriyyah and Ahmadiyyah took pride of place, and regional connections. Because the poems refer to local people, places, events, and livelihoods, they also bring into view the uniquely local dimension of Islam in this small East African port city in this time-period.

Analyzing the intersection between Sufism and philosophy, this volume is a sweeping examination of the mystical philosophy of Muhyi-l-Din Ibn al-'Arabi (d. 637/1240), one of the most influential and original thinkers of the Islamic world. This book systematically covers Ibn al-'Arabi's ontology, theology, epistemology, teleology, spiritual anthropology and eschatology. While philosophy uses deductive reasoning to discover the fundamental nature of existence and Sufism relies on spiritual experience, it was not until the school of Ibn al-'Arabi that philosophy and Sufism converged into a single framework by elaborating spiritual doctrines in precise philosophical language. Contextualizing the historical development of Ibn al-'Arabi's school, the work draws from the earliest commentators of Ibn al-'Arabi's oeuvre, Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi (d. 673/1274), 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani (d. ca. 730/1330) and Dawud al-Qaysari (d. 751/1350), but also draws from the medieval heirs of his doctrines Sayyid Haydar Amuli (d. 787/1385), the pivotal intellectual and mystical figure of Persia who recast philosophical Sufism within the framework of Twelver Shi'ism and 'Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 898/1492), the key figure in the dissemination of Ibn al-'Arabi's ideas in the Persianate world as well as the Ottoman Empire, India, China and East Asia via Central Asia. Lucidly written and comprehensive in scope, with careful treatments of the key authors, Philosophical Sufism is a highly accessible introductory text for students and researchers interested in Islam, philosophy, religion and the Middle East.

Since the beginning of recorded history, Iran/Persia has been one of the most important world civilizations. Iran remains a distinct civilization today despite its status as a major Islamic state with broad regional influence and its deep integration into the global economy through its vast energy reserves. Yet the close attention paid to Iran in recent decades stems from the impact of the 1979 revolution, which unleashed ideological shock waves throughout the Middle East that reverberate to this day. Many observers look at Iran through the prism of the Islamic Republic's adversarial relationship with the US, Israel, and Sunni nations in its region, yet as Michael Axworthy shows in Iran: What Everyone Needs to Know, there is much more to contemporary Iran than its fraught and complicated foreign relations. He begins with a concise account of Iranian history from ancient times to the late twentieth century, following that with sharp summaries of the key events since the1979 revolution. The final section of the book focuses on Iran today-its culture, economy, politics, and people-and assesses the challenges that the nation will face in coming years. Iran will be an essential overview of a complex and important nation that has occupied world headlines for nearly four decades.

The figure of the renegade - a European Christian or Jew who had converted to Islam and was now serving the Ottoman sultan - is omnipresent in all genres produced by those early modern Christian Europeans who wrote about the Ottoman Empire. As few contemporaries failed to remark, converts were disproportionately represented among those who governed, administered, and fought for the sultan. Unsurprisingly, therefore, renegades have attracted considerable attention from historians of Europe as well as students of European literature. Until very recently, however, Ottomanists have been surprisingly silent on the presence of Christian-European converts in the Ottoman military-administrative elite. The Sultan's Renegades inserts these 'foreign' converts into the context of Ottoman elite life to reorient the discussion of these individuals away from the present focus on their exceptionality, towards a qualified appreciation of their place in the Ottoman imperial enterprise and the Empire's relations with its neighbours in Christian Europe. Drawing heavily on Central European sources, this study highlights the deep political, religious, and cultural entanglements between the Ottoman Empire and Christian Europe beyond the Mediterranean Basin as the 'shared world' par excellence. The existence of such trans-imperial subjects is not only symptomatic of the Empire's ability to attract and integrate people of a great diversity of backgrounds, it also illustrates the extent to which the Ottomans participated in processes of religious polarization usually considered typical of Christian Europe in this period. Nevertheless, Christian Europeans remained ambivalent about those they dismissed as apostates and traitors, frequently relying on them for support in the pursuit of familial and political interests.

