Download or read book Beyond Sectarianism written by Adam S. Ferziger and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1965 social scientist Charles S. Liebman published a study that boldly declared the vitality of American Jewish Orthodoxy and went on to guide scholarly investigations of the group for the next four decades. As American Orthodoxy continues to grow in geographical, institutional, and political strength, author Adam S. Ferziger argues in Beyond Sectarianism: The Realignment of American Orthodox Judaism that one of Liebman’s principal definitions needs to be updated. While Liebman proposed that the “committed Orthodox” —observant rather than nominally affiliated—could be divided into two main streams: “church,” or Modern Orthodoxy, and “sectarian,” or Haredi Orthodoxy, Ferziger traces a narrowing of the gap between them and ultimately a realignment of American Orthodox Judaism. Ferziger shows that significant elements within Haredi Orthodoxy have abandoned certain strict and seemingly uncontested norms. He begins by offering fresh insight into the division between the American sectarian Orthodox and Modern Orthodox streams that developed in the early twentieth century and highlights New York’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun as a pioneering Modern Orthodox synagogue. Ferziger also considers the nuances of American Orthodoxy as reflected in Soviet Jewish activism during the 1960s and early 1970s and educational trips to Poland taken by American Orthodox young adults studying in Israel, and explores the responses of prominent rabbinical authorities to Orthodox feminism and its call for expanded public religious roles for women. Considerable discussion is dedicated to the emergence of outreach to nonobservant Jews as a central priority for Haredi Orthodoxy and how this focus outside its core population reflects fundamental changes. In this context, Ferziger presents evidence for the growing influence of Chabad Hasidism – what he terms the “Chabadization of American Orthodoxy.” Recent studies, including the 2013 Pew Survey of U.S. Jewry, demonstrate that an active and strongly connected American Orthodox Jewish population is poised to grow in the coming decades. Jewish studies scholars and readers interested in history, sociology, and religion will appreciate Ferziger’s reappraisal of this important group.
Download or read book Beyond Sectarianism written by Tehseen Thaver and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2024-05-14 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, Tehseen Thaver offers a fundamental reevaluation of how one should think about the relationship between the Qur’an, Shi‘ism, and religious identity. Beyond Sectarianism focuses on the literary Arabic Qur’an exegesis of the highly influential yet less studied poet, historian, and exegete al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015). Al-Radi’s fascinating interpretations sought to resolve Qur’anic ambiguities or mutashabihat. Through a philologically layered and historically attuned analysis, Thaver argues that al-Radi’s efforts at resolving Qur’anic ambiguities were interlocked with the project of the canonization of the Arabic language. Although he was marked as a Shi‘i scholar, the interpretive and political horizons that informed al-Radi’s scholarly endeavors could not be reduced to predetermined templates of sectarian identity. Rather, Thaver argues, al-Radi was an active participant and beneficiary of critical intellectual currents and debates that animated the wider Muslim humanities during his life, especially on questions of language, poetry, and theology. Thaver thus leads her readers to reconsider their assumptions about the interaction of sectarian identity and scriptural interpretation in the study of Islam and religion. Though centered on the context of late tenth- and eleventh-century Baghdad under the Buyid dynasty, Beyond Sectarianism raises and addresses crucial questions of religious thought and identity with major ramifications for how we imagine the narrative of Islam and the place of sectarianism in it today.
Download or read book Moving Beyond Sectarianism written by Joseph Liechty and published by Columba Press (IE). This book was released on 2001 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A six-year research project of the Irish School of Ecumenics concerned with Christianities and sectarianism in Northern Ireland, and offering a detailed analysis of sectarian dynamics.
