In the long history of the monotheistic tradition, violence - often bloody with warfare - have not just been occasional but defining activities. Since 9/11, sociologists, religious historians, philosophers and anthropologists have examined the question of the roots of religious violence in new ways, and with surprising results. In November 2004, the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion brought together leading theorists at Cornell University to explore the question whether religions are viral forms of a general cultural tendency to violent action. Do religions, and especially the Abrahamic tradition, encourage violence in the imagery of their sacred writings, in their theology, and their tendency to see the world as a cosmos divided between powers of good and forces of evil? Is such violence a historical condition affecting all religious movements, or are some religions more prone to violence than others?;The papers collected in this volume represent the independent and considered thinking of internationally known scholars from a variety of disciplines concerning the relationship between religion and violence, with special reference to the theories of 'just war' and 'jihad', technical terms that arise in connection with the theology of early medieval Christianity and early Islam, respectively.

Which religion on earth was not and is not victim of the terrorist activities of Islam? Muhammad was a crime boss. Muslims should be restricted to Islamic countries.

Islam has permeated Chinese civilization as a religion and lifestyle for centuries. This volume offers a summary of key developments concerning scholarship on Islam in China and presents a record of research on this topic. The first part of the book is a narrative introduction to the history of Islam in China, the coexistence of Chinese and Muslim cultures, and contemporary issues. The second part of the work is a listing of more than four hundred sources of information on the topic. Entries are grouped in ten categories, and each entry includes a descriptive annotation. An appendix lists journals devoted to research in this field, and the volume concludes with author, title, and subject indexes.

Originally published in 1897. Author: Samuel M.Zwemer Language: English Keywords: History / Islam / Mohammed Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

There is a long and rich history of opinion centred on female prayer leadership in Islam that has occupied the minds of theologians and jurists alike. It includes outright prohibition, dislike, permissibility under certain conditions and, although rarely, unrestricted sanction, or even endorsement. This book discusses debates drawn from scholars of the formative period of Islam who engaged with the issue of female prayer leadership. Simonetta Calderini critically analyses their arguments, puts them into their historical context, and, for the first time, tracks down how they have informed current views on female imama (prayer leadership). In presenting the variety of opinions discussed in the past by Sunni and Shi'i scholars, and some of the Sufis among them, the book uncovers how they are, at present, being used selectively, depending on modern agendas and biases. It also reviews the roles and types of authority of current women imams in diverse contexts spanning from Asia, Africa and Europe to America. The research offers readers the opportunity to gain nuanced answers to the question of female imama today that may lead to informed discussions and to change, if not necessarily in practices then at the very least in attitudes. This ground-breaking book interrogates the cases of women who are reported to have led prayer in the past. It then analyses the voices of current women imams, many of whom engage with those women of the past to validate their own roles in the present and so pave the way for the future.

Al-Kindi was the first philosopher of the Islamic world. He lived in Iraq and studied in Baghdad, where he became attached to the caliphal court. In due course he would become an important figure at court: a tutor to the caliph's son, and a central figure in the translation movement of the ninth century, which rendered much of Greek philosophy, science, and medicine into Arabic. Al-Kindi's wide-ranging intellectual interests included not only philosophy but also music, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine. Through deep engagement with Greek tradition al-Kindi developed original theories on key issues in the philosophy of religion, metaphysics, physical science, and ethics. He is especially known for his arguments against the world's eternity, and his innovative use of Greek ideas to explore the idea of God's unity and transcendence.
Despite al-Kindi's historical and philosophical importance no book has presented a complete, in-depth look at his thought until now. In this accessible introduction to al-Kindi's works, Peter Adamson surveys what is known of his life and examines his method and his attitude towards the Greek tradition, as well as his subtle relationship with the Muslim intellectual culture of his day. Above all the book focuses on explaining and evaluating the ideas found in al-Kindi's wide-ranging philosophical corpus, including works devoted to science and mathematics. Throughout, Adamson writes in language that is both serious and engaging, academic and approachable. This book will be of interest to experts in the field, but it requires no knowledge of Greek or Arabic, and is also aimed at non-experts who are simply interested in one of the greatest of Islamicphilosophers.