Tradition and Modernity focuses on how Christians and Muslims connect their traditions to modernity, looking especially at understandings of history, changing patterns of authority, and approaches to freedom. The volume includes a selection of relevant texts from 19th- and 20th-century thinkers, from John Henry Newman to Tariq Ramadan, accompanied by illuminating commentaries.

This is volume 2 of a unique collection, offering a veritable Who's Who of renowned Christian and Muslim scholars that have shaped the course of Christian-Muslim dialogue."Global Christianity in Local Context and Muslim Encounter" is a unique collection of essays in honour of David A. Kerr, well-known for his contributions in the areas of Christian-Muslim dialogue, Ecumenical Studies and Missions. With contributions from recognized experts in these fields, the book provides a platform for examining contemporary Christian-Muslim relations and critical issues facing twenty-first century Christianity.Volume 2 is a veritable Who's Who of renowned Christian and Muslim scholars that have shaped the course of Christian-Muslim dialogue over the last half century. Their contributions in this volume address contemporary and pivotal issues facing Christians and Muslims today, such as Islamophobia, Islamism, Religious Freedom, Inter-religious Challenges and Urbanism, Mission and Economic Globalisation, Suffering and Social Responsibility, and others.

This concise and accessible volume introduces the reader to issues around religion, gender, and violence, using a wide range of case studies to engage the reader and apply the subject area to the real world. An outstanding resource for students approaching the topic for the first time. The eBook is open access and therefore widely available.

Organ Donation in Islam: The Interplay of Jurisprudence, Ethics, and Society delves into the complexities and nuances of organ donation in Muslim communities. A diverse group of authors including Muslim jurists, academic researchers, clinicians and policy stakeholders engage with the multi-faceted topic. Contributions from Sunni and Shia scholars are positioned alongside each other, giving the reader an appreciation of the different Islamic traditions and legal methodologies; and qualitative research examining the views and potential concerns of Muslim families towards donating organs of loved ones is juxtaposed with the work of academicians and community advocates engaging diverse Muslim communities to equip them with the knowledge and tools to make informed donation decisions. Taken together the collection yields new ethical, empirical and sociological insights into how issues of body ownership, the definition of death, and community engagement interface with the act of donation. Accordingly, this wide-ranging volume represents a invaluable resource for religious leaders, healthcare professionals, social scientists, policy makers, researchers, and others interested in the interplay between contemporary healthcare, religious tradition, health policy and the topic of organ donation.

This book presents selected chapters from the proceedings of the 12th Global Islamic Marketing Conference (June 2021). The chapters provide an up-to-date overview of research and insights into Islamic business practices in general and Islamic marketing strategies in particular. Papers include topics such as understanding Muslim consumer behavior, services marketing, implications and implementation of Halal business practices, social media marketing, ecommerce strategies, and overall business strategy. This book is helpful for researchers interested in the specialties of the topic and also for business consultants who wish to have an in-depth understanding of doing business in Islam-oriented regions.

This book examines the archaeological implications of Islam as a force which can act upon all areas of life. Islam leaves distinctive material culture remains and distinctive categories of evidence which can be detected and described.

The subject and the geographical area of Islam is vast. The author provides an assessment of the means and the methods of uncovering Islamic material records in the context of a wide range of times and places. Separate chapters examine the mosque, the domestic environment, the Islamic city, death and burial, art, manufacturing and trade. The author draws evidence from the perceived heartlands of the Islamic world (Arabia, the Near East), and from those regions traditionally regarded as the periphery (Africa and the Far East). Coverage extends from the origins of Islam in the seventh century AD up until the present.

