'Another India' tells the story of the world's biggest religious minority. Weaving together vivid biographical portraits of a wide range of Indian Muslims--elite and subaltern, secular and clerical, activist and apolitical--it brings the experience of the country's Muslims under a single focus; and, by throwing light on the Indian Muslim condition during the first thirty years of independence, reflects on the true character of democratic India. What we have here is a rather different picture from received accounts of the 'world's largest democracy'. Challenging traditional histories of Nehru's India, Pratinav Anil shows that minority rights were neglected right from independence. Despite its best intentions, the Congress regime that ruled for three decades was often illiberal, intolerant and undemocratic. Muslims had to contend with discrimination, disadvantage, deindustrialisation, dispossession and disenfranchisement, as well as an unresponsive leadership. Anil demonstrates how the Muslim elite encouraged depoliticisation, taking up seemingly noble but largely inconsequential causes with little bearing on the lives of ordinary members of the community. There was no room for mass protests or collective solidarity in this version of Muslim politics. Another India explores this elite betrayal, whose consequences are still felt by India's 200 million Muslims today.

In the 'encyclopaedic' fourteenth century, Arabic chronicles produced in Mamluk cities bore textual witness to both recent and bygone history, including that of the Fatimids (969-1171CE). For in two centuries of rule over Egypt and North Africa, the Isma'ili Fatimids had left few self-generated historiographical records. Instead, it fell to Ayyubid and Mamluk historians to represent the dynasty to posterity. This monograph sets out to explain how later historians preserved, interpreted and re-organised earlier textual sources. Mamluk historians engaged in a sophisticated archival practice within historiography, rather than uncritically reproducing earlier reports. In a new diplomatic edition, translation and analysis of Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furat's account of late Fatimid rule in The History of Dynasties and Kings, a widely known but barely copied universal chronicle of Islamic history, Fozia Bora traces the survival of historiographical narratives from Fatimid Egypt. Through Ibn al-Furat's text, Bora demonstrates archivality as the heuristic key to Mamluk historical writing. This book is essential for all scholars working on the written culture and history of the medieval Islamic world, and paves the way for a more nuanced reading of pre-modern Arabic chronicles and of the epistemic environment in which they were produced.

Roshan Iqbal traces the intellectual legacy of the exegesis of Qur'an 4:24, which is used as the proof text for the permissibility of mut'a (temporary marriage) and asks if the use of verse 4.24 for the permissibility of mut'a marriage is justified within the rules and regulations of Qur'anic hermeneutics. Iqbal examines seventeen Qur'an commentaries, the chronological span of which extends from the first extant commentary to the present day in three major Islamicate languages. Iqbal concludes that doctrinal self-identity, rather than strictly philological analyses, shaped the interpretation of this verse. As Western academia's first comprehensive work concerning the intellectual history of mut'a marriage and sexual ethics, this work illustrates the power of sectarian influences on how scholars have interpreted verse 4:24. This book is the only work in English that includes a plurality of voices from minor schools (Ibadi, Ashari, Zaidi, and Ismaili) largely neglected by Western scholars, alongside major schools, and draws from all available sub-genres of exegesis. Further, by revealing ambiguities in the interpretation of mut'a, this work challenges accepted sexual ethics in Islamic thought-as presented by most classical and many modern Muslim scholars-and thus opens up space to theorize Islamic sexual ethics anew and contribute to this crucial conversation from the perspective of Muslim feminism.

Just like people around the world have done for generations, Arab people from the Middle East and North African (MENA) region have immigrated to various nations around the world. A number of 'push' factors account for why groups have left their homeland and 'pulled' to another nation to settle. The history and patterns of Arab migration out of the MENA illustrates the wide array of reasons for these patterns, primarily illustrating that mass emigration and settlement are highly linked to a number of factors, including social, political, economic, familial climates of each nation-state and its policies. If it is one takeaway that this edited volume brings to light, it is that the Arab MENA does not only include a diverse population within each nation-state it also illustrates the ways in which their settlement in new nations have contributed to their own identity development patterns, their communities, and that of their new nation-state. This book celebrates the achievements and acknowledges the challenges of the new communities that Arabs have built around the world. It shows examples of societies that have embraced the Arab diaspora as well as examples of sidelining these communities. These examples come from a number of subject areas, from music to international affairs. The examples are both contemporary and historical, authored by individuals with a diverse set of disciplinary lenses and professional training. This book is meant to fill a gap in the literature as it expands on the understanding of Arab communities to inform and inspire a more nuanced, inclusive approach to the study of the Arab diaspora. It does so by revealing untold stories that challenge stereotypes to push for more inclusive media representation of Arab identity and its development in various regions of the world.