Download or read book Understanding Sectarianism written by Fanar Haddad and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-15 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Sectarianism" is one of the most over-discussed yet under-analyzed concepts in debates about the Middle East. Despite the deluge of commentary, there is no agreement on what "sectarianism" is. Is it a social issue, one of dogmatic incompatibility, a historic one or one purely related to modern power politics? Is it something innately felt or politically imposed? Is it a product of modernity or its antithesis? Is it a function of the nation-state or its negation? This book seeks to move the study of modern sectarian dynamics beyond these analytically paralyzing dichotomies by shifting the focus away from the meaningless '-ism' towards the root: sectarian identity. How are Sunni and Shi'a identities imagined, experienced and negotiated and how do they relate to and interact with other identities? Looking at the modern history of the Arab world, Haddad seeks to understand sectarian identity not as a monochrome frame of identification but as a multi-layered concept that operates on several dimensions: religious, subnational, national and transnational. Far from a uniquely Middle Eastern, Arab, or Islamic phenomenon, a better understanding of sectarian identity reveals that the many facets of sectarian relations that are misleadingly labelled "sectarianism" are echoed in intergroup relations worldwide.
Download or read book Beyond Sunni and Shia written by Frederic M. Wehrey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveys the landscape of modern sectarianism within Islam in North Africa and the Middle East.
Download or read book Beyond the Qumran Community written by John J. Collins and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls, fresh analysis of the evidence presented can be and indeed, should be made. Beyond the Qumran Community does just that, reaching a surprising conclusion: the sect described in the Dead Sea Scrolls developed later than has usually been supposed and was never confi ned to the site of Qumran. / John J. Collins here deconstructs the Qumran community and shows that the sectarian documents actually come from a text spread throughout the land. He examines the Community Rule, or Yahad, and considers the Teacher of Righteousness, a pivotal fi gure in the Essene movement. After examining the available evidence, Collins concludes that it is, in fact, overwhelmingly likely that the site of Qumran housed merely a single settlement of a very widespread movement.
Download or read book Sectarianization written by Nader Hashemi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, 'sectarianism' has become a catch-all explanation for the region's troubles. The turmoil is attributed to 'ancient sectarian differences', putatively primordial forces that make violent conflict intractable. In media and policy discussions, sectarianism has come to possess trans-historical causal power. This book trenchantly challenges the lazy use of 'sectarianism' as a magic-bullet explanation for the region's ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Through multiple case studies -- including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and Kuwait -- this book maps the dynamics of sectarianisation, exploring not only how but also why it has taken hold. The contributors examine the constellation of forces -- from those within societies to external factors such as the Saudi-Iran rivalry -- that drive the sectarianisation process and explore how the region's politics can be de-sectarianised. Featuring leading scholars -- and including historians, anthropologists, political scientists and international relations theorists -- this book will redefine the terms of debate on one of the most critical issues in international affairs today.
Download or read book The New Sectarianism written by Geneive Abdo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ensuing clash--between Islamism and Nationalism, Shi'a and Sunni, and other factions within these communities--
Download or read book Sectarian Politics in the Gulf written by Frederic M. Wehrey and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of Foreign Policy's Best Five Books of 2013, chosen by Marc Lynch of The Middle East Channel Beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and concluding with the aftermath of the 2011 Arab uprisings, Frederic M. Wehrey investigates the roots of the Shi'a-Sunni divide now dominating the Persian Gulf's political landscape. Focusing on three Gulf states affected most by sectarian tensions—Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait—Wehrey identifies the factors that have exacerbated or tempered sectarianism, including domestic political institutions, the media, clerical establishments, and the contagion effect of external regional events, such as the Iraq war, the 2006 Lebanon conflict, the Arab uprisings, and Syria's civil war. In addition to his analysis, Wehrey builds a historical narrative of Shi'a activism in the Arab Gulf since 2003, linking regional events to the development of local Shi'a strategies and attitudes toward citizenship, political reform, and transnational identity. He finds that, while the Gulf Shi'a were inspired by their coreligionists in Iraq, Iran, and Lebanon, they ultimately pursued greater rights through a nonsectarian, nationalist approach. He also discovers that sectarianism in the region has largely been the product of the institutional weaknesses of Gulf states, leading to excessive alarm by entrenched Sunni elites and calculated attempts by regimes to discredit Shi'a political actors as proxies for Iran, Iraq, or Lebanese Hizballah. Wehrey conducts interviews with nearly every major Shi'a leader, opinion shaper, and activist in the Gulf Arab states, as well as prominent Sunni voices, and consults diverse Arabic-language sources.
