Download or read book Beyond Textual Islam written by Nadeem Hasnain and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With special reference to India.
Download or read book Beyond Timbuktu written by Ousmane Oumar Kane and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Timbuktu is famous as a center of learning from Islam’s Golden Age. Yet it was one among many scholarly centers to exist in precolonial West Africa. Ousmane Kane charts the rise of Muslim learning in West Africa from the beginning of Islam to the present day and corrects lingering misconceptions about Africa’s Muslim heritage and its influence.
Download or read book Beyond the Qur an written by David Hollenberg and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2016-10-20 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book-length study of ta'wil, a form of allegorical scriptural interpretation propagated by Ismaili-Shiite missionaries Ismailism, one of the three major branches of Shiism, is best known for ta'wil, an esoteric, allegorizing scriptural exegesis. Beyond the Qur'?n: Early Ismaili ta'wil and the Secrets of the Prophets is the first book-length study of this interpretive genre. Analyzing sources composed by tenth-century Ismaili missionaries in light of social-science theories of cognition and sectarianism, David Hollenberg argues that the missionaries used ta'wil to instill in acolytes a set of symbolic patterns, forms, and "logics." This shared symbolic world bound the community together as it created a gulf between community members and those outside the movement. Hollenberg thus situates ta'wil socially, as an interpretive practice that sustained a community of believers. An important aspect of ta'wil is its unconventional objects of interpretation. Ismaili missionaries mixed Qur'?nic exegesis with interpretation of Torah, Gospels, Greek philosophy, and symbols such as the Christian Cross and Eucharist, as well as Jewish festivals. Previously scholars have speculated that this extra- Qur'?nic ta'wil was intended to convert Jews and Christians to Ismailism. Hollenberg, departing from this view, argues that such interpretations were, like Ismaili interpretations of the Qur'?n, intended for an Ismaili audience, many of whom converted to the movement from other branches of Shiism. Hollenberg argues that through exegesis of these unconventional sources, the missionaries demonstrated that their imam alone could strip the external husk from all manner of sources and show the initiates reality in its pure, unmediated form, an imaginal world to which they alone had access. They also fulfilled the promise that their imam would teach them the secrets behind all religions, a sign that the initial stage of the end of days had commenced. Beyond the Qur'?n contributes to our understanding of early Ismaili doctrine, Fatimid rhetoric, and, more broadly, the use of esoteric literatures in the history of religion.
Download or read book A Culture of Ambiguity written by Thomas Bauer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Western imagination, Islamic cultures are dominated by dogmatic religious norms that permit no nuance. Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam’s medieval “Golden Age,” marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy? In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam’s encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity—and therefore also their own cultural traditions. Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.
Download or read book The Bruce B Lawrence Reader written by Bruce B. Lawrence and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of his career, Bruce B. Lawrence has explored the central elements of Islamicate civilization and Muslim networks. This reader assembles more than two dozen of Lawrence's key writings, among them analyses of premodern and modern Islamic discourses, practices, and institutions and methodological reflections on the contextual study of religion. Six methodologies serve as the organizing rubric: theorizing Islam, revaluing Muslim comparativists, translating Sufism, deconstructing religious modernity, networking Muslims, and reflecting on the Divine. Throughout, Lawrence attributes the resilience of Islam to its cosmopolitan character and Muslims' engagement in cross-cultural dialogue. Several essays also address the central role of institutional Sufism in various phases and domains of Islamic history. The volume concludes with Lawrence's reflections on Islam's spiritual and aesthetic resources in the context of global comity. Modeling what it means to study Islam beyond political and disciplinary borders as well as a commitment to linking empathetic imagination with critical reflection, this reader presents the broad arc of Lawrence's prescient contributions to the study of Islam.
Download or read book Islam Obscured written by D. Varisco and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-02-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnographers have observed Muslims nearly everywhere Islam is practiced. This study analyzes four seminal texts that have been read widely outside anthropology. Two are by distinguished anthropologists on either side of the Atlantic, Islam Observed (by Clifford Geertz in 1968) and Muslim Society (by Ernest Gellner in 1981). Two other texts are by Muslim scholars, Beyond the Veil (Fatima Mernissi in 1975) and Discovering Islam (by Akbar Ahmed in 1988). Varisco argues that each of these four authors approaches Islam as an essentialized organic unity rather than letting 'Islams' found in the field speak to the diversity of practice. The textual truths engendered, and far too often engineered, in these idealized representations of Islam have found their way unscrutinized into an endless stream of scholarly works and textbooks. Varisco's analysis goes beyond the rhetoric over what Islam is to the information from ethnographic research about what Muslims say they do and actually are observed to do. The issues covered include Islam as a cultural phenomenon, representation of 'the other', Muslim gender roles, politics of ethnographic authority, and Orientalist discourse.
