In Jesus for Zanzibar: Narratives of Pentecostal (Non-)Belonging, Islam, and Nation Hans Olsson offers an ethnographic account of the lived experience and socio-political significance of newly arriving Pentecostal Christians in the Muslim majority setting of Zanzibar. This work analyzes how a disputed political partnership between Zanzibar and Mainland Tanzania intersects with the construction of religious identities. Undertaken at a time of political tensions, the case study of Zanzibar's largest Pentecostal church, the City Christian Center, outlines religious belonging as relationally filtered in-between experiences of social insecurity, altered minority / majority positions, and spiritual powers. Hans Olsson shows that Pentecostal Christianity, as a signifier of (un)wanted social change, exemplifies contested processes of becoming in Zanzibar that capitalizes on, and creates meaning out of, religious difference and ambient political tensions.

The qasidah and the qit'ah are well known to scholars of classical Arabic literature, but the maqtu', a form of poetry that emerged in the thirteenth century and soon became ubiquitous, is as obscure today as it was once popular. These poems circulated across the Arabo-Islamic world for some six centuries in speech, letters, inscriptions, and, above all, anthologies. Drawing on more than a hundred unpublished and published works, How Do You Say "Epigram" in Arabic? is the first study of this highly popular and adaptable genre of Arabic poetry. By addressing this lacuna, the book models an alternative comparative literature, one in which the history of Arabic poetry has as much to tell us about epigrams as does Greek.

The Sound Traditions: Studies in Ismaili Texts and Thought is a collection of Ismail K. Poonawala's articles on Ismaili studies. Divided into three sections, the volume consists of nineteen articles that have been published over a long period of more than forty years. Part One focuses on Ismaili sources and the question of their authorship. The aspects of Ismaili rational discourses are examined in Part Two. Focusing on the scriptural knowledge of Ismaili tradition, Part Three then delves into investigating al-Qadi al-Nu'man's life and contribution. This volume is an excellent gateway to the study of origins and development of Ismaili thought.

Antonia Bosanquet's Minding Their Place is the first full-length study of Ibn al-Qayyim's (d. 751/1350) collection of rulings relating to non-Muslim subjects, Ahkam ahl al-dhimma. It offers a detailed study of the structure, content and authorial method of the work, arguing that it represents the author's personal composition rather than a synthesis of medieval rulings, as it has often been understood. On this basis, Antonia Bosanquet analyses how Ibn al-Qayyim's presentation of rulings in Ahkam ahl al-dhimma uses space to convey his view of religious hierarchy. She considers his answer to the question of whether non-Muslims have a place in the Abode of Islam, how this is defined and how his definition contributes to Ibn al-Qayyim's broader theological world-view.

Sufism in Central Asia: New Perspectives on Sufi Traditions, 15th-21st Centuries brings together ten original studies on historical aspects of Sufism in this region. A central question, of ongoing significance, underlies each contribution: what is the relationship between Sufism as it was manifested in this region prior to the Russian conquest and the Soviet era, on the one hand, and the features of Islamic religious life in the region during the Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet eras on the other? The authors address multiple aspects of Central Asian religious life rooted in Sufism, examining interpretative strategies, realignments in Sufi communities and sources from the Russian to the post-Soviet period, and social, political and economic perspectives on Sufi communities. Contributors include: Shahzad Bashir, Devin DeWeese, Allen Frank, Jo-Ann Gross, Kawahara Yayoi, Robert McChesney, Ashirbek Muminov, Maria Subtelny, Eren Tasar, and Waleed Ziad.

Saintly Spheres and Islamic Landscapes explores the creation, expansion, and perpetuation of the material and imaginary spheres of spiritual domination and sanctity that surrounded Sufi saints and became central to religious authority, Islamic piety, and the belief in the miraculous. The cultural and social constructs of Islamic sainthood and the spatial inscription of saintly figures have fascinated and ignited scholars across a range of disciplines. By bringing together a broad scope of perspectives and case studies, this book offers the reader the first comprehensive, albeit variegated, exposition of the evolution of saintly spheres and the emplacements of spiritual power in the Muslim world across time and place. Contributors: Angela Andersen, Irit Back, Devin DeWeese, Daphna Ephrat, Jo-Ann Gross, Nathan Hofer, Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, Sara Kuehn, Bulle Tuil Leonetti, Silvia Montenegro, Alexandre Papas, Paulo G. Pinto, Fatima Quraishi, Eric Ross, Itzchak Weismann, Pnina Werber, and Ethel Sara Wolper.

Long popular in Arabic, as well as Swahili and Malay, this classic text offers a complete guide to Muslim devotions, prayers and practical ethics. There are many books in English which present Sufi doctrine, but few which can be used as practical travel guides along the Path. Originally written in Classical Arabic, the aptly-named Book of Assistance is today in widespread use among Sufi teachers in Arabia, Indonesia and East Africa. The author, Imam al-Haddad (d. 1720), lived at Tarim in the Hadramaut valley between the Yemen and Oman, and is widely held to have been the "spiritual renewer" of the twelfth Islamic century. He spent most of his life in Kenya and Saudi Arabia where he taught Islamic jurisprudence and classical Sufism according to the order (tariqa) of the BaAlawi sayids.

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.