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Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination
By John Tolan. 2002
In the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under…
Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. Confronted by the world of Islam, countless medieval Christians experienced a profound ambivalence, awed by its opulence, they were also troubled by its rival claims to the spiritual inheritance of Abraham and Jesus and humiliated by its social subjugation of non-Muslim minorities. Some converted. Others took up arms. Still others, the subjects of John Tolan's study of anti-Muslim polemics in medieval Europe, undertook to attack Islam and its most vivid avatar, the saracen, with words.In an effort to make sense of God's apparent abandonment of Christendom in favor of a dynamic and expanding Muslim civilization, European writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its believers in a variety of ways. What ideological purposes did these portrayals serve? And how, in turn, did Muslims view Christianity? Feelings of rivalry, contempt, and superiority existed on both sides, tinged or tempered at times with feelings of doubt, inferiority, curiosity, or admiration. Tolan shows how Christian responses to Islam changed from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, through fast-charging crusades and spirit-crushing defeats, crystallizing into polemical images later drawn upon by Western authors in the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Saracens explores the social and ideological uses of contempt, explaining how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one's own intellectual construction of the world.Sufi Bodies: Religion and Society in Medieval Islam
By Shahzad Bashir. 2011
Between 1300 and 1500 C.E. a new form of Sufi Islam took hold among central Islamic peoples, joining individuals through…
widespread networks resembling today's prominent paths and orders. Understanding contemporary Sufism requires a sophisticated analysis of these formative years. Moving beyond a straight account of leaders and movements, Shahzad Bashir weaves a rich history around the depiction of bodily actions by Sufi masters and disciples, primarily in Sufi literature and Persian miniature paintings of the period.Focusing on the Persianate societies of Iran and Central Asia, Bashir explores medieval Sufis' conception of the human body as the primary shuttle between interior (batin) and exterior (zahir) realities. Drawing on literary, historical, and anthropological approaches to corporeality, he studies representations of Sufi bodies in three personal and communal arenas: religious activity in the form of ritual, asceticism, rules of etiquette, and a universal hierarchy of saints; the deep imprint of Persian poetic paradigms on the articulation of love, desire, and gender; and the reputation of Sufi masters for working miracles, which empowered them in all domains of social activity. Bashir's novel perspective illuminates complex relationships between body and soul, body and gender, body and society, and body and cosmos. It highlights love as an overarching, powerful emotion in the making of Sufi communities and situates the body as a critical concern in Sufi thought and practice. Bashir's work ultimately offers a new methodology for extracting historical information from religious narratives, especially those depicting extraordinary and miraculous events.The Silent Qur'an and the Speaking Qur'an: Scriptural Sources of Islam Between History and Fervor
By Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi. 2016
Two major events occurred in the early centuries of Islam that determined its historical and spiritual development in the centuries…
that followed: the formation of the sacred scriptures, namely the Qur'an and the Hadith, and the chronic violence that surrounded the succession of the Prophet, manifesting in repression, revolution, massacre, and civil war. This is the first book to evaluate the writing of Islam's major scriptural sources within the context of these bloody, brutal conflicts. Conducting a philological and historical study of little-known though significant ancient texts, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi rebuilds a Shi'ite understanding of Islam's early history and the genesis of its holy scriptures. At the same time, he proposes a fresh interpretative framework and a new data set for theorizing the early history of Islam, isolating the contradictions between Shi'ite and Sunni sources and their contribution to the tensions that rile these groups today.Shi'ite Lebanon: Transnational Religion and the Making of National Identities (History and Society of the Modern Middle East)
By Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr. 2008
By recasting the relationship between religion and nationalism in the Middle East, Roschanack Shaery-Eisenlohr proposes a new framework for understanding…
