Download or read book The Dissident Mullah written by Ulrich von Schwerin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-05-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Iranian cleric Ayatollah Montazeri (1922-2009) played an integral role in the founding of the Islamic Republic in the wake of the Iranian Revolution of 1978/9. Yet at the time of his death, Montazeri was considered one of the Islamic Republic's fiercest critics. What made this man, who was once considered the leading advocate of the state doctrine of the 'Guardianship of the Jurist' (velayat-e faqih) and the designated successor to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini, change his views? How did his political theory incorporate issues such as civil rights, pluralism and popular participation? And what influence did his ideas have on others? Ulrich von Schwerin's book answers these questions by examining the evolution of Montazeri's political thought over the course of five decades, and studies his role in the discourse on religion and politics in Iran. In doing so, he sheds a new light on some of the most crucial events and vital protagonists of recent Iranian history.

Download or read book Demystifying the Sacred written by Eveline G. Bouwers and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demystifying the Sacred: Blasphemy and Violence from the French Revolution to Today offers a much-needed analysis of a subject that historians have largely ignored, yet that has considerable relevance for today’s world: the powerful connection that exists between offences against the sacred and different forms of violence. Drawing on cases from revolutionary France to the Russia of Vladimir Putin, the international authors probe the nature and agency of local blasphemy accusations, the historical and legal framework in which they were expressed and the violence, both physical and symbolic, accompanying them. In doing so, the volume reveals how cultures of blasphemy, and related acts of heresy, apostasy and sacrilege, were a companion to or acted as a trigger for physical action but also a form of how violence was experienced. More generally, it shows the importance of religious sensibilities in modern society and the violent potential contained in criticism or ridicule of the sacred and secular alike.

Download or read book Mullahs on the Mainframe written by Jonah Blank and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Jonah Blank's important, myth-shattering book, the West gets its first look at the Daudi Bohras, a unique Muslim denomination who have found the core of their religious beliefs largely compatible with modern ideology. Combining orthodox Muslim prayer, dress, and practice with secular education, relative gender equality, and Internet use, this community serves as a surprising reminder that the central values of "modernity" are hardly limited to the West.

Download or read book Osama written by Jonathan Randal and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How is it possible for one middle-aged Saudi millionaire to threaten the world's only superpower? This is the question at the center of Jonathan Randal's riveting, timely account of Osama bin Laden's life and role in the rise of terrorism in the Middle East. Randal traces the current sources of Osama's money and tells us why the Iraq war has played into the hands of the terrorists, while also providing essential insight and background on the history of American involvement in the Middle East. With his long-maintained sources in the Middle East and his intimate understanding of the region, Randal gives us a clearer explanation than any we have had of the whys and wherefores of the world's most prominent and feared terrorist.

Download or read book Ahmad Q bel and Contemporary Islamic Thought written by Lloyd Ridgeon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-06 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ahmad Qābel (1954–2012) was one of the key figures in the 'New Religious Thinking' trend of reformist thought, whose radical views were some of the most daring of his generation, seeking to rationalize and modernize Islamic law. In this comprehensively researched and accessibly written book, Lloyd Ridgeon offers an original examination of Qābel's writings, including his seminal work Shari'at-e 'Aqlāni (Rational Shariah). Throughout his career, Qābel crossed many political and religious redlines, resulting in several prison terms and hastening his premature death while under hospital arrest. Chapters covering topics from jurisprudence and politics to gender relations and society unravel Qābel's worldview, introducing and illuminating his work for all readers. With extended translations from Qābel's compositions, including two whole chapters from Shari'at-e 'Aqlāni, Ridgeon offers the necessary context to understand the resounding significance of Qābel's ideas and arguments.

