How do modern Muslims' attitudes to marital violence and patriarchy relate to the Islamic tradition? In recent years, discussion regarding the interpretation of the Qur'an has become highly controversial. Especially contentious is passage 4:34, which covers the legitimacy of marital violence and the subjugation of women within Islam. Scholarly opinion on the topic is heavily influenced by contemporary context, so the issue remains largely unsettled. While pre-colonial Islamic jurists permitted the use of violence against women, they still held ethical concerns about the disciplinary privileges of husbands. Consequently, the debate for these early scholars was focussed on the level of violence permitted, and how to apply the three disciplinary steps: admonishment, abandonment, and physical abuse. Ayesha Chaudhry argues that all living religious traditions are rooted in a patriarchal, social, and historical context, and they need ways to reconcile gender egalitarian values with religious tradition. Post-colonial, modern Islamic scholars that consult the Qu'ran for gender-egalitarian interpretations must confront a difficult and unique debate: equality vs authority. As in many religions, authority is derived from tradition, rebelling from which results in a loss of authority in the eyes of the community. Chaudhry reveals that Muslims do not speak with one voice about Islam. Instead, Muslim scholarly discourse is spirited and diverse. The voices of contemporary Muslim scholars enrich the scope of the 'Islamic tradition'. Many recent works on Islam strive to promote a 'public relations' image of Islam. This book deals with ethical problems of domestic violence as discussed in historic and contemporary Islamic religious doctrine. The stakes are high, and very real. The author confronts the significant issue of how modern Muslims can relate to Islamic tradition and the Qur'anic text.

Although the position of Saudi women within society draws media attention throughout the world, young Saudi men remain part of a silent mass, their thoughts and views rarely heard outside of the Kingdom. Based on primary research across Saudi Arabia with young men from a diverse range of backgrounds, Mark C. Thompson allows for this distinct group of voices to be heard, revealing their opinions and attitudes towards the societal and economic transformations affecting their lives within a gender-segregated society and examining the challenges and dilemmas facing young Saudi men in the twenty-first century. From ideas and beliefs about, identity, education, employment, marriage prospects and gender segregation, as well as political participation and exclusion, this study in turn invites us to reconsider the future of Saudi Arabia as a globalized kingdom.

The fall of President Soeharto in May 1998 and the introduction of multi-party democracy by President BJ Habibie have unleashed religious parties (both Islamic and Christian) in Indonesian politics. This study shows that the Islamist agenda of the Islamist parties is overshadowed by their political pragmatism. This book is a must-read account on the rise and failure of the Islamist struggle in Indonesia's emerging democracy. Platzdasch's work is without a doubt a significant and timely contribution to a better understanding of Islamic politics in contemporary Indonesia. - Professor Azyumardi Azra, Professor of History & Director, Graduate School, Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University, Jakarta, Indonesia.

With a discography of over 1000 songs, 20 musicals and three motion pictures, the Lebanese singer and performer, Fairouz, is an artist of pan-Arab appeal, who has connected with listeners from diverse backgrounds and geographies for over four often tumultuous decades. In this book, Dima Issa explores the role of Fairouz's music in creating a sense of Arab identity amidst changing political, economic context. Based on two years of research including 60 interviews, it takes an ethnographic approach, focussing on audience reception of Fairouz's music among the Arab diasporas of London and Doha. It shows that for discussants, talking about Fairouz meant discussing diasporic life, bringing to the surface notions of Arabness and authenticity, presence and absence, naturalization and citizenship, and the issue of gender. Conversations with the research respondents shed light on the idea of iltizam (commitment), or how members of the Arab diaspora hold on to attributes that they feel define and differentiate them from others.

In recent years Abdolkarim Soroush has become known as one of the leading moderate revisionist thinkers of the Muslim world. These essays translated into English for the first time set forth Soroush's views on such matters as the freedom of the Muslim believe to interpret the Qur'an, the inevitability of change in religion, the necessity of freedom of belief, and the compatibility of Islam with democracy. This book will be of great interest, both here and abroad, to students and scholars of the Middle East and its politics, and Islam.

