Download or read book The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam written by Talal Asad and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Anthropology of Islam written by Gabriele Marranci and published by Berg. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acknowledgements p. ix 1 Introduction p. 1 2 Islam: Beliefs, History and Rituals p. 13 3 From Studying Islam to Studying Muslims p. 31 4 Studying Muslims in the West: Before and After September 11 p. 53 5 From the Exotic to the Familiar: Anamneses of Fieldwork among Muslims p. 71 6 Beyond the Stereotype: Challenges in Understanding Muslim Identities p. 89 7 The Ummah Paradox p. 103 8 The Dynamics of Gender in Islam p. 117 9 Conclusion p. 139 Glossary p. 147 References p. 151 Index p. 173
Download or read book The Anthropology of Islamic Law written by Aria Nakissa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-05 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthropology of Islamic Law shows how hermeneutic theory and practice theory can be brought together to analyze cultural, legal, and religious traditions. These ideas are developed through an analysis of the Islamic legal tradition, which examines both Islamic legal doctrine and religious education. The book combines anthropology and Islamicist history, using ethnography and in-depth analysis of Arabic religious texts. The book focuses on higher religious learning in contemporary Egypt, examining its intellectual, ethical, and pedagogical dimensions. Data is drawn from fieldwork inside al-Azhar University, Cairo University's Dar al-Ulum, and the network of traditional study circles associated with the al-Azhar mosque. Together these sites constitute the most important venue for the transmission of religious learning in the contemporary Muslim world. The book gives special attention to contemporary Egypt, and also provides a broader analysis relevant to Islamic legal doctrine and religious education throughout history.
Download or read book A New Anthropology of Islam written by John R. Bowen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful, accessible new study explores the contributions that anthropology has made to the study and understanding of Islam.
Download or read book The Anthropology of Islam Reader written by Jens Kreinath and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Anthropology of Islam Reader brings together a rich variety of ethnographic work, offering an insight into various forms of Islam as practiced in different geographic, social, and cultural contexts. Topics explored include Ramadan and the Hajj, the Feast of Sacrifice, and the representation of Islam. An extensive introduction and bibliography helps students develop their understanding of the variety of methodological and theoretical approaches involved in the anthropological study of Islam. In his selections, Jens Kreinath highlights the diversity of practices and themes that were formative for this field of study, making this essential reading for students of Islam at undergraduate and graduate level.
Download or read book Muslim Cool written by Su'ad Abdul Khabeer and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, “Muslim Cool.” Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between “Black” and “Muslim.” Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are “foreign” to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested—critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.
Download or read book Islam Observed written by Clifford Geertz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1971-08-15 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In four brief chapters," writes Clifford Geertz in his preface, "I have attempted both to lay out a general framework for the comparative analysis of religion and to apply it to a study of the development of a supposedly single creed, Islam, in two quite contrasting civilizations, the Indonesian and the Moroccan." Mr. Geertz begins his argument by outlining the problem conceptually and providing an overview of the two countries. He then traces the evolution of their classical religious styles which, with disparate settings and unique histories, produced strikingly different spiritual climates. So in Morocco, the Islamic conception of life came to mean activism, moralism, and intense individuality, while in Indonesia the same concept emphasized aestheticism, inwardness, and the radical dissolution of personality. In order to assess the significance of these interesting developments, Mr. Geertz sets forth a series of theoretical observations concerning the social role of religion.
Download or read book Articulating Islam Anthropological Approaches to Muslim Worlds written by Magnus Marsden and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of arresting and innovative chapters applies the techniques of anthropology in analyzing the role played by Islam in the social lives of the world’s Muslims. The volume begins with an introduction that sets out a powerful case for a fresh approach to this kind of research, exhorting anthropologists to pause and reflect on when Islam is, and is not, a central feature of their informants’ life-worlds and identities. The chapters that follow are written by scholars with long-term, specialist research experience in Muslim societies ranging from Kenya to Pakistan and from Yemen to China: thus they explore and compare Islam’s social significance in a variety of settings that are not confined to the Middle East or South Asia alone. The authors assess how helpful current anthropological research is in shedding light on Islam’s relationship to contemporary societies. Collectively, the contributors deploy both theoretical and ethnographic analysis of key developments in the anthropology of Islam over the last 30 years, even as they extrapolate their findings to address wider debates over the anthropology of world religions more generally. Crucially, they also tackle the thorny question of how, in the current political context, anthropologists might continue conducting sensitive and nuanced work with Muslim communities. Finally, an afterword by a scholar of Christianity explores the conceptual parallels between the book’s key themes and the anthropology of world religions in a broader context. This volume has key contemporary relevance: for example, its conclusions on the fluidity of people’s relations with Islam will provide an important counterpoint to many commonly held assumptions about the incontestability of Islam in the public sphere.