Shi'ite politics in Lebanon. Her study draws on a variety of untapped sources, reconsidering not only the politics of the established leadership of Shi'ites but also institutional and popular activities of identity production. Shaery-Eisenlohr traces current Shi'ite politics of piety and authenticity to the coexistence formula in Lebanon and argues that engaging in the discourses of piety and coexistence is a precondition to cultural citizenship in Lebanon. As she demonstrates, debates over the nature of Christianity and Islam and Christian-Muslim dialogue are in fact intertwined with power struggles at the state level.Since the 1970s, debates in the transnational Shi'ite world have gradually linked Shi'ite piety with the support of the Palestinian cause. Iran's religious elite has backed this piety project in multiple ways, but in doing so it has assisted in the creation of a variety of Lebanese Shi'ite nationalisms with competing claims to religious and national authenticity. Shaery-Eisenlohr argues that these ties to Iran have in fact strengthened the position of Lebanese Shi'ites by providing, as is recognized, economic, military, and ideological support for Hizbullah, as well as by compelling Lebanese Shi'ites to foreground the Lebanese components of their identity more forcefully than ever before. Shaery-Eisenlohr challenges the belief that Shi'ite identity politics only serve to undermine the Lebanese national project. She also makes clear that the expression of Lebanese Shi'ite identity is a nationalist expression and an unintended result of Iranian efforts to influence the politics of Lebanon.Secularism Confronts Islam
By Olivier Roy. 2007
The denunciation of fundamentalism in France, embodied in the law against the veil and the deportation of imams, has shifted…
into a systematic attack on all Muslims and Islam. This hostility is rooted in the belief that Islam cannot be integrated into French-and, consequently, secular and liberal-society. However, as Olivier Roy makes clear in this book, Muslim intellectuals have made it possible for Muslims to live concretely in a secularized world while maintaining the identity of a "true believer." They have formulated a language that recognizes two spaces: that of religion and that of secular society.Western society is unable to recognize this process, Roy argues, because of a cultural bias that assumes religious practice is embedded within a specific, traditional culture that must be either erased entirely or forced to coexist in a neutral, multicultural space. Instead, Roy shows that new forms of religiosity, such as Islamic fundamentalism and Christian evangelicalism, have come to thrive in post-traditional, secular contexts precisely because they remain detached from any cultural background. In recognizing this, Roy recasts the debate concerning Islam and democracy. Analyzing the French case in particular, in which the tension between Islam and the conception of Western secularism is exacerbated, Roy makes important distinctions between Arab and non-Arab Muslims, hegemony and tolerance, and the role of the umma and the sharia in Muslim religious life. He pits Muslim religious revivalism against similar movements in the West, such as evangelical Protestantism and Jehovah's Witnesses, and refutes the myth of a single "Muslim community" by detailing different groups and their inability to overcome their differences. Roy's rare portrait of the realities of immigrant Muslim life offers a necessary alternative to the popular specter of an "Islamic threat." Supporting his arguments with his extensive research on Islamic history, sociology, and politics, Roy brilliantly demonstrates the limits of our understanding of contemporary Islamic religious practice in the West and the role of Islam as a screen onto which Western societies project their own identity crisis.Offering an authoritative study of the plural religious landscape in modern Syria and of the diverse Christian and Muslim communities…
that have cohabited the country for centuries, this volume considers a wide range of cultural, religious and political issues that have impacted the interreligious dynamic, putting them in their local and wider context. Combining fieldwork undertaken within government-held areas during the Syrian conflict with critical historical and Christian theological reflection, this research makes a significant contribution to understanding Syria’s diverse religious landscape and the multi-layered expressions of Christian-Muslim relations. It discusses the concept of sectarianism and how communal dynamics are crucial to understanding Syrian society. The complex wider issues that underlie the relationship are examined, including the roles of culture and religious leadership; and it questions whether the analytical concept of sectarianism is adequate to describe the complex communal frameworks in the Middle Eastern context. Finally, the study examines the contributions of contemporary Eastern Christian leaders to interreligious discourse, concluding that the theology and spirituality of Eastern Christianity, inhabiting the same cultural environment as Islam, is uniquely placed to play a major role in interreligious dialogue and in peace-making. The book offers an original contribution to knowledge and understanding of the changing Christian-Muslim dynamic in Syria and the region. It should be a key resource to students, scholars and readers interested in religion, current affairs and the Middle East.Multi-Religious Perspectives on a Global Ethic: In Search of a Common Morality (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies)
