bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery
Authors: Stockdale Nancy L.
Published: October 2020

Nabil Matar's Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery is awelcome addition to the important yet often-overlooked scholarship ofcross-cultural exchanges between Muslims and non-Muslims in the erabetween the Crusades and modem European colonial hegemony. Drawingon literary and historical sources from the Elizabethan and Stuart periods,Matar strikes at the heart of the Orientalism debate with a complicated yetplausible link between English representations of Muslims and nativeAmericans and later imperialist racism. By stressing a triangular powerrelationship between England, North Africa and the Ottoman world, andthe new American colonies, Matar convincingly argues that it was the veryfailure of the English to conquer the Muslims in the face of Englishsuccesses in America against the indigenous populations that led Britons totransfer their ideas about "savage natives" from the American Indians tothe Muslims. According to Matar, it was this transference that laid thefoundation for centuries of racism and stereotyping against Islam and itsadherents in western scholarship and popular culture. By using thelanguage of racism created during their destruction of the native Americansagainst the Muslims they could not destroy, the English in the Age ofDiscovery created the ideological foundation for their conquests in the Ageof Imperialism.In his introduction, Matar is quick to remind his readers that Muslimswere the most familiar and significant Others in Elizabethan and StuartEngland unlike Americans, they were not in the colonial sights of theEnglish, but rather, to be admired and feared. Indeed, it was their veryresistance to being conquered that led to their demonization in literary andtheological works. However, in the realm of politics, English rulers werekeen to forge political and economic ties with Muslim governments,because they knew they needed such ties to maintain their own nationaland economic security. Matar is also careful to point out that Englishrepresentations of Muslims cannot be taken at face value as accuratehistorical sources describing lived experiences of Muslims, but rather, asrepresentations of how the English viewed the Islamic world they knewvis-a-vis the other major group of non-Christians with which they wereactively engaged, Native Americans.The bulk of Matar's work can be divided into two parts. Chapter One ...
Second Annual Conference of the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID)
Authors: Sein Layla
Published: October 2020

The Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID) held its secondannual conference at Georgetown University on April 7, 2001. Students,diplomats, liberal professionals, investors, activists and academicians wereamong the guests at the conference cosponsored by GeorgetownUniversity's Center for Muslim Christian Understanding (CMCU), theInternational Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and the Institute of GlobalCultural Studies.The conference theme, "Islam, Democracy and the Secularist State in thePost Modem Era" echoed in the presentations of Muslim scholars in thefollowing five panels: Islam and Democracy, The Secular State, Elementsof Democracy with Respect to Islam, Postmdernity, and Democracy inPractice and Islam in Context. A total of twenty presentations were madeby the panelists in these five sections.Since the CSID is a research organization with a membership ofacademics, entrepreneurs, Muslim intellectuals, liberal professionals andactivists committed to promoting democracy in the Muslim world, itsannual conferences and monthly publication "The Muslim Democrat" serveas a forum through which the relationship between Islam and democracy isdefined and democratic elements inherent in Islam are identified. As athink-tank dedicated to defining the historical and philosophical basis ofdemocracy and its compatibility with the elements of Islam, CSID'spresentations underscored justice, equality and tolerance as democraticconcepts intrinsic to Islamic principles.By outlining the historical development of secularism and its role inMuslim societies, the panelists did not only encourage Muslim activists toinstitutionalize democratic practices, but they also addressed Muslimscholars and activists from both the western and the Muslim worlds whoare convinced that Islam is incompatible with democracy. By presentingthe causes of problems inherent in secular trends in Muslim countries likeYemen, Jordan, Indonesia and Malaysia, and identifying the shortcomingsin their democratization process, CSID's presentations simultaneouslysought to convince both Islamists and secularists that democratic ideals andIslamic principles were compatible.Since a distinction must be made between the separation of church andstate and the separation of religion from politics in order to advance the ...
The Rule of Law in the Middle East and the Islamic World
Authors: Fadel Mohammad
Published: October 2020

