The treatment and role of women is one of the most discussed and controversial aspects of Islam. In this volume, three respected scholars of Islam survey the situation of women in Islam, focusing on how Muslim views about and experiences of gender are changing in the Western diaspora. It offers an overview of the teachings of the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad on gender, analyzes the ways in which the West has historically viewed Muslim women, and examines how the Muslim world has changed in response to Western critiques. The volume then centers on the Muslim experience in America, examining Muslim American analyses of gender, Muslim attempts to form a new "American" Islam, and the legal issues surrounding equal rights for Muslim females. Such specific issues as dress, marriage, child custody, and asylum are addressed. It also looks at the ways in which American Muslim women have tried to create new paradigms of Islamic womanhood and are reinterpreting the traditions apart from the males who control the mosque institutions.

Reaching beyond traditionally politicised scholarship to provide a unique perspective on the place of religion and culture in global and local politics, this book examines the impact of Islam on 'civilizational' relations between different groups and polities.

Bassam Tibi takes a highly original approach to the topic of religion in world politics, exploring the place of Islam in society and its frequent distortion in world politics to the more radical Islamism. Looking at how this becomes an immediate source of tension and conflict between the secular and the religious, Tibi rejects the 'clash of civilizations' theory and argues for the revival of Islamic humanism to help bridge the gap. Chapters expand on:

• inter-civilizational conflict in global politics
• dialogue between religious and secular, East and West
• western concepts of Islamism
• euro-Islam and the Islamic diaspora in Europe
• Islamic humanism as a tool for bridging civilizations.

Shedding new light on the highly topical subject of Islam in politics and society, this book is an essential read for scholars and students of international politics, Islamic studies and conflict resolution.

Since the late 1980s, growing migration from countries with a Muslim cultural background, and increasing Islamic fundamentalism related to terrorist attacks in Western Europe and the US, have created a new research field investigating the way states and ordinary citizens react to these new phenomena. However, whilst we already know much about how Islam finds its place in Western Europe and North America, and how states react to Muslim migration, we know surprisingly little about the attitudes of ordinary citizens towards Muslim migrants and Islam. Islamophobia has only recently started to be addressed by social scientists. With contributions by leading researchers from many countries in Western Europe and North America, this book brings a new, transatlantic perspective to this growing field and establishes an important basis for further research in the area. It addresses several essential questions about Islamophobia, including: what exactly is Islamophobia and how can we measure it? how is it related to similar social phenomena, such as xenophobia? how widespread are Islamophobic attitudes, and how can they be explained? how are Muslims different from other outgroups and what role does terrorism and 9/11 play? Islamophobia in the West will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology, religious studies, social psychology, political science, ethnology, and legal science.

Before they had an empire in the East, the British travelled into the Islamic world to pursue trade and to form strategic alliances against the Catholic powers of France and Spain. First-hand encounters with Muslims, Jews, Greek Orthodox, and other religious communities living together under tolerant Islamic rule changed forever the way Britons thought about Islam, just as the goods they imported from Islamic countries changed forever the way they lived. Britain and the Islamic World tells the story of how, for a century and a half, merchants and diplomats travelled from Morocco to Istanbul, from Aleppo to Isfahan, and from Hormuz to Surat, and discovered a world that was more fascinating than fearful.
Gerald MacLean and Nabil Matar examine the place of Islam and Muslim in English thought, and how British monarchs dealt with supremely powerful Muslim rulers. They document the importance of diplomatic and mercantile encounters, show how the writings of captives spread unreliable information about Islam and Muslims, and investigate observations by travellers and clergymen who reported meetings with Jews, eastern Christians, Armenians, and Shi'ites. They also trace how trade and the exchange of material goods with the Islamic world shaped how people in Britain lived their lives and thought about themselves.

