bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The New Turkish Republic
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E.
Published: October 2020

This policy book purports to advise American decision makers about thechanges and transformations taking place in Turkey’s politics and foreignpolicy, as well as their reasons and implications. It further counselsWashington on how to deal with the novelties that they may engender. Graham Fullerargues that Turkey, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his successors, underwentan imposed “cultural lobotomy” designed to induce a national “amnesia”about its Islamic and Ottoman past (p. 17). This condition, however, isending, for Turkey seems to be experiencing a counter-dynamic and a “returnof history,” away from what the author deems a “transient geopolitical aberrationfrom a long norm” (p. 8).Fuller makes his point by asserting, first, that Turkey is again becomingpart of the Middle East and examining its historical trajectory and legacies.Second, by highlighting the increasing divergence in Turkish-Americanrelations due to the changing circumstances related to the Soviet collapseand the reordering of European politics, he sees an American regionalagenda at odds with Turkish national and geopolitical interests, as well as aTurkish strategic opening to the Muslim world, Eurasia, Russia, and China,as alternative political and economic options. The author’s broad conclusionis that how Turkey will act in the Middle East and the Muslim world willlargely depend on the “complex interplay” between the United States, theEuropean Union, and Turkey’s non-western interests (p. 9). Such a “comeback,”in any case, is likely to partially dilute and complicate, as well asenrich and complement, Turkey’s links with the “West” (p. 8) ...
Rituals of Memory in Contemporary Arab Women’s Writing
Authors: Ben-Ami Naama
Published: October 2020

Gender, an issue that has been in the headlines for decades now, has naturallyalso attracted the scholarly attention of both men and women. In thebook under review, Brinda Mehta, professor of French and FrancophoneStudies at Mills College, inquires into the subject of gender from the perspectiveof a select group of leading contemporary women writers in theArab world whose compositions express the complexities of life for Arabwomen in the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq), NorthAfrica (Egypt,Algeria, andMorocco), and the United States (LosAngeles). The authors areallArabs on both sides, except forDianaAbu-Jaber, daughter of a JordanianbornArab Muslim father and an American Christian mother. The novelschosen for analysis have widely varying plots, but all reflect the place ofwomen inArab society and how they cope with difficult circumstances.The book is divided into six chapters, each devoted to one ormore compositions(novels) by a writer or two, whose stimulation to write was derivedat least in part from their own personal experiences ...
Fine Arts in Egypt
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

The “Fine Arts in Egypt: 100 Years of Creativity” conference, which tookplace on 19-22 October 2008 at Helwan University, Cairo, celebrated thecentennial of the establishment of one of the leading fine arts educationalinstitutions in Egypt and the Arab world. It was convened on the premisesof Cairo’s Opera House.Held under the auspices of Egypt’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, theopening ceremony featured welcome speeches by Farouk Hosni (minister ofculture), Abdulla Barakat (president, Helwan University), Mohamed Mekkawy(dean, Fine Arts), and Aleya Abdel-Hadi (conference organizer).Following these speeches, Benedetto Todar (dean of architecture, Sapienza,Rome) and Hazem El Kowedi (governor, Helwan) gave keynote addresseson architecture ...
Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures
Authors: Rippin Andrew
Published: October 2020

An encyclopedia is popularly thought of as presenting the sum of all knowledge,whether it be universal or on a specific topic. A moment’s reflectionreveals, of course, that such an understanding does not quite get at the realconcept, for there is no such thing as “all knowledge.” The historicalmomentwill always define the extent of the knowledge that is available. The structuralterms within which that knowledge is constructed – its headings andsubheadings – are historically bound as well. One of the features – bothadmirable and disconcerting – of the Encyclopedia of Women & IslamicCultures is how the work makes the reader aware of these factors: that thisencyclopedia is, in fact, by its very act of being produced, defining a previouslynon-existent area of encyclopaedic knowledge and that the gaps inknowledge of the subject area, even after the production of the work, are substantial.Volume 4, “Economics, Education, Mobility and Space,” illustratesthis point vividly.As can be seen by the volume’s heading, the overall encyclopedia isorganized at the top level in themes. Within each volume, though, entries areorganized alphabetically. The main topics covered are “Cities,” “Development,”“Economics,” “Education,” “Environment,” “Information Technologies,”“Migration,” “Poverty,” “Slavery,” “Space,” and “Tourism.” Sincethe ordering of the next level of headings is alphabetical as well, there is noparticular organizational logic to the sequence of presentation. Under“Cities,” for example, the subheadings are, in order: “Colonial Cities,”“Homelessness,” “Informal Settlement,” “Islamic Cities,” “Urban BuiltEnvironments,” “Urban Identities,” and “Urban Movements.” It is difficultto ascertain whether any theoretical structure has dictated these subheadings ...
India Traders of the Middle Ages
Authors: Blumi Isa
Published: October 2020

