Download or read book Cultural Fusion of Sufi Islam written by Sarwar Alam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-19 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has been argued that the mystical Sufi form of Islam is the most sensitive to other cultures, being accommodative to other traditions and generally tolerant to peoples of other faiths. It readily becomes integrated into local cultures and they are similarly often infused into Sufism. Examples of this reciprocity are commonly reflected in Sufi poetry, music, hagiographic genres, memoires, and in the ritualistic practices of Sufi traditions. This volume shows how this often-side-lined tradition functions in the societies in which it is found, and demonstrates how it relates to mainstream Islam. The focus of this book ranges from reflecting Sufi themes in the Qur’anic calligraphy to movies, from ideals to everyday practices, from legends to actual history, from gender segregation to gender transgression, and from legalism to spiritualism. Consequently, the international panel of contributors to this volume are trained in a range of disciplines that include religious studies, history, comparative literature, anthropology, and ethnography. Covering Southeast Asia to West Africa as well as South Asia and the West, they address both historical and contemporary issues, shedding light on Sufism’s adaptability. This book sets aside conventional methods of understanding Islam, such as theological, juridical, and philosophical, in favour of analysing its cultural impact. As such, it will be of great interest to all scholars of Islamic Studies, the Sociology of Religion, Religion and Media, as well as Religious Studies and Area Studies more generally.
Download or read book Hajj to the Heart written by Scott Kugle and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2021-12-28 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Against the sweeping backdrop of South Asian history, this is a story of journeys taken by sixteenth-century reformist Muslim scholars and Sufi mystics from India to Arabia. At the center is the influential Sufi scholar Shaykh Ali Muttaqi and his little-known network of disciples. Scott Kugle relates how Ali Muttaqi, an expert in Arabic, scriptural hermeneutics, and hadith, left his native South Asia and traversed treacherous seas to make the Hajj to Mecca. Settling in Mecca, he continued to influence his homeland from overseas. Kugle draws on his original translations of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, never before available in English, to trace Ali Muttaqi's devotional writings, revealing how the Hajj transformed his spiritual life and political loyalties. The story expands across three generations of peripatetic Sufi masters in the Mutaqqi lineage as they travel for purposes of pilgrimage, scholarship, and sometimes simply for survival along Indian Ocean maritime routes linking global Muslim communities. Exploring the political intrigue, scholarly debates, and diverse social milieus that shaped the colorful personalities of his Sufi subjects, Kugle argues for the importance of Indian Sufi thought in the study of hadith and of ethics in Islam. We are proud to announce that this book is freely available in an open-access enhanced edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of Emory University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Learn more at the TOME website: openmonographs.org. The open-access enhanced edition of Hajj to the Heart can be found here: https://manifold.ecds.emory.edu/projects/hajj-to-the-heart
Download or read book Music Branding and Consumer Culture in Church written by Tom Wagner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting as a single congregation in Australia, Hillsong Church now has campuses worldwide, releases worship music that sells millions of albums and its ministers regularly appear in mainstream media. So, how has a single church gained such international prominence? This book offers an ethnographic exploration of the ways in which music and marketing have been utilised in the pursuit and production of spiritual experience for members of Hillsong Church. An experience that has proven to be incredibly popular. The main theme of this book is that marketing, specifically branding, is not just a way to "sell" religion, but rather an integral part of spiritual experience in consumer society. Focussing on the London Hillsong church as a case study, the use of its own music in tandem with strong branding is shown to be a co- and re-productive method of organizing, patterning, and communicating information. The church provides the branded material and cultural context in which participants’ sacred experience of self unfolds. However, this requires participants to "do the work" to properly understand, and ultimately embody, the values associated with the brand. This book raises important questions about the role of branding and music in forming modern scared identities. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Ethnomusicology and Media Studies.
Download or read book Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-26 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Cultures in Early Modern North India: Current Research grows out of over a 40-year tradition of the triennial International Conferences on Early Modern Literatures in North India (ICEMLNI), initiated to share 'Bhakti in current research.' This volume brings together a selection of contributions from some of the leading scholars as well as emerging researchers in the field originally presented at the 13th ICEMLNI (University of Warsaw, 18-22 July 2018). Considering innovative methodologies and tools, the volume presents the current state of research on early modern sources and offers new inputs into our understanding of this period in the cultural history of India. This collection of essays is in the tradition of 'Bhakti in current research' volumes produced from 1980 onward but reflecting our current understanding of early modern textualities. The book operates on the premises that the centuries preceding the colonial conquest of India, which in scholarship influenced by orientalist concepts, has often been referred to as medieval. However these languages already participated in modernity through increased circulation of ideas, new forms of knowledge, new concepts of the individual, of the community, and of religion. The essays cover multiple languages (Indian vernaculars, Sanskrit, Apabhramsha, Persian), different media (texts, performances, paintings, music) and traditions (Hindu, Jain, Muslim, Sant, Sikh), analyzing them as individual phenomena that function in a wider network of connections at textual, intertextual, and knowledge-system levels.
