bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Future of the Arab Spring
Authors: Gada Mohd Yaseen
Published: October 2020

The Arab Spring, which began in December 2010, mobilized the Arab massesto depose once-uncontestable autocratic rulers. Many observers predicted thatthis regional uprising would move the Arab world from autocracy to democracyin no time. However, the present scenario speaks to the contrary. Althoughmany are struggling to understand its long-term effects, one thing iscertain: This ongoing event has engendered a significant change in the people’ssociopolitical awareness. Consequently, many writers have approachedit from various social, political, economic, and religious aspects.The book under review seeks to examine and explore this subjectthrough a unique and different aspect: the contribution of “civic entrepreneurship,” defined as an innovative, non-violent, and peaceful “citizen-driveneffort to mobilize communities to respond to opportunities or crises in orderto advance the collective good” (p. 2). In its seven chapters, the author emphasizesthe revolution’s non-violent roots under three main sections: “CivicEntrepreneurship in Politics and Society, Civic Entrepreneurship in Art andCulture, and Civic Entrepreneurship in Technology Startups” (p. 3). Thefirst three chapters attempt to form the theoretical foundation for her mainargument ...
Bourdieu and Historical Analysis
Authors: Delgado Jibreel
Published: October 2020

Many scholars, among them Omar S. Kasule (“Islamic Epistemology andIntegration of Knowledge in the Islamic University” [2009]) and Fathi HasanMalkawi (Epistemological Integration: Essentials of an Islamic Methodology[2014]) call for the epistemological integration of knowledge. I seek to answerthis call, in part, by demonstrating the relevance of Pierre Bourdieu’s(d. 2002) theory to the study of Islam, Muslims, and Islamic movements.One precedent in this direction is Stephane Lacroix’s Awakening Islam: ThePolitics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia (2011), whichstudies the Saudi Sahwa movement from the 1950s to the 1990s. I contendthat studies of Islam must go even further in this direction. As this approachdeserves our attention, I will present Bourdieu’s theory to those who studyIslam and Muslims ...
Islam is a Foreign Country
Authors: Nassar Maha
Published: October 2020

Zareena Grewal’s book traces the hopes, debates, accomplishments, and disappointmentsof American Muslim students who travel to the Middle East inpursuit of Islamic knowledge. As Grewal discovers through her interviewswith over 100 students and teachers, the impetus behind many of their journeysis a desire to find a solution to the “crisis” of Islamic authority in theUnited States. But once they spend some time immersed in a predominantlyMuslim society, many discover that this crisis extends to the Muslim worldas well. More recently, some American Muslim scholars have shifted their attention away from the Middle East and toward an “indigenization” of AmericanIslam, which, the author points out, also faces many challenges.In chapter 1 Grewal explains that her project is focused on student-travelerswho view the Islamic East as an “Archive of Tradition” (p. 36) that they hopewill provide a more authentic and authoritative form of Islamic knowledgethan what they could learn in the United States. Her fieldwork took her toAmman, Damascus, and Cairo during the early 2000s, where she interviewedstudents of such figures as Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Qubaysiya AnsaTamara Gray, and Shaykh Ali Goma‘a, among others. The students she metcame from diverse ethnic, geographic, and socio-economic backgrounds. Grewaldoes a good job of highlighting how these factors shaped their journeys ...
Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion
Authors: Arjana Sophia Rose
Published: October 2020

This volume of scholarship surrounding Islamic fashion presents a counternarrativeto a dominant story: that Muslim women in the West are subjugatedby the oppressive and patriarchal yoke of Islam. Islamic Fashion and Anti-Fashion: New Perspectives from Europe and North America offers a freshnew look at veiling, its intersection with religious piety, family, community,religious authority, fashion, and commoditization through sixteen distinct stud-104 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 32:2ies ranging from clothing items like the burqini and the pardosu to larger issuessurrounding identity and politics, such as North American Islamophobia andits impact on Canadian Muslims. This book represents a large field of researchon Muslim women’s lived experiences, one that reveals the complexities inherentin these religious actors whose choices of dress reveal a large set ofcompeting values, desires, and commitments.The book is organized into five sections: location and encounter, historyand heritage, the marketplace, fashion and media, and fashion and anti-fashion.Two of its attractive features are the numerous black and white images runningthrough many of the chapters, as well as the two groups of stunning, provocativecolor photographs showing the richness of Islamic fashion, from “hijabistreet style” to London Muslim hipster style ...
The Sharī‘a and Islamic Criminal Justice in Time of war and Peace
Authors: Laabdi Mourad
Published: October 2020

