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Friendship in Islamic Ethics and World Politics
By Mohammad Jafar Amir Mahallati. 2019
Based on a decade of direct diplomatic engagement with the United Nations, a decade of teaching on international relations, and…
another decade of research and teaching on Islamic and comparative peace studies, this book offers a friendship-related academic framework that examines shared moral concepts, philosophical paradigms, and political experiences that can develop and expand multidisciplinary conversations between the Christian West and the Muslim East. By advancing multicultural and interreligious discourses on friendship, this book helps promote actual friendships among diverse cultures and peoples. This is not a monologue. It provides a model of conversations among scholars and political actors who come from diverse international and interreligious backgrounds. The word “Islamic” should not mislead the reader to suspect that this edited volume delves only into religious discourses. Rather, it provides a forum for conversations within and between religious and philosophical perspectives. It sparks friendship conversations thematically and through disciplinary and cultural diversity. The result of the work of many prominent international scholars and diplomats over many years, it conveys at least one message clearly: friendship matters for not only our happiness but also for our survival.The Literary Qur'an: Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb
By Hoda El Shakry. 2020
The novel, the literary adage has it, reflects a world abandoned by God. Yet the possibilities of novelistic form and…
literary exegesis exceed the secularizing tendencies of contemporary literary criticism. Showing how the Qurʾan itself invites and enacts critical reading, Hoda El Shakry’s Qurʾanic model of narratology enriches our understanding of literary sensibilities and practices in the Maghreb across Arabophone and Francophone traditions. The Literary Qurʾan mobilizes the Qurʾan’s formal, narrative, and rhetorical qualities, alongside embodied and hermeneutical forms of Qurʾanic pedagogy, to theorize modern Maghrebi literature. Challenging the canonization of secular modes of reading that occlude religious epistemes, practices, and intertexts, it attends to literature as a site where the process of entextualization obscures ethical imperatives. Engaging with the Arab-Islamic tradition of adab—a concept demarcating the genre of belles lettres, as well as social and moral comportment—El Shakry demonstrates how the critical pursuit of knowledge is inseparable from the spiritual cultivation of the self.Foregrounding form and praxis alike, The Literary Qurʾan stages a series of pairings that invite paratactic readings across texts, languages, and literary canons. The book places twentieth-century novels by canonical Francophone writers (Abdelwahab Meddeb, Assia Djebar, Driss Chraïbi) into conversation with lesser-known Arabophone ones (Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī, al-Ṭāhir Waṭṭār, Muḥammad Barrāda). Theorizing the Qurʾan as a literary object, process, and model, this interdisciplinary study blends literary and theological methodologies, conceptual vocabularies, and reading practices.Feminist Edges Of The Qur'an
By Aysha Hidayatullah. 2014
Aysha A. Hidayatullah offers the first comprehensive examination of contemporary feminist Qur'anic interpretation, exploring its dynamic challenges to Islamic tradition…
and contemporary Muslim views of the Qur'an. She analyzes major feminist readings of the Qur'an beginning in the late twentieth century, synthesizing their common concepts and methods and revealing their vital part in the development of the nascent field of Qur'anic tafsir (exegesis).Hidayatullah contributes her own critical assessment of feminist ''impasses'' in the Qur'anic text and the field's appeals to the principles of equality and justice. She expands these observations into a radical critique of feminist approaches to the Qur'an, arguing that the feminist exegeticalendeavor has reached a point of irresolvable contradiction by making claims about the Qur'an that are not fully supported by the text. Hidayatullah outlines major challenges to the authority of feminist interpretations of the Qur'an and interrogates the feminist premises on which they have relied, questioning the viability of current strands of feminist Qur'anic interpretation and proposing a major revision of its exegetical positions.An innovative work of Muslim feminist theology, this volume offers an essential contribution to conversations about feminist tafsir and asking bold questions at the ''edge'' of Qur'anic interpretation.Democratic Education and Muslim Philosophy: Interfacing Muslim and Communitarian Thought
By Nuraan Davids, Yusef Waghid. 2019
This book examines how democratic education is conceptualised by exploring understandings of emotions in learning. The authors argue that emotion…
is both an embodiment and enhancement of democratic education: that rationality and emotion are not separate entities, but exist on a continuum. While democratic education would not exist if it were incommensurate with reason, making judgements about the human condition could not happen without invoking emotion. Synthesising Muslim scholarship with the perspectives of the Western world, the book draws on scholars such as Ibn al-Arabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Fazlur Rahman to offer an enriched and expanded notion of democratic education. This engaging and reflective work will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational philosophy and cultural studies.Islamicity Indices: The Seed For Change (Political Economy Of Islam Ser.)