Download or read book Sacred Spaces written by Samina Quraeshi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-31 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quraeshi provides a vision of Islam in South Asia enriched by art and by a female perspective on the diversity of Islamic expressions of faith. An account of a journey through the author’s childhood homeland, the book reveals the deeply spiritual nature of major centers of Sufism in the central and northwestern heartlands of South Asia.
Download or read book Democratic Transition in the Muslim World written by Alfred Stepan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In early 2011, widespread protests ousted dictatorial regimes in both Tunisia and Egypt. Within a few years, Tunisia successfully held parliamentary and presidential elections and witnessed a peaceful transition of power, while the Egyptian military went on to seize power and institute authoritarian control. What explains the success and failure of transitions to democracy in these two countries, and how might they speak to democratic transition attempts in other Muslim-majority countries? Democratic Transition in the Muslim World convenes leading scholars to consider the implications of democratic success in Tunisia and failure in Egypt in comparative perspective. Alongside case studies of Indonesia, Senegal, and India, contributors analyze similarities and differences among democratizing countries with large Muslim populations, considering universal challenges as well as each nation’s particular obstacles. A central theme is the need to understand the conditions under which it becomes possible to craft pro-democratic coalitions among secularists and Islamists. Essays discuss the dynamics of secularist fears of Islamist electoral success, the role of secular constituencies in authoritarian regimes’ resilience, and the prospects for moderation among both secularist and Islamist political actors. They delve into topics such as the role of the army and foreign military aid, Middle Eastern constitutions, and the role of the Muslim Brotherhood. The book also includes an essay by the founder and president of Tunisia’s Ennadha Party, Rachid Ghannouchi, who discusses the political strategies his party chose to pursue.
Download or read book Religious Categories and the Construction of the Indigenous written by Christopher Hartney and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-10-18 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume significantly advances the academic debate surrounding the taxonomy and the categorisation of ‘indigenous religion’. Developing approaches from leading scholars in the field, this edited volume provides the space for established and rising voices to discuss the highly problematic topic of how indigenous 'religion' can be defined and conceptualised. Constructing the Indigenous highlights the central issues in the debate between those supporting and refining current academic frameworks and those who would argue that present thinking remains too dependant on misunderstandings that arise from definitions of religion that are too inflexible, and from problems caused by the World Religion paradigm. This book will prove essential reading for those that wish to engage with contemporary discussions regarding the definitions of religion and their relations to the indigenous category. Contributors are: Zoe Alderton, Steve Bevis, James L. Cox, Christopher Hartney, Graham Harvey, Milad Milani, Bjørn Ola Tafjord, Daniel J. Tower, Garry W. Trompf, and Jack Tsonis.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion Gender and Sexuality written by Sonya Sharma and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together disciplines across the arts, humanities and social sciences, this Handbook presents novel and lively examinations of the dynamic ways religion, gender and sexuality operate. Applying feminist, intersectional, and reflexive approaches, the volume aims to loosen imperialist and exclusionary figurations that have underwritten and tethered religion, gender, and sexuality together. While holding onto the field of inquiry, the Handbook offers contributions that interrogate and untie it from the terms and conditions that have formed it. The volume is organized into thematic sections: - Forces and Futures - Activisms and Labors - Agencies and Practices - Relationships and Institutions - Texts and Objects Chapters range across religious, geographical, historical, political, and social contexts and feature an array of case-studies, experiences, and topics that exemplify the reflexive intention of the volume, including explorations of race, whiteness, colonialism, and the institutional intolerance of minority groups. Contributors also advance new areas of research in religion including artificial intelligence, farming, migrant mothering, child sexual abuse, mediatization, national security, legal frameworks, addiction and recovery, decolonial hermeneutics, creative arts, sport, sexual practices, and academic friendship. This is an essential contribution to the fields of religious studies and gender and sexuality studies.
