"The Dignity of Man: An Islamic Perspective" provides the most detailed study to date on the subject of the dignity of man from the perspective of Islam. M H Kamali sets out the proclamations on human dignity found in the Qur'an and then discusses topics pertaining to or resulting from human dignity: the physical and spiritual nobility of man; God's love for humanity; the sanctity of life; and the necessity for freedom, equality and accountability. Finally, the author examines the measures that the "Shariah" has taken to protect human dignity and to promote it in social interaction. The discussion is here presented in the light of the debate on the universality of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This book goes a long way towards exploring an alternative to Western concepts of human rights. "The Dignity of Man: An Islamic Perspective" is part of a series of studies on fundamental rights and liberties in Islam and should be read with its companion volumes of "Freedom,"" Equality and Justice in Islam," and "Freedom of Expression in Islam,"

This book deals with the mathematical sciences in medieval Islam, and focuses on three main themes. The first is that of the translation of texts (from Greek into Arabic, then from Arabic into Latin), and close attention is paid to terminology and comparative vocabulary. The other themes are those of the technology of the sphere and of astronomical instruments, which are treated both from the mechanical and mathematical point of view. Several of the articles combine these themes, for instance the study of the self-rotating sphere of al-Khazini (12th century) or that on the transmission of spherical trigonometry to the West. Four articles also contain substantial texts, with translation and commentary.

These studies by Wael Hallaq represent an important contribution to our understanding of the neglected field of medieval Islamic law and legal thought. Spanning the period from the 8th to the 16th centuries, they draw upon a wide range of original sources to offer both fresh interpretations of those sources and a careful evaluation of contemporary scholarship. The first articles expound the interrelated issues of legal reasoning, legal logic and the epistemology of the law. There follows a set of primarily historical studies, which question a series of widely held assumptions, while the last items explore issues of legal theory and methodology. One particular topic concerns the role of Shafi'i as the 'master architect' of Islamic legal theory, and Professor Hallaq would finally argue that this image is in fact false and a creation of later centuries.

The former Muslim republics of the USSR are struggling to strike a balance between the legacy of the Soviet regime and the revival of their own, traditional culture. This volume examines the religion, economy and demography of the areas as well as both internal and external relations.

Many biographers have written about Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, but none have employed this literary device to relate his story in detail. The Beloved Prophet: An Illustrated Biography in Rhyme is a story overflowing with emotion and sentiment, presented in the most compressed literary style. This is not the only element that sets this unique biography apart. Combined with these verses are beautiful hand-drawn artwork that further animates the spirit of this profound story. The book comprises of fifty-two chapters, each with its corresponding artwork, 624 stanzas and 2,496 verses to delight a variety of palates ranging from the young to the old.

Based on extensive architectural and archaeological research, these papers present a series of studies on the art, buildings, settlement patterns, and land use in Iraq, Yemen and Oman, from the pre-Islamic period to modern times. Many of the monuments and sites were studied here for the first time, and have subsequently disappeared or become inaccessible. Among the main themes emerging from Professor Costa's work are the continuity of Arab craftsmanship, in both technical and aesthetic terms, from Late Antiquity into the Islamic period; the relationship between the natural and the built environment; and the dependence of architecture and settlement patterns on the exploitation of natural resources, especially water.

This book examines the cultural responses of Muslims to the transformations, contradictions and challenges confronting contemporary Islam as it moves towards the twentieth-first century. The diffusion of populations, the globalization of culture and teh forces of postmodernity have shaken the world like never before. These developments have generated a debate among Muslims which as, the contributors to this volume show, will have far-reaching consequences not just for the Muslim world, but for relations between Islam and the West more generally.

Prepared over a period of 20 years, this book explores the previously unrecorded houses and mosques of the now abandoned island town of Suakin in the Red Sea, off the coast of Sudan. Drawings illustrate in detail the traditional architecture of Suakin.

