This book consists of a series of interrelated chapters analyzing why Iran, among all countries, has seen so many revolutionary movements in the past century; the degree to which its religion, Shi'ism, is revolutionary; and the history of revolutionary and resistance movements in the modern Muslim world. The author stresses historical change, such as the change of Twelver Shi'ism from political quietism to revolutionary opposition, and also previously unnoticed factors in revolution, such as the multi-urban character of all Iran's modern revolutions.

Since the Mediterranean connects cultures, Mediterranean studies have by definition an intercultural focus. Throughout the modern era, the Ottoman Empire has had a lasting impact on the cultures and societies of the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean. However, the modern Balkans are usually studied within the context of European history, the southern Mediterranean within the context of Islam. Although it makes sense to connect both regions, this is a vast field and requires a command of different languages not necessarily related to each other. Investigating both Greek and Arabic sources, this book will shed some light on the significance of ideas in the political transitions of their time and how the proponents of these transitions often became so overwhelmed by the events that they helped trigger adjustments to their own ideas. Also, the discourses in Greek and Arabic reflect the provinces of the Ottoman Empire and it is instructive to see their differences and commonalities which helps explain contemporary politics.

Islam and International Relations: Fractured Worlds reframes and radically disrupts perceived understanding of the nature and location of Islamic impulses in international relations. This collection of innovative essays written by Mustapha Kamal Pasha presents an alternative reading of contestation and entanglement between Islam and modernity. Wide-ranging in scope, the volume illustrates the limits of Western political imagination, especially its liberal construction of presumed divergence between Islam and the West. Split into three parts, Pasha's articles cover Islamic exceptionalism, challenges and responses, and also look beyond Western international relations. This volume will be of great interest to graduates and scholars of international relations, Islam, religion and politics, and political ideologies, globalization and democracy.

The 'War on Terror' ushered in a new era of anti-Muslim bias and racism. Anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia, is influenced by local economies, power structures and histories. However, the War on Terror, a conflict undefined by time and place, with a homogenised Muslim 'Other' framed as a perpetual enemy, has contributed towards a global Islamophobic narrative. This edited international volume examines the connections between interpersonal and institutional anti-Muslim racism that have contributed to the growth and emboldening of nativist and populist protest movements globally. It maps out categories of Islamophobia, revealing how localised histories, conflicts and contemporary geopolitical realities have textured the ways that Islamophobia has manifested across the global North and South. At the same time, it seeks to highlight activism and resistance confronting Islamophobia. -- .

This in-depth study examines the relation between legal theory (usul al-fiqh) and speculative theology ('ilm al-kalam). It compares the legal theory of four classical jurists who belonged to the same school of law, the Shafi'i school, yet followed three different theological traditions. The aim of this comparison is to understand to what extent, and in what way, the theology of each jurist shaped his choices in legal theory.

The holy book of Islam, the Koran as a book is the result of: 1. revelations given to Muhammad in the period 610- 632 (Muhammad's death) 2. writing down of these revelations by people around Muhammad in a period probably starting some years after 610, and ending a couple of years after 632 3. compiling of these writings stretching from mid-630s and perhaps until mid-650s 4. vowelling and dotting of the text (ancient Arabic was written without dots, leaving some letters look identical, and without vowels, which can make two different words look identical). Old Koran Essential to the reading of the Koran are the interpretations, which are still conducted, but which were more normal and accepted in the first centuries of Islam. As the Koran has a structure and a language, as well as allusions, which often are difficult for the normal Muslim to understand, a whole science were built around the comprehension of the Koran. The early Muslims studied history, language and nature science in an effort of understanding the Koran better. The product is surprisingly well accepted by the whole Muslim society, and no Muslim child or adult of today, studying the Koran, does this without help from the interpretations built on the early science of the Koran.

The seven volumes in this set, originally published between 1923 and 1987, explore the influence of Islam on law, politics, science, and development in the Muslim world. This set will be of interest to students of both Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.

This book cuts across important debates in cultural studies, literary criticism, politics, sociology, and anthropology. Meyda Yegenoglu brings together different theoretical strands in the debates regarding immigration, from Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic understanding of the subject formation, to Zygmunt Bauman's notion of the stranger, to Etienne Balibar's reading of Hanna Arendt's notion of 'right to have rights," and to Antonio Negri's concept of the constituent and constitutive power.

How did the Victorians perceive Muslims in the British Empire and beyond? How were these perceptions propagated by historians and scholars, poets, dramatists and fiction writers of the period? For the first time, Shahin Kuli Khan Khattak brings to life Victorian Britain's conceptions and misconceptions of the Muslim World using a thorough investigation of varied cultural sources of the period. She discovers the prevailing representation of Muslims and Islam in the two major spheres of British influence - India and the Ottoman Empire - was reinforced by reoccurring themes: through literature and entertainment the public saw 'the Mahomedan' as the 'noble savage', a perception reinforced through travel writing and fiction of the 'exotic east' and the 'Arabian Nights'. "Islam and the Victorians" will be an important contribution to understanding the apprehensions and misapprehensions about Islam in the nineteenth century, providing a fascinating historical backdrop to many of today's concerns.

Visible Islam in Modern Turkey presents a rich panorama of Islamic practices in today's Turkey. The authors, one a Muslim and one a Christian, introduce readers to Turkish Islamic piety and observances. The book is also a model for Muslims, for it interprets the foundations of Islam to the modern mind and shows the relevance of Turkish Islamic practices to modern society. Packed with data and insights, it appeals to a variety of circles, both secular and traditional.

