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Tango and the Dancing Body in Istanbul (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
By Melin Levent Yuna. 2022
Tango and the Dancing Body in Istanbul explores the expansion of social Argentine tango dancing among Muslim actors in Turkey,…
pioneered in Istanbul despite the conservative rule of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) and Tayyip Erdoğan. In this book, Melin Levent Yuna questions why a dance that appears to publicly represent an erotic relationship finds space to expand and increase dramatically in the number of contemporary Turkish Muslim tango dancers, particularly during a conservative rule. Even during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, tango dance classes, gatherings, and messages flourished on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Zoom. Urban Turkey and its tango dance performances provide one symbol and example of how neoliberal capitalism could go hand in hand with conservatism by becoming a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. This study largely focuses on the dancers’ perspective while presenting the policies of Erdoğan. It presents the social characteristics of the tango dancers, the meanings they attach to their bodies and their dance as well as what this dance reflects about them – besides the policies of the Justice and Development Party. The book approaches the tango dance and its dancing body in terms of layers of meaning systems in a neoliberal and conservative context. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in dance, anthropology, cultural studies, and performance studies.The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom
By Sahar F. Aziz. 2021
Why does a country with religious liberty enmeshed in its legal and social structures produce such overt prejudice and discrimination…
against Muslims? Sahar Aziz’s groundbreaking book demonstrates how race and religion intersect to create what she calls the Racial Muslim. Comparing discrimination against immigrant Muslims with the prejudicial treatment of Jews, Catholics, Mormons, and African American Muslims during the twentieth century, Aziz explores the gap between America’s aspiration for and fulfillment of religious freedom. With America’s demographics rapidly changing from a majority white Protestant nation to a multiracial, multireligious society, this book is an in dispensable read for understanding how our past continues to shape our present—to the detriment of our nation’s future.For the first time, the author has explored the intertwinement of written law, Islamic law, and customary law in the…
highly complex Afghan society, being deeply influenced by traditional cultural and religious convictions. Given these facts, the author explores how to bridge the exigencies of a human rights–driven penal law and conflicting social norms and understandings by using the rich tradition of Islamic law and its possible openness for contemporary rule of law standards. This work is based on ample field research in connection with a thorough analysis of the normative contexts. It is a landmark, since it offers broadly acceptable and thus feasible solutions for the Afghan legal practice. The book is of equal interest for scientists and practitioners interested in legal, religious, social, and political developments concerning human rights and regional traditions in the MENA region, in Afghanistan in particular.Drawing on first-hand sources which had been inaccessible to Western readers at the time this book was originally published in…
1961, this book gives a vivid picture of life in an order of Muslim mystics or Sufis. Against this background stands the unforgettable figure of the Algerian Shaikh who was head of the order from the death of his Master in 1909 until his own demise in 1934. The last chapters are devoted to his writings, which include some remarkable mystic poems.An Anthropology of the Qur’an (Routledge Studies in Religion)
By Ahmed Achrati. 2022
This book presents an anthropological study of the Qur’an, offering an unprecedented challenge to some of the epistemological and metaphysical…
assumptions of the tawḥīdic discourses. Combining primary textual materials and anthropological analysis, this book examines transcendence as a core principle of the Qur’an, uniquely signified in the divine name al-Quddūs (the Holy). It shows how the tawḥīdic representations of Allah constitute an inversion of this attribute; examines how this inversion has been conceived, authorized, and maintained; and demonstrates how it has affected Islamic thinking and practices, especially as relates to authority. This book also explores how a return to the Qur’anic primacy of God’s otherness as al-Quddūs can influence Islamic thinking and practices moving forward. Therefore, it will be highly useful to scholars of Islamic Studies, philosophical theology, Qur’anic studies, political science, ethics, anthropology, and religious studies.Islam, Justice, and Democracy (Religious Engagement in Democratic Politics)
By Sabri Ciftci. 2022
Justice (al-‘adl) is one of the principal values of the Islamic faith. In Islam, Justice, and Democracy, Sabri Ciftci explores…
the historical, philosophical, and empirical foundations of justice to examine how religious values relate to Muslim political preferences and behavior. He focuses on Muslim agency and democracy to explain how ordinary Muslims use the conceptions of divine justice—either servitude to God or exercising free will against oppressors—to make sense of real-world problems. Using ethnographic research, interviews, and public opinion surveys as well as the works of Islamist ideologues, archives of Islamist journals, and other sources, Ciftci shows that building contemporary incarnations of Islamist justice is, in essence, a highly practical political project that has formative effects on Muslim political attitudes. Islam, Justice, and Democracy compares the recent Arab Spring protests to the constitutionalist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Middle East to demonstrate the continuities and rifts a century apart. By putting justice at the center of democratic thinking in the Muslim world, Ciftci reconsiders Islam's potential in engendering both democratic ideals and authoritarian preferences.Islamic Finance and Circular Economy: Connecting Impact and Value Creation (Gulf Studies #5)