Based on a wide variety of previously unstudied sources, these articles explain how science was applied to three aspects of Islamic ritual in the Middle Ages: the regulation of the lunar calendar; the organisation of the times of the five daily prayers; and the determination of the sacred direction (qibla) towards the Kaaba in Mecca. Simple procedures of folk astronomy were used by the scholars of religious law who determined popular practice; more complicated mathematical methods were provided by the scientists - and this proved a powerful incentive for the development of scientific analysis and research. Some of these procedures were to have far-reaching consequences. For example, the astronomical alignment of the Kaaba - known to various medieval writers, but long forgotten - led to the adoption of similar alignments for the qibla, and the final articles show how these were calculated, whether from astronomical observation or geographical computation, and their impact on the orientation of religious and secular architecture across the Islamic world. C'est A partir d'une grande diversite de sources inexplorees que ces articles expliquent comment la science avait ete appliquee a trois aspects du rituel islamique au Moyen Age: la regulation du calendrier lunaire; l'organisation des heures assignees aux cinq prieres quotidiennes; et l'etablissement de la direction sacree (qibla) vers la Kaaba de la Mecque. Des procedes simples d'astronomie populaire etaient utilises par les erudits en droit religieux qui decidaient de la pratique populaire; des methodes mathematiques plus complexes etaient offertes par les hommes de science - ce qui, en effet, s'avera Atre une motivation puissante dans le developpement de l'analyse et de la recherche scientifique. Certains de ces procedes eurent des consequences d'une grande portee par la suite. L'alignement astronomique de la Kaaba - pour ne reprendre qu'un exemple connu

Though we can no longer hear how it sounded, the written sources that remain provide much information on the music of the medieval Islamic and Jewish worlds, on how it was regarded and on the importance that was attached to it. Amnon Shiloah has been a pioneer in the exploration of these sources, and the present volume brings together some of the results. The opening studies examine, with annotated translations, several key works expounding the meaning of music and its power, in terms of its ethical and therapeutic effects and properties. The following articles focus on scientific writings about music and on the transmission of musical knowledge, while the final section approaches the subject from the angle of religion, noting how the power attributed to music occasioned the distrust of many religious figures, who feared its capacity to deprave and debase its audience. Bien que nous ne puissions plus de nos jours l'entendre, les sources ecrites qui ont survecu apportent enormement d'information sur la musique des mondes juifs et islamiques, sur l'importance qui y etait attachee et sur son rAle. Le professeur Shiloah est un des pionniers en terme d'exploration de ces sources et le present volume rassemble un certain nombre des resultats de ses recherches. Les premieres etudes, accompagnees de traductions annotees, font l'examen de plusieurs travaux importants, exposant la signification de la musique et sa puissance de par ses effets et ses proprietes morales et therapeutiques. Les articles suivants se concentrent sur les ecrits scientifiques au sujet de la musique et sur la propagation de la connaissance musicale. La derniere section aborde le sujet A partir de l'aspect de la religion, soulignant combien le pouvoir attribue A la musique entraA (R)nait une certaine mefiance de la part d'un certain nombre de religieux, qui craignaient son aptitude A avilir et depraver ceux qui l'ecoutaient.

This book traces the expansion of Islamisation within a modern and plural state such as Malaysia. It elaborates on how elements of theology, sacred space, resources, and their interactivity with secular instruments such as legislative, electoral, and new social technological platforms are all instrumentally employed to consolidate a divine bureaucracy. The book makes the point that religious social movements and political parties are only few of the important agents of Islamisation in society. The other is the modern and secular state structure itself. Weber's legal rational bureaucracy or Hegel's ethical bureaucracy predominantly characterises a modern feature of governmentality. In this instance an Islamic bureaucracy is advantageously situated not only within an ambit of modernity and therefore legality, but divinity and therefore sacrality as well. This positioning gives religious state agents more salience than any other form of bureaucracy leading to their unquestioned authority in the current contexts of societies with Muslim majority rule. One of the requisites of this condition is the homogenisation of Islam followed by ring-fencing of its constituents. The latter can involve contestations with women, other genders, 'secular' Muslims, non-Muslims as well as dissenting Muslims with their differing truthful 'Islams'.