Download or read book A Secular Age beyond the West written by Mirjam Künkler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book traces religion and secularity in eleven countries not shaped by Western Christianity (Japan, China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, and Morocco), and how they parallel or diverge from Charles Taylor's grand narrative of the North Atlantic world, A Secular Age (2007). In all eleven cases, the state - enhanced by post-colonial and post-imperial legacies - highly determines religious experience, by variably regulating religious belief, practice, property, education and/or law. Taylor's core condition of secularity - namely, legal permissibility and social acceptance of open religious unbelief (Secularity III) - is largely absent in these societies. The areas affected by state regulation, however, differ greatly. In India, Israel and most Muslim countries, questions of religious law are central to state regulation. But it is religious education and organization in China, and church property and public practice in Russia that bear the brunt. This book explains these differences using the concept of 'differential burdening'.

Download or read book Presidential Elections in Iran written by Mahmoud Pargoo and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-06 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By looking at all the presidential elections since the revolution, this book offers a new analysis of politics in Iran.

Download or read book In a Pure Muslim Land written by Simon Wolfgang Fuchs and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Centering Pakistan in a story of transnational Islam stretching from South Asia to the Middle East, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs offers the first in-depth ethnographic history of the intellectual production of Shi'is and their religious competitors in this "Land of the Pure." The notion of Pakistan as the pinnacle of modern global Muslim aspiration forms a crucial component of this story. It has empowered Shi'is, who form about twenty percent of the country's population, to advance alternative conceptions of their religious hierarchy while claiming the support of towering grand ayatollahs in Iran and Iraq. Fuchs shows how popular Pakistani preachers and scholars have boldly tapped into the esoteric potential of Shi'ism, occupying a creative and at times disruptive role as brokers, translators, and self-confident pioneers of contemporary Islamic thought. They have indigenized the Iranian Revolution and formulated their own ideas for fulfilling the original promise of Pakistan. Challenging typical views of Pakistan as a mere Shi'i backwater, Fuchs argues that its complex religious landscape represents how a local, South Asian Islam may open up space for new intellectual contributions to global Islam. Yet religious ideology has also turned Pakistan into a deadly battlefield: sectarian groups since the 1980s have been bent on excluding Shi'is as harmful to their own vision of an exemplary Islamic state.

Download or read book Montazeri written by Sussan Siavoshi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-20 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the historical context and political philosophy of the Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, a key figure in the Iranian revolution of 1978-9.

Download or read book Contemporary Approaches to the Qur an and its Interpretation in Iran written by Ali Akbar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out how contemporary Iranian scholars have approached the Qurʾān during recent decades. It particularly aims to explore the contributions of scholars that have emerged in the post 1979-revolution era, outlining their primary interpretive methods and foundational theories regarding the reading of the Qurʾān. Examining issues such as the status of women, democracy, freedom of religion and human rights, this book analyses the theoretical contributions of several Iranian scholars, some of which are new to the English-speaking academy. The hermeneutical approaches of figures such Abdolkarim Soroush, Muhammad Mojtahed Shabestari, Mohsen Kadivar, Hasan Yousefi-Eshkevari, Abolqasem Fanaie and Mostafa Malekian are presented and then analysed to demonstrate how a contextualist approach to the Qu’ran has been formed in response to the influence of Western Orientalism. The effect of this approach to the Qu’ran is then shown to have wide-ranging effects on Iranian society. This study reveals Qu’ranic thought that has been largely overlooked by the West. It will, therefore. Be of great use to academics in Religious, Islamic and Qurʾānic studies as well as those studying the culture of Iran and the Middle East more generally.

Download or read book Shi ism Revisited written by Liyakat Takim and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Muslims face a challenge: how should they define the relationship between normative Islamic jurisprudence--worked out by classical jurists over the course of centuries-and the reality that confronts them in their everyday lives. They have to reckon with how religion can regulate and serve the needs of a changing community. Is there a need for reformation in Islam? If so, where should it begin and how should it proceed? So far, these challenging questions have received little attention from Western scholars. Shi'ism Revisited will address this gap. In order to address pressing religious and social questions--on topics ranging from women's rights to bioethics and the challenges facing diasporic Muslims--legal scholars have sought to apply ijtihad, or independent reasoning. The lack of a central authority in Islam means the interpretations and edicts of scholars are frequently challenged, resulting in diversity and plurality in Islamic law. This makes Islamic law capacious, but also suggests the critical importance of examining not just the theory of law, but its application. Shi'ism Revisited moves beyond theoretical questions of reformation to address specific ways that Islamic law is being revisited by jurists. Tracing the origins and development of Shi'i jurisprudence and legal theory, Liyakat Takim analyzes how underlying epistemologies can be revised in order to create a moral and coherent legal system.

