bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Histories of the Middle East
Authors: Amin Yasmin
Published: October 2020

This collection of papers, presented at a Princeton University conference heldin May 2008, opens with an extensive bibliography of Abraham L. Udovitch’sworks and a preface detailing his scholarship on the medieval Islamic world’seconomic institutions, social structure, legal theory, and practices. The prefacealso highlights Udovitch’s role and scholarly contributions, prolific publicationsand international academic collaboration, his respect for interdisciplinaryexamination and combination of various methods, as well as the diversity ofhis intellectual pursuits and teachings. The editors praise his visionary approachof focusing on seemingly unconnected texts to uncover the past, suchas combining normative legal texts with narratives from diverse sources andgenres. His students, as demonstrated in this volume, have adopted these methods.Udovitch’s role in changing the writing of medieval Islamic history islauded, as is his encouragement to explore new techniques and methodologiesas well as his attention to the human experience within history.Mark Cohen, whose introduction examines Udovitch’s many roles (viz.,scholar, leading historian, activist, and teacher) provides a biography focusedon the professor’s life and projects. The nine essays, loosely grouped into fourunmarked categories, discuss the main areas of Udovitch’s interests: (1) “EconomicHistory” highlights the intersections between the legal theory of commerceand the commercial practices of institutions. It includes contributionsby Petra Sijpesteijn and Michael Bonner; (2) “Social History” relates economicand social actions, underlines their thematic and methodological commonalities,and comprises essays by Adam Sabra and Jonathan Berkey; (3)“Mediterranean and Indian Ocean” deals with “Middle Eastern History in itsGeographic contexts” and coalesces around what has been termed Udovitch’s“Mediterraneanist” concerns, namely, interdenominational relations and negotiationsbridging the gap between “rigid principles and supple accommodation.”This includes contributions by Olivia Remie Constable, YossefRapaport, and Hassan Khalilieh; and (4) “Urbanism,” the study of cities assites of economic exchanges and interactions between individuals and groups,combining legal, political, ideological, and intellectual dimensions to formthe realities of daily life. This includes two contributions by Boaz Shoshanand Roxani Margariti ...
Feeling Betrayed
Authors: Sodiq Yushau
Published: October 2020

Steven Kull’s Feeling Betrayed is a great addition to the literature on whatmotivated the 9/11 attacks. His critical analysis is based upon hundreds of interviewsconducted by international polling agencies in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan,Turkey, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Participantswere Sunni and Shi‘i, men and women, as well as Islamists, modernists, andsecularists. The nine-chapter book contains charts designed to facilitate readercomprehension of the data presented. Among his findings are the following:(1) Muslims perceive the United States as dominant, exploitive, oppressive,and undermining of their values and cultures; (2) Washington talks about promotingdemocracy in the Muslim world but supports military regimes andmonarchies; (3) it undercuts democracy and social justice by telling Arab leaderswhat to do; and (4) it does not live up to its ideal values. Unfortunately, hebases his very frequent sweeping generalizations (viz., “Muslims in …. say”)on the words of a minute fraction of the global Muslim population. In fact,many other polls reveal that millions of Muslims hold a positive image of theUnited States ...
The Makings of Indonesian Islam
Authors: Sunardi Christina
Published: October 2020

This rich, nuanced historical study effectively encourages (demands, perhaps)a rereading of much of what has been written about Islam in Indonesia bywestern observers. Focusing on a period during which the Indonesian nationitself was being made – Dutch colonial times (c. 1800-1942) – Michael Laffansets out to investigate what makes Indonesian Islam and who has participatedin the processes by and through which it has been made (p. xi). Dipping alsointo earlier times, he argues that the makings of Indonesian Islam lie in interactionsspanning centuries involving Southeast Asian Muslims, Muslims fromother places, and the Dutch (p. xi). He draws on a wealth of archival and scholarlysources (especially Dutch material) to explore the role that Dutch Orientalistadvisors played in the history of Indonesian Islam and in its(mis)representation in western writings (pp. xi-xii). Complicating understandingsof Sufism in the region, he also focuses on “disputes about the place oftariqa praxis – the rituals of mystical reflection organized under the guidanceof a preceptor known as a shaykh – which represents but one aspect of Sufismas a field of Islamic knowledge” (p. xii). With its exploration of the makingsof Indonesian Islam on multiple levels, this book would be of particular interestto specialists (especially historians) of Indonesia, Southeast Asia morebroadly, Islam, and colonialism ...
Religious Dimensions of Democratization Processes in Muslim-Majority Nations
Authors: Lizzio Celene Ayat
Published: October 2020

