bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Applying Wasaṭīyah within the Malaysian Religio-Political Context
Authors: El-Muhammady Ahmad
Published: October 2020

There is a resurgence of interest in the wasaṭīyah (moderation) approachamong contemporary Muslim academics and policymakers, particularly withregards to its application and utility in resolving social challenges. This renewedinterest apparently intensified especially due to Samuel Huntington’s1993 “clash of civilizations” thesis in the aftermath of 9/111 and the emergenceof extremism and liberal thinking in the Muslim world.2This short essay argues that the need for wasaṭīyah in the present-daycontext is not due to that factor alone; rather, it is a response to the pervasiveextremism manifesting itself in various forms, either in the practice of politics,economics, culture, religion, and others. Economic extremism produced exploitation,market manipulation, inequality, and poverty in many countries.In the realm of politics, extremism appears in the form of global domination,authoritarianism, and even democratization projects that ignore the country’ssocio-political contexts. Such an effort is meaningless to the locals and, atworst, might jeopardize the democratization project itself.In addition, the rise of modernity and postmodernity has produced unintendedconsequences. Modern society tends to engage in the endless pursuitof materialism and conspicuous consumerism, both of which devalue spiritualityand the religious life. Modern people, therefore, are intellectually sophisticatedbut suffer from a spiritual-ethical vacuum due to their excessive pursuitof material gain. The “reign of quantity,” as Rene Guénon argued, not onlyrules supreme in the economic and business domains, but also permeates institutionsof higher learning. Eventually liberal education does produce ...
IIIT Panels at the 2015 ICNA Convention
Authors: Pervez Saulat
Published: October 2020

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) hosted two consecutivepanels at the annual Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) convention onMay 24, 2015.Ermin Sinanović (director, Research and Academic Programs) openedpanel 1, “Imam & Community Education,” by explaining that IIIT is committedto continuous professional development for imams and community leadersso that they can be effective in the United States. As opposed to the societiesfrom which they come, here they are expected to perform many non-traditionalroles, such as Islamic instruction, interfaith participation, counseling, dealingwith a pluralistic community, and catering to the community’s needs. All ofthese expectations and the difficulties that imams face in trying to fulfill them,he remarked, “explains the high turnover we have at mosques.”Several years ago, IIIT and Hartford Seminary designed a joint GraduateCertificate in Imam and Muslim Community Leadership program to trainimams in the necessary skills. To “bring the Muslim component to the conversationand instill self-respect and confidence in their students,” IIIT helpedHartford Seminary hire Muslim instructors. Each applicant for this 24-hourcredit eight-course program must already possess a BA. The certification providespractical training for counseling in hospitals, prisons, and other settings.Zahid Bukhari (former president, ICNA) acknowledged the huge variationamong imams, especially those “imported imams” who have soundknowledge of Islam but cannot relate to American culture and youth and thusend up essentially leading disconnected lives “in an icloud type atmosphere.”He recommended periodic recertification of imams and community leadersso that they can improve their ability to handle contemporary challenges, andexpressed enthusiasm for the ICNA-IIIT partnership.Timur Yuskaev (director, Graduate Certificate Program in Imam and MuslimCommunity Leadership, Hartford Seminary) commented that many ...
The Middle East and Brazil
Authors: Bruckmayr Philipp
Published: October 2020

The title at hand is a valuable and timely edited volume that sheds light onthe economic, political, literary, social, cultural, religious, and historical connectionsbetween Brazil and the Middle East. Whereas the Middle East in thisrespect primarily means the area historically referred to as bilād al-shām (i.e.,Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Israel), the book also tackles the historicallinkages among Brazil, Muslim Andalusia, and West Africa. Structurally,the volume is divided into three parts, which are preceded by anintroduction by the editor.Part 1, “South-South Relations, Security Politics, Diplomatic History,”includes five papers, the first four of which are more or less straightforwardtreatments of political history/science. Paul Amar sketches the dynamic strategicchanges in policy toward the region and hegemonic American power duringthe early presidency of Dilma Rousseff (2010-13) in the face of majorchanges in the Middle East that rendered her continuation of the “handshakepolitics” that her predecessor Lula had extended toward the now-crumblingdictatorial regimes unfeasible. In the following chapter, Paulo Daniel EliasFarah discusses one of the fruits of Lula’s endeavors: the formation of theSummit of South America-Arab States in 2003. He situates this diplomaticconcord within a long history of contacts between Brazil and the Arab/Muslimworld as well as the transnational flows of forced and free migration, as epitomizedby the presence of enslaved West African Muslims and then, later on,Syro-Lebanese settlers in Brazil.Carlos Ribeiro Santana’s contribution sheds light on Brazil’s pragmatismin fostering relationships with the Middle East to secure its oil supplies againstthe background of the energy crises of the 1970s. This thread is also pickedup in the following paper by Monique Sochaczweski, which details how thesevery configurations caused Brazil to abandon its “equidistance” policy ...
The Burqa Affair across Europe
Authors: Piela Anna
Published: October 2020