Honorable Mention for the 2008 Clifford Geertz Prize in the Anthropology of Religion!The roots of contemporary Islamic militancy in Southeast Asia lie in the sixteenth century, when Christian Europeans first tried to dominate Indian Ocean trade. Through a detailed analysis of sacred scriptures, epic narratives and oral histories from the region, this book shows how Southeast Asian Muslims combined cosmopolitan Islamic models of knowledge and authority with local Austronesian models of divine kingship to first resist and then to appropriate Dutch colonial models of rational bureaucracy. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, these models continue to shape regional responses to contemporary trends such as the rise of global Islamism.

This book explores "A Common Word Between Us and You," a high-level ongoing Christian-Muslim dialogue process. The Common Word process was commenced by leading Islamic scholars and intellectuals as outreach in response to the Pope's much criticized Regensburg address of 2007, and brings to the fore, in the interest of developing a meaningful peace, how the Islamic and Christian communities representing well over half of the world's population might agree on love of God and love of neighbor as common beliefs.

By terrorism expert Rachel Ehrenfeld, uncovers the clandestine and sinister ways that Islamic terrorist groups finance their global network. Terrorist have grown increasingly savvy in ways to bolster their financial power. Dr. Ehrenfeld's investigation also details how these undected billions are spent to bring about chaos and destablization. Funding Evil show offers realistic and provocative strategies for winning the war on terror.

This volume is centred around the theme of veiling in Islam and provides multifarious aspects of the discussion regarding veiling of Muslim women, especially in the West. The issue of veiling has been intensively debated in Western society and has implications for religious liberty, inter-communal relationships and cultural interaction. Islam and the Veil seeks to generate open and objective discussion of this highly important, though controversial, subject, with contributions from distinguished scholars and academics, including female practitioners of Islam. This subject has inflamed passions and generated heated debate in the media in recent years, particularly in the West. This book aims to look at the historical background, theological and social factors underlying the veiling of women in Islam. Such discussion will provide the reader with a well-balanced and unbiased analysis of this important aspect of Islamic practice.

Today there are more Muslims living in diaspora than at any time in history. This situation was not envisioned by Islamic law, which makes no provision for permanent as opposed to transient diasporic communities. Western Muslims are therefore faced with the necessity of developing an Islamic law for Muslim communities living in non-Muslim societies. In this book, Kathleen Moore explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the US and Great Britain, as well the Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam. Islamic jurisprudence, Moore notes, contains a number of references to various 'abodes' and a number of interpretations of how Muslims should conduct themselves within those worlds. These include the dar al harb (house of war), dar al kufr (house of unbelievers), and dar al salam (house of peace). How Islamic law interprets these determines the debates that take shape in and around Islamic legality in these spaces. Moore's analysis emphasizes the multiplicities of law, the tensions between secularism and religiosity. She is the first to offer a close examination of the emergence of a contingent legal consciousness shaped by the exceptional circumstances of being Muslim in the U.S and Britain in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century

Bassam Tibi offers a radical solution to the problems faced by Islam in a rapidly changing and globalizing world. He proposes a depoliticization of the faith and the introduction of reforms to embrace secular democracy, pluralism, civil society and individual human rights. The alternative to this is the impasse of fundamentalism. The pivotal argument is that Islam is being torn between the pressure for cultural innovation and a defensive move towards the politicization of its symbols for non-religious ends.

Conciliation in the Qur'an addresses an existing imbalanced focus in Islamic Studies on conflict in the Qur'an, and moves beyond a restrictive approach to sulh (reconciliation) as a mediation process in fragmented social contexts. The book offers a critical analysis of conciliation as a holistic concept in the Qur'an, providing linguistic and structural insight based on the renowned pre-modern Arabic exegesis of Al-Razi (d. 1209) and the under-studied contemporary Urdu exegesis of Islahi (d. 1997). This ambitious thematic study of the entire Qur'an includes an innovative examination of the central ethical notion of ihsan (gracious conduct), and a challenging discussion of notorious passages relating to conflict. The author offers solutions to unresolved issues such as the significance of the notion of islah (order), the relationship between conciliation and justice, and the structural and thematic significance of Q.48 (Surat Al-Fath) and Q.49 (Surat Al-Hujurat). Conciliation in the Qur'an offers a compelling argument for the prevalence of conciliation in the Islamic scripture, and will be an essential read for practitioners in Islamic studies, community integration, conflict-resolution, interfaith dialogue and social justice.

