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.

Selected as Emma Watson's Jan/Feb 2019 pick for her feminist book club, Our Shared Shelf Shortlisted for London's Big Read A Guardian Best Book of the Year Longlisted for The People's Book Prize From established literary heavyweights to emerging spoken word artists, the writers in this ground-breaking collection blow away the narrow image of the 'Muslim Woman'. Hear from users of Islamic Tinder, a disenchanted Maulana working as a TV chat show host and a plastic surgeon blackmailed by MI6. Follow the career of an actress with Middle-Eastern heritage whose dreams of playing a ghostbuster spiral into repeat castings as a jihadi bride. Among stories of honour killings and ill-fated love in besieged locations, we also find heart-warming connections and powerful challenges to the status quo. From Algiers to Brighton, these stories transcend time and place revealing just how varied the search for belonging can be.

This book analyzes perceptions of self, power, agency, and gender of Muslim women in a rural community of Bangladesh. Rural women's limited power and agency has been subsumed within the male dominated Islamic discourses on gender. However, many Muslim women have their own alternative discourses surrounding power and agency. Sarwar Alam intertwines an exploration of these power dynamics with reading of the Qur'an and Hadith, and analyzes how Muslim women's perception of power and gender are linked to their relationship with religion.

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.

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.

Islam in France is often regarded as a political 'issue' and much of the scholarly and public debates about Islam in contemporary France over the last three decades have concentrated on the supposedly 'antagonistic' relationship between France, Islam and its Muslims. Against such a troubled backdrop, however, this book looks at the ways in which certain prominent French Muslim intellectuals seek to articulate a vision of multi-faith co-existence, which embraces a critical secularism, and which simultaneously draw on religious and secular humanist traditions. Intellectuals have historically played a major part in French public life, yet relatively little is known about the work of Abdelwahab Meddeb, Malek Chebel, Leila Babes, Dounia Bouzar and Abdennour Bidar, whose writings and public interventions this book examines. Secularism, Islam and public intellectuals in contemporary France will be of particular interest to specialists, undergraduate and post-graduate students working across the Humanities and Social Sciences from disciplines such as Francophone Studies, Anthropology, Religious Studies or Sociology. -- .

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

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.

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.

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.

Why does Islam seem to dominate Egyptian politics, especially when the country's endemic poverty and deep economic inequality would seem to render it promising terrain for a politics of radical redistribution rather than one of religious conservativism? This book argues that the answer lies not in the political unsophistication of voters, the subordination of economic interests to spiritual ones, or the ineptitude of secular and leftist politicians, but in organizational and social factors that shape the opportunities of parties in authoritarian and democratizing systems to reach potential voters. Tracing the performance of Islamists and their rivals in Egyptian elections over the course of almost forty years, this book not only explains why Islamists win elections, but illuminates the possibilities for the emergence in Egypt of the kind of political pluralism that is at the heart of what we expect from democracy.

The Islamic resurgence in modern times has received extensive treatment in scholarly literature. Most of this literature, however, deals with the concept of jihad and disputes between radicals and their rivals over theological and political issues, and far less with martyrdom and death. Moreover, studies that do address the issue of martyrdom focus mainly on 'suicide' attacks - a phenomenon of the late twentieth century and onward - without sufficiently placing them within a historical perspective or using an integrative approach to illuminate their political, social and symbolic features. This book fills these lacunae by tracing the evolving Islamic perceptions of martyrdom, its political and symbolic functions, and its use of past legacies in both Sunni and Shi'i milieus, with comparative references to Judaism, Christianity and other non-Islamic domains. Based on wide-ranging primary sources, along with historical and sociological literature, the study provides an in-depth analysis of modern Islamic martyrdom and its various interpretations while also evaluating the historical realities in which such interpretations were molded and debated.

Themistius' close relationship with Christian emperors from Constantius to Theodosius makes him one of the most important political thinkers and politicians of the later fourth century, and his dealings with Julian the Apostate have recently attracted much speculation. This volume presents a new critical edition, translation and analysis of Themistius' letter to Julian about kingship and government, which survives mainly in Arabic, together with texts, translations and analyses of Julian's Letter to Themistius and Sopater's Letter to Himerius. The volume is completed with a text, translation and analysis of the other genuine work of Greek political theory to survive in Arabic, the Letter of Aristotle to Alexander, which dates from an earlier period and throws into relief the particular concerns of Themistius, Julian, and the rulers of the fourth-century Roman world.

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.

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.

This book addresses contemporary empirical issues in Islamic stock markets including volatility, efficiency and Sukuk defaults. The studies contained within this book consider a combination of pure Islamic stock markets and comparative studies, with reference to their conventional counterparts. The authors provide up-to-date, robust, accurate, reliable empirical enquiries addressing current issues of stock markets as well as providing up to date information and statistics to support future development and research. The book also covers a chapter on the current trends in research in Islamic capital markets, which analyses some recent and leading works to highlight and indicate the gaps in research that require further exploration. This book will be of value to all those who wish to gain a more thorough understanding of research in Islamic capital markets and the major topics in the field.