By William Schweiker, Myriam Renaud. 2021
Ratified by the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 1993 and expanded in 2018, "Towards a Global Ethic (An Initial…
Declaration)," or the Global Ethic, expresses the minimal set of principles shared by people—religious or not. Though it is a secular document, the Global Ethic emerged after months of collaborative, interreligious dialogue dedicated to identifying a common ethical framework. This volume tests and contests the claim that the Global Ethic’s ethical directives can be found in the world’s religious, spiritual, and cultural traditions. The book features essays by scholars of religion who grapple with the practical implications of the Global Ethic’s directives when applied to issues like women’s rights, displaced peoples, income and wealth inequality, India’s caste system, and more. The scholars explore their respective religious traditions’ ethical response to one or more of these issues and compares them to the ethical response elaborated by the Global Ethic. The traditions included are Hinduism, Engaged Buddhism, Shi‘i Islam, Sunni Islam, Confucianism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Indigenous African Religions, and Human Rights. To highlight the complexities within traditions, most essays are followed by a brief response by an expert in the same tradition. Multi-Religious Perspectives on a Global Ethic is of special interest to advanced students and scholars whose work focuses on the religious traditions listed above, on comparative religion, religious ethics, comparative ethics, and common morality.This book sets out a rationale for the compatibility of Islam and Feminism and shows that Islamic Feminism is a…
diverse and valuable lens through which to analyse religion and gender. In addition, including scholarship written in Arabic, it promotes the decolonisation of knowledge production around Islam, gender and sexuality. Islamic feminism is a field of study that has been marginalised both in contemporary Islamic discourse and in feminist discourse. This study counters this marginalisation in two ways. Firstly, it enumerates the diversity of approaches used in Islamic feminist scholarship. Secondly, it foregrounds voices that are often neglected in discussions of Islam, gender and sexuality by highlighting and contrasting the work of two key scholars: Kecia Ali based in the USA and Olfa Youssef based in Tunisia. The book suggests that in addition to geo-political positioning, language, as a ‘prior-text’, also influences an individual’s personal interpretation of Islamic feminism. This comparison, therefore, enables broader issues to be dissected, such as the interrelationships between life experiences, strategies of resistance to patriarchal and other forms of oppression, and the production of knowledge. This is a unique study of Islamic Feminism that will be of great use to any scholar of Religion and Gender, Islamic Studies, Gender Studies and the Sociology of Religion.Lost Maps of the Caliphs: Drawing the World in Eleventh-Century Cairo
By Yossef Rapoport, Emilie Savage-Smith. 2018
About a millennium ago, in Cairo, an unknown author completed a large and richly illustrated book. In the course of…
thirty-five chapters, this book guided the reader on a journey from the outermost cosmos and planets to Earth and its lands, islands, features, and inhabitants. This treatise, known as The Book of Curiosities, was unknown to modern scholars until a remarkable manuscript copy surfaced in 2000. Lost Maps of the Caliphs provides the first general overview of The Book of Curiosities and the unique insight it offers into medieval Islamic thought. Opening with an account of the remarkable discovery of the manuscript and its purchase by the Bodleian Library, the authors use The Book of Curiosities to re-evaluate the development of astrology, geography, and cartography in the first four centuries of Islam. Their account assesses the transmission of Late Antique geography to the Islamic world, unearths the logic behind abstract maritime diagrams, and considers the palaces and walls that dominate medieval Islamic plans of towns and ports. Early astronomical maps and drawings demonstrate the medieval understanding of the structure of the cosmos and illustrate the pervasive assumption that almost any visible celestial event had an effect upon life on Earth. Lost Maps of the Caliphs also reconsiders the history of global communication networks at the turn of the previous millennium. It shows the Fatimid Empire, and its capital Cairo, as a global maritime power, with tentacles spanning from the eastern Mediterranean to the Indus Valley and the East African coast. As Lost Maps of the Caliphs makes clear, not only is The Book of Curiosities one of the greatest achievements of medieval mapmaking, it is also a remarkable contribution to the story of Islamic civilization that opens an unexpected window to the medieval Islamic view of the world.This book is the first work that comprehensively presents the accounts of Lia Eden a former flower arranger who…