Download or read book Middle Eastern Gothics written by Karen Grumberg and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2022-12-15 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this study cover the four major Middle Eastern languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish) and are authored by experts in these literatures, who read and engage with these texts in their original languages. Their intimate knowledge of the linguistic and cultural contexts of the works they analyse provides readers access to nuances in the texts and, ultimately, to a more profound understanding of them. This is the first cohesive collection addressing the Gothic in the geographic/linguistic context of the Middle East region. There has been increased interest not only in global iterations of the Gothic but also in Middle Eastern writing, particularly when it intersects with the Gothic (i.e. Frankenstein in Baghdad). The Introduction of the volume offers a new theorisation of Gothic literature, proposing the "transnational region" as a frame for reading literary texts that cross national and linguistic boundaries.
Download or read book Orthodox Christianity and Gender written by Helena Kupari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Orthodox Christian tradition has all too often been sidelined in conversations around contemporary religion. Despite being distinct from Protestantism and Catholicism in both theology and practice, it remains an underused setting for academic inquiry into current lived religious practice. This collection, therefore, seeks to redress this imbalance by investigating modern manifestations of Orthodox Christianity through an explicitly gender-sensitive gaze. By addressing attitudes to gender in this context, it fills major gaps in the literature on both religion and gender. Starting with the traditional teachings and discourses around gender in the Orthodox Church, the book moves on to demonstrate the diversity of responses to those narratives that can be found among Orthodox populations in Europe and North America. Using case studies from several countries, with both large and small Orthodox populations, contributors use an interdisciplinary approach to address how gender and religion interact in contexts such as, iconography, conversion, social activism and ecumenical relations, among others. From Greece and Russia to Finland and the USA, this volume sheds new light on the myriad ways in which gender is manifested, performed, and engaged within contemporary Orthodoxy. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that employing the analytical lens of gender enables new insights into Orthodox Christianity as a lived tradition. It will, therefore, be of great interest to scholars of both Religious Studies and Gender Studies.
Download or read book Media and Science Religion Conflict written by Thomas Aechtner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines why the religion-science skirmishes known as the Evolution Wars have persisted into the 21st century. It does so by considering the influences of mass media in relation to decision-making research and the Elaboration Likelihood Model, one of the most authoritative persuasion theories. The book’s analysis concentrates on the expression of cues, or cognitive mental shortcuts, in Darwin-sceptic and counter-creationist broadcasts. A multiyear collection of media generated by the most prominent Darwin-sceptic organizations is surveyed, along with rival publications from supporters of evolutionary theory described as the pro-evolutionists. The analysed materials include works produced by Young Earth Creationist and Intelligent Design media makers, New Atheist pacesetters, as well as both agnostic and religious supporters of evolution. These cues are shown to function as subtle but effective means of shaping public opinion, including appeals to expertise, claims that ideas are being censored, and the tactical use of statistics and technical jargon. Contending that persuasive mass media is a decisive component of science-religion controversies, this book will be of keen interest to scholars of Religion, Science and Religion interactions, as well as researchers of Media and Communication Studies more generally.
Download or read book Religion Modernity Globalisation written by François Gauthier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the last four decades have seen profound and important changes in the nature and social location of religion, and that those changes are best understood when cast against the associated rise of consumerism and neoliberalism. These transformations are often misunderstood and underestimated, namely because the study of religion remains dependent on the secularisation paradigm which can no longer provide a sufficiently fruitful framework for analysis. The book challenges diagnoses of transience and fragmentation by proposing an alternative narrative and set of concepts for understanding the global religious landscape. The present situation is framed as the result of a shift from a National-Statist to a Global-Market regime of religion. Adopting a holistic perspective that breaks with the current specialisation tendencies, it charts the emergence of the State and the Market as institutions and ideas related to social order, as well as their changing rapports from classical modernity to today. Breaking with a tradition of Western-centeredness, the book offers probing enquiries into Indonesia and a synthesis of global and Western trends. This long-awaited book offers a bold new vision for the social scientific study of religion and will be of great interest to all scholars of the Sociology and Anthropology of religion, as well as Religious Studies in general.