In much of the Muslim world, Islamic political and economic movements appear to have a comparative advantage. Relative to similar secular groups, they are better able to mobilize supporters and sustain their cooperation long-term. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Turkey, a historically secular country that has experienced a sharp rise in Islamic-based political and economic activity. Drawing on rich data sources and econometric methods, Avital Livny challenges existing explanations - such as personal faith - for the success of these movements. Instead, Livny shows that the Islamic advantage is rooted in feelings of trust among individuals with a shared, religious group-identity. This group-based trust serves as an effective substitute for more generalized feelings of interpersonal trust, which are largely absent in many Muslim-plurality countries. The book presents a new argument for conceptualizing religion as both a personal belief system and collective identity.

This volume complements the selection of Wilferd Madelung's articles previously published by Variorum (Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam), the earlier volume dealing principally with dogmatic issues, the present one concentrating on the political and social aspects. The first articles here examine the origins of the belief in the coming of the Mahdi and apocalyptic prophecies connected with this, such as arose among the Yemenite emigrants in Syria and Egypt. The following studies relate to Shi'ite and Alid movements under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates and to the political ideology of the Buyids. The final group focuses on the Yemen, its social structures and its historiography, in particular Zaydi sources. A section of additional notes and a detailed index complete the volume. Ce volume vient s'ajouter en complement de la collection d'articles de Wilferd Madelung prealablement publiee par Variorum (Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam); le volume precedent traitant de questions de dogme et celui-ci se concentrant sur les aspects sociaux et politiques. Les premiers articles font l'examen des origines de la croyance en l'avenement du Mahdi et des prophecies apocalyptiques lui etant rattachees - telles celles qui ont vu le jour parmi les emigres yemenites en Syrie et en Egypte. Les etudes suivantes se rapportent aux mouvements chi'ite et alide sous les caliphats umayyade et abbaside, ainsi qu'A l'ideologie politique des Buyides. Un dernier groupe s'attache au Yemen, A ses structures sociales et son historiographie, en particulier aux sources Zaydi. Une section de notes supplementaires et index detaille viennent s'ajouter au recueil.

Surah Yusuf, a chapter of the Qur'an (Koran), was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad at a critical juncture of his life. This was the time when he had gone through ten to eleven years of ridicule and rejection in Makkah, a time when he lost his wife and partner, Khadija, a time when he lost his dear uncle Abu Talib. Allah revealed this precious surah to strengthen the Prophet Muhammad's heart. To remind him that he lives in the footsteps of the great prophets of the past and that Allah's help and support is there. This surah is full of meaningful messages of patience, reliance on Allah and how to overcome hardship and betrayal. It was also educational, teaching the Prophet Muhammad the answers to queries that were posed to him by the local Jews and Muslims. Finally this surah was a timely morale booster for the Prophet and his companions in a time of need. Yasir Qadhi has clearly divided the surah into related themes, as per the revelations, so that the reader can easily understand and grasp the great wealth of knowledge relayed through this surah to all.

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1058-1111) is one of the most important religious figures in Islamic history. He is particularly noted for his brilliant synthesis of mysticism and traditional Sunni Islam. Ghazzali's "The Alchemy of Happiness", written toward the end of his life, provides a succinct introduction to both the theory and practice of Sufism (Islamic mysticism). It thus offers many insights into traditional Muslim society. This translation is fully annotated for readers unfamiliar with Ghazzali and includes an introduction to his life and historical milieu.

Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazzali (1058-1111) is one of the most important religious figures in Islamic history. He is particularly noted for his brilliant synthesis of mysticism and traditional Sunni Islam. Ghazzali's "The Alchemy of Happiness", written toward the end of his life, provides a succinct introduction to both the theory and practice of Sufism (Islamic mysticism). It thus offers many insights into traditional Muslim society. This translation is fully annotated for readers unfamiliar with Ghazzali and includes an introduction to his life and historical milieu.

