Download or read book Martyrdom in Islam written by David Cook and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-15 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description

Download or read book Christian Martyrs Under Islam written by Christian C. Sahner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.

Download or read book Striving in the Path of God written by Asma Afsaruddin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In popular and academic literature, jihad is predominantly assumed to refer exclusively to armed combat, and martyrdom in the Islamic context is understood to be invariably of the military kind. This perspective, derived mainly from legal texts, has led to discussions of jihad and martyrdom as concepts with fixed, universal meanings divorced from the socio-political circumstances in which they have been deployed through the centuries. Asma Afsaruddin studies in a more holistic manner the range of significations that can be ascribed to the term jihad from the earliest period to the present and historically contextualizes the competing discourses that developed over time. Many assumptions about the military jihad and martyrdom in Islam are thereby challenged and deconstructed. A comprehensive interrogation of varied sources reveals early and multiple competing definitions of a word that in combination with the phrase fi sabil Allah translates literally to "striving in the path of God." Contemporary radical Islamists have appropriated this language to exhort their cadres to armed political opposition, which they legitimize under the rubric of jihad. Afsaruddin shows that the multivalent connotations of jihad and shahid recovered from the formative period lead us to question the assertions of those who maintain that belligerent and militant interpretations preserve the earliest and only authentic understanding of these two key terms. Retrieval of these multiple perspectives has important implications for our world today in which the concepts of jihad and martyrdom are still being fiercely debated.

Download or read book Jihad and Martyrdom written by David Cook and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jihad and martyrdom in Islam have an ever-greater relevance in today's world, topics which are called upon to teach with increasing frequency and areas around which there is also ignorance and about the historical meaning. This set provides a survey of the breadth of scholarly opinion across 75 journal articles which will go towards dispelling myth and unravelling the historical interpretations of jihadism and matyrology in many parts of the world.

Download or read book Martyrdom in Modern Islam written by Meir Hatina and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth analysis of modern Islamic martyrdom and its various interpretations, positing martyrdom as a vital component of contemporary identity politics and power struggles.

Download or read book Dying as a Shahid written by Raphael Israeli and published by Strategic Book Publishing & Rights Agency. This book was released on 2019-04-29 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dying as a Shahid: Martyrs in Islam examines the motives, religious and psychological, which make the so-called “suicide bomber” tick. What is usually so-called, must rather be termed “Islamikaze” a combination of Islam and kamikaze, due to the phenomenological resemblance between the Japanese kamikaze who fought in the Pacific during World War II, and the present-day Muslim terrorists. In addition to the religious, social, and psychological underpinnings of the phenomenon of Shahid (martyr), there is a rich array of historical precedents that have fixated this sort of terrorism with self-immolation, dubbed “self-sacrifice,” as a prominent feature of Islamic life.

Download or read book Martyrdom Self sacrifice and Self immolation written by Margo Kitts and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, or self-immolation is perennially controversial: Should it rightly be termed suicide? Does religion sanction it? Should it be celebrated or anathematized? At least some idealization of such self-chosen deaths is found in every religious tradition treated in this volume, from ascetic heroes who conquer their passions to save others by dying, to righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. At the same time, there are persistent disputes about the concepts used to justify these deaths, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. In this volume, renowned scholars bring their literary and historical expertise to bear on the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three examine contemporary movements with disputed classical roots, while eleven look at classical religious literatures which variously laud and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of death. Overall, the volume offers an important scholarly corrective to the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.

Download or read book The Political Development of the Kurds in Iran written by F. Koohi-Kamali and published by Springer. This book was released on 2003-09-30 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at Kurdish Nationalism in Iran and examines the links between the structural changes in the Kurdish economy and its political demands. Farideh Koohi-Kamali argues that the transition of the nomadic, tribal society of Kurdistan to an agrarian village society was the beginning of a process by which Kurds saw themselves as a community of homogenous ethnic identity. The political movements of Kurds in Iran are discussed to illustrate that the different phases of economic development of Kurdish society played a great role in determining the way in which Kurds expressed their political demands for independence.

