This is the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its own members. Drawing on years of participant observation, extensive interviews, previously inaccessible organizational documents, and dozens of memoirs and writings, the book provides an intimate portrayal of the recruitment and socialization of Brothers, the evolution of their intricate social networks, and the construction of the peculiar ideology that shapes their everyday practices. Kandil shows why attempts to compare the Brotherhood to secular social movements or typical forms of religious activism obscure its unique nature, and he seeks instead to unlock the organization's unique logic. Building on his original research, Kandil reinterprets the Brotherhood's slow rise and rapid downfall from power in Egypt, and compares it to the Islamist subsidiaries it created and the varieties it inspired around the world.This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the politics of the Middle East and to anyone who wants to understand the dramatic events unfolding in Egypt and elsewhere in the wake of the Arab uprisings.

In the past decade Muslims in Europe have been the subject of heated debates on the place and role of religion in the public space. Research into the issues involved has often used visible and formalised expressions of Muslim religiosity as its empirical point of departure. This book instead examines the microlevel workings of Muslim minority religiosity to offer a new perspective on these debates.

Contributors to this volume examine the forms of Muslim religiosity which are not dependent on the official or semi-official settings of organised religion. These ethnographic studies investigate a range of examples of non-organised Islam, ranging from salafi-jihadism, to converts to Islam, to everyday spiritualities of Muslim in Europe. By exploring these neglected forms of Muslim religiosity, this book is able to build up a more nuanced picture of the role of Muslims in Europe. It will be of interest to academics, researchers and graduate students of Religion, Ethnic Studies, Migration Studies, Sociology and Political Science.

This book was previously published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

After barely half a century of experience, Islamic banking has become established as a new niche industry across the world, offering new and sophisticated financial products designed to be compliant with Islamic legal principles and common law. This comprehensive book explores the theory, principles and practices underpinning this rapidly expanding sector of banking. Expert contributors - including eminent scholars and senior practitioners in the field - examine the roots of the principles of ethical Islamic financial transactions, which have evolved over several millennia, on issues including usury, interest rates, and financial contracting for funding enterprises, mortgages, leasing and other transactions. Regulatory and governance issues are discussed, and the practice and operation of Islamic financial institutions are explained via three distinct case studies. Importantly, the final chapter looks at what steps are being taken to provide professional accreditation to Islamic banking professional personnel, and prescribes requirements for training in this growing industry. This rich and wide-ranging guide to the foundations and fundamental principles of this new form of ethics-based financial practice will prove a fascinating and illuminating read for regulators, practitioners, and scholars in the fields of economics, finance, money and banking. Contributors: I. Abraham, S.O. Alhabshi, S.H. Aljunid, M. Ariff, M.K. Badar, I. Bhatti, M. Bhatti, E. Girard, K. Hassan, T. Hassan, M. Iqbal, M.K. Lewis, C. Mews, A. Saeed, S.H. Razak, M. Shamsher, M.T. Skully, A. Walsh, M. Zaman

Literary, cinematic and media representations of the disputed category of the South Asian Muslim have undergone substantial change in the last few decades and particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. Here we find the first book-length critical analysis of these representations of Muslims from South Asia and its diaspora in literature, the media, culture and cinema.

Contributors contextualize these depictions against the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam, and also against cultural responses to earlier crises on the subcontinent such as Partition (1947), the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhya riots, the 2002 Gujarat genocide and the Kashmir conflict. Offering a comparative approach, the book explores connections between artists generic experimentalism and their interpretations of life as Muslims in South Asia and its diaspora, exploring literary and popular fiction, memoir, poetry, news media, and film. The collection highlights the diversity of representations of Muslims and the range of approaches to questions of Muslim religious and cultural identity, as well as secular discourse. Essays by leading scholars in the field highlight the significant role that literature, film, and other cultural products such as music can play in opening up space for complex reflections on Muslim identities and cultures, and how such imaginative cultural forms can enable us to rethink secularism and religion.