Throughout Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and our current era, the IndianOcean has been the economic backbone of an interconnected global community.This inter-territorial commerce, which feeds a vast network of merchantsfrom the western Mediterranean to the South China Sea, probablyconstitutes the single most important cultural milieu in human history.While many existing studies highlight these networks’ significance andeven a subdiscipline in academia focuses on the “Indian Ocean,” some significantcomponents of the interlinking system are missing. A particularlydifficult problem is the shortage of primary material from the system’s earlierperiods, especially prior to the arrival of the Portuguese and the Dutch.The present volume, which is comprised of annotated and translated lettersof various eleventh- and twelfth-centuryArab Jewish traders who interactedwithin this larger Indian Ocean complex, provides perhaps the most foundationalsource to understand the economic activities, communal organization,family life, and material civilization of the medieval world’s ArabicspeakingJews. Indeed, with patience and a creative imagination, IndiaTraders of the Middle Ages could lay the foundation for taking this subdisciplinein new directions ...
Secularism Confronts Islam
Authors: Johnston David L.
Published: October 2020

This work by a leading French Islamicist is both an analysis of Islam, secularism,and society in Europe, as well as a prescription for its leaders on howto “correct” their wrongheaded policies with regard to their Muslim minoritiesbased on this analysis. This might seem unduly arrogant on OlivierRoy’s part, but his past landmark books do seem to commend the perspicacityof his views on the subject, and most of all, The Failure of Political Islam(Harvard University Press: 1994) and Globalized Islam: The Search for theNew Umma (Hurst: 2004).On one level, Roy is focused on France: how one might begin to mitigatethe polarization of the French elites in the wake of forbidding the veil in publicplaces and the violence of the 2005 riots in the poorest – mostly Muslim– suburbs of Paris. Indeed, the first chapter is devoted to the historical rootsof France’s virulent version of state-enforced secularism (laïcité). But onanother level, this is a work rich in theoretical analysis, widening its insightsto Britain and the United States and their “common law” version of laïcité, aswell as providing a new theory to the sociology of religion.The intensity of the French debate raises important questions. “The campaignof Islamophobia we are witnessing today is involved in the reshapingof the French political and intellectual landscape” (p. 2). How so? The ChristianRight and the Extreme Right’s suspicion of Islam is now shared by a sizableportion of the Left, which has reacted with fear to the French Muslimcommunity’s new and outspoken rhetoric. School girls want to wear the veilout of pride. And this new Islamic discourse has been promoted both by the“bearded Salafist preacher” and the suave intellectual embodied by TariqRamadan ...
Sultans, Shamans & Saints
Authors: Kersten Carool
Published: October 2020

Few people in North American academia are more knowledgeable aboutIslam in Southeast Asia, and especially in Indonesia, than Howard Federspiel.The forte of his own research contributions lays not so much in innovativeanalyses as in presenting comprehensive and useful overviews forspecialists and novice students alike. As a political scientist, he made hisname with his study of Indonesia’s Persatuan Islam (PERSIS), a modernistIslamic organization active from the 1920s until the 1950s – the critical timeframe during which the Dutch colony gained its independence. This was followedby further contributions to the country’s contemporary intellectualhistory. With Sultans, Shamans & Saints, Federspiel has now tried his handat producing a general overview of Islam in Southeast Asia ...
Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition
Authors: Hashim Rosnani
Published: October 2020

The goal of this book “is to provide a way of conceptualizing the Islamic traditionthat is different from that proposed by conventional scholarship”(p. 6). The author wants to highlight howMuslims themselves view modernitybecause their own views have been overshadowed by western scholarshipand have problematized assumptions founded on the oppositionaldichotomies of modern versus traditional or secular versus sacred. Sheargues that a tradition is not simply the recapitulation of previous beliefs andpractices, but that each successive generation confronts its own particularproblems via an engagement with a set of ongoing arguments. Therefore, theauthor asserts, one effective way of addressing Islam is to approach it asMuslims do – as a discursive tradition embodied in the practices and institutionsof their communities.Haj intends to attain her goals and highlights these problems by analyzingthe work of two significant Muslim reformers: Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-87) and Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905). Although theybelong to different historical periods and social settings, she feels that theirwork has inspired the two major strands of contemporary Islamic politicalthought. The former, an Arabian reformer, has often been referred to as the“legendary mastermind of a ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘violent’ political movement,the inspiration for the present-day militant Muslim groups (like al-Qa`ida) in their struggle against modernity” (p. 30). The latter is an Egyptianreformer regarded as a liberal humanist who underlined the essence ofMuslim humanism for the modern world ...
Islamic Traditions and Comparative Modernities
Authors: Yenigun Halil Ibrahim
Published: October 2020

From 25-26 September 2009, Thomas Jefferson’s academic village inCharlottesville, the University of Virginia (UVA), hosted the Thirty-EighthAnnual Conference of theAssociation of Muslim Social Scientists of NorthAmerica (AMSS). Cosponsored by the university’s Department of ReligiousStudies and the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languagesand Cultures, presenters and participants discussed “Islamic Traditions andComparative Modernities.”In his opening remarks, Conference Chair Abdulaziz Sachedina(Frances Myers Ball Professor of Religious Studies, UVA) underlined thedeliberate choice of traditions and modernities in the title to acknowledgethe multiplicity of these experiences in current academic disciplines.AMSSpresidentAli Mazrui (Binghamton University), the second opening speaker,focused on modernity, modernization, democratization, globalization, secularization,and other related concepts, all of which were invented anddefined by the West and are part of the dilemma of Islam’s confrontationwith it. Expanding upon globalization’s various forms, he opined that itsdominant category was comprehensive globalization, which represents all ofthe forces that have brought societies together in a globalized village. Heconcluded by stating that he was proud to launch this conference with theagenda of this changing dynamic of the present century ...
The Obama Administration and US Relations with the Muslim World
Authors: Mazrui Ali
Published: October 2020