This work grew out of a series of lectures that were delivered over atwo-year period between 1996 and 1998 at the Centre of Islamic andMiddle Eastern Law (CIMEL) at the School of Oriental and AfricanStudies (SOAS), University of London, on the genera] subject of the rule oflaw in the Middle East and Islamic countries. Subsequently, materials wereadded dealing particularly with issues relating to human rights law. Thecontributors to this work are a combination of legal academics, human rights activists, lawyers and judges, who hale from various countries in theArab world, Iran, the United States, Great Britain and Germany.There are a total of fourteen separate chapters, of varying length andquality. The book is not lengthy - including notes and authors’ biographies,it is 180 pages long. The average length of each chapter is between ten andfifteen pages. Despite the diversity of countries surveyed, all the essays areconcerned with generic questions regarding the rule of law, whether in atheoretical sense, viz., whether the notion that legitimate governmentalaction is limited to those acts that are deemed lawful by a pre-existing setor rules, or in a practical sense, viz., assuming that the formal legal regimeof a given state recognizes the rule of law in a theoretical sense, whetherthe coercive apparatus of the state in fact recognizes legal limitations onits conduct.Perhaps the most interesting (it is certainly the most lengthy, at 35 pages),and most important, essay in this work is the very fiit one, authored byAdel Omar Sherif, an Egyptian judge, wherein the author provides a digestof the landmark decisions of the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court.While the work can be criticized for taking on the appearance of a meresurvey of decisions, without taking a critical perspective to the Court’sprecedents, it is nonetheless a very valuable contribution for those lawyersand scholars who cannot read Arabic but nonetheless wish to gain insightinto Egypt’s legal culture. The modest task of relating the decisions ofEgypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court is especially important given thecliches regarding the absence of effective judicial institutions in the Arabworld. Sherifs contribution effectively dispels that myth. His article revealsthe Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court to be a vibrant institution thattakes its constitutional duties seriously, and discharges those duties withintegrity, and when it finds that the government has acted unlawfully, it willstrike down the offensive legislation, or rule against the government ...
Maximization Postulates and Their Efficacy for Islamic Economics
Authors: Hasan Zubair
Published: October 2020

This paper examines the nature and role of maximization postu­lates concerning profit and utility in the mainstream price theory formation, from a methodological perspective. Mainstream eco­nomics retains these postulates, despite much criticism, mainly for two reasons. Firstly, they help establish cause-effect linkages among economic variables and markets. In that they greatly facil­itate predictions and their empirical veri_fication over a wide field of inquiry. Secondly, no other behavioral rule has so far been established that gives equally valid, if not superior, results over such range. ft is argued that the postulates are required in fslamic econom­ics as well for the same reasons. Maximization, per se, is not un-Islamic: what is maximized, how and for what purpose are the real issues to investigate before passing judgment. Contrary to the current position in the I iterature, we find it preferable to include moral values and social considerations of Islam in the assumptions of economic theorems, rather than attempting to include them in the objective elements of the models, until Islamic economics evolves as an independent subject. For max­imization is a mathematical concept, and cannot fruitfully accommodate what cannot somehow be measured.
Islam in Global History
Authors: Erfan Niaz
Published: October 2020

Islam in Global History, written in two volumes covering the period fromthe death of the Holy Prophet to the First World War, has the distinction ofbeing a book on history and the philosophy of history. This is because, as thereader discovers, it is not merely a chronicle of events of the Muslim worldfrom the advent of Islam to the end of the World War I; it is a book whichprovides insights into the causes of the victories and defeats of dynasties aswell as successes and failures of movements in Islamic history, and laysdown the laws for the rise and fall of civilizations.Certainly, he is not the first in the field of the philosophy of history. Thetwo stalwarts who made original and remarkable contributions in this fieldduring the last two millennia are Ibn Khaldun and Arnold Toynbee. Thebooks in which they propounded their theories of the interpretation of historyare not books on history as such. Historical data were, no doubt, usedand analyzed to substantiate their theses. lbn Khaldun proved his conceptof asabiyah (social group cohesion) in the context of the history of theArabs and the Berbers, which he was to write subsequently. Toynbee usedthe data from world history to prove his idea of "Challenge and Response"to be the detennining factor in the strength and decay of civilizations andsocieties. It is to the author's credit that such a comprehensive and coherentwork on Islamic history has been produced. At each critical stage hediagnosed the causes of the major events that went into making watershedsand turning points in Muslim history worldwide.Dr. Ahmed is an eclectic writer who has partially benefited from theconcepts of the interpretation of history expounded by lbn Khaldun andToynbee. For example, he agrees with lbn Khaldun when he says:The origins of the Ottoman Empire are to be found in a combination ofTurkish 'asabiyah, a term used by lbn Kha Idun to denote tribal cohesion,the force that holds together tribes through bonds of blood, a characteristicfound in abundance among peoples of the desert and the nomads offthe steppes.He concurs with Toynbee when he writes:Great civilizations measure up to their challenges and grow more resili entwith each crisis, turning adversity into opportunjty. Critical moments in ...
Islam and Democracy
Authors: Ejobowah John Boye
Published: October 2020

