This book, based on extensive, original research, details the changing lives of youth living in slum communities (bustees) in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta). Using young people's own photos, art and narratives, the book explores how Muslim girls and young women are contributing to, and impacted by, changing youth culture in India. We are invited into the risky world of mixed-sex dance taking place in clandestine spaces in the slums. We join young people on their journeys to find premarital romance and witness their strategic and savvy risk taking when participating in transgressive aspects of consumer culture. The book reveals how social changes in India, including greater education and employment opportunities, as well as powerful middle class Muslim reform discourses, are impacting youth the very local level. More than just fantasy we see that Bollywood is an important role model which young people consult. By carefully negotiating risks and performing multiple identities inspired by modernity, globalization and, most of all, Bollywood culture, young people actively participate in a changing India and disrupt dominant discourses about slum youth as poor victims who are excluded from social change.

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Through crusades and expulsions, Muslim communities survived for over 500 years, thriving in medieval Europe. This comprehensive study explores how the presence of Islamic minorities transformed Europe in everything from architecture to cooking, literature to science, and served as a stimulus for Christian society to define itself. Combining a series of regional studies, Catlos compares the varied experiences of Muslims across Iberia, southern Italy, the Crusader Kingdoms and Hungary to examine those ideologies that informed their experiences, their place in society and their sense of themselves as Muslims. This is a pioneering new narrative of the history of medieval and early modern Europe from the perspective of Islamic minorities; one which is not, as we might first assume, driven by ideology, isolation and decline, but instead one in which successful communities persisted because they remained actively integrated within the larger Christian and Jewish societies in which they lived.

The Canonization of Islamic Law tells the story of the birth of classical Islamic law in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. It shows how an oral normative tradition embedded in communal practice was transformed into a systematic legal science defined by hermeneutic analysis of a clearly demarcated scriptural canon. This transformation was inaugurated by the innovative legal theory of Muhammad b. Idris al-Shafi'i (d. 820 CE), and it took place against the background of a crisis of identity and religious authority in ninth-century Egypt. By tracing the formulation, reception, interpretation and spread of al-Shafi'i's ideas, the author demonstrates how the canonization of scripture that lay at the heart of al-Shafi'i's theory formed the basis for the emergence of legal hermeneutics, the formation of the Sunni schools of law, and the creation of a shared methodological basis in Muslim thought.

This thoroughly updated and revised second edition analyses the ideas behind Islamic finance, the forms Islamic finance has taken in practice and the tension between the two that may occasionally arise. Along with an expanded section on the history of the ban on interest, this second edition contains a much more extensive discussion of investment and savings accounts, sukuk and tawarruq.Hans Visser aims to answer key topics on Islamic finance, ranging from the principles behind the phenomenon to the interaction of the market place with religious restrictions. How can governments finance their deficits and central banks conduct monetary policy without the interest-rate instrument? What price do the clients of the Islamic financial system pay for the increase in complexity and loss in flexibility compared with conventional finance? How do banking supervisors take account of the associated risks? In answering these questions, Visser's systematic treatment of the belief system and a discussion on the acceptability of disputed instruments of Islamic finance distinguish the book from others in its field. Islamic Finance is essential reading for students of economics, finance and Islamic studies. Moreover, a detailed examination of both financial products and fiscal and monetary policies ensures that it will also appeal to banking staff, financial journalists and politicians alike. Contents: Preface Introduction 1. Why Islamic Finance? 2. Sources of Islamic Law 3. The Islamic Economy 4. Forms of Islamic Finance 5. Islamic Banks 6. Special Sectors 7. Public Finance and the Monetary Authorities 8. Islamic Finance: A Tentative Verdict Appendices A. The Quran on Riba B. The Quran on Maysir C. The Bible on Interest References Index

Examining the process of abolition on the island of Pemba off the East African coast in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book demonstrates the links between emancipation and the redefinition of honour among all classes of people on the island. By examining the social vulnerability of ex-slaves and the former slave-owning elite caused by the abolition order of 1897, this study argues that moments of resistance on Pemba reflected an effort to mitigate vulnerability rather than resist the hegemonic power of elites or the colonial state. As the meaning of the Swahili word heshima shifted from honour to respectability, individuals' reputations came under scrutiny and the Islamic kadhi and colonial courts became an integral location for interrogating reputations in the community. This study illustrates the ways in which former slaves used piety, reputation, gossip, education, kinship and witchcraft to negotiate the gap between emancipation and local notions of belonging.

