What duty do we have to stop others from doing wrong? The question is intelligible in almost any culture, but few seek to answer it in a rigorous fashion. The most striking exception is found in the Islamic tradition where "commanding right and forbidding wrong" is a central moral tenet. Michael Cook's comprehensive and compelling analysis represents the first sustained attempt to chart the history of Islamic reflection on this obligation and to explain its relevance for politics and ideology in the contemporary Islamic world.

A complete history of Islamic political thought from early Islam (c.622-661) to the present. This comprehensive overview describes and interprets all schools of Islamic political thought, their origins, inter-connections and meaning. It examines the Qur'an, the early Caliphate, classical Islamic philosophy, and the political culture of the Ottoman and other empires. Major thinkers such as Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Ibn Taymiyya are covered as well as numerous lesser authors, and Ibn Khaldun is presented as one of the most original political theorists ever. It draws on a wide range of sources including writings on religion, law, philosophy and statecraft expressed in treatises, handbooks and political rhetoric. The new edition discusses and analyses the connections between religion and politics. It incorporates recent developments in Islamic political thought before and after 9/11 and ends with a critical survey of reformism (or modernism) and Islamism (or fundamentalism) from the late nineteenth century up to the present day. Key Features of the Second Edition Revised and updated throughout A new final section on Islam and the West New bibliographies of primary and secondary sources Only book to cover the whole of Islamic political thought, past and present

From antiquity to the early modern period, many philosophers also studied anatomy and medicine, or were medical doctors themselves - yet the history of philosophy and of medicine are pursued as separate disciplines. This book departs from that practice, gathering contributions by both historians of philosophy and of medicine to trace the concept of health from ancient Greece and China, through the Islamic world and to modern thinkers such as Descartes and Freud. Through this interdisciplinary approach, Health demonstrates the synchronicity and overlapping histories of these two disciplines. From antiquity to the Renaissance, contributors explore the Chinese idea of qi or circulating "vital breath," ideas about medical methodology in antiquity and the middle ages, and the rise and long-lasting influence of Galenic medicine, with its insistence that health consists in a balance of four humors and the proper use of six "non-naturals" including diet, exercise, and sex. In the early modern period, mechanistic theories of the body made it more difficult to explain what health is and why it is more valuable than other physical states. However, philosophers and doctors maintained an interest in the interaction between the good condition of the mind and that of the body, with Descartes and his followers exploring in depth the idea of "medicine for the mind" despite their notorious mind-body dualism. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientific improvements in public health emerged along with new ideas about the psychology of health, notably with the concept of "sensibility" and Freud's psychoanalytic theory. The volume concludes with a critical survey of recent philosophical attempts to define health, showing that both "descriptive," or naturalistic, and "normativist" approaches have fallen prey to objections and counterexamples. As a whole, Health: A History shows that notions of both physical and mental health have long been integral to philosophy and a powerful link between philosophy and the sciences.

Philips defends a middle ground between the view that there is a set of standards binding on rational beings as such (universalism) and the view that differences in morals reduce ultimately to matters of taste (skepticism). He begins with a sustained critique of universalist moral theories and of certain familiar approaches to concrete moral questions that presuppose them (most appeals to intuitions, respect-for-persons moralities, and versions of contractarianism and wide reflective equilibrium). He goes on to criticize major recent attempts to develop nonuniversalist alternatives to skepticism, arguing that they rely on excessively abstract and philosophically indefensible preference satisfaction theories of the good. According to Philips's positive alternative, ethics as social artifact, moral codes are social instruments and they are justified to the extent that they effectively do their jobs, which is to promote reasonably valued ways of life. Accordingly, he argues that different standards may be justified for different societies, depending on their circumstances, traditions, and current institutions. His account of a reasonably valued way of life depends on a "falsifiability" approach to reasonable values according to which existing values are treated as reasonable unless good arguments can be made against them. He describes many strategies for making such arguments, the upshot being an approach to the justification of moral standards that is sufficiently "grounded" to settle many controversies and to mark off areas in which rational persons are free to disagree. It also explains why the weight of a moral consideration may vary reasonably from one "domain" of social life toanother. An original approach to the uses and limits of reason in ethics, Between Universalism and Skepticism provides a theoretical basis for approaching actual moral controversies and questions of applied and professional ethics in a systematic way.

