bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Islamic Studies in South Africa
Authors: Sonn Tamara
Published: December 2020

Background of South African IslamIn 1994, South Africans will celebrate three centuries of Islam inSouth Africa. Credit for establishing Islam in South Africa is usuallygiven to Sheikh Yusuf, a Macasser prince who was exiled to South Africafor leading the resistance against the Dutch colonization of Malaysia. Thefitst Muslims in South Africa, however, were actually slaves who hadbeen imported, beginning in 1677, mainly from India, the Indonesianarchipelago, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka, by the Dutch colonists living in theCape. The Cape Muslim community, popularly but inaccurately knownas "Malays" and known under apattheid as "Coloreds," is the oldest Muslimcommunity in South Africa. The other major Muslim community wasestablished over a century later by indentured laborers and tradespeoplefrom northern India, a minority of whom weae Muslims. The majority ofSouth African Indian Muslims, classified as "Asians" or "Asiatics," nowlive in Natal and Tramvaal. The third ethnically identifiable group, classifiedas "Aftican" or "Black," consists mainly of converts or theirdescendants. Of the entire South African Muslim population, roughly 49percent are "Coloreds," nearly 47 pement are "Asians," and, although statisticsregarding "Africans" ate generally unreliable, it is estimated thatthey are less than 4 percent. Less than 1 percent is "White."Contributions to South African SocietyAlthough Muslims make up less that 2 petcent of the total population,their presence is highly visible. There ate over twenty-five mosques inCape Town and over one hundred in Johannesburg, making minarets asfamiliar as church towers Many are histotic and/or architectuml monuments.More importantly, Muslims ate uniquely involved in the nation'scultwe and economy. The oldest extant Afrikaans-language manuscriptsare in the Arabic script, for they ate the work of Muslim slaves writingin the Dutch patois. South African historian Achrnat Davids has tracedmany linguistic elements of Afrikaans, both in vocabulary and grammar,to the influence of the Cape Muslims. Economically, the Indian Muslimsaxe the most affluent, owing primarily to the cirmmstances under whichthey came to South Africa. Muslim names on businesses and buildingsare a familiar sight in all major cities and on those UniveAty campusesthat non-Whites were allowed to attend during apartheid ...
Islamic Perspectives on Sustainable Development
Authors: Ansari Mohammed I.
Published: December 2020

Economic progress in the twentieth century has been spectacular bycommon Statistical standards. Along with this enviable record have cometwo important realizations: the immense material wealth has not madepeople happier than they were before,' and it has resulted in a gradual depledonand, in some cases, an outright destruction of scarce ecologicaland other resources. This has forced many social scientists to rethjnk thenecessity-even the desirability-of indiscriminate economic progress. Noother single topic of discussion seems to manifest these concerns morethan that of sustainable development.This paper looks at sustainable development from an Islamic perspective.Its theoretical arguments proceed as follows: Islam means peaceand harmony and, therefore, the Islamic way of life entails living in peaceand harmony. An active promotion of the harmonization of indi-vidual,social, and ecological intensts would ensure sustainable development.The discussion is then framed in the context of the ordained role ofhuman beings as God's trustees. Under this arrangement, God is the realowner of all resources, and humanity is allowed to use them to itsadvantage as long as this trust is not violated. The paper concludes thatin a truly Islamic society, sustainable development is a logical outcomeof a normal life and that there is thus no need for a separate strategy ofsustainable development. The rest of the paper deals with the concept ofsustainable development and highlights its multifaceted nature, explainsthe endogeneity of sustainable development in Islam, examines theIslamic characterization of the role of human beings and shows how sucha role conforms to the requirements of sustainable development, and endswith some concluding remarks ...
Everyday Life in the Muslim Middle East
Authors: Altalib Omar
Published: December 2020

This book is a collection of thirty-four essays about people fromeleven countries and is designed to "give Western readers a sense ofwhat it is like to live in the Middle East in the latter part of the 20thcentury.” The approach is based on the assumption that “one canlearn much about another culture by examining the daily, simple actsthat are performed by all people.” The book does not attempt to presentany theories of social action, although the primary sourcematerial in the book can be used to test social theories.Eleven of the essays deal with Moroccans and seven deal withEgyptians. The book is thus heavily slanted toward Morocco andEgypt, at the expense of countries not dealt with at all (i.e., Turkey,Oman, Jordan, and Pakistan). What makes this book sociologicallyinteresting is its description of the behavior of people in groups. Itpresents the themes of old vs. new, tradition vs. modernity, village vs.city, and Islam vs. secularism. There were eleven articles that dealtwith Islam and Muslims specifically, as opposed to Middle Easternersin general. I will limit my comments to seven of these articles, especiallysince the title of the book specifies the “Muslim” Middle East.In “The Sound of the Divine in Daily Life,” Kristina Nelsonmakes the point that the Qur’an is heard extensively in public areasthroughout Egypt. She states that “Qur’anic recitation is a common,daily event, not restricted to special occasions, nor even to strictlyreligious contexts.” It may be recited by a beggar, heard in a taxi cab,played on a shopkeeper’s radio, or used to open a conference. This isuncommon in the West, and thus presents a unique and new experiencefor people visiting the Middle East ...
Islamic Thought in the South Asian Subcontinent
Authors: Ansari Zafar I.
Published: December 2020