The 41st AMSS annual conference, held on 29 September 2012 at Yale DivinitySchool, brought together scholars and activists to address “ReligiousDimensions of Democratization Processes in Muslim-Majority Nations.” Theevent, consisting of four panels and Juan R. I. Cole’s (University of Michigan)very anticipated keynote luncheon address, was co-sponsored by the Yale DivinitySchool and the Council on Middle East Studies at The MacMillian Centerat Yale. Several luminaries in the field, including Ambassador SallamaShaker (conference program chair, Yale Divinity School), also attended. GregoryE. Sterling (dean, Yale Divinity School) opened the conference, and AliA.Mazrui (former AMSS president, State University of New York) made welcomingremarks.The first panel, “The Arab Spring: A Revolution towards Democracy,”was chaired by Narges Erami (Yale University). In his opening paper, “TheArab Spring and Democratization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Which Is Cause andWhich Is Effect?,” Mazuri examined political processes, recent uprisings, andlonger-term democratic trends in South Africa, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, andYemen. He raised questions of chronology and causality, as well as howprocesses of colonialism and decolonization shaped contemporary politicallandscapes. After examining the concept of democratic contagion, he observedhow democratic processes that occurred in many African nations during thetwentieth century could serve as models for how to enshrine human rights andan independent judiciary in new constitutions. His paper ended with a detaileddiscussion of women’s contributions to shaping and buttressing a vibrant publicsphere, the positive effects of which can be seen particularly strongly inTunisia ...
Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic
Authors: Wilson Brett
Published: October 2020

Much has been written about religion and secularism in Turkey over the pastdecades, but detailed histories of the late Ottoman and modern Turkish ulemahave been few and far between. Therefore, this recent book by Amit Bein isa welcome and a much needed contribution to the literature on the Turkishulema and to the literature on religion in modern Turkey in general. It chartsthe vicissitudes of the ulema during a period of dramatic change from the latenineteenth century until roughly 1960. Bein shows the multiple challengesthe ulema faced during successive rounds of political and social reform andthe various approaches that they took in response. The diversity of opinionand political orientation within the ulema corps are on full display – from themost ardent nationalist figures, who supported state reforms in all respects, tothe staunchest enemies of the republican regime. This book conveys a nuancedunderstanding of who the Turkish ulema were and how they navigated theempire-to-republic transition ...
Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam
Authors: Pirbhai M. Reza
Published: October 2020

This insightful book, useful to scholars and students of Islamic and SouthAsian history, illuminates the place of Islamic thought and institutions in thepolitical regimes of the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1526). Finding late approachesto the historiography of the period unduly focused on “fact” and “fiction,”rather than “meaning,” the author unravels the more complex relationshipbetween history and historiography in six pertinent chapters (p. xix). Theseare complemented by maps, illustrations, thorough endnotes, and a usefulbibliography. As a whole, the cohort of Persian histories read lead to the convincingconclusion that “historians played a major role in producing and sustainingideas about power, justice and Islamic rule of the premodern empire”(p. 160) ...
Religion and Revolution
Authors: Sekaleshfar F. B.
Published: October 2020

In his Religion and Revolution: Spiritual and Political Islam in Ernesto Cardenal,John Morrow has manifested his years-of-research incorporated knowledgein Hispanic, Native American, and Arabic-Islamic studies to shed lighton two poorly understood themes – both in the East and, particularly, in theWest – via a specific narrative. The themes are, broadly speaking, those ofSufism and the Islamic Republic of Iran. The narrative is the story of ReverendFather Ernesto Cardenal, a Nicaraguan revolutionary Christian priest who hadprogressively acquired some spiritual and revolutionary interests in Islam aftervisiting certain Middle Eastern countries, especially Iran.Whether Cardenal is seen as merely a medium for Morrow to expresshis own findings on Sufism and Iran or as an end in itself is up to the reader.Either way, Morrows’ on-the-whole impartial and unbiased interpretation ofIslam, Sufism, and Iran, indirectly through the personality and writings ofCardenal, constitutes a calibre of work rarely seen or read in the westernmedia and literature. This is mostly due to its seemingly close, albeit academic,sympathy with elements of Iran’s right “conservative” and “hardline”elite. Perhaps that is why, at times, one feels that the author has stepped uphis defence a shadow too much. The manner he has raised and evaluatedsome of the data he presents, as well as some of the rumours – against Sufismand especially Iran – he refutes, clearly demonstrates that he has exploredand gained access to (1) the pristine image of Sufism and notable Sufis and ...
Islamic Political Thought after the Arab Spring
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

On December 7, 2012, Ermin Sinanovic (assistant professor, Department ofPolitical Science, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD) presentedhis “Islamic Political Thought after the Arab Spring,” at the headquarters ofthe International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT; Herndon, VA). After openingwith several questions – How have the events in the Middle East and Arabworld influenced and continued to shape Islamic political thought? Why didthe Arab Spring happen now? What were the contributing factors? How is Islamicpolitical thought being reshaped by these events? – he began to makehis case that the underlying political theory of the Arab Spring representssomething new in Islamic political thought.One of his contentions is that traditional Islamic political thought is nowseen as out of date, as caught up in the past. This situation began to changefirst among the Shi‘ah and was instrumental in Iran’s revolution. The ArabSpring has accelerated this reawakening among the Sunnis, which began inthe 1970s, thereby showing that Islamic political thought was no longerstatic. But because this uprising is still so recent and ongoing, scholars arestill trying to make sense of it and thus all conclusions up to this point remaintentative ...
Prospects and Dimensions of Conflict Resolution Programs in the Islamic Context
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