By Syed Nazim Ali, Zul Hakim Jumat. 2021
This book is the first of its kind to provide a critical overview and theoretical analysis of the Circular Economy from Shariah…
and Islamic Finance perspectives. The book is divided into three parts. The contributing authors pay close attention to Islamic Finance in light of sustainability and value creation. It also includes case studies on the Circular Economy application in Islamic Finance industry. The book is of interest to academics, students, and practitioners on Islamic Economics and Finance who have an interest in understanding the Circular Economy under the lens of Islamic Finance principles and applications.Studying Lived Religion: Contexts and Practices
By Nancy Tatom Ammerman. 2021
Offers an overarching definition and framework for the study of religion as it manifests itself in everyday lifeLook around you…
as you walk down the street; somewhere, usually hidden in plain sight, there will be traces of religion. Perhaps it is the person who walks past with a Christian tattoo or a Muslim hijab. Perhaps it is the poster announcing a charity auction at the local synagogue. Or perhaps you open your Instagram feed to see what inspiring images and meditations have been posted by spiritual guides to help start the day.Studying Lived Religion examines religious practices wherever they happen—both within religious spaces and in everyday life. Although the study of lived religion has been around for over two decades, there has not been an agreed-upon definition of what it encompasses, and we have lacked a sociological theory to frame the way it is studied. This book offers a definition that expands lived religion’s geographic scope and a framework of seven dimensions around which we can analyze lived religious practice. Examples from multiple traditions and disciplines show the range of methods available for such studies, offering practical tips for how to begin. The volume opens up how we understand the category of lived religion, erasing the artificial divide between what happens in congregations and other religious institutions and what happens in other settings. Nancy Tatom Ammerman draws on examples ranging from Singapore to Accra to Chicago to show how deeply religion permeates everyday lives. In revealing the often overlooked ways that religion shapes human experience, she invites us all into new ways of seeing the world around us.Producing Islam(s) in Canada: On Knowledge, Positionality, and Politics
By Melanie Adrian, Jennifer A. Selby, Amélie Barras. 2021
During the last twenty years, public interest in Islam and how Muslims express their religious identity in Western societies has…
grown exponentially. In parallel, the study of Islam in the Canadian academy has grown in a number of fields since the 1970s, reflecting a diverse range of scholarship, positionalities, and politics. Yet, academic research on Muslims in Canada has not been systematically assessed. In Producing Islam(s) in Canada, scholars from a wide range of disciplines come together to explore what is at stake regarding portrayals of Islam(s) and Muslims in academic scholarship. Given the centrality of representations of Canadian Muslims in current public policy and public imaginaries, which effects how all Canadians experience religious diversity, this analysis of knowledge production comes at a crucial time.Knowledge and the University: Islam and Development in the Southeast Asia Cooperation Region
By Masudul Alam Choudhury. 2022
This book looks at a substantively new model of educational philosophy and its application within the field of tertiary education,…
in relation to socio-economic development in Southeast Asian members of the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC). Focusing on and drawing from the cross-regional South East Asian Cooperation (SEACO), a network promoting regional economic cooperation, the author presents a thoughtful evocation of a new orientation to educational philosophy and policy within the development context in the time of, and relating to, COVID-19. The generalized worldview of Islamic educational and socio-economic development model is laid down in relation to the philosophy of education and an ethical-scientific structure of development in terms of the theory of knowledge (epistemology, episteme). The foundation of scientific thought and a comparative Islamic worldview in understanding the unified reality of ‘everything’ is presented. The objectivity of socio-scientific learning at all levels of educational development is further explained within the context of SEACO and its think tank vis-à-vis a reconstructive perspective in which the Islamic episteme of the unity of knowledge and its substantive methodology is addressed and unpacked. The book is relevant to policymakers and scholarly researchers in Islamic philosophy and development and higher education in Southeast Asia and in the Muslim world and more broadly for the world of learning.Intimate Connections dissects ideas, feelings, and practices around love, marriage, and respectability in the remote high mountains of Gilgit-Baltistan in…
