The Yearbook of Muslims in Europe provides an up-to-date account of the situation of Muslims in Europe. Covering 45 countries of Europe in its broader sense, the Yearbook presents a country-by-country summary of essential data with basic statistics and evaluations of their reliability, surveys of legal status and arrangements, organisations, etc. Data have been brought up to date from the previous volume. The Yearbook is an annual reference work for country surveys on Muslims in Europe. It is an important source of reference for government and NGO officials, journalists, and policy makers as well as scholars.

This collection of studies by Edward Kennedy looks first at questions of spherical astronomy, celestial mapping and planetary models, and then deals with astrological calculations. Throughout the author emphasises the importance of advances in mathematics for understanding the development of medieval Arabic sciences. This collection of studies based on previously unexploited manuscript sources in Arabic and Persian. They were written by authors from the 9th through the 15th centuries, whose locations reached from south China in the east through Central Asia, the Middle and Near East, and North Africa, to Spain in the west. The topics are predominately astronomical rather than astrological. The former include eclipse predictions, problems in spherical astronomy, non-ptolemaic planetary theory, and the achievements of Ulugh Beg and his observatory. Astrological subjects treated are the method of calculating the ascendant, and how to determine astrological houses and lots. An astrological history of the career of Genghis Khan is also described.

This text deals with a number of aspects of the history of pre-Islamic Arabian society and the emergence of Islam, as reflected in Hadith, Adab, historical, genealogical and exegetical literature. Among the themes discussed are the ethnic composition of the population of Mecca, the evolving relationship between the Nascent state in Medina and Muslim religious ideas, as well as some aspects of early Muslim expansion. Other articles deal with Jahili tribal groups and their contribution to the emerging Islam, and an article is devoted to Adam as a great herald and predecessor of Muhammed.

How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today's personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency.

By all measures, the late twentieth century was a time of dramatic decline for the Islamic world, the Ummah, particularly its Arab heartland. Sober Muslim voices regularly describe their current state as the worst in the 1,400-year history of Islam. Yet, precisely at this time of unprecedented material vulnerability, Islam has emerged as a civilizational force strong enough to challenge the imposition of Western, particularly American, homogenizing power on Muslim peoples. This is the central paradox of Islam today: at a time of such unprecedented weakness in one sense, how has the Islamic Awakening, a broad and diverse movement of contemporary Islamic renewal, emerged as such a resilient and powerful transnational force and what implications does it have for the West? In One Islam, Many Muslim Worlds Raymond W. Baker addresses this question. Two things are clear, Baker argues: Islam's unexpected strength in recent decades does not originate from official political, economic, or religious institutions, nor can it be explained by focusing exclusively on the often-criminal assertions of violent, marginal groups. While extremists monopolize the international press and the scholarly journals, those who live and work in the Islamic world know that the vast majority of Muslims reject their reckless calls to violence and look elsewhere for guidance. Baker shows that extremists draw their energy and support not from contributions to the reinterpretation and revival of Islamic beliefs and practices, but from the hatreds engendered by misguided Western policies in Islamic lands. His persuasive analysis of the Islamic world identifies centrists as the revitalizing force of Islam, saying that they are responsible for constructing a modern, cohesive Islamic identity that is a force to be reckoned with.

Since the beginnings of this century western scholars have become familiar with Ignaz Goldziher's hypothesis concerning canonical hadith literature - that religious literary genre of Islam, second in holiness to the Qur'an, which allegedly comprises faithful accounts of what the Prophet of Islam said and did. Goldziher rejected this allegation and maintained that the Hadith rather reflects in the first instance the social, legal, moral and theological debates among the Muslims of the first two and a half centuries after the death of the Prophet. But Goldziher never systematically searched for the real originators of this literature. In this collection of articles, G. H. A. Juynboll deals with the uses Muslims have made of hadith through the ages but studies on chronology, provenance, as well as authorship of the prophetic traditions form the backbone of this anthology. For this purpose the author has developed new methods of analysing the chains of transmitters initially meant to authenticate the individual sayings. His overall position can be summed up as midway between the official Islamic point of view and the stance adopted by his Western predecessors

This collection of articles by Professor Bosworth contains a series of studies on the Arab-Persian heartland of the medieval Islamic world, from the Levant to Afghanistan and the borderlands with India. The emphasis is on historical, religious, cultural and literary aspects of the region's history, from pre-Islamic times to the medieval period. A number of the studies focus on the Arab caliphate and the successor dynasties that arose from it in the Iranian world, others focus on Muslim perceptions of other faiths in the Middle East and on the relations of the ruling Muslim institution with its non-Muslim minorities. One particular group is also concerned with the prolonged contacts and interaction between Islam and the Byzantine Empire.