On 16 October 2009, the Institute of Global Cultural Studies (IGCS) atBinghamton, jointly with the Association of Muslim Social Scientists ofNorth America (AMSS), sponsored a symposium in Binghamton University’sMandela Hall on “The Obama Administration and US Relations withtheMuslimWorld: Prospects, Progress and Lingering Skepticism.” The presentationsaddressed Iran’s nuclear program, Arab-Israeli relations, Iraq andAfghanistan, Darfur, and studies comparing Obama with Malcolm X andJapan’s new prime minister Yukio Haroyama. Inevitably, there was alsosome debate as to whether Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was legitimatelyearned or premature ...
Women of Fes
Authors: Spadola Emilio
Published: October 2020

The city of Fes, the once “bourgeois citadel” (J. Berque’s words) of Moroccoand once the world’s most populous city (1170-80), has in modernity beenunhappily bypassed for coastal trading hubs and global mega-cities. Materialand symbolic elements of Fassi power persist, however, and anthropologistRachel Newcomb’s finely researched and written ethnography identifies them in upper-middle-class women’s gender identity. In so doing, Women ofFes helps the fields of anthropology, sociology, gender studies, and Islamicstudies to illuminate the often-neglected power of class to shape gender in theMuslim Middle East and North Africa, demonstrating, not pointedly, thatclass divides women within as much as across cultures.Newcomb’s book concerns women of, not merely in, Fes, namely, a classof women of “original” Fassi families navigating the social ruins and newopportunities of daily urban life. Its disparate topics – urban rumors, women’sNGOs, reforms of the Moroccan Muslim family code (mudawanah), flexiblekinship, public space, a dépassé lounge singer – shift the book’s centerfrom class to gender and public life. Her skillful identification of class issueswithin the latter, however, gives the book a necessary coherence ...
A History of the Modern Middle East, 4th ed.
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E.
Published: October 2020

This extensive and lucid book provides a laudable introduction to the politicalhistory of the Middle East, tracing its development from Islam’s rise inthe seventh century to the recent direct American military involvement inIraq and Afghanistan. While the opening chapters start with Islam’s “rise andexpansion,” however, the book’s main chronological focus centers on thelate eighteenth century onward. This only adds to its current status. The geographicalarea covered is from Egypt to Iran, and from Turkey to the ArabianPeninsula. Some omission, however, was necessary (e.g., western NorthAfrica, Sudan, and Afghanistan) in order to keep the book manageable (p.xiii). While extensiveness and generality frequently lead to unavoidable simplificationand superficiality, this book nevertheless contains an insightfulanalysis of the continuum of events and transformations that have helpedshape the region’s history and geography. The authors are to be praised fortheir grasp and clear conceptualization of core issues, as well as for theireffort to maintain a good measure of narrative neutrality and thus eschewingthe usual prejudices and biases ...
The Arabic Hermes
Authors: Rizvi Sajjad H.
Published: October 2020

Unfortunately there is still far too much by way of conjecture, innuendo,ahistoricity, ideology, and basic guesswork in the study of Islamic philosophyand mysticism, at least in what passes for historical studies of theseintellectual traditions. But as we have seen the serious study of intellectualhistory, particularly in the Graeco-Arabic period and in classical Islamdom,flourish, so too has attention been placed upon those critical intersectionsbetween disciplines and bodies of knowledge. One can no longer argue forthe Neopythagorean roots of a particular intellectual tradition or claim that athinker’s “esoteric” doctrine is due to his/her “hermeticism.”The publication of Kevin van Bladel’s revised Yale doctoral dissertationis a wonderfully solid historical masterpiece that greatly contributes to ourunderstanding of certain strands of intellectual transmission in the lateantique Near East, as well as disabuses us of many a myth about the presenceof Hermes and hermeticism in classical Islamic learned culture.Hermetic manuscripts on the occult, alchemy, and the esoteric doctrine ofthe soul abound within collections of Sufi works and without; what is criticalis to make sense of why they exist where they are found and to acquirea deeper sense of what constitutes the Arabic Hermes in the same way thatwe now understand far better the Arabic Plato and the Arabic Aristotle.The historical transmission of texts and ideas is not just an obsession ofthe positivist pedant, but rather a method to avoid woolly thinking on crossculturalrelations and their possibilities, exigencies, and lacunae. It is truethat unless texts were available to translators and adaptors, they could nothave emerged in an Arabic form. But we should not insist too much on stricthistorical orthographical trails, however, for orality did figure as a medium of transmission (no doubt partly influenced by Platonic logocentrism) andtexts sometimes disappeared and reappeared over the ages. Nonetheless, thestory of how early Muslims appropriated Hermes is a case in point of howideas and figures were taken from their Hellenic (or Hellenizing NearEastern, or maybe even orientalising Hellenic) contexts and naturalizedwithin an Arabic idiom. The author rather carefully avoids the use of theterms Hermeticist and hermeticism, because we have no evidence of anyMuslim community’s continuous engagement with hermetic learning andpractice from late antiquity into classical Islam ...
Dreaming across Boundaries
Authors: Gardiner Noah
Published: October 2020

