This text is the product of dialogue between a group of leading British Muslim and Christian scholars concerned about the alleged danger to the West of Islamic fundamentalism. It analyzes the ethical and legal principles, rooted in both traditions, underlying any use of armed force in the modern world. After chapters on the history, theology and laws of war as seen from both sides, the book applies its conclusions to firstly, the 1990-91 Gulf War and secondly, the Bosnian conflict. It concludes that Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis is a myth.

Islamophobia is the name given to the virulent anti-Islamic prejudice that has been hyped by the news media and seized upon by cynical politicians. Five essays by six specialists on Islam in America provide important insights into Islamophobia as a conflict over American identity during a time of crisis. The authors clarify the way that differences of religion, race, and gender have been used to portray Muslims as threatening "out-groups," just as other minorities (Catholics, Jews, blacks) have been attacked in the past. The result is a valuable and thought-provoking analysis of the tactics for denying full citizenship to a minority religious group.

Muslim women of all ages, economic status, educational backgrounds, sexual orientations, and from different parts of historically Muslim countries suffer the kinds of atrocities that violate common understandings of human rights and are normally denounced as criminal or pathological, yet these actions are sustained because they uphold some religious doctrine or some custom blessed by local traditions. Ironically, while instances of abuse meted out to women and even female children are routine, scholarship about Muslim women in the post 9/11 era has rarely focused attention on them, preferring to speak of women's agency and resistance. Too few scholars are willing to tell the complicated, and at times harrowing, stories of Muslim women's lives. Women and Islam: Myths, Apologies, and the Limits of Feminist Critique radically rethinks the celebratory discourse constructed around Muslim women's resistance. It shows instead the limits of such resistance and the restricted agency given women within Islamic societies. The book does not center on a single historical period. Rather, it is organized as a response to five questions that have been central to upholding the 'resistance discourse': What is the impact of the myth of al-Andalus on a feminist critique? What is the feminist utility of Edward Said's theory of Orientalism? Is Islam compatible with a feminist agenda? To what extent can Islamic institutions, such as the veil, be liberating for women? Will the current Arab uprisings yield significant change for Muslim women? Through examination of these core questions, Bouachrine calls for a shift in the paradigm of discourse about feminism in the Muslim world. Cover images provided by Tachfine Bouachrine.

Scholars, thinkers, and activists around the world are paying increasing attention to a legal reform method that promises to revolutionize the way people think about Islamic law. Known as "The Objectives of the Shari'a" (maqasid al-shari'a), the theory offers a way to derive and apply new Islamic laws using an ancient methodology. The theory identifies core objectives that underlie Islamic law, and then looks at inherited Islamic laws to see whether they meet those objectives. According to the maqasid theory, historical Islamic laws that meet their objectives should be retained, and those that do not-no matter how entrenched in practice or embedded in texts-should be discarded or reformed. Recently, several scholars have questioned the maqasid theory, arguing that it is designed not to reform laws, but to support existing power structures. They warn that adopting the maqasid wholesale would set the reform project back, ensuring that inherited Islamic laws are never fully reformed to agree with contemporary values like gender-egalitarianism and universal human rights. The Objectives of Islamic Law: The Promises and Challenges of the Maqasid al-Shari'a captures the ongoing debate between proponents and skeptics of the maqasid theory. It raises some of the most important issues in Islamic legal debates today, and lays out visions for the future of Islamic law.

In this book we study The Tabligh Jama'at, an Islamic revivalist movement which, through participation in its preaching tours, provides satisfaction to individuals experiencing the crisis of modernity. Preaching tours enable Muslims to become workers for Allah and involved in the renewal of Allah's world. We explore the ideological underpinning of preaching and working for Allah through the application of Frame Theory. Through an analytic framework comprising framing tasks and framing processes we unpack how the ideas of Islamic revivalism found in key Tabligh Jama'at written and oral texts - the Faza'il-e-A'maal and bayans - are packaged and communicated in such a way as to attract individuals to participate in preaching tours. The book concludes that working for Allah provides Muslims with meaning, social solidarity, and satisfaction which modernity has failed to provide them. This book will appeal to academics, researchers, journalists, policy-makers, and research students interested in or working on Islamic revivalist movements.

