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There are two main trends distinguishable amongst Muslim reformists - revivalists and modernists. This book charts and analyses the main…
trends of Muslim reformist political thought in Bukhara. It is the first to utilize original sources preserved in Soviet archives that were previously inaccessible to western scholars. The author has translated numerous original documents from Tajiki and Russian into English. This book thus serves as a useful resource for students of Islam, Central Asia, the former Soviet Union, and of law, politics and philosophy.This is the only volume dedicated to the Alevis available in English and based on sustained fieldwork in Turkey. The…
Alevis now have an increasingly high profile for those interested in the diverse cultures of contemporary Turkey, and in the role of Islam in the modern world. As a heterodox Islamic group, the Alevis have no established doctrine. This book reveals that as the Alevi move from rural to urban sites, they grow increasingly secular, and their religious life becomes more a guiding moral culture than a religious message to be followed literally. But the study shows that there is nothing inherently secular-proof within Islam, and that belief depends upon a range of contexts.Divorcing Traditions: Islamic Marriage Law and the Making of Indian Secularism
By Katherine Lemons. 2019
Divorcing Traditions is an ethnography of Islamic legal expertise and practices in India, a secular state in which Muslims are…
a significant minority and where Islamic judgments are not legally binding. Katherine Lemons argues that an analysis of divorce in accordance with Islamic strictures is critical to the understanding of Indian secularism. Lemons analyzes four marital dispute adjudication forums run by Muslim jurists or lay Muslims to show that religious law does not muddle the categories of religion and law but generates them. Drawing on ethnographic and archival research conducted in these four institutions—NGO-run women's arbitration centers (mahila panchayats); sharia courts (dar ul-qazas); a Muslim jurist's authoritative legal opinions (fatwas); and the practice of what a Muslim legal expert (mufti) calls "spiritual healing"—Divorcing Traditions shows how secularism is an ongoing project that seeks to establish and maintain an appropriate relationship between religion and politics. A secular state is always secularizing. And yet, as Lemons demonstrates, the state is not the only arbiter of the relationship between religion and law: religious legal forums help to constitute the categories of private and public, religious and secular upon which secularism relies. In the end, because Muslim legal expertise and practice are central to the Indian legal system and because Muslim divorce's contested legal status marks a crisis of the secular distinction between religion and law, Muslim divorce, argues Lemons, is a key site for understanding Indian secularism.Improvisational Islam: Indonesian Youth in a Time of Possibility
By Nur Amali Ibrahim. 2018
Improvisational Islam is about novel and unexpected ways of being Muslim, where religious dispositions are achieved through techniques that have…
little or no precedent in classical Islamic texts or concepts. Nur Amali Ibrahim foregrounds two distinct autodidactic university student organizations, each trying to envision alternative ways of being Muslim independent from established religious and political authorities. One group draws from methods originating from the business world, like accounting, auditing, and self-help, to promote a puritanical understanding of the religion and spearhead Indonesia’s spiritual rebirth. A second group reads Islamic scriptures alongside the western human sciences. Both groups, he argues, show a great degree of improvisation and creativity in their interpretations of Islam.These experimental forms of religious improvisations and practices have developed in a specific Indonesian political context that has evolved after the deposal of President Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime in 1998. At the same time, Improvisational Islam suggests that the Indonesian case study brings into sharper relief processes that are happening in ordinary Muslim life everywhere. To be a practitioner of their religion, Muslims draw on and are inspired by not only their holy scriptures, but also the non-traditional ideas and practices that circulate in their society, which importantly include those originating in the West. In the contemporary political discourse where Muslims are often portrayed as uncompromising and adversarial to the West and where bans and walls are deemed necessary to keep them out, this story about flexible and creative Muslims is an important one to tell.Visions of Deliverance: Moriscos and the Politics of Prophecy in the Early Modern Mediterranean
By Mayte Green-Mercado. 2019
In Visions of Deliverance, Mayte Green-Mercado traces the circulation of Muslim and crypto-Muslim apocalyptic texts known as joferes through formal…
