Download or read book Islam and the Question of Reform written by Benjamin Macqueen and published by Academic Monographs. This book was released on 2008 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reform, by definition, is not a complete break with tradition, but a determination by scholars, activists, politicians and critical thinkers to re-claim the tenets of their faith. Muslim communities have historically displayed a tendency to preserve the status quo. By contrast, the individuals and movements in Islam and the Question of Reform are determined-often at great personal risk-to push aside existing political and social elites and the historically accepted interpretations of Islam and its place in society. The perspectives examined in this volume avoid superficial or apologetic examinations of Islam's political and social role. Instead, they meticulously scrutinise the religion's public role, often questioning the validity of dogmas that have acted as tools of empowerment for existing elites for centuries. Islam and the Question of Reform is an engaging book about the evolving and dynamic discourse that surrounds the question of Islamic reform.
Download or read book Radical Reform written by Tariq Ramadan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-05 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new book, Tariq Ramadan argues that it is crucial to find theoretical and practical solutions that will enable Western Muslims to remain faithful to Islamic ethics while fully living within their societies and their time. He notes that Muslim scholars often refer to the notion of ijtihad (critical and renewed reading of the foundational texts) as the only way for Muslims to take up these modern challenges. But, Ramadan argues, in practice such readings have effectively reached the limits of their ability to serve the faithful in the West as well as the East. In this book he sets forward a radical new concept of ijtihad, which puts context -- including the knowledge derived from the hard and human sciences, cultures and their geographic and historical contingencies -- on an equal footing with the scriptures as a source of Islamic law.
Download or read book Revival and Reform in Islam written by Bernard Haykel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-05-27 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revival and Reform in Islam is at once an intellectual biography of Muhammad al-Shawkani, and a history of a transitional period in Yemeni history. This was a time when a society dominated by traditional Zaydi Shiism shifted to one characterised instead by Sunni reformism. The author traces the origins and outcomes of this transition, presenting the first systematic account of the ways in which the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reorientation of the Zaydi madhhab, and consequent 'sunnification' of Yemeni society, were intricately linked to tensions within the political realm. In advocating juridical systematization of religious belief and practice, Shawkani espoused a socio-religious order which in its dominant features echoed key aspects of Western modernity. Yet he did so in a context bereft of Western ideational influence. This study then presents a textured account of eighteenth-century Islamic reformist thought and challenges the meaning of modernity in an Islamic context.
Download or read book Toward an Islamic Reformation written by Abdullahi Ahmed An Na'im and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1996-07-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Toward an Islamic Reformation is an ambitious attempt to modernize Islamic law, calling for reform of the historical formulations of Islamic law, commonly known as Shari'a that is perceived by many Muslims to be part of the Islamic faith. As a Muslim, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is sensitive to and appreciative of the delicate relationship between Islam as a religion and Islamic law. Nevertheless, he considers that the questions raised here must be resolved if the public law of Islam is to be implemented today. An-Na'im draws upon the teachings and writings of Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Mohamed Taha to provide what some have called the intellectual foundations for a total reinterpretation of the nature and meaning of Islamic public law.
Download or read book The Trouble with Islam written by Irshad Manji and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2004-01-16 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I have to be honest with you. Islam is on very thin ice with me....Through our screaming self-pity and our conspicuous silences, we Muslims are conspiring against ourselves. We're in crisis and we're dragging the rest of the world with us. If ever there was a moment for an Islamic reformation, it's now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?" In blunt, provocative, and deeply personal terms, Irshad Manji unearths the troubling cornerstones of mainstream Islam today: tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism, and an uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, and therefore superior, manifesto of God. In this open letter to Muslims and non-Muslims alike, Manji asks arresting questions. "Who is the real colonizer of Muslims - America or Arabia? Why are we all being held hostage by what's happening between the Palestinians and the Israelis? Why are we squandering the talents of women, fully half of God's creation? What's our excuse for reading the Koran literally when it's so contradictory and ambiguous? Is that a heart attack you're having? Make it fast. Because if more of us don't speak out against the imperialists within Islam, these guys will walk away with the show." Manji offers a practical vision of how the United States and its allies can help Muslims undertake a reformation that empowers women, promotes respect for religious minorities, and fosters a competition of ideas. Her vision revives Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking. This book will inspire struggling Muslims worldwide to revisit the foundations of their faith. It will also compel non-Muslims to start posing the important questions without fear of being deemed "racists." In more ways than one, The Trouble with Islam is a clarion call for a fatwa-free future.