Download or read book Martyrdom written by Ali Shariati and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compilation of lectures by Dr Ali Shariati on the concept of martyrdom, and the importance of martyrdom in Shi'ite ideologyThis book is one of the many Islamic publications distributed by Ahlulbayt Organization throughout the world in different languages with the aim of conveying the message of Islam to the people of the world. Ahlulbayt Organization (www.shia.es) is a registered Organization that operates and is sustained through collaborative efforts of volunteers in many countries around the world, and it welcomes your involvement and support. Its objectives are numerous, yet its main goal is to spread the truth about the Islamic faith in general and the Shi`a School of Thought in particular due to the latter being misrepresented, misunderstood and its tenets often assaulted by many ignorant folks, Muslims and non-Muslims. Organization's purpose is to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge through a global medium, the Internet, to locations where such resources are not commonly or easily accessible or are resented, resisted and fought! In addition, For a complete list of our published books please refer to our website (www.shia.es) or send us an email to [email protected]

Download or read book Four Californian Lectures written by Sayyid Saeed Akhtar Rizvi and published by Bilal Muslim Mission of Tanzania. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 49 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transcript of four lectures delivered by Allamah Sayyid Saeed Akhtar Rizvi in California regarding Islam's true nature and it's perception in the West. It also includes a lecture about the culture of Muslims in India.

Download or read book Beyond Terror and Martyrdom written by Gilles Kepel and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 2001, two dominant worldviews have clashed in the global arena: a neoconservative nightmare of an insidious Islamic terrorist threat to civilized life, and a jihadist myth of martyrdom through the slaughter of infidels. Across the airwaves and on the ground, an ill-defined and uncontrollable war has raged between these two opposing scenarios. Deadly images and threats—from the televised beheading of Western hostages to graphic pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib, from the destruction wrought by suicide bombers in London and Madrid to civilian deaths at the hands of American occupation forces in Iraq—have polarized populations on both sides of this divide. Yet, as the noted Middle East scholar and commentator Gilles Kepel demonstrates, President Bush’s War on Terror masks a complex political agenda in the Middle East—enforcing democracy, accessing Iraqi oil, securing Israel, and seeking regime change in Iran. Osama bin Laden’s call for martyrs to rise up against the apostate and hasten the dawn of a universal Islamic state papers over a fractured, fragmented Islamic world that is waging war against itself. Beyond Terror and Martyrdom sounds the alarm to the West and to Islam that both of these exhausted narratives are bankrupt—neither productive of democratic change in the Middle East nor of unity in Islam. Kepel urges us to escape the ideological quagmire of terrorism and martyrdom and explore the terms of a new and constructive dialogue between Islam and the West, one for which Europe, with its expanding and restless Muslim populations, may be the proving ground.

Download or read book Shurat Legends Ibadi Identities written by Adam R. Gaiser and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2016-10-15 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of a variety of early Islamic texts to understand processes of identity formation and community In Shurat Legends, Ibadi Identities, Adam Gaiser explores the origins and early development of Islamic notions of martyrdom and of martyrdom literature. He examines the catalogs or lists of martyrs (martyrologies) of the early shur?t (Kh?rijites) in the context of late antiquity, showing that shur?t literature, as it can be reconstructed, shares continuity with the martyrologies of earlier Christians and other religious groups, especially in Iraq, and that this powerful literature was transmitted by seventh century shur?t through their successors, the Ib??iyya. Gaiser examines the sources of poems and narratives as quasi-historical accounts and their application in literary creations designed to meet particular communal needs, in particular, the need to establish and shape identity. Gaiser shows how these accounts accumulated traits—such as all-night prayer vigils, stoic acceptance of death, and miracles—-of a wider ascetic and apocalyptic literature in the eighth century, including martyrdom narratives of Eastern Christianity. By establishing focal points of piety around which a communal identity could be fashioned, such accounts proved suitable for use in missionary activity in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Gaiser also documents the reshaping of these narratives for more quietist purposes: emphasizing moderated rather than violent action, diplomacy, and respect for other Islamic sects as also being monotheistic, rather than condemning them as sinful. Along with refashioning narratives, Gaiser details the Ib??? efforts to compile collections into genealogies, both biographical dictionaries and lineages of the true faith linking individuals and communities to local saints and martyrs. He also shows how this more nuanced history led to the formation of rules and authorities governing the shur?t. Employing rarely examined manuscript materials to shed light on such processes as identity formation and communal boundary maintenance, Gaiser traces the course by which this martyrdom literature and its potentially dangerous implications came to be institutionalized, contained, and controlled.