Surveying a broad range of up-to-date writing and cultural production, this concise and pioneering critical analysis of representations of South Asian Muslims will be of interest to students and academics of a variety of subjects including Asian Studies, Literary Studies, Media Studies, Women s Studies, Contemporary Politics, Migration History, Film studies, and Cultural Studies.

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The public visibility of Islam is becoming increasingly controversial throughout European countries. With case studies drawn from France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK, this book examines a range of public issues, including mosque construction, ritual slaughter, Sharia councils and burqa bans, addressing the question of 'Islamic difference' in public life outside the confines of established normative discourses that privilege freedom of religion, minority rights or multiculturalism. Acknowledging the creative role of dissent, it explores the manner in which public controversies unsettle the religious-secular divide and reshape European norms in the domains of aesthetics, individual freedom, animal rights and law. Developing an innovative conceptual framework and elaborating the notion of controversy as a methodological tool, Islam and Public Controversy in Europe draws our attention to the processes of interaction, confrontation and mutual transformation, thereby opening up a new horizon for rethinking difference and pluralism in Europe. As such, it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in religion, integration, cultural difference and the public sphere.

This book explores how stereotypes of "oppressed Muslim women" feed into the self-representations of women with a Muslim background. The focus is on women active in, and speaking on behalf of, a wide variety of minority self-organisations in the Netherlands and Norway between 1975 and 2010. The author reveals how these women have internalised and appropriated particular stereotypes, and also developed counter-stereotypes about majority Dutch or Norwegian women. She demonstrates, above all, how they have tried time and again to change popular perceptions by providing alternative images of themselves and of Islam, paying particular attention to their attempts to gain access to media debates. Her central argument is that their efforts to undermine stereotypes can be understood as an assertion of belonging in Dutch and Norwegian society and, in the case of women committed to Islam, as a demand for their religion to be accepted. This innovative work provides a "history from below" that makes a valuable contribution to scholarly debates about citizenship as a practice of inclusion and exclusion. Providing new insights into the dynamics between stereotyping and self-representation, it will appeal to scholars of gender, religion, media, and cultural diversity.

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.

Anne Bang focuses on the ways in which a particular Islamic brotherhood, or 'tariqa', the tariqa Alawiyya, spread, maintained and propagated their particular brand of the Islamic faith. Originating in the South-Yemeni region of Hadramawt, the Alawi tariqa mainly spread along the coast of the Indian Ocean. The Alawis are here portrayed as one of many cultural mediators in the multi-ethnic, multi-religious Indian Ocean world in the era of European colonialism.

A comprehensive history of one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups Boko Haram is one of the world's deadliest jihadist groups. It has killed more than twenty thousand people and displaced more than two million in a campaign of terror that began in Nigeria but has since spread to Chad, Niger, and Cameroon as well. This is the first book to tell the full story of this West African affiliate of the Islamic State, from its beginnings in the early 2000s to its most infamous violence, including the 2014 kidnapping of 276 Nigerian schoolgirls. Drawing on sources in Arabic and Hausa, rare documents, propaganda videos, press reports, and interviews with experts in Nigeria, Cameroon, and Niger, Alexander Thurston sheds new light on Boko Haram's development. He shows that the group, far from being a simple or static terrorist organization, has evolved in its worldview and ideology in reaction to events. Chief among these has been Boko Haram's escalating war with the Nigerian state and civilian vigilantes. The book closely examines both the behavior and beliefs that are the keys to understanding Boko Haram. Putting the group's violence in the context of the complex religious and political environment of Nigeria and the Lake Chad region, the book examines how Boko Haram relates to states, politicians, Salafis, Sufis, Muslim civilians, and Christians. It also probes Boko Haram's international connections, including its loose former ties to al-Qaida and its 2015 pledge of allegiance to ISIS. An in-depth account of a group that is menacing Africa's most populous and richest country, the book also illuminates the dynamics of civil war in Africa and jihadist movements in other parts of the world.

Because of recent changes in the explicitly declared goals of Arabs in the Palestinian conflict, this book is of singular importance, and no scholar or expert on Middle East affairs can afford to ignore it.