By Hossein Askari, Hossein Mohammadkhan. 2016
The extent of Islamicity, or what Islam demands, is measured to confirm that self-declared Muslim countries have not adopted foundational…
Islamic teachings for rule-compliant Muslim communities. Western countries, on the other hand, are demonstrated to have better implemented fundamental Islamic teachings for a thriving society.Islam: A Concise Introduction
By Huston Smith. 2001
Originally titled The Religions of Man, this completely revised and updated edition of Smith's masterpiece, now with an engaging new…
foreword, explores the essential elements and teachings of the world's predominant faiths, including: Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and the native traditions of the Americas, Australia, Africa, and Oceania. Emphasizing the inner -- rather than institutional -- dimensions of these religions, Smith devotes special attention to Zen and Tibetan Buddhism, Sufism, and the teachings of Jesus. He convincingly conveys the unique appeal and gifts of each of the traditions and reveals their hold on the human heart and imagination.The Heritage of Sufism: Late Classical Persianate Sufism (1501-1750) Volume 3
By David Morgan. 1999
This comprehensive study is unique in its chronological breadth, intellectual diversity and historical scope and which demonstrates the central role…
played by Sufism in Persianate culture in Iran, Central Asia and IndiaTransformational Embodiment in Asian Religions: Subtle Bodies, Spatial Bodies (Routledge Studies in Religion)
By George Pati, Katherine Zubko. 2020
This volume examines several theoretical concerns of embodiment in the context of Asian religious practice. Looking at both subtle and…
spatial bodies, it explores how both types of embodiment are engaged as sites for transformation, transaction and transgression. Collectively bridging ancient and modern conceptualizations of embodiment in religious practice, the book offers a complex mapping of how body is defined. It revisits more traditional, mystical religious systems, including Hindu Tantra and Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, Chinese Daoism and Persian Sufism and distinctively juxtaposes these inquiries alongside analyses of racial, gendered, and colonized bodies. Such a multifaceted subject requires a diverse approach, and so perspectives from phenomenology and neuroscience as well as critical race theory and feminist theology are utilised to create more precise analytical tools for the scholarly engagement of embodied religious epistemologies. This a nuanced and interdisciplinary exploration of the myriad issues around bodies within religion. As such it will be a key resource for any scholar of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Gender Studies.Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India (Routledge Studies in Religion)
By Rakesh Peter-Dass. 2020
This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and…
religion in contemporary India. In public portrayals, Hindi has been the language of Hindus and Urdu the language of Muslims, but Christians have been usually been associated with the English of the foreign ‘West’. However, this book shows how Christian writers in India have adopted Hindi in order to promote a form of Christianity that can be seen as Indian, desī, and rooted in the religio-linguistic world of the Hindi belt. Using three case studies, the book demonstrates how Hindi Christian writing strategically presents Christianity as linguistically Hindi, culturally Indian, and theologically informed by other faiths. These works are written to sway public perceptions by promoting particular forms of citizenship in the context of fostering the use of Hindi. Examining the content and context of Christian attention to Hindi, it is shown to have been deployed as a political and cultural tool by Christians in India. This book gives an important insight into the link between language and religion in India. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion in India, World Christianity, Religion and Politics and Interreligious Dialogue, as well as Religious Studies and South Asian Studies.This monograph explores the original literary produce of Muslim mystics during the eighth–tenth centuries, with special attention to nineteenth-century mystics,…
