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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Religious life & practice
Al-Minhaj Al-Sawi is a milestone work, the first work of its kind
for many centuries. It is a compendium of Prophetic Hadiths,
categorised under a number of headings and compiled with clear
relevance to the lives and situation of Muslims in the modern age.
The work is authenticated by a rigorous and detailed process of
Takhreej - referencing each hadith to its sources - from a study of
over 300 authentic works of hadith. This work will be useful for
academics in many relevant fields, whether researching the basis of
orthodox Sunni belief and practice, or examining the contemporary
Muslim response to religious extremism. It is split into 2 volumes:
Prophetic Virtues and Miracles and Righteous Character and Social
Interactions. The first part Prophetic Virtues and Miracles will
prove invaluable to readers who wish to understand, in the light of
the most authenticated and sourced classical Islamic materials, the
responsibilities of Muslims in modern age, and the rights of
others, and will provide clarity in relation to the Prophet
Muhammad's virtues and life, his methods of worship and spiritual
practice and other aspects of his Sunnah.
In this groundbreaking book, based on in-depth ethnographic
research spanning ten years, Antoinette Elizabeth DeNapoli brings
to light the little known, and often marginalized, lives of female
Hindu ascetics (sadhus) in the North Indian state of Rajasthan. Her
book offers a new perspective on the practice of asceticism in
India today, exploring a phenomenon she terms vernacular
asceticism. Examining the everyday religious worlds and practices
of primarily "unlettered" female sadhus who come from a variety of
castes, Real Sadhus Sing to God illustrates that the female sadhus
whom DeNapoli knew experience asceticism in relational and
celebratory ways and construct their lives as paths of singing to
God. While the sadhus have combined ritual initiation with
institutionalized and orthodox orders of asceticism, they also draw
on the non-orthodox traditions of the medieval devotional
poet-saints of North India to create a form of asceticism that
synthesizes multiple and competing world views. DeNapoli suggests
that in the vernacular asceticism of the sadhus, singing to God
serves as the female way of being an ascetic. As women who have
escaped the dominant societal expectations of marriage and
housework, female sadhus are unusual because they devote themselves
to a way of life traditionally reserved for men in Indian society.
Female sadhus are simultaneously respected and distrusted for
transgressing normative gender roles in order to dedicate
themselves to a life of singing to the divine. Real Sadhus Sing to
God is the first book-length study to explore the ways in which
female sadhus perform and, thus, create gendered views of
asceticism through their singing, storytelling, and sacred text
practices, which DeNapoli characterizes as the sadhus' "rhetoric of
renunciation." The book also examines the relationship between
asceticism (sannyas) and devotion (bhakti) in contemporary
contexts. It brings together two disparate fields of study in
religious scholarship-yoga/asceticism and bhakti-through use of the
orienting metaphor of singing bhajans (devotional songs) to
understand vernacular asceticism in contemporary India.
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