The International Institute of Islamic Thought-Islamabad, the IslamicResearch Institute, and the International Islamic University, Islamabad,are conducting ongoing seminars on the history of Islamic thought ineighteenth-century South Asia. What follows is a report of some activitiesand decisions taken to date.Recent studies of Islamic thought have generally attributed the rise ofMuslim reform and revival movements, as well as the intellectual activitiesundertaken during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to theimpact of Europe and the influence of its academic, social, political, andtechnological advancement. This raises the following question: If theMuslim world had not come into contact with Europe, would it haveremained a totally unchanged and unchanging society? In order to answerthis question, it is essential to:1. Study and examine how Muslim thinkers analyzed their societyin the precolonial period2. Explore whether there was any dissatisfaction with the statusquo among Muslims;3. Detemine whether there were any trends of reform, revival,ijtihad or whether there was any significant interest in philosophyand rational sciences. Was there any interest in reinterpretingIslamic teachings in order to meet the challenges ofmodernity in general and of the western intellectual experiencein particular;4. Study whether the foundations of the political movements, religiousorganizations, and sects that arose in the subcontinent (i.e.,Ahl-i Hadith, Deobandi, and Barelawi) were laid on the emergentattitudes of opposition and resistance to British rule or whethertheir origins can be traced in the pre-British period; and5. Investigate principles and concepts (i.e., bid’ah, taqlid, ijtihad,dar al harb, jihad, and hijrah) used by Muslim thinkers for totalacceptance, rejection, or adaptation of political, social, and religiousideas and practices and of modern science and technology.How were these developed, refiied, restated, or reconsh-ucted? ...
Editorial
Authors: Nafi Basheer
Published: December 2020

An extensive corpus of literature on the phenomenon of the Islamicmovement as a reaction to modernization and modernity has appeared duringthe past two decades. In this important category of research, Islamicdiscourse and its sociopolitical impact may be explained in tenns of thegrowing sense of alienation and exclusion generated by the changes ofmodem times. As a result, a dichotomous model of analysis has beenwidely employed in many of the recent approaches to Islam and Muslims,a model that pits the "modem," "progressive," and "rational" against the"traditional," "reactionary," and "emotional."In contrast, only a few attempts have been made to understand contemporaryIslamic discourse(s) and movements as the quintessential productsof the modernization process in the Muslim world. The case for thisalternative, though complementary, approach can be formulated on thebasis of a sociocultural analysis of the views and backgrounds of modemlslamists.For more than thirteen centuries of its history, Islam was defined intellectuallyand practically by the ulama class. This vital and pervasive socialforce, although open and accessible to various sections of society, was notwithout its own boundaries in the areas of culture, education, or piety.Progressively, of course, and for reasons that cannot be dealt with here, theulama class was transformed into an established social institution and preservedby families with long scholarly traditions and a complex networkof a particular kind of power.Twentieth-century Islamists are, by and large, graduates of modem(western?) schools who have received intensive training in modem disciplinesand methodologies. Their breeding milieu, in most cases, are modemurban centers in the Muslim world and modem social classes. Thusthey have little to do with the ancient institution of the ulama. In fact, theiradvent has marked an era of decline for the ulama class. Traditional Islam,or that of the ulama, has been and will always be a strong tributary to contemporaryIslamic thought and its world vision. But the latter's idioms,logic, symbols, structural relations, inner dynamics, and ultimate goals arenecessarily of modem geneaology.In this issue of AJISS, A. I. Tayob presents a brilliant study on the"Paradigm of Knowledge of the Modem Islamic Resurgence." Groundinghis analysis on Foucault's themes of power relations between disciplines, ...
The Need for a Sacred Science
Authors: Omar Lrfan A.
Published: December 2020