Edited by Louise Marlow, this anthology consists of twelve articles on thehistory of dreams and their interpretation in an array of historical Muslimsettings. A number of well-known hadiths support the idea of ProphetMuhammad communicating with Muslims through dreams, and earlierbooks and articles have established the existence of “a dominant, if notentirely uncontested, tradition of [dream] interpretation” common to muchof the premodern Islamic world (p. 3). The articles address variations on thiscore discourse specific to the cultural, sectarian, and disciplinary orientations of the original actors. Beyond this goal of discursive specificity,Marlow notes two themes as having guided her selection: “the complexprocess of translation whereby a personal visionary experience assumes theform of a literary, narrative account accessible to, and subject to interpretationby, an audience” (p. 9); and the “ways in which the leveling and potentiallysubversive effects of dreams were countered by their integration intohierarchical or normative systems” (p. 8). While the articles are arranged ina roughly chronological order, they are considered here according to theirsociohistorical, literary, and intellectual-historical orientations ...
Democracy in Islam
Authors: Parray Tauseef Ahmad
Published: October 2020

From the early twentieth century onward, many Muslim thinkershave explored the prospects for establishing an “Islamic democracy”by defining, discussing, and debating the relationship andcompatibility (and similarity) between “Islamic political concepts”and the “notions and positive features of democracy.”They interpret the Islamization of democracy on the basis of amodern reinterpretation of several key Islamic political concepts– mainly khilafah and shura – to provide an effective foundationfor understanding the (contemporary) relationship between Islamand democracy. The majority of scholars in the Muslim worldcontinue to throw light on the “modern reflection on democracy,”thereby pushing this century-long search ever forward.
Educating the Muslims of America
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

This pioneering volume brings together many different voices in an attemptto tackle various aspects of this topic. The introduction, written by YvonneY. Haddad and Jane I. Smith, contextualizes the volume’s importance withinsome of the growing hostility voiced in the American media as regards tothe supposed association of Muslim madrasas and “home-grown terrorism.”They highlight the magnified threefold importance of Muslim education inAmerica as serving to improve Islamic education, dispel myths, and educatethe American public. They also give a brief history of Muslim educationhere and trace the growth of full- and part-time Muslim schools ...
The Politics of Women’s Rights in Iran
Authors: Barzegar Abbas
Published: October 2020

Firmly situated in the field of legal anthropology, Arzoo Osanloo’s ThePolitics of Women’s Rights in Iran is an ethnographic treatment of women’srights discourse in contemporary Iran. It is concerned with unraveling theassumed paradoxes involved in administering a republican theocracy thatattempts to incorporate both divinely inspired legal injunctions and representativeforms of governance.Whereas many conversations concerning human rights and Islam aredrowned in contention, normativity, and exegetical speculation, Osanloo’scontribution steadily manages to remain above the fray. This is done by placingthe discourse of women’s rights within the cultural context of globalizationand post-colonialism and yet still identifying its local, embodiedpractice within the shifting political dynamics of post-revolutionary Iran. Tothis end, through exploring the lives of upper-middle class women in Tehranand their encounters with the emerging Islamo-republican state, the authorexplores the “conditions [that] have allowed for the discussion of rights tomaterialize in a language that was unacceptable just after the revolution…”(p. 7), while paying close attention to the ways in which contemporary Iranrepresents a vernacular modernity expressed through “a hybrid discoursethat locates a distinctive form of modernity at the juncture of Islamic revivalismand Western political and legal institutions” (p. 8).Her theoretical and methodological approach, which incorporates elementsof post-colonialism and post-modernism, is presented in a shortintroudction. Guiding concepts such as “rights as discursive practice,” “dialogicalsites,” and “subjectivization” thus readily inform her mobilizationand treatment of the data. Thankfully, her concern for methodological precisiondoes not obscure or consume the narrative form through which she putsforth her thesis in the remainder of the text ...
Design Criteria for Mosques and Islamic Centers
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

In an area where only a handful of books exist, Design Criteria for Mosquesis a welcome addition. A follow up of sorts to Kahera’s Deconstructing theAmerican Mosque (2002), it was hoped that this text would present new material and a fresh analysis in addition to serving as a guide for design. Thefive-chapter book covers mosques built in North America and Europe fromthe early 1920s onwards and incorporates many images and architecturaldrawings, including many from the author’s design office. Several overallissues related to inconsistency, however, undermine its potential. The greatestone is that of voice, a common enough problem when a book is writtenby multiple authors – the text fluctuates between didactic and spare guide listsfor planning and building a mosque to a philosophical discourse on the meaningof each issue related to designing contemporary mosques. The imagesand drawings could have mediated between the two polarized voices. The useof images, if explained in the text or even in subtitles, could have faciliatedthe discourse and related the ideas to the guideline lists.Yet this is not the case, for the images and drawings (of inconsistentquality and often with illegible dimensions) are included in the text’s bodybut seldom referenced in the text. The captions are also non-explanatory,thereby leaving the reader to guess at their relevance to the discourse andthe lists ...
The Eighth Biennial Conference of the International Society for Iranian Studies
Authors: Tourage Mahdi
Published: October 2020