This edited collection provides a comprehensive analysis of the legal contextswithin which the “burqa affair” is located across Europe. It was published followingthe December 2012 “Secularism and Religious Diversity in Europe:Opportunities and Perspectives” conference organized under the auspices ofthe RELIGARE project (Religious Diversity and Secular Models in Europe).Its aims are ambitious and commendable: to analyze the socio-legal situationof face-veil wearers in eight Western European countries where regulationsrange from outright bans (disguised under the tagline of banning full or partialface coverings to avoid reasonable allegations of religious discrimination directedat the already besieged European Muslim populations) to the simultaneouslack of general prohibitions but specific rulings against full-face veils.Despite the baffling personal interpolations made by some contributorsto express their personal dislike of this practice (e.g., p. 5), they neverthelessrecommend in their collective conclusion that legislators should not introducegeneral prohibitions into the common space (i.e., “the physical territory thatpeople must necessarily enter to meet their basic needs,” p. 53), for doing sowould unjustly criminalize those who exercise their personal rights, be theyreligious or human. However, they do allow for restrictions based on a caseby-case approach.The contributions are significant in that they display the frequent tensionthat exists between the local anti-burqa movements’ introduction and enactmentof local and regional anti-face-veil legislation and the various nationallegal systems, European law, and human rights frameworks. Many of the casespresented illuminate the issues under discussion in national contexts. For example,Lisbet Christofersson’s “A Quest for Open Helmets: On the DanishBurqa Affair” and Jorn Thielmann and Kathrin Vorholzer’s “Burqa in ...
Jerusalem Unbound
Authors: Gada Muhammad Yaseen
Published: October 2020

Jerusalem represents the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The everchangingevents there have perplexed and compelled analysts, political scientists,academics, and activists to devise countless solutions, especially since1948. Moreover, the last decade has witnessed a substantial change in its demographydue to the Separation Wall and the ongoing Jewish settlement inEast Jerusalem, both of which violate international law and agreements. Thephysical barrier is itself a grim reminder of Israel’s harsh unilateral and discriminatorymeasures that seriously impact for the bilateral peace process.Michael Dumper (professor of Middle East politics, University of Exeter)has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In this book, he exploresand illustrates how, despite the wall (hard border), people on the bothsides have managed to create and retain various trans-wall spheres of influence(soft borders) by taking advantage of its porous nature to breach it by variousways. This reality, which renders Jerusalem a “many-bordered” or unboundcity, is primarily attributable to its rich, complex, and intersecting religiousand political interests that are sought and contested by many actors (p. 5).The city’s physical boundaries, discussed in chapter 1, shifted continuouslyfrom 1947 to 2003; the Separation Wall actually runs right through it. Accordingto Dumper, three major events have had long-term ramifications on thisconflict: the 1947 UN Partition Plan; the 1949 partition of East and West Jerusalembetween Jordan and Israel, respectively; and the ongoing illegal Israeli ...
Muslim Women, Transnational Feminism, and the Ethics of Pedagogy
Authors: Arik Hülya
Published: October 2020

The asphyxiation of subaltern voices and the disregard of Arab and Muslimwomen’s subjectivities in the cultural sphere of the post-9/11 era is the mainproblematic addressed by this collection. With the editorship of Lisa K. Taylorand Jasmin Zine, and based on the legacy of post-colonial writers like GayatriSpivak and Paulo Friere, this collection foregrounds how Orientalism operateson the ground and discusses how we can come up with new discursive toolsand spaces for articulations of difference and diversity and for “reading back” to resist the Empire. Critical public pedagogy is both the main objective and themain analytical tool in unmaking the epistemic frameworks of western imperialism,Orientalism, and patriarchy. The articles take up different stories to exposehow racist, patriarchal, imperialist, and neo-Orientalist legacies cooperate withwestern feminism in the public and cultural realms and determine the forms ofrepresentation and modalities of agency that Muslim and Arab women canclaim. Presenting examples from South Asia to North America to the MiddleEast through various cultural media (e.g., literature, the visual arts, film, andperformance art), this volume contributes to studies in critical pedagogy, transnationalfeminism, and cultural and Islamic studies. It addresses an audience thatranges from academics and students to artists and public pedagogues ...
Qur’ans of the Umayyads
Authors: Rippin Andrew
Published: October 2020

Qur’an manuscripts have attracted a good deal of attention from scholars, especiallyin the wake of the spectacular finds in the Great Mosque in Sanaa in1972. Some might suggest that this attention is superfluous or even reflectiveof a willful ignoring of the significance of the scripture’s oral transmissionand a privileging of the written word over the oral. However, careful studiesof these manuscripts tell us many things, such as early Muslim attitudes towardthe text, that cannot be documented otherwise. In fact, early manuscriptsare the only tangible source about the oral tradition itself. We can also see thatchanges in appearance in early manuscripts provide evidence of the perceptionand role of such copies and that this went through a significant transformation,especially during the Umayyad period (661-750).Studies done by knowledgeable scholars do not aim to establish an “original”text or to find fault with the modern version; rather, they aim to focuson such matters as the history of the Arabic script’s development and howmanuscripts were used. Of course, such early manuscripts also provide evidenceof textual variation, the precise dimensions of which have not alwaysbeen preserved by Muslim tradition. It is worth reiterating, however, that thesevariations are never of such extent that one can doubt the integrity of the textor its doctrinal or legal contents. Overall, the study of early Qur’an manuscriptsis a challenging task, subject to much scholarly speculation and thusdifference of opinion, especially due to the absence of colophons on the availabletexts thought to stem from the Umayyad period. This is generally the resultof the lost first and last pages in such manuscripts, for they are the first tobecome worn and detached and then disappear. Most of those manuscriptsavailable to us today are in a highly fragmented condition.François Déroche is the world’s leading scholar on matters related toQur’an manuscripts. The vast majority of his writing until now has been inFrench; his masterful examination of a single early exemplar, La transmissionécrite du Coran dans les débuts de l’islam, appeared in 2009. Thus many readersto whom his scholarship has not otherwise been accessible will welcomethis book written in English and marketed in a relatively inexpensive paperbackformat. The work originated as a series of four lectures given at the LeidenUniversity Centre for the Study of Islam and Society in 2010. Thoselectures were primarily the result of an extensive use of the resources held inIstanbul’s Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum ...
Traditional Islamic Environmentalism
Authors: Anjum Ovamir
Published: October 2020