Scholars of religion and policy makers may be surprised at the changes occurring on the second largest island of the world that straddles one of the most Christianised and least Christianised areas of the world. This book provides an accurate and deeper understanding of the nature of Islam in Papua New Guinea, and determines the causes and processes of recent growth in the country's Muslim population. Combining ethnographic, sociological and historical approaches to understanding Islam's growth in Papua New Guinea, the book uses extensive fieldwork, interviews and archival records to look at the establishment, institutionalization and growth of Islam in a country that is predominantly Christian. It analyses the causes and processes of conversion, and presents a new analytical approach that could be used as a basis for analysing Islamic conversions in other parts of the world. Presenting an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Islamic conversion thorough the examination of the causes and process of Islamic conversion in Papua New Guinea, the book is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Religion, Islamic Studies and Cultural Studies.

This book assesses the capabilities of an Islamic approach in aiding self-organisation by examining the case of the occupied Palestinian territories in conjunction with a comparative analysis of four other nations. Three main mechanisms of Islamic development are explored; finance, microfinance and charity. Identifying the need to recognise the non-linear nature of societal interaction at the individual, community and state levels, the book uses complexity theory to better understand development. It assesses the role of Islamic development at macro and micro levels and identifies issues with rigid and hierarchical policy making.

As Senegal prepares to celebrate fifty years of independence from French colonial rule, academic and policy circles are engaged in a vigorous debate about its experience in nation building. An important aspect of this debate is the impact of globalization on Senegal, particularly the massive labor migration that began directly after independence. From Tokyo to Melbourne, from Turin to Buenos Aires, from to Paris to New York, 300,000 Senegalese immigrants are simultaneously negotiating their integration into their host society and seriously impacting the development of their homeland.
This book addresses the modes of organization of transnational societies in the globalized context, and specifically the role of religion in the experience of migrant communities in Western societies. Abundant literature is available on immigrants from Latin America and Asia, but very little on Africans, especially those from French speaking countries in the United States. Ousmane Kane offers a case study of the growing Senegalese community in New York City. By pulling together numerous aspects (religious, ethnic, occupational, gender, generational, socio-economic, and political) of the experience of the Senegalese migrant community into an integrated analysis, linking discussion of both the homeland and host community, this book breaks new ground in the debate about postcolonial Senegal, Muslim globalization and diaspora studies in the United States. A leading scholar of African Islam, Ousmane Kane has also conducted extensive research in North America, Europe and Africa, which allows him to provide an insightful historical ethnography of the Senegalese transnational experience.

The war in the Middle East is marked by a lack of cultural knowledge on the part of the western forces, and this book deals with another, widely ignored element of Islam-the role of dreams in everyday life. The practice of using night dreams to make important life decisions can be traced to Middle Eastern dream traditions and practices that preceded the emergence of Islam. In this study, the author explores some key aspects of Islamic dream theory and interpretation as well as the role and significance of night dreams for contemporary Muslims. In his analysis of the Islamic debates surrounding the role of "true" dreams in historical and contemporary Islamic prophecy, the author specifically addresses the significance of Al-Qaeda and Taliban dream practices and ideology. Dreams of "heaven," for example, are often instrumental in determining Jihadist suicidal action, and "heavenly" dreams are also evidenced within other contemporary human conflicts such as Israel-Palestine and Kosovo-Serbia. By exploring patterns of dreams within this context, a cross-cultural, psychological, and experiential understanding of the role and significance of such contemporary critical political and personal imagery can be achieved.

Militant Salafism is one of the most significant movements in politics today. Unfortunately its significance has not been matched by understanding. To begin to address this knowledge deficit this book argues that, rather than the largely unhelpful pursuit of individual 'root causes' offered in much of the literature, we would be better served by looking at the factors that have enabled and facilitated a particular political imaginary. That political imaginary is one that allows individuals to conceive of themselves as integral members of a global battle waged between the forces of Islam and the West, something that lies at the heart of militant Salafism. Frazer Egerton shows how the ubiquity of modern media and the prevalence of movement have allowed for a transformation of existing beliefs into an ideology supportive of militant Salafism against the West amongst Western Muslims.