Hailed in The New York Times Book Review as "the doyen of Middle Eastern studies," Bernard Lewis has been for half a century one of the West's foremost scholars of Islamic history and culture, the author of over two dozen books, most notably The Arabs in History, The Emergence of ModernTurkey, The Political Language of Islam, and The Muslim Discovery of Europe. Eminent French historian Robert Mantran has written of Lewis's work: "How could one resist being attracted to the books of an author who opens for you the doors of an unknown or misunderstood universe, who leads you within to its innermost domains: religion, ways of thinking, conceptions of power, culture--an author who upsets notions too often fixed, fallacious, or partisan."
In Islam and the West, Bernard Lewis brings together in one volume eleven essays that indeed open doors to the innermost domains of Islam. Lewis ranges far and wide in these essays. He includes long pieces, such as his capsule history of the interaction--in war and peace, in commerce and culture--between Europe and its Islamic neighbors, and shorter ones, such as his deft study of the Arabic word watan and what its linguistic history reveals about the introduction of the idea of patriotism from the West. Lewis offers a revealing look at Edward Gibbon's portrait of Muhammad in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (unlike previous writers, Gibbon saw the rise of Islam not as something separate and isolated, nor as a regrettable aberration from the onward march of the church, but simply as a part of human history); he offers a devastating critique of Edward Said's controversial book, Orientalism; and he gives an account of the impediments to translating from classic Arabic to other languages (the old dictionaries, for one, are packed with scribal errors, misreadings, false analogies, and etymological deductions that pay little attention to the evolution of the language). And he concludes with an astute commentary on the Islamic world today, examining revivalism, fundamentalism, the role of the Shi'a, and the larger question of religious co-existence between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
A matchless guide to the background of Middle East conflicts today, Islam and the West presents the seasoned reflections of an eminent authority on one of the most intriguing and little understood regions in the world.

Winner of the 2016 Julian Minghi Distinguished Book Award of the Political Geography Specialty Group at the AAG Providing important insights into political geography, the politics of peace, and South Asian studies, this book explores everyday peace in northern India as it is experienced by the Hindu-Muslim community. * Challenges normative understandings of Hindu-Muslim relations as relentlessly violent and the notion of peace as a romantic endpoint occurring only after violence and political maneuverings * Examines the ways in which geographical concepts such as space, place, and scale can inform and problematize understandings of peace * Redefines the politics of peace, as well as concepts of citizenship, agency, secular politics, and democracy * Based on over 14 months of qualitative and archival research in the city of Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, India

The society and legal systems of Southern Arabia, both ancient and modern, form the subject of this second collection of articles by Professor Serjeant. His approach has been to make a detailed study of modern social structures and legal customs and to relate these to what we know of ancient society and law. The traditional tribal society of the region, he argues, has preserved in its customary law and practice a very great deal that derives directly from the pre-Islamic period, whereas the shari'ah, the law of Islam, though stemming from the same sources, has often diverged significantly from it. An understanding of the modern situation, therefore, is of immediate relevance to the interpretation of pre- and early-Islamic society. Among the particular topics covered are the interplay between tribal affinities and religious authority, marriage legislation and the "Frankish chancre" or (syphilis), and maritime customary law. From an ethnographic viewpoint, furthermore, these studies record peoples and lifestyles that have been increasingly overwhelmed by contemporary events. Les societes et les systemes juridiques de l'Arabie du Sud, moderne et ancienne, sont le theme de ce recueil d'articles par le professeur Serjeant. Il aborde le sujet avec une etude des structures sociales modernes, ainsi que du droit coutumier, puis les rattache A ce qui est connu de la societe et du droit anciens. La societe tribale traditionnelle de la region, affirme-t'il, a conserve un grand nombre d'us et coutumes trouvant des origines directes au cours de la periode pre-islamique, alors que le droit de l'Islam, le shari'ah, bien qu'issu des mAmes sources, s'en eloigne de faAon significative. Le fait de comprendre la situation moderne a donc un rapport immediat avec toute interpretation de la societe islamique A ses debuts. Parmi les themes specifiques que couvre l'auteur, se trouvent le droit marital et le "chancre" franc (syphilitique), le droit

Paul Gilroy's After Empire - in many ways a sequel to his classic study of race and nation, There Ain't No Black in the Union Jack - explores Britain's failure to come to terms with the loss of its empire and pre-eminent global standing. Drawing on texts from the writings of Fanon and Orwell to Ali G. and The Office, After Empire shows that what we make of the country's postcolonial opportunity will influence the future of Europe and the viability of race as a political category. Taking the political language of the post 9/11 world as a new point of departure he defends beleaguered multiculturalism against accusations of failure. He then takes the liberal discourse of human rights to task, finding it wanting in terms of both racism and imperialism. Gilroy examines how this imperial dissolution has resulted not only in hostility directed at blacks, immigrants and strangers, but also in the country's inability to value the ordinary, unruly multi-culturalism that has evolved organically and unnoticed in its urban centres. A must-read for students of cultural studies, and Britain in the post 9/11 era.