Mahmoud Cherif Bassiouni is a distinguished human rights advocate with anastounding career and publication record that exceeds seventy books (authoredand edited) and 260 articles. The Sharī‘a and Islamic Criminal Justice is yetanother rigorous contribution that should enrich and broaden the scope of thecriminal law debate in the Islamic legal system and its relevance to internationalhumanitarian law. The significance of this work lies especially in theBook Reviews 107author’s sincere endeavor to derive appropriate tools from Islamic law to addresscontemporary issues of post-conflict and transitional justice.The first chapter, an introductory review of key conceptual constructs andhistorical developments, examines various topics from the evolution of Islamiclegal theory and the Sunni and Shi‘i schools of law to the resurgence of Islamicthought during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In regard to Islamic law’shistorical pertinence to issues related to war and peace, the author elaboratesespecially on two categories: dār al-ḥarb (the house of war) and dār al-silm(the house of peace). Finally, he illustrates four types of treaties: those of peace(salām), truce (hudnah), protection (dhimmah), and safe conduct (amān) ...
Teaching Arabs, writing Self
Authors: Inloes Amina
Published: October 2020

Teaching Arabs, Writing Self traces Evelyn Shakir’s evolution from a buddingstudent of canon English literature who was desperately trying to “becomewhite” to her epiphany that stories from her own working-class immigrantneighborhood might be of equal worth. There, she found her unique niche bybecoming an author and scholar of Arab-American literature who helped gainrecognition for this literature as a genre, and who helped readers see ArabAmericans as people rather than stereotypes.Shakir divides her memoirs into three sections. In the first, she reflectson her childhood during an era that frowned upon diversity. Like many immigrantchildren, she turns up her nose at the “wrong” foods: “Bread withpockets. Hummus and tabouli. ‘Don’t put that stuff in my lunch box,’ I said”(p. 8). She even goes so far as to join a Methodist church whose quiet, orderlysimplicity seems more “American” than her family’s ritualistic but expressiveOrthodox church. Acculturated to the “Protestant disdain for Eastern churchesand, by extension, for the East itself,” only later does she develop “[a]n inklingthat there might be treasures I had turned my back on. That I might not alwayshave to be ashamed” (p. 13).In this section, we see the historical value of Shakir’s work not only as apersonal memoir, but also as an account of twentieth-century Americana. Bornin 1938, she offers a rare narrative voice of that era – that of a Lebanese-American and a woman; a handful of personal photos literally offer a rareglimpse into the society of Arab-American women. Many of her childhoodmemories center on Boston’s nearby Revere Beach, which boasted “slot machinesspitting out weight, fortune, photos of Rita Hayworth,” “Dodgems (‘nohead-on collisions’ but we did),” and “clams in a Fryolator … corn poppingfrantic in a display case … frozen custard (banana my favorite) spirallingthick-tongued into waffle cones, then dipped headfirst in jimmies” (p. 32).Her true claim to Americanhood is that her uncle ran the beach’s “glitzy” Cycloneroller coaster, which “gave me bragging rights among my friends andhelped situate me closer to the American norm that was always just beyondmy reach” (p. 29). The Cyclone was so important to the beach’s identity thatits closure in 1969 signaled the demise of the beach itself. “It’s those cars thattell the story,” she recollects. “As soon as masses of people could afford them,Revere lost its reason for being” (p. 43) ...
Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition
Authors: Mavani Hamid
Published: October 2020

The polyvalent Qur’anic text lends itself to multiple interpretations, dependingupon one’s presuppositions and premises. In fact, Q. 3:7 distinguishesbetween muḥkam (explicit, categorical) and mutashābih (metaphorical, allegorical,symbolic) verses. As such, this device provides a way for reinterpretingverses that outwardly appear to be problematic – be it in the area ofgender equality, minority rights, religious freedom, or war. However, manyof the verses dealing with legal provisions in such areas as devotional matters,marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and bequest, and specific punishmentsappear to be unequivocal, categorical, and explicit. As such, scholarshave devised certain hermeneutical strategies to situate and contextualizethese verses in a particular socio-historical context, as well as to emphasizethat they were in conversation with the society to which the Qur’an was revealedand thereby underlining the “performative” (p.15) nature of the relationshipbetween the Qur’an and the society.No verse is more problematic, in the sense that it offends contemporarysensibilities and is quite difficult to reconcile with an egalitarian worldviewwhen dealing with gender issues, than Q. 4:34, which allows the husband todiscipline his wife if he deems her guilty of nushūz (e.g., disobedience, intransigence,sexual lewdness, aloofness, dislike or hatred of himself). AyeshaChaudhry undertakes a study of this challenging verse by engaging the corpusof literature in Arabic from the classical period to the seventeenth century; shealso includes Urdu and English sources for the post-colonial period.She starts off by relating her personal journey from a state of discomfortand puzzlement when she first came across this verse in middle school to adefensive posture in trying to convince herself by invoking the Prophet’scompassion toward his wives and in cherishing the idea that the Qur’an gavemore rights to women than either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.She began a more rigorous and nuanced study of this verse after equippingherself with the necessary academic tools and analytic skills during her universitystudies. Frustrated with the shallow responses and the scholars’ circumspectionas regards any creative and novel reading of the verse for fearof losing their status in the community, she decided to do so herself with thehope of discovering views that would promote an egalitarian reading ...
Dunia Melayu Dunia Islam
Authors: Haron Muhammed
Published: October 2020

