This book offers a novel approach for the study of law in the Judean Desert Scrolls, using the prism of legal theory. Following a couple of decades of scholarly consensus withdrawing from the "Essene hypothesis," it proposes to revive the term, and suggests employing it for the sectarian movement as a whole, while considering the group that lived in Qumran as the Yahad. It further proposes a new suggestion for the emergence of the Yahad, based on the roles of the Examiner and the Instructor in the two major legal codes, the Damascus Document and the Community Rule. The understanding of Essene law is divided into concepts and practices, in order to emphasize the discrepancy between creed, rhetoric, and practices. The abstract exploration of notions such as time, space, obligation, intention, and retribution, is then compared against the realities of social practices, including admission, initiation, covenant, leadership, reproof, and punishment. The legal analysis yields several new suggestions for the study of the scrolls: first, Amihay proposes to rename the two strands of thought of Jewish law, formerly referred to as "nominalism" and "realism," with the terms "legal essentialism" and "legal formalism." The two laws of admission in the Community Rule are distinguished as two different laws, one of an association for a group as a whole, the other as an admission of an individual. The law of reproof is proven to be an independent legal procedure, rather than a preliminary stage of prosecution. The methodological division in this study of thought and practice provides a nuanced approach for the study of law in general, and religious law in particular.

In our age of globalisation and pandemic, how should we react to the new Islamophobic movements now spreading in the West? Everywhere the far right is on the march, with nationalist and populist parties thriving on the back of popular anxieties about Islam and the Muslim presence. Hijab and minaret bans, mosque shootings, hostility to migrants and increasingly scornful media stereotypes seem to endanger the prospects for friendly coexistence and the calm uplifting of Muslim populations. In this series of essays Abdal Hakim Murad dissects the rise of Islamophobia on the basis of Muslim theological tradition. Although the proper response to the current impasse is clearly indicated in Qur'an and Hadith, some have lost the principle of trust in divine wisdom and are responding with hatred, fearfulness or despair. Murad shows that a compassion-based approach, rooted in an authentic theology of divine power, could transform the current quagmire into a bright landscape of great promise for Muslims and their neighbours.

This book provides a detailed history of Hindu goddess traditions with a special focus on the local goddesses of Andhra Pradesh, past and present. The antiquity and the evolution of these goddess traditions are illustrated and documented with the help of archaeological reports, literary sources, inscriptions and art. Tracing the symbols and images of goddess into the brahmanical (Saiva and Vaisnava), Buddhist, and Jaina religious traditions, the book argues effectively how and with what motivations goddesses and their symbolizations were appropriated and transformed. The book also examines the evolution of popular Hindu goddesses such as Durga and Kali, discussing their tribal and agricultural backgrounds. It also deals extensively with how and in what circumstances women are deified and shows how these deified women cults share characteristics with the village goddesses.

Much has been written about the role and presence of the Arabs in the world at the beginning of this millennium, and their ability to meet the challenges overwhelming our planet, bristling as it is with science, technology and latest lethal weapons. Now this new book by Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber penetrates to the heart of the Arab situation by a new route, hitherto uncharted. The author gives us a practical and precise summary of his own contemporary Arab experience from an intercontinental perspective, notable for its success, variety and modernity. Sheikh Mohamed has been able to scale the peaks of international corporate and institutional life, and impose his presence and voice upon them. Here, in a distillation of wisdom drawn from a unique career, he presents us with a practical account of the lessons of his success, so that they can be applied to economic and social institutions and thence to society at large. This book is a translation of the Arabic original, first published in 2009. It therefore pre-dates the events of the`Arab Spring' and other recent upheavals in the Arab world. Its insights are none-theless valid, and are just as applicable to the Arab world today as they were four years ago. Indeed, they have taken on extra urgency in the light of the author's prescient diagnosis of the Arab peoples' thirst for democracy, human rights and proper citizenship in their own countries. SHEIKH MOHAMED BIN ISSA AL JABER was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1959, and is today a prominent international businessman and philanthropist. He is founder and chairman of the MBI Group, a worldwide investment institution operating in the hospitality, real estate, finance, oil and gas, and food industries, as well as the founder and sole patron of the MBI Al Jaber Foundation, a UK-registered charity focused on building bridges between the Middle East and the wider world. Among many other roles he is Special Envoy of the Director General of UNESCO for tolerance, democracy and peace, official UN spokesman for good governance, founder of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, and a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. With a Foreword by Professor Michael Worton.