In light of the ongoing public debate that focuses on differences between Islam and the West, this book suggests a change of perspective. It departs from the observation that both western Orientalists and Islamist activists have defined Islam similarly as an all-encompassing religious, political and social system. In shifting from differences to similarities, it leaves behind the increasingly circular debate about the true nature of Islam in which the Muslim religion has been represented either as intrinsically hostile to or as principally compatible with modern culture. Instead, it associates the evolution of a particularly essentialist image of Islam with a complex process of cross-cutting (self)-interpretations of Muslim and Western societies within an emerging global public sphere. Putting its focus on the life and work of a number of paradigmatic individuals, the book investigates the intellectual encounters and discursive interdependencies among western and Muslim intellectuals. In a historical genealogy it deconstructs the essentialist image of Islam in uncovering its conceptual foundations in the modern transformation of European and Muslim societies from the nineteenth century onwards. Thereby, the changing infrastructure of the global public sphere has facilitated the gradual popularization, trivialization, and dissemination of a previously elitist discourse on Islam and modernity. In this way, the idea of Islam as an all-encompassing system has been turned into accepted knowledge in the Western and Muslim worlds alike.

This book offers a comparative examination of Islamic welfare activities across urban areas in both Switzerland and Italy, in order to address general issues relating to the welfare engagement of Islamic organisations in Europe. Welfare Activities by New Religious Actors describes how Islamic organisations have been coordinated and structured in Geneva, Milan, Rome, and Zurich; four cities not yet analysed in the literature on Islamic welfare. It also explores the institutional opportunities and constraints that are able to influence forms of social religious activities at the local and international level, by bringing together two research fields that seldom speak to each other: social network analysis and political opportunity theory. This book will appeal to scholars of Sociology, Anthropology and Religious Studies dealing with the social and political inclusion of Muslims in Europe and the social activities of Islamic organisations in Western countries.

This text challenges existing writing on 'Abd al-Qa dir al-Jaza 'iri which divides his life into two juxtaposed phases separated by narratives of conversion: from Francophobia to Francophilia, from militarism to pacifism, from activism to quietism, from Islamism to pluralism, from politics to religion. This work's interdisciplinary approach demonstrates that these narratives cannot be sustained in light of the evidence. Rather, they can be shown to originate in specific historical, cultural, and methodological tendencies within western societies and academies. Drawing on primary materials including archival documents and selections from his own writing, it constructively critiques his reception in the literature while advancing a continuous and contextualised account of his life and ideas. These include the relating of his ethico-religious and jurisprudential concerns to his political decision-making, and a resituating of his mystical writings within a definite moral, epistemological, and political context. By problematising these interpretive issues, this thesis aims at opening new avenues for understanding even as it offers its own solutions. In so doing, this study contributes to discussions on Sufism, political Islam, and east-west relations. This monograph has been awarded the annual BRAIS - De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World.

This book investigates, both theoretically and in considerable empirical detail, the teachings of Islam vis-a-vis politics. It defines the essence of Islamic civilization and highlights aspects of the colonial encounter as a background for understanding contemporary dynamics of the Muslim world. It shows, through textual, intellectual, and historical evidences, the linkage between Islam and politics and the nature of Islamic research methodology. Additionally it deals with a range of key issues and institutions including the law, the community, the legal and political order and the strategies and tactics of various Islamic movements. Useful distinctions are made between Islamic and Western perspectives which should prove illuminating to experienced professionals and students alike.