In 2006 against the background of the increasing problematization of Muslims and Islam in German public debate, the German government established the German Islam Conference. In a post 9/11 world, this was a time period shaped by the global war on terror, changes in the German naturalization law, the proliferation of racism targeting Muslims, and the expansion of security apparatuses. In Governing Muslims and Islam in Contemporary Germany Luis Manuel Hernandez Aguilar critically analyzes the institutionalization of the Conference and the different projects this institution has set in motion to govern Islam and Muslims against the looming presence of racial representations of Muslims. The analysis begins with the foundation of the Conference until the end of its second phase in 2014.

The creation of Afghanistan in 1880, following the Second Anglo-Afghan War, gave an empowering voice to the Pashtun people, the largest ethnic group in a diverse country. In order to distil the narrative of the state's formation and early years, a Pashtun-centric version of history dominated Afghan history and the political process from 1880 to the 1970s. Alternative discourses made no appearance in the fledgling state which lacked the scholarly institutions and any sense of recognition for history, thus providing no alternatives to the narratives produced by the British, whose quasi-colonial influence in the region was supreme. Since 1970, the ongoing crises in Afghanistan have opened the space for non-Pashtuns, including Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks, to form new definitions of identity, challenge the official discourse and call for the re-writing of the long-established narrative. At the same time, the Pashtun camp, through their privileged position in the political settlements of 2001, have attempted to confront the desire for change in historical perceptions by re-emphasising the Pashtun domination of Afghan history. This crisis of hegemony has led to a deep antagonism between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun perspectives of Afghan history and threatens the stability of political process in the country.

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

Louis Massignon was a pivotal figure in awakening Western interest in Islamic studies, and although his work is well-known to students of Islam or French history, he is relatively unknown in the English-speaking world. Now in this fascinating biography Mary Louise Gude introduces a new audience to the eminent French Orientalist who dominatesd the field of Islamic studies for over 60 years. This account covers many aspects of Massignon's rich and complex life, beginning with his birth in 1883 in Paris until his death in 1962, and reveals how Massignon's extraordinary life unfolded during a time when relations between Islam and the West changed radically. Gude discusses how Massignon first discovered the Muslim world in the nineteenth century - the era of European colonial imperialism - and lived to witness the major events that reshaped Islam in the first half of the twentieth century, including the creation of the Arab states after World War I, the creation of Israel and the subsequent Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and the independence of Algeria in 1962. Drawn from Massignon's own writings as well as other primary and secondary sources, this unique biography also includes theological discussions of Massignon's intellectual development and writings. Gude reveals Massignon to be a believer who rediscovered Christianity through Islam; a mystic involved in the political realities of his day; and an Islamophile who remained quintessentially French. What emerges overall is the story of a passionate, but ultimately elusive, man whose professional and personal commitments were inseparable. Today Massignon's work continues to engage scholars and students of Islam and interfaith relations, and, as abridge-builder between Christianity and Islam, his far-reaching influence is unequaled.

Hamed El-Said investigates Counter-de-Rad programmes in Muslim majority and Muslim minority states. This multifaceted book provides a new approach to evaluate Counter-de-Rad Programmes and develops a holistic framework which will allow policy-makers and practitioners to design and effectively implement and assess such programmes in the future.

The purpose of this study is to examine the rationale of Doris Lessing's development from classical realism to mysticism and forms of science fiction, and to consider the unifying motifs that appear throughout her novels in her consistent search for Sufi equilibrium. The selected novels represent significant stages in Lessing's work. Chapter one focuses on "The Grass is Singing", which represents the author's early, traditionally realistic writing, to show how far the preoccupations of Lessing's later novels find expression in this early work. Chapter two studies "The Golden Notebook", which marks a turning point in formal structure in Lessing's canon, and is selected as evidence of her interest in Sufism at that early stage. Chapter three concentrates on the study of "The Memoirs of a Survivor", which has elicited a comparatively limited amount of criticism, but which proves to be a major achievement when brought into line with Sufi methods of writing. Chapter four considers Lessing's science fiction series, "Canopus in Argos", trading sources from Oriental literature - a key which unlocks many areas of obscurity.

Although a large body of the great poetry of the Islamic world has been translated into English, except for a few fragments, the poetry of the Isma'ilis is still only accessible in the original. This anthology should enable lovers of devotional and mystical poetry to sample the great range and depth of Isma'ili poetry. The selection spans 1000 years of Isma'ili history, from the time of the Fatimid caliphate to the present day. It includes both sophisticated and popular verses from the Isma'ili poets of Arabia, Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, China, India and Pakistan composed in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Burushaski and Urdu. In addition to the theme of divine love and the virtues of the prophet and the Immans, the poems present some of the central ideas of the Isma'ilis and their esoteric interpretation of Islam.