Dunia Melayu Dunia Islam (Malay World Islam World) may beconsidered one of the State of Melaka’s flagship NGOs. It hasworked hard to forge fraternal ties among the region’s Melayuspeakingcommunities and build religious relations between itselfand the larger Muslim world. Since its formation in 2000, it hasconnected these diverse groups through mutual projects and programs.In addition, DMDI has been in the vanguard, along withother Malaysian universities and other national and regional stakeholdersthat subscribe to the wasaṭīyah (moderation) approach.As a result, this has now become a rallying call for the entire nationto adhere to and support moderation. This essay reflects uponDMDI’s application of moderation toward various socio-politicaland religious issues by tying it to Malaysia’s specific socio-culturalreligious NGOs ...
Recovering the Female Voice in Islamic Scripture
Authors: Davary Bahar
Published: October 2020

The absence of women’s voices from the scriptures of the major world religionshas been the subject of feminist theologians’ inquiry, especially duringthe past three decades. Georgina Jardim’s work in feminist scholarship andwomen’s study is impressive. This book provides a fine synopsis of some ofthe important works in Islamic hermeneutical tradition while set in a comparative framework. As such, it is a great contribution to the comparative feministhermeneutics of scripture. The author makes good use of works by AminaWadud, Barbara Stowasser, Asma Barlas, and other feminists who have workedon the Qur’an or on paradigms of Muslim women in the Islamic textual tradition.She weaves their ideas and theories with those of Annemarie Schimmel,Sachiko Murata, Denise A. Spellberg, W. Montgomery Watt, RichardBell, Ashley M. Walker, Michael Sells, and others. In addition, she draws fromChristian and Jewish feminist thought as well as that of secular philosophersor theoreticians in juxtaposition with Muslim interpretations. As the title suggests,she focuses on women’s speech by emphasizing voice rather than silence.The author concludes that women not only have a voice in Islamicscripture, but that in the Abrahamic scriptures as a whole they break silencein order to invoke social justice.The book’s predominant theme, the Qur’anic account of “the womanwho disputes,” is juxtaposed with similar stories in the Jewish and Christianscriptures, which makes it an interesting exploration in Abrahamic interfeministinterreligious dialogue. Her use of scriptural reasoning to bringAbrahamic and secular voices in conversation on this topic is original.Among the few works with a comparative hermeneutic approach to womenin religion are Murata’s The Tao of Islam (1992), a sourcebook on genderrelations in Islamic discourse with references and analogies to the yin andyang elements, and Yvonne Yazbek Haddad and John L. Esposito’s Daughtersof Abraham (2002). Jardim’s book is distinct in that it compares bothfeminist methodologies as well as a parallel scriptural story in these threetraditions ...
Islam in the Balance
Authors: Sabet Amr G.E.
Published: October 2020

This concise and important book deals with the dimensional change in internationalconflicts and security pertaining to the power of ideas: Do ideas and/or political ideologies threaten the security of regimes and states in ways thatdiffer from those conventionally attributed to the mere balance of militarypower? By studying the role of religious or transnational ideology in the MiddleEast in particular, the study aims to advance an understanding of “how,why, and when ideology affects threat perception and state policy” (p. vii) viatwo aspects, one related to ideational threat perception and the other toideational balancing. Together they provide an analytical framework for understandingstrategic interaction as an “ideational security dilemma” (p. vii)with a specific focus on how Egypt and Saudi Arabia have responded to threatperceptions emanating both from the rise and the activities of Iran and Sudan.These four dyads attempt to examine changes in threat perceptions before andafter Islamists came to power in the latter two countries (p. 4).

The idea behind this dyadic approach is to show how threat perceptionsto national security are not altered due to increased hard power capabilities,but rather due to soft power projections. Rubin makes the interesting pointthat Egypt and Saudi Arabia felt more threatened by a militarily weak Sudanas well as a militarily degraded post-revolutionary Iran far more than theydid during the time of the militarily powerful Shah (pp. 2-3). Much of thishas to do with the point that it is not mere ideology or ideas that pose a threatto national security, but rather that they become so in their “projected” form(p. 4).The following six chapters elaborate on this simple and straightforward,yet highly significant and relevant, proposition. In the introductory chapter,Rubin develops his framework of analysis (the “ideational securitydilemma”) and makes it clear that one of the study’s main purposes is “totake ideology seriously.” This is done within the realist framework that acceptsthe centrality of the state, as well as that of neo-classical realism (p.124) which focuses on the foreign policy emanating from domestic culturaland perceptual variables (p. 18). The study refocuses attention on ideationalprojections that resonate with a foreign domestic audience and that may consequentlybring about a transnational response, thereby exacerbating internalsocietal unrest ...
A Critical Introduction to Khomeini
Authors: Ebrahimian Mojtaba
Published: October 2020