Amr Abdalla (professor and vice rector, University for Peace, San Jose, CostaRica) visited the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) on February1, 2013, to discuss the challenges of conflict resolution and peace that hascaught the attention of so many Muslim and non-Muslim scholars and policymakersfor several decades. As the Muslim world remains plagued with violentconfrontations between states and non-state actors, regional and nationalsectarian conflicts, and domestic conflicts with gender and family elements,such a discussion is very timely.The outbreak of the Arab Spring, which has resulted in several Islamistgroups taking power, has raised various questions: Why is it important to talk about conflict resolution and peace building in an Islamic context? How canthe theoretical be combined with the practical? How does Islam fit into thedemonstrations that occurred during the Arab Spring as well as into modernity?This is, according to Abdalla, the first opportunity that contemporaryMuslims have had to answer these questions for themselves ...
Herbal Medicine in Yemen
Authors: Morrow John Andrew
Published: October 2020

Herbal Medicine in Yemen contains eleven studies on a wide range of virtually

unrelated subjects. In their introduction, the editors mention that “religious

and magical rituals are employed side by side with material medica”

(p. 1) in Yemen. This should serve as warning for what is to come and send

practitioners of phytotherapy into flight. They assert that Yemenites employ

an enormous variety of plant-based medicines and allege that “[t]this is different

in other Islamic countries, e.g. Morocco, where animal drugs are

widely used” (p. 1). As an herbalist who has lived for extended periods in

Morocco, who has also travelled widely therein and met many of its herbalists

and healers, their latter assertion is not accurate. In all of the stalls and stores

I visited in markets in cities nationwide, the only animal drugs I ever saw

were small quantities of dried lizards and other such creatures; I found more

animal drugs in the shops of sorcerers and witches who dabbled in the dark

arts ...
Apostasy in Islam
Authors: Sabet Amr G.E.
Published: October 2020

This lucid and concise book is an important and timely contribution in light

of current intra-Muslim political rivalries that find their fueling justifications

in the domain of “excommunication” and mutual accusations of disbelief

and apostasy (takfīr). This situation has caused Alalwani, the author of this

“treatise,” to delve into the controversies and subtleties of this sensitive and

manipulation-laden issue. He attempts, both scripturally and logically, to clarify

its various aspects and challenge the conventional and traditional approaches

to it, which have been obscured by the historical weight of dogma

and power politics (pp. 19-20, 129).

Alalwani’s contends that there is no explicitly stated evidence, whether

from the Qur’an or the Prophet’s Sunnah, that mandates the death penalty for

merely changing one’s religion, as long as doing so is not accompanied or associated

with another criminal act. He highlights that when stipulating that an

apostate should be killed, the jurists were in fact dealing with “compound”

crimes that involved, in addition to apostasy, other political, legal, and social

dimensions (p. 1). He proceeds to make his point by providing evidence from

the Qur’an and the Sunnah while casting doubt on the authenticity or consistency

of much of what the fuqahā’ (jurists and scholars) narrated later on and

attributed to the Prophet or his Companions. His chosen method combines

philosophical, analytical, inductive, and historical approaches along with Islamic

textual sciences and fields of knowledge (p. 3). He focuses on cases in

which an individual changes his/her faith without engaging in hostile or criminal

activities against the Muslim community, which otherwise would elevate

the case to one of security threat or treason (p. 4).

The study comprises six chapters. The first two deal with whether apostasy

is a capital crime and with the Qur’anic depiction of what apostasy means.

Alalwani points out that despite unleashing the “sword of consensus” regarding

the death penalty for this event, in fact there is no such consensus, for no ...
Why Islam (Properly Understood) Is the Solution
Authors: Hashemi Nader
Published: October 2020

This paper is a provocative play on the famous Muslim Brotherhood

slogan al-Islām hūwa al-ḥāl (Islam is the solution). While

critics of the Muslim Brothers rightly criticized them for the simplicity

of their worldview in thinking that religion was a panacea

for all of the problems confronting Muslim societies during the

late twentieth century, an argument can be made that religion does

profoundly matter in the context of the struggle for democracy in

the Arab-Islamic world. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, democratic

transitions in North Africa and the Middle East will be dependent

on democratically negotiating the question of religion’s

role in politics. Here I provide some reflections on this topic with

a focus on Tunisia’s transition to democracy.
Educating Muslim Women
Authors: Thompson Katrina Daly
Published: October 2020

Educating Muslim Women is a unique study of Muslim women told throughthe story of Nana Asma’u, a nineteenth-century Fulani woman from NorthernNigeria who became a renowned scholar and greatly impacted Muslim womenin Nigeria and beyond. Drawing on history, literary analysis, and ethnography,the volume’s slimness belies a wealth of material that will interest historians,applied linguists, and even sociologists of contemporary Muslim communities.The book’s main argument is that Muslim women have played a greaterrole in their communities than has previously been understood by historians.While using Nana Asma’u as an example, Boyd and Mack argue that she wasnot unique and offer painstaking details to show that her society supportedand encouraged female Islamic scholarship. In addition, they relate how contemporarywomen continue to follow her example. The book is organizedroughly chronologically, although the chapter titles suggest a thematic organizationthat is not always adhered to.The introduction offers some background on Sufism, which in later chaptersthe authors narrow down to the Qadiriyyah order. They define Sufism as“the prayerful pursuit of knowledge aiming to move an individual closer toGod” (p. 15). Their focus on knowledge allows them to emphasize Islamicscholarship and education: “Education, like Islam itself, was integral to allparts of daily life” (p. 21). Nineteenth-century schools are depicted as placeswhere pupils learned Qur’anic recitation and received religious blessings, aswell as practiced farming, obtained medical treatment, and sought personaladvice. By depicting education as central to Islam and Islam as central toNorthern Nigerian society, their subsequent account of how involved women ...
“Like the Scum of a Torrent”
Authors: Ibrahim Zakyi
Published: October 2020