When revolutionary hero Gamal Abdel Nasser dismantled and suppressed Egypt's largest social movement organization during the 1950s, few could have imagined that the Muslim Brotherhood would not only reemerge, but could one day compete for the presidency in the nation's first ever democratic election. While there is no shortage of analyses of the Muslim Brotherhood's recent political successes and failures, no study has investigated the organization's triumphant return from the dustbin of history. Answering the Call examines the means by which the Muslim Brotherhood was reconstituted during Anwar al-Sadat's presidency. Through analysis of structural, ideological, and social developments during this period in the history of the Islamic movement, a more accurate picture of the so-called "Islamic resurgence" developsone that represents the rebirth of an old idea in a new setting. The Muslim Brotherhood's success in rebuilding its organization rested in large part on its ability to attract a new generation of Islamic activists that had come to transform Egypt's colleges and universities into a hub for religious contention against the state. Led by groups such as al-Gama'ah al-Islamiyyah (The Islamic Society), the student movement exhibited a dynamic and vibrant culture of activism that found inspiration in a multitude of intellectual and organizational sources, of which the Muslim Brotherhood was only one. By the close of the 1970s, however, internal divisions over ideology and strategy led to the rise of factionalism within the student movement. A majority of student leaders opted to expand the scope of their activist mission by joining the Muslim Brotherhood, rejuvenating the struggling organization, and launching a new phase in its history. Answering the Call is an original study of the history of this dynamic and vibrant period of modern Egyptian history, giving readers a fresh understanding of one of Egypt's most pivotal eras.

This book puts together grounded research on the discourses that counter Islamophobic tropes in North America. Dealing with an important and urgent issue of human rights, it explores how public policies, new conceptualizations, and social movements can transform Islamophobia into a positive and healthy discourse. Surprisingly, and apart from selected media studies, empirical investigations about countering xenophobia and hate are rare. The book proposes effective means and mechanisms to help generate debate, dialogue, and discussion concerning policy issues to mitigate Islamophobia. Written in uncomplicated language, this topical book will attract specialist and non-specialist readers interested in the topic of Islamophobia, understanding the roots of Islamophobic hate rhetoric, and how to counter it.

This work charts the political, sociological and demographic factors that have shaped the position of Christian and Jewish minorities under Islam in the past and today. Focusing on the Arab world and on Turkey, the authors show how Christianity and Judaism survived and, at times, even prospered in the region, thus modifying the view of Islam as an inevitably unbending and radical religion. They also demonstrate that the position of the minorities was badly affected in the wake of confrontations with the Christian West - at the time of the Crusades, after the first victories of the Spanish Reconquista, with the humiliations meted out to the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and North Africa, and once again with the creation of the state of Israel.

Modern scholars of most major religious traditions, who seek gender egalitarian interpretations of their scriptural texts, confront a common dilemma: how can they produce interpretations that are at once egalitarian and authoritative, within traditions that are deeply patriarchal? This book examines the challenges and resources that the Islamic tradition offers to Muslim scholars who seek to address this dilemma. This is achieved through extensive study of the intellectual history of a Qur'anic verse that has become especially contentious in the modern period: Chapter 4, Verse 34 (Q. 4:34) which can be read to permit the physical disciplining of disobedient wives at the hands of their husbands. Though this verse has been used by historical and contemporary Muslim scholars in multiple ways to justify the right of husbands to physically discipline their wives, progressive and reformist Muslim scholars and activists offer alternative and non-violent readings of the verse. The diverse and divergent interpretations of Q. 4:34 showcases the pivotal role of the reader in shaping the meaning and implications of scriptural texts. This book investigates the sophisticated and creative interpretive approaches to Q. 4:34, tracing the intellectual history of Muslim scholarship on this verse from the ninth century to the present day. Ayesha S. Chaudhry examines the spirited and diverse, and at times contradictory, readings of this verse to reveal how Muslims relate to their inherited tradition and the Qur'anic text.