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (1902-89) is undoubtedly one of the twentiethcentury’s key international revolutionary figures whose role is definitive tomodern Iranian history. A massive amount of scholarship has been producedin Iran about him; this is not the case, however, in the English-speaking world.This publication by a collection of eminent scholars of Iranian studies, therefore,examines the critical impact of his political thought and religious philosophywithin and beyond Iran.In “Introduction,” editor Arshin Adib-Moghaddam provides a brief summaryof Khomeini’s political life before, during, and after the revolution. Inhis view, the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary discourse not only triggeredunprecedented sociopolitical changes, but also influenced the subjectivity ofIranian citizens. Moreover, he maintains that the two pillars of the ayatollah’spolitical thought were a “strong state” and “independence from foreign influences,”which are still adamantly pursued today (p. 15).Fakhreddin Azimi, in “Khomeini and the ‘White Revolution,’” looks atthe social context of his rise to prominence in the pre-revolutionary decades.With the dissolution of Reza Shah’s autocratic rule in 1941, secular and leftistdiscourses gained enough momentum to threaten the religious establishment.Despite these changes, the leading Shi‘i ulema maintained a quietist stanceuntil the middle of twentieth century (p. 19). During the 1960s, Khomeini initiatedhis rigorous anti-Shah political activity by combining “a stern moralismon gender issues and sociopersonal freedoms” with “forceful professions of ...
A Moment in the American Desert
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

Dar al-Islam is the realized vision of an American-born Muslim, an AmericaneducatedSaudi businessman, the award-winning architect Hassan Fathy(1900-89). The purpose-built educational center and mosque was built in theearly 1980s, sits in New Mexico’s mesa landscape, and today functions as aneducational retreat.During the late 1970s Abdullah Nurdin Durkee and his wife Nura envisionedthe construction of an Islamic village in the United States. During atrip to Makkah they met Sahl Kabbani, a Saudi businessman educated in theUnited States who felt a connection and desired to contribute in some manner.Together they decided to create an Islamic village that would also function asan educational center and retreat. Later on Nura Durkee, while also prayingin Makkah, met Mothie and Johara, daughters of the Saudi king at the time,both of whom offered a financial gift to start the project. The group searchedfor a suitable site and eventually settled on Abiquiu, NM, due to the abundanceof available land for a relatively low cost, the remote location, and the landscape’ssimilar qualities with those in the Middle East.In Abiquiu, 3,450 hectares were purchased in the rugged backcountry,populated with flat-topped mesas and a verdant valley near the Chama river.Abdullah Naseef, then rector of the King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, ...
Hassan al-Turabi’s Discourse on the Arts
Authors: Hassan Gubara Said , Buaben Jabal M.
Published: October 2020

In Islam, God’s wondrous creativity is reflected in the unity of designin the widest diversity and beauty of the cosmos. For someMuslims, Islamic art expresses this natural beauty as well as themiracles of God’s creation related in the Qur’an and the prophetictraditions (aḥādīth). This article focuses on Hassan al-Turabi’sperceptions of the arts and the aura of conservative prohibitionand cautious permission that surrounds them. For him, the Islamicattitude toward the arts and aesthetics is determined by monotheism(tawḥīd), which entails one’s absolute belief in God’s onenessand the abjuration of anything that might compete with it or withHis omnipotence. God has created in beauty a dualistic nature:guidance (belief and faith) and temptation (seduction and aberration)for humanity.
Successful Schools, Stagnant Education
Authors: Pervez Saulat
Published: October 2020

With so much focus on illiteracy, we sometimes forget the dire stateof affairs in our urban centers with regard to education. Educationin the Muslim world has increasingly regressed into an exercise ofrote learning, a mass of discrete knowledge, and a frenzied race towardwhat we deem “useful” skills. By showing the ground realityin private education in Karachi, Pakistan, this article strives to highlightthe cyclical and future-oriented trends in schools that are inimicalto the very spirit of education. In doing so, it emphasizes theneed to adopt thinking as the primary skill taught to students inschools, with everything else encompassed within its fold. WhileKarachi is a case study here, the importance of creating thinkingcultures within schools is a crucial and very relevant concept toschools everywhere in the world, including the United States.
Muslim Scholars’ Take on the Negative Consequences of “Terrorism”
Authors: Ibrahim Zakyi
Published: October 2020

I pen this editorial feeling weary of having to address this particular topic yetagain. But please bear with me, for the senseless murder of fourteen innocentsin San Bernardino on December 2, 2015, occurred only twenty-two milesfrom my home. Although I do not regularly attend the mosque that the killersfrequented, I personally know that its director is one of America’s best Muslimleaders in terms of knowledge, wisdom, and kindness. Lastly, one victim recentlygraduated from the university at which I teach.Over the years, I have addressed Muslim extremism and radicalism fromvarious vantage points: the identity of the Muslim extremists, whether their actionscan be intellectually and religiously described as Islamic (AJISS 32:2),and whether they could be decisively defeated (not wiped out) so that peacewill prevail (AJISS 32:4). I have deliberated how their violent acts against innocentsevoke apprehension and fear, thereby stigmatizing and staining allMuslims and even Islam itself (AJISS 29:1). I even addressed the erroneousperception that America’s imams cause radicalism and suggested how theyshould tailor their messages to combat extremism (AJISS 27:2). In this editorial,I explicate what a group of Muslim academics in the Middle East considersto be the negative consequences of “terrorism” (maḍār al-irhāb).1The first negative consequence of terrorism2 is that it “attracts God’s wrathand subjects the perpetrator to God’s severe punishment, both in this worldand the hereafter.”3 These Muslim scholars had the following verse in mindwhile extrapolating: “If anyone kills a believer deliberately, the punishmentfor him is Hell, and there he will remain: God is angry with him, and rejectshim, and had prepared a tremendous torment for him” (Q. 4:93). In a hadithnarrated by Ibn Abbas, the young Companion who has been dubbed the “fatherof Qur’anic exegesis,” he said that when this verse was revealed the Companionsasked the Prophet, “Even if the perpetrator repents, becomes a truebeliever, and does good deeds?” The Prophet responded, “How else can herepent?” (annā lahū al-tawbah) ...
God Is Beautiful
Authors: Stewart Devin
Published: October 2020