This book explores how to locate the sources which influenced the political, social, and ideological stance of a famous Turkestani Jadid thinker, writer, journalist and scholar, 'Abdurra'uf Fitrat (1886-1938), thus also putting in perspective some overall intellectual trends in Turkestan, especially in Bukhara in the early 1910s. Based on Fitrat's early publications the book discusses what intellectual milieu it was that shaped his worldview in the early 1910s, a worldview that could be designated as a first attempt at "freedom and sovereignty through Islam". A thorough review of these publications also brings greater clarity to the issue of Fitrat's ethnical identity, which sheds light on how he related to the worldwide community of Muslims and how he positioned himself towards political unity of the Muslim World. Furthermore, by scrutinizing Fitrat's intellectual legacy of 1910-1915, this book highlights some of the origins of Jadidism in Turkestan and places Turkestani Jadidism in the context of worldwide Muslim reformism at the turn of the 20th century.

This volume contains papers on both medieval and modern aspects of Muslim-Jewish relations. For the medieval period, there is a diverse treatment of literary and philosophical issues. The mutual influence of Islamic and Jewish texts is explored, as well as the perceptions Muslim and Jewish writers had about each other. The subject matter of these papers is diverse - Isral'iliyat literature, Arabic wine-poetry, Hebrew allegorical poetry and Jewish exegetical commentary. The interdependence of Muslim-Jewish intellectual life is emphasized here. The papers on the modern period all deal with Muslim-Jewish relations in the wake of the sweeping historical, institutional and political changes which have characterized the modern Middle East. There are papers dealing with new definitions of Judaism and Zionism for example that can only be understood against the background of pre-modern ideas but which are specific to the pressures and needs of contemporary life. From a different perspective, there is also a study of language learning as an indication of new and promising social relations.

Veiling in Fashion enters the worlds of women who wear the hijab, both as an aspect of their religious observance and community belonging, and as a fashion statement, drawing upon global Islamic fashion history. The book uses rich ethnographic investigation of everyday veiling practices among Muslim women in the city of Helsinki as a lens through which to reflect on and advance understanding of matters concerning Muslim dress in international Muslim minority contexts. The book provides an innovative approach to studying veiling by connecting varied realms of practice, demonstrating how domains as apparently separate as fashion, materiality, city spaces, private life, religious beliefs, and cosmopolitan social conditions are all tightly bound up together in ways that only a sensitive multi-disciplinary approach can reveal. It will appeal to scholars and students in fashion, gender, religion, material cultures, and the construction of space.

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.

"There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion," Deleuze and Guattari write in their final collaboration, What Is Philosophy? Their claim that Christianity "secretes" atheism "more than any other religion," however, reflects the limits of their archive. Theological projects seeking to engage Deleuze remain embedded within Christian theologies and intellectual histories; whether they embrace, resist, or negotiate with Deleuze's atheism, the atheism in question remains one extracted from Christian theology, a Christian atheism. In Sufi Deleuze, Michael Muhammad Knight offers an intervention, engaging Deleuzian questions and themes from within Islamic tradition. Even if Deleuze did not think of himself as a theologian, Knight argues, to place Deleuze in conversation with Islam is a project of comparative theology and faces the challenge of any comparative theology: It seemingly demands that complex, internally diverse traditions can speak as coherent, monolithic wholes. To start from such a place would not only defy Islam's historical multiplicity but also betray Deleuze's model of the assemblage, which requires attention to not only the organizing and stabilizing tendencies within a structure but also the points at which a structure resists organization, its internal heterogeneity, and unpredictable "lines of flight." A Deleuzian approach to Islamic theology would first have to affirm that there is no such thing as a universal "Islamic theology" that can speak for all Muslims in all historical settings, but rather a multiplicity of power struggles between major and minor forces that contest each other over authenticity, authority, and the making of "orthodoxy." The discussions in Sufi Deleuze thus highlight Islam's extraordinary range of possibilities, not only making use of canonically privileged materials such as the Qur'an and major hadith collections, but also exploring a variety of marginalized resources found throughout Islam that challenge the notion of a singular "mainstream" interpretive tradition. To say it in Deleuze's vocabulary, Islam is a rhizome.

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.

This first full-length study of the Arabic reception of Plato's Timaeus considers the role of Galen of Pergamum (129-c. 216 CE) in shaping medieval perceptions of the text as transgressing disciplinary norms. It argues that Galen appealed to the entangled cosmological scheme of the dialogue, where different relations connect the body, soul, and cosmos, to expand the boundaries of medicine in his pursuit for epistemic authority - the right to define and explain natural reality. Aileen Das situates Galen's work on disciplinary boundaries in the context of medicine's ancient rivalry with philosophy, whose professionals were long seen as superior knowers of the cosmos vis-a-vis doctors. Her case studies show how Galen and four of the most important Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers in the Arabic Middle Ages creatively interpreted key doctrines from the Timaeus to reimagine medicine and philosophy as well as their own intellectual identities.

