This book considers positions refugees take relative to the state, humanitarian actors and faith-based organisations in the humanitarian field. Attention is drawn to refugee agency as they negotiate circumstances of considerable constraint demonstrating relational dimensions of religious practice and experience.

Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics is a powerful introduction to the scope of Islamophobia in the United States. Drawing on examples such as the legacy of Barack Obama, the mainstream media's portrayal of Muslims, and the justifications given for some of America's most recent military endeavors, author Nazia Kazi highlights the vast impact of Islamophobia, connecting this to a long history of US racism. Kazi shows how American Islamophobia and racism are at once domestic-occurring within the borders of the United States-and global-a matter of foreign policy and global politics. Using Islamophobia as a unique case study, Kazi asks the reader to consider how war and empire-building relate to racism. The book sheds light on the diverse experiences of American Muslims, especially the varying ways they have experienced Islamophobia, and confronts some of the misguided attempts to tackle this Islamophobia.

Are you a prison officer who feels nervous about dealing with Muslims on the wings? Are you a prison chaplain who wants to know how your chaplaincy affects the lives of prisoners? Are you a policymaker who needs a robust base of evidence for Islam in prison? Are you an academic or a journalist seeking ground-breaking social science in a contentious field? Based on original evidence from 279 Muslim prisoners and 79 prison officers, we explore how Muslims come to be incarcerated, how the practice of Islam affects prison life and rehabilitation, the types of Islam and the effects of Islamic conversion in prison and the professional practice of officers and chaplains. We also investigate the common belief that incarceration fosters Islamist extremism and suggest improvements to faith provision and rehabilitative opportunities for Muslim prisoners.

Having survived the process of modernization and reasserted themselves in public life, religious traditions play an increasingly important public role in shaping and defining social institutions and interactions. This book examines Rawls's theory of political liberalism in the context of Muslim societies, where religion wields a significant social and political influence. Contrasting a sociological analysis with a theoretical approach, the author explores the political questions brought up by religious individuals, organizations, and minorities, and examines fundamental notions such as neutrality of state, public/private distinction, and individual autonomy. Offering a rich set of conceptual and normative instruments, the author presents new ways to incorporate political liberalism into political discourses and advocating policy prescriptions for the advancement of democracy in Muslim societies. Independent of the focus on Muslim societies, this book makes a significant contribution to the political liberalism debate. As such, it will be of interest not only to students of Islam and the Middle East, but also to those with an interest in political philosophy, democracy, religion and contemporary political theory.

With a focus on the areas of theory, literature, culture, society and film, this collection of essays examines, questions and broadens the applicability of Postcolonialism and Islam from a multifaceted and cross-disciplinary perspective. Topics covered include the relationship between Postcolonialism and Orientalism, theoretical perspectives on Postcolonialism and Islam, the position of Islam within postcolonial literature, Muslim identity in British and European contexts, and the role of Islam in colonial and postcolonial cinema in Egypt and India. At a time at which Islam continues to be at the centre of increasingly heated and frenzied political and academic deliberations, Postcolonialism and Islam offers a framework around which the debate on Muslims in the modern world can be centred. Transgressing geographical, disciplinary and theoretical boundaries, this book is an invaluable resource for students of Islamic Studies, Cultural Studies, Sociolgy and Literature.

An enduring educational concern that has plagued researchers and policy makers in a number of affluent countries is the endemic nature of educational inequalities. These inequalities highlight distinct differences in the educational skills, knowledge, capabilities and credentials between learners' demographic characteristics. They also point to issues of educational disadvantage that emanate from a combination of factors including family life, communities, the geographies of space and place, gender and ethnicity. This book examines some of the causes and responses to educational inequalities, and focuses upon poor urban contexts where educational disadvantage is at its most concentrated, and where educational policy and practice has, over time, proliferated. It questions how wider inequities experienced by young people in urban contexts generate educational inequalities and disadvantage, detailing explicitly what an equitable approach to education might look like. Included in the book is an innovative educational equity framework and toolkit with illustrative policy and practice case studies, bringing together unique scholarship and analysis to examine future educational policy in a holistic, comprehensive and equitable way. It will be valuable reading for postgraduate students, researchers and policy makers with an interest in education and educational equity.

