Service Alert
Website maintenance April 24 10pm ET
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
On Wednesday April 24 at 10pm ET the CELA website will be unavailable for about 15 minutes for planned maintenance.
Showing 21 - 40 of 1881 items
By Shahzad Bashir. 2005
Fazlallah Astarabadi was a 14th-century Islamic religious leader who believed that the world was about to come to an end.…
This book is the first comprehensive study of Astarabadi's life and thought and also offer a history of his movement. It emphasizes the diversity of medieval Islam by describing an apocalyptic movement founded on the idea that the cosmos contains embedded secrets that become manifest through extraordinary human beings.By Maria M Ebrahimji, Zahra T Suratwala. 2011
Muslim American women are the subject of endless discussions regarding their role in society, their veils as symbols of oppression…
or of freedom, their identity, their patriotism, their womanhood. Yet the voices and life experiences of Muslim American women themselves are rarely heard in the loud rhetoric surrounding the question of Muslims in America. Finally, in I Speak for Myself, 40 American women under the age of 40, share their experiences of their lives as Muslim women in America. While their commonality is faith and citizenship, their voices and their messages are very different. Readers of I Speak for Myself are presented with a kaleidoscope of stories, artfully woven together around the central idea of limitlessness and individuality. A common theme linking these intimate self-portraits will be the way each woman uniquely defies labeling, simply by defining for herself what it means to be American and Muslim and female. Each personal story is a contribution to the larger narrative of life stories and life work of a new generation of Muslim women.There are approximately six million Muslims living in the United States and over one billion around the world. While the events of 9/11 certainly engaged Americans with the religion of Islam, many enduring stereotypes continue to belittle the Muslim American experience; this often leads to a monolithic interpretation of Islam. Such a treatment is especially inappropriate when reflecting on the Muslim American identity, which is by far one of the most culturally, ethnically, and socially diverse of any in the Islamic world. Women of the Muslim community in America could be described as both patriots and practitioners (of faith). Their experiences call for a body of literature that reflects how they celebrate and live Islam in distinctive ways.In the wake of the current rising tide of Islamophobia (see Time Magazine, Aug. 30, 2010), I Speak for Myself is a must read for Americans seeking understanding of Islam from young women who were all born in the USA.By Dorothy Kavanaugh. 2010
Many Westerners associate Islam primarily with the Middle East. But in fact, four countries have larger Muslim populations than Egypt,…
the largest Arab state. Those four countries-Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh-all like within Asia. This volume presents a wealth of statistical and background information on more than 20 Asian nations with significant Muslim populations. The book also provides a valuable overview of the Islamic faith and chronicles the history of Islam's spread into Asia.By Hatem Akil. 2017
This book considers the ways in which Muslims view the way they are being viewed, not viewed, or incorrectly viewed,…
by the West. The book underscores a certain "will-to-visibility" whereby Muslims/ Arabs wish just to be "seen" and to be marked as fellow human beings. The author relates the failure to achieve this visibility to a state of desperation that inextricably and symmetrically ties visibility to violence. When Syrian and Palestinian refugees recently started refusing to be photographed, they clearly ushered the eventual but inevitable collapse of the image and its final futility. The photograph has been completely emptied of its last remaining possibility of signification. The book attempts to engage with questions about the ways in which images are perceived within cross cultural contexts. Why and how do people from different cultural backgrounds view the same image in opposing ways; why do cartoon, photographs, and videos become both the cause and target of bloody political violence - as witnessed recently by the deadly attacks against Charlie Hebdo in France and in the swift military response by the US, Jordan, France, and others to videotaped violence by ISIS.By Raymond Farrin. 2014
The Qur'an, Islam's holy book, is widely misunderstood because it is a difficult book to engage. The Qur'an is not…
written as a straightforward narrative like the Christian Gospels but is composed of discontinuous revelations that are often unclear in placing in an overall context. Structure and Qur’anic Interpretation, aimed both at readers familiar with the Qur’an and at those opening it for the first time, differs from other books on the Qur’an in that it reveals the text’s fundamental symmetrical organization. Moreover, through readings of key Qur'an chapters, Farrin shows how structure serves as a guide to interpretation. Indeed, one finds that the Qur’an’s structure again and again points to universal messages of an ethical nature, rather than to messages whose application may be limited to a specific context. In addition, the book makes a contribution to Qur’anic studies by highlighting literary evidence indicating that the Qur’an was compiled by one author (in all probability, the Prophet Muhammad) and not by an official committee.By Kazim Ali, Sohrab Sepehri, Mohammad Jafar Mahallati. 2013