For much of the twentieth century, the intellectual life of the Ottoman and Arabic-Islamic world in the seventeenth century was ignored or mischaracterized by historians. Ottomanists typically saw the seventeenth century as marking the end of Ottoman cultural florescence, while modern Arab nationalist historians tended to see it as yet another century of intellectual darkness under Ottoman rule. This book is the first sustained effort at investigating some of the intellectual currents among Ottoman and North African scholars of the early modern period. Examining the intellectual production of the ranks of learned ulema (scholars) through close readings of various treatises, commentaries, and marginalia, Khaled El-Rouayheb argues for a more textured - and text-centered - understanding of the vibrant exchange of ideas and transmission of knowledge across a vast expanse of Ottoman-controlled territory.

In recent years, the Islamization of Turkish politics and public life has been the subject of much debate in Turkey and the West. This book makes an important contribution to those debates by focusing on a group of religious schools, known as Imam-Hatip schools, founded a year after the Turkish Republic, in 1924. At the outset, the main purpose of Imam-Hatip schools was to train religious functionaries. However, in the ensuing years, the curriculum, function and social status of the schools have changed dramatically. Through ethnographic and textual analysis, the book explores how Imam-Hatip school education shapes the political socialization of the schools' students, those students' attitudes and behaviours and the political and civic activities of their graduates. By mapping the schools' connections to Islamist politicians and civic leaders, the book sheds light on the significant, yet often overlooked, role that the schools and their communities play in Turkey's Islamization at the high political and grassroots levels.

Asma Sayeed's book explores the history of women as religious scholars from the first decades of Islam through the early Ottoman period. Focusing on women's engagement with hadith, this book analyzes dramatic chronological patterns in women's hadith participation in terms of developments in Muslim social, intellectual and legal history. It challenges two opposing views: that Muslim women have been historically marginalized in religious education, and alternately that they have been consistently empowered thanks to early role models such as 'A'isha bint Abi Bakr, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad. This book is a must-read for those interested in the history of Muslim women as well as in debates about their rights in the modern world. The intersections of this history with topics in Muslim education, the development of Sunni orthodoxies, Islamic law and hadith studies make this work an important contribution to Muslim social and intellectual history of the early and classical eras.

How do converts to a religion come to feel an attachment to it? The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran answers this important question for Iran by focusing on the role of memory and its revision and erasure in the ninth to eleventh centuries. During this period, the descendants of the Persian imperial, religious and historiographical traditions not only wrote themselves into starkly different early Arabic and Islamic accounts of the past but also systematically suppressed much knowledge about pre-Islamic history. The result was both a new 'Persian' ethnic identity and the pairing of Islam with other loyalties and affiliations, including family, locale and sect. This pioneering study examines revisions to memory in a wide range of cases, from Iran's imperial and administrative heritage to the Prophet Muhammad's stalwart Persian companion, Salman al-Farisi, and to memory of Iranian scholars, soldiers and rulers in the mid-seventh century.

The Islamic financial industry is expanding rapidly into non-Muslim countries including Western Europe. The author analyses what the prospects of success for an Islamic mode of banking and finance in Germany are at the retail level. The quantitative study revealed that two-thirds of respondents were willing to switch to Islamic banking, and that Giro and savings bank accounts and mortgage financing products and services were most desired by the respondents. The qualitative study showed that the success of Islamic Banking and Finance in the United Kingdom is mainly due to the proactive role taken by regulators and London's role as an international financial center. Germany's regulatory model is different than that of the United Kingdom in that there are no market entry barriers, and the success of Islamic banking in Germany will largely depend on the operating model of Islamic financial institutions.

