Demonstrating the vibrancy of an Early Modern Muslim society through a study of the natural sciences in seventeenth-century Morocco, Revealed Sciences examines how the natural sciences flourished during this period, without developing in a similar way to the natural sciences in Europe. Offering an innovative analysis of the relationship between religious thought and the natural sciences, Justin K. Stearns shows how nineteenth and twentieth-century European and Middle Eastern scholars jointly developed a narrative of the decline of post-formative Islamic thought, including the fate of the natural sciences in the Muslim world. Challenging these depictions of the natural sciences in the Muslim world, Stearns uses numerous close readings of works in the natural sciences to a detailed overview of the place of the natural sciences in scholarly and educational landscapes of the Early Modern Magreb, and considers non-teleological possibilities for understanding a persistent engagement with the natural sciences in Early Modern Morocco.

Farhaan Wali offers a timely contribution to the issues and problems involved in the de-radicalisation process. Trying to generate ethnographic insight into Islamism has always presented a problem for researchers seeking to comprehend Islamism. Islamist groups operate secretly, making it difficult to penetrate their inner workings. Leaving Islamism is like no other academic analysis of Islamism and de-radicalisation. The author was given access to ex-Islamist actors, giving the book a significant advantage over other books. Therefore, in Leaving Islamism, the author has put together a comprehensive examination of the causes-political, social, cultural, and interpersonal-of why some young Muslims leave Islamism in Britain. To go beyond abstract theory, Farhaan Wali has conducted in-depth interviews with ex-members of Islamist organisations. His access to ex-members put him in the unique position of being able to gather the biographical information required to study the causes of "dropping out" of Islamism. Therefore, Leaving Islamism will be vital reading for anyone seeking to understand why some young Muslims leave Islamism. (Dr Alhagi Manta Drammeh, Associate Professor in Islamic Studies and visiting scholar at the University of The Gambia in politics, international relations and diplomacy MSC programme) Islamism continues to inspire countless young people in Britain to turn away from the bedrock principles of this country, infusing them with religious fanaticism. Events such as the Manchester bombing or the beheading of Lee Rigby seem to trigger a flood of predictable academic attention. However, these responses are still largely transfixed on the causality of Islamism. The debate needs to move forward and take stock of additional dimensions of Islamism. Although scores of young Muslims are flowing towards the spectre of Islamism, there are equal numbers flooding out from it. What is the narrative behind this exodus? Leaving Islamism explores how and why some British Muslims leave Islamism, providing a compelling new perspective from which to understand the de-radicalisation process. The author draws on first-hand accounts of ex-Islamists. By framing ex-Islamist experiences Farhaan Wali is able to identify and evaluate the reasons, methods and pathways used by ex-Islamists to leave Islamist groups and ideology through the collection of ex-Islamist narratives.

Through extensive textual analysis, this open access book reveals how various passages of the Qur'an define death and resurrection spiritually or metaphorically. While the Day of Resurrection is a major theme of the Qur'an, resurrection has largely been interpreted as physical, which is defined as bones leaving their graves. However, this book shows that the Qur'an sometimes alludes to death and resurrection in a metaphoric manner - for example, rebuilding a desolate town, typically identified as Jerusalem, and bringing the Israelite exiles back; thus, suggesting awareness and engagement with Jewish liturgy. Many times, the Qur'an even speaks of non-believers as spiritually dead, those who live in this world, but are otherwise zombies. The author presents an innovative theory of interpretation, contextualizing the Qur'an within Late Antiquity and traces the Qur'anic passages back to their Biblical, extra-biblical and rabbinic subtexts and traditions. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Although Turkey is a secular state, it is often characterised as a Muslim country. In her latest book, Lejla Voloder provides an engaging and revealing study of a Bosniak community in Turkey, one of the Muslim minorities actually recognised by the state in Turkey. Under what circumstances have they resettled to Turkey? How do they embrace Islam? How does one live as a Bosniak, a Turkish citizen, a mother, a father, a member of a household, and as one guided by Islam? The first book based on fieldwork to detail the lives of members of the Bosnian and Bosniak diaspora in Turkey, A Muslim Minority in Turkey makes a unique contribution to the study of Muslim minority groups in Turkey and the Middle East.

The ancient kalam cosmological argument maintains that the series of past events is finite and that therefore the universe began to exist. Two recent scientific discoveries have yielded plausible prima facie physical evidence for the beginning of the universe. The expansion of the universe points to its beginning-to a Big Bang-as one retraces the universe's expansion in time. And the second law of thermodynamics, which implies that the universe's energy is progressively degrading, suggests that the universe began with an initial low entropy condition. The kalam cosmological argument-perhaps the most discussed philosophical argument for God's existence in recent decades-maintains that whatever begins to exist must have a cause. And since the universe began to exist, there must be a transcendent cause of its beginning, a conclusion which is confirmatory of theism. So this medieval argument for the finitude of the past has received fresh wind in its sails from recent scientific discoveries. This collection reviews and assesses the merits of the latest scientific evidences for the universe's beginning. It ends with the kalam argument's conclusion that the universe has a cause-a personal cause with properties of theological significance.