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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Non-Christian religions > Islam
"The book traces the rise of Islamism in Lebanon and its attempt to
Islamize society and state by the reverse integration of society
and state into the project of Islamism. Against a background of
weak and contested national identity and capricious interaction
between religious affiliation and confessional politics, this book
attempts to illustrate in detailed analysis this "comprehensive"
project of Islamism according to its ideological and practical
evolutionary change. The book demonstrates that, despite
ideological, political and confessional incongruities and concerns,
Islamism, in both its Sunni and Shi'a variants, has maintained a
unity of purpose in pursuing its project: Jihad against Israel and
abolishment of political sectarianism"--
Education and Muslim Identity During a Time of Tension explores
life inside an Islamic Center and school in present-day America.
Melanie Brooks' work draws on in-depth discussions with community
and school leaders, teachers, parents and students to present
thoughtful and contemporary perspectives on many issues central to
American-Muslim identities. Particularly poignant are the
children's voices, as they discuss their developing identities and
how they navigate the choice of being American, Muslim, or both.
The book covers topics ranging from establishing the community and
the considerations involved, the management of diversity within the
community, and approaches to modern opinions on and experiences of
gender and extremism in the western world. Based on focus groups,
interviews and observations collected over a two-year period, this
book serves as a fascinating and informative insight into the
culture and experiences of modern American Muslims. This is
essential reading for students and researchers interested in
education, religion, politics, sociology, and most particularly in
contemporary Islamic studies.
Ethnographers have observed Muslims nearly everywhere Islam is
practiced. This study analyzes four seminal texts that have been
read widely outside anthropology. Two are by distinguished
anthropologists on either side of the Atlantic, Islam Observed (by
Clifford Geertz in 1968) and Muslim Society (by Ernest Gellner in
1981). Two other texts are by Muslim scholars, Beyond the Veil
(Fatima Mernissi in 1975) and Discovering Islam (by Akbar Ahmed in
1988). Varisco argues that each of these four authors approaches
Islam as an essentialized organic unity rather than letting
'Islams' found in the field speak to the diversity of practice. The
textual truths engendered, and far too often engineered, in these
idealized representations of Islam have found their way
unscrutinized into an endless stream of scholarly works and
textbooks. Varisco's analysis goes beyond the rhetoric over what
Islam is to the information from ethnographic research about what
Muslims say they do and actually are observed to do. The issues
covered include Islam as a cultural phenomenon, representation of
'the other', Muslim gender roles, politics of ethnographic
authority, and Orientalist discourse.
An award-winning journalist's extraordinary account of being
kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years--a
revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance that's
"the best of the genre, profound, poetic, and sorrowful" (The
Atlantic). In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in
Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border
town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in
October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young
Syrians--who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives--and they
captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his
first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a
blindfold--a grime-stained scrap of fabric--that was his only
possession throughout his horrific ordeal. Now, Padnos recounts his
time in captivity in Syria, where he was frequently tortured at the
hands of the al Qaeda affiliate, Jebhat al Nusra. We learn not only
about Padnos's harrowing experience, but we also get a firsthand
account of life in a Syrian village, the nature of Islamic prisons,
how captors interrogate someone suspected of being CIA, the ways
that Islamic fighters shift identities and drift back and forth
through the veil of Western civilization, and much more. No other
journalist has lived among terrorists for as long as Theo has--and
survived. As a resident of thirteen separate prisons in every part
of rebel-occupied Syria, Theo witnessed a society adrift amid a
steady stream of bombings, executions, torture, prayer, fasting,
and exhibitions, all staged by the terrorists. Living within this
tide of violence changed not only his personal identity but also
profoundly altered his understanding of how to live. Offering
fascinating, unprecedented insight into the state of Syria today,
Blindfold is "a triumph of the human spirit" (The New York Times
Book Review)--combining the emotional power of a captive's memoir
with a journalist's account of a culture and a nation in conflict
that is as urgent and important as ever.
The Third Choice provides a compelling introduction to Islam on the
basis of its primary sources, the Quran and the life of Muhammad.