In all of the Middle East and North Africa, Algeria was the first country to be infected by the wind of democratization that swept the developing world in the 1980s and 1990s. The country became a political laboratory for the rest of the Arab world, as liberalization opened spaces for moderate and radical Islamic groups to contest elections. Unfortunately, these elections quickly descended into a long drawn-out and brutal war with the secularist rulers. This bitter battle, fought most fiercely between 1992-99, turned Algeria into a hot spot, thereby raising the question of whether democracy is feasible in the Muslim world. Frederic Volpi's new book seeks to answer this question by analyzing the process of political liber­alization and the severe problems it generated in Algeria. Volpi presents early and mid-twentieth-century North African schol­ars' reinterpretations of the Islamic creed that activated the emergence of anti-secularist movements in the Maghreb as a point of departure for his historical narrative of the Algerian conflict. Although Algeria's militant movement was coopted by the state party (the National Liberation Front [FLN]) and lost its dynamism during the post-independence years, it still sought to change the political system by operating from the community level, where it had built a network of associations. The author shows how this network's provision of services designed to meet the people's welfare needs helped thrust Islamic leaders into the political limelight as they uti­lized their organizational capacities and authority to transform the 1988 October food riots into a political protest ...
Believing as Ourselves
Authors: Khattab Huda
Published: October 2020

This book represents the "female" side of a new genre in Islamic publishing.Jones, a white American convert, educated, well-read, and passionate abouther native tongue and its literature, writes of her experiences as a femaleconvert to Islam and, as the saying goes, ''tells it like it is." Like JeffreyLang, who provides the foreword, the author puts into words the confusion,hurt, bewilderment, and anguish that many converts feel after they comedown from the giddy heights of"saying their shahadah," - experiences thatmay all but extinguish the initial spark of excitement and enthusiasm.The book traces Jones' progress from initial conversion and communityinvolvement, to "burn-out'' and withdrawal, and on to her recoveryfrom depression and marital difficulties. In a pattern familiar to many converts,the initial spiritual delight - even euphoria - is soon swamped bylayer upon layer of community-induced confusion, rebuffs, snubs, dogmatism,and even racism. She speaks with reference to her interaction withthe Arab community, but the pattern will be familiar to many of those whoare either converts to Islam and/or partners in mixed marriages.Jones introduces the Muslim community to the idea of "personalauthenticity" and suggests that converts may suffer greatly when theylose their own ethnic or cultural identity in the effort to become more likethe born-Muslim community in which they find themselves. While this isan interesting idea, a brief search of such terms via my favorite websearch engine led to a host of gay and lesbian sites. Not knowing the pre ciseorigin of the notion of "personal authenticity," it wou Id appear to bea matter that should be handled with caution.The author frankly discusses depression, instead of accepting its beingswept under the carpet and dismissed as "madness" or the product of weakfaith ... and, therefore, one's own fault. This is another area that deserves theMuslim community's further attention, and in which Jones blazes a longoverduetrail. In addition to the spiritual approach, she provides some practicaltools for dealing with it, such as journaling and physical exercise. Thisbrings us back to the issue pertaining to the loss of identity and personalauthenticity, as she asks: How can you come to prayer without your heart?Jones also touches upon women's issues. The chapter on "TheAmerican Harlot," which makes for painful reading, highlights the ...
Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East
Authors: Khandwala Nazia
Published: October 2020

Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East, now in its second edition, is a collection of songs, articles, poems, and letters, as well as manuscripts, related to life in the Muslim Middle East. The authors, a mix of wellknown (and less well-known) scholars and writers from the Middle East and the West, seek to give readers an intimate look at the everyday life of the region's Muslim inhabitants in the hopes of addressing and dispelling some common stereotypes. Everyday Life is divided into five sections, each of which contains var­ious essays, stories, and so on. Section One focuses on family life, birth, adolescence, marriage, and death. The first piece is Erika Friedl's collec­tion of traditional songs from southwestern Iran about such events as childbirth and marriage. Susan Schaefer Davis examines how childrearing has changed in north-central Morocco from the 1970s to the present. In the next story, "Explosion," Lebanese journalist Emily Nasrallah depicts the tragedy of a young girl who parts from her mother at a supermarket and dies in an explosion. Next is an essay by Margaret A. Mills about an arranged marriage in Afghanistan. Jenny B. White ("Two Weddings") compares and contrasts traditional and modem Turkish weddings. In "Editing al-Fajr: A Palestinian Newspaper in Jerusalem," Bishara Bahbah talks about the experiences and challenges he faced as the editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem-based al-Fajr. Next is an excerpt from popular Moroccan novelist Driss Chraibi's "The Son's Return," in which he discusses the generation gap when a Moroccan immigrant to the West returns to visit his grandfather ...
The Unthought in Contemporary Islamic Thought
Authors: Shaikh Ameer U.
Published: October 2020