Shaping a Muslim State provides a synthetic study of the political, social, and economic processes which formed early Islamic Egypt. Looking at a corpus of previously unknown Arabic papyrus letters, dating from between AD 730 and 750, which were written to a Muslim administrator and merchant in the Fayyum oasis in Egypt, Sijpesteijn examines the reasons for the success of the early Arab conquests and the transition from the pre-Islamic Byzantine system and its Egyptian executors to an Arab/Muslim state. By examining the impact of Islam on the daily lives of those living under its rule, the volume highlights the striking newness of Islamic society while also acknowledging the influence of the ancient societies which preceded it. The book applies theoretical discussions about governance, historiography, (social) linguistics, and source criticism to understand the dynamics of early Islamic Egypt, as well as the larger process of state formation in the Islamic world.

The Reformed Church historian and orientalist Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620-1667) is a key figure in the history of Arabic and Islamic studies in early modern Europe. His life and his work have been almost completely neglected and there has never been a full-length study on Hottinger. This book presents a thorough documentation of Hottinger's Arabic and Islamic studies. Based on printed books and a great number of unpublished and hitherto unknown manuscripts, the book assesses his scholarship in the context of seventeenth-century oriental studies and confessional rivalries. The book contains a biographical account of Hottinger and inserts him into the Zurich tradition of oriental studies, which can be traced back to Theodor Bibliander and Konrad Pellikan in the sixteenth century. It gives an account of his years as a student of Jacobus Golius in Leiden, where Hottinger copied and collected an impressive number of Arabic manuscripts on which he later based his teaching and his publications. The book explores Hottinger's network in the Protestant Republic of Letters and it contains studies of his activities as a bibliographer of Arabic texts, as a teacher of the Arabic language, as a linguist who promoted a comparative approach to oriental languages, as a student of the history of Islam and as a Protestant who used his knowledge of Arabic and of Islam in the theological debates of the time.

The pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, has been a yearly phenomenon of great importance in Muslim lands for well over one thousand years. Each year, millions of pilgrims from throughout the Dar al-Islam, or Islamic world, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia, make the trip to Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. Records for this practice show that the majority of pilgrims in Islam's earliest centuries came from surrounding polities, such as Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth, fully half of all pilgrims making the journey in any one year could come from Southeast Asia. This is astonishing because of the distances traveled; sailing ships, and later huge steamers as described in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, plodded across the length of the Indian Ocean to disgorge pilgrims on Arabian docks. Yet the huge numbers of Southeast Asian pilgrims may be even more phenomenal if one thinks of the spiritual distances traveled. The variants of Islam practiced in Southeast Asia have traditionally been seen as syncretic, making the effort, expense, and meaning of undertaking the Hajj hugely important in local life. Millions of Southeast Asians, from Southern Thailand into Malaysia and Singapore, from Indonesia up through Brunei and the Southern Philippines, have now made this voyage. More undertake it every year. The movement of Islam in global spaces has become a topic of interest to states, scholars, and the educated reading public for many reasons. The Hajj is still the single largest transmission variant of Muslim ideologies and fraternity in the modern world. This book attempts to write an overarching history of the Hajj from Southeast Asia, encompassing very early times all the way up until the present.

Scholarship on Islam and women has expanded exponentially over the past twenty years, with increasing specialization within the field, as well as cross-pollination between other fields and disciplines. With this surge in interest there is a genuine need for a systematic reference work to provide balanced comprehensive coverage of the field.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women is designed to meet this need by providing clear, current, comprehensive information on the major topics of scholarly interest within the study of women and Islam.
The Encyclopedia, which is based on the highly acclaimed Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World and is one of four encyclopedias in the Islamic World series, is being published as an e-book, in print, and on Oxford Islamic Studies Online. It features several hundred in-depth articles written by leading experts and is an excellent single source for accurate overview articles covering all aspects of this flourishing area of research.

