Download or read book Self and Secrecy in Early Islam written by Ruqayya Yasmine Khan and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this comparative analysis of the significance of keeping and revealing secrets in early Islamic culture, Ruqayya Yasmine Khan draws from a broad range of Arabo-Islamic texts to map interconnections between concepts of secrecy and identity. In early Islamic discourse, Khan maintains, individual identity is integrally linked to a psychology of secrecy and revelation - a connection of even greater importance than what is being concealed or displayed. Khan further maintains that secrecy and identity demarcate boundaries for interpersonal relations when governed by the cultural norms of discretion espoused in these texts."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Affect Emotion and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires New Studies in Ottoman Safavid and Mughal Art and Culture written by Kishwar Rizvi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-11-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Affect, Emotion and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires presents new approaches to Ottoman Safavid and Mughal art and culture. Taking artistic agency as a starting point, the authors consider the rise in status of architects, the self-fashioning of artists, the development of public spaces, as well as new literary genres that focus on the individual subject and his or her place in the world. They consider the issue of affect as performative and responsive to certain emotions and actions, thus allowing insights into the motivations behind the making and, in some cases, the destruction of works of art. The interconnected histories of Iran,Turkey and India thus highlight the urban and intellectual changes that defined the early modern period. Contributors are: Sussan Babaie, Chanchal Dadlani, Jamal Elias, Emine Fetvaci, Christiane Gruber, Sylvia Hougteling, Kishwar Rizvi, Sunil Sharma, and Marianna Shreve Simpson.
Download or read book Bonds of Secrecy written by Benjamin A. Saltzman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-09-30 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How beliefs about human and divine secrets informed medieval ideas about the mind and shaped the practices of literary interpretations What did it mean to keep a secret in early medieval England? It was a period during which the experience of secrecy was intensely bound to the belief that God knew all human secrets, yet the secrets of God remained unknowable to human beings. In Bonds of Secrecy, Benjamin A. Saltzman argues that this double-edged conception of secrecy and divinity profoundly affected the way believers acted and thought as subjects under the law, as the devout within monasteries, and as readers before books. One crucial way it did so was by forming an ethical relationship between the self and the world that was fundamentally different from its modern reflex. Whereas today the bearers of secrets might be judged for the consequences of their reticence or disclosure, Saltzman observes, in the early Middle Ages a person attempting to conceal a secret was judged for believing he or she could conceal it from God. In other words, to attempt to hide from God was to become ensnared in a serious sin, but to hide from the world while deliberately and humbly submitting to God's constant observation was often a hallmark of spiritual virtue. Looking to law codes and religious architecture, hagiographies and riddles, Bonds of Secrecy shows how legal and monastic institutions harnessed the pervasive and complex belief in God's omniscience to produce an intense culture of scrutiny and a radical ethics of secrecy founded on the individual's belief that nothing could be hidden from God. According to Saltzman, this ethics of secrecy not only informed early medieval notions of mental activity and ideas about the mind but also profoundly shaped the practices of literary interpretation in ways that can inform our own contemporary approaches to reading texts from the past.
Download or read book Algeria Revisited written by Rabah Aissaoui and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-03-09 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 5 July 1962, Algeria became an independent nation, bringing to an end 132 years of French colonial rule. Algeria Revisited provides an opportunity to critically re-examine the colonial period, the iconic war of decolonisation that brought it to an end and the enduring legacies of these years. Given the apparent centrality of violence in this history, this volume asks how we might re-imagine conflict so as to better understand its forms and functions in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. It considers the constantly shifting balance of power between different groups in Algeria and how these have been used to re-fashion colonial relationships. Turning to the postcolonial period, the book explores the challenges Algerians have faced as they have sought to forge an identity as an independent postcolonial nation and how has this process been represented. The roles played by memory and forgetting are highlighted as part of the ongoing efforts by both Algeria and France to grapple with the complex legacies of their prolonged and tumultuous relationship. This interdisciplinary volume sheds light on these and other issues, offering new insights into the history, politics, society and culture of modern Algeria and its historical relationship with France.
Download or read book Lethal Spots Vital Secrets written by Roman Sieler and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an ethnographic study of varmakkalai, or 'the art of the vital spots, ' a South Indian esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts
Download or read book The Unseen Things written by Kathryn A. Rhine and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-04 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What do HIV-positive women in Nigeria face as they seek meaningful lives with a deeply discrediting disease? Kathryn A. Rhine uncovers the skillful ways women defuse concerns about their wellbeing and the ability to maintain their households. Rhine shows how this ethic of concealment involves masking their diagnosis, unfaithful husbands, and unsupportive families while displaying their beauty, generosity, and vitality. As Rhine observes, collusion with counselors and support group leaders to deflect stigma, secure respectability, and find love features prominently in the lives of ordinary women who hope for a brighter future as the HIV epidemic continues to expand.