The rise of political Islam has provoked considerable debate about the compatibility of democracy, tolerance, and pluralism with the Islamist position. As "The Challenge of Political Islam" reveals, Egyptian Islamists today are more integrated into the political arena than ever, and are voicing a broad spectrum of positions, including a vision of Islamic citizenship more inclusive of non-Muslims.
Based on Islamist writings, political tracts, and interviews with Islamists--including members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and other important contemporary thinkers--this book looks closely at how modern, politically-oriented Egyptian Islamists perceive non-Muslims in an Islamic state and how non-Muslims respond. Clarifying the movement's aims, this work uncovers how Islamists have responded to the pressures of modernity, the degree to which the movement has been influenced by both a historical Islamic framework and Western modes of political thinking, and the necessity to reconsider the notion that secularism is a precondition for toleration.

Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.

Corporate governance is oriented around the values of fairness, transparency and accountability. The comprehension and measurement of these objectives is subject to the social and economic attributes of the corporate arena. Significant bodies of intellectual work have approached an assessment of corporate governance from perspectives such as differences in management practices, economic advancements, financial management, as well as regional and country constituents. But little is known about the Islamic perspective on the conceptualization, structure and practice of corporate governance. Research in Corporate and Shari'ah Governance in the Muslim World: Theory and Practice aims to address a critical disciplinary gap between Islamic theory and the practice of the corporate sector in the Muslim World. Adopting a critical approach, the book sheds light on the impact of corporate governance on the economies of the Muslim world. It presents an examination of: Corporate governance in Islamic financial institutions The efficiency of the Islamic Jurisprudence system The common conceptual grounds of corporate structure in the Muslim World The composition of business leaders in the Muslim World Using standard tools of analysis, the book presents a logically consistent synthesis of key variables with critical economic reasoning. It extends the conventional scope of corporate governance to form a basis for common understanding of how it operates in the Muslim world. The book will prove useful to those who research, study and practice in this field.

The Muslim Brotherhood is the oldest and most important international Islamist group. Aside from strong organizations in Egypt, Jordan, Syria--where it provides the main opposition--and its Palestinian offshoot Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip, the Brotherhood has become active in Europe and North America. Its flexible tactics which range from terrorism through electoral participation to social welfare activities have made it a particularly effective group. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the Brotherhood's organizations, doctrine, and leaders in all the main countries where it operates.

In "Allah's Torch", National Geographic's Tracy Dahlby takes readers into the sprawling, porous, virtually lawless domain of Indonesia, where overlapping lines of radical Islamic rage are now converging in Asia, posing new threats to Westerners at home and abroad. From the moment the adventure begins, the night the author blunders on board an Indonesian passenger ship with 600 Islamic warriors on an anti-Christian jihad, readers glimpse the passions, politics and personalities fuelling radical Islam's relentless march. We listen as Koran-thumping preachers, hardened holy warriors and fresh-faced recruits, police investigators, military commandos, and spies try to make sense of the epidemic chaos that threatens to the region - and now the world beyond. Based on reporting both before and after September 11, "Allah's Torch" an action-packed and thought-provoking narrative that enables readers to see the face of Islamic terror more clearly and assess the threat for themselves.

The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey explains why political Islam, which has been part of Turkish politics since the 1970s but on the rise only since the 1990s, has now achieved governing power. Drawing on social movement theory, the book focuses on the dominant form of Islamist activism in Turkey by analyzing the increasing electoral strength of four successive Islamist political parties: the Welfare Party; its successor, the Virtue Party; and the successors of the Virtue Party: the Felicity Party and the Justice and Development Party. This book, which is based on extensive primary and secondary sources as well as in-depth interviews, provides the most comprehensive analysis currently available of the Islamist political mobilization in Turkey.