Is France afraid of her others? By looking back at the discourses and practices that have been formed over the last fifteen years, Sarah Mazouz addresses French politics of alterity. Drawing on an ethnographic survey conducted in both public administrations in charge of combating racial discrimination and in naturalisation offices in a large city in the Paris region, she shows how immigration, nation, and racialisation are articulated in the social space. Through the analysis of these two public offices, Mazouz questions the processes of inclusion and exclusion within the national group itself and between the national and the foreigner. In so doing, she seeks to grasp the paradoxical relationship between the French Republic and her others and the plural logics producing national order.

Timur (or Tamerlane) is famous as the fourteenth-century conqueror of much of Central Eurasia and the founder of the Timurid dynasty. His reputation lived on in his native lands and reappeared some three centuries after his death in the form of fictional biographies, authored anonymously in Persian and Turkic. These biographies have become part of popular culture. Despite a direct continuity in their production from the eighteenth century to the present, they remain virtually unknown to people outside the region. This remarkable and rigorous scholarly appraisal of the legendary biographies of Tamerlane is the first of its kind in any language. The book sheds light not only on the character of Tamerlane and how he was remembered and championed by many generations after his demise, but also on the era in which the biographies were written, and how they were conceived and received by the local populace during an age of crisis in their own history.

With links to the global jihad, the indigenous insurgency and terrorism in Xinjiang challenges the security and stability of China. This book examines the prevailing scholarship on ethnic and minority conflicts and argues that the root cause of the conflict in China, especially in Xinjiang is not only about religious extremism, but also about the systematic violation of basic rights and insensitivity towards minority identities by the state. As our analysis demonstrates, the Islamist terrorist threat to China is manifestly clear and not ambiguous. However, Beijing needs to develop an appropriate counter-terrorism posture that is transparent, legitimate and fair and addresses the concerns of the international community.   

Terrorist attacks on America and its allies and persistent violence in the Islamic world point to a crisis in Islamic society, which "States without Citizens" attributes to an unfulfilled quest for an Islamic renaissance. The Islamic states, whose borders were arbitrarily imposed by Western states, are beset by pervasive socioeconomic problems--authoritarian rule, economic inequities, educational shortcomings, development project failures, sexual frustration--that are being exploited by radical Islamists. Native attempts to modernize Islamic society by adopting Western ways have repeatedly foundered because they have sought to replicate the trappings of state power while neglecting their foundation in civic ethics. To mitigate the violence engendered by the Islamic crisis, the author recommends that culturally authentic institutions must be created that will instill a civic ethics of common cause and public service.

The ideals of civic activism and public service that inspired the Western Renaissance are absent in the Islamic world. Islamic religio-moral ethics aim at salvation; Islamic social ethics aim at clan dominance. Western-inspired solutions to the Islamic crisis are inappropriate to Islamic states, in as much as they are states without citizens. To mitigate the violence engendered by the Islamic crisis, culturally authentic institutions must be created that will instill a civic ethics of common cause and public service. The author recommends this approach for policy makers and development managers and deplores the dangerous vacuity of such drumbeat cliches as the clash of civilizations that have gained currency in the war on terrorism.

Today there are at least 15 million people in Western Europe who adhere to the Muslim faith or have close cultural or other affiliations with the Islamic world. Indeed, in the course of a few decades, Islam has emerged as Europe's second religion, after Christianity. What is remarkable about this phenomenon is that it has occurred gradually, generally peacefully, and, in some measure, as a consequence of the economic needs of European countries. Despite some difficulties, Islam is slowly but inexorably becoming part of Europe's social, cultural, and, to some degree, political landscape. The question today is not can Islam be uprooted and expelled from European soil, as was done six centuries ago during the period of "Reconquista" in Spain, but rather what is the best way of accommodating Islam in Europe and establishing cooperative relations between Muslims and the followers of other religious and/or secular value systems. This volume examines the situation and attempts to provide answers to these questions through a country-by-country analysis by recognized experts from each of the Western European nations examined. An invaluable resource and text for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Islamic and European Studies.

