This volume brings together articles on the cultural, religious, social and commercial interactions among Jews, Christians and Muslims in the medieval and early modern periods. Written by leading scholars in Jewish studies, Islamic studies, medieval history and social and economic history, the contributions to this volume reflect the profound influence on these fields of the volume's honoree, Professor Mark R. Cohen.

The author reveals persuasive evidence that al Qaeda has now established connections with the Sicilian Mafia, which is helping to finance terrorism through the sale of heroin. In addition, through its ties to the Chechen Mafia, the group responsible for the heinous attack on a Russian school, al Qaeda has managed to obtain nuclear weapons from poorly secured and carelessly guarded storehouses in Russia.Perhaps the most disturbing evidence uncovered by Williams is the relation of al Qaeda to an obscure Salvadoran street gang, which calls itself Mara Salvatrucha and has expanded exponentially. No other book deals with the connection between international, extremist Islamic terrorism and organized crime-a connection that has made possible the establishment of a well-financed branch of al Qaeda in Latin America and the creation of terrorist cells in major metropolitan areas throughout the United States.

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.

Chanfi Ahmed shows how West African 'ulama', who fled the European colonization of their region to settle in Mecca and Medina, helped the regime of King Ibn Sa'ud at its beginnings in the field of teaching and spreading the Salaf -Wahhab 's Islam both inside and outside Saudi Arabia. This is against the widespread idea of considering the spread of the Salaf -Wahhab doctrine as being the work of 'ulama' from Najd (Central Arabia) only. We learn here that the diffusion of this doctrine after 1926 was much more the work of 'ulama' from other parts of the Muslim World who had already acquired this doctrine and spread it in their countries by teaching and publishing books related to it. In addition Chanfi Ahmed demonstrates that concerning Islamic reform and mission (da'wa), Africans are not just consumers, but also thinkers and designers.

What happens when the idea of religious progress propels the shaping of modernity? In The Ahmadiyya Quest for Religious Progress. Missionizing Europe 1900 - 1965 Gerdien Jonker offers an account of the mission the Ahmadiyya reform movement undertook in interwar Europe. Nowadays persecuted in the Muslim world, Ahmadis appear here as the vanguard of a modern, rational Islam that met with a considerable interest. Ahmadiyya mission on the European continent attracted European 'moderns', among them Jews and Christians, theosophists and agnostics, artists and academics, liberals and Nazis. Each in their own manner, all these people strove towards modernity, and were convinced that Islam helped realizing it. Based on a wide array of sources, this book unravels the multiple layers of entanglement that arose once the missionaries and their quarry met.

Today there are more Muslims living in diaspora than at any time in history. This situation was not envisioned by Islamic law, which makes no provision for permanent as opposed to transient diasporic communities. Western Muslims are therefore faced with the necessity of developing an Islamic law for Muslim communities living in non-Muslim societies. In this book, Kathleen Moore explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the US and Great Britain, as well the Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam. Islamic jurisprudence, Moore notes, contains a number of references to various 'abodes' and a number of interpretations of how Muslims should conduct themselves within those worlds. These include the dar al harb (house of war), dar al kufr (house of unbelievers), and dar al salam (house of peace). How Islamic law interprets these determines the debates that take shape in and around Islamic legality in these spaces. Moore's analysis emphasizes the multiplicities of law, the tensions between secularism and religiosity. She is the first to offer a close examination of the emergence of a contingent legal consciousness shaped by the exceptional circumstances of being Muslim in the U.S and Britain in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century

Financial institutions are increasingly providing Islamic financial contracts in global markets. As a result of this market growth there is a high demand to understand how to assess and manage the risks arising from applying Islamic financial products and services. Credit, operational, market and liquidity risks together with the risk of non compliance with the Shariah law are becoming very hot issues for financial institutions. This book presents a common framework on how to efficiently manage the risks faced.

This book tackles unanswered questions on British Muslims and political participation: What makes religion a salient 'political' identity for young Muslims (over any other identity)? How do young British Muslims identify themselves and how does it relate to their political engagement? A fascinating insight into the lives of young British Muslims.

Islamist capital accumulation has split the Turkish bourgeoisie and polarized Turkish society into secular and religious social groupings, giving rise to conflicts between the state and political Islam. By providing a long-term historical perspective on Turkey's economy and its relationship to Islamism, this volume explores how Islamism as a political ideology has been utilized by the conservative bourgeoisie in Turkey, and elsewhere, to establish hegemony over labor. The contributors analyze the relationship between neoliberalism and the political fortunes of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), and examine the similarities and differences amongst new factions in the secular and Islamic middle class that have benefited economically, socially, and culturally during the AKP's reign. The articles also investigate the impact of the Gulen Movement and the role of the media in shaping the contours of intra-class struggle within contemporary Turkish political and social life.

Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World is sponsored by The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Muqarnas articles are published on all aspects of Islamic visual culture, historical and contemporary, as well as articles dealing with unpublished textual primary sources.