The hadith compilations are filled with the Prophet’s prophecies and predictionsabout the future, be it the future state of Muslims, the outcomes of battles,the signs of the end times, and so on. If Muslims are uncertain as to how andwhen some of these may come to pass, there is little doubt that, somehow,someway, they will certainly do so. Muslims’ confidence in the latter scenariostems from their unflinching belief in Muhammad as God’s messenger.The Sunan Abī Dāwūd, one of six authentic Sunni hadith collections, containsa hadith in which the Prophet predicts that one day Muslims, as a group,will be so weak and insignificant that other nations (umam) will compete tosnatch them, just like feeding animals (akalah) challenge one another overthir feed (qaṣ‘ah; lit.: large bowl). He insists that this will not be due to theMuslims’ smaller numbers, because their numbers will be huge; rather, theywill be as worthless as “the scum of a torrent” (ghuthā’ al-sayl), which is unworthyof being kept for any future use and thus deserves to be removed anddiscarded. At this time, the hadith continues, non-Muslims will have not oneiota of fear and apprehension (mahāba) of Muslims, but the latter will havealready resigned themselves to their own feebleness (wahn) and thus begripped with fear of non-Muslims ...
Gender and Islam in Southeast Asia
Authors: Abbas Megan Brankley
Published: October 2020

Emerging from a 2005 conference at the University of Passau (Germany),Susanne Schroter’s edited volume brings together an interdisciplinary groupof scholars, from anthropologists and historians to literary scholars and Muslimfemale activists, to examine this complex subject. The book is organizedinto four country-specific sections on Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,and Thailand, respectively. The fifth and final section, consisting of only onechapter, adds a transnational dimension by analyzing the Tablighi Jama‘at.Despite the volume’s breadth of disciplinary and geographic contributions,its authors share a common project: the recuperation of Muslim women’s history,and especially female Muslim agency, amidst the rise of Islamization inSoutheast Asia.In her introductory essay, Schroter works to unite the country-specificcontributions under a broader regional framework. She argues that whereasIslam in Southeast Asia has traditionally been “moderate, especially with regardto its gender orders” (p. 7), the recent “upsurge of neo-orthodox Islamposes a threat” (p. 37) to women’s rights. With characterizations of conservativeMuslims as “religious zealots” (p. 16) and “hardliners” (p. 19), shepresents Islamization as a process in which “orthodox” Muslims, often withinternational ties, have imperiled the moderate Islam of traditional SoutheastAsia and the liberal Islam of Muslim reformers. The majority of the volume’scontributors embrace this framing narrative. On the one hand, this globalstory enables them to shine new light on the region’s pressing debates overIslam and gender. Yet, on the other hand, the framework consistently placesfemale agency in absolute distinction with so-called orthodox Islam, therebyeclipsing a more complicated landscape of ethical contestation and culturaldifference.Building on Schroter’s framework, the book’s opening section on Indonesiafeatures four chapters, each of which emphasizes challenges Muslimwomen face in asserting their rights an identities in various Indonesian Islamicspheres. To begin, Nelly van Doorn-Harder investigates the Harmonious FamilyProgram of ‘Aisyiyah, Muhammadiyah’s sister organization, as “a tool totransmit the reformist views on gender and women’s position within marriage” ...
Women, Leadership, and Mosques
Authors: Riley Krista
Published: October 2020

Edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, Women, Leadership, andMosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority is a compilation ofpapers presented at a 2009 conference of the same name. The book’s twentychapters represent a diverse range of geographic, thematic, and methodologicalapproaches to questions of female leadership within mosques, religiousscholarship, education, Muslim organizations, and other Islamic spaces. Together,they paint a rich and complex picture of the intersections of gender,religion, culture, history, politics, class, and migration, as well as the impactof these intersections on female authority in Islamic contexts.In their introduction to the first of the book’s three sections, the editorsdescribe the section’s chapters as reflecting the impact of “male invitation,state intervention, and female initiative” (p. 31) on women’s leadership roles.The first chapter, by Maria Jaschok, looks at female ahong (imams) inwomen’s mosques in China, who provide religious education, counselling,and prayer leadership in gender-segregated spaces. She discusses the complexdebates about segregation, empowerment, and religious innovation (bid‘ah)that these mosques represent. The second chapter, by Margaret J. Rausch, examinesthe context of Morocco’s murshidahs, women trained and certified bythe Moroccan government as preachers, teachers, and counsellors, and whohave an important influence on women’s religious education and mosque ...
The Role of Education in Implementing Social Justice
Authors: Seif-Amirhosseini Zahra
Published: October 2020