Is France afraid of her others? By looking back at the discourses and practices that have been formalised over the last fifteen years, Sarah Mazouz addresses French politics of alterity. Drawing on an ethnographic survey lead in both public administrations in charge of combating racial discrimination and naturalisation offices of a large city in the Paris region, she shows how immigration, nation and racialization are articulated in the social space. Through the analysis of these two public policies, she questions the processes of inclusion and exclusion within the national group itself (through the examination of the modalities taken by anti-discrimination) and outside, between the national and the foreigner (through the study of naturalization practices). In so doing, it seeks to grasp the paradoxical relationship between the Republic and her others and the plural logics producing national order.

This book provides a study of the attempts by the US and EU to develop meaningful political relations with Islamist movements in the Middle East and Balkans. The contributors draw on extensive research on Islamist parties and movements and Western policy towards them over the past decade.

The traditional approach to business and public management assumes that management decisions and outcomes will remain the same, irrespective of the environment in which they are applied. However, the value systems operating within a society can also influence the principles that govern modern management within organizations. Principles and Fundamentals of Islamic Management examines the concept of business and public management from the viewpoint of Islam, with close reference to the Quran and other illuminating Islamic sources. Seyed Mohammad Moghimi provides key insights from an Islamic perspective across a comprehensive range of management topics, including planning, decision making and policy making, organizing, human resources management, directing and organizational control. The book concludes by analyzing the role of a company director within an Islamic context. Through this in-depth exploration of Islamic management principles and fundamentals, the author creates a modern and practical framework suitable for use by international business managers. Providing a much-needed insight into the practicalities of management operations in an Islamic context, this book is essential reading for researchers, managers, and for students of Islamic management at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

This text examines Muslim-European interactions in the interwar period and provides original insights into the emergence of geopolitical and intellectual East-West networks that transcended national, cultural, and linguistic borders.

Kingdoms arose during the early centuries of the Common Era across a wide region of West Africa. A rich source of information about West Africa is available in the Arabic sources written by geographers and chroniclers in the Muslim world between the 8th and the 15th centuries. In this volume are the actual primary sources upon which much modern knowledge about the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, Kanem-Borno and their neighbors depends. Here is the story of the conversion of the western Sudan to Islam, as well as accounts of the famous medieval gold trade, testimonies about the pilgrimage of Mansa Musa, and insightful introductions to many other less familiar personalities, activities and events.

As far too many intellectual histories and theoretical contributions from the 'global South' remain under-explored, this volume works towards redressing such imbalance. Experienced authors, from the regions concerned, along different disciplinary lines, and with a focus on different historical timeframes, sketch out their perspectives of envisaged transformations. This includes specific case studies and reflexive accounts from African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. Taking a critical stance on the ongoing dominance of Eurocentrism in academia, the authors present their contributions in relation to current decolonial challenges. Hereby, they consider intellectual, practical and structural aspects and dimensions, to mark and build their respective positions. From their particular vantage points of (trans)disciplinary and transregional engagement, they sketch out potential pathways for addressing the unfinished business of conceptual decolonization. The specific individual positionalities of the contributors, which are shaped by location and regional perspective as much as in disciplinary, biographical, linguistic, religious, and other terms, are hereby kept in view. Drawing on their significant experiences and insights gained in both the global north and global south, the contributors offer original and innovative models of engagement and theorizing frames that seek to restore and critically engage with intellectual practices from particular regions and transregional contexts in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. This volume builds on a lecture series held at ZMO in the winter 2019-2020

This book provides an engaging and insightful look into the definitions, discourse and experiences of Islamophobia and its steady rise since 9/11. It analyses concepts and binaries that are drawn around discussions on civilization, religious dogma, violence, and race. Is there a link between Islam and violence? Why does the West feel threatened by it? The author critically examines these questions and the birth of hate politics which packages hate in a marketable format and often demonizes victims. It also looks at the role of the media in the West in perpetuating stereotypes and its consequences and the nature of war reportage in Islamic countries while deconstructing the narrative of the clash of civilizations. Topical and lucid, this book is a must-read for students and scholars of sociology, international relations, peace and conflict studies, political science, Islamic studies and for other readers interested in these topics.