This book reinterprets the Muslim architecture and urban planning of South India, looking beyond the Deccan to the regions of Tamil Nadu and Kerala - the historic coasts of Coromandel and Malabar. For the first time a detailed survey of the Muslim monuments of the historic ports and towns demonstrates a rich and diverse architectural tradition entirely independent from the better known architecture of North India and the Deccan sultanates. The book, extensively illustrated with photographs and architectural drawings, widens the horizons of our understanding of Muslim India and will no doubt pave new paths for future studies in the field.

This volume locates the contemporary study of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia squarely within the fields of race and racism. As such, it challenges the extent to which discussion of the racialization of these minorities remains unrelated to each other, or is explored in distinct silos as a series of internal debates. By harnessing the explanatory power of long-established organizing concepts within the study of race and racism, this collection of articles makes a historically informed, theoretical and empirical contribution to aligning these analytical pursuits. The collection brings together a range of perspectives on this subject, including a comparison between Islamophobia in early modern Spain and twenty-first century Europe, an examination of the 'new anti-Semitism', and an analysis of online anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic jokes. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This book examines the Islamist radicalisation process in Europe, developing a new theoretical model based on an empirical study of the evolution of Islamist radicals in their social environment. The approach of this book is to examine how, and under what conditions, people choose to radicalise. It focuses on the experience of radicalisation from the perspective of those who have undergone it. The study is based on trial and court material, along with an extensive number of interviews collected from many different European countries, and this biographical approach is used to address individuals and the details of their social environment. Overall, the explanatory framework departs from the existing deterministic paradigm (with grievances as causes), also present in some psychological models, and argues that radicalisation is a process much like occupational choice - a rational choice made with social and ideational significance. It addresses critically the assumption that, because the result of the radicalisation process could be seen as 'abnormal', the cause of it might be of a similar nature. Parallels are drawn with other forms of extremism and European counter-radicalisation policies are considered critically. This book will be of great interest to students of terrorism studies and political violence, political Islam, social movements, European politics and IR/security studies in general.

First published in 1991, this title explores the myths and misperceptions that have underpinned Muslim-Christian relations throughout history, and which endure to the current day. William Montgomery Watt describes how the myths originated and developed, and argues that both Muslims and Christians need to have a more accurate knowledge and positive appreciation of the other religion. Chapters discuss the Qur'anic perception of Christianity, attitudes to Greek philosophy and the relationship between Islam and Christianity in medieval Europe. Written by one of the leading authorities on Islam in the West, Muslim-Christian Encounters remains a relevant and vivid study and will be of particular value to students of Islam, religious history and sociology.

This is a study of the structure and composition of the official learning current in medieval Arabic culture. This comprises natural sciences both exoteric and esoteric (medicine, alchemy, astrology and others), traditional and religious sciences (such as theology, exegesis and grammar), philosophical sciences such as metaphysics and ethics, in addition to technical disciplines like political theory and medicine, and other fields of intellectual endeavour. The book identifies and develops a number of conceptual elements common to the various areas of official Arabic scientific discourse, and shows how these elements integrate these disparate sciences into an historical epistemic unity. The specific profile of each of these different sciences is described, in terms of its conceptual content, but especially with reference to its historical circumstances. These are seen to be embodied in a number of institutional supports, both intellectual and social: paradigms, schools of thought, institutions of learning, pedagogic techniques, and a body of professionals, all of which combine to form definite, albeit ever renewed, traditions of learning. Finally, an attempt is made to relate Arabic scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages to patterns of scientific and political authority. First published in 1986.