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.

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.

In 874 CE, the eleventh Imam died, and the Imami community splintered. The institutions of the Imamate were maintained by the dead Imam's agents, who asserted they were in contact with a hidden twelfth Imam. This was the beginning of 'Twelver' Shi'ism. Edmund Hayes provides an innovative approach to exploring early Shi'ism, moving beyond doctrinal history to provide an analysis of the socio-political processes leading to the canonisation of the Occultation of the twelfth Imam. Hayes shows how these agents cemented their authority by reproducing the physical signs of the Imamate, including protocols of succession, letters and the alm taxes. Four of these agents were ultimately canonised as "envoys" but traces of earlier conceptions of authority remain embedded in the earliest reports. Hayes dissects the complex and contradictory Occultation narratives to show how, amidst the claims of numerous actors, the institutional positioning of the envoys allowed them to assert a quasi-Imamic authority in the absence of an Imam.

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

In recent years, Islam - whether via the derivatives of 'Political Islam' or 'Islamism' - has come to be seen as an 'activist' force in social and political spheres worldwide. What such representations have neglected is the strong countervailing tradition of political quietism. Political quietism in Islam holds that it is not for Muslims to question or oppose their leaders. Rather, the faithful should concentrate on their piety, prayer, religious rituals and personal quest for virtue. This book is the first to analyze the history and meaning of political quietism in Islamic societies. It takes an innovative cross-sectarian approach, investigating the phenomenon and practice across both Sunni and Shi'i communities. Contributors deconstruct and introduce the various forms of political quietisms from the time of the prophetic revelations through to the contemporary era. Chapters cover issues ranging from the politics of public piety among the women preachers in Saudi Arabia, through to the legal discourses in the Caucasus, the different Shi'i communities in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Pakistan, and the Gulen movement in Azerbaijan. The authors describe a wide range of political quietisms and assess the continuing significance of the tradition, both to the study of Islam and to the modern world today.

This book explores the tensions between the religious and legal principles of Islamic finance and Islamic banking in practice. It does not limit itself to a legal discussion and presents a truly interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue between lawyers, theologians, and economists with roots in academia and practice. There is considerable divergence in their evaluation of the status quo and future of Islamic finance.Contributions cover aspects of Islamic finance in theory and practice. It provides insights into the interplay of religion, ethics and finance covering both the Islamic and Christian traditions that sets the scene for Islamic finance in practice: economic technicalities of Islamic banking services, its regulatory aspects, and the complex legal arrangements of Islamic finance in non-Muslim-majority countries. Islamic Finance is a truly international collaboration of outstanding scholars and practitioners in their field that reveals the complexities involved in applying religious principles and legal theory to the daily practice of business and finance.

"The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims" traces how governments across Western Europe have responded to the growing presence of Muslim immigrants in their countries over the past fifty years. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews with government officials and religious leaders in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Morocco, and Turkey, Jonathan Laurence challenges the widespread notion that Europe's Muslim minorities represent a threat to liberal democracy. He documents how European governments in the 1970s and 1980s excluded Islam from domestic institutions, instead inviting foreign powers like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Turkey to oversee the practice of Islam among immigrants in European host societies. But since the 1990s, amid rising integration problems and fears about terrorism, governments have aggressively stepped up efforts to reach out to their Muslim communities and incorporate them into the institutional, political, and cultural fabrics of European democracy.

"The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims" places these efforts--particularly the government-led creation of Islamic councils--within a broader theoretical context and gleans insights from government interactions with groups such as trade unions and Jewish communities at previous critical junctures in European state-building. By examining how state-mosque relations in Europe are linked to the ongoing struggle for religious and political authority in the Muslim-majority world, Laurence sheds light on the geopolitical implications of a religious minority's transition from outsiders to citizens. This book offers a much-needed reassessment that foresees the continuing integration of Muslims into European civil society and politics in the coming decades.

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.

Interrogating the development and conceptual framework of economic thought in the Islamic tradition pertaining to ethical, philosophical, and theological ideas, this book provides a critique of modern Islamic economics as a hybrid economic system. From the outset, Sami Al-Daghistani is concerned with the polyvalent methodology of studying the phenomenon of Islamic economic thought as a human science in that it nurtures a complex plentitude of meanings and interpretations associated with the moral self. By studying legal scholars, theologians, and Sufis in the classical period, Al-Daghistani looks at economic thought in the context of Shari'a's moral law. Alongside critiquing modern developments of Islamic economics, he puts forward an idea for a plural epistemology of Islam's moral economy, which advocates for a multifaceted hermeneutical reading of the subject in light of a moral law, embedded in a particular cosmology of human relationality, metaphysical intelligibility, and economic subjectivity.