This book provides an engaging and insightful look into the definitions, discourse and experiences of Islamophobia and its steady rise since 9/11. It analyses concepts and binaries that are drawn around discussions on civilization, religious dogma, violence, and race. Is there a link between Islam and violence? Why does the West feel threatened by it? The author critically examines these questions and the birth of hate politics which packages hate in a marketable format and often demonizes victims. It also looks at the role of the media in the West in perpetuating stereotypes and its consequences and the nature of war reportage in Islamic countries while deconstructing the narrative of the clash of civilizations. Topical and lucid, this book is a must-read for students and scholars of sociology, international relations, peace and conflict studies, political science, Islamic studies and for other readers interested in these topics.

This multidisciplinary book on Islamic finance covers Islamic economic, financial, and legal systems, insurance (takaful), commercial jurisprudence, and the socio-political and political-economy of the Islamic world. It examines the dichotomies and similarities between Islamic and conventional financial systems and suggests future roles and governance of Islamic financial institutions. Distinctive features of the second edition include an emphasis on the theoretical foundations of Islamic finance, the distinctions between the micro- and macroeconomic concepts and theories to the readers, and an expansion on Islamic approved forms of trade dealings, transactions, and contracts. Furthermore, this work discusses the newly introduced Islamic capital market products of the years 2020 to 2022-including the transition from the inter-bank-offer-rates (IBORs) as global benchmark lending rate to the new risk-free-rates (RFRs) that became effective on January 1, 2022-and discusses the transition of Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency to Saudi Central Bank in 2020. Though every effort is made to avoid tedious mathematical proof and derivatives, this work provides working calculations for the pricing of Islamic instruments and provides supplemental materials in the form of faculty resources and students' study guide and workbook. This work acts as a useful textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students who are looking at broadening their knowledge in finance. Similarly, this book is a helpful guide and tool for financial practitioners who are interested in learning more about the innovative discipline of Islamic finance. For financial practitioners to drive maximum benefits from this innovative financing mechanism, they need to know, understand, and participate in the investment opportunities which are provided by Islamic finance.

The renaissance of Shi'i Islam began in the 9th/15th century when the Ismailis experienced the Anjudan revival and Twelver Shi'i traditions were also renewed. This renaissance gained further strength when the Safavids succeeded in establishing a state in the early decades of the 10th/16th century, making Ithna'ashari Shi'i Islam their official religion. The chapters in this open access book represent the most recent scholarship on the intellectual and spiritual life of the age and discuss what prepared the ground for its appearance as well as its achievements. Although the political and artistic developments of the Safavid era of the 10th-12th/16th-18th centuries have been extensively studied, the complexities of the different groups, movements and strands of thought in the renaissance of Shi'i Islam still remain largely unexplored. The major themes that characterised the Shi'i renaissance are explored, including: popular reactions to messianic movements; the development of legal theories and concepts; the investigation of theological and philosophical problems, above all by the 'School of Isfahan'; Shi'i-Sufi interactions and intra-Shi'i relations; the collection of Shi'i hadith and its application in Shi'i exegesis; and the interplay between political considerations and religious beliefs. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by The Institute of Ismaili Studies.

Intriguing dreams, improbable myths, fanciful genealogies, and suspect etymologies. These were all key elements of the historical texts composed by scholars and bureaucrats on the peripheries of Islamic empires between the tenth and fifteenth centuries. But how are historians to interpret such narratives? And what can these more literary histories tell us about the people who wrote them and the times in which they lived? In this book, Mimi Hanaoka offers an innovative, interdisciplinary method of approaching these sorts of local histories from the Persianate world. By paying attention to the purpose and intention behind a text's creation, her book highlights the preoccupation with authority to rule and legitimacy within disparate regional, provincial, ethnic, sectarian, ideological and professional communities. By reading these texts in such a way, Hanaoka transforms the literary patterns of these fantastic histories into rich sources of information about identity, rhetoric, authority, legitimacy, and centre-periphery relations.