Topics covered include the sharia; interpretation of the Quran;
abrogation; women's rights (including female genital mutilation);
lawful deception (taqiyya); Muhammad's responses to opposition;
Islamic antisemitism; religious freedom; and prospects for
reforming Islam. After this critical introduction of Islam, there
follows an explanation and critique of Islam's policy for
non-Muslims living under Islamic conditions. The doctrine of the
three choices (conversion, the sword, or the dhimma pact of
surrender to Islam) is explained, including an analysis of the
meaning of tribute payments (jizya) made by non-Muslims (dhimmis)
to their Muslim conquerors. Durie describes the impact of
dhimmitude on the human rights of non-Muslims in Islamic contexts
around the world today, in the light of global Islamic resurgence
and advancing Islamization, including pressure being exerted
through the United Nations for states to conform to sharia
restrictions on freedom of speech. The worldview of dhimmitude,
Durie argues, offers indispensable keys for understanding current
trends in global politics, including the widening impact of sharia
revival, deterioration of human rights in Islamic societies, jihad
terrorism, recurring patterns of Western appeasement, interfaith
dialogue initiatives, and the increasingly fraught relationship
between migrant Muslim communities in the West and their host
societies.
This book presents some twenty essays on different aspects of Islam
in history and the present. These essays are grouped into eight
larger sections. The first, "The Beginnings," deals with the
transition from pre-Islamic understandings and reason, an essential
part of the Quranic message. The next two sections deal with Islam
specifically as a religion with its particular signs and symbols.
The question of rules of interpretation in Islam and its structural
features is discussed here. Sections four and five deal with ethics
in Islam, including Muslim identity and human rights, and certain
social functions of Islam. Section six introduces some 19th and
20th century reform movements, with special attention given to
developments in Saudi Arabia and the "puritan" characteristics of
present-day Islamic revival movements. The final two sections
discuss contemporary issues: Islamization processes and policies,
Islamic ideologies, the ideologization of Islam, and the political
uses of religion. Throughout the book the author shows the links
between the religious and other interpretations and uses made of
Islam and the contexts in which they are made. The Introduction
signals some important developments in Islamic studies since World
War II.
Holy war ideas appear among Muslims during the earliest
manifestations of the religion. This work locates the origin of
Jihad and traces its evolution as an idea with the intellectual
history of the concept of Jihad in Islam as well as how it has been
misapplied by modern Islamic terrorists and suicide bombers.
The book is a collection of chapters discussing the Sustainable
Development Goals in the broader context of Islamic finance along
with mapping the SDGs with Maqasid Al-Shariah. It provides a
framework for both Muslim and non-Muslim countries to develop a
sustainable economy which encompasses not only the concept of the
welfare state but also supports development-related activities,
ensures financial inclusion through equal distribution of wealth
and alleviation of poverty, and protects the overall environmental
and ecological system. More specifically, this book explores
various aspects of Islamic finance in relation to parameters of
SDGs; restructuring of Islamic finance and connecting its dots in
the light of SDGs; Islamic perspective on ESG and ecological
quality; interest-free tools and modernization of Islamic financial
institutions for sustainable development and economic stability;
and the role of Islamic finance in infrastructure-related
development activities. Consistent with the view that SDGs are
embedded within the theme of Islamic finance, this book is
specifically designed to meet the needs of key regulatory
institutions, academic scholars, and industry practitioners both in
the field of Islamic finance and sustainable finance.
In the wake of radical Islamist terrorist attacks described as
jihad worldwide and in South Asia, it is imperative that there
should be a book-length study of this idea in this part of the
world. The focus of the study is the idea of jihad with its
changing interpretations mostly those available in exegetical
literature of key figures in South Asia. The hermeneutic devices
used to understand the meaning of the Quranic verses and the
Prophetic traditions relating to jihad will be the focus of this
study. The main thrust of the study is to understand how
interpretations of jihad vary. It is seen as being both defensive
and aggressive by traditionalists; only defensive and mainly about
moral improvement by progressive Muslims; and being
insurrectionist, aggressive, eternal and justifying violence
against civilians by radical Islamists. One purpose of the book is
to understand how the radical interpretation came to South Asia.
The book also explains how theories about jihad are influenced by
the political and social circumstances of the period and how these
insights feed into practice legitimizing militant movements called
jihad for that period.