In honor of World Day of Social Justice, on February 24, 2014, Shia RightsWatch and American University held the first-ever conference devoted to presentingnew paradigms for exploring how the rights of the minority Shia Muslimcommunity can be protected against such entrenched realities assubordination, injustice, violence, discrimination, and marginalization. Socialscientists define minority as a culturally, ethnically, religiously, or racially distinctgroup that coexists with, but is subordinate to, a more dominant group.This subordinancy, the chief defining characteristic of any minority, has nothingto do with numbers, a fact perhaps most vividly illustrated by South Africaunder apartheid (c. 1950-91).The conference, held at American University, was cosponsored by theMohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace. Well-known and high caliberpolicymakers, professors, and researchers shared their findings in order tooffer solutions designed to foster peace, tolerance, and religious freedom forthis group and the regions in which they reside.In his capacity as the first occupant of the endowed Mohammed SaidFarsi Chair of Islamic Peace as well as the founder of the university-wideCenter for Global Peace, Abdul Aziz Said (School of International Service,American University) welcomed everyone. He remarked that peace is farmore than the absence of war, that it is, in fact, inclusive of social justice, ecologicalsustainability, sustainable economics, and cultural diversity (peace asthe absence of structural violence). Thus, conflict resolution is one of the buildingblocks of peace. Given that the ends we seek and the means that we employin the study of peace and conflict resolution are interconnected, teachingthese two fields must be based on a pedagogy that is itself peace and notmerely a process of certification. He argued that education about peace andconflict resolution and education for peace and conflict resolution are twosides of the same coin. Peace and conflict resolution education combine informationwith liberation and procedure with transformation. He concluded ...
A History of Shi‘i Islam
Authors: Masterton Rebecca
Published: October 2020

Despite the progress made in the study of Shi‘i Islam, few publications providea comprehensive account of its history. Referring primarily to secondarysources, A History of Shi‘i Islam overviews key events going back to the timeof Prophet Muhammad to “clarify misunderstandings” and illustrate the variousShi‘i schools’ contribution to Islamic history. From an Ismaili Perspectivecould have been a helpful subtitle, as will be explained below.The book consists of six chapters: “Introduction: Progress in the Study ofShi‘i Islam,” “The Origins and Early History of Shi‘i Islam,” “The Ithna‘asharisor Twelvers,” “The Ismailis,” “The Zaydis,” and “The Nusayris or ‘Alawis,” respectively. A glossary is provided; however, not all of the terms used by theauthor are listed. Each chapter is divided into several subsections ...
The Second International Conference on Contemporary Scholarship on Islam
Authors: Ali Muhammad Mumtaz
Published: October 2020

The International Islamic University, Malaysia’s (IIUM) Department of Usulal-Din and Comparative Religion, along with the Kulliyyah of Islamic RevealedKnowledge and Human Science (IRKHS), organized an internationalconference to analyze the work of Ismail Raji al-Faruqi, a leading twentiethcenturythinker who had had a significant impact on Islamic thought and comparativereligion. Held at IIUM’s Senate Hall on October 22-23, 2013, incollaboration with Kolej Universiti Islam Sultan Azlan Shah (KUISAS), participantsdiscussed the legacy of this influential scholar, who is best known forhis pioneering work in the Islamization of Knowledge movement. One of hisbooks, Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life (Herndon, VA: IIIT,1992) has attracted the attention of scholars and been introduced into variousuniversity courses worldwide as an important resource book.The main theme was “Infusing the Creativity and Excellence of al-Faruqi’sScholarship into Contemporary Islamic Thought.” The seventy-five acceptedpapers were divided into five sub-themes: tawḥīd, the Islamization of Knowledge,Islamic civilization, Islamic thought, and comparative religion. The organizersinvited scholars to (1) study and examine the relevance of al-Faruqi’sthought, (2) examine his vision and mission in various areas of Islamic thought,(3) regenerate the tradition of Islamic scholarship in academic disciplines, (4)enhance the intellectual understanding of Islam’s tawhidic worldview, and (5)develop a comparative approach to the study of Islamic thought in relation tomodernity. This unique event enabled scholars, intellectuals, and academiciansto meet and deliberate on al-Faruqi’s intellectual and scholarly output.This event began with three inaugural speeches. Zambry Bin Abdul Kadir(chief minister, State of Perak) pointed out that only intellectual and moral developmentcan cause human civilization to reach its zenith. In the case of Islamiccivilization, this development was achieved by grounding the civilizationon the core values of research, criticism, and creativity. He stated that al-Faruqidedicated his life to calling upon Muslims to revive that sprit. Ibrahim M. Zein(dean, IRKHS) highlighted the conference’s importance and expressed his hopethat it would be a resounding success. Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin (deputy rector,Research and Innovation, IIUM) called for excellence and innovation incontemporary Muslim scholarship and emphasized that tawḥīd and thetawhidicworldview must be the base of Islamic discourse. He further remarked ...
Muslim Men Writing for Muslim Women
Authors: Ibrahim Zakyi
Published: October 2020

During a discussion in my “CPRL 373 Women in Islam” class, students werebaffled by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s (d. 1111) candid discussion of sex in hisIḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn.1 I was not surprised, because many assumptions are takenfor granted about medieval Muslim scholars due to their religious and sectarianreputations, cultural environments, and eras. However, without highlightingany sexual discourse or showering praises, this editorial only introducesIbn al-Jawzi and his Aḥkām al-Nisā’.
A Most Masculine State
Authors: Sabet Amr G. E.
Published: October 2020