Download or read book An Islamic Reformation written by Michaelle Browers and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last two decades we have seen a vast number of books published in the West that treat Islamic fundamentalism as a rising threat to the western values of secularism and democracy. In the last decade scholars began proclaiming an existent or emerging "clash" between East and West, Islam and Christianity, or in the case of Benjamin R. Barber, "Jihad and "McWorld." More recently, some western scholars have offered another interpretation. Focusing on the work of contemporary Muslim intellectuals, these scholars have begun to argue that what we are witnessing, in Islamic contexts, is tantamount to a Reformation. An Islamic Reformation attempts to evaluate this claim through the work of emerging and top scholars in the fields of political science, philosophy, anthropology, religion, history and Middle Eastern studies. The overall goal of this volume is to question the impact of various reformist trends throughout the Middle East. Are we witnessing a growth in fundamentalism or the emergence of an Islamic Reformation? What does religious practice in this region reflect? What is the usefulness of approaching these questions through Christian/Islamic and West/East dichotomies? Unique in its focus and scope, An Islamic Reformation represents an emerging vanguard in the discussion of Islamic religious heritage and practice and its effect on world politics.
Download or read book Muslim Civilization written by M. Umer Chapra and published by Kube Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "[This is] a subject of such relevance and importance that one wonders why nobody else dealt with it in book form before."—Dr. Wilfried Hofmann Muslim civilization has experienced a decline during the last five centuries after previously having undergone a long period of prosperity and comprehensive development. This raises a number of questions such as what factors enable Muslims to become successful during the earlier centuries of Islam and what led them to their present weak position. Is Islam responsible for this decline or are there some other factors which come into play? M. Umer Chapra provides an authoritative diagnosis and prescription to reverse this decline. M. Umer Chapra is a research advisor at the Islamic Research and Training Institute of the Islamic Development Bank, Jeddah, and author of The Future of Economics and Islam and the Economic Challenge.
Download or read book Old Texts New Practices written by Etty Terem and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-16 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1910, al-Mahdi al-Wazzani, a prominent Moroccan Islamic scholar completed his massive compilation of Maliki fatwas. An eleven-volume set, it is the most extensive collection of fatwas written and published in the Arab Middle East during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Al-Wazzani's legal opinions addressed practical concerns and questions: What are the ethical and legal duties of Muslims residing under European rule? Is emigration from non-Muslim territory an absolute duty? Is it ethical for Muslim merchants to travel to Europe? Is it legal to consume European-manufactured goods? It was his expectation that these fatwas would help the Muslim community navigate the modern world. In considering al-Wazzani's work, this book explores the creative process of transforming Islamic law to guarantee the survival of a Muslim community in a changing world. It is the first study to treat Islamic revival and reform from discourses informed by the sociolegal concerns that shaped the daily lives of ordinary people. Etty Terem challenges conventional scholarship that presents Islamic tradition as inimical to modernity and, in so doing, provides a new framework for conceptualizing modern Islamic reform. Her innovative and insightful reorientation constructs the origins of modern Islam as firmly rooted in the messy complexity of everyday life.
Download or read book Heretic written by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities. Today, she argues, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Hirsi Ali shows, there is no denying that some of its key teachings—not least the duty to wage holy war—are incompatible with the values of a free society. For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali has come to believe that a Muslim Reformation—a revision of Islamic doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity—is now at hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a new readiness—not least by Muslim women—to think freely and to speak out. Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims have to make to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first. And she calls on the Western world to end its appeasement of the Islamists. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” she writes. It is the Muslim reformers who need our backing, not the opponents of free speech. Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of global toleration. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders, with jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this book offers an answer to what is fast becoming the world’s number one problem.
Download or read book Islamic Reform in Twentieth Century Africa written by Roman Loimeier and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive analysis of Muslim movements of reform in modern sub-Saharan AfricaBased on twelve case studies (Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar and the Comoros), this book looks at patterns and peculiarities of different traditions of Islamic reform. Considering both Sufi- and Salafi-oriented movements in their respective historical contexts, it stresses the importance of the local context to explain the different trajectories of development.The book studies the social, religious and political impact of these reform movements in both historical and contemporary times and asks why some have become successful as popular mass movements, while others failed to attract substantial audiences. It also considers jihad-minded movements in contemporary Mali, northern Nigeria and Somalia and looks at modes of transnational entanglement of movements of reform. Against the background of a general inquiry into what constitutes areform, the text responds to the question of what areform actually means for Muslims in contemporary Africa.Key featuresBiographies of reformist scholars complement the textCase studies are placed in the context of the dynamics of areform in the larger world of IslamAddresses the importance of trans-national entanglements and their formative powerFocuses on the dynamics of social and religious development, the political dynamics of Islamic areform and issues of youth, generational change and gender
Download or read book The Politics of Islamic Law written by Iza R. Hussin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.