Seyyed Hossein Nasr (b. 1933) is one of the most important living mysticphilosopherstoday. His consistent and clairvoyant critique of the materialism,secularism, and anthropocentricism of modernity for the last fifty yearshas been a wake-up call to many across the religious divide. Thus it is onlyfitting that the teachings on environment of a thinker who saw well beforemost of us the signs of our ominous times, one who wrote against the futilityof technological fixes and the need to reject modern metaphysics, shouldbe the subject of a dedicated monograph. The present book by Tarik M.Quadir is based on his PhD dissertation, which aims to present Nasr’s contentionson the subject over his long and productive career in one coherentnarrative. Being “the first person ever to write extensively about the philosophicaland religious dimension of the crisis” (emphasis in the original),Nasr’s critiques and specific suggestions are scattered in various writingsand interviews. The book at hand seeks to be the go-to volume for “the response[to the ecological crisis] that he envisions for any human civilization”(pp. 4-6).Nasr, educated in the United States since the age of thirteen, attended MITand Harvard. Having taught in Iran, the United Kingdom, the United States,and elsewhere, he finally settled at the George Washington University. Arenowned scholar and author of nearly fifty books and many more articles,his teachings are a blend of Shi‘ism, Sufism, and, most of all, the perennialist,anti-modernist philosophy of René Guénon (1886-1951) and Frithjof Schuon(1907-98). Nasr’s response to the environmental cataclysm is derived fromhis perennialist philosophy and is based on the spiritual reality of nature andits relevance to human purpose as defined by religion, and not merely on thebasis of consideration for physical survival, which permeates nearly the entiretyof environmentalist activism today.Quadir reviews a swath of literature by various authors, including activists,scholars, and scientists, who warn of the end of our world as we knowit and the limits of growth. From scientific projections to confessions of failureby leading environmentalists, several alarming and alarmist books are addedto the list every month. Nasr argues that many mainstream environmentalistsrecognize that not only is business as usual (i.e., capitalist growth) unsustainable,...
Constitutions and Pluralism in Muslim States and Societies
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

The Summer Institute for Scholars 2015, held at the IIIT headquarters in Herndon,VA, from June 8-21, brought together a group of scholars to address“Constitutions and Pluralism in Muslim States and Societies.” In order to presentas many of their ideas as possible, the wide-ranging and thought-provokingcomments of the chairs and the discussants are not recounted here ...
Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora
Authors: Dar Showkat Ahmad
Published: October 2020

Islam has been wrongly interpreted by representing it synonymous with terrorand “the Muslim,” as Hamid Dabashi maintains in Norway: Muslims andMetaphors (2011), “is a metaphor of menace, banality and terror everywhere”(p. 2). Consequently, Muslims in and beyond South Asia are being stigmatizedby the newly constituted environment known in the western scheme of thingsas “Islamophobia.” The state of disgrace and misery of Muslims continues toincrease and is being facilitated by the biased ideas and thoughts propoundedby some journalists and writers to construct often misleading and one-dimensional images. This had led to Muslims being harassed, dishonored,and rebuked. The present book evinces their increasingly stereotyped and demonizedportrayal.Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora is a critical evaluationand analysis of representations of these Muslims in literature, the media, culture,and cinema. The essays highlight their diverse representations and therange of approaches to questions concerning their religious and cultural identityas well as secular discourse. In addition they contextualize the depictionsagainst the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam and against culturalresponses to earlier crises in the Subcontinent, including the 1947 partition,the 1971 war and subsequent secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhyariots, the 2002 Gujarat genocide, and the ongoing tension in Indian-occupiedKashmir ...
The International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies
Authors: Khan Sameen Ahmed
Published: October 2020

Numerous conferences have been held on themes related to the Islamic goldenage of science during the mid-eighth to thirteenth centuries. But the event reportedhere is the “event of events,” so to say. The United Nations declared2015 the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL-2015)to stimulate global interest in light-related sciences and technologies. TheIYL-2015 partnership, formed in 2010, is a cross-disciplinary educational andoutreach project with over 100 partners from more than 90 countries, accompaniedby UNESCO’s International Basic Sciences Program. UNESCO’s executiveboard adopted this resolution during its October 2012 session; the UNdeclared IYL-2015 in December 2013.The year 2015 marks numerous anniversaries in the field of optics. Theoldest among these is the 1000th anniversary of the appearance of Ibn al-Haytham’s (965-1040) encyclopedic Book of Optics (Kitāb al-Manāẓir) bythe Arab scientist. Ibn al-Haytham became a central figure in the documentssubmitted to UNESCO’a board and eventually the UN. The International ...
Beyond the “Conflict” Paradigm
Authors: Douai Aziz
Published: October 2020