The Ismailis, among whom are the followers of the Aga Khan, rose to prominence during the fourth Islamic/tenth Christian century. They developed a remarkably successful intellectual programme to sustain and support their political activities, promoting demands of Islamic doctrine together with the then newly imported sciences from abroad. The high watermark of this intellectual movement is best illustrated in the writings of the Ismaili theoretician Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani. Using both published and manuscript writings of al-Sijistani that have hitherto been largely hidden, forgotten or ignored, Dr Paul Walker reveals the scholar's major contribution to the development of philosophical Shiism. He analyses his role in the Ismaili mission (da'wa) of that time and critically assesses the major themes in his combination of philosophy and religious doctrine.

Shariah is by now a term that most Americans and Europeans recognize, though few really understand what it means. Often portrayed as a medieval system used by religious zealots to oppress women and deny human rights, conservative politicians, media commentators, and hardline televangelists stoke fear by promoting the idea that Muslims want to impose a repressive Shariah rule in America and Europe. Despite the breadth of this propaganda, a majority of Muslims-men and women-support Shariah as a source of law. In fact, for many centuries Shariah has functioned for Muslims as a positive source of guidance, providing a moral compass for individuals and society. This critical new book by John L. Esposito and Natana Delong-Bas aims to serve as a guide for what everybody needs to know in the conversation about Shariah, responding to misunderstandings and distortions, and offering answers to questions about the origin, nature, and content of Shariah.

What would it mean to imagine Islam as an immanent critique of the West? Sayyid Ahmad Khan lived in a time of great tribulation for Muslim India under British rule. By examining Khan's work as a critical expression of modernity rooted in the Muslim experience of it, Islam as Critique argues that Khan is essential to understanding the problematics of modern Islam and its relationship to the West. The book re-imagines Islam as an interpretive strategy for investigating the modern condition, and as an engaged alternative to mainstream Western thought. Using the life and work of nineteenth-century Indian Muslim polymath Khan (1817-1898), it identifies Muslims as a viable resource for both critical intervention in important ethical debates of our times and as legitimate participants in humanistic discourses that underpin a just global order. Islam as Critique locates Khan within a broader strain in modern Islamic thought that is neither a rejection of the West, nor a wholesale acceptance of it. The author calls this "Critical Islam". By bringing Khan's critical engagement with modernity into conversation with similar critical analyses of the modern by Reinhold Niebuhr, Hannah Arendt, and Alasdair MacIntyre, the author shows how Islam can be read as critique.

This book explores the constitutive role alterity plays in identity formation in Western and Eastern traditions. It examines the significance of difference in conceptions of identity across major philosophical and religious traditions in a global and comparative context, considering Ancient Greek and Egyptian, Chinese, Islamic, European and Japanese philosophies. In addition, the book opens up discussion of less dominant trends in philosophical thinking, particularly the spaces between self-same existence and otherness in the histories of philosophical and religious thought. Chapters critique both essentialist and postmodern understandings of self-constitution by questioning the ordinary narrative of identity construction across Western and non-Western traditions. The book also explores the construction of selfhood from a wide range of perspectives, drawing upon individual philosophers (including Plotinus, Descartes, Geulincx, Hume, de Beauvoir and Ueda) as well as religious and philosophical movements, including Confucian philosophy, Zen Buddhism, Protestantism and Post-Phenomenology. Differences in Identity in Philosophy and Religion represents a landmark study, drawing together a range of approaches, perspectives and traditions to explore how identity is constructed across the world.

The Delhi Sultanate ruled northern India for over three centuries. The era, marked by the desecration of temples and construction of mosques from temple-rubble, is for many South Asians a lightning rod for debates on communalism, religious identity and inter-faith conflict. Using Persian and Arabic manuscripts, epigraphs and inscriptions, Fouzia Farooq Ahmad demystifies key aspects of governance and religion in this complex and controversial period. Why were small sets of foreign invaders and administrators able to dominate despite the cultural, linguistic and religious divides separating them from the ruled? And to what extent did people comply with the authority of sultans they knew very little about? By focusing for the first time on the relationship between the sultans, the bureaucracy and the ruled Muslim Rule in Medieval India outlines the practical dynamics of medieval Muslim political culture and its reception. This approach shows categorically that sultans did not possess meaningful political authority among the masses, and that their symbols of legitimacy were merely post hoc socio-cultural embellishments.Ahmad's thoroughly researched revisionist account is essential reading for all students and researchers working on the history of South Asia from the medieval period to the present day.