Looking through humanity's experience of history one finds, in a varietyof ways, a tendency to go beyond time. This was true in premodemman and is equally prevalent in the postmodern view of human spirituality,even though postmodemism as an entity has failed to recognize the needand logic of such an idea. In response, contemporary religious thinkers,philosophers, and spiritualists have argued for the revival of "tradition,"religious values, and spirituality. Some of the main proponents of this "traditionistschool" (p. 53) are Huston Smith, Frithjof Schuon, Gai Eaton,Titus Burckhardt, Martin Lings, and, of course, Seyyed Hossein Nasr.Nasr has written on several topics within the field of Islamics as wellas other related disciplines. However, the major portion of his writingshave been permeated with such themes as scientia sacra, perennial philosophy,and the revival of spiritual traditions. These are indicative of hisconcern for and commitment to the cause of the revival of tradition. In thewords of Jane Smith, he is the "defender of the sacred."His works on Islam, especially on Sufism, the philosophy of religion,Shi'ite thought, and various topics in world religions are too innumerableto be accounted for here. But Nasr's relevance extends far beyond theareas of Islamic studies and comparative religion, for he writes for thespecialist and for the wider public and appeals to those who are interestednot only in religion and spirituality as such but also in their interrelationto philosophy, science, social science, policy making, art, and youthissues. Above all, Nasr provides material for those who simply seek tounderstand life's deeper mysteries. It has been rightly pointed out thatNasr has beenone of the leading figures in ... the "neo-traditionist" movementin modem Islam and has contributed enormously to the enrichmentof ideas earlier propounded by Rene Guenon. [Further] hisdefense of the "whole and integral tradition of Islam" separateshim from other contemporary Shi'ite Muslim thinkers and bringshim closer to the mainstream of Islamic thought ...
Women and Words in Saudi Arabia
Authors: Zuhur Sherifa
Published: December 2020

Arebi embarks on cultural analysis via the literary work of ninecontemporary Saudi women writers in this thoughtful and provocativediscussion of gender and literary production at a significant historicaljuncture for Saudi women. The import of this discussion for and aboutMuslim women, by a Muslim woman, exists not only in its particularcountry context but also in the troubling debate now raging over personalexpression and commitment to "feminist" reform versus Muslimperceptions of a continuing ideological invasion that is heavily influencedby western political hegemony. I need not even mention the nameof Taslima Shahin for readers to acknowledge some degree of anguishin our sharp disagreements over the issue of gender versus culture.The voices of these female Saudi writers range from the avant-gardeto conservative "journalese," and Arebi contends that they illustrate thecomplex nature of female discourse in an Arab-Islamic context. However,she seems to have backed into asserting a unique and nonfeminist positionfor Saudi women, using such slogans as "quality not equality," althoughthe subjects of her study often write otherwise. Arebi arrives at this analyticalquandary by a similar route that has been followed by other sincerescholars and observers. As Leila Ahmed commented some years ago:It is only when one considers that one's sexual identity alone (andsome would not accept even this) is more inextricably oneselfthan one's cultural identity, that one can perhaps appreciate howexcruciating is the plight of the Middle Eastern feminist caughtbetween those two opposing loyalties, forced almost to choosebetween betrayal and betrayal ...
Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad
Authors: Sodiq Yushau
Published: December 2020

Without doubt, Gomez has made a great contribution to the understandingof Islam in Bundu. Although a few works have been published onIslam in West Africa, Gomez’s work is a valuable addition. The authorbegins by locating Bundu on the map of West Africa and explaining thescope of his research and the sources upon which he relies. Gomez attributesthe success of Bundu as a state to its pragmatic policies, which, healleges, were predetermined by its founders. By pragmatism he means:a policy in which the pursuit of commercial and agriculturaladvantage supersedes all other considerations, to the extent thatalliances and rivalries with both neighboring polities andEuropean powers are determined by economic expediency, andare subject to rapid and frequent realignment. (p. 2)Compliance with this policy implies that the foreign and domesticaffairs are not based on advancing the claims of Islam, but rather on promotingpeaceful coexistence among all groups, be they Muslim or non-Muslim, in Bundu.This book is designed for general readers. The author discusses majorissues in Bundu and Senegambia before the imposition of colonial rule andadministration. He analyzes critically the significant roles played by Almaamis(the imams) Malik Sy, Buba Malik, Maka Jiba, Amadi Gai, BokarSaada, and Mamadu Lamine and provides a clear explanation of the Bundustate’s gradual development from the sixteenth century until 1902. He alsoshows the French administration’s insidious politics of divide and rule in St.Louis, Bakel, and Senegal, which was designed to weaken Bundu by instigatingconflict between one imam and another and to control the trade inthis area (pp. 95-97). Throughout his analysis, Gomez reiterates cautiouslyhis thesis that Bundu’s leaders were never interested in advancing Islam orestablishing a strong Islamic state. Rather, they were “essentially concernedwith preservation and commercial expansion of the state” (p. 99).Toward the end of the book, he deals more with the leadership ofBokar Saada, who reigned for a long time despite the lack of popular support. Bokar Saada was a leader forced on Bundu by French administrators ...
Sharia
Authors: Taher Mohamed
Published: December 2020

This book is a good analysis of the Shafi'i school of Islamic law,and the author is to be commended for his successful presentation of itssalient features to the English-reading public. He has divided his bookinto an introduction to the school, the law of marriage and divorce, thelaw of property and related matters, the law of evidence and proceduralmatters, and the law of crimes and criminal procedure. In addition tothese major topics, Dalvi deals with various lesser known features, suchas:

