Between the eighth and eleventh centuries, many defining features of classical Sunni Islam began to take shape. Among these was the formation of medieval Sunnism around the belief in the unimpeachable orthodoxy of four eponymous founders and their schools of law. In this original study, Ahmad Khan explores the history and cultural memory of one of these eponymous founders, Abu Hanifa. Showing how Abu Hanifa evolved from being the object of intense religious exclusion to a pillar of Sunni orthodoxy, Khan examines the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy, and outlines their changing meanings over the course of four centuries. He demonstrates that orthodoxy and heresy were neither fixed theological categories, nor pious fictions, but instead were impacted by everything from law and politics, to society and culture. This book illuminates the significant yet often neglected transformations in Islamic social, political and religious thought during this vibrant period.

Interest in Shi'i Islam is running at unprecedented levels. International tensions over Iran, where the largest number of Shi'i Muslims live, as well as the political resurgence of the Shi'i in Iraq and Lebanon, have created an urgent need to understand the background, beliefs and motivations of this dynamic vision of Islam. Abbas Amanat is one of the leading scholars of Shi'ism. And in this powerful book, a showcase for some of his most influential writing in the field, he addresses the colorful and diverse history of Shi' Islam in both premodern and contemporary times. Focusing specifically on the importance of apocalypticism in the development of modern Shi'i theology, he shows how an immersion in messianic ideas has shaped the conservative character of much Shi'i thinking, and has prevented it from taking a more progressive course. Tracing the continuity of apocalyptic trends from the Middle Ages to the present, Amanat addresses such topics as the early influence on Shi'ism of Zoroastrianism; manifestations of apocalyptic ideology during the Iranian Revolution of 1979; and the rise of the Shi'i clerical establishment during the 19th and 20th centuries. His book will be an essential resource for students and scholars of both religious studies and Middle Eastern history.

In today's ever-changing and often uncertain world, encouraging healthy dialogue between all cultures and religions is vital. In "Beyond the Clash of Civilizations," Mohamed Wa Baile carefully explores how Muslims and people of other faiths can achieve a peaceful coexistence instead of beingvictims of conflict.

Wa Baile, a follower and practitioner of Islamic religion, has had the privilege of unconditional access to study Muslim communities in Switzerland.There, for the past ten years, he has examined the interactions between Muslims and the complex, introspective issues that often plague both individuals and families. Through attendinghundreds of congregational prayers and interviews with Muslim leaders, Wa Baile shares his thoughtfulobservations as he seeks new meanings and alternative ways of thinking that will help all Muslims understand and assess the real challenges that lie ahead.

It is up to the current generation to seek practical solutions and peaceful resolutions, rather than insist on the narrative of one insular side or theother. "Beyond the Clash of Civilizations"encourages a new respect for Islam with the hope of changing long-held perceptions of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

The end of communism has revived the historical debate about Russia's relations with both the West and the East. Some commentators viewed the Russian-Chechen war as a clash of civilizations, which would shape the future relationships between the new Russia and its Muslim periphery and perhaps lead to its disintegration. But the reality has challenged this scenario. This book surveys the public and private relations between Russia and Islam and concludes these are more complex than is usually recognized.

Modern scholarship has not given Edirne the attention it deserves regarding its significance as one of the capitals of the Ottoman Empire. This edited volume offers a reinterpretation of Edirne's history from Early Ottoman times to recent periods of the Turkish Republic. Presently, disconnections and discontinuities introduced by the transition from empire to nation state still characterize the image of the city and the historiography about it. In contrast, this volume examines how the city engages in the forming, deflecting and creative appropriation of its heritage, a process that has turned Edirne into a UNESCO heritage hotspot. A closer historical analysis demonstrates the dissonances and contradictions that these different interpretations and uses of heritage produce. From the beginning, Edirne was shaped by its connectivity and relationality to other places, above all to Istanbul. This perspective is employed at many different levels, e.g., with regard to its population, institutions, architecture, infrastructures and popular culture, but also regarding the imaginations Edirne triggered. In sum, this multi-disciplinary volume boosts urban history beyond Istanbul and offers new insight into Ottoman and Turkish connectivities from the vantage point of certain key moments of Edirne's history.