Download or read book Genealogies of Religion written by Talal Asad and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1993-08-18 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Geneologies of Religion, Talal Asad explores how religion as a historical category emerged in the West and has come to be applied as a universal concept. The idea that religion has undergone a radical change since the Christian Reformation—from totalitarian and socially repressive to private and relatively benign—is a familiar part of the story of secularization. It is often invokved to explain and justify the liberal politics and world view of modernity. And it leads to the view that "politicized religions" threaten both reason and liberty. Asad's essays explore and question all these assumptions. He argues that "religion" is a construction of European modernity, a construction that authorizes—for Westerners and non-Westerners alike—particular forms of "history making."
Download or read book Formations of the Secular written by Talal Asad and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2003-02-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A dark but brilliantly original work . . . one of the most important books on religion and the modern in recent years.” —H-Net Reviews Opening with the provocative query “what might an anthropology of the secular look like?” this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East. Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the “strangeness of the non-European world” and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined. The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity. “A difficult if stunningly eloquent book, a response both elusive and forthright to the many shelves of ‘books on terrorism’ which this country’s trade publishers are rushing into print.” —Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature “This wonderfully illuminating book should be read alongside the author’s Genealogies of Religion.” —Religion “One of the most interesting scholars of religious writing today.” —Christian Scholar’s Review “Asad’s brilliant study remains a defining piece of intellectual and scholarly contribution for all of those interested in exploring the religious and the secular in the modern era.” —The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences
Download or read book The Practice of Islam in America written by Edward E. Curtis IV and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Muslims have always been part of the United States, but very little is known about how Muslim Americans practice their religion. How do they pray? What's it like to go on pilgrimage to Mecca? What rituals accompany the birth of a child, a wedding, or the death of a loved one? What holidays do Muslims celebrate and what charities do they support? How do they learn about the Qur'an? [This book] introduces readers to the way Islam is lived in the United States, offering ... portraits of Muslim American life passages, ethical actions, religious holidays, prayer, pilgrimage, and other religious activities"--Back cover.
Download or read book Islam and New Kinship written by Morgan Clarke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Assisted reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization have provoked global controversy and ethical debate. This book provides a groundbreaking investigation into those debates in the Islamic Middle East, simultaneously documenting changing ideas of kinship and the evolving role of religious authority in the region through a combination of in-depth field research in Lebanon and an exhaustive survey of the Islamic legal literature. Lebanon, home to both Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities, provides a valuable site through which to explore the overall dynamism and diversity of global Islamic debate. As this book shows, Muslim perspectives focus on the moral propriety of such controversial procedures as the use of donor sperm and eggs as well as surrogacy arrangements, which are allowed by some authorities using surprising and innovative legal arguments. These arguments challenge common stereotypes of the rigidity and conservatism of Islamic law and compel us to question conventional contrasts between ‘liberal’ and Islamic notions of moral freedom, as well as the epistemological assumptions of anthropology’s own ‘new kinship studies’. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary Islam and the impact of reproductive technology on the global social imaginary.
Download or read book Islam Politics Anthropology written by Filippo Osella and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-03-19 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part of The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute SpecialIssue Book Series, Islam, Politics, Anthropology offerscritical reflections on past and current studies of Islam andpolitics in anthropology and charts new analytical approaches toexamining Islam in the post-9/11 world. Challenges current and past approaches to the study of Islamand Muslim politics in anthropology Offers a critical comprehensive review of past and currentliterature on the subject Presents innovative ethnographic description and analysis ofeveryday Muslim politics in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, andNorth America Proposes new analytical approaches to the study of Islam andMuslim politics
Download or read book Ordinary Lives and Grand Schemes written by Samuli Schielke and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-06-01 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyday practice of religion is complex in its nature, ambivalent and at times contradictory. The task of an anthropology of religious practice is therefore precisely to see how people navigate and make sense of that complexity, and what the significance of religious beliefs and practices in a given setting can be. Rather than putting everyday practice and normative doctrine on different analytical planes, the authors argue that the articulation of religious doctrine is also an everyday practice and must be understood as such.