The Eighth Biennial Conference of the International Society for IranianStudies (ISIS), the largest international gathering of scholars in the field, washeld in Santa Monica, CA, on 27-30 May 2010. There were sixty-four panels,each with three to four presenters addressing topics ranging from literature,Shi`ism and Sufism, to modernity, politics, women and gender. Amongthe ones that I found most interesting were “Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran,”“Engagements with Reason: Shi`ism and Iran’s Intellectual Culture,” “PersianLiterary and Cinematic Representations of a Society in Transition,”“Shi’i Modernity, Constitutionalism, Elections, and Factional Politics,”“Reconstructing the Forgotten Female: Women in the Realm of the Shahnama,”“Zones of Exploration: Society, Literature, and Film,” “Re-ReadingIranian Shi`ism: International and Transnational Connections and Influence,”“The Politics of the Possible in Iran,” “Women’s Issues in ModernIran (in Persian),” “Discourses on Self And Other,” and “Sufism: Poetry andPractice.”Also featured were classical Persian music presentations and additionalroundtable discussions. One telling example of often overlooked aspects ofIranian society was “‘Waking Up the Colours: Candour and Allegory inWomen’s Rap Texts,” a paper on Iranian women’s rap music. Presenter GaiBray, an ethnomusicologist, argued that unlike the common conception ofrap as direct language, Iranian female rappers often use allegory to deal withdifficult subject matters, such as rape and prostitution. In another memorablepaper Babak Rahimi (University of California, San Diego) argued thatBushehr’s commemoration of Ashura serves to solidify communal identity.The ritual ends by burning the stage upon which the performances tookplace, signifying a communal act of creative destruction through which newidentities are reconstructed via building new ritual sites ...
Can Islam Be French?
Authors: Morrow John Andrew
Published: October 2020

John R. Bowen’s Can Islam Be French? is divided into three parts. The firstpart, which includes chapters 1 and 2, provides a brief overview of Islam inFrance and addresses issues of migration, the rise of religion, the responseof the state, and the distinctive features of the French Islamic landscape.The second part consists of four chapters. Chapter 3 explores Islam inthe suburbs, Islamic networks, and the work of an everyday imam, as wellas mosques and social divisions. Chapter 4 examines the forces that shapeIslamic knowledge in the countries; the various rules, schools, and principlesused to interpret Islam; Hichem El Arafa’s Centre d’Etudes et de RecherchesSur l’Islam, the science of prophetic traditions, and the objectives ofScripture. Chapter 5 differentiates among the various schools of jurisprudencein Islam, the differing pedagogical approaches employed in teachingthe Muslim faith, the major influence of the Maliki madhhab in France, andthe practical training of preachers and scholars. Chapter 6, which wonderswhether Islamic schools can really be republican, examines the case ofDhaou Meskine’s Success School, how Muslim schools manage to teach asecular curriculum, Muslim family camp, and closes with coverage of Meskine’sarrest.Part 3 includes three chapters. Chapter 7 asks whether there should bean Islam for Europe and whether there should be different rules for differentlands, ideological confrontations in mosques, and the transnational Islamicsphere. Chapter 8 deals with issues such as secular and religious marriages, halal and haram food rules, as well as the attitude of French civil law towardIslamic practices. Finally, chapter 9 tackles Islamic spheres in republicanspace, whether religion-based associations impede integration, priorities andvalues, as well as pragmatics of convergence ...
Cosmopolitan Islam
Authors: Khan Saeed A.
Published: October 2020

The Thirty-ninth Annual AMSS Conference, held at Chicago’s DePaulUniversity, continued the association’s tradition of exploring cutting-edgescholarly issues by examining the notion of Islam’s inherently cosmopolitannature, focusing upon its transnational and diasporic dimensions in the age ofglobalization. Welcomed by Conference Chair Aminah McCloud of the hostinstitution, this one-day symposium was rich in the generation and developmentof new ideas and concepts and the stimulation of vibrant discussion anddebate among the participants and attendees. The twelve presenters undertooka concise yet highly concentrated and comprehensive effort to identify,define, and examine the major debates within an ever-evolving subject ofhow diaspora communities face the challenges of an equally unstatic worldand society in which they seek to find space and agency.
Knowledge, Faith, Morality, and the Future of Humanity
Authors: Haron Muhammed
Published: October 2020

The International Symposium on Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, held in Istanbulfrom 3-5 October 2010 under the auspices of Istanbul Ilim ve Kültür Vakfi(www.sempozyum2010.com and www.barlaplatformu.com), coincided withthe fiftieth anniversary of this great Muslim social reformer’s death. Itstheme, “Knowledge, Faith, Morality, and the Future of Humanity,” attractedacademics, scholars, and writers from around the world who sought toexplore and examine The Risale-i Nur’s contributions to human peace, prosperity,and happiness. The 106 peer-reviewed papers presented were dividedinto three separate volumes according to language: Turkish (13 papers),Arabic (50 papers), and English (43 papers and the keynote address).
Nefissa Naguib, Women, Water and Memory
Authors: Sasson Sharon
Published: October 2020