claims to have received divine messages from the Archangel Gabriel and founded the divine Eden Kingdom in her house in Jakarta This book places Lia Eden s prophetic trajectory in the context of diverse Indonesian spiritual and religious traditions by which hundreds of others also claimed to have been commanded by God to lead people and to establish religious groups This book offers a fresh approach towards the rich Indonesian religious and spiritual traditions with particular attention to the accounts of the emergence of indigenous prophets who founded some popular religions It presents the history of prophetic tradition which remains alive in Indonesian society from the colonial to reform period It also explores the ways in which these prophets rebelled against two hegemonies colonial power in the past and Islamic orthodoxy in the present The discussion of this book focuses on Lia Eden including her biography claims to prophethood and divinity the development of her group Eden Kingdom her challenge to Islamic orthodoxy under the banner of the MUI Indonesian Ulama Council her persecution by radical groups her experiences in court trials and imprisonment and public responses to her emergence The discussion also covers other themes currently drawing public attention in Indonesia such as pluralism religious freedom tolerance discrimination against minorities and secularisationRoutledge Handbook of Freedom of Religion or Belief (Routledge International Handbooks)
By Rossella Bottoni, Silvio Ferrari, Mark Hill, Arif A. Jamal. 2021
Freedom of religion is an issue of universal interest and scope. However, in the last two centuries at least, the…
philosophical, religious and legal terms of the question have been largely defined in the West. In an increasingly global world, widening our knowledge of this right’s roots in different cultural and legal systems becomes a priority. This Handbook seeks to attain this goal through a better understanding of the historical roots and expressions of the right to freedom of religion on the one hand and, on the other, of its theological background in different religious traditions. History and theology provide the setting for the analysis of the politics of freedom of religion, that is, how this right is used in the context of the dialogue/confrontation between countries placed in different cultural regions of the world, and of the legal strategies and tools that have been developed and are employed to protect and foster the right to freedom of religion. Behind these legal and political strategies, there is an ongoing debate about the nature of this right, whose main features are explored in the final section. Global, historical and interdisciplinary in approach, this book studies the new relevance of freedom of religion worldwide and develops suitable categories to analyze and understand the role that freedom of religion can play in managing religious and cultural diversity in our societies. Authored by experts, through the contributions collected in these chapters, scholars and students will be able to broaden and deepen their knowledge of the right to freedom of religion and to develop the ability to go beyond the borders of the different cultural environments in which this right took shape and developed.Channeling Moroccanness: Language and the Media of Sociality
By Becky L. Schulthies. 2021
What does it mean to connect as a people through mass media? This book approaches that question by exploring how…
Moroccans engage communicative failure as they seek to shape social and political relations in urban Fez. Over the last decade, laments of language and media failure in Fez have focused not just on social relations that used to be and have been lost but also on what ought to be and had yet to be realized. Such laments have transpired in a range of communication channels, from objects such as devotional prayer beads and remote controls; to interactional forms such as storytelling, dress styles, and orthography; to media platforms like television news, religious stations, or WhatsApp group chats. Channeling Moroccanness examines these laments as ways of speaking that created Moroccanness, the feeling of participating in the ongoing formations of Moroccan relationality. Rather than furthering the discourse about Morocco’s conflict between liberal secularists and religious conservatives, this ethnography shows the subtle range of ideologies and practices evoked in Fassi homes to calibrate Moroccan sociality and political consciousness.Religion and State: The Muslim Approach to Politics
By L. Brown. 2000
If Westerners know a single Islamic term, it is likely to be jihad, the Arabic word for "holy war." The…