Western-Muslim relations have experienced long periods of peaceful coexistence,fruitful co-operation, and close interactions that have enriched both civilizations.And yet an alien observer of our mainstream media could be forgivenfor concluding that “Islam” and the “West” can never co-exist in peace becausethey seem to have nothing in common. In fact, the intermittent violence interruptingthese long peaceful interactions – from the Crusades to the “War onTerror” – has constituted the core of most mainstream media coverage and“scholarship” purporting to “study” and “explain” these relations.In a zero-sum power game, these dominant frameworks emphasize thatsuch a “clash” is inevitable. Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”theory has become the best known articulation and deployment of “conflict”as an “explanatory” framework for understanding current and past Muslim-West interactions. Simply put, existential, cultural, and religious chasmshave put the Muslim world on a collision course with the western world, aproblem that is most exacerbated by the presence of “Islam” and Muslimcommunities in western societies (Huntington, 1993).1 His thesis appearsto ignore each civilization’s internal diversity and pluralism and to be willfullyoblivious to the inter- and intra-civilizational interactions and centuriesoldco-existence, as Edward Said argued in his rebuttal: “Clash of Ignorance”(2001). 

Beyond the broadest generalizations, after all, what do “Islam” and the“West” mean? How long can we afford to “ignore” the “porousness” and “ambiguity”of their geographical and cultural borders? Is “conflict” between thesetwo realms inevitable? How about the centuries-old dialogue between thesecivilizations, the “Self” and the “Other”? How can researchers and intellectualsdeploy their inter-disciplinary insights and scholarship to address both thereal and the perceived civilizational “chasms”?These questions constitute the overarching themes of some very importantscholarship published in three recent books: Engaging the Other: Public Policyand Western-Muslim Intersections, edited by Karim H. Karim and MahmoudEid; Re-Imagining the Other: Culture, Media, and Western-Muslim Intersections,edited by Mahmoud Eid and Karim H. Karim; and the Routledge Handbookof Islam in the West, edited by Roberto Tottoli. With rich methodologicalapproaches, broad theoretical lenses, and diverse topics, these three books offera unique platform to build both a holistic and nuanced understanding of thecontingencies and intricacies surrounding “Islam” and the “West.” ...
Contemplation and Craft in Turkish Material Arts
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

Books Reviewed: Mehmet Zeki Kuşoğlu, The Ottoman Touch: TraditionalDecorative Arts and Crafts (Istanbul: Blue Dome Press, 2015); Mehmet ZekiKuşoğlu, Silver in Turkish Art (Istanbul: Blue Dome Press, 2015); Sema Onat,Islamic Art of Illumination: Classical Tazhib from Ottoman to ContemporaryTimes (Istanbul: Blue Dome Press, 2015); Laurelie Rae, Islamic Art and Architecture:Memories of Seljuk and Ottoman Masterpieces (Istanbul: BlueDome Press, 2015).

The unusual aspect connecting these four books is not the fact that they sharethe same publisher or even the same general scope of Turkish arts, but thatthey have been authored by practicing artists who have featured some of theiroriginal works between their covers.Blue Dome Press, a relatively new publisher, has offices in the majorwestern cities; however, all of the printing done in Istanbul. In addition, themajority of its publications, which range from Turkish cooking to fiction, fromcurrent affairs to various arts, focus on some aspect of Turkish culture. Bysupporting the publication of these texts, one gets the sense that various sectorsof Turkish society continue to value the traditional and important historicalcontributions that the featured and other contemporary artists continue to maketo the national culture.The three artists featured in this review (one is the author of two books)come from different backgrounds that have enabled them to practice their arttoday. Mehmet Zeki Kuşoğlu author of The Ottoman Touch: Traditional DecorativeArts and Crafts and Silver in Turkish Art, has practiced the crafts ofsilverwork and other art forms based on traditional methods for over fortyyears. During his career, he has apprenticed with craftsmen – he identifiesthem by name – and completed two art degrees in Turkey. His efforts to understand,reconcile, and ultimately interpret the country’s historical craft methodsthrough his own creations lends a tremendous insight into the meaningsand processes of crafts, one that brings them palpably alive. Sema Onat, author ...
The Islamic Secular
Authors: Iqtidar Humeira
Published: October 2020

Professor Sherman A. Jackson, an authority on Islamic legal and intellectualhistory, has claimed in this article that a particular form of the secular is internalto Islam. For him, the secular is primarily a manifestation of the differentiationof spheres of human life. The Islamic secular, he argues, is revealedthrough a close reading of the boundaries that the Sharia self-imposes uponits jurisdiction and that implicitly operationalizes a type of differentiation. Hisargument rests upon a distinction between Sharia and the wider religion ofIslam. This allows him to claim that the Sharia’s self-limitation supported arecognition of other modes of reasoning and argumentation within Islam, andthat it is this space of non-Sharia reasoning that constitutes the space of thesecular within Islam. Arguing for such a relationship between Sharia and thesecular, then, leads him to point out that the distinction between the Islamicand the Western seculars lays not so much in the substance, but in their function.In other words, substantively both versions of the secular seem to supportrational, empirical thought; however, in the case of Islam, the function of thesecular is not to reduce of religion.
The Words of God to Prophet Muhammad
Authors: Abbas Shabbir A.
Published: October 2020