1. On the issue of marriage and divorce, Dalvi points out: "By stress­ing the need to establish the intention behind divorce, making such causes as inability to maintain a cause for the wife to ask for a divorce, making redundant divorce pronouncement under the influence of drink, indicating the necessity to know one another prior to the marriage, choosing of wit­nesses agreeable to the wife, stressing the responsibility of the husband to provide for maintenance to the divorced wife ... all go to show how seri­ous concern was in the mind of Imam Shafi'i for the protection of the rights of the women." (p. 240) 2. "The Shafi'i School holds that it is forbidden to [hold] court-sittings in a mosque" (p. 154). The author states that "the mosque being the 'House of God,' it was felt that if by any chance a judge delivered a judgment which has resulted in any injustice unknowingly too, it would not be behoving with God's desire to meet justice. Hence the mosque was not made a house of law." (p. 154) ...
Islamic Society in Practice
Authors: Bangura Ahmed Sheikh
Published: December 2020

Islamic Society in Practice is written in a new tradition of Westernscholarship on Islam that seeks to represent an alternative view to that ofOrientalism. The author sets out to analyze Islam as lived and practiced ineveryday life, and brings out the human dimension of a region and a religioustradition that largely have been stereotyped in the West. Withoutadvocating conversion or the blurring of differences, she argues thatapproaching Islamic and Arab cultures on their own terms and recognizingtheir strengths and weaknesses will produce the crosscultural understandingnecessary for world peace in the twenty-first century.The book, the result of more than two decades of research and over fiveyears of residence in Khartoum, Cairo, and Tunis, covers a wide range ofsubjects. Among these are the five pillars of Islam, Islamic values andsocial practice, family and gender relations, the ongoing debate on thereform of family law, Islamic identities in a changing world, and the sociopoliticaldimensions of contemporary Islamic movements.The author's study of Islam and her residence among and closeinteraction with Muslims accorded her considerable access to Islamicculture and enabled her to debunk tenured stereotypes. She gives a veryintimate picture of the ethos of Muslim societies and pays special attentionto the structure of the extended Muslim family and the status ofwomen in Islamic societies. In a bid to explode the myth of theoppressed Muslim woman, she goes beyond facile observations to lookat the deeper social and ethical logic that informs apparent genderbaseddiscrepancies in Islamic laws and practices. She also documentsfacts about the strides that Muslim women have been making that nevermake it to the headlines: For instance, many major universities in theMiddle East, such as Cairo University, have about 50 percent femalestudents, and until recently, there was a greater proportion of femalemedical doctors and engineers in Arab Muslim societies than in theWest ...
Recognizing Islam
Authors: Vawda Shahid
Published: December 2020

Michael Gilsenan is an anthropologist who has done extensive fieldworkin Egypt and Lebanon and has extensive knowledge of the literature,paticularly ethnography, on the Middle East, including North Africa. Hisbook Recognising Islam is a detailed ethnography of the practice of Islamin the Middle East. When it was fi.rst published, it was considered a significantanthropological contribution to the understanding of the complexitiesof Islamic societies in the Middle East. To be more precise, it is aboutIslam as practiced in the villages and urban centers of Lebanon, Egypt,Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Iran. These are the places from which hedraws illustrative enthnographic material, weaving into the narrative hisanalysis of the specific case studies of urban and village !if e showing howIslam is practiced in the context of much larger national and internationalevents taking place.The Islam that Gilsenan wishes to be recognized is not that of the literatespecialists or of learned sheikhs. Neither is it of theological discussionsand debate, although no doubt it has implications for those debates, nor is itof Orientalist conceptions or the Western media's caricature of Muslims asthe inscrutable "other"----the barbarous, corrupt, enemy of Christianity, andnemesis of Western civilization. In other words, the focus on the practice ofIslam in the villages of the Middle East and urban enclaves of such majorcities as Cairo is not just a description of the exotic or strange practices ofpeople as bounded entities, each one being an isolated species of Muslimgroupings. Rather, Gilsenan's work shows how daily life is informed by ...
Prophet Muhammad and His Western Critics
Authors: Sarwar Ghulam
Published: December 2020

Modem Orientalists generally boast of their objective analysis and impartialapproach to problems, but facts believe their loud claims when their researchcomes down to the study of the Prophet. In this case, deep prejudices are reflectedin their writings. Sometimes they indulge in frontal attacks on him, whileat other times they hit him below the belt. They try to give an impression thatthe time in which the message of Islam was spread was ripe for revolution, independentof the Prophet. So to them, the Prophet's contribution was to make a correct assessment of the prevailing situation and then make use of the opportunityprovided to project his viewpoint. The ultimate aim of such endeavors onthe part of Orientalists is to belittle the historic role of the Prophet and to unsettlethe Muslim consciousness of its cognitive certainty of the divine revelationto the Prophet.The author asserts that the Prophet brought about a complete revolution inthe lives of his early followers. After embracing Islam, they no longer remainedthe old Arabs they became God-fearing and pious folk who were very concernedwith the life hereafter rather than riveting their attention on material considerations.In view of these realities, it is highly callous on the part of ReverendWatt to denigrate Muslims for what they sought to accomplish. No fair-mindedhistorian would point out any character failing in these noble men. Also, theycould not simply think of invading neighboring lands, as Watt would have usbelieve. Likewise, Watt’s whole chain of hypotheses about the economic andpolitical reasons for the emigration to Abyssinia is without foundation ...
Oil in the New World Order
Authors: Hamed Anas H.
Published: December 2020

