Contemporary Muslim-Christian Encounters: Developments, Diversity and Dialogues addresses the key issues in the present day global encounter between Christians and Muslims. Divided into two parts, the first examines theoretical issues and concerns which affect dialogue between the two traditions. The second part highlights case studies from around the world. Chapters come from established scholars including Reuven Firestone, Douglas Pratt and Clinton Bennett, emerging scholars, as well as practitioner perspectives. Highlighting the diversity within the field of "Christian-Muslim" encounter, case studies cover examples from the US and globally, and include dialogue in the US post 9/11, Nigerian Muslims and Christians, and Christian responses to Islamophobia in the UK. Covering unique areas and those not explored in detail elsewhere, Contemporary Muslim-Christian Encounters: Developments, Diversity and Dialogues will be of interest to advanced students, researchers, and interfaith professionals.

Using concepts that are not already a part of the militant discourse as a way to undermine extremism, Countering Heedless Jihad explores a stratagem aimed at defusing jihadist ideology. It explains how to counteract idealist theology using concepts from it, borrowing ideas from some revered Islamic theologians and positioning them in a way that sabotages jihadist ideology. By integrating the theology with viable methods for dissemination, it presents a viable means for confusing existing members of radical groups and for neutralizing their recruiting effort. The book includes contributions by Major General Michael Lehnert, USMC; U.S. Ambassador David J. Dunford; and Dr. Khuram Iqbal.

This book analyzes perceptions of self, power, agency, and gender of Muslim women in a rural community of Bangladesh. Rural women's limited power and agency has been subsumed within the male dominated Islamic discourses on gender. However, many Muslim women have their own alternative discourses surrounding power and agency. Sarwar Alam intertwines an exploration of these power dynamics with reading of the Qur'an and Hadith, and analyzes how Muslim women's perception of power and gender are linked to their relationship with religion.

This engaging introduction to Islam examines its lived reality, its worldwide presence, and the variety of beliefs and practices encompassed by the religion. The global perspective uniquely captures the diversity of Islam expressed throughout different countries in the present day. * A comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, and global introduction to Islam, covering its history as well as current issues, experiences, and challenges * Incorporates key new research on Muslims from a variety of countries across Europe, Latin America, Indonesia, and Malaysia Central Asia * Directly addresses controversial issues, including political violence and terrorism , anti-western sentiments, and Islamophobia * Explores different responses from various Islamic communities to globalizing trends * Highlights key patterns within Islamic history that shed light upon the origins and evolution of current movements and thought

An original and uncompromising study of the Qur'anic foundations of women's identity and agency, this book is a bold call to Muslim women and men to reread and reinterpret the Qur'an, Islam's most authoritative source, and to discover within its revelations an inherent affirmation of gender equality. Nimat Hafez Barazangi asserts that Muslim women have been generally excluded from equal agency, from full participation in Islamic society, and thus from full and equal Islamic identity, primarily because of patriarchal readings of the Qur'an and the entire range of early Qur'anic literature. Based on her pedagogical study of the sacred text, she argues that Islamic higher learning is a basic human right, that women have equal authority to participate in the interpretation of Islamic primary sources, and that women will realize their just role in society and their potential as human beings only when they are involved in the interpretation of the Qur'an. Consequently, a Muslim woman's relationship with God must not be dependent on her husband's or father's moral agency. Barazangi, an American Muslim of Syrian origin, is a scholar, an activist, and a concerned feminist. Her analysis of the complex interaction of gender, religion, and the power of knowledge for self-identity offers a paradigm shift in Islamic studies. She documents the historical development of Islamic thought and describes how Muslim males have arrived at the prevailing exclusionary positions. She considers the issues of dependent morality and of modesty, especially in attire - a polarizing subject for many Muslim women - and she concludes that the majority of Muslim women today are not educated even for a complementary role in society. The book offers a curricular framework for self-learning that could prepare Muslim women for an active role in citizenship and policy making in a pluralistic society and may serve as a guideline for moving toward a ""gender revolution."" Her main thesis, if carried out in the lives of Muslims in America or elsewhere, would be so radical and liberating that her discourse is more powerful than those of many Muslim feminists. She writes, ""I intend this book to affirm the self-identity of the Muslim woman as an autonomous spiritual and intellectual human being.

In the view of Dr. Martin Sicker, it was with the emergence of Islam that the combination of geopolitics and religion reached its most volatile form and provided the ideological context for war and peace in the Middle East for more than a millennium. The conflation of geopolitics and religion in Islam is predicated on the concept of "jihad" (struggle), which may be understood as a "crescentade," in the same sense as the later Christian "crusade," which seeks to achieve a religious goal, the conversion of the world to Islam, by militant means. This equates to a concept of perpetual war with the non-Muslim world, a concept that underlays Muslim geopolitical thinking throughout the thousand-year period covered in this book. However, as Sicker amply demonstrates, the concept often bore little relation to the political realities of the region that as often as not saw Muslims and non-Muslims aligned against and at war with other Muslims.