God is Beautiful is the English translation of a work originally submitted as adoctoral dissertation in Islamic studies at the University of Bonn in 1997 andpublished as Gott ist Schön: Das ästhetische Erlebung des Koran in 1999.Four printings since then attest to its popularity, which stems from its handlingof a fascinating topic – Muslims’ experience of the Qur’an. This subject hasbeen largely ignored in western scholarship, notable exceptions being art historicalinvestigations of Qur’anic calligraphy and Kristina Nelson’s work onQur’anic recitation. Rather than attempting a historical, linguistic, or grammaticalanalysis of the Qur’an, Kermani here engages in reader-response criticismto explain how the Qur’an both affected and continues to affect Muslimreaders. This work presents itself as an alternative path to the Orientalists’ negative assessments of the Qur’an as an aesthetic text, which implied thatMuslims’ claims about its beauty were simply the results of bias, devotion,blind adherence to tradition, and imperfect understanding. Kermani dividesthe discussion into six chapters, each of which investigates the topic from adifferent angle.Chapter 1, “The First Listeners,” discusses accounts of early reception ofthe Qur’an, stressing that from the very beginning its appeal was its linguisticbeauty as much as the content of its message. He examines, among many others,the famous example Umar ibn al-Khattab’s conversion after he heard thebeginning of Sūrat Ṭāhā (Q. 20) and was enraptured by its beauty and eloquence.The aesthetic experience of the Islamic message was thus inseparablefrom its theological or religious aspects. Chapter 6, “The Sufi Listeners,”makes a similar point by focusing on the reception of the Quran in mysticalcircles and especially on accounts of qatlā al-Qur’ān, figures who, upon hearingcertain verses, were so affected emotionally that they died on the spot.Through its linguistic form, the Qur’an has a visceral effect on the hearer thatcannot be reduced to the mental reception of doctrine ...
Reinstating the Queens
Authors: Ibrahim Zakyi
Published: October 2020

The leadership of women at the highest political level remains an ongoingcontroversial issue for Muslims.1 And yet women have led both medievaland modern Muslim societies – Pakistan, Indonesia, and Bangladesh –thereby rendering this debate, in practice, moot. But quite a few Muslimmen consider this reality as an abomination and perversion.In his Al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭānīyah wa al-Wilāyāt al-Dīnīyah, al-Mawardi (d.1058) discusses the imamate in the sense of the caliphate (khilāfah: Islamicleadership) and lists its conditions.2 Rather surprisingly, gender is not one ofthem. However, Asghar Ali Engineer writes that “al-Mawardi maintained thata woman cannot be made head of state.”3 Although the gender clause is notfound in Al-Aḥkām al-Sulṭānīyah written by the Hanbali Abu Ya‘la al-Farra’(d. 1113) and other early works, later scholars categorically include it.The Shafi‘i Ahmad ibn Ali al-Qalqashandi (d. 1418) cites masculinity asthe first of the fourteen conditions of eligibility. He bases his decision on thehadith reported by al-Bukhari and narrated by the Companion Abu Bakra.This scholar explains how a leader has to mingle with other men to discussstate affairs, an act that Islam prohibits for women. He adds that “because awoman is incomplete in her own right, as she does not even control her marriage,she cannot be made a leader over others.”4 I contend that his and similarremarks are seriously influenced by cultural circumstances, ones that are nottruly reflective of Islam.
From Anatolia to Aceh
Authors: Bruckmayr Philipp
Published: October 2020

Scholars of Islam in Southeast Asia and the history of the Malay-Indonesianworld have long been aware of periods of intense contacts between the OttomanEmpire and the region. Most widely known in this context are the politicalexchanges between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Ottoman Empire ofthe sixteenth century in the face of Portuguese maritime domination in SoutheastAsia. Regional calls for Ottoman aid against the expanding Europeanpowers by Muslim rulers were voiced in the nineteenth century. Despite thislapse in documented political contacts, however, connections between the tworegions were also sustained and developed further throughout the interveningcenturies on a variety of levels, most prominently in the economic, religious,and intellectual spheres.Despite the pioneering work of scholars such as Anthony Reid since the1960s, these connections, including inter alia the holy cities and Yemen’sHadhramaut region, both important centers of Islamic learning for SoutheastAsian Muslims and the source of strong migrant communities settling in theMalay-Indonesian world, have received scant scholarly attention. It is againstthis background that the British Academy-funded research project “Islam,Trade, and Politics across the Indian Ocean” and the volume at hand, whichrepresents one of its major fruits, brings together new innovative research onall of the various aspects of this particular relationship. Hereby it must benoted that its scope extends at times well beyond the Ottoman era also intothe Republican era, and that, importantly, much of the documentary evidencerelied upon derives from newly discovered archival sources.The volume is divided into three thematic parts, preceded by two introductorychapters by the editors and Anthony Reid, respectively, which set thestage for the remainder of the book by reviewing the relationship’s general ...
The Cosmic Script
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