This book examines the “plight” of women and gender relations in an attemptto give voice to an excluded and marginalized group in the closed and conservativesociety of Saudi Arabia (pp. 1, 2). Al-Rashid problematizes the“woman question,” designating it as both a state and a social problem that defiesconsensus regarding its causes and solutions, where giving voice becomesthe first step toward reclaiming denied rights. She contextualizes her study bylooking at the historical roots and “interconnection between gender, politics,and religion that shapes and perpetuates the persistent exclusion of Saudiwomen” (p. 3). By so doing, Al-Rashid essentially depicts the roots of this“extreme form of gender inequality” as structural and related to the complexrelationship between the Saudi state and the Wahhabi religious establishment.This relationship, which takes the form of religious nationalism, provided fora narrow definition and interpretation of just who was entitled to belong to the pious community. Narrow interpretations of rituals and jurisprudence, aswell as how gender relations are to be conducted or acquire validity, both createdand exacerbated the social and religious boundaries within Saudi societyand between it and other Muslim cultural interpretations ...
The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics
Authors: Laabdi Mourad
Published: October 2020

David Vishanoff’s The Formation of Islamic Hermeneutics is a significantcontribution to the study of Islamic legal theory and legal hermeneutics. Vishanoff’smain objective is to examine how Sunni legal hermeneutics becamea systematic and institutional discipline. For this purpose, he strives to restorethe reception and development of al-Shafi‘i’s (d. 820) legal hermeneutics during the pre-classical period (ninth to eleventh centuries). He presents the imamas the first scholar to have codified an Islamic legal theory and reads him inlight of four hermeneutical models: the Zahiri, Mu‘tazili, Ash‘ari and, whathe calls, a law-oriented model. The book is organized into seven chapters, fiveof which are devoted to al-Shafi‘i’s hermeneutics and the four responses to it.Chapter 1 and 7, respectively, serve as analytic introduction and conclusion.The most authoritative source investigated by the author, and to whichChapter 2 is devoted, is al-Shafi‘i’s Al-Risālah fī Uṣūl al-Fiqh. Central to thistext is al-Shafi‘i’s argument that a system of law can and should be inferredfrom revelation: the Qur’an and Sunnah. The Risālah, Vishanoff confirms, isthe first work to have raised a consequential hermeneutical question in the Islamiclegal theory: How does one reconcile revealed texts with legal rules?Al-Shafi‘i’s solution, one that places the Qur’an’s equivocalness or linguisticambiguity at the centre of its argument, was one of the most debated legalthemes at the time; a deliberation that has largely contributed to the formationof classical uṣūl al-fiqh ...
Islamic Law and Ethics
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

The Summer Institute for Scholars 2014, held at the IIIT headquarters in Herndon,VA, from June 16-21, 2014, brought together a group of scholars to address“Islamic Law and Ethics.” In order to present as many of their ideas aspossible, the wide-ranging and thought-provoking comments of the chairs andthe discussants are not recounted here.
IIIT Intellectual Panels
Authors: Siddiqui Muhammad , Dorroll Courtney
Published: October 2020

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) organized a two-day seriesof intellectual panels at the Islamic Society of North America’s 51st annualconvention, held in Detroit during August 30-31 2014. These events werehosted in the institute’s hospitality suite on the third floor of the Cobo Center.
Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
Authors: Arjana Sophia R.
Published: October 2020

In this extension of her important 2002 article in American Anthropologist,Lila Abu-Lughod examines the problematic nature of the western discoursesurrounding Muslim women. In particular, she is interested in how westernpolitical programs in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan use the status ofgirls and women to validate their claims to occupy, colonize, or otherwisemeddle in Muslim countries’ internal affairs. Abu-Lughod shows how thehuman rights discourse surrounding grim situations (often aggravated orcaused by western interventions and other maneuverings) relies on a kind ofone-downtrodden-Muslim-female-fits-all scenario. This book analyzes the“idea of the Muslim woman,” a character often in need of western liberation,and argues that the lives of Muslims are more complicated and nuanced thanthe popular media would have us believe.Abu-Lughod begins her Introduction by reflecting on her fieldwork as ananthropologist in Egypt, an experience that taught her a great deal about thelives of Muslim women and has influenced her view that there is a “disjuncturebetween my experiences and these public attitudes” (p. 4). In other words, whatthe West thinks about Muslim women – their hopes, dreams, aspirations, andexperiences – is radically different than what Muslim women actually experience.These fantasies, much like the fantasies about Muslim men as irrationaland hopelessly violent, “rationalize American and European international adventuresacross the Middle East and South Asia” (p. 7). Muslim women arerepresented as lacking agency, a result in part of the alignment of sexual freedomswith personal liberation, about which Wendy Brown has written. Abu-Lughod sets off on her project to deconstruct and analyze the intersectionamong feminism, human rights language, and politics with the hope that theactual complicated, diverse, and multifaceted lives of Muslim women can contributeto a critical reflection on the growing movement for women’s rights.In chapter 1, the author sets her sights on Afghanistan, a state well knownfor its violence and poverty, not to mention the mass suffering of the generalpopulation. As she skillfully points out, the plight of Afghan girls and womenserves a foundational role in arguments for American intervention. While theTaliban certainly deserve the demonization they have received in the press,so do the numerous other factions that target women as well as religious minoritiesand ethnic groups like the Hazara. As she reminds us, some of thesegroups are in “the U.S. backed government” (p. 29) ...
The language of Secular Islam
Authors: Abbas Megan Brankley
Published: October 2020

