One of the main cultural consequences of the contacts between Islam and the West has been the borrowing of hundreds of words, mostly of Arabic but also of other important languages of the Islamic world, such as Persian, Turkish, Berber, etc. by Western languages. Such loanwords are particularly abundant and relevant in the case of the Iberian Peninsula because of the presence of Islamic states in it for many centuries; their study is very revealing when it comes to assess the impact of those states in the emergence and shaping of Western civilization. Some famous Arabic scholars, above all R. Dozy, have tackled this task in the past, followed by other attempts at increasing and improving his pioneering work; however, the progresses achieved during the last quarter of the 20th c., in such fields as Andalusi and Andalusi Romance dialectology and lexicology made it necessary to update all the available information on this topic and to offer it in English.

Kenneth Cragg was one of the West's most gifted interpreters of Islam and one of the most well-known figures of the Middle Eastern Church. During his 45 years in the Middle East, Cragg was an assistant Bishop of Jerusalem and scholar, he focussed on the Christian understanding of other faiths, particularly Islam. A major figure in Christian-Muslim conversations he was a prolific writer whose books became a forum of intellectual debate about Islam and Christian-Muslim relations. This set re-issues two of his lesser-known but no less important books, which illustrate his deep knowledge of the Qur'an and his lifelong interest in Islamic and Christian theology.

From the Civil War in Lebanon to the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79, from the dismantling of the Ba'athist regime in Iraq to the virtual splintering of the country; and from the chaos in Afghanistan to the victimisation of the Hazaras by the Taliban. Shi'i communities around the world have suffered from wars, revolutions and hostility. These problems, in different ways, have all involved a configuration of complicated events, a heritage of historical factors and interntional power politics that defy simplistic explanations. Here, Lloyd Ridgeon brings together an investigation of the nature of contemporary Shi'ism. He and his collaborators here focus on the creation of identities- showing the diversity of thought within the Shi'i world. They demonstrate the transnational nature of Shi'i networs and the forces of tradition and modernity influencing current developments in Shi'i identity both in the Middle East and in the West. This volume looks at both the attempts of authorities to construct a cohesive Shi'i identity (by using, for example, Iranian school books as an indicator of sanctioned facets of what it means to be Iranian) as well as the ways in which identity is created and developed by minority groups in the Diaspora. It also offers an analysis of the Hazaras of Afghanistan- so often overlooked when attempts to understand Afghanistan are made. It is this ethnic minority, which was so marginalised and victimised under the Taliban that offers an example of the trend of the rise of Islamism amongst the Shi'a. Moreover, by looking further afield to the Shi'a of Senegal, and asking the question of whether the Alevis of Turkey comprise part of the global Shi'i community, this book emphasizes the ways in which traditional patterns of social organisation are being transformed. Shi'i Islam and Identity highlights these global networks, and shows that it is inaccurate to speak of a 'Shi'i Crescnt'; rather, Shi'i worlds range from Senegal, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq, to Turkey, Albania and to European capitals such as London and Berlin. This book is thus of interest to those looking at modern religion and its contemporary forms, as well as those researching Shi'ism more specifically.

Lebanon is a significant region of encounter between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East. This book examines how Christian-Muslim dialogue is envisioned by four present-day Lebanese thinkers: Great Ayatollah Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah and Doctor Mahmoud Ayoub from the Shiite tradition, and Metropolitan Georges Khodr and Doctor, Father Mouchir Basile Aoun from the Eastern Christian Antiochian tradition. The study seeks to bring the four thinkers into dialogue on a number of topics, including doctrinal themes, ethical principles and the issue of political power-sharing in Lebanon. All four thinkers make several suggestions for facilitating mutual understanding and transcending old debates. The concept of God and the principle of neighbourly love seem to have particular potential as fruitful bases for further dialogue.