Download or read book Triumph and Despair written by Mehran Kamrava and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Triumph and Despair tells the dramatic story of post-revolutionary Iran's first four decades, from its establishment in 1979 until today. The revolutionary coalition that overthrew the monarchy was at once democratic, populist and Islamic. The Islamists, and the Khomeinists in particular, were able to capitalize effectively on prevailing conditions on the ground; to frame the new republic's constitution, capture nascent institutions, and consolidate their power by eliminating opponents through a reign of terror. Once the war with Iraq was over and after the death of the new order's charismatic founder, Ayatollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic was consolidated: first by tweaking its institutional arrangements, and then by fostering economic development and post-war reconstruction. A reformist interlude then followed, reversed unceremoniously by a return of populism and a broader authoritarian retrenchment. Today Iran remains at odds with itself, its economy too deeply political to yield meaningful developmental results, its foreign relations too conflicted to allow it a productive place in the community of nations. As Iran's nationalities and its women and youth carve out spaces for themselves in the broader narrative, competing identities-religious, national and otherwise-abound. After forty years, the Islamic Republic remains a country in search of itself.

Download or read book The Making of Shia Ayatollahs written by Sayed Hassan Akhlaq and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-04-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Making of Shia Ayatollahs is a uniformly balanced and scholarly but empathetic portrayal of the appearance, construction, and dynamism of Shia hawzas, aytollahs’ attitudes and scholarship, and the meeting of faith, knowledge, and popularity in Shia Islam.

Download or read book The Conceptualization of Guardianship in Iranian Intellectual History 1800 1989 written by Leila Chamankhah and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of the concept of wilāya and its developments among Shīʿī scholars from the eighteenth to twentieth century. Leila Chamankhah addresses a number of issues by delving into the conceptualizations of wilāya through the examination and interpretation of key texts. She focuses on the influence of ibn ʿArabī’s mysticism, with regard to the conception of wilāya, on his Shīʿa successors and expositors in later centuries. She also discusses the development and transformation of the conception of wilāya over two hundred years, from the esoteric school of Shaykhīsm to the politicization of wilāya in the theory of wilāyat al-faqīh.

Download or read book Contemporary Perspectives on Revelation and Qu ranic Hermeneutics written by Akbar Ali Akbar and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-27 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A number of innovative hermeneutical approaches emerged in Muslim exegetical discourse in the second half of the 20th century. Among these developments is a trend of systematic reform theology that emphasises a humanistic approach, whereby revelation is understood to be dependent not only upon its initiator, God, but also upon its recipient, Prophet Muhammad, who takes an active role in the process.Ali Akbar examines the works of four noted scholars of Islam: Fazlur Rahman (Pakistan), Abdolkarim Soroush (Iran), Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari (Iran) and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Egypt). His study shows that the consequences of taking a humanistic approach to understanding revelation are not confined to the realm of speculation about God-human relations, but also to interpreting Qur'A nic socio-political precepts. And the four scholars emerge as a distinctive group of Muslim thinkers who open up a new horizon in contemporary Islamic discourse.

Download or read book Revolution and its Discontents written by Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-21 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a focus on the political elite, Sadeghi-Boroujerdi analysis the intellectual and political trajectory of post-revolutionary Iranian reformism.

Download or read book Righteous Politics written by Mehran Kamrava and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Drawing on extensive fieldwork and rare primary sources, Mehran Kamrava provides a comprehensive, accessible analysis of the formal and informal institutions through which the Iranian state exercises power. Highlighting the nuances of Iranian politics, Kamrava shows how factional politics and rentierism serve to enhance state resilience"--