Sohrab Sepehri (1928-1980) is one of the major Iranian poets of the 20th century. His verses are often-recited in public…
gatherings and lines from them were used as slogans by protesters in 2009. A painter, wood-worker, and poet, Sepehri wrote these poems after journeys through Japan, China, and India, where he was exposed to various cultural arts and spiritual disciplines.By Stephen Schwartz. 2003
Since its formation in 1932, Saudi Arabia has been ruled by two interdependent families. The Al Sa'uds control politics and…
the descendants of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab impose Wahhabism--a violent, fanatical perversion of the pluralistic Islam practiced by most Muslims. Stephen Schwartz argues that Wahhabism, vigorously exported with the help of Saudi oil money, is what incites Palestinian suicide bombers, Osama bin Laden, and other Islamic terrorists throughout the world.Schwartz reveals the hypocrisy of the Saudi regime, whose moderate facade conceals state-sponsored repression and terrorism. He also raises troubling questions about Wahhabi infiltration of America's Islamic community and about U.S. oil companies sanitizing Saudi Arabia's image for the West. This sharp analysis and eye-opening expose illuminates the background to the September 11th terrorist attacks and offers new approaches for U.S. policy toward its closest ally in the Middle East.From the Trade Paperback edition.By Asma Lamrabet. 2016
Today, the issue of Muslim women is held hostage between two perceptions: a conservative Islamic approach and a liberal Western…
approach. At the heart of this debate Muslim women are seeking to reclaim their right to speak in order to re-appropriate their own destinies, calling for the equality and liberation that is at the heart of the Qur'an. However, with few female commentators on the meaning of the Qur'an and an overreliance on the readings of the Qur'an compiled centuries ago this message is often lost. In this book Asma Lamrabet demands a rereading of the Qur'an by women that focuses on its spiritual and humanistic messages in order to alter the lived reality on the ground. By acknowledging the oppression of women, to different degrees, in social systems organized in the name of religion and also rejecting a perspective that seeks to promote Western values as the only means of liberating them, the author is able to define a new way. One in which their refusal to remain silent is an act of devotion and their demand for reform will lead to liberation. Asma Lamarbetis a pathologist in Avicenna Hospital, Rabat, Morocco. She is also an award-winning author of many articles and books tackling Islam and women's issues. Myriam Francois-Cerrahis a writer and broadcaster whose articles have been published in theGuardian,Salon, and elsewhere.By Kazim Ali. 2016
These gently fragmented narrative lyrics pursue enlightenment in long, elegant yet plain-spoken, dark yet ecstatic lines. Ali travels by water…
and by night, seeking the Far Mosque and its overarching paradox: that when God and Self are one, an ascent into Heaven is a voyage within.By Johan Rasanayagam. 2011
In recent years, the Uzbekistan government has been criticized for its brutal suppression of its Muslim population. This book, which…
is based on the author's intimate acquaintance with the region and several years of ethnographic research, is about how Muslims in this part of the world negotiate their religious practices despite the restraints of a stifling authoritarian regime. Fascinatingly, the book also shows how the restrictive atmosphere has actually helped shape the moral context of peoples' lives, and how understandings of what it means to be a Muslim emerge creatively out of lived experience.By Michael Crawford. 2014
Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792) aroused great controversy in his lifetime. More than two centuries after his death, he still…
elicits strong views. For some he is the model of a pious religious activist who fought to establish a regime of Islamic godliness in the least promising of environments. For others, especially Muslims associated with mystic orders or who belong to the Shi'i branch of Islam, he is a hate figure. Few would contest that he shaped the Muslim world. For over 250 years the Wahhabi movement has rested on the twin pillars of a clear, compelling credo and an indissoluble alliance with temporal power. Absolutist, uncompromising theology and political and religious ambition combined to make it the dominant force in Arabia, turning its champions, the Al Sa'ud clan, from petty rulers of a mid-sized settlement into the guardians of Islam's Holy Places, disposing of the earth's greatest identified oil reserves. This thought-provoking and comprehensive biography, which charts the relationship between religious doctrine, political power, and events on the ground, uncovers the life and thoughts of the man who helped establish the first Saudi state and who began a dynastic alliance that continues to the present day.By Taneli Kukkonen. 2014
Ibn Tufayl (1105-1185) was an Andalusian courtier, philosopher, Sufi master, and royal physician to the Almohad Caliphs. He inspired the…