Mohammad Arkoun’s eight essays appearing in The Unthought in ContemporaryIslamic Thought are gates leading into a city. In this case, thecity is the deeply multifarious metropolis called Islam – a source of identityand pride for its adherents and, equally, a source of concern andcuriosity for those outside of its periphery. Throughout his life, Arkounhas placed himself on the ramparts and straddled the walls, leading someto call him an enemy spy and others to think of him as a brave pioneerinto the unknown. The past few years have seen an unheralded evaluationof Islam’s role in this globalized world. Arkoun’s eight essays, reflectinga lifetime in the field of Islamic studies, concern themselves with a hostof issues enveloping the world of Islam: Qur’anic studies, revelation,belief, authority, power, law, and civil society.The idea of unthought is a creative encapsulation of those diseases thathe believes are plaguing Islam. He defines unthought as the power employedby the traditional ulama and ideological Islamic states in order to guaranteethat a deeply dogmatic and unapproachable version of Islam is protectedfrom all intellectual and scientific analysis. Arkoun uses unthought to referto “an Islam that is isolated from the most elementary historical reasoning,linguistic analysis or anthropological decoding” (p. 308).The first essay, “A Critical Introduction to Qur’anic Studies,” is a sort ofoutline of his ideas. It expresses Arkoun’s suggestion that “we need to artic -ulate the cognitive, critical strategies used by social sciences of the ‘metamodern’sort to analyze, in thorough fashion, the structure and form of theQur’an, the ‘differentiated corpora of Meccan and Medinan revelation, the‘psychology of knowledge,’ the notions of sin, virtue, and interpersonal rela -tions, and finally everything from society, law, culture to warfare, commerceand children” (p. 44). The scope is indeed overwhelmingly broad. Arkounwants the preferred current mode of analytic evaluation in the social sciences– deconstruction, hermeneutics, and their various poststructuralist relatives– to be applied to Islamic studies. The Qu’ran, he argues, has becomeheavily loaded by “legalistic instrumentalization, and the ideological manipulationsof contemporary political movements” (p. 45).On the one hand, he is concerned about the loss of critical Qur’anicreading; however, he is equally wary of carte-blanche dismissals of Islam ...
Muslim Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe
Authors: Caputo Barbara
Published: October 2020

Through networks and media, European Muslims finally emerged associal and public actors in both European societies and the context of thebroader ummah. This is the core subject of the book, an edited collectionthat examines the networks and ways in which Muslims engage in the publicsphere. The discussion is supported with various case studies.According to two of the contributors, Mark Le Vine and PeterMandaville, European Islam can develop alternative Muslim views thataffect the native homelands of European Muslims and also contribute to thedynamic of self-perception and self-interpretation of Islam. EuropeanMuslims animate religious debates and contribute to developing a critical,pluralistic, and less conservative view of Islam. According to Mandaville,differences (viewed as positive elements) are negotiated and not negated. This demonstrates, as fellow contributor Valerie Amiraux argues, that thereis the possibility within Islam to express different religious beliefs. JorgenNeilson notes in his chapter that many networks (e.g., the IndianDeobandis, the Brelwis, or the Tabligh-i-Jama’at) have gained a space andan influence in Europe that they cannot achieve in their home countries.Many authors problematize singular conceptions of Islam. Unfortunately,quite often Muslim is taken for granted and regarded as self-evidentand self-explanatory. Mandaville defines Muslims as “those who considerIslam and its regular practice to be a primary (although, as we will see, notnecessarily as an exclusive one) component of self-identity” (p. 130), andconsiders those who fall outside this definition to be ethnic, non-universalistic,and cultural Muslims. Ironically, this definition looks similar to thatof fundamentalists, who believe that religious identity is the Muslims’ primaryessence, despite the fact that one of the book’s main aims is to demonstratethat European Islam is tolerant and pluralistic.In making distinctions between religion, culture, and society, StefanoAllievi emphasizes similarities and minimizes differences and conflicts inthe construction of a pan-Islamic global and deterritorialized ummah. Inexamining the tensions between the universal and the particular conceptionsof Islam and Islamic identification, Steven Vertovec, in particular,focuses on the contemporary emergence of disaporic realities as “newprocesses of localization” (p. 318) and the existence of specific nationalforms of religion alongside universalist claims ...
Najd before the Salafi Reform Movement
Authors: Salem Ahmed Ali
Published: October 2020

As the Muslim world searches for the right formula for reform, scholarsand intellectuals are invited to study Islamic reform movements and theconditions that made their successes possible. In this context, Najd beforethe Salafi Reform Movement is a timely contribution to the literature onsocial conditions of reform in Muslim societies. The author correctly notesthat pre-Salafi Najd (central Arabia) was neither a center of religious learningnor the site of large urban communities, which might be expected toproduce a reform movement of a size and significance of the Salafi movement.Nevertheless, the Salafi movement managed to establish a strongstate that unified Arabia and imposed peace and order on its people for thefirst time since the period of the early caliphs (pp. 1-2).This book, originally a Ph.D. dissertation, seeks to solve this puzzle.A six-page bibliography and a thirteen-page index are suffixed, along withseveral maps and tables, and both the Hijri and the Gregorian calendars areused to mark the general time periods. This book is particularly useful forstudents of history, sociology, anthropology, or genealogy in an earlymoderncontext, such as that of Najd between the mid-ninth/fifteenth andmid-twelfth/eighteenth centuries. The author argues that nomadic migrationand settlement; the growth of a sedentary population, as well asmigration and resettlement; and the growth of religious learning combinedto create a new Najdi society that produced the Salafi reform movement(p. 2). Each of these factors is addressed in one chapter.The first chapter, “The Geographical and Ecological Background,”demonstrates how Najd’s geographical setting and climatic conditions(viz., a desert region with an unpredictable climate) dictated its people’shard lifestyle and activities. For example, a persistant drought could turn asettlement, a region, or even the entire emirate into a wasteland (pp. 36-37).The second chapter, “An Historical Background,” surveys Najd’s inhabitantsat the rise of Islam and follows its demographic and political developmentsthroughout the first 9 centuries of the Islamic era. On the eve ofIslam, Najd was populous and prosperous; however, by the third/ninth ...
The Muslim Mind on Trial
Authors: Shahjahan Riyad
Published: October 2020