Download or read book In the Shadow of Sectarianism written by Max Weiss and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-30 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prologue : Shiʻism, sectarianism, modernity -- The incomplete nationalization of Jabal ʻAmil -- The modernity of Shiʻi tradition -- Institutionalizing personal status -- Practicing sectarianism -- Adjudicating society at the Jaʻfari court -- ʻAmili Shiʻis into Shiʻi Lebanese? -- Epilogue : Making Lebanon sectarian.
Download or read book The Real Peace Process written by Siobhan Garrigan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-01 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Good Friday Agreement resulted in the cessation of paramilitary violence in Northern Ireland. However, prejudice and animosity between Protestants and Catholics remains. The Real Peace Process draws on extensive fieldwork in Protestant and Catholic churches across Ireland to analyse how Christian worship can become caught up in sectarianism. The book examines the need for a peace process that changes hearts and minds and not merely civic structures of their inhabitants. Aspects of everyday worship – ranging from the spatial and symbolic to the verbal, musical and interpersonal – are explored as the means by which sectarianism can be challenged and transformed.
Download or read book Muslims Beyond the Arab World written by Fallou Ngom and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Muslims beyond the Arab World explores the vibrant tradition of writing African languages using the modified Arabic script ('Ajami) alongside the rise of the Muridiyya Sufi order in Senegal. The book demonstrates how the development of the 'Ajami literary tradition is entwined with the flourishing of the Muridiyya into one of sub-Saharan Africa's most powerful and dynamic Sufi organizations. It offers a close reading of the rich hagiographic and didactic written, recited, and chanted 'Ajami texts of the Muridiyya, works largely unknown to scholars. The texts describe the life and Sufi odyssey of the order's founder, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba Mbakke (1853-1927), his conflicts with local rulers and Muslim clerics and the French colonial administration, and the traditions and teachings he championed that permanently shaped the identity and behaviors of his followers. Fallou Ngom evaluates prevailing representations of the Muridiyya movement and offers alternative perspectives. He demonstrates how the Mur'ds used their written, recited, and chanted 'Ajami materials as an effective mass communication tool in conveying to the masses Bamba's poignant odyssey, doctrine, the virtues he stood for and cultivated among his followers-self-esteem, self-reliance, strong faith, work ethic, pursuit of excellence, determination, nonviolence, and optimism in the face of adversity-without the knowledge of the French colonial administration and many academics. Muslims beyond the Arab World argues that this is the source of the resilience, appeal, and expansion of Muridiyya, which has fascinated observers since its inception in 1883.
Download or read book Beyond Crisis written by Naveeda Khan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the essays in this volume, we see how the failure of the state becomes a moment to ruminate on the artificiality of this most modern construct, the failure of nationalism, an opportunity to dream of alternative modes of association, and the failure of sovereignty to consider the threats and possibilities of the realm of foreignness within the nation-state as within the self. The ambition of this volume is not only to complicate standing representations of Pakistan. It is take Pakistan out of the status of exceptionalism that its multiple crises have endowed upon it. By now, many scholars have written of how exile, migrancy, refugeedom, and other modes of displacement constitute modern subjectivities. The arguments made in the book say that Pakistan is no stranger to this condition of human immigrancy and therefore, can be pressed into service in helping us to understand our present condition.