12th-century Andalusian revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy and through his sponsorship he was also responsible for the career of the most renowned Aristotelian of medieval times, Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd (the Latin Averroes). In Ibn Tufayl, we see an exemplar of the kind of versatile and pious scholar early Almohad culture wanted to cultivate.Ibn Tufayl's own intellectual outlook is preserved for us in Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, a philosophical romance that is one of the most beloved and best read pieces in all Arabic literature. A popular and often-copied work in early modern Europe, Hayy has for many come to represent what is distinctive of high classical Arabic philosophy. Ibn Tufayl sets one of the most famous Arabic philosophical works of all time in its historical and philosophical context: it paints a vivid portrait of the world as Ibn Tufayl saw it and as he wished for it to be seen.By William C. Chittick. 2007
Islamic Intellectualism is dead: or so argues William Chittick in this radical new book challenging modern trends in religious thought.…
Whilst many may say that Islamic studies thrives as a subject, Chittick points to the words of one of his former Professors when describing young colleagues: "they know everything one can possibly know about a text, except what it says". Indeed, Chittick states that it is impossible to understand ancient Islamic texts without the years of contemplative study that are anathema to the modern education system. While the modern intellectual with faith often treats their studies and faith in two seperate spheres, Chittick argues that it is essential to return to the ways of the ancient Sufis, who viewed knowledge of the soul, the world, and God as an extension of the same thing, and he bemoans the loss of the spiritual and intellectual highs of the Medieval Islamic period.By Sayeh Meisami. 2013
Mulla Sadra (1572-1640) is perhaps the single most important and influential philosopher in the Muslim world. The author of over…
forty works, he sought to bring to life the whole heritage of Islamic thought, from philosophy to mysticism, and create a more flexible and conciliatory approach to the problems which seemed to dissociate reason from faith. In this wide-ranging profile, Sayeh Meisami reaches beyond historical narrative to assess the true impact of the man and his ideas. This thought provoking and comprehensive account is ideal for readers interested in uncovering the life and thoughts of a man who represents the climax of intellectual tradition at a crucial point in the history of Islamic civilization.By Herbert Berg. 2013
In the mid-1930s, Elijah Muhammad was just one of several competing leaders of the embryonic movement begun by the mysterious…
Wali Fard Muhammad, who claimed to be a prophet of Islam and who had recently disappeared. By the time of his death in 1975, Elijah Muhammad led a movement that may have numbered a few hundred thousand, making him the most powerful Muslim in the United States of America. Even before his death he was overshadowed by the growing legend of Malcolm X, and after his death by the activities of Louis Farrakhan and his own son Warith Deen Mohammed. Each of these men, however, was brought to Islam by Elijah Muhammad. And although Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad's son came to reject his idiosyncratic and racial formulation of Islam, Elijah Muhammad was responsible for introducing hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of African Americans to Islam. Almost four decades after his death, he remains by far the most influential American Muslim.By Michal Biran. 2007
In this novel perspective on a much-maligned figure, Michal Biran explains the monumental impact Chinggis Khan has had upon the…
Islamic World, both positive and negative. Often criticized as a mass-slaughterer, pillager, and arch-enemy of the faith, Biran shows that his constructive influence upon Islam was also considerable - his legacy apparent in Central Asia even today. Covering Chinggis Khan's early career, his conquests, the enduring power of his descendents, and the numerous ways he is presented in different Muslim contexts, this accessible book provides a fascinating insight into one of the most notorious men in history.By Simon A. Wood. 2008
Muhammad Rashid Rida is among the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern period and yet, until this book, his…
writings on religious reform remained unpublished in English. In this paperback version of the flagship English edition, esteemed academic Simon A. Wood rights this wrong by translating and analysing one of his most important works, The Criticisms of the Christians and the Arguments of Islam. Responding to arguments made in the ninetenth century that Islam is 'irrational' or 'inferior to Christianity', and that the unification of religious and political power is a 'barrier to progress', Rida sought to defend Islam and often charged Christianity of its own brand of irrationality. Wood analyses these arguments, showing that Rida's work cannot be separated from the period of colonial humiliation in which it originated. He also takes on the traditional accusation that Rida was a fundamentalist and argues that he was in fact distinctly modernist. Simon A. Wood is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a leading expert on Rashid Rida.By Roy Mottahedeh. 2003
This classic text is rendered directly from the original Arabic by one of America's leading Islamic scholars. This paperback edition…
has been specially published for the many courses for which this book has been requested.By Mahmoud Ayoub. 2003
This balanced and sensitive study draws on a wide range of original sources to provide a scholarly yet highly readable…
account of the period, exploring the delicate interplay between religion and politics and the roots of the conflict that led to the Crisis of Succession and Sunni/Shii schism.