Sayyid Hasan Shirazi, a member of the famed Shirazi clerical family of Iranand Iraq, is best remembered for establishing the first Damascene Twelverseminary in the 1970s and his unfortunate 1980 assassination in Beirut. Alongwith his involvement in many political endeavors and leading dissident movementsagainst both the Iraqi Baathists and the Saudi royals, Sayyid Hasan wasnotable for his efforts to reconcile Syria’s heterodox Alawite community withthe more orthodox Twelver Shi‘i community. But beyond these leadershiproles, he was a prolific scholar. One of his works that received much praise inthe Arabic-speaking world, his twenty-five-volume Kalimat series, covered awide array of selected narrations ranging from those of God Himself to theAhl al-Bayt and the Twelve Imams, their companions, and previous prophets.The first volume, Kalimat Allāh, is a compilation of al-aḥādīth al-qudsīyah,which are not considered part of the Qur’an. A selected translation of KalimatAllāh is the focus of this review ...
Women, Islam, and Abbasid Identity
Authors: Amin Yasmin
Published: October 2020

The book under review, which is divided into five chapters, an introduction,and a conclusion, investigates how gender, sexuality, and concepts of womanhoodwere deployed to express cultural differences in order to formulateand articulate the Abbasid identity and legitimize the new dynasty’s authority.El Cheikh argues that Abbasid-era texts used gendered metaphors and conceptsof sexual difference to describe those groups they perceived as a threat.The “Introduction” opens with an overview of the book’s scope and isfollowed by the story of the “harlots of Hadramaut” rejoicing after theProphet’s death, how Abu Bakr dealt with it, and why this event was consideredsignificant. These women’s public celebration was contrasted withMuslim prescriptions for women as regards obedience, piety, and domesticity.The purpose here was to juxtapose the era of jāhilīyah, with its idolatry,tribal feuds, sexual immorality, burial of live infant girls, and theabsence of food taboos and rules of purity, to the mainstream Islamic culturalconstruction of the emerging community struggling to define itself.El Cheikh argues that the Abbasid textual tradition was unsympathetic towardthe Umayyads and thus represented them as corrupt and godless inorder to justify Abbasid rule, which would lead to a new society characterizedby “the cohesive powers of a common language, currency and a unifyingreligio-political center” (p. 5) ...
The Mystics of Andalusia
Authors: Qureshi Jawad Anwar
Published: October 2020

The Mystics of al-Andalus by Yousef Casewit, assistant professor of Qur’anicstudies at the University of Chicago Divinity School, tells the story of an overlookedmystical school of Andalusia, the Muʿtabirun (lit. “the contemplators”or “the practicers of iʿtibār”). The Muʿtabirun, as Casewit demonstrates, formulateda mystical teaching centered on contemplating God’s signs in creationand the Book, and that self-consciously distinguished itself from the Sufis of the East. This book details the ways in which Ibn Barrajan (d. 536/1141), Ibnal-ʿArif (d. 536/1141), and Ibn Qasi (d. 546/1151), the school’s main authors,contributed to Andalusi mystical thought and provided a link between IbnMasarra (d. 319/931) and Ibn al-ʿArabi (d. 637/1240).This book comprises eight chapters. The first two frame Casewit’s interventioninto the historiography of Islamic spirituality in al-Andalus.Chapter 1, “The Beginnings of Mystical Discourse in al-Andalus,” providesa concise history of mystical discourse and practices from the Umayyadsto the end of the Murabitun (the seventh to the twelfth century). The majorprecursor of the Muʿtabirun was Ibn Masarra, whose Risālat al-Iʿtibār presentsan intellectual-cum-spiritual practice of contemplating God’s signs(āyāt) in the book of nature in order to ascend the ladder of knowledge todivine unity. Controversially, Ibn Masarra maintained that iʿtibār couldlead to the same truths as revelation. In 961, thirty years after his death, hisbooks were burned at the behest of the jurists and his followers were forcedto publicly disavow their master. His teachings, however, continued clandestinely ...
A Response to Shabbir A. Abbas’ Review of The Words of God to Prophet Muhammad
Authors: Abbas Shabbir A.
Published: October 2020

Shabbir A. Abbas, a graduate student from Rutgers University, completeda thorough and thoughtful review of my work, The Words of God to ProphetMuhammad: Forty Sacred Sayings, in the American Journal of Islamic SocialsSciences 34, no. 2 (spring 2017): 102-04.Abbas provides relevant biographical and bibliographical informationabout Sayyid Hasan Shirazi, the compiler of Kalimat Allāh from which Idrew the Forty Hadith and presented in Arabic along with my English translation.I am pleased that the reviewer described my translation as “refreshinglyaccurate… and … perfectly intelligible.” I am also honored that hedescribed my preface as “excellent.” ...
Nationalist Ethnicities as Religious Identities
Authors: Yusuf Imtiyaz
Published: October 2020