This readable and informative book discusses recent and expected futuredevelopments in the oil industry. It is a compendium of ten articles by academicsand industry experts.In the introduction, the editors argue that the international oil industry is apeculiarly volatile industry. Oil prices are very sensitive to crises in the MiddleEast, where two-thirds of the world's oil reserves are located, where half of theinternationally traded oil is produced, and where the cost of production is thelowest in the world. They maintain that, due to the inherent inelasticity of bothdemand and supply of crude oil and high price volatility, markets have neverworked for oil industry efficiently. Consequently, there has always been someson of market order. The editors provide a survey of the different orders thatprevailed in the past, such as John D. Rockefeller's monopoly through theStandard Oil Trust, the dominance of the vertically integrated Seven Sisters, and OPEC. The current oil order, according to the authors, is the Saudi-Americanregime, which emerged after the Jraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequentDesert Storm. This regime, which combines huge Saudi oil production capacitywith American military might, has replad OPEC. The editors do not expect itto last long, because the new world order following the collapse of the SovietUnion may give rise to a new oil regime independent of the Saudi-Americanregime: the Commonwealth of Independent States has a potential of huge oilreserves that can be produced at a low cost ...
The Ramadan Sonnets
Authors: Kempton Karl
Published: December 2020

Best book of poems I’ve read in years by a contemporary and have had thepleasure of being lifted by, shot into the orbit of harmonious rapture grins andthe joyousness of countless YES, O, YES. The collection resonates and purifiesthe deep sweet water in the cells where the real self drinks. The resonatingbuilds stanza by stanza, poem after poem, informed by an American spiritualand mystical lineage from Transcendentalism to the Beats of the BeatitudeVision into as-yet-to-be identified and named Third Wave, holding in itsunnumbered beckoning hands the world‘s mystical poetry body. Moore’s spectacularcontribution to this present building surge arrives before his audiencewith a thorough immersion in Islam’s Sufi way. This is experience inspired intosong, not a complex geometry of imaginary gymnastics afloat in an alienatedmental life ...
The Gulf Conflict
Authors: Hill Fred
Published: December 2020

Writers have compared the media frenzy of the Gulf War to the coverage ofa football game. Critics noted the pep rally atmosphere created by journalists(Charles Osgood's description of US bombing as a "marvel"; Dan Rather's"Congratulations on a job wonderfully done."). A Chicago Tribune cartoon portrayedSaudi and Kuwaiti emirs in luxury boxes awaiting the war, heckling Bush to “Throw the bomb!” Perhaps it was that pause in the second week of thebombing, allowing most US soldiers to watch the Super Bowl, but Americansdid seem to confuse the war with a sporting event. Both features perceived goodguys and bad guys, satisfying but guilt-free violence, little sympathy for thecasualties . . . and plenty of cheerleaders.Books about the Gulf War extend this comparison to sports coverage. Afterthe big game, our fist wave of analysts report from postgame interviews. Theseare generally shallow and simplistic, breathless with elation and self-glory.Comparable books on the Gulf War, including biographies of Schwarzkopf,Powell, and Bush, now cram the discount tables at the large booksellers. Insports, the second wave of analysts, back in the studio, offer somewhat meatierexplanations and more subtle rationalizations for the events just reported. Theiremotions are thinly concealed in a semblance of objectivity ...
The Role of Schools in Islamic Society
Authors: Al-Otaibi Moneer M.
Published: December 2020

Education in Arabia before IslamThere are at least three opinions concerning the status of education onthe Arabian peninsula prior to the advent of Islam. The first opinionassumes that the Arabs were an illiterate people, void of any knowledgeof science or any other indicator of educational progress. It maintainsargue that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), towhom the Qur’an was revealed, was himself illiterate, thus reflecting hissociety’s educational state; and that those living in the pre-IslamicArabian peninsula were steeped in ignorance and controlled by myths,superstitions, and the worship of idols.’The second opinion concerning the days of ignorance (the pre-Islamicperiod Ijuhiliyyuh]) concentrates on the extent to which the Arabsacquired knowledge of those sciences that were necessary for their dailylives. For example, Mustafa Mutawali discusses the study of astronomyas an aid to traveling, the study of weather conditions (meteorology), andthe study of traditional healing in medicine.2 The pre-Islamic Arabs alsostudied the science of tracking, genealogy, and poetry. While this line ofhistorical research does not necessarily contradict the first, the issue isone of emphasis, with Mutawali and others demonstrating that the pre-Islamic Arabs were not totally void of knowledge.The third opinion focuses on the knowledge acquired by the upper strataof pre-Islamic Arab society. A very small minority of upper class individualswere well versed in the skills of reading, writing, mathematics,and business administration. Some scholars have asserted that only 17 ...
Islamic Education Reform
Authors: AbuSulayman AbdulHamid
Published: December 2020