The meanings and contexts of Shari'a are the subject of both curiosity and misunderstanding by non-Muslims. Shari'a is sometimes crudely characterized by outsiders as a punitive legal system operating broadly outside, and separate from, national laws and customs. This groundbreaking book shows that Shari'a and its 'fiqh' (laws set forward by various Islamic legal schools) comprise a far more nuanced matrix of interpretations than is often assumed to be the case. Far from being monolithic or impervious to change from without, Muslim legal tradition has - since its beginnings in the early Islamic period - placed an emphasis on equity and non-adversarial conflict-resolution. Mohamed Keshavjee examines both Sunni and Shi'a applications of Islamic law, demonstrating how political, cultural and other factors have influenced the practice of fiqh and Shari'a in the West. Exploring in particular the modern development of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the author shows that this process can revitalize some of the essential principles that underlie Muslim teachings and jurisprudence, delivering not only formal remedies but also perceived justice, even to non-Muslims.

Originally published in 1905. Author: Samuel M. Zwemep Language: English Keywords: Religion / Moslem / Allah Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Obscure Press are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Too long the church has been programmed to accept the inevitabilities of meager results in the efforts toward Muslim evangelization. The reasons for this failure in mission must now be probed and resolved as the world today is coming alive to the presence of the Muslim religious community. Phil Parshall asks the missions world to forsake former presuppositions and to become conscious of God speaking in a new and fresh manner--not in regard to His changeless Word--but in areas of extra-biblical methodology.

In the West abandoning one's religion (apostasy) can be a difficult, emotional decision, which sometimes has social repercussions. However, in culturally diverse societies where there is a mixture of ethnic groups and various philosophies of life, most people look upon such shifts in intellectual allegiance as a matter of personal choice and individual right. By contrast, in Islam apostasy is still viewed as an almost unthinkable act, and in orthodox circles it is considered a crime punishable by death. Renowned scholar of Islamic Studies Bernard Lewis described the seriousness of leaving the Islamic faith in the following dire terms: "Apostasy was a crime as well as a sin, and the apostate was damned both in this world and the next. His crime was treason u desertion and betrayal of the community to which he belonged, and to which he owed loyalty; his life and property were forfeit. He was a dead limb to be excised."
Defying the death penalty applicable to all apostates in Islam, the ex-Muslims who are here represented feel it is their duty to speak up against their former faith, to tell the truth about the fastest growing religion in the world. These former Muslims, from all parts of the Islamic world, recount how they slowly came to realize that the religion into which they were born was in many respects unbelievable and sometimes even dangerous.
These memoirs of personal journeys to enlightenment and intellectual freedom make for moving reading and are a courageous signal to other ex-Muslims to come out of the closet.

William A Graham, a leading international scholar in the field of Islamic Studies, gathers together his selected writings under three sections: 1.History and Interpretation of Islamic Religion; 2.The Qur'an as Scripture, and 3. Scripture in the History of Religion. Each section opens with a new introduction by Graham, and a bibliography of his works is included. Graham's work in Islamic studies focuses largely on the analysis and interpretation of the religious dimensions of ritual action, scriptural piety, textual authority/revelation, tradition, and major concepts, such as grace and transcendence. His work in the comparative history of religion has focused in particular on the 'problem' of scripture as a cross-cultural religious phenomenon that is more complex than simply 'sacred text'. This invaluable resource will be of primary interest to students of the Islamic tradition, especially as regards Qur'anic piety, Muslim 'ritual' practice, and fundamental structures of Islamic thought, and to students of the comparative history of religion, especially as regards the phenomenon of 'scripture' and its analogs.