This thoughtful and wide-ranging open access volume explores the forces and issues shaping and defining contemporary identities and everyday life in Brunei Darussalam. It is a subject that until now has received comparatively limited attention from mainstream social scientists working on Southeast Asian societies. The volume helps remedy that deficit by detailing the ways in which religion, gender, place, ethnicity, nation-state formation, migration and economic activity work their way into and reflect in the lives of ordinary Bruneians. In a first of its kind, all the lead authors of the chapter contributions are local Bruneian scholars, and the editors skilfully bring the study of Brunei into the fold of the sociology of everyday life from multiple disciplinary directions. By engaging local scholars to document everyday concerns that matter to them, the volume presents a collage of distinct but interrelated case studies that have been previously undocumented or relatively underappreciated. These interior portrayals render new angles of vision, scale and nuance to our understandings of Brunei often overlooked by mainstream inquiry. Each in its own way speaks to how structures and institutions express themselves through complex processes to influence the lives of inhabitants. Academic scholars, university students and others interested in the study of contemporary Brunei Darussalam will find this volume an invaluable resource for unravelling its diversity and textures. At the same time, it hopefully stimulates critical reflection on positionality, hierarchies of knowledge production, cultural diversity and the ways in which we approach the social science study of Brunei. 'I wish to commend the editors for bringing this volume to fruition. It is an important book in the context of Southeast Asian sociology and even more important for the development of our social, geographical, cultural and historical knowledge of Brunei.' -Victor T. King, University of Leeds

This open access book addresses, for the first time, Islamic social work as an emerging concept at the interface of Islamic thought and social sciences. Applying a multidisciplinary approach it explores, on the one hand, the discourse that provides religious legitimisation to social work activities and, on the other hand, case studies of practical fields of Islamic social work including educational programmes, family counselling, and resettlement of prisoners. Although in many cases, these activities are oriented towards Muslim clients, more often than not they go beyond the boundaries of Muslim communities to benefit society as a whole. Muslim actors are also starting to professionalise their services and to negotiate the ways in which they can become fully recognised service-providers within the welfare state. At a more general level, the volume also shows that in contrast to the widespread processes of secularisation of social work and its separation from religious communities, new types of activities are now emerging, which bring back to the public arena both an increased sensitivity to the religious identities of the beneficiaries and the religious motivations of the benefactors. The edited volume will be of interest to researchers in Islamic Studies, Social and Political Sciences, Social Work, and Religious Studies. This is an open access book.

Ashlee Quosigk explores the diversity of opinions within the largest religious group in the US - Evangelical Christians - on the topic of Islam. Evangelicals are often characterized as monolithically antagonistic toward Muslims. This book challenges that stereotype, exposing the sharp divides that exist among Evangelicals on Islam and examines why there is division. Drawing on qualitative research on two congregations in the US, as well as on popular Evangelical leaders, this book details the surprisingly diverse views Evangelicals hold on Muhammad, the Qur'an, interfaith dialogue, syncretism, and politics. This research is invaluable for providing a better understanding of what Evangelicals think, and why. This book also offers insight into why conflict exists and why Evangelicals differ, while advancing culture war theory and qualitative methods. Specifically, it explores differences in moral authority (assumptions that guide one's perceptions of the world) among Evangelicals and explains how these differences influence their views on Islam. The findings are relevant to religious relations worldwide as everyone appeals to moral authority, irrespective of their geographic location.

This book works on the interface between literature, culture, and discourse. It is entirely devoted to the reading of some of Zafzaf's novels that came out in the early 1970s and in the late 1980s, and attempts to chart the trajectory of the aesthetic imaginary of an exceptional writing experience that marked out the literary and cultural landscape in Morocco and in the Arab world for long. Zafzaf and his writings are associated with aspects of the country's social contradictions, cultural transition, and political transformations, expressed through various aesthetic patterns that translate the crisis of the intellectual within a society weighed down by poverty, political instability, social conflict, and cultural disintegration. Given the relative scarcity of resources that are written in English about the Moroccan novel of Arabic expression, this work is an attempt to theorize and approach in an interdisciplinary manner a set of narratives that have not been previously explored in western academia. Using postcolonial discourse as approach and a metaphor of reading, it draws attention to the often-neglected texts in Moroccan literature of Arabic expression and explores their aesthetic, discursive, and cultural implications that rethink and disturb canonical formations of literary texts in Morocco. This book will be adopted in the now burgeoning fields of the Humanities, and will provide useful resources for courses about Moroccan Literature and culture.