and informal networks of merchants, Sufis, and other channels of diffusion among Muslims and Christians across the Mediterranean from Constantinople and Venice to Morisco towns in eastern Spain. The movement of these prophecies from the eastern to the western edges of the Mediterranean illuminates strategies of Morisco cultural and political resistance, reconstructing both productive and oppositional interactions and exchanges between Muslims and Christians in the early modern Mediterranean.Challenging a historiography that has primarily understood Morisco apocalyptic thought as the expression of a defeated group that was conscious of the loss of their culture and identity, Green-Mercado depicts Moriscos not simply as helpless victims of Christian oppression but as political actors whose use of end-times discourse helped define and construct their society anew. Visions of Deliverance helps us understand the implications of confessionalization, forced conversion, and assimilation in the early modern period and the intellectual and theological networks that shaped politics and identity across the Mediterranean in this era.Hamka and Islam: Cosmopolitan Reform in the Malay World
By Khairudin Aljunied. 2018
Since the early twentieth century, Muslim reformers have been campaigning for a total transformation of the ways in which Islam…
is imagined in the Malay world. One of the most influential is the author Haji Abdul Malik bin Abdul Karim Amrullah, commonly known as Hamka.In Hamka and Islam, Khairudin Aljunied employs the term "cosmopolitan reform" to describe Hamka's attempt to harmonize the many streams of Islamic and Western thought while posing solutions to the various challenges facing Muslims. Among the major themes Aljunied explores are reason and revelation, moderation and extremism, social justice, the state of women in society, and Sufism in the modern age, as well as the importance of history in reforming the minds of modern Muslims.Aljunied argues that Hamka demonstrated intellectual openness and inclusiveness toward a whole range of thoughts and philosophies to develop his own vocabulary of reform, attesting to Hamka's unique ability to function as a conduit for competing Islamic and secular groups.Hamka and Islam pushes the boundaries of the expanding literature on Muslim reformism and reformist thinkers by grounding its analysis within the Malay experience and by using the concept of cosmopolitan reform in a new context.Hearing Allah’s Call: Preaching and Performance in Indonesian Islam
By Julian Millie. 2017
Hearing Allah’s Call changes the way we think about Islamic communication. In the city of Bandung in Indonesia, sermons are…
not reserved for mosques and sites for Friday prayers. Muslim speakers are in demand for all kinds of events, from rites of passage to motivational speeches for companies and other organizations. Julian Millie spent fourteen months sitting among listeners at such events, and he provides detailed contextual description of the everyday realities of Muslim listening as well as preaching. In describing the venues, the audience, and preachers—many of whom are women—he reveals tensions between entertainment and traditional expressions of faith and moral rectitude. The sermonizers use in-jokes, double entendres, and mimicry in their expositions, playing on their audiences’ emotions, triggering reactions from critics who accuse them of neglecting listeners’ intellects. Millie focused specifically on the listening routines that enliven everyday life for Muslims in all social spaces—imagine the hardworking preachers who make Sunday worship enjoyable for rural as well as urban Americans—and who captivate audiences with skills that attract criticism from more formal interpreters of Islam. The ethnography is rich and full of insightful observations and details. Hearing Allah’s Call will appeal to students of the practice of anthropology as well as all those intrigued by contemporary Islam.This companion volume to the highly successful Islam in Malaysian Foreign Policy explores the extent to which foreign policy in…
the world's largest Muslim nation has been influenced by Islamic considerations.Moral Rationalism and Sharī'a is the first attempt at outlining the scope for a theological reading of Sharī'a, based on…
a critical examination of why 'Adliyya theological ethics have not significantly impacted Shī'ī readings of Sharī'a. Within Shī'ī works of Sharī 'a legal theory (usūl al-fiqh) there is a theoretical space for reason as an independent source of normativity alongside the Qur’ān and the Prophetic tradition. The position holds that humans are capable of understanding moral values independently of revelation. Describing themselves as 'Adliyya (literally the people of Justice), this allows the Shī 'a, who describe themselves as 'Adiliyya (literally, the People of Justice), to attribute a substantive rational conception of justice to God, both in terms of His actions and His regulative instructions. Despite the Shī'ī adoption of this moral rationalism, independent judgments of rational morality play little or no role in the actual inference of Sharī 'a norms within mainstream contemporary Shī'ī thought. Through