A reinterpretation of the history of Sokoto that provides a new assessment of its leaders and their visions for the Muslim state. Sokoto was the largest and longest lasting of West Africa's nineteenth-century Muslim empires. Its intellectual and political elite left behind a vast written record, including over 300 Arabic texts authored by the jihad's leaders: Usman dan Fodio, his brother Abdullahi and his son, Muhammad Bello (known collectively as the Fodiawa). Sokoto's early years are one of the most documented periods of pre-colonial African history, yet current narratives pay little attention to the formative role these texts played in the creation of Sokoto, and the complex scholarly world from which they originated. Far from being unified around a single concept of Muslim statecraft, this book demonstrates how divided the Fodiawa were about what Sokoto could and should be, and the various discursive strategies they used to enrol local societies into their vision. Based on a close analysis of the sources (some appearing in English translation for the first time) and an effort to date their intellectual production, the book restores agency to Sokoto's leaders as individuals with different goals, characters and methods. More generally, it shows how revolutionary religious movements gain legitimacy, and how the kind of legitimacy they claim changes as they move from rebels to rulers.

In a world of increasingly mixed identities, what does it mean to belong? As western democracies increasingly curtail their support for multiculturalism, how can migrants establish belonging as citizens? A Muslim Diaspora in Australia explores how a particular migrant group has faced the challenges of belonging. The author illustrates how Bosnian migrants in Australia have sought to find places for themselves as migrants, as refugees, and as Muslims, in Australia and Australian society. Challenging the methodological nationalism that tends to dominate discussions of migrant identities, the author exposes the ways in which dignity emerges as a dominant concern for people as they relate to varied local, national and translational contexts. Very little is known about how migrants themselves read and react to the multiple challenges of belonging and this pioneering work offers a timely and much needed critical insight into what it means to belong.

Nineteenth-century Istanbul was an intellectual hub of rich discussions about Islam, in which leading reformists had a significant role. Turkey today appears to be an intellectual vacuum to anyone searching for ongoing critical engagement with Islam. The main purpose of this book is to adjust this view of Turkey by showcasing the modern Turkish theologians who challenge mainstream Sunni interpretations of Islam. Labelling these theologians as 'rationalist' rather than 'reformist', the author reveals that their theology is inherently anti-establishment and thus a religiously-oriented challenge to the hegemony of the state-sanctioned Islam: for the rationalists, Turkey's problems have their origins in the Sunni interpretation of Islam. Contemporary Rationalist Islam in Turkey analyses nine prominent scholars of Islam who provide a religious opposition to the Sunni revival in Turkey: Huseyin Atay, Yasar Nuri OEzturk, M. Hayri Kirbasoglu, Ilhami Guler, R. Ihsan Eliacik, OEmer OEzsoy, Mustafa OEzturk, Israfil Balci, and Mehmet Azimli. These scholars' writings are almost exclusively published in Turkish, so this book makes their ideas available in English for the first time. It also examines the scope, methodology and argumentation of the scholars' theology, categorizing their theological interpretations from 'historicist' to 'universalist' and from 'empiricist' to 'rationalist'. In identifying a new 'rationalist' school of Turkish theology and outlining its different manifestations, the book breaks new ground. It fills a significant gap in the literature on Islamic studies and reveals an understudied dimension of Turkey and Turkish Islam beyond the well-known ideas of the AKP and the Gulenists.

Sonic Encounters recounts the author's experience gathering field recordings of the Islamic Call to Prayer. It touches on key questions and problems faced along the way, as well as discussing technologies and methods for recording, what it means to develop art from ethnographic research, and the ethics and considerations of working with Islamic communities around the globe. The book uses a sound studies framework to explore artistic research methods and practices in ethnography as they relate to religious recitation.