Sherman Jackson offers a trenchant examination of the career of Islam among the blacks of America. Jackson notes that no one has offered a convincing explanation of why Islam spread among Blackamericans (a coinage he explains and defends) but not among white Americans or Hispanics. The assumption has been that there is an African connection. In fact, Jackson shows, none of the distinctive features of African Islam appear in the proto-Islamic, black nationalist movements of the early 20th century. Instead, he argues, Islam owes its momentum to the distinctively American phenomenon of "Black Religion," a God-centered holy protest against anti-black racism.
Islam in Black America begins as part of a communal search for tools with which to combat racism and redefine American blackness. The 1965 repeal of the National Origins Quota System led to a massive influx of foreign Muslims, who soon greatly outnumbered the blacks whom they found here practicing an indigenous form of Islam. Immigrant Muslims would come to exercise a virtual monopoly over the definition of a properly constituted Islamic life in America. For these Muslims, the nemesis was not white supremacy, but "the West." In their eyes, the West was not a racial, but a religious and civilizational threat. American blacks soon learned that opposition to the West and opposition to white supremacy were not synonymous. Indeed, says Jackson, one cannot be anti-Western without also being on some level anti-Blackamerican. Like the Black Christians of an earlier era struggling to find their voice in the context of Western Christianity, Black Muslims now began to strive to find their black, American voice in the context of the super-tradition of historical Islam. Jackson argues that Muslim tradition itself contains the resources to reconcile blackness, American-ness, and adherence to Islam. It is essential, he contends, to preserve within Islam the legitimate aspects of Black Religion, in order to avoid what Stephen Carter calls the domestication of religion, whereby religion is rendered incapable of resisting the state and the dominant culture. At the same time, Jackson says, it is essential for Blackamerican Muslims to reject an exclusive focus on the public square and the secular goal of subverting white supremacy (and Arab/immigrant supremacy) and to develop a tradition of personal piety and spirituality attuned to distinctive Blackamerican needs and idiosyncrasies.

Radical Skin, Moderate Masks explores a voice trapped by the War on Terror. How can a Muslim speak about politics? And, in what tone can they argue? In today's climate can they "talk back" without being defined as a moderate or radical? And, what do the conditions put on their political choices reveal about liberalism and its deep and historical relationship with racism? This timely work looks at ongoing debates and how they call for Muslims to engage in a "de-radicalisation" of their voice and identities. The author takes his lessons from Fanon and uses them to make sense of his many readings of Said's Orientalism. He reflects on the personal and scholarly difficulty of writing this very book. An autoethnography follows. It shows (rather than tells of) the felt demand to use a pleasing "Apollonian" liberalism. This approved language, however, erases a Muslim's ability to talk about the "Dionysian" more Asiatic parts of their faith and politics.

In both the social sciences and the humanities, current scholarship typically examines speech and social action as separate entities. But do they truly act in isolation? In Narrative Social Structure, Recep Senturk challenges the prevailing understandings of speech and social action, of actor and organization. Using the example of the hadith transmission network, Senturk demonstrates the synergy between speech and action in producing social reality. Hadith, a brief narrative about the Prophet Muhammad transmitted across generations by a chain of narrators, represents the longest recorded social network presently known to sociologists and historians. This book presents the first attempt by a sociologist to unearth the long hadith transmission network from ancient historical sources and analyze it using the most recent qualitative and quantitative analytical tools. It demonstrates how both synchronic and diachronic analyses uncover the structure of generational and inter-generational discourse networks used in the process of identity and authority formation. The author concludes that these networks of narrative are constantly at work in the world. Even if we are not aware of it, we are always part of them.