What Time is it There? is a history of worlds that encounter each other without ever meeting. The title comes from a film by Tsai Ming-liang which explores the desire to conquer the barriers of space and time by abolishing time differences and inventing substitutes for a coveted elsewhere. This preoccupation with other worlds and consciousness of the differences that separate them have become a persistent theme of our world today, shaped as it has been by the complex flows of people, images and ideas that we have come to associate with the term 'globalization'. But the dismantling of closed worlds that gradually opened cultures and peoples to one another is by no means new. In this remarkable book, Serge Gruzinski takes us back to the early modern period and examines two testimonies that require us to navigate between America and the Islamic world long before the images of 9/11 had entered our heads. One is a chronicle of the New World compiled in Istanbul in 1580, the other is a Repertory of the Times written in Mexico in 1606, which dwells at length on the Empire of the Turks. Why and how did the Turks come to know so much about America, and what made readers in Mexico ask questions about the Ottomans? Gruzinski conducts a dialogue between these two texts that emphasizes the singularities of the two visions, that of Islam and that of America, each already keeping a watchful eye on the other and yet irreducibly different, with this question always in the background: what did it mean to 'think the world' at the dawn of modern times?

Following the ideological disappointment of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, an Islamic revival arose in Egypt. Yet, far from a mechanical reaction to the decline of secular nationalism, this religious shift was the product of impassioned competition among Muslim Brothers, Salafis and state institutions and their varied efforts to mobilize Egyptians to their respective projects. By pulling together the linked stories of these diverse claimants to religious authority and tracing the social and intellectual history of everyday practices of piety, Aaron Rock-Singer shows how Islamic activists and institutions across the political spectrum reshaped daily practices in an effort to persuade followers to adopt novel models of religiosity. In so doing, he reveals how Egypt's Islamic revival emerged, who it involved, and why it continues to shape Egypt today.

This book offers empirical insight into the way Muslims reacted online towards various controversial issues related to Islam. The book examines four cases studies: The Muhammed's cartoons, the burning of the Quran controversies, Fitna and the Innocence of Muslims' films. The issues of online religion, social movements and extremism are discussed, as many of the cases in question created both uproar and unity among many YouTubers. These case studies - in some instances - led to the expression of extremist views by some users, and the volume argues that they helped contribute to the growth of extremism due to the utilization of these events by some terrorist groups in order to recruit new members. In the concluding chapter, social network and sentiment analyses are presented in order to investigate all the collected comments and videos, while a critical discussion of freedom of expression and hate speech is offered, with special regards to the growing online influence of far right groups and their role in on-going YouTube debates.

This monograph explores the ways in which canonical Francophone Algerian authors, writing in the late-colonial period (1945-1962), namely Kateb Yacine, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Feraoun, Mouloud Mammeri and Assia Djebar, approached the representation of Algerian women through literature. The book initially argues that a masculine domination of public fields of representation in Algeria contributed to a postcolonial marginalization of women as public agents. However, it crucially also argues that the canonical writers of the period, who were mostly male, both textually acknowledged their inability to articulate the experiences and subjectivity of the feminine Other and deployed a remarkable variety of formal and conceptual innovations in producing evocations of Algerian femininity that subvert the structural imbalance of masculine symbolic hegemony. Though it does not shy from investigating those aspects of its corpus that produce ideologically conditioned masculinist representations, the book chiefly seeks to articulate a shared reluctance concerning representativity, a pessimism regarding the revolution's capacity to deliver change for women, and an omnipresent subversion of masculine subjectivity in its canonical texts.