Nefissa Naguib’s book is the third in Brill’s Women and Gender series. It isan interdisciplinary study comprising an anthropological discussion, socialgender theories, and a geographical discussion. The book is primarily basedon anthropological research and presents the stories of eight women fromthe Palestinian village of Musharafah—and by means of which, it createsa discourse that examines the changes that have taken place in the status ofwomen in Palestinian society, and their functioning following the politicaland economic changes in Palestinian society in general, and in Musharafahin particular. Water is the connecting thread between the stories of the eightwomen and the analysis of their social functioning in the village.The extensive preface to the book is part of a long theoretical introduction,in which the author explains that “It is a story about how water is anendlessly evolving enactment of gender, family and community relationships”(1). She reviews the aims of the book in general, provides a generaldescription of the village and its women, and discusses terms—such as“society of women”—which she will use extensively in the book. The secondpart of the theoretical introduction, entitled “The Women and TheirStories,” describes the way of life that is a backdrop for the women’s stories,and the importance of water as a component in each story.The book is comprised of two parts. Part 1, “About Musharafah,” includesthe first two chapters, which also constitute a theoretical review,and serve as the basis for the anthropological study and analysis in Part 2 ...
Islamic Spectrum in Java
Authors: Sunardi Christina
Published: October 2020

Timothy Daniels’ Islamic Spectrum in Java critically examines the myriadof ways in which Javanese Muslims draw on religious and secular ideas toproject desirable futures for their local societies, for the Indonesian nation,and for Indonesia’s place in the global economic, political, and culturalstructures of the twenty-first century. This book identifies a broad rangeof desirable futures projected by Javanese Muslims, as well as a range ofbeliefs and practices that comprise Javanese Islam (12). While this engagingwork is very likely to appeal to scholars in many fields, theoreticallyand methodologically it is foremost an anthropological study. Synthesizingsymbolic and cognitive anthropology in order to “provide ‘thick description’1 of polysemous symbols . . . and to ascertain the social distributionof knowledge and formation of mental representations in various contexts(4),” Daniels draws primarily on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in theYogyakarta area of south-central Java from 2003 to 2004.Daniels makes a complex argument, focusing on issues of globalization,localization, social change, identity formation, and the place of Islamin Javanese culture. He contends that in projecting a range of desirable futures,Javanese Muslims are able to negotiate globalization and directionsof social change on their own terms by drawing from local culture andtheir interpretations of Islam in different ways. In particular, he examinesto what extent particular ideological positions expressed by Javanese Muslimscontribute to or undermine processes of equalization—“processes ofweakening, undermining, and lessening hierarchical formations” (8). Insupporting his argument, he addresses other related issues as well, includingconcepts of spiritual power, gender, sexuality, and class ...
Piety and Politics:
Authors: Robinson Francis
Published: October 2020

For much of the twentieth century, race and ethnicity formed the basis ofMalaysian politics and, therefore, dominated its discourse. This book exploreshow over the past thirty years the politics of Malaysia, which wasonly approximately 60 percent Muslim, moved strongly in an Islamist direction,indeed, “how Islam—in particular its ideological and institutionalexpressions—informs the configuration of power, the nature of legitimacy,and the sources of authority in Malaysian politics and society today” (xii).To do so, Liow first examines the genesis of the Islamist agenda from theperspective of the two major political parties—the Islamist oppositionParti Islam se-Malaysia (PAS) and the dominant United Malay NationalOrganisation (UMNO)—showing how the latter went through severalchanges as it evolved to place Islamism at the center of its sociopoliticalagenda. He then proceeds to show how the UMNO-led government of Malaysia began to create institutions of Islamic governance, a process heterms the “bureaucratization” of Islam, which formed the basis for PrimeMinister Mahathir’s claim in the 1990s that Malaysia, constitutionally asecular state, was an Islamic state. As he does so, he notes the tensions thatthese developments caused between the federal and state administration onthe one hand and civil and religious law on the other. Liow moves on toexplore the debate from the 1990s between PAS and UMNO, and withinPAS itself, on how Islam might be expressed as the organizing principlefor society and politics in a religiously plural Malaysia and how the non-Muslim communities responded to the parties’ endeavors ...
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ
Authors: Shafi Sophia Rose
Published: October 2020

Hooman Majd, a former writer for the Rolling Stone and movie producer,is uniquely qualified to write a book about Iran for an American audience.As he admits, “A friend once told me that that I was the only personhe knew who was both 100 percent American and 100 percent Iranian.Oxymoronic as that sounds, I knew what he meant. I was raised andeducated completely in the West, but am the grandson of a well-respectedAlameh (learned) and Ayatollah; my first language is English, but I am alsofluent in Farsi and am told that I speak it without an identifying accent.But more important, my Western outlook on life doesn’t interfere with mycomplete ease in the company of even the most radical of Iranian politicalor religious figures (and often theirs with me), and in my travels to IranI have often thought there must be a toggle switch somewhere along theelectrical system in my brain that is magically triggered to ʻEast’ whenmy plane crosses into Iranian airspace (8‒9).” Due to this toggle switch,Majd is able to highlight the very important role Persian culture plays in Iranian history and politics ‒ challenging the assumptions often madeabout Iranian clerics, politicians, and citizens ...
The Closing of the Muslim Mind
Authors: Griffel Frank
Published: October 2020