For centuries, the Rohingya have been living within the borders of the countryestablished in 1948 as Burma/Myanmar. Today left stateless, having beengradually stripped of their citizenship rights, they are described by theUnited Nations as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world. Inorder to understand the complexity of this conflict, one must consider howBurma is politically transitioning from military to democratic rule, a processthat is open (much as was Afghanistan) to competition for resources by internationaland regional players such as the United States, China, India, Israel,Japan, and Australia.1 To be fair, the record of Southeast Asian Muslimcountries with Buddhist minorities is also not outstanding. Buddhist minoritiesidentified as ethnic groups have faced great discrimination in, amongothers, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Brunei ...
Interview with Talal Asad
Authors: Anjum Ovamir
Published: October 2020

The work of Talal Asad, in particular his two landmark volumes Genealogiesof Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianityand Islam (1993) and Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam,Modernity (2004), has given new life to critical study of secularismand the idea of “religion” across the disciplines of anthropology, politicalscience, religion, history, and colonial studies. In fact my firstpublished article, “Islam as a Discursive Tradition” (2007), was amethodological inquiry into efforts to conceptualize Islam, focalizedthrough the work of Asad and his interlocutors. The preface tomy 2012 book on Islamic political thought remarked my broaderindebtedness to Asad’s notion of “discursive tradition” (against simpleaccounts of the “politicization” of modern Islam). Shortly afterthe book was published, in June 2012, I conducted a dialogue withProfessor Asad in his Manhattan apartment, unique also for beinga dialogue between an anthropologist and an intellectual historian.Our conversation spanned topics of mutual interest: secularismand the nation-state, democracy, Islamic tradition, the questions ofreform and coercion, and too (what was at the time) Egypt’s newrevolution and so the possibilities and limits of Islamist politics.Since then, Asad has published articles which touch on themes wediscussed (for example, the pair of 2015 essays in Critical Inquiry41:2 and 42:1), and a few other interviews have appeared in whichhe also reflects on his intellectual trajectory and methodologicalconsiderations (see in particular the interviews by Fadi Bardawiland by Basit Kareem Iqbal). Now, nearly six years later after theytook place, AJISS publishes an edited transcript of our 2012 conversations,both for their remarkable theoretical and biographicalcandor and for how, when read in relationship to the essays he haspublished since then, they make visible the development of a sustainedargument regarding “tradition” and the project of modernity ...
Brand Islam
Authors: Arjana Sophia R.
Published: October 2020

Brand Islam: The Marketing and Commodification of Piety examines thegrowing business of Muslim merchandise, ranging from food products consideredḥalāl (permissible) to children’s dolls that represent devout Muslimbehavior through sartorial choices such as modest clothing and the wearingof the veil. Faegheh Shirazi illustrates how a growing Muslim marketoften intersects, in both problematic and intriguing ways, with capitalism.Using an extensive survey of case studies, illustrations, and diverse Muslimcommunities (Iran and Indonesia are often cited), the book provides a usefulexploration of the question of Muslim consumption and contributes tolarger discussions surrounding material religion.

In chapter 1, Shirazi begins her investigation into these topics by discussingthe problem of Islamophobia and how it may influence Muslimsto seek out markers of religious identity, thus influencing the market. Herdefinitions of xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Islamoparanoia are useful,although I felt myself wanting a richer discussion of how these trends intersectwith white supremacy, colonial politics, and misogyny. Symbols—especially the veil and the mosque—can be used, as other scholars haveshown, to generate anxiety in non-Muslim populations. Although Shiraziis less interested in how these symbols are used to shore up white, male,Christian, or secular authority, she employs them to show the ways inwhich Islamophobia and radical, literalist Islamic rhetoric feed off eachother. The manipulation of this rhetoric is even used when non-Muslimsmake concessions in an effort to improve relations with Muslims, such asQueen Elizabeth’s 2010 visit to the UAE, when she covered her hair. AsShirazi points out, “Sheikh Yasser Burhani, one of Egypt’s leading Islamicscholars, jumped on the queen’s gesture as justification for furthering an oppressive,fundamentalist Salafi Islamic position” (p. 32). The ways in whichthe body—in this case a white, regal body—is used in debates surroundingIslam and modernity is at the crux of this book ...
Ijtihad and Renewal
Authors: Johnston David
Published: October 2020

Ijtihad and Renewal is a confessional manifesto by Moroccan scholar andjurist, Said Shabbar. Very much in the style and substance of Taha Jabiral-Alwani, Abd al-Majid Najjar, and other leading lights of the InternationalInstitute of Islamic Thought, Shabbar adds a slightly more conservative and,if I may add, an Arab touch to the wider renewal discourse of this milieu.The intended audience of this monograph is no doubt a wide Muslimreadership, most of whom have little background in Islamic jurisprudence(fiqh) and even less in its legal theory literature (uṣūl al-fiqh). Sothis abridged version of Said Shabbar’s longer volume minus any footnotesmakes his material much more accessible to the general Muslim public.Nancy Roberts’ translation is mostly excellent and very readable (I did havesome questions however about two sentences that were likely either misleadingor at least unclear) ...
Muslim Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Lawrence Bruce B.
Published: October 2020

Does cosmopolitanism exist in the Muslim world? Does it reflect a distinctambience in Muslim societies that links to other expressions of cosmopolitanismbeyond Islam?