Acclaimed worldwide as the definitive biography of the Prophet Muhammad in the English language, Martin Lings' "Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources" is unlike any other. Based on Arabic sources of the eighth and ninth centuries, of which some important passages are translated here for the first time, "Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources" owes the freshness and directness of its approach to the words of men and women who heard Muhammad speak and witnessed the events of his life.---Martin Lings' gift for narrative, and his adoption of a style which is extremely readable, allows both the simplicity and grandeur of the story to shine through. The result is a book which will be read with equal enjoyment by those already familiar with Muhammad's life and those coming to it for the first time. "Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources" was selected as the best biography of the Prophet in English at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad in 1983.

What is the status of religious freedom in the world today? What barriers does it face? What are the realistic prospects for improvement, and why does this matter? The Future of Religious Freedom addresses these critical questions by assembling in one volume some of the best forward-thinking and empirical research on religious liberty, international legal trends, and societal dynamics. Top scholars from law, political science, diplomacy, sociology, and religion explore the status, value, and challenges of religious liberty around the world - with illustrations from a wide range of historical situations, contemporary contexts, and constitutional regimes. With a thematic focus on the nature of religious markets and statecraft, the book surveys conditions in different regions, from the Muslim arc to Asia to Eastern Europe. It probes dynamics in both established and emerging democracies. It features up-to-date treatments of such pivotal nations as China, Russia, and Turkey, as well as illuminating new threats to conscience and religious autonomy in the United States and in kin countries of the English speaking world. Finally, it demonstrates the vital contribution of religious freedom to inter-religious harmony, thriving societies, and global security, and applies these findings to the momentous issue of advancing freedom and democracy in Islamic cultures.

This collection of seven essays offers wide-ranging and in-depth studies of locations sacred to Muslims, of the histories of these sites (real or imagined), and of the ways in which Muslims and members of other religions have interacted peaceably in sacred times and spaces. The volume begins with a discussion by David Damrel of the official, hostile, Muslim attitude toward practices at shrines in South Asia. Lance Laird then presents a case study of a shrine holy to Palestinian Christians, who identify its patron as St. George, as well as to Palestinian Muslims, who believe that its patron is al Khadr. Ethel Sara Wolper illustrates how al Khadr's patronage was used also to show Muslim connections to Christian sites in Anatolia, and JoAnn Gross's essay explores oral and written traditions linking shrines in Tajikistan to traditional Muslim locations and figures. A chapter by the late Thomas Sizgorich examines how Christian and Muslim authors used monastic settings to reimagine the relationship between the two religions, and Alexandra Cuffel offers a study of attitudes towards the mixing of religious groups in religious festivals in eleventh- to sixteenth-century Egypt. Finally, Eric Ross shows how the Layenne Sufi order incorporates a singular combination of Christian and Muslim figures and festivals in its history and practices. Muslims and Others in Sacred Space will be an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the complex meanings of sacred sites in Muslim history.

We live in a world polarized by the ongoing conflict between Muslims, Christians and Jews, but - in an extraordinary narrative spanning fourteen centuries - Zachary Karabell argues that the relationship between Islam and the West has never been simply one of animosity and competition, but has also comprised long periods of cooperation and coexistence. Through a rich tapestry of stories and a compelling cast of characters, People of the Book uncovers known history, and forgotten history, as Karabell takes the reader on an extraordinary journey through the Arab and Ottoman empires, the Crusades and the Catholic Reconquista and into the modern era, as he examines the vibrant examples of discord and concord that have existed between these monotheistic faiths. By historical standards, today's fissure between Islam and the West is not exceptional, but because of weapons of mass destruction, that fissure has the potential to undo us more than ever before. This is reason enough to look back and remember that Christians, Jews and Muslims have lived constructively with one another. They have fought and taught each other, and they have learned from one another. Retrieving this forgotten history is a vital ingredient to a more stable, secure world.