Download or read book Christianity Islam and the Negro Race written by Edward Wilmot Blyden and published by . This book was released on 1887 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Islam in Context written by Peter G. Riddell and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2003-07-01 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent months, much attention has been paid to Islam and the greater Muslim world. Some analysis has been openly hostile, while even more has been overly simplistic. Islam in Context goes behind the recent crisis to discuss the history of Islam, describe its basic structure and beliefs, explore the current division between Muslim moderates and extremists, and suggest a way forward. Authors Peter G. Riddell and Peter Cotterell draw from sources such as the Qur'an, early Christian chronicles of the Crusades, and contemporary Muslim and non-Muslim writings. They move beyond the stereotypes of Muhammad-both idealized and negative-and argue against the myth that relatively recent events in the Middle East are the only cause for the clash between Islam and the West. Riddell and Cotterell ask the non-Muslim world to attempt to understand Islam from the perspective of Muslims and to acknowledge past mistakes. At the same time, they challenge the Muslim world by suggesting that Islam stands today at a vital crossroads and only Muslims can forge the way forward. Islam in Context will appeal to all those who are interested in an alternative to the easily packaged descriptions of the relationship between Islam and the West.
Download or read book Beyond the Clash of Civilizations written by Mohamed Wa Baile and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-08-17 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In todays ever-changing and often uncertain world, encouraging healthy dialogue between all cultures and religions is vital. In Beyond the Clash of Civilizations, Mohamed Wa Baile carefully explores how Muslims and people of other faiths can achieve a peaceful coexistence instead of being victims of conflict. Wa Baile, a follower and practitioner of Islamic religion, has had the privilege of unconditional access to study Muslim communities in Switzerland. There, for the past ten years, he has examined the interactions between Muslims and the complex, introspective issues that often plague both individuals and families. Through attending hundreds of congregational prayers and interviews with Muslim leaders, Wa Baile shares his thoughtful observations as he seeks new meanings and alternative ways of thinking that will help all Muslims understand and assess the real challenges that lie ahead. It is up to the current generation to seek practical solutions and peaceful resolutions, rather than insist on the narrative of one insular side or the other. Beyond the Clash of Civilizations encourages a new respect for Islam with the hope of changing long-held perceptions of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Download or read book Hidden Caliphate written by Waleed Ziad and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-16 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 ÒHidden Caliphate,Ó 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 ÒGreat Game,Ó 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.
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 409 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.
Download or read book Islam Jihad written by Abdul Gafoor Abdul Majeed Noorani and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2002 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath have focused the world's attention on Islamic fundamentalism. This accessible volume aims to rebutt the misconceptions about Islam articulated by many European intellectuals down the centuries. For non-Muslims these still obstruct a clear understanding of both the nature of Islam and the history of Christian/Muslim interactions.
Download or read book Inside the Gender Jihad written by Amina Wadud and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A world-renowned professor of Islamic studies, Amina Wadud has long been at the forefront of what she calls the 'gender jihad,' the struggle for justice for women within the global Islamic community. In 2005, she made international headlines when she helped to promote new traditions by leading the Muslim Friday prayer in New York City, provoking a firestorm of media controversy and kindling charges of blasphemy among conservative Muslims worldwide. In this provocative book, "Inside the Gender Jihad", Wadud brings a wealth of experience from the trenches of the jihad to make a passionate argument for gender inclusiveness in the Muslim world. Knitting together scrupulous scholarship with lessons drawn from her own experiences as a woman, she explores the array of issues facing Muslim women today, including social status, education, sexuality, and leadership. A major contribution to the debate on women and Islam, Amina Wadud's vision for changing the status of women within Islam is both revolutionary and urgent.