Download or read book The For the War Yet to Come written by Hiba Bou Akar and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-11 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Through elegant ethnography and nuanced theorization . . . gives us a new way of thinking about violence, development, modernity, and ultimately, the city.” —Ananya Roy, University of California, Los Angeles Beirut is a city divided. Following the Green Line of the civil war, dividing the Christian east and the Muslim west, today hundreds of such lines dissect the city. For the residents of Beirut, urban planning could hold promise: a new spatial order could bring a peaceful future. But with unclear state structures and outsourced public processes, urban planning has instead become a contest between religious-political organizations and profit-seeking developers. Neighborhoods reproduce poverty, displacement, and urban violence. For the War Yet to Come examines urban planning in three neighborhoods of Beirut’s southeastern peripheries, revealing how these areas have been developed into frontiers of a continuing sectarian order. Hiba Bou Akar argues these neighborhoods are arranged, not in the expectation of a bright future, but according to the logic of “the war yet to come”: urban planning plays on fears and differences, rumors of war, and paramilitary strategies to organize everyday life. As she shows, war in times of peace is not fought with tanks, artillery, and rifles, but involves a more mundane territorial contest for land and apartment sales, zoning and planning regulations, and infrastructure projects. Winner of the Anthony Leeds Prize “Upends our conventional notions of center and periphery, of local and transnational, even of war and peace.” —AbdouMaliq Simone, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity “Fascinating, theoretically astute, and empirically rich.” —Asef Bayat, University of Illinois — Urbana-Champaign “An important contribution.” —Christine Mady, International Journal of Middle East Studies
Download or read book Beyond the Death of God written by Simone Raudino and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2022-05-26 with total page 661 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume offers a nuanced picture with specific instances of religion and politics in Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu contexts, broadly presenting the phenomenon of religion and politics via country and thematic case studies. Qualitative, quantitative, material, philosophical, and theological analyses draw upon social theory to show how (and why) religion matters deeply in each time and place. The authors and contributors demonstrate that religion is a significant force that drives societies and polities around the world, and that a radical change in the Western understanding of value-driven global politics is needed. Beyond the Death of God offers new, local voices to Western audiences—through essays that suggest the need for an appreciation of Divinity as a quintessence holding a significant place in the hearts, minds, social orders, and political organization of polities around the world.
Download or read book Sectarian Gulf written by Toby Matthiesen and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As popular uprisings spread across the Middle East, popular wisdom often held that the Gulf States would remain beyond the fray. In Sectarian Gulf, Toby Matthiesen paints a very different picture, offering the first assessment of the Arab Spring across the region. With first-hand accounts of events in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, Matthiesen tells the story of the early protests, and illuminates how the regimes quickly suppressed these movements. Pitting citizen against citizen, the regimes have warned of an increasing threat from the Shia population. Relations between the Gulf regimes and their Shia citizens have soured to levels as bad as 1979, following the Iranian revolution. Since the crackdown on protesters in Bahrain in mid-March 2011, the "Shia threat" has again become the catchall answer to demands for democratic reform and accountability. While this strategy has ensured regime survival in the short term, Matthiesen warns of the dire consequences this will have—for the social fabric of the Gulf States, for the rise of transnational Islamist networks, and for the future of the Middle East.
Download or read book Beyond Sunni and Shia written by Frederic Wehrey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection seeks to advance our understanding of intra-Islamic identity conflict during a period of upheaval in the Middle East. Instead of treating distinctions between and within Sunni and Shia Islam as primordial and immutable, it examines how political economy, geopolitics, domestic governance, social media, non- and sub-state groups, and clerical elites have affected the transformation and diffusion of sectarian identities. Particular attention is paid to how conflicts over distribution of political and economic power have taken on a sectarian quality, and how a variety of actors have instrumentalized sectarianism. The volume, covering Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Iran, and Egypt, includes contributors from a broad array of disciplines including political science, history, sociology, and Islamic studies. Beyond Sunni and Shia draws on extensive fieldwork and primary sources to offer insights that are empirically rich and theoretically grounded, but also accessible for policy audiences and the informed public.
