Secularism, Theology and Islam offers a uniquely theological analysis of the historic Danish cartoon crisis of 2005-2006, in which the publication of twelve images of the Prophet Muhammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ignited violent global protests. The crisis represents a politically, culturally, and religiously important event of the early 21st century, and Jennifer Veninga explores the important question of why the cartoons were published in Denmark when they were and why this matters to the larger global community. The book outlines three main interpretations of the affair as they were framed by international news media: as an issue exclusively about freedom of speech, as related to a 'clash of civilizations', or exclusively as a matter of international politics. Whilst these are important to note, the author argues that the crisis was far more complex than any of these interpretations suggest, and argues that an alternative methodology can be found in philosopher Charles Taylor's concept of the 'social imaginary', which refers to the shared norms, expectations, images and narratives of a community or nation that inform many of its shared practices. Describing the Danish social imaginary as a paradox of Christianity and secularism, Veninga explains why the new presence of Islam has been perceived as such a threat to Danish identity. The author also maintains that despite tendencies toward exclusion, the Danish imaginary also supports a move toward authentic religious pluralism. Understanding the Danish cartoon crisis is important for any community struggling with new religious diversity, especially those with largely secular identities. Furthermore, the method used to examine the crisis provides a theological analytical framework applicable to a wide variety of contemporary social and political movements and issues.

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Halal" Arabic, literally "permissible" or "lawful." Johan Fischer's illuminating studyproves that in the modern world, halal is no longer an expression of esoteric forms of production, trade, and consumption, but part of a huge and expanding globalized market. Exploring contemporary forms of halal understanding and practice among Malay Muslims in London - that is, halal consumption by middle-class Malays on "the frontier" - evokes important and pressing questions onboth Islamic thought and how we live our lives today. "The Halal Frontier" gives us fresh insight into the religious dimensions of food consumption in an era of globalized mass production.

Understanding Political Islam retraces the human and intellectual development that led Francois Burgat to a very firm conviction: that the roots of the tensions that afflict the Western world's relationship with the Muslim world are political rather than ideological. In his compelling account of the interactions between personal life-history and professional research trajectories, Burgat examines how the rise of political Islam has been expressed: first in the Arab world, then in its interactions with European and Western societies. An essential continuation of his work on Islamism, Burgat's unique field research and 'political trespassing' marks an overdue challenge to the academic mainstream. -- .

In the last elections in Turkey, in December 1995, an Islamic party had come to power by means of free elections for the first time in history. The rise to power of the Turkish Islamists is a result of several decades of revivalism. In this process the veil has been a prominent symbol of the new religious puritanism, causing resentment among those who regard the bare-headed woman as the symbol of progress and emancipation. In the light of a century-long conflict between secularism and popular Islam, this study describes the conflict over the veil as it became a burning issue in the decade following the military intervention of 1980, and remains a matter of controversy. While focusing on the issue of veiling, the author also considers the wider picture of tension between official secularism and popular Islam in present-day Turkey. Although she does not discount this tension, the author argues that the fact that the Islamic movements is on the rise does not mean that it threatens the very foundations of modern Turkish society

Islam in World Cultures analyzes differences in Islamic culture and practice by looking not simply at matters of doctrine, but also at how Islam interacts with local cultures. Contemporary treatments of Islam focus on the Middle East; they treat the beliefs and people of that region as representing all of Islam. At most they emphasize the differences between Muslim groups-Sunni vs. Shia, for instance-while overlooking the even greater differences that result from region-specific cultural and political pressures. Islam in World Cultures gathers the work of ten eminent scholars, each of whom has expertise in the Muslim culture of a particular country or geographical area. Individual chapters explore contemporary developments in the Islamic experience in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Central Asia, China, Indonesia, South Africa, Ethiopia, and the United States. This broad treatment provides an introduction to the full range of issues relating to Islam in the context of globalization. A full chapter of annotated references and electronic links, organized to relate to each chapter A glossary of key terms, with emphasis on comparative usage and how common terms differ in definition from place to place

Analysing the spread and survival of Islamic legal ideas and commentaries in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean littorals, Islamic Law in Circulation focuses on Shafi'ism, one of the four Sunni schools of Islamic law. It explores how certain texts shaped, transformed and influenced the juridical thoughts and lives of a significant community over a millennium in and between Asia, Africa and Europe. By examining the processes of the spread of legal texts and their roles in society, as well as thinking about how Afrasian Muslims responded to these new arrivals of thoughts and texts, Mahmood Kooria weaves together a narrative with the textual descendants from places such as Damascus, Mecca, Cairo, Malabar, Java, Aceh and Zanzibar to tell a compelling story of how Islam contributed to the global history of law from the thirteenth to the twentieth century.

Prior accounts have portrayed Islamic Spain either as a paradise of enlightened tolerance, or as the site where civilisations clashed. Award-winning historian Brian A. Catlos taps a wide array of original sources to paint a more complex picture, showing how Muslims, Christians, and Jews together built a sophisticated civilisation that transformed the Western world, even as they waged relentless war against each other and amongst themselves. Religion was often the language of conflict, but seldom its cause--a lesson we would do well to learn in our own time. Kingdoms of Faith rewrites Spain's Islamic past from the ground up, evoking the cultural splendour of al-Andalus and the many forces that shaped it.

