Gershon Brin examines the development of biblical law, suggesting that it may be due to different authors with different legal outlooks, or that the differing policies were required in response to different social needs, etc. Biblical laws appearing in the Dead Sea Scrolls literature are treated in a separate unit. Study of this subject can shed light both on the biblical laws as such, as well as on the manner of their reworking by the Judaean Desert sect. Brin also discusses here questions of the style, the idea, and the historical and ideological background underlying the reworking of these laws in Qumran. The second part of the book presents a comprehensive picture of the issues involved in the laws of the first-born, a subject that has legal, social and religious implications.

Despite late reconsideration, a dominant paradigm rooted in Orientalist essentialisations of Islam as statically 'legalistic' and Muslims as uniformly 'transgressive' when local customs are engaged, continues to distort perspectives of South Asia's past and present. This has led to misrepresentations of pre-colonial Muslim norms and undue emphasis on colonial reforms alone when charting the course to post-coloniality. This book presents and challenges staple perspectives with a comprehensive reinterpretation of doctrinal sources, literary expressions and colonial records spanning the period from the reign of the 'Great Mughals' to end of the 'British Raj' (1526-1947). The result is an alternative vision of this transformative period in South Asian history, and an original paradigm of Islamic doctrine and Muslim practice applicable more broadly.

These and many other questions are answered in this informative introduction to Islam. Christians of all denominations will find reliable and up-to-date information on Islam and its relationship to Christianity. The first part of the book surveys the faith and life of Islam, exploring the subjects of the Quran, Muhammad, beliefs about God, justice and the law, women and family, and death and eternal life. Part 2 tells about Islam in North America, both its early history and the current situation. Part 3 describes various groups and movements within Islam. Part 4 looks at Islam and Christianity, their encounters in history, the Bible and the Quran, and how Jesus is regarded by Muslims. Part 5 presents a Christian evaluation of Islam. Carefully researched and clearly written, Islam: An Introduction for Christians is an ideal book for both individual and group use.

In Muslim al-Naysaburi (d. 261/875). The skeptical traditionalist, Pavel Pavlovitch studies the life and works of Muslim b. al-Hajjaj al-Naysaburi, the author of the famous collection of traditions (hadith) al-Musnad al-sahih (The Sound Collection), which Sunni Muslims rank as the third most authoritative source of legal and theological norms after the Qur'an and Muhammad b. Isma'il al-Bukhari's Sahih. Based on multiple biographical sources and Muslim's extant works, Pavel Pavlovitch studies hitherto unexplored aspects of Muslim's biography, elaborates on his founding contribution to the science of hadith criticism, and examines the transmission history of Muslim's Sahih in unprecedented detail. The monograph includes the first systematic study of Muslim's traditionalist theology, which played a defining role in the formation of Sunni identity.

The Journeys of a Taymiyyan Sufi explores the life and teachings of 'Imad al-Din Ahmad al-Wasiti (d. 711/1311), a little-known Hanbali Sufi master from the circle of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). The first part of this book follows al-Wasiti's physical journey in search of spiritual guidance through a critical study of his autobiographical writings. This provides unique insights into the Rifa'iyya, the Shadhiliyya, and the school of Ibn 'Arabi, several manifestations of Sufism that he encountered as he travelled from Wasit to Baghdad, Alexandria, and Cairo. Part I closes with his final destination, Damascus, where his membership of Ibn Taymiyya's circle and his role as a Sufi teacher is closely examined. The second part focuses on al-Wasiti's spiritual journey through a study of his Sufi writings, which convey the distinct type of traditionalist Sufism that he taught in early eighth/fourteenth-century Damascus. Besides providing an overview of the spiritual path unto God from beginning to end as he formulated it, this reveals an exceptional interplay between Sufi theory and traditionalist theology.