Before it fell to Muslim armies in AD 635-6 Damascus had a long and prestigious history as a center of Christianity. How did the city, which became capital of the Islamic Empire, and its people, negotiate the transition from a late antique, or early Byzantine world to an Islamic culture? In this innovative study, Nancy Khalek demonstrates that the changes that took place in Syria during the formative period of Islamic life were not a matter of the replacement of one civilization by another as a result of military conquest, but rather of shifting relationships and practices in a multi-faceted social and cultural setting. Even as late antique forms of religion and culture persisted, the formation of Islamic identity was effected by the people who constructed, lived in, and narrated the history of their city. Khalek draws on the evidence of architecture, and the testimony of pilgrims, biographers, geographers, and historians to shed light on this process of identity formation. Offering a fresh approach to the early Islamic period, she moves the study of Islamic origins beyond a focus on issues of authenticity and textual criticism, and initiates an interdisciplinary discourse on narrative, story-telling, and the interpretations of material culture.

The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia examines the corpus of polemical literature against the Christians and the Jews of the protected Muslims (Mudejars). Commonly portrayed as communities in cultural and religious decay, Monica Colominas convincingly proves that the discourses against the Christians and the Jews in Mudejar treatises provided authoritative frameworks of Islamic normativity which helped to legitimize the residence of their communities in the Christian territories. Colominas argues that, while the primary aim of the polemics was to refute the views of their religious opponents, Mudejar treatises were also a tool used to advance Islamic knowledge and to strengthen the government and social cohesion of their communities.

The Gospel of Barnabas is one of the New Testament Apocrypha, which narrates the life of Jesus Christ as seen by Barnabas, who in this book is depicted as of the Twelve Apostles. Altogether, Barnabas is roughly equal in length to the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it being a biography of Jesus Christ. It is noted for attributing Jesus with a prediction of the Prophet Muhammad, whom he calls 'Ahmad'. Jesus foresees but preemptively rejects his own deification, which is also consistent with the Islamic account of his life. Jesus also makes a direct plea to Barnabas shortly before his crucifixion, asking that he write the Gospel. Many academics and Biblical scholars of the modern day consider The Gospel of Barnabas to be a text written far later than the original New Testament Gospels, perhaps between the 14th and 15th century AD. Its contents combine the narrative of the Biblical gospels, together with the Islamic interpretation of the life of Christ.

This volume features forty-two essays written in honor of Joseph Agassi. It explores the work and legacy of this influential philosopher, an exciting and challenging advocate of critical rationalism. Throughout six decades of stupendous intellectual activity, Agassi called attention to rationality as the very starting point of every notable philosophical way of life. The essays present Agassi's own views on critical rationalism. They also develop and expand upon his work in new and provocative ways. The authors include Agassi's most notable pupils, friends, and colleagues. Overall, their contributions challenge the received view on a variety of issues concerning science, religion, and education. Readers will find well-reasoned arguments on such topics as the secular problem of evil, religion and critical thinking, liberal democratic educational communities, democracy and constitutionalism, and capitalism at a crossroad.

Offering new perspectives on the relationship between Shi'is and Sufis in modern and pre-modern times, this book challenges the supposed opposition between these two esoteric traditions in Islam by exploring what could be called "Shi'i Sufism" and "Sufi-oriented Shi'ism" at various points in history. The chapters are based on new research in textual studies as well as fieldwork from a broad geographical areas including the Indian subcontinent, Anatolia and Iran. Covering a long period stretching from the early post-Mongol centuries, throughout the entire Safawid era (906-1134/1501-1722) and beyond, it is concerned not only with the sphere of the religious scholars but also with different strata of society. The first part of the volume looks at the diversity of the discourse on Sufism among the Shi'i "ulama" in the run up to and during the Safawid period. The second part focuses on the social and intellectual history of the most popular Shi'i Sufi order in Iran, the Ni'mat Allahiyya. The third part examines the relationship between Shi'ism and Sufism in the little-explored literary traditions of the Alevi-Bektashi and the Khaksariyya Sufi order. With contributions from leading scholars in Shi'ism and Sufism Studies, the book is the first to reveal the mutual influences and connections between Shi'ism and Sufism, which until now have been little explored.