This work, by a scholar described as "the doyen of Israeli Arabists," is the result of vast research into the attitude of the Arabs toward Israel, manifested both in their declared, explicit aims and in ideological exegeses on the roots of the Palestinian problem. Approximately one hundred twenty books written by Arabs and the Arab press and radio are herein analyzed. Harkabi's searching examination is objective. His detection of consistent patterns in what at first seems amorphous is convincing. If there is such a thing as a science of political psychology, Harkabi is its master.

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 thought-provoking collection offers a multi-disciplinary approach on the subject of humour, Muslims, and Islam. Beginning with theoretical perspectives and scriptural guidance on permissible and restricted humour, the volume presents a variety of case studies about Muslim comedic practices in various cultural, political, and religious contexts. This unprecedented scholarship sheds new light on common misconceptions about humour and laughter in Islam and deftly tackles sensitive themes from blasphemy to freedom of speech. Chapter 9 is available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

The editors of this new collection write: Western economists define economics as the branch of knowledge or science which investigates how scarce resources are best allocated into competing claims upon them. These claims are socially and culturally determined. Islamic economics and its principles have also developed from a specific set of social and cultural circumstances, but the key to the whole subject is the guidance given in the Prophetic scriptures. The tenets laid down in the Qur'an provided the basis for a comprehensive, and continuous, system of social and cultural, and hence also economic, behaviour, for which there is no Western equivalent. This collection analyses the rationale of Islamic values and Islamic laws in economic activities. It examines how Islam has contributed several alternative values to business and economic policies in Muslim countries. Consideration is also given to how Islam can be considered as a universal system that can be applied to various economic policies, business strategies and government regulations.

This book studies the relationship between Islam, family processes, and gender inequality among Uyghur Muslims in UErumchi, China. Empirically, it shows in quantitative terms the extent of gender inequalities among Uyghur Muslims in UErumchi and tests whether the gender inequalities are a difference in kind or in degree. It examines five aspects of gender inequality: employment, income, household task accomplishment, home management, and spousal power. Theoretically, it investigates how Islamic affiliation and family life affect Uyghur women's status. Zang's research involved rare and privileged access to a setting which is difficult for foreign scholars to study due to political restrictions. The data are drawn from fieldwork in UErumchi between 2005 and 2008, which include a survey of 577 families, field observations, and 200 in-depth interviews with local Uyghurs. The book combines qualitative and quantitative data and methods to study gendered behavior and outcomes. The author's study reinterprets family power and offers a more nuanced analysis of gender and domestic power in China and makes a pioneering effort to study spousal power, gender inequality in labor market outcomes, and gender inequality in household chores among members of ethnic minorities in China. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnic studies, Chinese studies, Asian anthropology and cultural sociology.

While issues surrounding Muslim women are common in the international media, the voices of Muslim women themselves are largely absent from media coverage and despite the rapidly increasing presence of Muslim women in online groups and discussions, it is still a relatively unexplored topic.This book examines Muslim women in transnational online groups, and their views on education, culture, marriage, sexuality, work, dress-code, race, class and sisterhood. Looking at both egalitarian and traditionalist Muslim women's views, the author considers their interpretations of Islam and identifies a new category of holists who focus on developing the Islamic sisterhood. Drawing on detailed analysis of online transcripts, she highlights women's rhetorical techniques and the thorough knowledge of Islamic sources which they use to justify their points in online discussions. She details how in the online context, as opposed to offline interactions, Muslim women are much more willing to cross boundaries between traditionalist and egalitarian interpretations of Islam and women's Islamic rights and responsibilities and to develop collaborative interpretations with supporters of different views. Shedding light on a candid and forthright global community, this book is an important contribution to the debate on women in Islam, and as such will be of interest to scholars and students of Islamic studies, gender studies, media studies and the Middle East.

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.

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.

Mustafa El-Amin, author of bestseller Al-Islam, Christianity, and Freemasonry, now examines what it is about Freemasonry that made most of the founding fathers of America feel the need to embrace it; why is it that so many people of influence (members of Congress, the Supreme Court, judges, politicians)--past and present--have joined and studied the teachings of Freemasonry.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.