Abdessalam Yassine, a Moroccan Qur’anic scholar, passionately arguesthat Muslims need to return to the Qur’anic revelation and the propheticmethod of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in order to resurrect the Muslimmind and worldview, which are currently subjugated to secular westernthought. According to Yassine, the book’s purpose “is the establishmentand reminding of the Prophetic Method” (p. 25). This argument is madein the format of an introduction and 37 subject variants (ranging in lengthfrom a few paragraphs to seven pages).Yassine juxtaposes the Muslim mind with that of the secular materialisticwestern mind, where the latter is shown to be deficient while theformer, based on and nourished by revelation and the Sunnah, is consideredto be truly emancipatory. He states: “When discussing the choicebetween two minds and two mentalities we have only two options: Eitherthe sovereignty of the Revelation, pure and simple … Or the sovereignty of the arena, which occupied the other mind with its materialism, racialismand vagueness of its goals” (p. 9).Throughout the book, Yassine provides some insights into Islamicspiritual practice and critiques mainstream western thought. Interestingly,his essay “Ritual Purity” eloquently points out the importance of situatingthe body in Islamic spirituality and how its purification is interconnectedwith inner spiritual growth. In addition, he does not romanticizethe current Muslim ummah and shift all blame to the West; rather, he critiquesthe ummah for being coopted by western materialism.However, I had numerous problems with this book, beginning with itspremise. In an age of pluralistic societies, it is very hard to digest a discussionwhere one does not acknowledge that a pure “western mind” or a“Muslim mind” does not exist, because this assumption fails to acknowledgethe difference and diversity among interpretations of text and ideas.Yassine employs the dominant discourses in both western and Islamicthought in order to forward his argument, which, in turn, leads to essentialism.Knowledge production is dynamic, and constructing such a binaryframework perpetuates the idea that knowledge is static and fixed to a certaincontext, which only bolsters stereotypes ...
Kernel of the Kernel, Concerning the Wayfaring and Spiritual Journey of the People of Intellect, A Shi`i Approach to Sufism
Authors: Tourage Mahdi
Published: October 2020

Kernel of the Kernel is a recension by Ayatullah Sayyid Muhammad HusyanHusayni Tihrani (d. 1995) of the oral teachings of Allamah MuhammadHusayn Tabatabai (d. 1982), one of the most prominent Iranian ‘ulama of thetwentieth century. The main text has chapters entitled “Kernel of the Kernel,”“Description of the Realms Preceding the Realm of Khulus,” “UndifferentiatedDescription of the Path and Methods of Wayfaring toward God,” and “Differentiated Description of the Path and Methods of Wayfaring towardGod.” Kernel of the Kernel concludes with a general index, an index ofQur’anic verses and ahadith, an index of the sayings of the Shi`i Imams, andan appendix of notes on saints and scholars cited in the text that contains briefbiographies of 37 people.The book consists of Allamah Tabatabai’s teachings, which are augmentedby an interesting commentary/introduction by the editor, AllamahTihrani. Its core part is further prefaced by the translator’s (Muhammad H.Faghfoory) introduction and informative notes on Allamah Tihrani’s life andwork. Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s foreword is the external shell that puts the text’sgeneral esoteric trajectory and the characters involved in composing it in context.Nasr’s foreword, the translator’s notes, and the editor’s introduction areinterspersed with teachings and stories of the lives of the Shi`i sages and scholarsof the past several centuries. This makes the text of interest to students ofSufi hagiography in general, and of Shi`i intellectual life in particular.Kernel of the Kernel is in the genre of the Shi`i tradition of explicatingthe stages of the spiritual path and the doctrinal foundations of wayfaring.Allamah Tihrani begins by discussing the complementary relationshipbetween Islam’s exoteric and esoteric aspects, and argues that the straightpath means combining both of these aspects. As much as contemplation,intellection, logic, reason, and rational argumentation are praised, it is bysubmitting the heart that inward witnessing is achieved. This complementaryrelationship is the book’s underlying theme. Thus, the discussions on“the spiritual traveler” and “immersion in the Divine essence of the Lord,”for example, are balanced with such topics as “the station of being presentin the world of multiplicity while simultaneously witnessing and experiencingthe realms of Divine Lordship.” The text follows with a descriptionof the inner meanings of Islam, faith, migration, spiritual struggle, submission,and ritual practices. At every step of the spiritual path, the authoraffirms the complementary nature of the relationship between wayfaring inthe spiritual realm and being in this world. The last chapter is a condenseddescription of the path and the methods of wayfaring ...
Another Sea, Another Shore
Authors: Asgharzadeh Alireza
Published: October 2020