Download or read book Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition written by Samira Haj and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-02 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samira Haj conceptualizes Islam through a close reading of two Muslim reformers—Muhammad ibn 'Abdul Wahhab (1703–1787) and Muhammad 'Abduh (1849–1905)—each representative of a distinct trend, chronological as well as philosophical, in modern Islam. Their works are examined primarily through the prism of two conceptual questions: the idea of the modern and the formation of a Muslim subject. Approaching Islam through the works of these two Muslims, she illuminates aspects of Islamic modernity that have been obscured and problematizes assumptions founded on the oppositional dichotomies of modern/traditional, secular/sacred, and liberal/fundamentalist. The book explores the notions of the community-society and the subject's location within it to demonstrate how Muslims in different historical contexts responded differently to theological and practical questions. This knowledge will help us better understand the conflicts currently unfolding in parts of the Arab world.
Download or read book Islamic Reform in South Asia written by Filippo Osella and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-16 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles in this volume build up ethnographic analysis complementary to the historiography of South Asian Islam, which has explored the emergence of reformism in the context of specific political and religious circumstances of nineteenth-century British India. Taking up diverse popular and scholarly debates as well as everyday religious practices, this volume also breaks away from the dominant trend of mainstream ethnographic work, which celebrates Sufi-inspired forms of Islam as tolerant, plural, authentic and so on, pitted against a 'reformist' Islam. Urging a more nuanced examination of all forms of reformism and their reception in practice, the contributions here powerfully demonstrate the historical and geographical specificities of reform projects. In doing so, they challenge prevailing perspectives in which substantially different traditions of reform are lumped together into one reified category (often carelessly shorthanded as 'wah'habism') and branded as extremist – if not altogether demonised as terrorist.
Download or read book Human Rights Revolution and Reform in the Muslim World written by Anthony Tirado Chase and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author stresses the importance of focusing on the diverse Muslim world rather than on one of its parts. He rejects popular arguments that there is an incompatibility between human rights and Islam.
Download or read book Manifesto for Islamic Reform written by Edip Yuksel and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yuksel reintroduces the actual message of the Quran. He removes the accumulated layers of man-made dogmas and traditions that have attached themselves to the text.
Download or read book The Challenge of Modernizing Islam written by Christine Douglass-Williams and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2017-07-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The entire foreign policy and much of the domestic policy of the United States and other Western governments are based on the proposition that the vast majority of Muslims are moderate and peaceful, including those who are emigrating in large numbers to Europe and North America. But as Islamist groups and many mosques radicalize peaceful Muslims and appeal to the teachings of the Koran, Hadith, and Sunnah, it is imperative for moderates and reformists to articulate a vision of Islam and an exegesis of Islamic texts that can withstand the challenge of Islamists and the ulema who have declared the sanctity and immutability of the text. Instead, they must re-establish a firm foundation of Islam that is modernized, genuinely peaceful, tolerant, pluralistic, and compatible with secular governance, the freedom of speech, human rights, and equality. The Challenge of Modernizing Islam is the first major effort to provide that foundation. Veteran journalist Christine Douglass-Williams interviews foremost moderate and reformist Muslims in the Western world. She asks them tough questions about how they deal with problematic Koran passages, how they intend to get their message across to the Muslim world, and more. Their answers are revelatory, even in the ways in which they disagree with one another. Douglass-Williams has captured the Islamic Reformist movement in its full intellectual ferment, laying bare the tensions and triumphs of the Reformers. In the book's second half, she adds a crucial series of searingly honest and illuminating reflections on the challenges the reformers face, the chances they have of succeeding, and the implications of their struggle for the future of the Western world and of all free people. Illuminating, engaging, and thought-provoking, The Challenge of Modernizing Islam is an essential text for understanding the future of the United States and the West, and the implications of Muslim moderates' struggle for the free world.
Download or read book Making Islam Democratic written by Asef Bayat and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks anew at the vexing question of whether Islam is compatible with democracy, examining histories of Islamic politics and social movements in the Middle East since the 1970s.