The earliest ijtihad, in the face of societal changes, can be traced backto the period of Khalifah Umar bin al-Khattab. The methodology ofjuristic preference (istihsan) was developed later as one way of institutingIslamic reform. It emerged as a response to the inadequacy of themethod of mere deduction. Other forms of intellectual reform can beseen in the works of Al-Ghazali in Ihya’ ‘Ulkn al-Din and Tahafat al-Falsifah, and in Ibn Rushd’s response, Tahafat al-Tahafat.Many of these early efforts toward intellectual reform were individualand accidental in nature and did not reflect any methodological school orinstitution. Reformers and creative thinkers seemed as flashes in the historyof Islamic thought. As the European challenge to the Ummahmounted, and the cultural and scientific imitation failed, many Muslimreformers surrendered themselves to culturally copying Europe whilecontinuing to praise the heritage of the Ummah and the sublime valuesand concepts embedded in its legacy.The movement for Islamization of knowledge tried to dig deep intoIslamic intellectual tradition in order to provide Muslim thinkers with thecapabilities and potential for the reform of contemporary Islamic thoughtand methodology. The genesis of the movement can be traced to the birthof the Association of Muslim Social Scientists in the United States and -Canada (AMSS) in 1972, the establishment of the International Instituteof Islamic Thought (IIIT) in 1981, and the development of theIslamization of Knowledge program of the International IslamicUniversity of Malaysia (IIUM) in 1989.As a result of these efforts, the ideas of Islamization of knowledge andIslamic methodological reform have become central themes in the worksof Muslim scholars, who find that these concepts give direction and purposeto their work. If we use the metaphor of a seed to describe the roleof intellectual and methodological reform in developing and reformingsocieties, then political, economic, technological and all other contributionsand reforms can be seen as the fruits of civilization. The questionthat presents itself is, if the seed is there-meaning proper thinking ...
A Fundamental Fear-Eurocentrism and the Emergence of lslamism
Authors: Asmal A.M.
Published: December 2020

At first this book looks like another eye-catching, fear-mongering title aboutIslam. Are these books promoted by profit-hungry publishers or by underpaidfretful academics? Or has Islam become fair game for a wider unrestrainedacademia replacing the Orientalist school with newer analytical tools? Somepreliminary remarks, or a contextualization, might be useful here.Whatever its “resurgent” form, Islam is presenting something of an enigmaticchallenge for all. From the bazaars of the East to the sidewalks of the West,it refuses to lie down or go away. Attempts to discount it, ignore it or even suppressit have not succeeded. This hauntingly recurring phenomenon (p. 1) needsto be relabeled and reassessed. But the doubt lingers that representing it as “terrorism,”“theocracy,” “obscurantism,” “fundamentalism,” or “religious extremism”has muddied waters even more. Feeding popular fears with such preconfiguredterminology has neither satiated curiosity, quelled fears, nor broughtanyone closer to the truth.Compounding the picture is the “location” of the writers of such works: theworld-view, epistemology, discourse theory, or narrative framework fromwhich they approach Islam. The much-heralded objectivity of academia issacrosanct no more. Relativity, subjectivity, and the actor’s point of view are invogue. Old Orientalist views and definitions of the non-Occidental world arebeing overwhelmed by an array of (neo-Orientalist) analyses from a variety ofdiscourse perspectives.These analytical tools, even if applied with some success to their own societiesand disciplines this past century, don’t seem to have much of a shelf lifewhile some are less effective than others: positivist assertions fast give way torealist or inteqretivist ones; modernist perspectives to postmodemist ones; andstructuralist interpretations to poststructuralist ones. And when applied to Islamand Muslim societies, the results of these approaches can be bewildering (asshown by Rushdie’s Satanic Verses), and so can their effects (as shown byHuntingdon’s Clash of Civilisations prognostication).From its side, the Muslim world is all the more perplexed at the persistenceof such stereotypical labeling and analyses. Generally unfamiliar with these“new” tools, their reaction is either to ignore this “demonology of fundamentalism”(p. 16) or to interpret it as another of the West’s conspiracies against Islam.Sometimes it results in outright hostility (as shown by Khomeini’s fatwa andBradford’s book burning) or crude attempts at redress in reciprocal terms (as inAkbar Ahmed‘s Postmodernity and Islam). To western experts, such reactionscan only seem woefully inadequate.Furthermore, the apparently monolithic scenario of western experts with theirwestern critiques of the non-West is complicated by the emerging presence ofnonwestern migrants and their offspring on the westem academic scene. Taken ...
I Am a Palestinian Christian
Authors: Pace Joseph L.
Published: December 2020