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.

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.

In the critical period when Islamic law first developed, a new breed of jurists developed a genre of legal theory treatises to explore how the fundamental moral teachings of Islam might operate as a legal system. Seemingly rhetorical and formulaic, these manuals have long been overlooked for the insight they offer into the early formation of Islamic conceptions of law and its role in social life. In this book, Rumee Ahmed shatters the prevailing misconceptions of the purpose and form of the Islamic legal treatise. Ahmed describes how Muslim jurists used the genre of legal theory to argue for individualized, highly creative narratives about the application of Islamic law while demonstrating loyalty to inherited principles and general prohibitions. These narratives are revealed through careful attention to the nuanced way in which legal theorists defined terms and concepts particular to the legal theory genre, and developed pictures of multiple worlds in which Islamic law should ideally function. Ahmed takes the reader into the logic of Islamic legal theory to uncover diverse conceptions of law and legal application in the Islamic tradition, clarifying and making accessible the sometimes obscure legal theories of central figures in the history of Islamic law. The book offers important insights about the ways in which legal philosophy and theology mutually influenced premodern jurists as they formulated their respective visions of law, ethics, and theology. The volume is the first in the Oxford Islamic Legal Studies series. Satisfying the growing interest in Islam and Islamic law, the series speaks to both specialists and those interested in the study of a legal tradition that shapes lives and societies across the globe. The series features innovative and interdisciplinary studies that explore Islamic law as it operates in shaping private decision making, binding communities, and as domestic positive law. The series also sheds new light on the history and jurisprudence of Islamic law and provides for a richer understanding of the state of Islamic law in the contemporary Muslim world, including parts of the world where Muslims are minorities.

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.

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.

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.

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.   

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.

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 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.

Can entertainment challenge divisive ideologies? Can we use theater, film, games, novels, and stories disarm the ideologies of fear? Ideological Battlegrounds: Entertainment to Disarm Divisive Propaganda introduces and develops Ideologically Challenging Entertainment (ICE) to challenge "us versus them" narratives. ICE counters polarizing perspectives by embracing multiple valid viewpoints without losing sight of facts. Additionally, this book explores the first ICE production, Two Merchants, The Merchant of Venice adapted to challenge ideologies related to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. A mixed-methods study of audience responses to this production showed that a significant number of audience members reconsidered their views, not only about the Arab-Israeli conflict but also about ideological divisions that were more personally relevant. Ideological Battlegrounds is unique, both in its conceptualization of entertainment as a means to address local and global conflicts and in its provision of evidence for the power of performance as a tool for confronting and influencing ideological change.This book offers a new approach to bridging dangerous ideological chasms that, without significant intervention, will only continue to worsen.

The dynamics of the global business environment necessitate that organizational assumptions and underpinnings are understood in their socio-cultural context. This pioneering book covers issues related to Islamic assumptions about organization and management, enabling readers to understand the challenges in managing corporations that operate in an Islamic environment. The author provides an original and up-to-date treatment of management orientations and practices in Muslim countries and provides pertinent information about the frame of reference for Muslims and Muslim organizations. Relying on classic interpretations of organizational issues without ignoring contemporary thought, the author uses original sources and extensive business, psychology, sociology, and religious references to highlight the orientations and practices that lead to superior performance in a Muslim environment. He goes on to identify both organizational and societal attributes that are essential for effective relationships at the workplace, underscoring the peculiarities of personal relationships and their tremendous influence on organizational expectations and conduct. Scholars and practitioners who specialize in business, economics, international relations, religion, and sociology will find this book a necessary resource for broadening their understanding of the religious and cultural aspects of conducting business across cultures. The comprehensive and original coverage of the book will prove useful in understanding business, cultural, and philosophical issues related to the Islamic World.