The story of the emergence and phenomenal ascendancy of the Islamic world from a relatively small tribe in sparsely populated Arabia is one that taxes the imagination, but it becomes more comprehensible when viewed through a geopolitical prism. Religion was repeatedly and often shamelessly harnessed to geopolitical purpose by both Muslims and Christians, albeit with arguably greater Muslim success. Islamic ascendancy began as an Arab project, initially focused on the Arabian peninsula, but was soon transformed into an imperialist movement with expansive ambitions. As it grew, it quickly registered highly impressive gains, but soon lost much of its Arab content. It ended a millennium later as a Turkish--more specifically, an Ottoman--project with many intermediate transformations. The reverberations of the thousand-year history of that ascendancy are still felt today in many parts of the greater Middle East. A comprehensive geopolitical survey for scholars, students, researchers, and all others interested in the history of the Middle East and Islam.

In Honored by the Glory of Islam Marc David Baer proposes a novel approach to the historical record of Islamic conversions during the Ottoman age and gathers fresh insights concerning the nature of religious conversion itself. Rejecting any attempt to explain Ottoman Islamization in terms of the converts' motives, Baer instead concentrates on the proselytizers - in this case, none other than the sultan himself. Mehmed IV (1648-87) is remembered as an aloof ruler whose ineffectual governing led to the disastrous siege of Vienna. Through an integrated reading of previously unexamined Ottoman archival and literary texts, Baer reexamines Mehmed IV's failings as a ruler by underscoring the sultan's zeal for bringing converts to Islam. As an expression of his rededication to Islam, Mehmed IV actively sought to establish his reputation as a convert-maker, convincing or coercing Christian and Jewish subjects to be "honored by the glory of Islam," and Muslim subjects to turn to Islamic piety. Revising the conventional portrayal of a ruler so distracted by his passion for hunting that he neglected affairs of state, Baer shows that Mehmed IV saw his religious involvement as central to his role as sultan. He traces an ever-widening range of reform, conversion, and conquest expanding outward from the heart of Mehmed IV's empire. This account is the first to correlate the conversion of people and space in the mature Ottoman Empire, to investigate conversion from the perspective of changing Ottoman ideology, and to depict the sultan as an interventionist convert maker. The resulting insights promise to rework our understandings of the reign of a forgotten ruler, a largely neglected period in Ottoman history, the changing nature of Islam and its history in Europe, relations between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Europe, the practice of Jihad, and religious architecture in urban history.

The Ayyubid and Mamluk periods were some of the most intellectually fecund in Islamic history. Megan H. Reid's book, which traverses three centuries from 1170 to 1500, recovers the stories of medieval men and women who were renowned not only for their intellectual prowess but also for their devotional piety. Through these stories, the book examines trends in voluntary religious practice that have been largely overlooked in modern scholarship. This type of piety was distinguished by the pursuit of God's favor through additional rituals, which emphasized the body as an instrument of worship and the rejection of the temptation of worldly pleasures and even society itself. Using an array of sources including manuals of law, fatwa collections, chronicles and obituaries, the book shows what it meant to be a good Muslim in the medieval period and how Islamic law defined holy behavior. In its concentration on personal piety, ritual and religious practice the book offers an intimate perspective on early Islamic society.

The long era of Muslim political ascendancy that began in a small region of western Arabia reached its pinnacle some nine hundred years later with the siege of Vienna by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1529. Suleiman then concluded that, given the increasingly volatile geopolitical environment, Muslim expansionism in Eurasia had run its course. The subsequent decline of Ottoman power also meant, in effect, the decline of political Islam, which had been intimately bound to it for centuries.

As Sicker shows, the problems faced by the Ottoman Empire were also faced by the Persian Empire and both underwent an extended period of political decline and territorial retrenchment in the face of imperialist pressures from Europe and Asia. The greatest challenge to the world of political Islam came from Western Europe, especially France and Great Britain. The Ottoman and Persian empires assumed a global importance in the 19th century, not because of anything in them of intrinsic economic value, but because of their geopolitical and geostrategic significance. They became, in effect, a buffer zone separating Europe from the wealth of the East, at a time when European imperialism was on the march in Asia. It thus came about that the rivalries of the Great Powers, most especially those of Great Britain, France, and Russia, were played out in the Middle East. This book will serve as a vital resource for students, scholars, and other researchers involved with Middle East History, Political Islam, and Modern European History.

