bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Islam and Bioethics
Authors: Bhattacharya Sandhya , Brockopp Jonathan E.
Published: October 2020

On 27-28 March 2006, Pennsylvania State University hosted an internationalconference on “Islam and Bioethics: Concerns, Challenges, and Responses.”Cosponsored by several academic units in the College of Liberal Arts, theconference brought in historians, health care professionals, theologians, and social scientists from ten different countries. Twenty-four papers were presented,along with Maren Grainger-Monsen’s documentary about an Afghaniimmigrant seeking cancer treatment in California.After opening remarks by Susan Welch (dean, College of Liberal Arts)and Nancy Tuana (director, Rock Ethics Institute), panelists analyzed“Critical Perspectives on Islamic Medical Ethics.” Hamada Hamid’s (NewYork University Medical School) “Negotiating Autonomy and Religion inthe Clinical Setting: Case Studies of American Muslim Doctors andPatients,” showed that few doctors explore the role of religion in a patient’sdecision-making process. She suggested that they rethink this practice.Hassan Bella (College of Medicine, King Faisal University, Dammam)spoke on “Islamic Medical Ethics: What and How to Teach.” His survey, conductedin Saudi Arabia among medical practitioners, revealed that most practitionersapproved of courses on Islamic ethics but did not know if suchcourses would improve the doctor-patient relationship. Sherine Hamdy’s(Brown University) “Bodies That Belong to God: Organ Transplants andMuslim Ethics in Egypt” maintained that one cannot easily classify transplantpatients’ arguments as “religious” or “secular,” for religious values are fusedtogether with a patient’s social, political, and/or economic concerns.The second panel, “Ethical Decision-Making in Local and InternationalContexts,” provoked a great deal of discussion. Susi Krehbiel (Brown University)led off with “‘Women Do What They Want’: Islam and FamilyPlanning in Tanzania.” This ethnographic study was followed by Abul FadlMohsin Ebrahim’s (KwaZulu University, Durban) “Human Rights andRights of the Unborn.” Although Islamic law is commonly perceived asantagonistic to the UN’s charter on human rights, Ebrahim argues that bothmay be used to protect those who can and cannot fight for their right to dignity,including the foetus. Thomas Eich (Bochum University) asserted in“The Process of Decision Making among Contemporary Muslim ReligiousScholars in the Case of ‘Surplus’ Embryos” that decisions reached by internationalMuslim councils were heavily influenced by local politics and contentiousdecisions in such countries as Germany and Australia.The afternoon panel, “The Fetus and the Value of Fetal Life,” focusedon specific issues raised by artificial reproductive technologies (ARTs).Vardit Rispler-Chaim (Haifa University) presented “Contemporary Muftisbetween Bioethics and Social Reality: Pre-Selection of the Sex of a Fetus asParadigm.” After summarizing social customs and religious literature fromaround the world, she claimed that muftis generally favor pre-selection techniquesand suggested that their reasoning is guided by a general social ...
The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia
Authors: Daniels Timothy P.
Published: October 2020

This book, an extension of Azra’s doctoral dissertation, explores the transmissionof Islamic knowledge from the Middle East to the Malay-Indonesian(Jawi) world. Making use of Arabic biographical dictionaries and scholarlytexts, he produces a historical account arguing that the region’s Islamicrenewal and reformism originated in crisscrossing networks of Islamic scholarsbased in the Haramayn (Makkah and Madinah) during the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries. Azra’s detailed historical research substantiates anearlier intellectual transmission than previously thought. He contends thatthe main ideas transmitted comprised a “neo-Sufism” characterized by harmonizingthe Shari`ah and tasawwuf (Sufism) and promoting a return toorthodoxy, purification, and activism. He makes these arguments in an introduction,seven chapters, and a brief epilogue ...
Indonesian Islam
Authors: Daniels Timothy P.
Published: October 2020