northern Pakistan. It offers insightful perspectives from the emotional lives of Shia women and their active engagement with their husbands. These gender relations are shaped by countless factors, including embodied values of modesty and honor, vernacular fairy tales and Bollywood movies, Islamic revivalism and development initiatives. In particular, the advent of media and communication technologies has left a mark on (pre)marital relations in both South Asia and the wider Muslim world. Juxtaposing different understandings of ‘love’ reveals rich and manifold worlds of courtship, elopements, family dynamics, and more or less affectionate matches that are nowadays often initiated through SMS. Deep ethnographic accounts trace the relationships between young couples to show how Muslim women in a globalized world dynamically frame and negotiate circumstances in their lives.Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints beyond the Oxus and Indus
By Waleed Ziad. 2021
Sufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual,…
and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world. In a pathbreaking work combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Waleed Ziad examines the development across Asia of Muslim revivalist networks from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At the center of the story are the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis, who inspired major reformist movements and articulated effective social responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power amid European colonialism. In a time of political upheaval, the Mujaddidis fused Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Indic literary traditions, mystical virtuosity, popular religious practices, and urban scholasticism in a unified yet flexible expression of Islam. The Mujaddidi “Hidden Caliphate,” as it was known, brought cohesion to diverse Muslim communities from Delhi through Peshawar to the steppes of Central Asia. And the legacy of Mujaddidi Sufis continues to shape the Muslim world, as their institutional structures, pedagogies, and critiques have worked their way into leading social movements from Turkey to Indonesia, and among the Muslims of China. By shifting attention away from court politics, colonial actors, and the standard narrative of the “Great Game,” Ziad offers a new vision of Islamic sovereignty. At the same time, he demonstrates the pivotal place of the Afghan Empire in sustaining this vast inter-Asian web of scholastic and economic exchange. Based on extensive fieldwork across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan at madrasas, Sufi monasteries, private libraries, and archives, Hidden Caliphate reveals the long-term influence of Mujaddidi reform and revival in the eastern Muslim world, bringing together seemingly disparate social, political, and intellectual currents from the Indian Ocean to Siberia.In 1945, Sukarno declared that the new Indonesian republic would be grounded on monotheism, while also insisting that the new…
nation would protect diverse religious practice. The essays in Religious Pluralism in Indonesia explore how the state, civil society groups, and individual Indonesians have experienced the attempted integration of minority and majority religious practices and faiths across the archipelagic state over the more than half century since Pancasila. The chapters in Religious Pluralism in Indonesia offer analyses of contemporary phenomena and events; the changing legal and social status of certain minority groups; inter-faith relations; and the role of Islam in Indonesia's foreign policy. Amidst infringements of human rights, officially recognized minorities—Protestants, Catholics, Hindus, Buddhists and Confucians—have had occasional success advocating for their rights through the Pancasila framework. Others, from Ahmadi and Shi'i groups to atheists and followers of new religious groups, have been left without safeguards, demonstrating the weakness of Indonesia's institutionalized "pluralism."Contributors: Lorraine Aragon, Christopher Duncan, Kikue Hamayotsu, Robert Hefner, James Hoesterey, Sidney Jones, Mona Lohanda, Michele Picard, Evi Sutrisno, Silvia VignatoIslam: The 4,000-year Quest Of Judaism, Christianity And Islam (Modern Library Chronicles Ser. #2)
By Karen Armstrong. 1993
One of the world's foremost commentators on religious affairs on the history (and destiny) of the world's most misunderstood religion.In…
the public mind, Islam is a religion of extremes: it is the world's fastest growing faith; more than three-quarters of the world's refugees are Islamic; it has produced government by authoritarian monarchies in Saudi Arabia and ultra-republicans in Iran. Whether we are reading about civil war in Algeria or Afghanistan, the struggle for the soul of Turkey, or political turmoil in Pakistan or Malaysia, the Islamic context permeates all these situations.Karen Armstrong's elegant and concise book traces how Islam grew from the other religions of the book, Judaism and Christianity; introduces us to the character of Muhammed; and demonstrates that for much of its history, the religion has been a force for enlightenment that promoted liberties for women and allowed the arts and sciences to flourish.ISLAM shows how this progressive legacy is today often set aside as the faith struggles to come to terms with the economic and political weakness of most of its believers and with the forces of modernity itself.Muslim Heroes on Screen
By Daniel O'Brien. 2021
If films drawing on Middle East tropes often highlight white Westerners, figures such as Sinbad and the Thief of Bagdad…