Yogacara and Tathagatagarbha are often regarded as antagonistic Indian Buddhist traditions. Paramartha (499-569) is traditionally credited with amalgamating these philosophies by translating one of the most influential Tathagatagarbha texts in East Asia, the Awakening of Faith in Mahayana, and introducing Tathagatagarbha notions into his translations of Yogacara texts. Engaging with the digitalized Chinese Buddhist canon, Ching Keng draws on clues from a long-lost Dunhuang fragment and considers its striking similarities with Paramartha's corpus with respect to terminology, style of phrasing, and doctrines. In this cutting-edge interpretation of the concept of jiexing, Keng demystifies the image of Paramartha and makes the case that the fragment holds the key to recover his original teachings.

While the resonance of Giambattista Vico's hermeneutics for postcolonialism has long been recognised, a rupture has been perceived between his intercultural sensibility and the actual content of his philological investigations, which have often been criticised as being Eurocentric and philologically spurious. China is a case in point. In his magnum opus New Science, Vico portrays China as backward and philosophically primitive compared to Europe. In this first study dedicated to China in Vico's thought, Daniel Canaris shows that scholars have been beguiled by Vico's value judgements of China without considering the function of these value judgements in his theory of divine providence. This monograph illustrates that Vico's image of China is best appreciated within the contemporary theological controversies surrounding the Jesuit accommodation of Confucianism. Through close examination of Vico's sources and intellectual context, Canaris argues that by refusing to consider Confucius as a "filosofo", Vico dismantles the rationalist premises of the theological accommodation proposed by the Jesuits and proposes a new functionalist valorisation of non-Christian religion that anticipates post-colonial critiques of the Enlightenment.

In this book, the author, with his extensive knowledge of the Pali canon (the earliest texts of Buddhism), argues that, in his lifetime, the Buddha and his mission were regarded quite differently to the manner in which they are presented today. Far from being seen as one teaching a means of liberation for all to follow, he was instead regarded - as is still the typical Indian guru - as one imparting teachings only to those whom he deemed capable of benefiting from them. In the story of initiation as recorded in the "Nikayas" (discourses of the Buddha compiled by his contemporaries immediately following his death), this book presents evidence that makes it clear that salvation in early Buddhism depended upon the saving intervention of the Buddha's grace and that, contrary to the now commonly accepted view of Buddhism as a rationalistic philosophy of self-endeavour, the picture that emerges from a careful examination of the canonical texts is one of Buddhism as a revealed religion in every sense of the term, and the Buddha as every bit the divine guru. In considering the relationship of Buddhism to the Brahmanic (Hindu) tradition, this book shows that the Buddha was critical of the Brahmins solely on the grounds that they no longer lived up to the social and religious ideals associated with their predecessors, and that, if the Buddha was a reformer, this was only so in the sense that he advocated a return to the former conservatism of Vedic India.

Written in 1938, Composite Nationalism and Islam laid out in systematic form the positions that the author had taken in speeches and letters from the early 1920s on the question of nationalism as well as other related issues of national importance. The book aimed at opposing the divisive policy of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the Muslim League. It mainly deals with two aspects, i.e. the meaning of the term qaum and how it is distinct from the term millat, and secondly, the crucial distinction between these two words and their true meanings in the holy Koran and the Hadith tradition. By proposing composite nationalism, this important book strongly argues that despite cultural, linguistic and religious differences, the people of India are but one nation. According to the author, any effort to divide Indians on the basis of religion, caste, culture, ethnicity and language is a ploy of the ruling power.