Most critics of modern Persian literature would agree that the emergentIranian diaspora literature is both rearticulating and challenging traditionalPersian narratives of identity, nationality, nation-state, and homeland.Another Sea, Another Shore is an admirable attempt to bring together in asingle volume representative samples of this diaspora literature, rooted in atleast 25 years of exilic experiences.The editors, Shouleh Vatanabadi and Mohammad Mehdi Khorrami,have done a superb job in selecting the stories as well as in translating themin a fluid, straightforward language. The book contains 21 stories groupedunder three headings that roughly divide narratives into initial experiencesof migrating/travelling, exilic experience, and more settled diasporic articulations.Represented in the volume are narratives of such well-establishedwriters as Reza Baraheni, Hushang Golshiri, Nasim Khaksar, and DariushKargar, as well as those of such new writers as Kader Abdolah, TaherehAlavi, and Marjan Riahi, among others.The constant themes of shattered dreams, unfulfilled hopes, disconnectedborders, ruptured identities, unfamiliar and defamiliarized spacesrunning through each story testify to the fact that this migration of a generationof exiled Iranians was no ordinary migration. It was not just aboutleaving one’s home behind; it was, more importantly, about not being ableto return. And this inability was powerful enough to drive some exiles andtheir loved ones back home to the shores of insanity – and even death. In“Anxieties from Across the Water,” Pari Mansouri masterfully depicts thispainful saga when a mother concludes that “the pain of separation will killme in the end” (p. 7). And it does.Among the collected stories, Mehri Yalfani’s “Without Roots” perhapsbest captures the essence of what one may call an Iranian diasporic experience.In this powerful piece, Yalfani demonstrates a complex web of relationships,conflicts, and interactions that migration creates, such as the onesbetween home and host cultures, old and young generations, males andfemales, as well as those emerging from class issues, racism, and processesof resocialization and identity formation. The old generation of Iranian ...
Jihad
Authors: Ahmed Rumee
Published: October 2020

Richard Bonney laments what he deems a misappropriation of the termjihad by both pundits in the West seeking to portray Islam as inherently violent,and a small faction of Muslim fanatics seeking political gain. Jihad, hecontends, has been perverted from its original intent of encouraging spiritualathleticism and allowing for physical defense when transgression occurs. He endeavors to return to the term’s roots to detail how and whyit has been manipulated over time to take on exclusively violent andaggressive connotations. By doing so, Bonney hopes to empower Muslimmoderates to publicize the concept of jihad as purely defensive, as wellas to enlighten non-Muslims of Islam’s true message of peace, balance,and pluralism.The author goes back to the original sources, the Qur’an and theSunnah, to make his case. He demonstrates his familiarity with the Qur’anby citing verses on jihad, contextualizing them in purely spiritual anddefensive terms, and briefly mentions how they could be misinterpreted ifone did not view the Qur’an holistically and in its proper context. However,Bonney betrays his ignorance of the Qur’anic sciences in his rather superficialdescription and application of classical hermeneutics and abrogationtheory. Rather than engage the prolific tradition of Qur’anic exegesis, herelies on a few modern commentators (e.g., Qamaruddin Khan and ReuvenFirestone) to promote his views. He acknowledges that these interpretationsmay differ with the tradition, but he does not address or attempt to resolvethe tension between the two ...
Muslims and the State in Britain, France, and Germany
Authors: Blumi Isa
Published: October 2020

The expanding Muslim communities in Western Europe have become asource of consternation in European capitals. Central to the issue ofEurope’s growing Muslim population is how far the secular state is willingto accommodate religious practices deemed to be antithetical to “European”values. Fetzer and Soper’s timely comparative study effectively addressesthe issue’s historical foundations as well as clearly explains the EuropeanMuslims’ disparate political responses.The authors’ central focus is how three core European states haveaccommodated the needs of Muslims flooding their borders since the 1960s.Exploring Europe’s surprisingly disjointed response to Muslim immigrationproves to be both theoretically interesting and an invaluable exercise indebating what options are available to elected governments that are beingincreasingly pressured by right-wing activism when it comes to accommodatethe practice of Islam in Europe.The questions raised in the book’s six chapters, three of which are dedicatedto the countries in question and the others to presenting the data collectedvia the authors’ surveys, should prove helpful to larger discussions inEuropean studies about what the contemporary dilemmas facing Germany,Britain, and France are in the context of the so-called war on terrorism.While most studies on Islam in Europe, particularly migration and genderstudies, focus on how Muslims mobilize their socioeconomic resources,Fetzer and Soper contend that developing a public policy on Muslim religious(and political) rights is actually mediated in significant ways by thedifferent institutional church/state patterns within each country.This move away from the assumption that Muslims, if organized in theright way, could expect certain institutional concessions in “democraticEurope” proves to be a helpful intervention into a sometimes doctrinally ...
Islam
Authors: Tayyara Abd al-Rahman
Published: October 2020