This edited volume conceives of International Relations (IR) not as a unilateral project, but more as an intellectual platform. Its contributors explore Islamic contributions to this field, addressing the theories and practices of the Islamic civilization and of Muslim societies with regards to international affairs and to the discipline of IR.

Like many women in the Church, Joy Loewen didn't fully understand Muslim women or their roles in the Muslim culture and religion. In fact, she was afraid of them and not particularly interested in befriending them. But with prayer, wisdom, and a lot of love, Joy overcame these obstacles, found that she actually liked them, and that many of these women are irresistibly attracted to the love of Jesus. For the last thirty years she has used this knowledge to build authentic connections with Muslim women, reaching out to them in a sensitive, effective way.
In this practical and very personal book, Joy shares not only her insights into befriending Muslim women, but many helpful stories from her own experiences. Her goal is to help readers "move from fear to love and compassion" so that they, too, can love as Christ does. Woman to Woman is essential reading for Christian leaders, ministries, and any layperson who wants to grow in love for and understanding of Muslims.

Opposing a binary perspective that consolidates ethnicity, religion, and nationalism into separate spheres, this book demonstrates that neither nationalism nor religion can be studied in isolation in the Middle East. Religious interpretation, like other systems of meaning-production, is affected by its historical and political contexts, and the processes of interpretation and religious translation bleed into the institutional discourses and processes of nation-building. This book calls into question the foundational epistemologies of the nation-state by centering on the pivotal and intimate role Islam played in the emergence of the nation-state, showing the entanglements and reciprocities of nationalism and religious thought as they played out in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Middle East.

All four of the bombers involved in 7/7, the deadly attack on London's transport system in July 2005, were aged 30 or under. The spectre of extremist Islam looms large and Muslim youth in the UK are increasingly linked to radical Islamic movements. A clear, balanced examination of this complex issue is long overdue. Philip Lewis sets out to address this by looking at the lives and beliefs of young Muslims aged 18 to 30, against a backdrop of the problems any migrant community face. Beginning with an overview of British Muslim communities, he goes on to explore the nature of the intergenerational gap in the Muslim community, showing how normal tensions are exaggerated as children are educated in a language and culture different to that of their parents. Patriarchal 'clan politics' and a breakdown in communication between young Muslims and traditional Muslim leaders are dispossessing Islamic youth, leading a small but significant minority to turn to radical groups for somewhere to belong and something to believe in. Lewis concludes by identifying a generational shift from 'clan politics' to what he calls a 'new professionalism' and demonstrates how new organizations and networks of Muslim thinkers are springing up all the time - allowing young Muslims to find positive identities and outlets for their concerns and energies.

"Islam in the Eastern African Novel engages the novels of three important eastern African novelists--Nuruddin Farah, Abdulrazak Gurnah, and M. G. Vassanji--by centering Islam as an interpretive lens and critical framework. Mirmotahari argues that recognizing the centrality of Islam in the fictional works of these three novelists has important consequences for the theoretical and conceptual conversations that characterize the study of African literature. The overdue and sustained attention to Islam in these works complicates the narrative of coloniality, the nature of the nation and the nation-state, the experience of diaspora and exile, the meaning of indigenaity, and even the form and history of the novel itself"--

In this new interpretation of the modernization and secularization of Turkey, Andrew Davison demonstrates the usefulness of hermeneutics in political analysis. A hermeneutic approach, he argues, illuminates the complex relations between religion and politics in post-Ottoman Turkey and, more broadly, between politics and matters of culture, tradition, national identity, and conscience in the modern world. Led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a modernist Turkish elite in the 1920s wrested political power from an empire in which Islam had exercised great political, social, and cultural power. Ataturk instituted policies designed to end Islamic power by secularizing politics and the state. Through the lens of hermeneutics, this book examines the ideas and policies of the secularizers and those who contested the process. Davison reinterprets the founding principles and practices of a modern, secular Turkey and closely reexamines the crucial ideas of the Turkish nationalist thinker Ziya Goekalp, who laid the conceptual groundwork for Turkey's Westernization experience. The application of hermeneutics, the author finds, remedies the methodological shortcomings of Western political analysts and provides a better understanding of the processes of secularization in Turkey as well as elsewhere in the modern world.

Ibn al-'Arabi (d. 1240) was one of the towering figures of Islamic intellectual history, and among Sufis still bears the title of al-shaykh al-akbar, or "the greatest master." Ibn al-'Arabi and Islamic Intellectual Culture traces the history of the concept of "oneness of being" (wahdat al-wujud) in the school of Ibn al- 'Arabi, in order to explore the relationship between mysticism and philosophy in Islamic intellectual life. It examines how the conceptual language used by early mystical writers became increasingly engaged over time with the broader Islamic intellectual culture, eventually becoming integrated with the latter's common philosophical and theological vocabulary. It focuses on four successive generations of thinkers (Sadr al-Din al-Qunawi, Mu'ayyad al-Din al-Jandi, 'Abd al-Razzaq al-Kashani, and Dawud al-Qaysari), and examines how these "philosopher-mystics" refined and developed the ideas of Ibn al-'Arabi. Through a close analysis of texts, the book clearly traces the crystallization of an influential school of thought in Islamic history and its place in the broader intellectual culture. Offering an exploration of the development of Sufi expression and thought, this book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of Islamic thought, philosophy, and mysticism.