Examining the theme of child sacrifice as a psychological challenge, this book applies a unique approach to religious ideas by looking at beliefs and practices that are considered deviant, but also make up part of mainstream religious discourse in Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Ancient religious mythology, which survives through living traditions and transmitted narratives, rituals, and writings, is filled with violent stories, often involving the targeting of children as ritual victims. Christianity offers Abraham's sacrifice and assures us that the "only begotten son" has died, and then been resurrected. This version of the sacrifice myth has dominated the West. It is celebrated in an act of fantasy cannibalism, in which the believers share the divine son's flesh and blood. This book makes the connection between Satanism stories in the 1980s, the Blood Libel in Europe, The Eucharist, and Eastern Mediterranean narratives of child sacrifice.

Nirmala S. Salgado offers a groundbreaking study of the politics of representation of Buddhist nuns. Challenging assumptions about writing on gender and Buddhism, Salgado raises important theoretical questions about the applicability of liberal feminist concepts and language to the practices of Buddhist nuns. Based on extensive research in Sri Lanka as well as on interviews with Theravada and Tibetan nuns from around the world, Salgado's study invites a reconsideration of female renunciation. How do scholarly narratives continue to be complicit in reinscribing colonialist and patriarchal stories about Buddhist women? In what ways have recent debates contributed to the construction of the subject of the Theravada bhikkhuni? How do key Buddhist concepts such as dukkha, samsara, and sila ground female renunciant practices? Salgado's provocative analysis of modern discourses about the supposed empowerment of nuns challenges interpretations of female renunciation articulated in terms of secular notions such as ''freedom'' in renunciation, and questions the idea that the higher ordination of nuns constitutes a movement in which female renunciants act as agents seeking to assert their autonomy in a struggle against patriarchal norms. Salgado argues that the concept of a global sisterhood of nuns-an idea grounded in a notion of equality as a universal ideal-promotes a discourse of dominance about the lives of non-Western women and calls for more nuanced readings of the everyday renunciant practices and lives of Buddhist nuns. Buddhist Nuns and Gendered Practice is essential reading for anyone interested in the connections between religion and power, subjectivity and gender, and feminism and postcolonialism.

The study of religions is essential for understanding other cultures, building a sense of belonging in a multicultural world and fostering a global intercultural dialogue. Exploring Chinese religions as one interlocutor in this dialogue, Diana Arghirescu engages with Song-dynasty Confucian and Buddhist theoretical developments through a detailed study of the original texts of the Chan scholar-monk Qisong (1007-1072) and the Neo-Confucian master Zhu Xi (1130-1200). Starting with these figures, she builds an interpretive theory focusing on "ethical interrelatedness" and proposes it as a theoretical tool for the study of the Chinese religious traditions. By actively engaging with other contemporary theories of religion and refusing to approach Chinese religions with Western frameworks, Arghirescu's comparative perspective makes it possible to uncover differences between the various Western and Chinese cultural presuppositions upon which these theories are built. As such, this book breaks new ground in the methodology of religious studies, comparative philosophy and furthers our understanding of the Confucian-Buddhist interaction.

Translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur'an (also known as The Koran) is the sacred book of Islam. It is the word of God whose truth was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad through the angel Gabriel over a period of 23 years. As it was revealed, so it was committed to memory by his companions, though written copies were also made by literate believers during the lifetime of the Prophet. The first full compilation was by Abu Bakar, the first Caliph, and it was then recompiled in the original dialect by the third Caliph Uthman, after the best reciters had fallen in battle. Muslims believe that the truths of The Holy Qur'an are fully and authentically revealed only in the original classical Arabic. However, as the influence of Islam grows and spreads to the modern world, it is recognised that translation is an important element in introducing and explaining Islam to a wider audience. This translation, by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, is considered to be the most faithful rendering available in English.

This volume focuses on the migration and acculturation of images in Jewish culture and how that reflects intercultural exchange. Gender aspects of Jewish art are also highlighted, as is the role of images in interreligious encounters. Other topics covered include the history, codicology, and iconography of a Haggadah produced in the late fifteenth century.