a close examination of the notion of independent rationality as a source in modern Shī'ī usūl al-fiqh, the obstacles preventing this moral rationalism from impacting the understanding of Sharī 'a are shown to be purely epistemic. In line with the ‘emic’ (insider) approach adopted, these epistemic obstacles are revisited identifying the scope for allowing a reading of Sharī'a that is consistent with the fundamental moral rationalism of Shī'ī thought. It is argued that judgments of rational morality, even when not definitively certain, cannot be ignored in the face of the apparent meaning of texts that are themselves also not certain. An 'Adliyya reading of Sharī'a demands that the strength of independent rational evidence be reconciled against the strength of any other apparently conflicting evidence, such that independent judgments of rational morality act as a condition for the validity of precepts attributed to a just and moral God.Philip Pullman, author of 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, has remarked that "after nourishment, shelter, and companionship, stories are the thing…
we need most in the world." This new collection of Rumi stories fills that need. This fresh prose translation of 105 short teaching stories by Rumi, which form the core of the six-volume Masnavi, explores the hidden spiritual aspects of everyday experience. Rumi transforms the seemingly mundane events of daily life into profound Sufi teaching moments. These prose gems open the mystical portal to the world of the ancient mystic. These stories include well-known and popular tales such as "Angel of Death," "The Sufi and His Cheating Wife," "Moses and the Shepherd," "Chickpeas," and "The Greek and Chinese Painters" as well as the less commonly quoted parables: "The Basket Weaver," "The Mud Eater," and "A Sackful of Pebbles." Rumi's voice alternates between playful and authoritative, whether he is telling stories of ordinary lives or inviting the discerning reader to higher levels of introspection and attainment of transcendent values. Mafi's translations delicately reflect the nuances of Rumi's poetry while retaining the positive tone of all of Rumi's writings, as well as the sense of suspense and drama that mark the essence of the Masnavi.Kahlil Gibran's Little Book of Wisdom
By Kahlil Gibran. 2019
One of the most popular and profound inspirational writers of all time shares simple wisdom for living a happy and…
fulfilling life. This book is a collection of Gibran's words on how to live. Here are his thoughts on what it means to live in community and solitude and what gives life meaning, along with his often prescient views on government, organized religion, wealth, and commerce. Gibran's sensibility feels contemporary. He did not recognize any ultimate authority outside of the human soul: "It were wiser to speak less of God, whom we cannot understand and more of each other, whom we may understand." This is the essential Gibran, with 88 selections organized into 5 sections that elucidate answers to the questions that each of us face: Living a Wise Life Community Wisdom Wise Exchange Wisdom from Solitude Wisdom Beyond Words This inspirational gift volume gently guides readers through life’s big issues: meaning and mortality, good and evil, and discovering an authentic spiritual path. Suitable for all gift-giving occasions, it is a book that delights, informs, and inspires.Far from the Caliph's Gaze: Being Ahmadi Muslim in the Holy City of Qadian
By Nicholas H. Evans. 2020
How do you prove that you're Muslim? This is not a question that most believers ever have to ask themselves,…
and yet for members of India's Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, it poses an existential challenge. The Ahmadis are the minority of a minority—people for whom simply being Muslim is a challenge. They must constantly ask the question: What evidence could ever be sufficient to prove that I belong to the faith? In Far from the Caliph's Gaze Nicholas H. A. Evans explores how a need to respond to this question shapes the lives of Ahmadis in Qadian in northern India. Qadian was the birthplace of the Ahmadiyya community's founder, and it remains a location of huge spiritual importance for members of the community around the world. Nonetheless, it has been physically separated from the Ahmadis' spiritual leader—the caliph—since partition, and the believers who live there now and act as its guardians must confront daily the reality of this separation even while attempting to make their Muslimness verifiable.By exploring the centrality of this separation to the ethics of everyday life in Qadian, Far from the Caliph's Gaze presents a new model for the academic study of religious doubt, one that is not premised on a concept of belief but instead captures the richness with which people might experience problematic relationships to truth.This is a timely study of the international relations of Islamic states, dealing both with the evolving theory of pan-Islamism…