such as al-Tustarī, al-Muḥāsibī, al-Kharrāz, al-Junayd and, in particular, al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī. Unlike other studies dealing with the so-called ‘Formative Period’, this book focuses on the extant writings of early mystics rather than on the later Ṣūfī compilations. These early mystics articulated what would become a hallmark of Islamic mysticism: a system built around the psychological tension between the self (nafs) and the heart (qalb) and how to overcome it. Through their writings, already at this early phase, the versatility, fluidity and maturity of Islamic mysticism become apparent. This exploration thus reveals that mysticism in Islam emerged earlier than customarily acknowledged, long before Islamic mysticism became generically known as Ṣūfism. The central figure of this book is al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī, whose teaching and inner world focus on themes such as polarity, the training of the self, the opening of the heart, the Friends of God (al-awliyāʾ), dreams and visions, divine language, mystical exegesis and more. This book thus offers a fuller picture than hitherto presented of the versatility of themes, processes, images, practices, terminology and thought models during this early period. The volume will be a key resource for scholars and students interested in the study of religion, Ṣūfī studies, Late Antiquity and Medieval Islam.Abd Al-Rahman III: The First Cordoban Caliph (Makers of the Muslim World)
By Maribel Fierro. 2005
'Abd al-Rahman III (891-961) was the greatest of the Umayyad rulers of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain and Portugal) and the first…
of them to take the title of Caliph. A strong leader and an astute politician, he conducted campaigns against Muslim rebels within his own realm, fought the Christian Kings in the north of the Iberian Peninsula, confronted the Fatimids in North Africa and founded the palatine town of Madinat al-Zahra. By the time of his death in 961, 'Abd al-Rahman III had pacified the whole of al-Andalus and made Cordoba a capital city to rival the greatest of the age. This book is the first biography of this fascinating and hugely influential figure to be published in English. Accessible yet authoritative, it also feature a comprehensive guide to further reading, and will prove an indispensable resource for readers of all backgrounds.Bedouin and ‘Abbāsid Cultural Identities: The Arabic Majnūn Laylā Story (Culture and Civilization in the Middle East)
By Ruqayya Yasmine Khan. 2020
This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majnūn Laylā…
story performed for ‘Abbāsid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos." The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnūn in the romance of Majnūn Laylā as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the ‘Abbāsid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnūn. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the ‘Abbāsid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such "cultural work" is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g., affective). Lastly, the Majnūn Laylā love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of ‘Abbāsid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed. Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies, Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and gender studies.'Abd al-Rahman b. 'Amr al-Awza'i (Makers of the Muslim World)
By Steven C. Judd. 2019
&‘Abd al-Rahman b. &‘Amr al-Awza&‘i (c.707–774) was Umayyad Syria&’s most influential jurist, part of a generation of scholars who began…
establishing the first formal structures for the preservation and dissemination of religious knowledge. Following the Abbasid revolution, they provided a point of stability in otherwise unstable times. Despite his close ties to the old regime, al-Awza&‘i continued to participate in legal and theological matters in the Abbasid era. Although his immediate impact would prove short-lived, his influence on aspects of Islamic law, particularly the laws of war, endures to this day.Morality at the Margins: Youth, Language, and Islam in Coastal Kenya
By Sarah Hillewaert. 2020
This book considers the day-to-day lives of young Muslims on Kenya’s island of Lamu, who live simultaneously on the edge…
and in the center. At the margins of the national and international economy and of Western notions of modernity, Lamu’s inhabitants nevertheless find themselves the focus of campaigns against Islamic radicalization and of Western touristic imaginations of the untouched and secluded. What does it mean to be young, modern, and Muslim here? How are these denominators imagined and enacted in daily encounters? Documenting the everyday lives of Lamu youth, this ethnography explores how young people negotiate cultural, religious, political, and economic expectations through nuanced deployments of language, dress, and bodily comportment. Hillewaert shows how seemingly mundane practices—how young people greet others, how they walk, dress, and talk—can become tactics in the negotiation of moral personhood.Morality at the Margins traces the shifting meanings and potential ambiguities of such everyday signs—and the dangers of their misconstrual. By examining the uncertainties that underwrite projects of self-fashioning, the book highlights how shifting and scalable discourses of tradition, modernity, secularization, nationalism, and religious piety inform changing notions of moral subjectivity. In elaborating everyday practices of Islamic pluralism, the book shows the ways in which Muslim societies critically engage with change while sustaining a sense of integrity and morality.A History of Islam in 21 Women