In his book Islam: Practices · Holy Texts · Sacred Persons · Sacred Places,Matthew Gordon discusses the divinely revealed nature of Islam throughtexts, persons, times, and places. His book is a welcome addition to a newwave of introductory books written by western scholars who seek to presentIslam objectively to western readers. The book’s main argument is that, likeother monotheistic religions, Islam is based on a set of divine beliefs thatrevolve exclusively around perceiving God through His many signs. Thesemanifestations of God are evident in the religious texts, persons, times, andplaces that have figured in Islam since its inception. At the same time,Gordon argues that the Islamic tradition “is far from monolithic and is theproduct of many centuries of scholarship and internal debate” (p. 67). Thetarget audience of this book is general readers and beginners in the field whoare looking for a handy textbook on the subject.This slim book is divided into nine chapters, each of which ends witha commentary on a selected text that elucidates the theme discussed, andincludes a glossary, bibliography, and an index. Its style is clear and simple.As the most important source of Islam’s genealogy, the Qur’an plays amajor role in this study. In the first chapter, Gordon offers a brief historicalreview of Islam’s religious and political development. By presenting differentIslamic dynasties that ruled various parts of the world, the authorreveals how Islam reached non-Arab peoples, which explains the fact thatthe majority of today’s Muslims live in Southeast Asia rather than theMiddle East.In the second chapter, the author discusses the axis around which the setof Islamic beliefs and practices revolves. Gordon rightly argues that thedivinely revealed nature of Islam stems absolutely from God’s pivotal placein Islam. Specifically, he claims that “[t]he relationship between Muslimsand God is informed by three principles that derive directly from the Quran”(p. 24): the “divine unity of God (tawhid),” “prophecy (nubuwwa),” and the“last days (maad).” At the same time, Gordon highlights the differencesbetween Sunni and Shi`i Islam and also refers to two other principles thatare exclusive to the Shi`i tradition: imamate and divine justice. Gordon’s discussionof Sufism takes up a considerable part of this chapter because, for ...
Challenging Empire
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E.
Published: October 2020

The idea for this book emerged from what the author perceives to be theextraordinary post-cold war circumstances associated with the Americanextremists’ push for empire. Its thesis is simple and straightforward:American unilateralism and militarism have spawned a global social movementagainst such eventualities, giving rise to a new kind of internationalism.The components of this internationalism are threefold: people and socialmovements, governments, and the United Nations (UN). Together, ratheroptimistically or perhaps wishfully, they have come to constitute a “secondsuperpower” capable of challenging this imperial drive (pp. 6 and 257).The book is divided into five chapters. The “Introduction” (chapter 1)presents the thesis and framework of the three-part internationalist perspective.Chapter 2 presents the global social movement as the core componentthat defies war and empire and that exhibits peoples’ power as the foundationof such defiance. The main argument here is that the events of September 11,2001, provided a golden opportunity for the George W. Bush administrationto manipulate and exploit the American people’s fears and shock. Fear,according to Bennis, undermines “not only independence of will, but the verycapacity to think” (p. 31). This was the means by which the neo-conservatives,hijacking state power, were able to carry the American people along,allowing for no serious questioning or opposition. Yet if the United States is ...
Woman and the Masjid between Two Extremes
Authors: Safi Louay
Published: October 2020

The masjid, better known in North America as the Islamic center, is the centerof spiritual, social, educational, and, most recently, political activities ofthe American Muslim community. The masjid is also the place whereMuslims of diverse cultural and ideological backgrounds meet and interact.The diversity of interpretations of Islamic sources and practices has createdtensions, particularly in Islamic centers where the tendency is to imposestrict interpretations about the appropriate place and role of Muslim womenin the masjid and the community.An increasing number of young Muslim women complain of restrictivearrangements and practices, impeding their ability to fully participate in educationaland social programs. Many masjids today restrict the main prayerhall to men and assign women to secluded quarters. Women are asking outloud: “Is this the place Islam assigns for us, or is it the imposition of culturaltraditions?” Some have even gone to the other extreme of rejecting all traditionsand discarding all limits ...
Voices of Islam in Europe and Southeast Asia
Authors: Jory Patrick
Published: October 2020