This deftly-crafted book amounts to a manifesto that answers bothquestions with a resounding: YES! Yes, there is a cosmopolitan trajectorywith Muslim overtones and undertones, and yes, it can be found in placesand persons identified with Islam, especially but not solely in SoutheastAsia. There it becomes part of what the author labels, following AzyumardiAzra, Islam Nusantara (86-91).The author begins by reviewing several previous efforts to locate, thendescribe, and interpret or explain what is cosmopolitanism and who areMuslim cosmopolitans. He correctly notes that “as a concept, Muslim cosmopolitanismsuffers from being used too loosely and too indiscriminatelyto describe anything that Muslims say and do which points towards somedegree of inclusivity” (xix). He then looks to forms of everyday expression—“a style of thought, a habit of seeing the world, and a way of living”—all linked to Islam in its broadest formulation as maqāṣid al-sharīʿa, that is,the purposes of Islamic law defined in five mandates that apply to Muslimsbut also to all humankind: to preserve self, to preserve mind, to propagatevia marriage, to preserve society, including property, and also to preserveand defend belief in God ...
Driving Culture in Iran
Authors: Saeidi Shirin
Published: October 2020

Driving Culture in Iran creatively explores the relationship between legalculture and citizenry formation in post-revolutionary Iran. Banakar focusseson driving customs and explanations for citizens’ disregard of trafficlaws, demonstrating that the exceptionally high rates of road accidents andlack of law abidance is due to the complex cultural and political climate. Themonograph argues that the state’s propaganda machine promotes revolutionaryzeal but in a context where people are penalized if they dissent (3).

Consequently, dissension becomes a tool for control, setting into motionmultiple forms of internal conflict which are reflected in the way Iraniansrelate to one another as well as in increasing rates of road traffic accidents(4). The originality of the study rests in its exploration of political life atthe juncture of law and culture. Through his analysis of the unintendedcultural outcomes of the legal structure in Iran, Banakar contributes to ourunderstanding of citizenship formation in hybrid and religiously chargedregimes. In particular, the book illustrates how citizens’ distrust of the statecan have deadly consequences on Iran’s roads. The monograph will be ofinterest to academics and other professionals working on the Middle East,Islam, and from a multitude of disciplinary perspectives ...
Editorial
Authors: Anjum Ovamir
Published: October 2020

Can we justify scholarship in apocalyptic times? “Across the world, genocidalstates are attacking Muslims,” reads the title of an opinion piece bysociologist Arjun Appadurai, “Is Islam really their target?”1 “As Israel incarceratesPalestinians and Myanmar drives out its Rohingyas, a reflectionon the predicament of ethnic and racial biominorities,” reads the by-line.Welcome to the club, I thought. For decades, this has been the questionMuslims have asked themselves. The piece ends with little great insight,but it is the banality of the observation, one made by an Indian-Americansociologist, not an al-Qaeda operative ready to blow things up in revenge,that caught my attention. The banality of Muslim blood, that is.Palestine is being shot and bled to death by a fanatic ethno-religious,nationalist, colonizing, apartheid state. We are Palestine. The Rohingya arebeing burned, raped, and annihilated by another ethno-religious, nationaliststate. Rohingyan mothers are birthing en masse the children of theirMyanmar rapists. We are Rohingya. The Kashmiris and millions of IndianMuslims are being deprived daily of their dignity, humanity, and life by yetanother religiously-inspired ethnic nationalism. We are Kashmiris. In China,Uighur Muslim men are being exterminated, held in torture and brainwashingcamps, while their women are forced to cohabitate with Chinesemen.2 In all four cases, an ancient religion has been conscripted to provideidentity, unity, passion, and even the narrative to justify the carnage, somebordering on genocide. A secular, enlightened Europe is pulverizing itsMuslim minorities, minorities that are there only because their lands wereinvaded, exploited, divided, and left to rot under ruined institutions andpuppet regimes propped up by the very same Europeans who cannot tolerateMuslims in their midst. And now, China, the emerging superpower,surpasses them all in its systematic extermination of its Muslim populationor identity. We Muslims (ought to) know better than to blame all Jews, ...
In Good Company
Authors: Sanyal Usha
Published: October 2020

This article is part of Darakhshan Khan’s larger body of work on womenin the Tablīghī Jamā‘at, who, as she argues persuasively, have not been giventhe scholarly attention they deserve (barring a few notable exceptions,among them Metcalf 2000). Khan observes that the reasons for this rangefrom the fact that the public image of the Tablīghī Jamā‘at is that of itinerantmales, not females, and that gender segregation in South Asian Muslimcommunities makes women invisible to male scholars. Moreover, in today’spost-9/11 world the Tablīghī Jamā‘at is often viewed through the lens ofcounter-terrorist concerns.Khan’s article revolves around several key themes: the geographicalmobility of Muslim bureaucrats in late nineteenth-century British India;changes in the structure of the family; changing patterns of religious leadershipin British India, resulting in part from the creation of seminaries suchas the Dār al-‘Ulūm, Deoband; and the incorporation of Muslim womenin religious leadership roles in Tablīghī networks from the mid-twentiethcentury onward. The article seems to fall into two distinct parts. The firsthalf deals with Muslim men from ashraf families working in British Indiangovernment jobs in the late nineteenth century who moved constantly(with their wives and children) in response to bureaucratic postings, livingwesternized lives at the margins of highly stratified British Indian socialnetworks. Drawing on sources ranging from Urdu literature to biographies,Khan shows how isolating this was for the wives and sometimes professionallydisappointing for the husbands. The second half of the article dealswith Muslim religious elites and their more limited geographical travelsin British India in pursuit of religious knowledge, often coinciding with ...
Lexical Choice and Rhetorical Expression
Authors: Feldmeier Peter
Published: October 2020