Download or read book An Introduction to Islam written by Frederick Denny and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-21 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Islam, Fourth Edition, provides students with a thorough, unified and topical introduction to the global religious community of Islam. In addition, the author's extensive field work, experience, and scholarship combined with his engaging writing style and passion for the subject also sets his text apart. An Introduction to Islam places Islam within a cultural, political, social, and religious context, and examines its connections with Judeo-Christian morals. Its integration of the doctrinal and devotional elements of Islam enables readers to see how Muslims think and live, engendering understanding and breaking down stereotypes. This text also reviews pre-Islamic history, so readers can see how Islam developed historically.
Download or read book The New Cultural Atlas of the Islamic World written by Marshall Cavendish Corporation and published by Marshall Cavendish. This book was released on 2010 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examine the ancient Islamic world through expertly designed maps and site drawings, bringing history to life.
Download or read book Hospitality and Islam written by Mona Siddiqui and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-15 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering its prominent role in many faith traditions, surprisingly little has been written about hospitality within the context of religion, particularly Islam. In her new book, Mona Siddiqui, a well-known media commentator, makes the first major contribution to the understanding of hospitality both within Islam and beyond. She explores and compares teachings within the various Muslim traditions over the centuries, while also drawing on materials as diverse as Islamic belles lettres, Christian reflections on almsgiving and charity, and Islamic and Western feminist writings on gender issues. Applying a more theological approach to the idea of mercy as a fundamental basis for human relationships, this book will appeal to a wide audience, particularly readers interested in Islam, ethics, and religious studies.
Download or read book The Good Muslim written by Mona Siddiqui and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thought-provoking book, Mona Siddiqui reflects upon key themes in Islamic law and theology. These themes, which range through discussions about friendship, divorce, drunkenness, love, slavery, and ritual slaughter, offer fascinating insights into Islamic ethics, and the way in which arguments developed in medieval juristic discourse. These pre-modern religious works contained a richness of thought, hesitation and speculation on a wide range of topics, which were socially relevant but also presented intellectual challenges to the scholars for whom God's revelation could be understood in diverse ways. These subjects remain relevant today, for practicing Muslims and scholars of Islamic law and religious studies. Mona Siddiqui is an astute and articulate interpreter who relays complex ideas about the Islamic tradition with great clarity. These are important attributes for a book, which charts the authors own journey through the classical texts, and reflects upon how the principles expounded there have guided her own thinking and impacted her teaching and research.
Download or read book Illustrated Dictionary of the Muslim World written by Marshall Cavendish Reference and published by Marshall Cavendish. This book was released on 2011 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The three books comprising the Muslim World series provide a rich and balanced view of all aspects of Islamic religion and its varied manifestations through time and around the world, with emphasis on understanding modern Muslim society today. Illustrated Dictionary of the Muslim World contains hundreds of short entries on Islamic concepts, religious practices, historical events and personalities, geographical places, and fact files of nations with large Muslim populations. Islamic Beliefs, Practices, and Cultures begins with 14 chapters introducing the ideas promoted by the religion's founder in the seventh century and tracking their development into new doctrines, schools of thought, and philosophical, literary, and cultural traditions as diverse as recitation of scripture in madrassas in Egypt to gift giving at holiday time in the United States. Among the numerous special features are those examining the meanings of jihad, the persistence of mystical Islam, and stand-up comedy addressing the cultural divides surrounding muslims today. Modern Muslim Societies, with a total of twenty-three chapters, devotes nine to subjects such as family life, marriage, law, human rights, and Muslim extremism before turning to fourteen regional surveys on manifestations of Islam around the world, including the United States and Canada, Iran, Southeast Asia, Africa, and everywhere else Islam has flourished. From the women around Muhammad to pop stars of today, from medieval caliphates to breakthroughs in science and medicine, from love poetry to suicide, no aspect of a rich and diverse story goes unnoticed in the three books of Muslim World. Religion, philosophy, politics, economy, society, law, history, visual arts, architecture, literature -- all sides of Islamic thought and Muslim ways of life receive attention in this uniquely organized presentation for students and interested general readers. - Publisher.