"Trust is debating the Israel-Palestine conflict with a conservative Sunni barber holding a straight-razor to your throat." - Kamal al-Kanady An immigrant white Christian businessman from Canada writes about his experiences in a majority Islamic country in the Middle East. He is a family man, a management consultant, and one of those scholarly types that reads history books for entertainment. He has been learning, not just Arabic and business, but learning from Islam about how he would like to live as a Christian. This book is a call to humility and inclusion in Christian-Muslim dialogue. There are more than a billion of each faith on the planet now, and the relationship between the world's two largest faiths is too important to be left to the minority of priests and imams to sort out. Regular everyday Muslims and Christians need to be building bridges, investing in understanding, and approaching each other with a humble orthodoxy. Perhaps we could start by simply inviting each other over for tea.

Muthuraj Swamy provides a fresh perspective on the world religions paradigm and 'interreligious dialogue'. By challenging the assumption that 'world religions' operate as essential entities separate from the lived experiences of practitioners, he shows that interreligious dialogue is in turn problematic as it is built on this very paradigm, and on the myth of religious conflict. Offering a critique of the idea of 'dialogue' as it has been advanced by its proponents such as religious leaders and theologians whose aims are to promote inter-religious conversation and understanding, the author argues that this approach is 'elitist' and that in reality, people do not make sharp distinctions between religions, nor do they separate political, economic, social and cultural beliefs and practices from their religious traditions. Case studies from villages in southern India explore how Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities interact in numerous ways that break the neat categories often used to describe each religion. Swamy argues that those who promote dialogue are ostensibly attempting to overcome the separate identities of religious practitioners through understanding, but in fact, they re-enforce them by encouraging a false sense of separation. The Problem with Interreligious Dialogue: Plurality, Conflict and Elitism in Hindu-Christian-Muslim Relations provides an innovative approach to a central issue confronting Religious Studies, combining both theory and ethnography.

In tenth-century Baghdad, the Mu'tazila theologians believed good and evil could be distinguished through human reason, while in the Indian subcontinent in the sixteenth century, rationalism served to express both the connections and boundaries of Islam in a sphere of religious pluralism. Universality in Islamic Thought discusses specific applications of rationalism in Islamic thought - from the Mu'tazila of Iraq and the Hanafi school of Islamic Law to the Chishti mystics of Mughal India - to explore the boundaries, morality and utility of the universalist principle as conceived by Islamic scientists, scholars, theologians and mystics across half a millennium. Providing a long-overdue and groundbreaking study of rationalism in Islam, this is the first methodological examination of how rationalism served - or did not serve - as a bridge between Muslims and non-Muslims during one of the most vital periods of Islamic intellectual activity. Bringing together contributions from leading academics such as Wilferd Madelung and Carl W Ernst, this is essential reading for scholars and students of intellectual history and Islamic studies.

France experienced an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks in 2015. Following these tragic events, social science researchers felt the need to undertake new work to better understand the dynamics of this new radicalism. This book is the result of one of these attempts. A large quantitative and qualitative survey was conducted among French Lycee students in order to gather substantive information and propose an interpretation of the penetration of radical ideas, be they religious or political, among them. How widespread are these radical ideas? What are the main characteristics of youngsters who share them? Are there links between religious radicalism and political radicalism? How do young people feel about the 2015 terrorist attacks? How do young people use media and social media to keep abreast of and understand radical acts and opinions? Those are the main questions explored in this book. Contributors are: Vincenzo Cicchelli, Alexandra Frenod, Olivier Galland, Laurent Lardeux, Anne Muxel, Jean-Francois Mignot and Sylvie Octobre.