'Shocking, heartfelt and well-researched' New Statesman 'A ground-shaping book that defines the edge of so many vital contemporary debates. Hers is a voice simultaneously behind and beyond the veil' Colum McCann 'A fascinating, can't-look-away, whistle-stop tour of the Middle East' Daily Telegraph 'Brave and impassioned . . . A shocking book, and one that will make anyone who has seen veiling as a cultural issue think very hard about what is really going on' Mail on Sunday Headscarves and Hymens explodes the myth that we should stand back and watch while women are disempowered and abused in the name of religion. In this laceratingly honest account, Eltahawy takes aim both at attitudes in the Middle East and at the western liberals who mistake misogyny for cultural difference. Her argument is clear: unless political revolution in the Arab world is accompanied by social and sexual revolution, no progress will be made. Headscarves and Hymens is the book the world has been crying out for: a powerful, fearless account of what it really means to be a woman in the Muslim world. 'A fascinating, can't-look-away, whistle-stop tour of the Middle East' Daily Telegraph 'Brave and impassioned . . . A shocking book, and one that will make anyone who has seen veiling as a cultural issue think very hard about what is really going on' Mail on Sunday

Pathways to Contemporary Islam: New Trends in Critical Engagement highlights that the current tensions in Islam and the Muslim world are the result of historical dynamics as opposed to an alleged incompatibility between religious tradition and modernity. The emphasis on pathways indicates that critical engagement and contestation have always been intrinsic to the history of Islam. The aim of the book is to elaborate the contemporary pathways and analyse the trends that contest the Islamic intellectual tradition, the relationship between religion and politics, and the individual and collective practice of religion. The collection of essays analyses the current efforts of critical re-engagement with the Islamic intellectual tradition and underlines the historical diversity of Islamic orthodoxies that led to the establishment of various pathways in the practice and role of religion in Muslim societies.

Transcultural Teens provides readers with a window onto the cultural and linguistic creativity of the housing projects, or cite s, that ring Paris, showing how young people of Algerian Arab origins play with language in fascinating ways that subvert commonly held notions of intercultural animosity. * Provides solid, real-world evidence in the often abstracted theoretical debate on globalization and transnationalism * Offers detailed data on linguistic practices that is more focused than generalized anthropological studies * Includes the experiences of French-Algerian adolescent girls who remain largely absent from academic and popular discourse * Reveals the cultural richness and diversity of a population that is stigmatized and marginalized in a national context

This work explores contemporary debates on migration and integration, focussing on Euro-Muslims. It critically engages with republicanist and multiculaturalist policies of integration and claims that integration means more than cultural and linguistic assimilation of migrant communities.

The great scholar of Islam directly confronts the events of September 11th and the reasons behind Islamic terrorism in the modern world - a Sunday Times bestseller. President Bush has made it clear that we are engaged in a war against terrorism. But for Osama bin Laden and his followers this is religious war, a war for Islam against infidels, especially the United States, the greatest power in the world of the infidels. In this book Bernard Lewis shows us where the anger and frustration have come from, and the extent to which almost the entire Muslim world is affected by poverty and tyranny. He looks at the influence of extreme Wahhabist doctrines in the Saudi kingdom, where custodianship of Islam's holy places and the revenues of oil have given worldwide impact to what would otherwise have been an extremist fringe in a marginal country. He looks at American double standards, which have long caused Muslim anger, and tells us the real meaning of `Islamic fundamentalism', `jihad' and `fatwa', and why the peoples of the Middle East are conscious of history in a way most Americans find difficult to understand.

Although pluralism and religious tolerance are most often associated today with Western Enlightenment thinkers, the roots of these ideologies stretch back to non-Western and premodern societies, including many under Muslim rule. This book explores the development of pluralism in Islam in South Asia through the work of the poet, historian and musician Amir Khusraw and sheds new light on how Islam developed its own culture of tolerance.