This workshop, co-organized by the Regional Studies Program, WalailakUniversity, Thailand, and the Department of Cross-cultural and RegionalStudies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and conceived of early in2005, took place a little over a week before the eruption of the “cartoon controversy,”which brought the issue of the relationship between Europe and theso-called “Muslim world” to the fore as never before. From January 20-22,2006, a group of almost thirty Muslim and non-Muslim specialists workingin Islamic studies and on the study of Muslim societies from fifteen countriesin Europe and Southeast Asia gathered in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand,to discuss the diverse “Voices of Islam” in these two regions. The workshopwas held in southern Thailand, where, in the ethnic Malay-majority borderprovinces, a violent insurgency over the last two years has claimed over 1,000lives and has heightened tensions between the local Muslim population andthe Thai state. Some observers have explained the intensification of the conflictas being due to the infiltration of foreign Islamist militants and the influenceof extremist Islamic discourses of struggle.The workshop focused on two major themes: how events following theSeptember 11 attacks have affected the nature of Islamic studies in Europeand Southeast Asia, and how changes in Islamic studies are impacting uponMuslims and their understanding of Islam in these two regions. While theworkshop presentations were given mainly in English (with a small numberof papers presented in Thai and Malay), a simultaneous interpreting servicewas available for local Thai Muslim (as well as non-Muslim) participants,who attended the workshop in significant numbers.A wide variety of papers were presented. However, if one theme couldsummarize the tone of the three days, it is that 9/11 has engendered a changingparadigm in these regions’ Islamic studies programs, even though manyof the changes may already have been underway prior to the attacks. In thecase of Southeast Asia, governments and the media in the region have attributedthe Muslim extremists’ ideology, at least partly, to the influence of ...
Europe and the Arab World
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E.
Published: October 2020

Concise, succinct, and informative, this book skillfully elucidates andassesses the patterns, prospects, and complexities of Arab-European relationscontextualized in a globalizing (read “Americanizing”) world. It alsoidentifies the ambiguities and limitations of social movements and struggleswithin the Arab world, as well as their implications for mutual relationships(p. vi). The authors’ main thesis is that both global capitalism and theAmerican determination to construct a “new” Middle East in its own imagehave undermined the possibilities of domestic reforms and external realignmentsin most Arab countries. American hegemonic influence, together withthe growing sway of politicized Islam on public life, have added more limitationsand constraints to other failures to transform the underlying economicand political structures defining the relations between members onboth sides of the Mediterranean.The book comprises four chapters: three written by Amin (chapters 1, 2,and 4), and one (chapter 3) by El Kenz. The first chapter is a critical surveyof conditions in the Arab world in general and that of the Arab “state” in particular.Amin designates the latter structure as a manifestation of “mamelukepower,” reflecting a complex traditional system that has merged the personalizedpower of warlords, businessmen, and men of religion (p. 3). The Arabstate, he argues, has never really embraced or understood modernity. Egypt,Syria, and the Ottoman Empire underwent a first phase of ineffective modernizationduring the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The secondphase was associated with the populist nationalism of Nasserism, Baathism,and the Algerian revolution between the 1950s and 1970s. With the end ofthis phase, a multiparty system gave way to a paradoxical regression into themameluke type of autocracy (pp. 10-12). Whereas Europe broke with itspast, which allowed for its modern progress, the Arabs have not. Amin identifiesmodernity with such a historical break as well as with secularism, thedifferentiation of religion and politics, the emancipation of women, and therest of the term’s conventional elements (pp. 2-3).He criticizes currents “claiming to be Islamic” (p. 6), particularly thoseof the Wahhabi type, viewing Islamic militant groups as manifestations of arevolt against “destructive” capitalism and “deceptive” modernity (p. 6),more interested in sociopolitical issues than in matters of theology. Amin dismissesIran as being no different, although he provides no details (p. 8), and ...
Pilgrims of Love
Authors: Curtis Mieke Maria
Published: October 2020

Pnina Werbner’s Pilgrims of Love, a truly exceptional book in several importantways, is the result of some eleven years of fieldwork in Britain andPakistan. While the topic, understanding a transnational Sufi cult, is quiteconventional within the discipline of anthropology, the time span in which theresearch was conceived and conducted is perhaps one wherein anthropology began to question seriously even its most taken-for-granted truths. Thismakes the final product anything but conventional.The author makes very clear her position as an anthropologist and thedifficulties she experienced as a western Jewish female academic writingabout a Pakistani, or second-generation Pakistani, predominantly Muslimmale practitioner’s perspective. Her honesty about the nature of her fieldexperience, the classic nature of the research itself within the canon ofanthropological literature, and her assessment of what she calls “the limitsof postmodern anthropology” (pp. 14-15, 291-302) add a certain depth ofsubstance to the discipline’s ongoing discussion of the subject-object relationship.This text is an important contribution to the body of literaturewithin the anthropology of religion and Islam, comparative studies of Islamicmovements, transnationalism, and, in general, to students and scholars ofPakistan and South Asia ...