Inside the Muslim Brotherhood provides a comprehensive analysis of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt since 1981. The book unpacks the principal factors that shape the Brotherhood's identity, organization, and activism, investigating the processes of socialization, indoctrination, recruitment, identification, networking, and mobilization utilized by the movement. Khalil al-Anani argues that the Brotherhood is not merely a political actor seeks power but also an identity maker that aims to change societal values, norms, and morals to line up with its ideology and worldview. As a socio-political movement, he finds, the Brotherhood is involved in an intensive process of meaning construction and symbolic production that shape individuals' identity and gives sense to their lives. The result is Brotherhood a distinctive code of identity that governs the norms, values, and regulations that bind members together, maintains their activism, and guides their behavior in everyday life. The book also explains the Brotherhood's durability and how it endured regime repression and exclusion over the past three decades, which al-Anani attributes to the organization's structure and coherence. A tight-knit structure coupled with complex membership system has allowed the Brotherhood to resist regime penetration. Lastly, the book explores the balance of power within the Brotherhood. It investigates the divisions and differences within the movement and how this affects its strategy and decisions.

The concept of jihad holds a prominent place in Islamic thought and history. Beyond its spiritual meanings, the term has historically been associated with the sweeping Arab-Believers conquests of the 7-8th century BCE. But given advances in our understanding of the historicity and chronology of the Qur'an and early Islamic texts, is it correct to identify jihad and Islam with violent conquest? In this book, Marco Demichelis explores the history of the concept of jihad in the early proto-Islamic centuries (7-8th). Deploying an interdisciplinary approach which combines the hermeneutical study of the famous 'Verses of the Sword' within the Qur'an itself, with historical writing by Islamic chroniclers as well as non-Islamic sources, numismatics, epigraphical and architectural evidence, the book questions the relationship between the religious concept of jihad and the conquests. The book argues that Christian Byzantine Foederati forices who previously fought against the Persians may have had a formative effect on the later emergence of more bellicose rhetoric. In so doing, it calls into question assumptions about warlike attitudes inherent within Islamic doctrine, and reveals a more nuanced and complicated history of religious violence in the pre, proto and early Islamic period.

An examination of the place of religion, especially Islam, in political and cultural life took on a special urgency after the events of 9/11. The essays in this volume concentrate on the way that Islam impacts on the everyday lives of people who reside in societies where Islam plays a large part. The relationship between Islam and women has always been seen as problematic, and by highlighting women's negotiations with this religion, this volume seeks to understand the many and various strategies and connections that are made, and their political and cultural ramifications. By keeping an Asian focus, the authors also seek to understand the wide panorama that Islamic societies inhabit, and the manifold political and cultural expressions that ensue from this. The effort is not only to break the image of a monolithic structure and set of beliefs, but also to highlight on-the-ground negotiations, and the ways that women in particular find spaces within Islamic structures and discourses. This book was originally published as a special issue of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies.

The past 18 months have seen a radical increase in incidents of jihadist terrorism within the United Kingdom - from the Manchester Arena attack, to the Houses of Parliament, to London Bridge. As a result, there are renewed calls for a high-level national conversation about the causes of, and the responses to, this particular terrorist problem. This book identifies policy and research gaps from an evidence-based perspective - it analyses what we know, what we don't know and what we need to know in relation to understanding and countering the jihadist terrorist threat. It provides readers with a synthesis of the knowledge and evidence that exists on each of the key topic areas, representing a distinctive and valuable resource for policymakers, academics and students. The contributors to the volume are leading international and national experts, from both the scholarly and policy-making communities, who are ideally placed to comment on the question of jihadist terrorism and the future of the threat in the UK.

This is a unique book, groundbreaking in the field of Islamic studies. It is, on its surface, a personal story of a South African couple making their first pilgrimage to Makkah (Hajj) together. The authors are highly intelligent, well educated, slightly sarcastic, but very devout in a way that resonates with the faith of other young people throughout the world. But this book is more than the musings of young professionals on the meaning of a traditional ritual. The authors are South African activists struggling against apartheid and its aftermath. At the same time, they grapple with gender and authority issues within Islam, especially as these issues question their social activism. Their book is therefore a focused story of Muslims committed to social reform and seeking to reconcile their activism with their deeply traditional faith. The story is all the more poignant knowing that the trip is both the vehicle of spiritual discovery and the couple’s last trip together. Shamima died a few months later, leaving Na’eem to bring up their two sons and make sense of their journey together. Several books have been published on the Islamic pilgrimage. None, however, has the accessibility and personal appeal of Journey of Discovery. More importantly, none has incorporated the meaning of the pilgrimage into the spiritual and social landscape of Muslim life in the contemporary world, as this has. This book is easy to read, yet highly charged intellectually and emotionally.