Download or read book Jinnealogy written by Anand Vivek Taneja and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ruins of a medieval palace in Delhi, a unique phenomenon occurs: Indians of all castes and creeds meet to socialize and ask the spirits for help. The spirits they entreat are Islamic jinns, and they write out requests as if petitioning the state. At a time when a Hindu right wing government in India is committed to normalizing a view of the past that paints Muslims as oppressors, Anand Vivek Taneja's Jinnealogy provides a fresh vision of religion, identity, and sacrality that runs counter to state-sanctioned history. The ruin, Firoz Shah Kotla, is an unusually democratic religious space, characterized by freewheeling theological conversations, DIY rituals, and the sanctification of animals. Taneja observes the visitors, who come mainly from the Muslim and Dalit neighborhoods of Delhi, and uses their conversations and letters to the jinns as an archive of voices so often silenced. He finds that their veneration of the jinns recalls pre-modern religious traditions in which spiritual experience was inextricably tied to ecological surroundings. In this enchanted space, Taneja encounters a form of popular Islam that is not a relic of bygone days, but a vibrant form of resistance to state repression and post-colonial visions of India.
Download or read book Toward Islamic Anthropology Definition Dogma and Directions Islamization of Knowledge Series written by Akbar S. Ahmed and published by International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT). This book was released on 1986 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, Toward Islamic Anthropology: Definition, Dogma and Direction, is a valuable prerequisite for the study and assessment of Western anthropology from a "universal" or Islamic perspective. Dr. Akbar Ahmed, author of this work, contends that Western Anthropology offers the Islamic scholar a body of knowledge worthy of merit, but which is, unfortunately, laden with conclusions based on cultural presumptions, misinformation and ethnocentrism. Approaching the subject from an Islamic perspective, Dr. Ahmed zeros in upon the "Methodological prejudices," which he suggests represents the greatest challenge to be overcome in the field. As the Late Dr. Isma'il R. al-Faruqi states in the introduction of the book, "regarding the cause of truth as its own, Islam prescribes that where there is valid evidence for the other point of view; the mind must bend itself to it with humility. But where the evidence is spurlous or lacking, the Islamic mind feels itself compelled to expose the incoherence." In Part I, Dr. Ahmed reviews the science of Anthropology and compares its development with that of other disciplines. He also shows how given historical and political periods, such as the "colonial era," forced erroneous methodological frameworks upon the discipline. In Part II, the author establishes the fact that Anthropology had its roots in the Islamic scientific heritage, dating back to the tenth Hijri century. He concludes that anthropologists "must transcend" themselves and their cultures, to a position where they can "speak to, and understand those around them in terms of their special humanity, irrespective of color, caste or creed."
Download or read book Being Young Male and Muslim in Luton written by Ashraf Hoque and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is it like to be a young Muslim man in the wake of the 2005 London bombings? What impact do political factors have on the multifaceted identities of young Muslim men? Drawn from the author's ethnographic research of British-born Muslim men in the English town of Luton, Being Young, Muslim and Male in Luton explores the everyday lives of young men and, focusing on how their identity as Muslims has shaped the way they interact with each other, the local community, and the wider world. Through a study of religious values, the pressures of masculinity, the complexities of family and social life, and attitudes towards work and leisure, Ashraf Hoque argues that young Muslims in Luton are subverting what it means to be "British" by consciously prioritizing and rearticulating their "Muslim identities" in novel and dynamic ways that suit their experiences. Employing rich interviews and extensive participant observation, Hoque paints a detailed picture of young Muslims living in a town consistently associated in the popular media with terrorist activity and as a hotbed for radicalization. He challenges widely held assumptions and gives voice to an emerging generation of Muslims who view Britain as their home and are very much invested in the long-term future of the country and their permanent place within it.