Inscriptions on buildings are a distinctive feature of Islamic architecture, and this book studies the 79 surviving monumental inscriptions in the Iranian world from the first five centuries of the Muslim era (A.D. 622-1106), the period in which all the major trends of monumental epigraphy in the area were set. These foundation, commemorative, and funerary texts come from the region between Iraq and Soviet Central Asia. Written primarily in Arabic, they embellished architectural monuments and furnishings whose nature implies the construction of major buildings. An extended introduction discusses such general topics as titulature, patronage, and stylistic development. Each text is then presented individually with photographs, drawings, transcriptions, translations and an extensive commentary, which presents the inscription in its larger palaeographic and historical contexts.

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.

The meanings and contexts of Shari'a are the subject of both curiosity and misunderstanding by non-Muslims. Shari'a is sometimes crudely characterized by outsiders as a punitive legal system operating broadly outside, and separate from, national laws and customs. This groundbreaking book shows that Shari'a and its 'fiqh' (laws set forward by various Islamic legal schools) comprise a far more nuanced matrix of interpretations than is often assumed to be the case. Far from being monolithic or impervious to change from without, Muslim legal tradition has - since its beginnings in the early Islamic period - placed an emphasis on equity and non-adversarial conflict-resolution. Mohamed Keshavjee examines both Sunni and Shi'a applications of Islamic law, demonstrating how political, cultural and other factors have influenced the practice of fiqh and Shari'a in the West. Exploring in particular the modern development of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), the author shows that this process can revitalize some of the essential principles that underlie Muslim teachings and jurisprudence, delivering not only formal remedies but also perceived justice, even to non-Muslims.

Exploring the most formidable human rights challenges facing the Middle East--the rights of women, minorities, migrant workers, those of various sexual orientations, and the rights of all people to engage in civil disobedience--this volume addresses the extent to which dynamics surrounding human rights conditions in the region conform to or diverge from such dynamics in other parts of the world. Offering wide-ranging and rich analyses, the contributors to this volume argue that for human rights to be effectively enforced, they must be locally justified and achieved. The 2011 Arab revolts demonstrate that the people of the region can shape the condition of human rights in their societies.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 have turned the world's attention to areas of the globe about which we know very little. Ahmed Rashid, who masterfully explained Afghanistan's Taliban regime in his previous book, here turns his skills as an investigative journalist to the five Central Asian republics adjacent to Afghanistan. Central Asia is coming to play a vital strategic role in the war on terrorism, but the region also poses new threats to global security.

The five Central Asian republics -- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan -- were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. Under Soviet rule, Islam was brutally suppressed, and that intolerance has continued under the post-Soviet regimes. Religious repression, political corruption, and the region's extreme poverty (unemployment rates exceed 80 percent in some areas) have created a fertile climate for militant Islamic fundamentalism. Often funded and trained by such organizations as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Taliban, guerrilla movements like the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) have recruited a staggering number of members across the region and threaten to topple the governments of all five nations. Based on groundbreaking research and numerous interviews, Jihad explains the roots of militant rage in Central Asia, describes the goals and activities of these militant organizations, and suggests ways in which this threat could be neutralized by diplomatic and economic intervention.

Rich in both cultural heritage and natural resources -- including massive oil reservoirs -- Central Asia remains desperately poor and frighteningly volatile. In tracing the history of Central Asiaand explaining the current political climate, Rashid demonstrates that it is a region we ignore at our peril.

Mirbagheri traces the revival of Islamic/ist movements, and embarks on a theoretical study of some of the fundamental concepts in Islam and International Relations such as the self, Jihad, peace and universalism. Contemporary cases of conflict in the Middle East are analysed to pose a challenge to the universalist discourse of Western liberalism.

The Mongol Empire was founded by Chinggis Khan in the early thirteenth century. Within the span of two generations it embraced most of Asia, thus becoming the largest land-based state in history. The united empire lasted only until around 1260, but the major successor states continued for many generations, in the Middle East, present-day Russia, Central Asia and China. It left a lasting impact on these areas and their peoples, which was often far from negative The papers in this volume offer fresh perspectives on the Mongol Empire, its rule in the eastern Islamic world, Central Asia and China, and the legacy of this rule. Various authors approach the matter from a variety of views, including political, military, social, cultural and intellectual. In doing so, they shed a new light on the Mongol Empire. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

Muqarnas: An Annual on the Visual Cultures of the Islamic World is sponsored by The Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. In Muqarnas articles are published on all aspects of Islamic visual culture, historical and contemporary, as well as articles dealing with unpublished textual primary sources.