The decade since 9/11 has seen a decline in liberal tolerance in the West as Muslims have endured increasing levels of repression. This book presents a series of case studies from Western Europe, Australia and North America demonstrating the transnational character of Islamophobia. The authors explore contemporary intercultural conflicts using the concept of moral panic, revitalised for the era of globalisation. Exploring various sites of conflict, Global Islamophobia considers the role played by 'moral entrepreneurs' in orchestrating popular xenophobia and in agitating for greater surveillance, policing and cultural regulation of those deemed a threat to the nation's security or imagined community. This timely collection examines the interpenetration of the global and the local in the West's cultural politics towards Islam, highlighting parallels in the responses of governments and in the worrying reversion to a politics of coercion and assimilation. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology and politics with interests in race and ethnicity; citizenship and assimilation; political communication, securitisation and The War on Terror; and moral panics.

2018 Outstanding Academic Title, given by Choice Magazine An exploration of twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Muslim womanhood that centers the lived experience of women of color For Sylvia Chan-Malik, Muslim womanhood is constructed through everyday and embodied acts of resistance, what she calls affective insurgency. In negotiating the histories of anti-Blackness, U.S. imperialism, and women's rights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Being Muslim explores how U.S. Muslim women's identities are expressions of Islam as both Black protest religion and universal faith tradition. Through archival images, cultural texts, popular media, and interviews, the author maps how communities of American Islam became sites of safety, support, spirituality, and social activism, and how women of color were central to their formation. By accounting for American Islam's rich histories of mobilization and community, Being Muslim brings insight to the resistance that all Muslim women must engage in the post-9/11 United States. From the stories that she gathers, Chan-Malik demonstrates the diversity and similarities of Black, Arab, South Asian, Latina, and multiracial Muslim women, and how American understandings of Islam have shifted against the evolution of U.S. white nationalism over the past century. In borrowing from the lineages of Black and women-of-color feminism, Chan-Malik offers us a new vocabulary for U.S. Muslim feminism, one that is as conscious of race, gender, sexuality, and nation, as it is region and religion.

As Europe goes astray, deeply conflicted about where it is both within and with the world, it does not know what it wants to know about, or do, with the racial subject. It is into this context of anxiety, and the Muslim subject as its most intense source, that I write Islamophobia. Islamophobia represents not merely a species of the racism constitutive of European modernity, but is rather symptomatic of deep contemporary transformations in (racist) power, knowledge and governance, propelled by technologies and economies of seemingly endless wars on/of terror. The Muslim, who is at once the terrifying object and dehumanised subject of race, is called to answer for Europe's existential fear of relegation. But who, or rather what is s/he? How might the Muslim speak about the world, its past and unfolding terror(s)? Which questions must s/he answer, and which answers are deemed acceptable? Presenting a speculative theory of the (post)racial subject of Islamophobia, this book is an attempt to build an adequate vocabulary for analysing the complexities of racism today, its potential futurity, and (Muslim) techniques for its dismantling.

Islamophobia is the name given to the virulent anti-Islamic prejudice that has been hyped by the news media and seized upon by cynical politicians. Five essays by six specialists on Islam in America provide important insights into Islamophobia as a conflict over American identity during a time of crisis. The authors clarify the way that differences of religion, race, and gender have been used to portray Muslims as threatening "out-groups," just as other minorities (Catholics, Jews, blacks) have been attacked in the past. The result is a valuable and thought-provoking analysis of the tactics for denying full citizenship to a minority religious group.