Download or read book The Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanij it written by Jason R. Zaborowski and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study provides an edition, English translation, and analysis of the thirteenth-century Coptic Martyrdom of John of Phanijōit. Sociological and philological approaches to the text explain its significance to the study of Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt at the time of the Crusades.

Download or read book The Missing Martyrs written by Charles Kurzman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are there so few Muslim terrorists? With more than a billion Muslims in the world-many of whom supposedly hate the West and ardently desire martyrdom-why don't we see terrorist attacks every day? Where are the missing martyrs? These questions may seem counterintuitive, in light of the death and devastation that terrorists have wrought around the world. But the scale of violence, outside of civil war zones, has been far lower than the waves of attacks that the world feared in the wake of 9/11. Terrorists' own publications complain about Muslims' failure to join their cause. The Missing Martyrs draws on government sources and revolutionary publications, public opinion surveys and election results, historical documents and in-depth interviews with Muslims in the Middle East and around the world to examine barriers to terrorist recruitment, including liberal Islam, revolutionary rivalries, and an inelastic demand for U.S. foreign policy. This revised edition, updated to include the self-proclaimed "Islamic State," concludes that fear of terrorism should be brought into alignment with the actual level of threat, and that government policies and public opinion should be based on evidence rather than alarmist hyperbole.

Download or read book Jih d and shah dat written by Maḥmūd Ṭāliqānī and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Martyrdom of the Franciscans written by Christopher MacEvitt and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While hagiographies tell of Christian martyrs who have died in an astonishing number of ways and places, slain by members of many different groups, martyrdom in a Franciscan context generally meant death at Muslim hands; indeed, in Franciscan discourse, "death by Saracen" came to rival or even surpass other definitions of what made a martyr. The centrality of Islam to Franciscan conceptions of martyrdom becomes even more apparent—and problematic—when we realize that many of the martyr narratives were largely invented. Franciscan authors were free to choose the antagonist they wanted, Christopher MacEvitt observes, and they almost always chose Muslims. However, martyrdom in Franciscan accounts rarely leads to conversion of the infidel, nor is it accompanied, as is so often the case in earlier hagiographical accounts, by any miraculous manifestation. If the importance of preaching to infidels was written into the official Franciscan Rule of Order, the Order did not demonstrate much interest in conversion, and the primary efforts of friars in Muslim lands were devoted to preaching not to the native populations but to the Latin Christians—mercenaries, merchants, and captives—living there. Franciscan attitudes toward conversion and martyrdom changed dramatically in the beginning of the fourteenth century, however, when accounts of the martyrdom of four Franciscans said to have died while preaching in India were written. The speed with which the accounts of their martyrdom spread had less to do with the world beyond Christendom than with ecclesiastical affairs within, MacEvitt contends. The Martyrdom of the Franciscans shows how, for Franciscans, martyrdom accounts could at once offer veiled critique of papal policies toward the Order, a substitute for the rigorous pursuit of poverty, and a symbolic way to overcome Islam by denying Muslims the solace of conversion.

Download or read book The Passion of Al Hallaj Mystic and Martyr of Islam Volume 4 written by Louis Massignon and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 4 of 4. Encompassing the whole milieu of early Islamic civilization, this major work of Western orientalism explores the meaning of the life and teaching of the tenth-century mystic and martyr, al-Hallaj. With profound spiritual insight and transcultural sympathy, Massignon, an Islamicist and scholar of religion, penetrates Islamic mysticism in a way that was previously unknown. Massignon traveled throughout the Middle East and western India to gather and authenticate al-Hallaj's surviving writings and the recorded facts. After assembling the extant verses and prose works of al-Hallaj and the accounts of his life and death, Massignon published La Passion d'al-Hallaj in 1922. At his death in 1962, he left behind a greatly expanded version, published as the second French edition (1975). It is edited and translated here from the French and the Arabic sources by Massignon's friend and pupil, Herbert Mason. Volume 1 gives an account of al-Hallaj's life and describes the world in which he lives; volume 2 traces his influence in Islam over the centuries; volume 3 studies Hallajian thought; volume 4 contains a full biography and index. Each volume contains Massignon's copious notes and new translations of original Islamic documents. Herbert Mason is University Professor of Religion and Islamic History at Boston University. He is also a poet and novelist; his version of the Gigamesh epic was a nominee for the National Book Award in 1971. Bollingen Series XCVIII. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.