This book discloses a largely unnoticed dialogue between Muslim and Western social thought on the search for meaning and transcendence in the human sciences. The disclosure is accomplished by a comparative reading of contemporary Muslim debates on secular knowledge on the one hand, and of a foundational Western debate on the demise of metaphysics in the human sciences on the other hand. The comparative reading is grounded in a dialogical hermeneutic approach; that is, a hermeneutic approach to texts and cultural traditions that draws upon the work of Hans Georg Gadamer and also upon the insights of inter-religious dialogue.

The 'War on Terror' ushered in a new era of anti-Muslim bias and racism. Anti-Muslim racism, or Islamophobia, is influenced by local economies, power structures and histories. However, the War on Terror, a conflict undefined by time and place, with a homogenised Muslim 'Other' framed as a perpetual enemy, has contributed towards a global Islamophobic narrative. This edited international volume examines the connections between interpersonal and institutional anti-Muslim racism that have contributed to the growth and emboldening of nativist and populist protest movements globally. It maps out categories of Islamophobia, revealing how localised histories, conflicts and contemporary geopolitical realities have textured the ways that Islamophobia has manifested across the global North and South. At the same time, it seeks to highlight activism and resistance confronting Islamophobia. -- .

This concise and accessible volume introduces the reader to issues around religion, gender, and violence, using a wide range of case studies to engage the reader and apply the subject area to the real world. An outstanding resource for students approaching the topic for the first time. The eBook is open access and therefore widely available.

Muslims from the region that is now Nigeria have been undertaking the Hajj for hundreds of years. But the process of completing the pilgrimage changed dramatically in the twentieth century as state governments became heavily involved in its organization and management. Under British colonial rule, a minimalist approach to pilgrimage control facilitated the journeys of many thousands of mostly overland pilgrims. Decolonization produced new political contexts, with nationalist politicians taking a more proactive approach to pilgrimage management for both domestic and international reasons. The Hajj, which had previously been a life-altering journey undertaken slowly and incrementally over years, became a shorter, safer, trip characterized by round trip plane rides. In examining the transformation of the Nigerian Hajj, this book demonstrates how the Hajj became ever more intertwined with Nigerian politics and governance as the country moved from empire to independence. -- .

This book deals with Islamic studies and with the question how the scholarly study of religion can contribute to the study of Islam. The author advocates studying Islamic phenomena as signs and symbols interpreted and applied in diverse ways in existing traditions. He stresses the role of Muslims as actors in the ongoing debate about the articulation of Islamic ways of life and construction of Islam as a religion. A careful study of this debate should steer clear of political, religious, and ideological interests. Research in this area by Muslims and non-Muslim scholars alike should address the question of what Muslims have made of their Islam in specific circumstances. Current political contexts have created an unhealthy climate for pursuing an "open" approach to Islam based on reading, observing, listening and reflecting. Yet, precisely nowadays we need to look anew at ways of Muslim thinking and acting that refer to Islam and to avoid certain schemes of interpreting Muslim realities that are no longer adequate for present-day Muslim life situations. Muslim recourses to Islam can be studied as human constructions of value and meaning, and relations between Muslims and others can be seen in terms of human interaction, without blame always falling on Islam as such.

The third in a series on the middle East, this volume deals with the way in which Islamic economists believe that an economic system should reflect religious values, rather than a society's values being determined by the economic system.

A Times History Book of the Year 2022 A TLS Book of the Year 2022 'Exhilarating and whip-smart' THE SUNDAY TIMES From award-winning writer Edward Wilson-Lee, this is a thrilling true historical detective story set in sixteenth-century Portugal. A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them - an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music - returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other - a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan - ends up as the national poet of Portugal. The stories of Damiao de Gois and Luis de Camoes capture the extraordinary wonders that awaited Europeans on their arrival in India and China, the challenges these marvels presented to longstanding beliefs, and the vast conspiracy to silence the questions these posed about the nature of history and of human life. Like all good mysteries, everyone has their own version of events.