image of Islam as an inherently aggressive and xenophobic religion has long prevailed in the West and can at times appear to be substantiated by current events. L. Carl Brown challenges this conventional wisdom with a fascinating historical overview of the relationship between religious and political life in the Muslim world ranging from Islam's early centuries to the present day. Religion and State examines the commonplace notion—held by both radical Muslim ideologues and various Western observers alike—that in Islam there is no separation between religion and politics. By placing this assertion in a broad historical context, the book reveals both the continuities between premodern and modern Islamic political thought as well as the distinctive dimensions of modern Muslim experiences. Brown shows that both the modern-day fundamentalists and their critics have it wrong when they posit an eternally militant, unchanging Islam outside of history. "They are conflating theology and history. They are confusing the oughtand the is," he writes. As the historical record shows, mainstream Muslim political thought in premodern times tended toward political quietism.Brown maintains that we can better understand present-day politics among Muslims by accepting the reality of their historical diversity while at the same time seeking to identify what may be distinctive in Muslim thought and action. In order to illuminate the distinguishing characteristics of Islam in relation to politics, Brown compares this religion with its two Semitic sisters, Judaism and Christianity, drawing striking comparisons between Islam today and Christianity during the Reformation. With a wealth of evidence, he recreates a tradition of Islamic diversity every bit as rich as that of Judaism and Christianity.Reshaping the Holy: Democracy, Development, and Muslim Women in Bangladesh
By Elora Shehabuddin. 2008
Through extensive field research, Elora Shehabuddin explores the profound implications of women's political and social mobilization for reshaping Islam. Specifically,…
she examines the lives of Muslim women in Bangladesh who have become increasingly mobilized by the activities of predominantly secular NGOs, yet who desire to retain, reclaim, and reshape-rather than reject-their faith. In their employment and in their interactions with the legal system, the state, NGOs, and political and religious groups, women are changing state practices, views of women in the public sphere, and the nature of lived Islam itself. In contrast to most work on Islam and Muslims, which has focused on the Middle East and has privileged the study of religious and legal texts, this book redirects our attention to South Asia, home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, and emphasizes the actual experiences of Muslims. Women and gender, as well as Bangladesh's formally democratic context, are central to this inquiry and analysis.Religion and Sports: An Introduction and Case Studies
By Rebecca Alpert. 2015
Like religion, playing and watching sports is a deeply meaningful, celebratory ritual enjoyed by millions across the world. The first…
scholarly work designed for use in both religion and sports courses, this collection develops and then applies a theoretically grounded approach to studying sports engagement globally and its relationship to modern-day issues of violence, difference, social protest, and belonging.Case studies explore the place of sports in mainstream faiths, such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Christianity, and lesser-known religious groups, particularly in Africa. It covers football, baseball, and basketball but also archery, soccer, bullfighting, judo, and track. Essays reflect all skill levels, from amateur to professional, and find surprising affinities among practices and cultures in locations as disparate as Germany and Japan, Spain and Saudi Arabia. Thoroughly examining a range of phenomena, this collection fully captures the unique overlap of two universal institutions and their interplay with human society, politics, and culture.Providing an in-depth and extensive analysis of the concept of power as articulated by Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah (1935–2010), this case…
study analyses the systemic conceptualisation of power and his argumentation of sacralising Islamised power. The volume also offers a quick overview of how the concept was understood and articulated by other Shi‛ite jurists such as Ayatollah Khomeini. Examining Fadlallah’s oeuvre, in particular his seminal book Islam and the Logic of Power [ al-Islam wa-mantiq al-quwwa ], this book focuses on the narrative itself, which played a central role in the radical transformation that occurred in the Shi‛te concept of empowerment and its recognition as a necessity. The analysis of Fadlallah’s conceptualisation and argumentation illustrates the mechanism of sacralising righteous power as well as the means of gaining it. Fadlallah reinterpreted Shi‛sm as a project of empowerment to initiate and sustain an “impulse of power” amongst the Lebanese Shi‛tes in the most critical moment of modern Lebanese history. Dealing with the concept of power in Shi‛te political thought from a theoretical perspective, the study has an innovative approach that offers an insight into how the transformative narrative is constructed and what makes it convincing. Shedding light on the content and logical structure of Fadlallah’s argumentation, this volume will be of interest to scholars and students researching contemporary politics, Islam, and the Middle East.Ist die Zugehörigkeit zum Islam ein Konfliktfaktor im beruflichen Miteinander? Beeinträchtigt sie die Arbeitsmarktintegration muslimischer Frauen? Die Studie untersucht Vereinbarkeitskonflikte…