The early years of the twenty-first century have been characterized by a sense of widespread anxiety and fear because of the violent activities of groups of terrorists who claim they act in the name of Islam. Their acts of terrorism, viewed by a majority in the Muslim world as crimes which must be subject to the law, are in tragic contrast to the efforts of many Muslim intellectuals who have been working for the past several decades to find common ground between people of all faiths based on the universality of humankind. This book aims to bring to the attention of non-Muslims, in particular, the range of views which Muslims in the Middle East and in South and Southeast Asia hold on six topics of importance to life in the twenty-first century. The topics have been addressed from the internal Muslim point of view to provide readers with a sense of the main debates within Islam on each of the issues. The topics addressed are: the new world order; globalization and modernity; banking and finance; the nation-state; the position of women; and law and knowledge. The chapters have been written by Muslims and non-Muslims, each of whom is an expert on the area about which they write. The chapters are presented in pairs which offer Middle Eastern (and in one case South Asian) points of view which are matched by Southeast Asian perspectives on each of the six topics. While the media is quick to report on the more violent expressions of Islam, including terrorism, the vigorous debates, which now characterize the intellectual discourse in Muslim communities, are rarely if ever reported. This book not only describes and analyses those debates but also reflects the views of many Muslims across the world, emphasizing the connections and contrasts between the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

During the last two decades, the (re-)discovery of thousands of manuscripts in different regions of sub-Saharan Africa has questioned the long-standing approach of Africa as a continent only characterized by orality and legitimately assigned to the continent the status of a civilization of written literacy. However, most of the existing studies mainly aim at serving literary and historical purposes, and focus only on the textual dimension of the manuscripts. This book advances on the contrary a holistic approach to the study of these manuscripts and gather contributions on the different dimensions of the manuscript, i.e. the materials, the technologies, the practices and the communities involved in the production, commercialization, circulation, preservation and consumption. The originality of this book is found in its methodological approach as well as its comparative geographic focus, presenting studies on a continental scale, including regions formerly neglected by existing scholarship, provides a unique opportunity to expand our still scanty knowledge of the different manuscript cultures that the African continent has developed and that often can still be considered as living traditions.

The dead are potent and omnipresent in modern Indonesia. Presidents and peasants alike meditate before sacred graves to exploit the power they confer, and mediums do good business curing the sick by interpreting the wishes of deceased forebears. Among non-Muslims there are ritual burials of the bones of the dead in monuments both magnificent and modest. By promoting dead heroes to a nationalist pantheon, regions and ethnic groups establish their place within the national story.Although much has been written about the local forms of the scriptural religions to which modern Indonesians are required by law to adhere - Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism - this is the first book to assess the indigenous systems of belief in the spirits of ancestors. Sometimes these systems are condemned in the name of the formal religions, but more often the potent dead coexist as a private dimension of everyday religious practice.A unique team of anthropologists, historians and literary scholars from Europe, Australia and North America demonstrate the continuing importance of the potent dead for understanding contemporary Indonesia. At the same time, they help us understand historic processes of conversion to Islam and Christianity by examining the continuing interactions of the spirit world with formal religion.

The book uses an ethnographic approach to explore why the Tablighi Jamaat movement remains so successful in contemporary times. It shows that this success results from the positive image that it cultivates, and the systematic preaching activities of Tablighi Jamaat followers, and that the organisation's apolitical image, the public profile of the ijtema, the humbleness of Tablighi followers, and the attraction of belonging to the global Tablighi community all help to create a positive image of the Tablighi Jamaat among ordinary Muslims. The book also argues that the Tablighi Jamaat remains successful because of its ability to hold its followers within a Tablighi-guided life, which is perceived as protection against the Western lifestyle. Many elements of contemporary Western lifestyle are considered non-Islamic, and so by clearly defining what is Islamic and non-Islamic in modern society, the Tablighi Jamaat provides a way in which Muslims can live in the contemporary world, but remain good Muslims.

Since 1989, religious fundamentalism and exclusionary nationalism in Jammu and Kashmir have generated political and social turmoil and eroded the ethos and culture of Kashmir. These forces are responsible for the silencing of dissenters, economic deprivation, lack of infrastructure, mass displacements, political anarchy, and the repression of women. Women in Kashmir constantly grapple with both the devastating effects of Indian occupation and Pakistani infiltration and their own complicated histories. Nyla Ali Khan, the granddaughter of the first Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, gives an insider's analysis of the effects of nationalist, militant, and religious discourses and praxes on a gender-based hierarchy. This cross-disciplinary project shows the attempted relegation of Kashmiri women to the archives of memory and reveals the women's powerful and persistent endeavors to rise from the ashes of immolated identities.

As the beating drums within the United States for a war with Iran grow louder, it is important, now more than ever, to understand precisely how and why neo-conservatives have chosen to orchestrate a sustained and coordinated campaign for a U.S. attack on Iran, or short of that, support an Israeli strike against the Islamic Republic's nuclear technology facilities. This campaign is aimed at convincing U.S. politicians, and policy- and decision-makers, that the Iranian regime is inherently evil and dangerous, and is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of attacking Israel. This study breaks down some of the key rhetorical techniques neo-conservatives have utilized in this campaign, which gained serious momentum following the official withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq from 2007-2011 and the ratifying of the Iran Nuclear Deal in 2015. It also locates and dissects the origins and the nature of the political and religious sources inspiring these choices, exploring the motivating roles played by ideas such as U.S., Israeli, and Jewish exceptionalism, and the concept of the End Times. While this work is heavily geared towards focusing on how and why the neo-conservatives have chosen to engage themselves in the war of ideas about the 'true nature' of the Iranian regime, its people and their intentions, it also addresses the 'bricks and mortar;' aspect of the neo-conservative network primarily operating in and around Washington D.C. and New York.