How do modern Muslims adapt their traditions to engage with today's world? Charles Tripp's erudite and incisive book considers one of the most significant challenges faced by Muslims over the last sixty years: the challenge of capitalism. By reference to the works of noted Muslim scholars, the author shows how, faced by this challenge, these intellectuals devised a range of strategies which have enabled Muslims to remain true to their faith, whilst engaging effectively with a world not of their own making. The work is framed around the development of their ideas on Islamic socialism, economics and the rationale for Islamic banking. While some Muslims have resorted to confrontation or insularity to cope with the challenges of modernity, most have aspired to innovation and ingenuity in the search for compromise and interaction with global capitalism in the twenty-first century.

Islam is a very mysterious and complex faith, one of intellectual depth in prayer and practice. It is unfortunate that the teachings of Islam have been marred by centuries of intellectual malaise, political misdirection, extremism, and disunity, leaving many spiritual wanderers-both Muslim and non-Muslim-to ponder a plethora of unaddressed questions about these sacred teachings. In his newest book, The Muslim Book of Why: What Everyone Should Know about Islam, author, scholar, and leading jihad theorist Warithudeen Umar highlights the concept of ijtihad in an attempt to help answer many of today's most pressing questions about Islam.

Ijtihad is described as a creative and disciplined intellectual effort to derive legal rulings from Islamic sources while taking into consideration the variables brought on by the fluctuating circumstances of the Muslim world. Though the world has changed and expanded, humanity's need for these teachings viewed through the clarifying concept of ijtihad has not.

To right these wrongs of gross misguidance within Muslim society, we must deconstruct history in order to discern what went wrong after the revelation of the Qur'an was shared with the world. The Muslim Book of Why seeks to do so, refocusing Muslim thought on a life of faith, family development, and worship.

Throughout history, the study of sacred texts has focused almost exclusively on the content and meaning of these writings. Such a focus obscures the fact that sacred texts are always embodied in particular material forms-from ancient scrolls to contemporary electronic devices. Using the digital turn as a starting point, this volume highlights material dimensions of the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The essays in this collection investigate how material aspects have shaped the production and use of these texts within and between the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, from antiquity to the present day. Contributors also reflect on the implications of transitions between varied material forms and media cultures. Taken together, the essays suggests that materiality is significant for the academic study of sacred texts, as well as for reflection on developments within and between these religious traditions. This volume offers insightful analysis on key issues related to the materiality of sacred texts in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, while also highlighting the significance of transitions between various material forms, including the current shift to digital culture.

Exploring the roles of Muslim guards and guides in Jewish cemeteries in Morocco, Cory Thomas Pechan Driver suggests that these custodians use performances of ritual and caring acts for Jewish graves for multiple reasons. Imazighen [Berbers] stress their close ties with Jews in order to create a moral self intentionally set apart from the mono-ethically Arab and mono-religiously Muslim Morocco. Other subjects, and particularly women, use their ties with Jewish sites to harness power and prestige in their communities. Others still may care for these grave sites to express grief for a close Jewish friend or adoptive family. In examining these motives, Driver not only documents the flow of material and spiritual capital across religious lines, but also moves beyond Muslim memory of the past on the one hand and Jewish dread of the future on the other to think about the Muslim/Jewish present in Morocco.

This book explores how medieval and modern Muslim religious scholars ('ulama') interpret gender roles in Qur'anic verses on legal testimony, marriage, and human creation. Citing these verses, medieval scholars developed increasingly complex laws and interpretations upholding a male-dominated gender hierarchy; aspects of their interpretations influence religious norms and state laws in Muslim-majority countries today, yet other aspects have been discarded entirely. Karen Bauer traces the evolution of their interpretations, showing how they have been adopted, adapted, rejected, or replaced over time, by comparing the Qur'an with a wide range of Qur'anic commentaries and interviews with prominent religious scholars from Iran and Syria. At times, tradition is modified in unexpected ways: learned women argue against gender equality, or Grand Ayatollahs reject sayings of the Prophet, citing science instead. This innovative and engaging study highlights the effects of social and intellectual contexts on the formation of tradition, and on modern responses to it.

The Arab revolutions of 2011 were a transformative moment in the modern history of the Middle East, as people rose up against long-standing autocrats throughout the region to call for 'bread, freedom and dignity'. With the passage of time, results have been decidedly mixed, with initial success stories like Tunisia contrasting with the emergence of even more repressive dictatorships in places like Egypt, with the backing of several Gulf states. Focusing primarily on Egypt, this book considers a relatively understudied dimension of these revolutions: the role of prominent religious scholars. While pro-revolutionary ulama have justified activism against authoritarian regimes, counter-revolutionary scholars have provided religious backing for repression, and in some cases the mass murder of unarmed protestors. Usaama al-Azami traces the public engagements and religious pronouncements of several prominent ulama in the region, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ali Gomaa and Abdullah bin Bayyah, to explore their role in either championing the Arab revolutions or supporting their repression. He concludes that while a minority of noted scholars have enthusiastically endorsed the counter-revolutions, their approach is attributable less to premodern theology and more to their distinctly modern commitment to the authoritarian state.