This important book investigates the emergence and development of a distinct concept of self-awareness in post-classical, pre-modern Islamic philosophy. Jari Kaukua presents the first extended analysis of Avicenna's arguments on self-awareness - including the flying man, the argument from the unity of experience, the argument against reflection models of self-awareness and the argument from personal identity - arguing that all these arguments hinge on a clearly definable concept of self-awareness as pure first-personality. He substantiates his interpretation with an analysis of Suhrawardi's use of Avicenna's concept and Mulla Sadra's revision of the underlying concept of selfhood. The study explores evidence for a sustained, pre-modern and non-Western discussion of selfhood and self-awareness, challenging the idea that these concepts are distinctly modern, European concerns. The book will be of interest to a range of readers in history of philosophy, history of ideas, Islamic studies and philosophy of mind.

In "Freedom, Equality and Justice in Islam," M H Kamali presents the reader with an analysis of the three concepts of freedom, equality and justice from an Islamic point of view and their manifestations in the religious, social, legal and political fields. The author discusses the evidence to be found for these concepts in the Qur'an and Sunna, and reviews the interpretations of the earlier schools of law. The work also looks at more recent contributions by Muslim jurists who have advanced fresh interpretations of freedom, equality and justice in the light of the changing realities of contemporary Muslim societies. "Freedom, Equality and Justice in Islam" is part of a series dedicated to the fundamental rights and liberties in Islam and should be read in conjunction with "The Dignity of Man: An Islamic Perspective" and "Freedom of Expression in Islam."

Throughout history, factors of radicalization have involved social and economic conditions and issues of identity. Patterns of Islamist radicalization in Europe reflect the historical experience of European Muslim communities, particularly their links to their home countries, the prevalence of militant groups there, and the extent to which factors of radicalization in Muslim countries transfer to European Muslim diasporas. Eurojihad examines the sources of radicalization in Muslim communities in Europe and the responses of European governments and societies. In an effort to understand the scope and dynamics of Islamist extremism and terrorism in Europe, this book takes into account recent developments, in particular the emergence of Syria as a major destination of European jihadists. Angel Rabasa and Cheryl Benard describe the history, methods, and evolution of jihadist networks in Europe with particular nuance, providing a useful primer for the layperson and a sophisticated analysis for the expert.

One of the most remarkable aspects pertaining to the legal bans and societal debates on the face veil in Europe is that they rely on assumptions which lack any factual basis. To rectify this, Eva Brems researched the experiences of women who wear a face veil in Belgium and brought her research results together with those of colleagues who did the same in four other European countries. Their findings, which are outlined in this volume, move the current discussion on face veil bans forward by providing a much-needed insider perspective. In addition, a number of legal and social science scholars comment on the empirical findings and on the face veil issue more generally.

The US Global War on Terror and earlier US counterterrorism efforts prompted a variety of responses from Muslim states despite widespread Islamic opposition. Some cooperated extensively, some balked at US policy priorities, and others vacillated between these extremes. This book explains how differing religion-state relationships, regimes' political calculations, and Islamic politics combined to produce patterns of tensions and cooperation between the United States and Muslim states over counterterrorism, using rigorous quantitative analysis and case studies of Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, and Turkey. The book combines recent advances in the study of political institutions with work on religion and politics to advance a novel theory of religion and international relations that will be of value to anyone studying religion, terrorism, or Islamic politics. It also provides numerous insights into current events in the Middle East by extending its analysis to the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State.

Through crusades and expulsions, Muslim communities survived for over 500 years, thriving in medieval Europe. This comprehensive study explores how the presence of Islamic minorities transformed Europe in everything from architecture to cooking, literature to science, and served as a stimulus for Christian society to define itself. Combining a series of regional studies, Catlos compares the varied experiences of Muslims across Iberia, southern Italy, the Crusader Kingdoms and Hungary to examine those ideologies that informed their experiences, their place in society and their sense of themselves as Muslims. This is a pioneering new narrative of the history of medieval and early modern Europe from the perspective of Islamic minorities; one which is not, as we might first assume, driven by ideology, isolation and decline, but instead one in which successful communities persisted because they remained actively integrated within the larger Christian and Jewish societies in which they lived.