Many religions understand themselves as fundamentally aligned to a givenculture or people. Hinduism is intrinsically connected to the Indian cultureand caste system. Daoism and Confucianism are highly integrated into theChinese spirit and the cultural mentality of the Orient. Shinto’s cosmology,myths, and rites concern themselves solely with the Japanese. Even in theWest, Judaism locates itself with the people of Israel. Jews welcome converts,but Judaism has never seen itself as a proselytizing religion. Islamis convinced that Muhammad’s message is both universal and constitutesthe highest revelation. Thus, it is a proselytizing religion. But Muslims historicallyand today believe that non-Muslims can be saved in the contextof their own religious traditions, particularly if these are monotheistic.Christianity perhaps stands alone as a religion that has historically believedthat membership in the church is necessary for salvation. Add to this thatRoman Catholicism had believed that Catholic membership was necessary.As the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared, “There is only one universalchurch of the faithful, outside which none can be saved.” More recently,most Christians, including Catholics, think that God’s saving grace is availableoutside its ecclesial boarders, but this is a modern idea.What then to think of the religious other? In the seventeenth century,a Catholic had few conceptual choices. One was to consider religious othersand their sacred texts as valuable preparation for the gospel, and thusadmire what could be admired in them. They had something of what St.Justin Martyr called the Logos spermatikos, seeds of the Word. This includedthe principle of inculturation whereby European culture was not to beconflated with Christianity. This principle became policy, at least in theory, ...
Some Reflections on the First Muslim Visitor to Japan
Authors: Morris James Harry
Published: October 2020

Japanese relations with Islam and Muslims have a much longer history1than is commonly assumed. Most scholarship on Japanese-Middle East andJapanese-Muslim relations has focused on the modern period. Nevertheless,there is evidence that Persian visitors came to Japan as early as 736CE(Tenpyō hachi nen 天平8年).2 It has been postulated that some of thesePersians were Syriac Christians,3 Zoroastrians, or Manichaeans,4 however,the historical sources do not provide details of their religious affiliationand therefore no definitive conclusions in regards to their religions can bemade.5 This research note explores the visit and biography of a man whocame to Japan some five and a half centuries later than these first Persianvisitors, a man whom Hosaka Shuji notes was the first recorded Muslimvisitor to Japan.6 This figure, known as Sādōulǔdīng 撒都魯丁 in Chineseand Sadorotei in Japanese, came to Japan as part of an envoy sent by Khubilai7Khan (1215-1294CE), the first ruler of the Yuán 元 dynasty (1271-1368CE), in 1275CE. Herein Sādōulǔdīng’s biography and the significanceof his visit to Japan will be explored ...
Complicaciones extrapulmonares de la enfermedad por COVID-19
Authors: Pecho-Silva Samuel , Arteaga-Livias Kovy , Bazán-Concha Brayan E. , Navarro-Solsol Ana C.
Published: October 2020

La infección por SARS-CoV-2 es la enfermedad emergente más importante del presente siglo. Desde su aparición hasta la actualidad ha ocasionado casi un millón de muertes en todo el mundo, convirtiéndose en una verdadera amenaza para la salud pública. Por tal motivo las nuevas revisiones y estudios científicos al respecto resultan sumamente importantes. De igual manera se sabe que la afección principal por este virus está confinado al sistema respiratorio. Sin embargo, aún existen aspectos desconocidos de la enfermedad y dentro de ellas se encuentran las complicaciones extrapulmonares. La presente revisión intenta resumir todo lo conocido al momento respecto a la enfermedad y sus complicaciones neurológicas, hematológicas. cardiológicas, renales y hepáticas.
Pengaruh Ukuran Perusahaan, dan Leverange Terhadap Praktik Income Smoothing pada Bank Syariah
Authors: Harianto Syawal , Amin Haris Al , Indah Yusmika
Published: October 2020

This research is to know the effect of firm size, and financial leverage to Income Smoothing practices is Islamic Banks.  The data used is the secondary data with sourced from annual report data published by Islamic commercial banks and syariah business unit during 2016-2018 periods, samples research are 54 (fifty four) bank. Data analysis method using eviews with the fixed effect model. The result of the research shows that the simultan firm size and financial leverage have significant effect on Income Smoothing in Islamic banks.the partially, firm size an financial leverage has a positive and significant effect on income smoothin practices in Islamic banks City. The determination test result is 55%. Keywords: Firm Size, Financial leverage, Income Smoothing.