By Hossein Kamaly. 2019
Beginning in seventh-century Mecca and Medina, A History of Islam in 21 Women takes us around the globe, through eleventh-century…
Yemen and Khorasan, and into sixteenth-century Spain, Istanbul and India. From there to nineteenth-century Persia and the African savannah, to twentieth-century Russia, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq, before arriving in present-day Europe and America. From the first believer, Khadija, and the other women who witnessed the formative years of Islam, to award-winning architect Zaha Hadid in the twenty-first century, Hossein Kamaly celebrates the lives and groundbreaking achievements of these extraordinary women in the history of Islam.In America today, online spaces serve as critical alternatives for tech-savvy Muslims seeking a place to root their faith, forge…
religious identity, and build communities. With a particular focus on the Inayati Order, a branch of the oldest Sufi community in the West, Robert Rozehnal explores the online revolution in internal communication, spiritual pedagogy, and public outreach – and looks ahead to the future of digital Islam in the age of Web 3.0.The Heritage of Sufism: Classical Persian Sufism from Its Origins to Rumi (700-1300) v.1
By Leonard Lewisohn. 1999
The first volume in a three-volume set, this is a study of the rise of Persian Sufi spirituality and literature…
in Islam during the first six Muslim centuries. This collection of 24 essays covers the key achievements of the Muslim intellectual and cultural tradition in history, mysticism, philosophy and poetry. It demonstrates the positive role played by Sufi thinkers during this period. The subjects covered include: Sufi masters and schools; literature and poetry; spiritual chivalry; divine love; Persian Sufi literature - Rumi and 'Attar.Communities of the Qur’an: Dialogue, Debate and Diversity in the 21st Century
By Emran El-Badawi, Paula Sanders. 2019
What is the nature of the Qur&’an? It might seem a straightforward question, but there is no consensus among modern…
communities of the Qur&’an, both Muslim and non-Muslim, about the answer. And why should there be? On numerous occasions throughout history, believers from different schools and denominations, and at different times and places, have agreed to disagree. The Qur&’anic interpreters, jurists and theologians of medieval Baghdad, Cairo and Cordoba coexisted peacefully in spite of their diverging beliefs. Seeking to revive this &‘ethics of disagreement&’ of Classical Islam, this volume explores the different relationships societies around the world have with the Qur&’an and how our understanding of the text can be shaped by studying the interpretations of others. From LGBT groups to urban African American communities, this book aims to represent the true diversity of communities of the Qur&’an in the twenty-first century, and the dialogue and debate that can flow among them.Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (The Foundations of Islam)
By Jonathan A.C. Brown. 2009
Contrary to popular opinion, the bulk of Islamic law does not come from the Quran but from hadith, first-hand reports…
of the Prophet Muhammad&’s words and deeds, passed from generation to generation. However, with varying accounts often only committed to paper a century after the death of Muhammad, Islamic scholars, past and present, have been faced with complex questions of historical authenticity. In this wide-ranging introduction, Jonathan A. C. Brown explores the collection and criticism of hadith, and the controversy surrounding its role in modern Islam. This edition, revised and updated with additional case studies and attention to the very latest scholarship, also features a new chapter on how hadiths have been used politically, both historically and in the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Informative and accessible, it is perfectly suited to students, scholars and general readers interested in this critical element of Islam.Polished Mirror: Storytelling and the Pursuit of Virtue in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism
By Cyrus Ali Zargar. 2017
Islamic philosophy and Sufism evolved as distinct yet interweaving strands of Islamic thought and practice. Despite differences, they have shared…
a concern with the perfection of the soul through the development of character. In The Polished Mirror, Cyrus Ali Zargar studies the ways in which, through teaching and storytelling, pre-modern Muslims lived, negotiated, and cultivated virtues. Examining the writings of philosophers, ascetics, poets, and saints, he locates virtue ethics within a dynamic moral tradition. Innovative, engaging, and approachable, this work – the first in the English language to explore Islamic ethics in the fascinating context of narrative – will be a valuable resource for both students and scholars.