embody a counter-tradition of protagonists, derived from Islamic folklore and history, who are portrayed as ‘Other’ to Western audiences. In Muslim Heroes on Screen, Daniel O’Brien explores the depiction of these characters in Euro-American cinema from the silent era to the present day. Far from being mere racial masquerade, these screen portrayals are more complex and nuanced than is generally allowed, not least in terms of the shifting concepts and assumptions that inform their Muslim identity. Using films ranging from Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Bagdad, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, El Cid, Kingdom of Heaven and The Message to The Wind and the Lion, O’Brien considers how the representational strategies of Western filmmakers may transcend such Muslim stereotypes as fanatic antagonists or passive victims. These figures possess a cultural significance which cannot be fully appreciated by Euro-American audiences without reference to their distinction as Muslim heroes and the implications and resonances of an Islamicized protagonist.Originally published in 1973, this volume consists of a sequence of essays in religious thinking, responsive to the impact of…
Quranic style and emphasis. It traces the implications of the Qur’ān in the related fields of man and history, evil and forgiveness, unity and worship, wonder and the hallowing of the world. It does so with a critical eye for the classical commentators, three of whom are translated here in their exegesis of three important Surahs. The underlying emphasis of this book is inter-religious converse and responsibility in the contemporary world.The Theology of Unity (Kenneth Cragg on the Intersection of Faiths #2)
By Muhammad 'Abduh. 1966
Originally published in 1966, this was the first of Muhammad ‘Abduh’s works to be translated into English. Risālat al Tauhid…
represents the most popular of his discussion of Islamic thought and belief. ‘Abduh is still quoted and revered as the father of 20th Century Muslim thinking in the Arab world and his mind, here accessible, constituted both courageous and strenuous leadership in his day. All the concerns and claims of successive exponents of duty and meaning of the mosque in the modern world may be sensed in these pages. The world and Islam have moved on since ‘Abduh’s lifetime, but he remains a source for the historian of contemporary movements and a valuable index to the self-awareness of Arab Islam.Routledge Handbook of Islam in Africa (Routledge International Handbooks)
By Terje Østebø. 2022
Bringing together cutting-edge research from a range of disciplines, this handbook argues that despite often being overlooked or treated as…
marginal, the study of Islam from an African context is integral to the broader Muslim world. Challenging the portrayal of African Muslims as passive recipients of religious impetuses arriving from the outside, this book shows how the continent has been a site for the development of rich Islamic scholarship and religious discourses. Over the course of the book, the contributors reflect on: The history and infrastructure of Islam in Africa Politics and Islamic reform Gender, youth, and everyday life for African Muslims New technologies, media, and popular culture. Written by leading scholars in the field, the contributions examine the connections between Islam and broader sociopolitical developments across the continent, demonstrating the important role of religion in the everyday lives of Africans. This book is an important and timely contribution to a subject that is often diffusely studied, and will be of interest to researchers across religious studies, African studies, politics, and sociology.This volume explores the paramount importance of family to jihadism in France, Spain and in Europe more generally. In France,…
special focus is given to the Mohammed Merah paradigmatic case study in the Toulouse region. In Spain, attention is given to the North and to Catalonia. With attention to both the concrete family - often in crisis - and the imaginary family invented by radicalized youth to substitute, this book shows the fundamental need among many jihadists to reconstitute the family, whether in the form of a clan or the imagined Caliphate (or neo-Ummah): a form of shared existence that offers escape from societies in which jihadists feel ill-at-ease. Demonstrating the failure of an emphasis on the individual actor to capture the meaning of jihadism, Family and Jihadism reveals the fundamental importance to our understanding of jihadist activity of the family (in an extended anthropological sense) - real or imagined - into which the individual is inserted. A study of the crisis of family and the re-creation of a new, enlarged family in the lives of young jihadists, this book will appeal to scholars of sociology, anthropology, politics and security studies with interests in radicalisation, political violence, social movements and religious violence.Showing that Muslim societies are facing a crisis that is more cultural than religious, this book focuses on cultural representations…
through which social life is experienced in the Muslim world. It brings a new theoretical framework to address the secularization process that is underway and the contradictions it entails. This volume will arouse a new debate on secularization and the relations between religion, culture and philosophy. The crisis Muslim societies are undergoing pertains to the culture and not to the Qur’an to the extent that people do not have access to the sacred in itself but only for oneself, meaning a cultural interpretation of the sacred. The Qur’an in itself is not an obstacle to secularization and modernization since any sacred text is experienced through culture. If we consider the European experience where secularization has first emerged, we see that culture has been transformed from medieval metaphysics to modern philosophy upholding a civic culture. Discussing secularization through cultural representation, this book launches new ideas that fill an important gap in the literature on secularization. It is a key resource for any readers interested in religious studies, philosophy and the anthropology of religion.