This book addresses the issue of one of the most visible and debated currents in contemporary radical Islam. It sheds light on the history, the fundamental principles, and the political and religious translations of Salafism and explains current events involving Salafist actors in an objective and dispassionate manner. The author explains with precision the different contemporary Salafist mobilizations by illustrating them with specific cases while shedding light on the main debates related to this mode of understanding of the Muslim religion, such as its potential role in triggering certain forms of violence, the way to compare it to other fundamentalist versions in other religions, or the way to describe, in terms of social sciences, the main concepts and discourses that can be observed in this current of Islam today.

Patristic Literature in Arabic Translations explores the Arabic translations of the Greek and Syriac Church Fathers, focusing on those produced in the Palestinian monasteries and at Sinai in the 8th-10th centuries and in Antioch during Byzantine rule (969-1084). These Arabic translations preserve patristic texts lost in the original languages. They offer crucial information about the diffusion and influence of patristic heritage among Middle Eastern Christians from the 8th century to the present. A systematic examination of Arabic patristic translations sheds light on the development of Muslim and Jewish theological thought. Contributors are Aaron Michael Butts, Joe Glynias, Habib Ibrahim, Jonas Karlsson, Sergey Kim, Joshua Mugler, Tamara Pataridze, Alexandre Roberts, Barbara Roggema, Alexander Treiger.

Islamic philosophy has often been treated as mainly of historical interest, belonging to the history of ideas rather than to philosophy. This volume challenges this belief, and provides an indispensable reference tool. It includes:
* Detailed discussions of the most important figures from earliest times to the present day
* Chapters on key concepts in Islamic philosophy, and on relevant traditions in Greek and western philosophy
* Contributions by 50 leading experts in the field, from over 16 countries
* Analysis of a vast geographical area with discussions of Arabic, Persian, Indian, Jewish, Turkish and South East Asian philosophy
* Comprehensive bibliographical information and an extensive index
Seyyed Hossein Nasr is Professor of Islamic Studies at the George Washington University, Washington D.C. He has held academic positions across the United States, as well as in Beirut and Tehran. He has written extensively on many aspects of Islamic philosophy; his work has been translated into over 20 languages. Oliver Leaman is a Reader in Philosophy at Liverpool's John Moores University and has published widely on Islamic philosophy and the philosophy of religion.

Can the seeker after Truth wholly depend on the guidance found in books on Sufism or are the oral teachings of a spiritual master necessary? This was a heated debate in fourteenth-century Andalusia that extended beyond the confines of Sufi circles. Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406), the celebrated social theorist and historian, ventured into this debate with a treatise that is as relevant today as it was then. Ibn Khaldun on Sufism: Remedy for the Questioner in Search of Answers is the first ever translation into English of Shifa' al-Sa'il li-Tahdhib al-Masa'il.Though Ibn Khaldun is renowned for the Muqaddima and the 'Ibar-which are considered milestones in the fields of medieval sociology and the philosophy of history-little is known about his religious and spiritual life. In her introduction to Ibn Khaldun on Sufism, Dr Yumna Ozer seeks to restore Ibn Khaldun and his work to the context from which his theories arose, both in intellectual and religious terms; she also draws a vivid painting of Sufism in the fourteenth century and rethinks Ibn Khaldun's relationship with Sufism. The translation itself addresses the dichotomies or synergies between religious law and the Sufi path, the roles played by jurists, and that played by Sufis, and the particular position of the Sufi shaykh or spiritual master. Dr Yumna Ozer gained a PhD in Islamic Studies from Indiana University and is an independent scholar specialising in Sufism.

The essay Reading and studying the Qur'an is an updated English version of the work appeared in Italian (Rome 2021) Leggere e studiare il Corano which deals with the contents of the Qur'an, the style and formal features of the text, the history and fixation of it and an poutline of the reception in Islamic literature. The aim of the work is to give a reader a description of what he/she can find in the Islamic holy text and the state of the critical debates on all the topics dealt with, focusing mainly on the growing scholarly literature which appeared in the last 30 years. As such, the work is unique in combining the aim to give comprehensive information on the topic and, at the same, time, reconstruct the critical debate in a balanced outline also emphasizing confessional approaches and the dynamics in the study of the Qur'an. There is nothing similar in contemporary scholarship and the book is a handbook for students and scholars of Islam but also for readers in religious studies who need to know how the main questions related to the Islamic text have been discussed in recent scholarship.

• Muslim expansion into the western Mediterranean in the Early Middle Ages had a great influence on Italy. Without minimizing the extent of the destruction that occurred in those centuries, this book presents the annotated sources translated into English for postgraduate and upper level undergraduate students about the way Muslims and Christians perceived each other. • Providing students with primary sources about the circulation of news about them, and their knowledge of their opponents, this book clarifies the relationship between Muslims and Christians in early medieval Italy. • This book allows students provides students with a fuller picture, not currently offered on the market. It enables them to see the dynamic between Muslims and Christians in early medieval Italy in a time of invasion and peace to better understand the relationship between the two religions.

John Penrice's Dictionary and Glossary of the Kor-an first published almost a century ago, has withstood the test of time, and has been an aid to generations of Kor-an students. According to Islamic doctrine the Kor-an is the literal word of God, and it would be introduced by the phrase, "Qiil Allah ta'iilii, God the Exalted said", and when a passage has been recited aloud it will be said, "$adaq Allah al-'Azim, God Almighty has truly spoken".

Except for Israel, the Middle East remains largely untouched by the democratic revolution that swept across Eastern Europe and the former USSR. This book aims to explain and analyze the reasons why despotism or religious fundamentalism continue to control the Middle Eastern countries.