2009 brought the end of the protracted civil war in Sri Lanka, and observers hoped to see the re-establishment of harmonious religious and ethnic relations among the various communities in the country. Immediately following the war's end, however, almost 300,000 Tamil people in the Northern Province were detained for up to a year's time in hurriedly constructed camps where they were closely scrutinized by military investigators to determine whether they might pose a threat to the country. While almost all had been released and resettled by 2011, the current government has not introduced, nor even seriously entertained, any significant measures of power devolution that might create meaningful degrees of autonomy in the regions that remain dominated by Tamil peoples. The Sri Lankan government has grown increasingly autocratic, attempting to assert its control over the local media and non-governmental organizations while at the same time reorienting its foreign policy away from the US, UK, EU, and Japan, to an orbit that now includes China, Burma, Russia and Iran. At the same time, hardline right-wing groups of Sinhala Buddhists have propagated-arguably with the government's tacit approval-the idea of an international conspiracy designed to destabilize Sri Lanka. The local targets of these extremist groups, the so-called fronts of this alleged conspiracy, have been identified as Christians and Muslims. Many Christian churches have suffered numerous attacks at the hands of Buddhist extremists, but the Muslim community has borne the brunt of the suffering. Buddhist Extremists and Muslim Minorities presents a collection of essays that investigate the history and current conditions of Buddhist-Muslim relations in Sri Lanka in an attempt to ascertain the causes of the present conflict. Readers unfamiliar with this story will be surprised to learn that it inverts common stereotypes of the two religious groups. In this context, certain groups of Buddhists, generally regarded as peace-oriented , are engaged in victimizing Muslims, who are increasingly regarded as militant , in unwarranted and irreligious ways. The essays reveal that the motivations for these attacks often stem from deep-seated economic disparity, but the contributors also argue that elements of religious culture have served as catalysts for the explosive violence. This is a much-needed, timely commentary that can potentially shift the standard narrative on Muslims and religious violence.

Between the years of 1898 and 1926, Edward Westermarck spent a total of seven years in Morocco, visiting towns and tribes in different parts of the country, meeting local people and learning about their language and culture; his findings are noted in this two-volume set, first published in 1926. The first volume contains extensive reference material, including Westermarck's system of transliteration and a comprehensive list of the tribes and districts mentioned in the text. The chapters in this, the second volume, explore such areas as the rites and beliefs connected with the Islamic calendar, agriculture, and childbirth. This title will fascinate any student or researcher of anthropology with an interest in the history of ritual, culture and religion in Morocco.

In this pathbreaking book, Marinus Iwuchukwu examinesthe perennial conflicts in different parts of northern Nigeria and why they are popularly called Muslim-Christian clashes. Specifically, he examines the immediate and remote factors that are responsible for the conflicts, seeking to know if northern Nigerians are intrinsically religious and if people in this region are attracted to either Islam or Christianity exclusively and why. In the light of the popular finger-pointing on religion and sometimes on culture as reasons for the conflicts, Iwuchukwu exploreshow an inclusive religious and cultural pluralistic framework can effectively facilitate ongoing interreligious dialogue among the feuding groups.

This comprehensive introduction explores the landscape of contemporary Islam. Written by a distinguished team of scholars, it: provides broad overviews of the developments, events, people and movements that have defined Islam in the three majority-Muslim regions traces the connections between traditional Islamic institutions and concerns, and their modern manifestations and transformations. How are medieval ideas, policies and practices refashioned to address modern circumstances investigates new themes and trends that are shaping the modern Muslim experience such as gender, fundamentalism, the media and secularisation offers case studies of Muslims and Islam in dynamic interaction with different societies. Islam in the Modern World includes illustrations, summaries, discussion points and suggestions for further reading that will aid understanding and revision. Additional resources are provided via a companion website.

Islam is not only a religion, but also a culture, tradition, and civilization. There are currently 1.5 billion people in the world who identify themselves as Muslim. Two thirds of the worldwide Muslim population, i.e. approximately a billion people, live in forty-eight Muslim majority countries (MMC) in the world- all of which except one are in Africa and Asia. Of these MMCs in Africa and Asia, only twelve (inhabited by about 165 million people) have ever achieved a high score on the Human Development Index (HDI), the index that measures life expectancy at birth, education and standard of living and ranks how "developed" a country is. This means that the majority of the world's Muslim population lives in poverty with low or medium level of human development.

The contributions to this innovative volume attempt to determine why this is. They explore the influence of environment, space, and power on human development. The result is a complex, interdisciplinary study of all MMCs in Africa and Asia. It offers new insights into the current state of the Muslim World, and provides a theoretical framework for studying human development from an interdisciplinary social, cultural, economic, environmental, political, and religious perspective, which will be applicable to regional and cultural studies of space and power in other regions of the world.

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Routledge Library Editions: Politics of Islam brings together as one set, or individual volumes, a series of previously out-of-print classics from a variety of academic imprints. With titles ranging from Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East (1984) to Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity (1988) and Islam and Power (1981), this set provides in one place a wealth of important reference sources from a wide range of authors expert in the field.