Many small pieces fit together to create the puzzle that is Palestine. One of thesmaller, but certainly not insignificant, pieces of the puzzle is the PalestinianChristian community, which clearly traces its origins back to the first century.Mitri Raheb makes the comment that it is not necessary for a PalestinianChristian to go on pilgrimage because one “is already at the source itself, thepoint of origin” (p. 3). Pilgrimage in the sense of a physical journey is perhapsnot necessary, but some sort of spiritual exploration, which is at the heart of pilgrimage,is indeed in order. Raheb performs this pilgrimage in two ways: byexploring his family’s complicated denominational background and by providinga refreshing exegesis of a handful of biblical texts.One might assume that Palestinian Christians are all members of churchessuch as the Syrian Orthodox, Armenian, or Jacobite, together with a few adventurousconverts to eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism. The thought of aPalestinian Lutheran community is one that stretches the Western image of thePalestinian Christian community but does give a more accurate picture of thecomplicated Christian church in Palestine. In spite of its small and fragmentednature, the Palestinian Christian community has traditionally held an importantplace in the life of Palestine. Members of this community are historically progressiveand urban-oriented, many earning a living as merchants and shopkeepers(p. 19). The community is also traditionally well-educated and multilingual,in large part because of the evangelistic efforts of denominations such asGerman Lutherans and the English-speaking Anglican Church as well as otherProtestant denominations. Raheb notes that this Christian community has neverenjoyed political autonomy, as it has always existed withii occupied territory,ruled by Byzantines (technically Christian, although more concerned with politicaland cultural hegemony) and their Muslim and Ottoman successors and thenby British mandate and now by Israel. The absence of autonomy is a threat tothe swival of any community, especially a small community. Lack of self-government,or appropriate representation in the government, leads to a number ofsignificant threats to the community’s viability. Issues of economic, social, andpolitical injustice are all problems with which the Palestinian Christian communityhas had to contend.Emigration- or moving to new places where political, economic, and socialoppression are not as devastating-is one traditional way a community seeks topreserve itself; and, Raheb notes, it also has significant biblical antecedents,which become important later in the book as he explores the Exodus. Since1948, the size of the Palestinian Christian community has decreased significantly,in large part due to emigration to South and North America and WesternEurope. The comment has been made that within a few generations there will be ...
Women in Feminism and Politics
Authors: Shabbir Mohammad
Published: December 2020

The debate about Islamization of the human sciences, of physical sciences, oflinguistics and aesthetics has become global. If Islamization is vital and a necessityfor the rejuvenation of the new Islamic civilization, women and familiescannot escape from Islamization. Zeenath Kausar has argued the same in herbook. Her arguments for the necessity of IslamizaLion of women's and family'sproblems are pioneering ideas on the subject.The book comprises four chapters and each chapter follows the generalframework of the methodology of Islamization of Knowledge: presentation ofthe Western theories followed by their critical analysis and Islamic alternatives.The firsl chapter titled "Women in Western Political Theory: An IslamicAnalysis," surveys Western political thinkers from classical to postmodern(Plato to Foucault), on their views on women. Discussing the arguments of thesethinkers, especially from Plato to Hegel on the ineligibility of women for politicalparticipation, she contends that Western political thought is essentiallymisogynistic. Plato argues that women, children, and slaves mainly belong tothe appetitive class when compared to the classes of "philosophers" and "soldiers,"where men predominate. Aristotle denies women citizenship; he contendsthat women are nol capable of political participation. St. Augustine and St.Thomas Aquinas, relying on biblical sources dealing with the creation and the ...
Development, Change, and Gender in Cairo
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: December 2020

Since the late 1980s, the literature on women living in the Middle East hasshown an uneven but progressive sophistication in its approach. The view ofbackward, oppressed, submissive women is gradually being replaced by anunderstanding that women in the Middle East, like women anywhere, are "rational"actors, fully cognizant of their environment and situations. Books such asEveryday Life in the Muslim Middle East,1 and Muslim Women's Choices:Religious Belief and Social Reality2 are examples of this welcome ttend.Development, Change, and Gender in Cairo: A View from the Household, editedby Diane Singerman and Homa Hoodfar, is a fine contribution lo this newgenre. The essays in this book not only show that Cairene women are intelligentand comprehending observers of Egyptian society, but that they are also activeparticipants in their society-acting upon it, as well as being acted upon. Wewould hardly need a scholarly book lo tell us this, if it were not for the sttengthand prevalence of the negative stereotype of the "oppressed/silenced/submissiveMuslim woman," contributed lo in no small measure by previous scholarlybooks!Development, Change, and Gender in Cairo: A View from the Householdcontains seven essays detailing various aspects of low-income Cairene women'slives, plus an introduction by the editors which sets the more focused empiricalessays into broader theoretical context The volume is an interdisciplinary work,with contributions from sociologists, anthropologists, communications special ...
False Dawn
Authors: Haneef Mohamed Aslam
Published: December 2020