Political liberalization and economic reform, the weakening of the
state, and increased global interconnections have all had profound
effects on Muslim societies and the practice of Islam in Africa.
The contributors to this volume investigate and illuminate the
changes they have brought, through detailed case studies of Muslim
youth activists, Islamic NGOs, debates about Islamic law,
secularism and minority rights, and Muslims and the political
process in both conflict and post-conflict settings. Their work
offers fresh perspectives on the complexity of Muslim politics in
contemporary Africa.
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.
Nasir al-Din Tusi, the renowned Shi'i scholar of the 13th century,
produced a range of writings in different fields of learning under
Ismaili patronage and later under the Mongols. This is a new
English translation of his Rawda-yi taslim - the single most
important Ismaili text from the Alamut period. Here the Persian and
English texts are published together for the first time to produce
a work of enormous value to students of Islamic theology and
philosophy. The book contains an introduction by Professor Hermann
Landolt and philosophical commentary by Professor Christian Jambet,
who has produced a French translation of this text.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-73) was a 13th-century Persian
poet, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic originally from
Greater Khorasan in Iran. This Chinese-bound volume offers a
selection of his many poems with a variety of themes, including
love, marriage, life and death, passion and mysticism, as well as
his religious collection, Rubaiyat, and his long poem, Masnavi, one
of the most influential works of Sufism, an Islamic form of
mysticism. Rumi's reach transcends national borders and ethnic
divisions: his poetry has influenced not only Persian literature,
but also the literary traditions of the Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai,
Urdu, Bengali and Pashto languages.
What is language? How did it originate and how does it work? What
is its relation to thought and, beyond thought, to reality?
Questions like these have been at the center of lively debate ever
since the rise of scholarly activities in the Islamic world during
the 8th/9th century. However, in contrast to contemporary
philosophy, they were not tackled by scholars adhering to only one
specific discipline. Rather, they were addressed across multiple
fields and domains, no less by linguists, legal theorists, and
theologians than by Aristotelian philosophers. In response to the
different challenges faced by these disciplines, highly
sophisticated and more specialized areas emerged, comparable to
what nowadays would be referred to as semantics, pragmatics, and
hermeneutics, to name but a few - fields of research that are
pursued to this day and still flourish in some of the traditional
schools. Philosophy of language, thus, has been a major theme
throughout Islamic intellectual culture in general; a theme which,
probably due to its trans-disciplinary nature, has largely been
neglected by modern research. This book brings together for the
first time experts from the various fields involved, in order to
explore the riches of this tradition and make them accessible to a
broader public interested both in philosophy and the history of
ideas more generally.
In recent years, the Uzbekistan government has been criticized for
its brutal suppression of its Muslim population. This book, which
is based on the author's intimate acquaintance with the region and
several years of ethnographic research, is about how Muslims in
this part of the world negotiate their religious practices despite
the restraints of a stifling authoritarian regime. Fascinatingly,
the book also shows how the restrictive atmosphere has actually
helped shape the moral context of peoples' lives, and how
understandings of what it means to be a Muslim emerge creatively
out of lived experience.
As far too many intellectual histories and theoretical
contributions from the 'global South' remain under-explored, this
volume works towards redressing such imbalance. Experienced
authors, from the regions concerned, along different disciplinary
lines, and with a focus on different historical timeframes, sketch
out their perspectives of envisaged transformations. This includes
specific case studies and reflexive accounts from African, South
Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. Taking a critical stance on the
ongoing dominance of Eurocentrism in academia, the authors present
their contributions in relation to current decolonial challenges.
Hereby, they consider intellectual, practical and structural
aspects and dimensions, to mark and build their respective
positions. From their particular vantage points of
(trans)disciplinary and transregional engagement, they sketch out
potential pathways for addressing the unfinished business of
conceptual decolonization. The specific individual positionalities
of the contributors, which are shaped by location and regional
perspective as much as in disciplinary, biographical, linguistic,
religious, and other terms, are hereby kept in view. Drawing on
their significant experiences and insights gained in both the
global north and global south, the contributors offer original and
innovative models of engagement and theorizing frames that seek to
restore and critically engage with intellectual practices from
particular regions and transregional contexts in Africa, South
Asia, and the Middle East. This volume builds on a lecture series
held at ZMO in the winter 2019-2020
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