The question of tolerance and Islam is not a new one. Polemicists are certain that Islam is not a tolerant religion. As evidence they point to the rules governing the treatment of non-Muslim permanent residents in Muslim lands, namely the dhimmi rules that are at the center of this study. These rules, when read in isolation, are certainly discriminatory in nature. They legitimate discriminatory treatment on grounds of what could be said to be religious faith and religious difference. The dhimmi rules are often invoked as proof-positive of the inherent intolerance of the Islamic faith (and thereby of any believing Muslim) toward the non-Muslim. This book addresses the problem of the concept of 'tolerance' for understanding the significance of the dhimmi rules that governed and regulated non-Muslim permanent residents in Islamic lands. In doing so, it suggests that the Islamic legal treatment of non-Muslims is symptomatic of the more general challenge of governing a diverse polity. Far from being constitutive of an Islamic ethos, the dhimmi rules raise important thematic questions about Rule of Law, governance, and how the pursuit of pluralism through the institutions of law and governance is a messy business. As argued throughout this book, an inescapable, and all-too-often painful, bottom line in the pursuit of pluralism is that it requires impositions and limitations on freedoms that are considered central and fundamental to an individual's well-being, but which must be limited for some people in some circumstances for reasons extending well beyond the claims of a given individual. A comparison to recent cases from the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Court of Human Rights reveals that however different and distant premodern Islamic and modern democratic societies may be in terms of time, space, and values, legal systems face similar challenges when governing a populace in which minority and majority groups diverge on the meaning and implication of values deemed fundamental to a particular polity.

The author examines from different perspectives (theological and philosophical as well as socio-political and historical) the significance of the concept of the individual in the ways of thinking of Iranians. This book establishes that the mystical dimension of Islamic thought, the divine nature of Islamic law and, the mode of relationship between ruler and the ruled, in combination, counteracted growth of concern for the individual self in Iranian thought.

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.

The fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the 2005 Danish cartoon fracas awakened many people to the potency of blasphemy accusations in the Muslim world. Accusations and charges such as "blasphemy," "apostasy," "insulting Islam," or "hurting Muslims' religious feelings" pose a far greater danger than censorship of irreverent caricatures of Mohammad: they are increasingly used as key tools by authoritarian governments and extremist forces in the Muslim world to acquire and consolidate power. These charges, which draw on disputed interpretations of Islamic law and carry a traditional punishment of death, have proved effective in crushing or intimidating not only converts and heterodox groups, but also political and religious reformers. In fact, one reason for the recent growth of more repressive forms of Islam is their use of accusations of blasphemy, apostasy, and related charges to intimidate and silence their religious opponents and make any criticism of their own actions and ideas religiously suspect. The effect of such laws thus goes far beyond what might narrowly be called religious matters. This volume provides the first world survey of the range and effects of apostasy and blasphemy accusations in the contemporary Muslim world, in international organizations, and in the West. The authors argue that we need to understand the context, history, impact, and mechanics of the blasphemy phenomenon in modern Muslim societies and guidance on how to effectively respond. The book covers the persecution of Muslims who convert to another religion or decide that they have become agnostic or atheists, as well as 'heretics:' those who are accused of claiming a prophet after Mohammed, such as Baha'is and Ahmadis. It also documents the political effects in Muslim societies of blasphemy and apostasy laws, as well as non-governmental fatwas and vigilante violence. It describes the cases of hundreds of victims, including political dissidents, religious reformers, journalists, writers, artists, movie makers, and religious minorities throughout the Muslim world. Finally, it addresses the legal evolution toward new blasphemy laws in the West; the increasing use of laws on "toleration" in the West, which may become surrogate blasphemy laws; increasing pressure by Muslim governments to make Western countries and international organizations enforce laws to restrict speech; and the increasing use of violence to stifle expression in the West even in the absence of law. Its foreword is by Indonesia's late President Abdurrahman Wahid.