Download or read book Freethought and Atheism in Central and Eastern Europe written by Tomáš Bubík and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first comprehensive overview of atheism, secularity and non-religion in Central and Eastern Europe in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In contrast to scholarship that has focused on the ‘decline of religion’ and secularization theory, the book builds upon recent trends to focus on the ‘rise of non-religion’ itself. While the label of ‘post-communism’ might suggest a generalized perception of the region, this survey reveals that the precise developments in each country before, after and even during the communist era are surprisingly diverse. A multinational team of contributors provide interdisciplinary case studies covering Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria. This approach utilises perspectives from social and intellectual history in combination with sociology of religion in order to cover the historical development of secularity and secular thought, complemented with sociological data. The study is framed by methodological and analytical chapters. Offering an important geographical perspective to the study of freethought, atheism, secularity and non-religion, this wide-ranging book will be of significant interest to scholars of twentieth-century social and intellectual history, sociology of religion and non-religion, cultural and religious studies, philosophy and theology.
Download or read book Contemporary Sufism written by Meena Sharify-Funk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-22 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is Sufism? Contemporary views vary tremendously, even among Sufis themselves. Contemporary Sufism: Piety, Politics, and Popular Culture brings to light the religious frameworks that shape the views of Sufism’s friends, adversaries, admirers, and detractors and, in the process, helps readers better understand the diversity of contemporary Sufism, the pressures and cultural openings to which it responds, and the many divergent opinions about contemporary Sufism’s relationship to Islam. The three main themes: piety, politics, and popular culture are explored in relation to the Islamic and Western contexts that shape them, as well as to the historical conditions that frame contemporary debates. This book is split into three parts: • Sufism and anti-Sufism in contemporary contexts; • Contemporary Sufism in the West: Poetic influences and popular manifestations; • Gendering Sufism: Tradition and transformation. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the challenges of contemporary Sufism as well as its relationship to Islam, gender, and the West. It offers an ideal starting point from which undergraduate and postgraduate students, teachers and lecturers can explore Sufism today.
Download or read book Transformational Embodiment in Asian Religions written by George Pati and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines several theoretical concerns of embodiment in the context of Asian religious practice. Looking at both subtle and spatial bodies, it explores how both types of embodiment are engaged as sites for transformation, transaction and transgression. Collectively bridging ancient and modern conceptualizations of embodiment in religious practice, the book offers a complex mapping of how body is defined. It revisits more traditional, mystical religious systems, including Hindu Tantra and Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Bon, Chinese Daoism and Persian Sufism and distinctively juxtaposes these inquiries alongside analyses of racial, gendered, and colonized bodies. Such a multifaceted subject requires a diverse approach, and so perspectives from phenomenology and neuroscience as well as critical race theory and feminist theology are utilised to create more precise analytical tools for the scholarly engagement of embodied religious epistemologies. This a nuanced and interdisciplinary exploration of the myriad issues around bodies within religion. As such it will be a key resource for any scholar of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, and Gender Studies.
Download or read book Hindi Christian Literature in Contemporary India written by Rakesh Peter-Dass and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-12 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first academic study of Christian literature in Hindi and its role in the politics of language and religion in contemporary India. In public portrayals, Hindi has been the language of Hindus and Urdu the language of Muslims, but Christians have been usually been associated with the English of the foreign ‘West’. However, this book shows how Christian writers in India have adopted Hindi in order to promote a form of Christianity that can be seen as Indian, desī, and rooted in the religio-linguistic world of the Hindi belt. Using three case studies, the book demonstrates how Hindi Christian writing strategically presents Christianity as linguistically Hindi, culturally Indian, and theologically informed by other faiths. These works are written to sway public perceptions by promoting particular forms of citizenship in the context of fostering the use of Hindi. Examining the content and context of Christian attention to Hindi, it is shown to have been deployed as a political and cultural tool by Christians in India. This book gives an important insight into the link between language and religion in India. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Religion in India, World Christianity, Religion and Politics and Interreligious Dialogue, as well as Religious Studies and South Asian Studies.
Download or read book Moroccan Female Religious Agents written by Aziza Ouguir and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Moroccan Female Religious Agents: Old Practices and New Perspectives, Ouguir studies Moroccan female religious agents in particular historical women saints and Sufis, the way they constructed powerful saintly personalities that challenged the dominant conventional norms, and the way they are received by venerators and feminist Islamist activists of modern Morocco. Through hagiographic and oral narratives, Ouguir examines the techniques religious women followed to achieve ethical self-formation and strong religious personalities that promoted them to leadership. She also examined the venerators’, murshidᾱt and Islamist feminists’ reception of women saints in their discourses. Ouguir states convincingly that Moroccan religious women agents in both Morocco’s past and present are to be highlighted for broader discourses on Muslim women and feminism.