Countering stereotypes of Islam as intrinsically intolerant, the book provides a better understanding of how rhetorics of pluralism develop, which may aid in identifying and encouraging such discourses in the present. Khusraw, a practicing Muslim who showed great affection toward Hindus and used much indigenous imagery in his poetry, is an ideal figure through whom to explore these issues. Addressing issues of ethnicity, religion and gender in the early medieval period, Alyssa Gabbay demonstrates the pre-modern precedents for pluralism, conveying the broad sweep of Perso-Islamicate culture and the profound transformations it underwent in medieval South Asia.

Accurately depicting the paradoxicality and jaggedness involved in the development of its composite culture, this book will have great relevance to scholars and students of Islam in South Asia, gender, religious pluralism, and Persian literature.

As America struggles to understand Islam and Muslims on the world stage, one concept in particular dominates public discourse: Islamism. References to Islamism and Islamists abound in the media, in think tanks, and in the general study of Islam, but opinions vary on the differences of degree and kind among those labeled "Islamists." This book debates what exactly is said when we use this contentious term in discussing Muslim religion, tradition, and social conflict.
Two lead essays offer differing viewpoints: Donald K. Emmerson argues that Islamism is a useful term for a range of Muslim reform movements--very few of which advocate violence--while Daniel M. Varisco counters that the public specter of violence and terrorism by Islamists too often infects the public perceptions of Islam more generally. Twelve commentaries, written by Muslim and non-Muslim intellectuals, enrich the debate with differing insights and perspectives.

Israel and Iran invariably are portrayed as sworn enemies, engaged in an unending conflict with potentially apocalyptic implications."Iranophobia" offers an innovative and provocative new reading of this conflict. Concerned foremost with how Israelis perceive Iran, the author steps back from all-too-common geopolitical analyses to show that this conflict is as much a product of shared cultural trajectories and entangled histories as it is one of strategic concerns and political differences.
Haggai Ram, an Israeli scholar, explores prevalent Israeli assumptions about Iran to look at how these assumptions have, in turn, reflected and shaped Jewish Israeli identity. Drawing on diverse political, cultural, and academic sources, he concludes that anti-Iran phobias in the Israeli public sphere are largely projections of perceived domestic threats to the prevailing Israeli ethnocratic order. At the same time, he examines these phobias in relation to the Jewish state's use of violence in the Palestinian territories and Lebanon in the post-9/11 world.
In the end, Ram demonstrates that the conflict between Israel and Iran may not be as essential and polarized as common knowledge assumes. Israeli anti-Iran phobias are derived equally from domestic anxieties about the Jewish state's ethnic and religious identities and from exaggerated and displaced strategic concerns in the era of the "war on terrorism."

What we understand by the 'Middle East' has changed over time and across space. While scholars agree that the geographical 'core' of the Middle East is the Arabian Peninsula, the boundaries are less clear. How far back in time should we go to define the Middle East? How far south and east should we move on the African continent? And how do we deal with the minority religions in the region, and those who migrate to the West? Across this handbook's 52 chapters, the leading sociologists writing on the Middle East share their standpoint on these questions. Taking the featured scholars as constitutive of the field, the handbook reshapes studies on the region by piecing together our knowledge on the Middle East from their path-defining contributions. The volume is divided into four parts covering sociologists' perspectives on: * Social transformations and social conflict; from Israel-Palestine and the Iranian Revolution, to the Arab Uprisings and the Syrian War * The region's economic, religious and political activities; including the impact of the spread of Western modernity; the effects of neo-liberalism; and how Islam shapes the region's life and politics * People's everyday practices as they have shaped our understanding of culture, consumption, gender and sexuality * The diasporas from the Middle East in Europe and North America, which put the Middle East in dialogue with other regions of the world. The global approach and wide-ranging topics represent how sociologists enable us to redefine the boundaries and identities of the Middle East today.

"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?