In Iran, folksongs are part of folklore and offer an intimate portrait of a vanishing era. They are also 'the voice' of ordinary people, providing a medium to express emotions, opinions and concerns. This book is based on folksongs collected over a 50-year period among the Boir Ahmad tribal people in the Zagros Mountains of West Iran. Erika Friedl has recorded, transcribed and translated more than 600 lyrics from a Lur community, and her analysis of the folksongs provides an intimate portrait of local people's attitudes, attachments, fears and desires. From songs of love, sex and mourning, to lyrics discussing beauty, infatuation and the community's violent tribal history, Friedl's solid understanding of the cultural background, lifestyle and worldview of these people lets her add ethnographic details that illuminate the deep meaning of the texts. In this way, Friedl goes far beyond a translation of words: she sheds light on a culture where beliefs, critical evaluation of circumstances and philosophical tenets are shown to be integral to each song's message. Based on fieldwork that began in 1965, Erika Friedl's research on the folklore in Boir Ahmad represents the best-documented modern folklore compendium on an Iranian tribe. This new book will be important for future generations of scholars, including ethnographers, Iranists, linguists, ethnomusicologists and those researching Persian literature and cultures of the Middle East.

This book presents a critical study of citizenship, state and globalization in societies that have been historically influenced by Islamic traditions and institutions. Interrogating the work of contemporary theorists of Islamic modernity such as Mohammed Arkoun, Abdul an-Na'im, Fatima Mernissi, Talal Asad, Saba Mahmood and Aziz Al-Azmeh, this book explores the debate on Islam, democracy and modernity, contextualized within contemporary Muslim lifeworlds. These include contemporary Turkey (following the 9/11 attacks and the onset of war in Afghanistan), multicultural France (2009-10 French burqa debate), Egypt (the 2011 Tahrir Square mass mobilizations), and India. Ali Mirsepassi and Tadd Graham Fernee critique particular counterproductive ideological conceptualizations, voicing an emerging global ethic of reconciliation. Rejecting the polarized conceptual ideals of the universal or the authentic, the authors critically reassess notions of the secular, the cosmopolitan and democracy. Raising questions that cut across the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology and law, this study articulates a democratic politics of everyday life in modern Islamic societies.

The first study of album-making in the Ottoman empire during the seventeenth century, demonstrating the period's experimentation, eclecticism, and global outlook The Album of the World Emperor examines an extraordinary piece of art: an album of paintings, drawings, calligraphy, and European prints compiled for the Ottoman sultan Ahmed I (r. 1603-17) by his courtier Kalender Pasa (d. 1616). In this detailed study of one of the most important works of seventeenth-century Ottoman art, Emine Fetvaci uses the album to explore questions of style, iconography, foreign inspiration, and the very meaning of the visual arts in the Islamic world. The album's thirty-two folios feature artworks that range from intricate paper cutouts to the earliest examples of Islamic genre painting, and contents as eclectic as Persian and Persian-influenced calligraphy, studies of men and women of different ethnicities and backgrounds, depictions of popular entertainment and urban life, and European prints depicting Christ on the cross that in turn served as models for apocalyptic Ottoman paintings. Through the album, Fetvaci sheds light on imperial ideals as well as relationships between court life and popular culture, and shows that the boundaries between Ottoman art and the art of Iran and Western Europe were much more porous than has been assumed. Rather than perpetuating the established Ottoman idiom of the sixteenth century, the album shows that this was a time of openness to new models, outside sources, and fresh forms of expression. Beautifully illustrated and featuring all the folios of the original seventy-page album, The Album of the World Emperor revives a neglected yet significant artwork to demonstrate the distinctive aesthetic innovations of the Ottoman court.