This book looks like a serious academic study in Islamic theology. Itis divided into nine chapters that build on an overall argument andhas a great number of endnotes, quoting Muslim sources and literaturepro-duced in the field of Islamic studies. The book’s author workswith-in Washington’s circle of government institutions and thinktanks. His book comes with a foreword and no fewer than tenendorsements by colleagues of Reilly, which praise his erudition,insight, and abil-ity to analyze and explain the Muslim mind. Iwonder whether they were all aware that the book they endorsed is, in fact, a Catholic refutationof Ashʿarite Muslim theology, the leading branch of Sunni theology.However, Reilly exempts Shiite theology from his harsh criticism ...
Where East Meets West
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E.
Published: October 2020

This short and concise book is presented as an important brick in the foundationof what had been designated the “Western Thought Project.” AsMona Abul-Fadl has indicated, the aim of this project was to encouragean “active” and “critical” presence of the Muslim intellect as well as promotingthe “Islamization of knowledge” (vii). This was rendered necessaryin light of the dilemmas facing Muslims everywhere as they strive toreconcile their religious conscience with the historical realities of a modernWestern consciousness. Abul-Fadl optimistically and ambitiously perceivespossibilities of shaping a “Muslim discourse on conscience” withina cooperative framework with the West ‒ in order, as she put it, to “evolvetogether the terms of a new global consciousness which is inclusive” (xi).This presumably would entail a dialogue, not with the West in general, butwith a particular variant of it that harbors religious commonalities withIslam in terms of the givens of God, humans, history, and revelation. Abul-Fadl seeks to change the terms of the encounter from the political and theeconomic to the intellectual and the cultural (xiv). Summoning the intellectualcommunity, primarily of Muslims but non-Muslims as well, is theprerequisite for the bid to renegotiate the terms of this proposed global encounter,and she asserts that the “fate of our civilization lies in the balanceof culture, not power” (1). Such a “simple truth” is the premise of her study ...
Looking Beyond September 11
Authors: Khan Saeed A.
Published: October 2020

The Fortieth Annual AMSS (Association of Muslim Social Scientists ofNorth America) Conference, held at John Jay College at the City Universityof New York in New York City, marked a decade since September 11 by reviewingthe past ten years of the Muslim narrative, with particular focus onthe past year and the considerable social and political changes in the MiddleEast and North Africa. Welcomed by John Jay College Provost and SeniorVice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Jane Bowers, and by outgoingAMSS President Dr. Ali Mazrui ‒ the conference’s one-day format ensuredan intensive and stimulating session, which captured the energy of the participantsand attendees that filled the symposium. While a four-panel conferencefeaturing only twelve presenters may appear small in comparison tosome academic meetings, AMSS again proved that quality eclipsed quantityin offering a diverse, yet deep analysis of contemporary issues ‒ ranging fromthe Arab Spring to domestic discourses highlighting and targeting Muslims.A panel entitled, “The Arab Spring: Paths to Democracy in the MiddleEast and North Africa,” opened the day’s proceedings by assessing the veryfluid and evolving situation in the heart of the Arab world. Khalid Madhi(Adjunct Professor at St. Xavier University and PhD Student Researchand Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois at Chicago) focused onhow the transformative movements in Tunisia and Egypt would be felt inMorocco by offering a study of the country’s Islamist efforts. Umar Oseni(Visiting Fellow at the Islamic Legal Studies Program at the Harvard LawSchool and Post-doctoral Scholar and Lecturer at the International IslamicUniversity Malaysia) shifted the discussion from a specific country to amore regional approach when he proposed a model for conflict managementthat is inherent within Islam itself. Finally, Mohamed Nimer (AssistantProfessor of International Relations at the School of International ...
Islam and the Fate of Others
Authors: Bazzano Elliott
Published: October 2020

In Islam and the Fate of Others, Mohammad Hassan Khalil masterfully approachesa difficult topic. What happens to non-Muslims when they die? Whois accountable for accepting Muhammad’s prophethood? Could any sane personpossibly reject the truth were it clearly revealed to him/her? In order toaddress these questions and others, Khalil probes some of the most prominentpremodern and modern voices in Islamic history. A reader looking for consensuson the answers to these challenging queries, however, will be left direlywanting. Khalil unearths not a monolithic consensus but instead a cacophonyof opinions concerning soteriological matters, which overwhelmingly envisions a heaven filled with Muslims and non-Muslims. As an added bonus toKhalil’s robust and provocative study, his adroit prose reads smoothly, his storytellingis exquisite, and he never obfuscates his topic with obtuse languageor style. That, combined with meticulous attention to transliteration and precise,fluid translations, makes Khalil’s monograph an absolute pleasure to readand should appeal to specialists and non-specialists ...
Finding Mecca in America
Authors: Lizzio Celene Ayat
Published: October 2020