Download or read book Bedouin and Abb sid Cultural Identities written by Ruqayya Yasmine Khan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-18 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story performed for ‘Abbāsid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos." The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnūn in the romance of Majnūn Laylā as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the ‘Abbāsid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnūn. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the ‘Abbāsid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such "cultural work" is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g., affective). Lastly, the Majnūn Laylā love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of ‘Abbāsid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed. Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies, Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and gender studies.
Download or read book Muhammad in the Digital Age written by Ruqayya Yasmine Khan and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The early twenty-first century has experienced an unrivaled dissemination of information and misinformation about Islam, its prophet Muhammad, and its followers, largely facilitated by the fact that the tragedy of 9/11 roughly coincided with the advent of the digital age. In the first collection of its kind, Ruqayya Khan has compiled essays that treat Muhammad and the core elements of Islam as focal points in an exploration of how the digital era—including social media and other expressions—have both had an effect on and been affected by Islam. Scholars from a variety of fields deal with topics such as the 2005 cartoon controversy in Denmark and the infamous 2012 movie trailer “Innocence of Muslims” that some believe sparked the attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi, as well as how the digitization of ancient texts have allowed the origins of Islam to be studied in new ways. Other essays examine how Muhammad’s wives have been represented in various online sources, including a web comic; the contrasting depictions of Muhammad as both a warrior and peacemaker; and how the widespread distribution of “the look” of Islamic terrorists has led to attacks on Sikhs, whose only point of resemblance to them may be a full beard. These findings illuminate the role of the Internet in forms of representation, advocacy, and engagement concerning Islam and Muslims in our world today.
Download or read book The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures written by Alireza Korangy and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long literary history of the Middle East, the notion of 'the beloved' has been a central trope in both the poetry and prose of the region. This book explores the concept of the beloved in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary manner, revealing how shared ideas on the subject supersede geographical and temporal boundaries, and ideas of nationhood. The book considers the beloved in its classical, modern and postmodern manifestations, taking into account the different sexual orientations and forms of desire expressed. From the pre-Islamic 'Udhri (romantic unrequited love), to the erotic same-sex love in thirteenth century poetry and prose, the divine Sufi reflections on the topic, and post-revolutionary love encounters in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures connects the affective and cultural with the political and the obscene. In focusing on the diverse manifestations of love and tropes of the lover/beloved binary, this book is unique in foregrounding what is often regarded as a 'taboo subject' in the region. The multi-faceted outlook reveals the variety of philological, philosophical, poetic and literary forms that treat this significant motif.
Download or read book Concubines and Courtesans written by Matthew Gordon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concubines and Courtesans contains sixteen essays on enslaved and freed women across medieval and pre-modern Islamic social history. The essays consider questions of slavery, gender, social networking, cultural production, sexuality, Islamic family law, and religion in the shaping of Near Eastern and Islamic society over time.
Download or read book Concubines and Courtesans written by Matthew S. Gordon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-26 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concubines and Courtesans contains sixteen essays that consider, from a variety of viewpoints, enslaved and freed women across medieval and pre-modern Islamic social history. The essays bring together arguments regarding slavery, gender, social networking, cultural production (songs, poetry and instrumental music), sexuality, Islamic family law, and religion in the shaping of Near Eastern and Islamic society over time. They range over nearly 1000 years of Islamic history - from the early, formative period (seventh to tenth century C.E.) to the late Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal eras (sixteenth to eighteenth century C.E.) - and regions from al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) to Central Asia (Timurid Iran). The close, common thread joining the essays is an effort to account for the lives, careers and representations of female slaves and freed women participating in, and contributing to, elite urban society of the Islamic realm. Interest in a gendered approach to Islamic history, society and religion has by now deep roots in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. The shared aim of the essays collected here is to get at the wealth of these topics, and to underscore their centrality to a firm grasp on Islamic and Middle Eastern history.
Download or read book Patronage and Poetry in the Islamic World written by Jocelyn Sharlet and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Panegyric poetry, in both Arabic and Persian, was one of the most important genres of literature in the medieval Middle East and Central Asia. Jocelyn Sharlet argues that panegyric poetry is important not only because it provides a commentary on society and culture in the medieval Middle East, but also because panegyric writing was one of the key means for individuals to gain social mobility and standing during this period. This is particularly so within the context of patronage, a central feature of social order during these times. Sharlet places the medieval Arabic and Persian panegyric firmly within its cultural context, and identifies it as a crucial way of gaining entry to and movement within this patronage network. This is an important contribution to the fields of pre-modern Middle Eastern and Central Asian literature and culture.