This cloth-bound, large-format book set is a quest to understand and apply thecontents of a groundbreaking fourth/tenth-century treatise that reformed Arabicpenmanship and established the canon of calligraphy applied to this day.Muhamad ibn Ali ibn Muqla’s treatise The Proportioned Script acts as the esotericcenter of a riddle not unlike the unraveling of a lost book through otherbooks as seen in Umberto Echo’s The Name of the Rose. In this case, The ProportionedScript is but a succinct treatise, for Ibn Muqla’s two explanatorymanuscripts detailing the proportions and methods are lost – and can only beretraced through subsequent studies and drawn reconstruction.Why such a monumental effort to unravel a single small treatise on Arabicpenmanship? As the authors explain, it was and is the canon of proportion inwriting and reveals a great deal about the sociocultural context and the importanceof script related to faith. Hence the title of the book. The Cosmic Scriptis clearly the result of significant research. The two authors met over fourdecades ago, during which Moustafa completed an MA and a PhD on the subject.They collaborated for eight years on unraveling The Proportioned Scriptthrough other sources and reconstructed the canon of letters by a detailed geometricanalysis and Moustafa’s own artistic practice of application.The first volume includes an introduction and seven chapters outliningthe historical and spiritual background of the Arabic script in terms of ancientpre-Islamic influences. The second volume contains an introduction andtwenty-one chapters, of which nineteen cover the specific letter families andoutline sources and specific graphics for each letter’s formulation.“Decoding the “Geometry of Letters,” the introduction to the first volume,describes Ibn Muqla as having invented the theory of proportioned script thattransformed this art form and had a significant impact upon the culture of theAbbasid era and beyond. He derived his system from the scribal dot (squarein form, on an angle) and thus, according to the authors, linked prophecy, writing,and geometry with the sacred dimensions. The elevated rank of the penand writing were underscored by the first revealed Qur’anic verses and thesacred status of the physical Qur’an. The authors argued that geometry bridged ...
Books and Written Culture of the Islamic World
Authors: Graham William A.
Published: October 2020

Claude Gilliot (b. 1940) stands at the forefront of Qur’anic and especiallytafsīr studies in today’s western academic world. His expertise extends alsointo other Islamic fields, notably theology, and his well-known encyclopediclearning and bibliographic erudition are as striking as the depth and breadthof his scholarly corpus and the sharp wit that all who know him have come toexpect in their encounters with him. The book under review is a fitting tributefrom twenty colleagues, nine writing in English, eight in French, and three inGerman across several fields of Islamic studies.The book’s first section (pp. 3-130), “Authors,” consists of seven contributions,each of which treats one Muslim or European non-Muslim author ortext, four of which pertain to Qur’anic studies and three to other areas. Threeof the four Qur’anic contributions discuss different interpretive approachesthrough elucidation of exemplary texts. Pierre Larcher offers a close analysisof four Qur’anic phrases or sentences that pose particular problems of textualvariants or readings as they are treated by al-Farra’ (d. 822) in his Ma‘ānī al-Qur’ān. Andrew Rippin gives a trenchant discussion of polysemy as a ...
Western Studies of Shi‘i Islam
Authors: Takim Liyakat
Published: October 2020

This paper will examine the historical study of Shi‘ism in thewestern academy and argue that until the last two decades, westernscholarship looked at it primarily through a Sunni lens. Thischanged during the 1980s due to various socio-political factors,among them Iran’s Islamic revolution, Hizbollah’s emergence inLebanon, and the American invasion and occupation of Iraq,forced western scholars to look at it in different light. Consequently,they began to examine different facets of this branch ofIslam, ranging from its concept of centralized authority during theTwelfth Imam’s Greater Occultation to liturgies, rituals, and politicaltheory.
Les Salafistes and a French Reproduction of Certainties in a World of Uncertainties
Authors: Poljarevic Emin
Published: October 2020

The new French documentary Les Salafistes (The Salafis) that premieredJanuary 26, 2016, in a small number of French theaters offersiconographic imagery seldom seen in the public space: a stringof interviews with some of the leading jihadist militants in Mali,Tunisia, Algeria, and Iraq coupled with ghastly images of violenceperpetrated by militant groups. The intention appears to be to showthe irrationality of and paradox in the jihadis’ discourse and actions.Unfortunately, the directors have succeeded only in reproducing alreadyexisting stereotypes of Salafis. The lack of any appropriatecontextualization that problematizes the recent rise of violence inthe Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is perhaps thefilm’s major flaw. Despite the directors’ ambition to let violent extremistsdiscredit their own project, the documentary presents anessentialist argument that reproduces Orientalist imageries of a savagereligion. Without the appropriate commentary and backgroundoverview to the conflicts featured in the film, the audiences are leftalone with an extremist narrative that confirms the evocations ofthe West’s moral, cultural, and political superiority over the East.
Mazrui
Authors: Sheikh Naveed S.
Published: October 2020