This volume advances the critical study of exegetical, doctrinal, and political authority in Shi'i Islam. Naive dichotomies of "reason" and "esotericism" in Islamic Studies have often marginalized Shi'i thought or impeded its understanding. The studies presented here aim to foster more exacting frameworks for interpreting the diverse modes of rationality and esotericism in Twelver and Ismaili Shi'ism and the socio-epistemic values they represent within Muslim discourse. The volume's contributions highlight the cross-sectarian genealogy of early Shi'i esotericism; the rationale behind Fatimid Ismaili Quranic ta'wil hermeneutics; the socio-political context of religious authority in nascent Twelver Shi'ism; authorial agency wielded by Imami hadith compilers; the position of esoteric Shi'i traditions in Timurid-era Hilla; and Shi'i-Sufi relations with Usuli jurists in modern Iran. Contributors: Rodrigo Adem, Alessandro Cancian, Edmund Hayes, Sajjad Rizvi, Tahera Qutbuddin, Paul Walker, George Warner

Once referred to by the New York Times as the "Israeli Faulkner," A. B. Yehoshua's fiction invites an assessment of Israel's Jewish inheritance and the moral and political options that the country currently faces in the Middle East. The Retrospective Imagination of A. B. Yehoshua is an insightful overview of the fiction, nonfiction, and hundreds of critical responses to the work of Israel's leading novelist. Instead of an exhaustive chronological-biographical account of Yehoshua's artistic growth, Yael Halevi-Wise calls for a systematic appreciation of the author's major themes and compositional patterns. Specifically, she argues for reading Yehoshua's novels as reflections on the "condition of Israel," constructed multifocally to engage four intersecting levels of signification: psychological, sociological, historical, and historiosophic. Each of the book's seven chapters employs a different interpretive method to showcase how Yehoshua's constructions of character psychology, social relations, national history, and historiosophic allusions to traditional Jewish symbols manifest themselves across his novels. The book ends with a playful dialogue in the style of Yehoshua's masterpiece, Mr. Mani, that interrogates his definition of Jewish identity. Masterfully written, with full control of all the relevant materials, Halevi-Wise's assessment of Yehoshua will appeal to students and scholars of modern Jewish literature and Jewish studies.

I.B.Tauris in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies Of the few surviving Nizari Ismaili texts from the Alamut period, the Haft bab (Seven Chapters), which outlines the basic tenets of Ismaili philosophical theology, has proved to be the most popular. One of its many attractive features is its simple recounting of the most complicated Ismaili theological narratives, including the doctrine of the Resurrection (qiyamat). Produced around the year 1203, this small treatise was probably intended as an introduction to the Diwan-i Qa'imiyyat compiled by Hasan-i Mahmud-i Katib (d. after 1242). For many years, the Haft bab was misattributed to Baba Sayyidna (Hasan-i Sabbah), but the true author has finally been identified as Hasan-i Mahmud-i Katib, whose works continue to shape our understanding of this important period.The current text of the Haft bab, edited and translated into English by S. J. Badakhchani, is based on Badakhchani's analysis of a great number of manuscripts available, including a complete and unaltered version. The concepts found in the text derive largely from the intellectual heritage of the Fatimids.These include the idea of tanzih (the absolute transcendence of God beyond human understanding and knowledge); a cyclical conception of prophetic history, consisting of seven eras (dawr); the Ismaili Imamate as the most important pillar of Ismaili Islam; and the Qiyamat as the completion and perfection of the religious law (shari'at). The Ismaili interpretation of the Qiyamat is radically different from Qur'anic eschatology in its esoteric formation, spiritual aspiration and imaginative scope. The Haft bab explains this key doctrine of Nizari Ismailism, shedding light on a fundamental period in the history of Shi'i Islam.