from classical to post-caliphal times and the foreign-policy practice of contemporary states, especially Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan, from the colonial period to the global aftermath of September 11. With a concise but analytic style, the book engages one-by-one with the questions of political theory, political geography and political sociology as they relate to international Islam. Its primary empirical investigation is centred on the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a powerful pan-Islamic regime, sometimes referred to as the 'Muslim United Nations'. In its theoretical deliberations on Islam and the postmodern condition, the book reconstructs contemporary understandings of how religious ideas and identities influence international politics in the Islamic world.One of the greatest dilemmas facing Muslims today is the fact that Muslim culture is often seemingly incompatible with the…
culture of the modern Western world, and the features associated with it - technological progress, consumerism, and new electronic communication, all of which have the potential for a homogenizing effect on any culture. This book explores many key aspects of the globalisation process, discussing how Muslim countries are coping with globalisation, as well as considering how the West is responding to Islam.The Future of Islam: A New Edition
By Wilfred Scawen Blunt. 2002
When it first appeared in 1882, this book was a pioneering work in every respect. It was the first coherent…
study of 'modern' Islam, explaining in a simple and functional manner its tenets and roots, the diversity of its cultural and political experience, and its dynamism and potential for good in the modern world. This was at a time when the Muslim world was perceived by most people in the west as inert and spent, caught in an irredeemable malaise of its own making. Blunt's attitude, shaped by several factors and sharpened by personal knowledge of important parts of the Muslim world and close association with many leading reformers in it, was unprecedented and startling at the time. This new edition includes an Introduction and numerous footnotes, updating statistics, explaining the background to historical events and religious and political figures, and filling in gaps.Debates on Islam and Knowledge in Malaysia and Egypt: Shifting Worlds
By Mona Abaza. 2002
This book is a comparative study of the sociological field in two different Muslim societies: Malaysia and Egypt. It analyses…
the process of the production of 'knowledge' through the example of the modern 'Islamization of knowledge debate' and local empirical variations.Muslim Neoplatonists: An Introduction to the Thought of the Brethren of Purity
By Ian Richard Netton. 2002
The tenth or eleventh century group of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al Safa) are as well known in the Arab world…
as Darwin, Marx and Freud in the west. Designed as an introduction to their ideas, this book concentrates on the Brethren's writings, analyzing the impact on them of thinkers such as Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and the Neoplatonists. Ian Netton traces the influences of Judaism and Christianity, and controversially this book argues that the Brethren of Purity did not belong to the Ismaili branch of Islam as is generally believed.Accretion
By Irfan Ali. 2020
An extraordinary debut set in Toronto, unfurling against the backdrop of an ancient Persian love story. The story of Layla…
and Majnun, made immortal by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi in the 12th century, has been retold thousands of times, in thousands of different ways, throughout literature. Against the backdrop of this story, to the sound-track of modern hip-hop, and amid the struggle of an immigrant family to instill an old faith under new conditions, Irfan Ali’s Accretion hurtles towards an unsustainable, “greater madness.” Majnun, one of the foundational literary characters who haunt Accretion, is also an Arabic epithet for “possessed.” In this tradition, Ali has written a book from the places where the self is no longer the self; places where, in order not to shut down forever, the debris must be cleared, and the soul must inch towards love and hope, “on memory’s dusty beams.” Accretion is written in a contemporary lyricism that honours ancient poetic traditions. It is a familiar story, imbued with a particularity and honesty that only Irfan Ali could bring to the table.Women in Islam: The Western Experience
By Anne-Sofie Roald. 2001
Women in Islam investigates the ongoing debate across the Muslim world and the West on the position of women in…
Islam.Anne-Sofie Roald focuses on how Islamic perceptions of women and gender change in Western Muslim communities. She shows how Islamic attitudes towards social concerns such as gender relations, female circumcision, and female dress emerge as responsive to culture and context, rather than rigid and inflexible.Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature
By Miriam Cooke. 2001
This provocative collection addresses the ways in which Arab women writers are using Islam to empower themselves, and theorizes the…
conditions that have made the appearance of these new voices possible.