This four-volume compendium delves into topics such as the theology of rights in Islam, comparative explorations, and a historical study of human rights in Muslim-majority societies spanning Africa, the Middle East, and South and South East Asia during the 20th and early 21 centuries. Moreover, it explores how Muslim women and men have understood their faith and evolving notions of rights and liberties. Volume 1 analyzes the relationship between religion and human rights along with "Western" and "Islamic" human rights schemes. Volume 2 traces early and later Muslim responses to human rights during the 20th century. Volume 3 considers the political context in the struggle for human rights in Muslim societies by focusing on state-society relations. Volume 4 explores shari'ah and contemporary human rights controversies by surveying subjects such as: women's rights which is described as the locomotive of societal change, apostasy and blasphemy laws, as well as LGBT and labor rights.

The Third Edition of Brill s Encyclopaedia of Islam appears in four substantial segments each year, both online and in print. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century and of Muslim minorities all over the world. This Part 2011-2 of the Third Edition of Brill s Encyclopaedia of Islam contains 59 new articles, reflecting the great diversity of current scholarship in the fields of Islamic Studies

In The Shi'is in Palestine Yaron Friedman offers a survey of the presence of Shi'ism in the region of Palestine (today: Israel) from early Islamic history until the contemporary period. It brings to light many pieces of information and interesting developments that are not widely known, in addition to the general point that, contrary to common belief, the Shi'i community has played a significant role in the history of Palestine. The volume includes a study of Shi'i shrines in Palestine, as well as showing the importance of these Muslim sites and holy towns in Palestine in the Shi'i religion.

This text revisits the main arguments and explanatory frameworks that have been used since the 1970s to understand Islamic activism, moderate as well as militant and violent, and proposes a rethinking of Islamist politics. Linking macro-level explanations to micro-level analysis, it analyzes Islamist activism and militancy in terms of the interplay of social formation and political structures on the one hand, and network processes within the other.

Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that "Sunnism" itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres-ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents-developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of 'tradition', 'orthodoxy' and 'orthopraxy' as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Contributors: Helen Pfeifer; Nabil al-Tikriti; Derin Terzioglu; Tijana Krstic; Nir Shafir; Guy Burak; Cigdem Kafescioglu; Grigor Boykov; H. Evren Sunnetcioglu; UEnver Rustem; Ayse Baltacioglu-Brammer; Vefa Erginbas; Selim Gu ngoeru rler.

In 'They Love Us Because We Give Them' Zakat, Dauda Abubakar describes the practice of Zakat in northern Nigeria. Those who practice this pillar of Islam annually deduct Zakat from their wealth and distribute it to the poor and needy people within their vicinity, mostly their friends, relatives and neighbours. The practice of giving and receiving Zakat in northern Nigeria often leads to the establishment of social relations between the rich and needy. Dauda Abubakar provides details of the social relationship in the people's interpersonal dealings with one another that often lead to power relations, high table relations etc. The needy reciprocate the Zakat they collect in many ways, respecting and given high positions to the rich in society.

Converso and Morisco are the terms applied to those Jews and Muslims who converted to Christianity in large numbers and usually under duress in late Medieval Spain. The Converso and Morisco Studies series examines the implications of these mass conversions for the converts themselves, for their heirs (also referred to as Conversos and Moriscos) and for Medieval and Modern Spanish culture. As the essays in this collection attest, the study of the Converso and Morisco phenomena is not only important for those scholars focusing on Spanish society and culture, but for all academics interested in questions of identity, Otherness, nationalism, religious intolerance and the challenges of modernity. Contributors: Luis F. Bernabe Pons, Michel Boeglin, Stephanie M. Cavanaugh, William P. Childers, Carlos Gilly, Kevin Ingram, Nicola Jennings, Patrick J. O'Banion, Francisco Javier Perea Siller, Mohamed Saadan, and Enrique Soria Mesa.

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.

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 Third Edition of Brill's Encyclopaedia of Islam is an entirely new work, with new articles reflecting the great diversity of current scholarship. It appears in four substantial segments each year, both online and in print. The new scope includes comprehensive coverage of Islam in the twentieth century and of Muslim minorities all over the world.