In a world where almost all societies are multi-religious and multi-ethnic, we need to study how social cohesion can be achieved in different contexts. In some geographical areas, as in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, people of different religious belonging have, through the ages, lived side by side, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in dissonance. In other geographical regions, as in Scandinavia, societies have been quite religiously homogeneous but only recently challenged by immigration. In both locations the relations between religious minority and majority are very much on the agenda. In order to discuss the situation for non-Muslims in Muslim majority societies, a consultation was convened with both Muslim and Christian participants from Pakistan, Palestine, Lebanon, and Sweden. Some of the participants work in academic settings, others in faith-based organisations, some in jurisprudence and others with theological issues. Non-Muslims in Muslim Majority Societies is the result of that consultation. The intention of the book is to trigger reflection and further thinking, through papers that discuss issues such as freedom of religion, minority rights, secular and religious legislation, and inter-religious dialogue in Muslim majority societies. Although the articles are presented as 'works in progress' and remain tentative in many of their conclusions, this book is an important contribution to the global debate over religious tolerance and religious pluralism.

The first eleven essays in this collection treat the application of Islamic law in qadi courts in the Maghrib in the period between 1100 and 1500 CE. Based on preserved legal documents and the expert opinions of Muslim jurists (Muftis), the essays examine family law cases involving legal minority, guardianship, divorce, inheritance, bequests, and endowments. Cumulatively, the cases bear witness to the effectiveness and efficiency of the Islamic judicial system in this period. Contrary to popular perceptions, the cases demonstrate that Muslim jurists placed a high value on reasoned thought and were sensitive to the manner in which law, society, and culture interacted with, and shaped, each other. The final essay shows how the treatment of family endowments by colonial regimes in Algeria and India at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries shaped, or misshaped the modern western scholarly understanding of Islamic law.

With the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, France has faced a number of critiques in its attempts to assimilate Muslims into an ostensibly secular (but predominantly Catholic) state and society. This book challenges traditional analyses that emphasise the conflict between Muslims and the French state and broader French society, by exploring the intersection of Muslim faith with other identities, as well as the central roles of Muslims in French civil society, politics and the media. The tensions created by attacks on French soil by Islamic State have contributed to growing acceptance of the Islamophobic discourse of Marine Le Pen and her far-right Front National party, and debates about issues such as headscarves and burkinis have garnered worldwide attention. Downing addresses these issues from a new angle, eschewing the traditional us-and-them narrative and offering a more nuanced account based on people's actual lived experiences. French Muslims in Perspective will be of interest to students and scholars across sociology, politics, international relations, cultural studies, European Studies and French studies, as well as policy makers and practitioners involved in immigration, education, and media.

This Reader offers a comprehensive overview of the variety of methodological and theoretical approaches involved in, and relevant to, the emerging field of Anthropology of Islam. It pays particular attention to the study of ethnographic cases, featuring various forms of Islam as practiced in different social and cultural contexts. The Anthropology of Islam Reader also explores topics of great current interest such as the body and cultural politics, the veil and the public sphere and key practices and festivals such as the Hajj and Eid. In his selections, Jens Kreinath highlights the diversity of practices and themes that were formative for this field of study, making this essential reading for students of Islam at undergraduate and graduate level.

This is the first detailed study of the life and thought of Shaykh Mahmud Shaltut (1897-1963). Shaltd=ut was an Egyptian scholar and reformer who held the most senior position open to Sunni Muslim religious scholars - that of Rector of the Azhar University in Cairo. His period of office (1958-63) was a turbulent time in Egypt and within the Azhar itself, with President Nasser's socialist government initiatinga radical reorganization of that institution in accordance with its policy of exerting greater control over the forces of Islam in Egypt. One of the most popuar and progressive Rectors of the Azhar in recent times, his writings have received extremely wide readership throughout the Muslim world. They reflect both his traditional religious background and his great concern with the contemporary problems of Muslims, thus providing an insight into some of the tensions which arise in the confrontation with modernity. In his important work in the areas of Islamic jurisprudence and Qur'anic commentary, he strove to demystify Islamic scholarship and make its fruits available to ordinary Muslims. He issued fatwas on a wide range of topics of particular relevance in the modern age, such as financial transactions and family planning. By focusing on the work of an essentially traditional religious scholar, this study will fill a serious gap in modern Islamic studies. Set against the wider context of the cultural and revolutionary changes of Egypt at this time, it will also provide valuable insights for students charting the development of the modern Middle East.