The notion that Islam is “Becoming an American Religion” may be unnervingto those who see America’s roots in its Christian, and more recentlyJudeo-Christian, heritage. Yet, given the rate of growth and development ofAmerican Muslim institutions and social networks, it may be more apt tospeak of Islam as part of an American multireligious heritage. In FindingMecca in America: How Islam is Becoming an American Religion, MuchitBilici explores the rapid increase of American Muslim educational, cultural,religious, and civic institutions, as well as how September 11, the so-calledwar on terror, and most recently media coverage of the Arab Spring have givenAmerican Muslims a unique visibility in the American public sphere.Bilici demonstrates how multifarious individuals and coalitions havebanded together to counter negative public sentiments toward Islam and Muslims,to advocate for legal protections against discrimination, and to help fashiona cultural and religious niche for the community’s faith, practices, andpresence. Even as public narratives about Muslims tend to emphasize “elementsof chaos, instability, and danger,” sympathetic representations of AmericanMuslims as “next-door neighbors” or “decent Americans struggling fortheir civil rights and in need of empathy, understanding and respect” are becomingmore prevalent in major media venues from National Public Radioto the New York Times (p. 3). In turn, Muslims are demonstrating their collectiveabilities to define authentically American identities through social andpolitical activism, forms of strategic public outreach, even ethnic comedy ...
SMIIC Forum 2012
Authors: Kayadibi Saim
Published: October 2020

Organized by the Standards and Metrology Institute for Islamic Countries(SMIIC), a subsidiary organ of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation(OIC), this forum was held on November 6-9, 2012, at Turkey’s Cornelia DeLuxe Resort in Belek. The 160 delegates, who came from thirty-five countries,represented the National Standardisation Bodies (NSB), important nationalorganizations of member countries, and such international organizationsas the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), the InternationalElectrotechnical Commission (IEC), the European Committee forElectrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC), the Standardisation Organisationfor the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GSO),the Turkish Standards Institution (TSE), the Turkish Accreditation Agency(TURKAK), the Saudi Standards Metrology and Quality Organization(SASO), the Malaysian National Metrology Laboratory (SIRIM), the InternationalLaboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC), the OIC GeneralSecretariat, the Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation(COMCEC), the Statistical Economic and Social Research andTraining Centre (SESRIC), and the Islamic Centre for the Development ofTrade (ICDT).Also present were media outlets, representatives of various governmentbodies, officers from the Presidency of Religious Affairs of the Republic ofTurkey (DIYANET), and academics from significant international universities.One of the forum’s main objectives was to create a platform to bring togetherexperts and professionals from the fields of standardization, accreditation, andmetrology in order to discuss these areas’ current circumstances within OICmember countries and at the international level ...
Contemporary Approaches to the Qur’an and Sunnah
Authors: Al-Azami Usaama
Published: October 2020

This edited volume forms the first collection of proceedings from the Summer

Institute for Scholars organized by the International Institute of Islamic

Thought (IIIT), one of the publishers of this journal. This annual gathering,

which was inaugurated in 2008, is “dedicated to the study of contemporary

approaches to Qur’an and Sunnah,” hence the name of this volume. Given

the capacious title, the work naturally offers essays – ten to be precise – from

a wide range of disciplines, including Qur’anic and hadith studies as well Islamic

law, theology, history, and comparative religion. Being the first iteration

of this series, it is perhaps somewhat unsurprising that the work’s overall qual-

ity is somewhat under par, with individual essays varying considerably in

quality. It is therefore reassuring to see on IIIT’s website that subsequent Summer

Institutes have been given a more focused theme.

The work is divided into four parts: the first two focus in different ways

on the Qur’an; the third part pertains more to the Sunnah and law (though, in

my assessment, the ninth essay has more Qur’an in it than Sunnah); and part 4

consists of a single twelve-page essay on the history of Islamic studies in the

West. Given constraints on space, I will not discuss every essay in this review ...
Jewish Revival and Respect for Islam in Nineteenth-Century Europe
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

On May 17, 2013, Joseph V. Montville, director of the Esalen Institute’s “Toward

the Abrahamic Family Reunion” project (http://abrahamicfamilyreunion.

org), addressed a select audience at the IIIT headquarters on pre-Zionist

Jewish scholarly interest in Islam.

He began by recalling how German and Austro-Hungarian Jewish scholars

discovered remarkable similarities in the Torah, the Talmud, and the

Qur’an. While hardly a surprise to Muslims, this was a “major revelation and

surprise” to European Christian philologists and historians of religions. This

new interest emerged as Europe was losing its fear of the Ottoman Empire,

and of Muslims in general, because the now militarily inferior empire was in

retreat and anti-Semitism was on the rise. Jewish intellectuals sought to blunt

this latter trend by combating Christian disdain, if not hostility, of Jews and

Judaism. They therefore played a major role in this scholarship, for, quoting

from Bernard Lewis [“The State of Middle Eastern Studies,” American

Scholar 48, no. 3 (summer 1979: 369-70)]: ...