In the checkered history of Africology, from early colonial endeavorsto the brave new world of postcolonialist dissections, few scholarselicited the excitement and adoration that Professor Ali Al-Amin Mazrui(1933-2014) did. On the very continent that he studied so intensely, libraries,educational centers, and roads have been named for him posthumouslyin recognition of his manifold contributions. And yet, althoughrare by the standards of academic aloofness, the adulation of his defenderswas matched by the abrasive disdain and aberrant hostility ofhis detractors, some of whom were undoubtedly driven by intellectualor political opposition to his underlying project of reviving non-westernconsciousness during an era so marked by the supposed universalismof western finance, culture, and militarism.To be certain, though, Mazrui was not fazed by such criticism orchallenge; instead, it would appear that he rather thrived on controversy,relishing each emergent opportunity to provide correctives to the receivedwisdom. Indeed, when writing, Mazrui was often schooling. Hisdeliberately provocative pronouncements, in prose and speech, wouldquestion and rattle, but always make, in demonstrative (rather than didactic)terms, poignant points about errors perceptual and praxeological.In so doing, Mazrui – clearly inspired by the finesse of his Oxforddoctoral training – was not shy to adopt riveting rhetorical devices:irony, hyperbole, and simile abounded. Such devices, however, did notobscure the structured ways, even if implicit, through which his analysisunfolded. When he took the time, he would reason as well as argue inclear schemata by employing binaries, triads, dichotomies, and juxtapositions.His eye for detail was as pronounced as his mastery of history:microhistory could give way to longue durée in a paragraph, thelocal and the global would intertwine, and the ideational and the ...
Reimagining Malcolm X
Authors: Morrow John Andrew
Published: October 2020

At 84-pages, Reimagining Malcolm X: Street Thinker Versus Homo Academicusby Seyed Javad Miri is more of a booklet than a book. In fact, like mostof the 40 books on sociology and religion published by this scholar, many ofwhich are self-published or released by subsidy publishers, it falls into thatawkward category between an essay that is too long and a book that is tooshort. Considering the fact that most university and independent academicpresses place profit and marketability before contribution to scholarship inthe field, the fact that ambitious and prolific academics seek to be proactiveand find alternate modes of sharing their scholarship should be commended.Consequently, scholars working in the field of sociology and religion shouldbe grateful to both Miri and the University Press of America for making thiswork on Malcolm X available to readers and researchers.Reimagining Malcolm X examines the significance of el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz as a social theorist by analyzing his views on race, academia, philosophy,and politics. The work is divided into four chapters: “Novel Strategiesof Interpretation,” “Undisciplinary Fields of Knowledge,” “Violence, Religion,and Extremism,” and “The Epic of America.”In chapter 1, Miri points out that “Malcolm X has not been appropriatedwithin the body of academic social sciences as he should have been” (p. 9).This is both obvious and intentional. It is heartening, however, to see thatinterest in Malcolm’s thoughts has extended to certain segments of Iranianacademia. As the author reveals, however, some Iranian scholars are reticentto see the value of Malcolmian theories and concepts (p. xi). Despite all ofits revolutionary rhetoric, the Islamic Republic of Iran has shown little interestin el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz. On the contrary, it has preferred to invitehis nemesis Louis Farrakhan, a man who admits that he created the conditionsthat lead to Malcolm’s assassination, to preach at the seminary in Qum.Considering that the Iranian regime considers itself the bastion of Shi‘iteorthodoxy and cracks down on both political critics and practitioners oftaṣawwuf (‘irfān or Sufism), it is ironic that its leaders have promoted a manwho believes that W. D. Fard was the incarnation of Allah and that ElijahMuhammad, as opposed to Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah, was Allah’s final ...
Mirrors of Entrapment and Emancipation
Authors: Elahi Babak
Published: October 2020

In 1992, Farzaneh Milani’s groundbreaking Veils and Words brought into dialoguethe fields of Iranian studies and feminist critical theory – two areas ofhumanist inquiry that, in some sense, need each other. Moreover, with workslike Hamid Naficy’s The Making of Exile Cultures (1993), interdisciplinarycritical theory has informed many humanist and social science approaches toIranian literature and culture. These links between integrated critical theoryand Iranian studies can produce compelling and insightful analyses. However,the cadence of such work might be more in tune with one subfield than another.While the content and subject of these studies might include Iranian society,culture, or art, it is often the case that the critical method being deployedis more important than the historical, literary, or social content to which it isapplied. Methodology eclipses the subject of analysis.This is the case with Leila Rahimi Bahmany’s Mirrors of Entrapment andEmancipation (Mirrors). Bahmany’s work tells us more about the feministcritical genealogy brought to bear on the work of Sylvia Plath (d. 1963) andForrough Farrokhzad (d. 1967) than it does about the works and lives of thesepoets themselves. But if, as I note above, these fields do “need” each other,then this book is worth exploring for both feminist scholars and Iranian studiesspecialists. Beyond specialists, however, the work does little to draw in areader not already at least slightly familiar with debates in psychoanalyticfeminist theory of the twentieth century.Bahmany begins her book with the highly suggestive images of Narcissusand Echo from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. However, she quickly movesfrom this basis in classical western mythology to the relevance of these imagesfor psychoanalysis and feminism. Thus, she rapidly establishes a ...
A Muslim Reflection on Dangerous Games
Authors: Inloes Amina
Published: October 2020