zwischen muslimischer Religiosität und der Berufstätigkeit von Frauen. Diskutiert wird die Wirkung religiöser Überzeugungen auf die Erwerbsmotivation, die Rolle von Diskriminierungen, der Kontext einer islamkritischen Gesellschaft sowie Auswirkungen rechtlicher Regelungen bezüglich der Religionspraxis am Arbeitsplatz in Deutschland und Frankreich. Auf der Grundlage einer ländervergleichenden Analyse der Berufsbiografien von Musliminnen, die im sozialen und medizinischen Sektor tätig sind, präsentiert die Studie eine Typologie von Lebensführung im Kontext von Religion und Berufstätigkeit. Rekonstruiert wird an Einzelfällen, wie im biografischen Verlauf Krisen mit Bezug zu Religion und Erwerbsarbeit entstehen und wie Vereinbarkeit durch eine Fusion, Separation oder flexible Grenzziehung zwischen den Lebenssphären Religion und Arbeit hergestellt wird.Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton Studies in Muslim Politics #68)
By Muhammad Zaman. 2018
The first book to explore the modern history of Islam in South AsiaThe first modern state to be founded in…
the name of Islam, Pakistan was the largest Muslim country in the world at the time of its establishment in 1947. Today it is the second-most populous, after Indonesia. Islam in Pakistan is the first comprehensive book to explore Islam's evolution in this region over the past century and a half, from the British colonial era to the present day. Muhammad Qasim Zaman presents a rich historical account of this major Muslim nation, insights into the rise and gradual decline of Islamic modernist thought in the South Asian region, and an understanding of how Islam has fared in the contemporary world. Much attention has been given to Pakistan's role in sustaining the Afghan struggle against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, in the growth of the Taliban in the 1990s, and in the War on Terror after 9/11. But as Zaman shows, the nation's significance in matters relating to Islam has much deeper roots. Since the late nineteenth century, South Asia has witnessed important initiatives toward rethinking core Islamic texts and traditions in the interest of their compatibility with the imperatives of modern life. Traditionalist scholars and their institutions, too, have had a prominent presence in the region, as have Islamism and Sufism. Pakistan did not merely inherit these and other aspects of Islam. Rather, it has been and remains a site of intense contestation over Islam's public place, meaning, and interpretation. Examining how facets of Islam have been pivotal in Pakistani history, Islam in Pakistan offers sweeping perspectives on what constitutes an Islamic state.La historia del Corán
By Bruce Lawrence. 2006
Una introducci n seria y magn ficamente escrita por el respetado historiador de las religiones Bruce Lawrence…
a uno de los libros m s famosos del mundo Lo hemos hecho descender con la Verdad y con la Verdad ha descendido No te hemos enviado Mahoma sino como anuncio de buenas nuevas y como monitor El Cor n Pocos libros han sido tan mal comprendidos a lo largo de la historia como el Cor n Considerado la palabra directa de Al fue enviado en una serie de revelaciones al profeta Mahoma y es adorado por los musulmanes de todo el mundo en quienes despierta devoci n pasi n y en ocasiones miedo En este libro el respetado historiador de las religiones Bruce Lawrence muestra por qu el Cor n es el islam Describe los or genes de la fe musulmana en la Arabia del siglo VII y explica por qu el Cor n ha de ser memorizado y recitado por sus seguidores Lawrence tambi n estudia a los esc pticos y los comentaristas del libro y eval a su inmensa influencia en la sociedad y la pol tica contempor neas Sobre todo Lawrence subraya que el Cor n es un libro sagrado de s mbolos que no tiene un nico mensaje Es un libro que exige ser interpretado y que solo puede ser comprendido correctamente a trav s de su historiaParable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs
By Tayeb El-Hibri. 2010
The story of the succession to the Prophet Muhammad and the rise of the Rashidun Caliphate (632-661) is familiar to…
historians from the political histories of medieval Islam, which treat it as a factual account. The story also informs the competing perspectives of Sunni and Shi'i Islam, which read into it the legitimacy of their claims. Yet while descriptive and varied, these approaches have long excluded a third reading, which views the conflict over the succession to the Prophet as a parable. From this vantage point, the motives, sayings, and actions of the protagonists reveal profound links to previous texts, not to mention a surprising irony regarding political and religious issues.In a controversial break from previous historiography, Tayeb El-Hibri privileges the literary and artistic triumphs of the medieval Islamic chronicles and maps the origins of Islamic political and religious orthodoxy. Considering the patterns and themes of these unified narratives, including the problem of measuring personal qualification according to religious merit, nobility, and skills in government, El-Hibri offers an insightful critique of both early and contemporary Islam and the concerns of legitimacy shadowing various rulers. In building an argument for reading the texts as parabolic commentary, he also highlights the Islamic reinterpretation of biblical traditions, both by Qur'anic exegesis and historical composition.