The natural counterpart of a free market economy is a politics of insecurity.If 'capitalism' means 'the free market,' then no view is moredeluded than the belief that the future lies with 'democratic capitalism'.... the free market cannot last in an age in which economic securityfor the majority of people is being reduced by the world economy... a reform of the world economy is needed that accepts a diversity ofcultures, regimes and market economies as a permanent reality.No one would blame the reader of the above paragraph from jumping to the conclusionthat they were reading the words of a defunct socialist critique or even of a rantingleader of some East Asian nation devastated by the current financial crisis. Criticism doesnot necessarily have to come from without. The fact that Western economic thought haswithin its fold a spectrum of views and schools of thought should make us realize thatself-criticism also has been a very important factor in the evolution of Western economics.In this very timely book, John Gray, Professor of Politics at Oxford University and a formerinsider to the (now subsiding) current wave of the New Right, presents the followingcentral thesis: the dynamics involved in the process of globalization, which is technolog ...
Globalization, Islam, and the West
Authors: Mazrui Ali A.
Published: December 2020

Let us begin with the challenge of a definition. What is globulizution?It consists of processes that lead toward global interdependence and theincreasing rapidity of exchange across vast distances. The word globulizutionis itself quite new, but the actual processes toward global interdependenceand exchange started centuries ago.Four forces have been major engines of globalization across time:religion, technology, economy, and empire. These have not necessarilyacted separately, but often have reinforced each other. For example, theglobalization of Christianity started with the conversion of EmperorConstantine I of Rome in 3 13. The religious conversion of an emperorstarted the process under which Christianity became the dominant religionnot only of Europe but also of many other societies thousands ofmiles distant from where the religion started. The globalization of Islambegan not with converting a ready-made empire, but with building anempire almost from scratch. The Umayyads and Abbasids put togetherbits of other people’s empires (e.g., former Byzantine Egypt and formerZoroastrian Persia) and created a whole new civilization.Voyages of exploration were another major stage in the process ofglobalization. Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus opened up a ...
Multicultural Counseling Competencies
Authors: Shoaee R. Sarah
Published: December 2020

In this thought-provoking and insightful book, ten psychologists, coW1selors,and educators have provided a ground-breaking study on multicultural counseling,a subject still fairly new to the field. Based on the work of Division 17open meeting of the Committee of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity, 1982, theauthors present guidelines for identifying monoculturalism and multiculturalism,proposing methods for achieving change at the individual, organizational,and professional levels.The authors argue that European-American traditions and research oftenfocus on the impact of intrapsychic factors on human development, ignoringinfluences of culture. They further argue that psychologists, who are aware ofand sensitive to other worldviews, should not only emphasize the knowledgeof such worldviews but should also incorporate them into the psychotherapeuticprocess. Multicultural Counseling Competencies is a timely book that couldbe used as a guide for mental health professionals.Chapter 1 of the book presents a definition of "multiculturalism" and a workingguideline upon which mental health professionals should base their knowledge,skills, and practice. Chapter 2 deals with "ethnocentric monoculturalism,"providing historical background on the emergence and development of aEuro-American worldview and highlighting how mental health professionalssubscribe to such a worldview without questioning its validity and applicabilityin a multicultural society.The profession's response to multiculturalism is the subject of the third chapter.This chapter identifies the "Seven Deadly Resistances" that are often ...
The Problems of Ideas in the Muslim World
Authors: Ahmed Mohamed Wagialla
Published: December 2020

This is a good English translation of a slim volume originally published inFrench under the title, Le Probleme des Ideas dans le Monde Musulman. Thebook is composed of 17 essays, the culmination of the intellectual life of itsauthor, the late Malik Bennabi.The book insightfully deals with a problem heretofore neglected by mostauthorities on Islamic thought: the problem of ideas in the Muslim world. Thecentral theme of the book builds on the close linkage between ideas and theircultural environment, which determines whether ideas are dead, deadly, or efficient.As an original thinker, Bennabi identifies the problem of the Muslimworld as civilizational and cultural in nature. Bennabi's contribution to modemMuslim thought lies, in principle, in his attempt to discover the universal lawsthat govern the perfonnance of human civilization from birth, growth, prosperity,expansion, decline, and disintegration and to apply these laws to the historyof ideas in the Muslim world. He postulates that the social process takesits course in the history of civilizations and cultures, revealing itself in the dynamics of three major realms: persons, objects, and ideas, the latter being thefocus of his book.Bennabi perceives the post-Muwahid or postcivilized Muslim world as lackingthe spirit of creativity and falling into a process of ad hoc borrowing ofready-made objects and ideas from the West without due concern for the preconditionsof their viability and applicability. In order to analyze this situation,the author develops a framework of analysis by which regional issues andminute details find their place and acquire their significance within a comprehensiveand integrated whole, which in itself poses a real challenge to the paradigmcurrently dominating the realm of ideas in the Muslim world ...