Download or read book The Mind of Jihad written by Laurent Murawiec and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-11 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines contemporary jihad as a cult of violence and power. All jihadi groups, whether Shiite or Sunni, Arab or not, are characterized by a similar bloodlust. Murawiec characterizes this belief structure as identical to that of Europe's medieval millenarians and apocalyptics, arguing that both jihadis and their European cousins shared in a Gnostic ideology: a God-given mission endowed the Elect with supernatural powers and placed them above the common law of mankind. Although the ideology of jihad is essentially Islamic, Murawiec traces the political technologies used by modern jihad to the Bolsheviks. Their doctrines of terror as a system of rule were appropriated by radical Islam through multiple lines of communication. This book brings history, anthropology, and theology to bear to understand the mind of jihad that has declared war on the West and the world.
Download or read book Texts Scribes and Transmission written by Wafi A. Momin and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past few decades have seen a burgeoning of interest in the manuscript cultures of the Muslim world. The study of manuscripts has brought to light new perspectives on the transmission of texts and larger questions of cultural practices passed down within the learned circles of premodern Muslim societies. But the intellectual and literary heritage of Ismaili communities, forming a major branch of Shi'i Islam, has until recently been preserved in private and largely inaccessible libraries. This open access volume brings together studies offering insights on different aspects of the manuscript cultures nurtured by Ismaili communities until well after the widespread dissemination of printed books. The wide-ranging materials transmitted via these manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Indic languages also reflect the doctrinal and literary preoccupation of Muslims at large and of other groups from the societies where Ismailis lived. Hence, the manuscripts bear the imprint of their respective cultural contexts, namely a number of regions from the Near East, Central and South Asia. As well as engaging with multifaceted problems surrounding the processes of textual transmission, the chapters in this book deal with other connected aspects like codicology, scribal and reading practices, educational and social history, authorship, script, religious identity and interactions of ideas across ideological denominations. With contributions from both seasoned and younger scholars, the volume will be of interest to those working on textual scholarship, manuscript and literary cultures, and Islamic studies.
Download or read book Texts Scribes and Transmission written by Wafi A. Momin and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The past few decades have seen a burgeoning interest in the manuscript cultures of the Muslim world. The study of manuscripts has brought to light new perspectives on the transmission of texts and larger questions of cultural practices passed down within the learned circles of premodern Muslim societies. The intellectual and literary heritage of Ismaili communities, who form a branch of Shi'i Islam, has until recently been preserved in private and largely inaccessible libraries. This open access volume brings together studies offering insights on different aspects of the manuscript cultures nurtured by Ismaili communities until well after the widespread dissemination of printed books. The range of materials transmitted via these manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Indic languages also reflects the doctrinal and literary preoccupations of Muslims at large and of other groups from the societies in which Ismailis lived. Hence, the manuscripts bear the imprint of their respective cultural contexts, namely a number of regions from the Near East to Central and South Asia. In addition to engaging with multifaceted problems surrounding the processes of textual transmission, the chapters in this book deal with other connected aspects like codicology, scribal and reading practices, educational and social history, authorship, communal script, religious identity and interactions of ideas across ideological denominations. With contributions from specialists and early-career scholars, the volume will be of interest to those working on textual scholarship, manuscript and literary cultures and Islamic studies. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Islamic Publications Ltd.
Download or read book Polemical Encounters written by Mercedes García-Arenal and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection takes a new approach to understanding religious plurality in the Iberian Peninsula and its Mediterranean and northern European contexts. Focusing on polemics—works that attack or refute the beliefs of religious Others—this volume aims to challenge the problematic characterization of Iberian Jews, Muslims, and Christians as homogeneous groups. From the high Middle Ages to the end of the seventeenth century, Christian efforts to convert groups of Jews and Muslims, Muslim efforts to convert Christians and Jews, and the defensive efforts of these communities to keep their members within the faiths led to the production of numerous polemics. This volume brings together a wide variety of case studies that expose how the current historiographical focus on the three religious communities as allegedly homogeneous groups obscures the diversity within the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities as well as the growing ranks of skeptics and outright unbelievers. Featuring contributions from a range of academic disciplines, this paradigm-shifting book sheds new light on the cultural and intellectual dynamics of the conflicts that marked relations among these religious communities in the Iberian Peninsula and beyond. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Antoni Biosca i Bas, Thomas E. Burman, Mònica Colominas Aparicio, John Dagenais, Óscar de la Cruz, Borja Franco Llopis, Linda G. Jones, Daniel J. Lasker, Davide Scotto, Teresa Soto, Ryan Szpiech, Pieter Sjoerd van Koningsveld, and Carsten Wilke.