In her study of Urdu language politics in late colonial India, Kavita SaraswathiDatla traces the rise and eventual demise of an alternative Urdu movement thatenvisioned the language not as a marker of Muslim religious identity, but as ameans to articulate a modern secular nationalism with roots in India’s Islamicpast. By highlighting this largely forgotten moment of secular Urdu nationalism,the author pushes back against two well-established historiographical narrativeson Muslims in colonial India: the dominant understanding of theHindi-Urdu controversy as a process of sharpening communal boundaries andthe scholarly emphasis on the epistemological struggles to make Islam andWestern science compatible. She complicates both of these existing historiesby shifting her geographic lens from northern India to the so-called colonialperiphery: the Muslim princely state of Hyderabad. Specifically, Datla’s researchcenters on the establishment and initial decades of intellectual activitiesat Hyderabad’s innovative and Urdu-medium Osmania University.In the book’s opening chapter, Datla argues that Hyderabad’s leadingMuslim intellectuals and administrators were largely uninterested in epistemologicalquestions about the relationship between Islam and modern Westernforms of knowledge. To underscore this disinterest, she examines Wilfred S.Blunt’s unsuccessful proposal from the late nineteenth-century that the Hyderabadistate build a modern Islamic seminary. Whereas Blunt envisionedan Islamic university as a catalyst for Islamic reform in India, Datla demonstratesthat his Muslim interlocutors remained unconvinced about the necessityof any Protestant-style reformation of Islam. Instead of possessing such boldtheological agendas, leading Hyderabadi educators focused on extending educationalaccess and forging a stronger connection between the values taughtat home and the knowledge acquired at school. They located the solution tothese twin issues in vernacular education. For them, the use of Urdu insteadof Persian, Arabic, or English as the medium of instruction would remove theexisting language barriers in Hyderabad’s education system and simultaneouslyensure a greater continuity between home and school cultures. Accordingto Datla it was this focus on vernacular education, not Islamic reform, thatinspired Osmania University’s founding in 1918.The second chapter provides an in-depth examination of the university’sTranslation Bureau and its projects designed to reform Urdu into a modernscientific language. She explains that the Osmania faculty hoped to ...
The Walking Qur’an
Authors: Hamdeh Emad
Published: October 2020

With the introduction of new educational systems in the Muslim world duringthe late-eighteenth through the early-twentieth century, many Muslims andnon-Muslims became critical of traditional pedagogical methods. In particular,the image of Qur’an schools in West Africa are often criticized for their“backward” forms of education and commonly perceived as places wherechildren simply parrot Qur’anic verses without much understanding. Theseinstitutions have largely been abandoned and replaced by modern and secularschooling systems. In his The Walking Qur’an, Rudolph Ware argues thatQur’an schools have survived in places like West Africa. By studying them,he seeks to historicize this once-paradigmatic approach to knowledge. Alongwith shedding light on Islamic knowledge, Ware attempts to move beyondrace by placing Africans at the center of Islamic studies. Such an attempt is welcome, given the rarity of in-depth studies on Islamic history in WestAfrica. In so doing he makes a welcome contribution to both Islamic andAfrican studies, while simultaneously examining the boundaries between thetwo ...
Mounting an “Islamic Studies” Program
Authors: Haron Muhammed
Published: October 2020

The study of Islam at many universities around the world has beenon the increase for the past three decades for various regions. InSouth Africa, where it was initiated by Semiticists in Semitic Studiesdepartments and Missiologists in Missiology courses, its studygradually developed into full courses. Since the popularity of “Islamicstudies” has been of interest to secular academics as well, thecountry’s University of the Free State (UFS) proposed the offeringof a Baccalaureus Divinitatis Degree in Islamic studies. But beforedoing so, the university decided to host a colloquium to which theorganizing committee invited various stakeholders. This essay contextualizesthis colloquium by locating the teaching and study ofIslam in a broad South(ern) African context and offers a critical reporton the ensuing two-day colloquium.
The Fatigue of the Shari‘a
Authors: Ayoub Samy
Published: October 2020