For over two decades, a moral panic over fantasy role-playinggames has swept America, fuelled by a minority of fundamentalistChristians who have campaigned against games such as Dungeons& Dragons on the grounds that they led youth to Satanism, suicide,and violent crime. In his 2015 book, Dangerous Games: What theMoral Panic over Role-Playing Games says about Play, Religion,and Imagined Worlds, David Laycock explores why fantasy roleplayinggames seem similar enough to religion to provoke fear,as well as the dynamics of this moral panic. While he, apparently,did not set out to write a book about Islam, his insights about religion,fantasy, and narrative opened my eyes to the dynamics oftwentieth-century Islam. Additionally, as a Muslim reader livingduring a “moral panic” over Islam, Laycock’s analysis helped meunderstand that today’s Islamophobia in America has little to dowith Islam. Lastly, although Muslim gamers, fantasy/sciencefictionauthors, and game developers are usually underacknowledged,there is increasing interest in Muslims and fantasy/science-fiction. I hope to call attention to this invisible cohort.
Reaching Consensus on Organ Donation
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

On July 20, 2016, IIIT held a forum entitled “Reaching Consensus on OrganDonation,” in collaboration with the Washington Regional Transplant Community(WRTC; http://www.beadonor.org), to hear presentations by medicalprofessionals, community leaders, religious scholars, and social scientists. Eachof the four panels was followed by a robust Question and Answer session.Panel 1: Conceptual Framework. Lori Bingham (president and CEO,WRTC) outlined the organ donation process in terms of which organizationsand partners are involved, how medical suitability is determined, consultingwith the surviving members, and deciding who receives the available organ.After listing the agencies and the high degree of regulation involved, shethanked Imam Johari Abdul-Malik (outreach director, Dar al-Hijrah IslamicCenter) for his help in reaching out to area Muslims, some of whom declineto donate their organs on religious grounds.Muzammil Siddiqi (chairman, Fiqh Council of North America) said thatsuch decisions require ijtihād, for there are no relevant Qur’anic verses or hadiths.Although widely accepted by jurists, questions remain, such as whichorgans can be donated, should this be encouraged before or after death, can afamily donate an organ if the deceased died without a will, does donating “deform”the body, how is death determined, is the patient obliged to receive it,can he/she buy it or should it be made available for free, and so on.In his “Organization of Islamic Legal Ethics.”Abdulzziz Sachedina (professorand IIIT Chair in Islamic Studies, George Mason University) stated thatthe main issue is procuring organs, a topic surrounded by “cultural impedimentsand religious misunderstandings.” People are asking to whom does thebody belong (the person or God), can one donate that which will not growback, and if the donated organ will be returned on the Day of Judgment. Asthis is a modern issue, imams and scholars need to identiy ethical grounds in ...
The Shi‘a in Modern South Asia
Authors: Bruckmayr Philipp
Published: October 2020

The volume at hand brings together recent advances in and new avenues forthe study of both Ithna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in South Asia. As FrancisRobinson notes in his introduction, the region’s roughly 60 million Shi‘aswere grossly neglected in scholarship until the mid-1980s. Since then, andparticularly from the turn of the twenty-first century onward, the situation haschanged significantly. Indeed, some of the most interesting and promising recentstudies of various historical and contemporary aspects of Shi‘ism in generalhave focused on those very communities. Justin Jones, one of the spearheadsof this development, has acted as co-editor of this important collectionof eight thematically highly diverse essays.After Robinson’s overview of the field’s existing literature and the volume’scontents, Sajjad Rizvi tackles a major desideratum in the study of IndianShi‘i scholarly history by closely examining the life and works of Sayyid DildarAli Nasirabadi (d. 1820). A major scholar of his day, as well as the founderof a scholarly dynasty and an instrumental figure in establishing the Usuli traditionin the Shi‘i state of Awadh, his figure and works have, surprisingly, onlyreceived attention in the context of Dildar Alis’s polemics against Shah Abdal-Aziz of Delhi (d. 1823) and his critique of Shi‘ism. Reviewing Ali’s severelycontested but lastingly influential intellectual attack on Akhbarism, Sufism,Sunnism, and philosophy, all expressed in the context of rising Shi‘ipower in late eighteenth-century Awadh, Rizvi aptly highlights the importanceof seriously considering major developments in the late pre-colonial periodin order to more fully understand the actual and supposed transformations thatSouth Asian Shi‘ism underwent during and beyond colonial rule. Needless tosay, this also holds true for the study of other Muslim communities of thenineteenth and twentieth centuries ...