This book is the first analysis of parental care regimes in Muslim jurisdictions, both in a comparative and country-specific sense. It contains the proceedings of a workshop on Parental Care and the Best Interests of the Child in Muslim Countries that the Max Planck Research Group "Changes in God's Law: An Inner-Islamic Comparison of Family and Succession Law" hosted in Rabat, Morocco in April 2015. This workshop saw a total of 15 country reports presented on questions of custody, guardianship and their development within different Muslim jurisdictions (ranging from Indonesia to Morocco), a number of which are included in full in the book. Each of these country reports contains a historical perspective on the evolution of domestic rules regarding custody and guardianship, and on the introduction and development of the notion of the best interests of the child. Most importantly, the prevailing legal norms, both substantive and procedural, are explored and particular attention is given to legal practice and the role of the judiciary. In addition to a selection of country reports from the workshop, the volume includes two comparative analyses on questions of parental care in both public and private international law. With a high practical relevance for legal practitioners working in the area of cross-border custody disputes and the most up-to-date assessment of parental care regimes beyond a pure analysis of statutory law, this book combines a number of country reports authored by experts who have worked or are still based in the respective countries they are reporting on and thus contains in-depth discussions of legal practice and custody law in action. Nadjma Yassari is Director of the Research Group "Changes in God's Law: An Inner-Islamic Comparison of Family and Succession Law" while Lena- Maria Moeller and Imen Gallala-Arndt are Senior Research Fellows at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle respectively.

The process of curriculum enhancement through various educational approaches aims to enhance quality assurance in the educational process itself. In Islamic education, traditional educational trends are enhanced by expanding the embodiment process on experiential learning to evaluate the achievement in creating outcomes that balance not only spirituality and morality but also quality of cognitive analytical performances. Global Perspectives on Teaching and Learning Paths in Islamic Education is a comprehensive scholarly book that provides broad coverage on integrating emerging trends and technologies for developing learning paths within Islamic education. Highlighting a wide range of topics such as digital ethics, psychology, and vocational education, this book is ideal for instructors, administrators, principals, curriculum designers, professionals, researchers, academicians, and students.

This book is about the history of the conflict between Shia sects, how different sects originated and what are the basic beliefs of world known Usuli Shia sect i.e. State religion of Iran, and how it differs from the True Shia religion. Usuli sect was founded only 10 centuries ago, and only 5 or 6 so-called Shia scholars accepted it in 4th and 5th Hijra century. After that for many centuries Shia scholars and public hated this man-made religion. Only few centuries ago Allama Hilli and his company propagated it again, and he was the first to call himself Ayatollah (which is forbidden in Islam). Baqir Behbahani used power and all other tactics to suppress the Shia religion and occupied shia institutions and mosques, so Usuli sect dominated. What are the true teachings of Shia Islam. The religion presented and practiced by Iranian government is not the Tru Shia Islam, infact they are the biggest enemies of Allah, Infallibles asws and Muslims.

This book shifts analytical focus from macro-politicization and securitization of Islam to Muslims' choices, practices and public expressions of faith. An empirically rich analysis, the book provides rich cross-country evidence on the emergence of autonomous faith communities as well as the evolution of Islam in the broader European context.

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The book is significant for those scholars who are attempting to understand Muslim communities in Southeast Asia, and also for those who want deep insights into Islamic education and its influence in any area of the Islamic world." - Raymond Scupin, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University, USA "Few books address the sensitive issue of Islamic education with empathy as well as critical distance as Joseph C. Liow's Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand. He examines global networks of religious learning within a local Thai as well as regional Asian context by brilliantly revealing the intersections between religion, politics and modernity in an accessible and illuminating manner. Traditional educational institutions rarely receive such sensitive and balanced treatment. Liow's book is a tour de force and mandatory reading for policy-makers, academics and all of those interested in current affairs." - Ebrahim Moosa, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Department of Religion, Associate Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center (DISe, Duke University, USA "Islam, Education, and Reform in Southern Thailand is Joseph Chinyong Liow's critical attempt to map out the reflexive questioning, locations of authority, dynamics and contestations within the Muslim community over what constitutes Islamic knowledge and education. Through the optics of Islamic education in Southern Thailand, Liow manages to brilliantly portray the ways in which Muslim minority negotiate their lives in the local context of violence and the global context of crisis of modernity." - Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Senior Research Scholar, Thailand Research Fund, Author of The Life of this World: Negotiated Muslim Lives in Thai Society