In this challenging and thought-provoking monograph, Ahmad Atif Ahmaddraws on the issue of futūr al-Sharī‘a (the end of access to divine guidancedue to the absence of qualified jurists) to explore how early Muslim scholarsdebated its possible loss. Basing himself upon the analysis of medieval Sunnilegal and theological texts, the author divides his monograph into four parts:Part I, “Foundations,” chapters 1-3; Part II, “Jurists and Nonjurists,” chapters4-6; Part III, “Modernity and Its Questions,” chapters 7-8; and Part IV, “BeyondModernity,” chapters 9-10.Ahmad situates his project as a commentary on the debate over the destinyof religious teachings “from the point of view of Muslim jurist-theologiansand those who engaged the intellectual production of these jurists and theologians”(p. 1). He pursues his central goal, to explore “the destiny and currentstatus of God’s guidance from a Muslim perspective” (p. 2), by explainingthat medieval Muslim theologians and jurists defined the Shari‘a’s survivalin terms of the availability of scholarly “knowledge” about it (p. 2). Utilizingthese medieval debates to offer important insights into similar contemporarydebates, he insists that empirical research will continue to refute the “death ofthe sharī‘a” thesis.In the Introduction, Ahmad poses a question that goes to the heart of thisdebate: Could God’s guidance, available to previous generations as religioushistories tell us, somehow become inaccessible at some point? His premise isthat the “fatigue of the sharī‘a” has been a subject of continuous debatethroughout the Islamic tradition and thus cannot be considered a “recent” or“modern” phenomenon. He closely evaluates two kinds of debates: (1) thosein the Islamic tradition about the end of access to futūr al-Sharī‘a and (2) thosein modern western scholarship in the discipline of Islamic legal studies aboutthe Shari‘a’s death.One of the important issues in this book is Ahmad’s discussion of thissupposed “fatigue” in relation to other intertwined inquiries about the natureof ijtihād (independent reasoning), God’s guidance and justice, and the availabilityof His guidance today (p. 15). This suggests to the reader that the claimsmade about this fatigue can be answered only after addressing auxiliary, yetfundamental, concerns about the Shari‘a in Muslim societies. Ahmad furthercomplicates the question of its death by pointing out the medieval relationshipbetween legal and theological reflections on this question. He alerts readersto the problem of defining “sharī‘a” and “fatigue of the sharī‘a” and observes ...
Religious Authority and Political Thought in Twelver Shi‘ism
Authors: Takim Liyakat
Published: October 2020

Utilizing a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, Hamid Mavaniexamines the locus of religious authority and its contemporary expression inTwelver Shi‘ism. Starting with the time of the Prophet, he provides a comprehensiveand nuanced analysis of the doctrine of the Imamate and Shi‘i religiousand political authority from traditional, rational, theological, andpolitical perspectives.The first part of the book, comprising three chapters, focuses on the doctrineof the Imamate and contains some of the material that has already beencovered by scholars like Amir Moezzi, Wilferd Madelung, Mousawi, and MariaMassi Dakake. Here, Mavani examines the authority of the Imams and that ofthe jurists during the Twelfth Imam’s occultation. He stresses the Imams’ spiritualand religious-political authority as well as the ensuing doctrines of taqlīdand ijtihād during this period. Citing Shi‘i sacred sources, he provides a Shi‘iself-understanding of the concepts underpinning the Imamate, namely, thoseof wilāyah and walāyah (the Imams’ moral-spiritual authority).Mavani argues, convincingly, that Khomeini’s model of governance(wilāyat al-faqīh) has received a disproportionate amount of attention in recenttimes. His theory was only one among others that have been proposed by suchscholars as Montazeri, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, Fadlallah, and Mahdi Shamsal-Din. Other Shi‘i theories of governance have been largely ignored. His discussionand critique of this model is both incisive and erudite, for not only doeshe examine the views of its proponents and opponents, but he also provides adetailed and nuanced discussion of other possible forms of government andthe dangers involved in Iran’s currently centralized form of leadership.The last three chapters cover material that has been largely neglected bywestern scholarship on contemporary Islam. This is where Mavani’s majorcontribution lies: his criticism of traditional ijtihād as being deficient and ineffectiveas regards meeting contemporary challenges (pp. 226-27) and someof the discriminatory rulings that are based upon it, many of which are casuistic,arbitrary, and often based on the principle of secondary rulings.Most works on religious authority in Shi‘ism focus on the authority ofthe Imams and the jurists during the Twelfth Imam’s occultation. Mavani proposesother state models to the one practiced in contemporary Iran ...
Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice
Authors: Amin Yasmin
Published: October 2020

Prayer in Islamic Thought and Practice, part of the “Themes in Islamic History”series, is divided into an introduction, five chapters, and a short conclusion.In the introduction, the author focuses on ṣalāt, the five canonical dailyprayers. The book offers a historical study based mainly on pre-modern Arabicsources from the ninth to the sixteenth century, which is supplemented by secondary and modern non-Arabic sources to cover major changes in the practiceor interpretation of ṣalāt (p. 2). Katz quotes the views of pre-modern and modernwestern observers, thereby showing their sympathy and admiration for theconcentration, devotion, seriousness, reverence, regularity, egalitarianism, andinclusiveness associated with it.In Chapter 1, “Canonical Prayer and Supplication, Development, andRules,” Katz traces the etymology of the term’s linguistic origin, historic significance,and pre-Islamic meaning. She quotes Q. 31:17 to show that it wasnot used exclusively in reference to monotheism or the Abrahamic faiths. Șalātis explained both in terms of the prayer’s religious content and physical postures.Its validity is discussed and shown to be dependent upon several conditions,such as the knowledge of specific times, ritual purity, orientation toMakkah, and intention. The prayer components (arkān) are also dealt with indetail ...