This book looks at a substantively new model of educational philosophy and its application within the field of tertiary education, in relation to socio-economic development in Southeast Asian members of the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC). Focusing on and drawing from the cross-regional South East Asian Cooperation (SEACO), a network promoting regional economic cooperation, the author presents a thoughtful evocation of a new orientation to educational philosophy and policy within the development context in the time of, and relating to, COVID-19. The generalized worldview of Islamic educational and socio-economic development model is laid down in relation to the philosophy of education and an ethical-scientific structure of development in terms of the theory of knowledge (epistemology, episteme). The foundation of scientific thought and a comparative Islamic worldview in understanding the unified reality of 'everything' is presented. The objectivity of socio-scientific learning at all levels of educational development is further explained within the context of SEACO and its think tank vis-a-vis a reconstructive perspective in which the Islamic episteme of the unity of knowledge and its substantive methodology is addressed and unpacked. The book is relevant to policymakers and scholarly researchers in Islamic philosophy and development and higher education in Southeast Asia and in the Muslim world and more broadly for the world of learning.

Elijah Muhammad is arguably the most significant figure in the history of Islam in the United States. Successor to W. D. Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam, and a mentor to Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam for over forty years.

In Elijah Muhammad and Islam, Herbert Berg focuses on Elijah Muhammad's religiosity, which is frequently brought into question as the authenticity of the Nation of Islam as "truly Islamic" remains hotly debated. To better comprehend this powerful and controversial figure, Berg contextualizes Elijah Muhammad and his religious approach within the larger Islamic tradition, exploring his use of the Qur'an, his interpretation of Islam, and his relationships with other Muslims. Above all, Berg seeks to understand--not define or label--Muhammad as a Muslim. To do otherwise, he argues, is to misunderstand and distort the man, his teachings, his movement, and his legacy.

Death, Resurrection, and Human Destiny: Christian and Muslim Perspectives is a record of the 2012 Building Bridges seminar for leading Christian and Muslim scholars, convened by Rowan Williams, then Archbishop of Canterbury. The essays in this volume explore what the Bible and Qur n-and the Christian and Islamic theological traditions-have to say about death, resurrection, and human destiny. Special attention is given to the writings of al-Ghazali and Dante. Other essays explore the notion of the good death. Funeral practices of each tradition are explained. Relevant texts are included with commentary, as are personal reflections on death by several of the seminar participants. An account of the informal conversations at the seminar conveys a vivid sense of the lively, penetrating, but respectful dialogue which took place. Three short pieces by Rowan Williams provide his opening comments at the seminar and his reflections on its proceedings. The volume also contains an analysis of the Building Bridges Seminar after a decade of his leadership.

For the first time, the author has explored the intertwinement of written law, Islamic law, and customary law in the highly complex Afghan society, being deeply influenced by traditional cultural and religious convictions. Given these facts, the author explores how to bridge the exigencies of a human rights-driven penal law and conflicting social norms and understandings by using the rich tradition of Islamic law and its possible openness for contemporary rule of law standards. This work is based on ample field research in connection with a thorough analysis of the normative contexts. It is a landmark, since it offers broadly acceptable and thus feasible solutions for the Afghan legal practice. The book is of equal interest for scientists and practitioners interested in legal, religious, social, and political developments concerning human rights and regional traditions in the MENA region, in Afghanistan in particular.

A Glossary of the Quran is a ready reckoner for those who are interested to know the spirit of the Quran but are discouraged by the lack of knowledge of the Arabic language. The author has compiled the most common words used in the Quran so that one is able to grasp the gist of the Quran without learning the intricacies of the Arabic language. The book will be an ideal tool for those who are interested in reading and understanding the Holy Qur'an.