Detailed, extensive, and provocative, this book presents and assesses twentieth-century Indonesian fatawa (legal rulings) on a range of issues. Over thecourse of his well-documented discussion of decisions rendered by fourmain Indonesian fatwa-issuing bodies, Hooker highlights their methods ofreasoning and the authorities they heed. He argues “that only the fatawa cantell us what Islam is on” the continuum of merging state and religiousauthorities in Indonesia at the beginning of the twenty-first century (p. ix).Confronting the question of secularism and revelation, as well as tensionsbetween new and old authorities, Hooker posits the authority of God,revealed Islamic knowledge, and 1,400 years of intellectual tradition intertwinedwith colonial and postcolonial state authority in complex ways.This book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and an epilogue andappendix of Indonesian fatawa sources. The substantial introduction beginsby reviewing the ideas of several Middle Eastern reformers who had aninfluence on “defining” Indonesian Islam, especially in the early twentieth century. However, underscoring the distinctiveness of indigenous IndonesianIslam, Hooker describes its particular characteristics, such as itsemphasis on the Shafi`i madhhab (legal school), local legal texts, sixteenthtoeighteenth-century tasawwuf literature, royal court literature, and thediverse translation of Islamic prescriptions into daily life. Despite this diffuselocalization of Islam, the Dutch colonial state and the subsequent Republic ofIndonesia severely limited Islam’s public presence until the recent passage oftwo legal initiatives.Finally, Hooker discusses the “new scholasticism” in Indonesia, thecrux of his introduction, in which he stresses four Indonesian intellectuals:Hazairin, Harun Nasution, Nurcholish Madjid, and Abdurrahman Wahid. Heasserts that they represent a “creative” rather than a “responsive scholasticism,”first emerging in the 1960s, that is “self-confident enough to proposeserious change, alteration,” and “adaptation of classic scholasticism” (p. 45).This section, which takes an optimistic tone toward these four intellectuals,appears to be disconnected from the rest of the book. None of them areclosely related to the four fatwa-issuing bodies, except for AbdurrahmanWahid, a former leader of Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and president of Indonesiawho has become increasingly isolated from mainstream Indonesian Islamdue to his perceived commitment to liberal democratic values over Revelation.On the other hand, a discussion of scholars prominent at significanthistorical junctures mentioned later in the text would have been moreinsightful and would have contributed to the author’s overall argument ...
An Enchanted Modern
Authors: Blomfield Bridget
Published: October 2020

In An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi`i Lebanon, culturalanthropologist Lara Deeb writes an ethnography about a group ofShi`i Muslim women in a Beirut community. She follows their religiousand social commitments, allows them to express their individual and collectivesentiments, and describes their understanding of piety and how theymanifest it in their commitment to social activism. She argues that they createa space for Islam within the modern world and that the notions Islamand modernity are not contradictory, but rather complementary. Her subjectspractice authenticated Islam, which she defines as an Islam that has amodern interpretation based on knowledge and understanding, in contrastto a traditional, unquestioned Islam that is followed blindly by the oldergenerations. 

Deeb uses interviews and participant observation to ascertain her interlocutors’multiple discourses. These women, having steadfastly studied theirreligion, locate themselves as pious women who can construct and definethemselves in the modern world without succumbing to the pressures ofwestern standards of modernity. Loosely associated with the Hizbullah politicalparty, her subjects live in al-Dahiyya, an area of southern suburbanBeirut (considered a Shi`i ghetto) that houses some 500,000 people.In the West, these women are seen as religious fundamentalists akin tothe Taliban. The goals of Deeb’s book are to dismiss this gross inaccuracy,suggest that Islam is not a static and monolithic religion, and show that Islamand modernity are compatible. She describes how the women she interviewedperceived modernity in the western sense, as well as their own ideaof what Deeb calls “enchanted ways of being modern.” This “enchantedmodern” form of piety emphasizes the importance of both material and spiritualprogress as well as a “new kind of religiosity, one that involves consciousand conscientious commitment.” ...
The Coalition against the “War on Terror” in Light of International Politics, Law, and Protecting Human Welfare
Authors: Hussain Kaleem
Published: October 2020

In the universal realms of international law, all the associated political,social, legal, and religious actors would seek to strive to live in a worldwhere there is justice, peace, tolerance, enhancement of human welfare,and friendly relations between states.1 Unfortunately, these universalideals are far from being achieved or adhered to in our contemporaryinternational society. The horrific attacks on the World Trade Center andthe Pentagon, which provided the catalyst for the global “war on terror”starting in Afghanistan, raises numerous questions in international lawand the global political realm. In all of its forms, terrorism is a diseasethat breeds fear and leads to the devastation and destruction of humanlives, societies, and nations. It is also a topic that many historians andlegalists try to avoid, at times, due to its promiscuity and subversivenature.In this short article, I argue that terrorism is not a new phenomenon assuch, but that it has been part of international society throughout the ages.However, since 9/11, it has experienced a sporadic injection and revitalizationthat has raised it from a nationalistic, racial, religious, or ideological phenomenonto one that has appeared on the global agenda with a symbolic significance.I question the motifs of the “war on terror,” due to its relativeunpredictability, on definitional grounds. Additionally, I challenge whetherthis is leading to an all-inclusive society based on uplifting human welfare,or whether it is creating a global discord of division, tension, antagonism,and resistance that may filter through the politics of the inter- and intrastatesystem and thus create tragedy, conflict, and destruction of globalproportions ...
Editorial
Authors: Tourage Mahdi
Published: October 2020

In his recently published Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs toKnow – and Doesn’t, Stephen Prothero argues that although the United Statesis secular by law, it is deeply religious by choice: it has a Christian majorityof roughly 85 percent, more than 90 percent of adults believe in God, morethan eighty percent report that religion is personally important, and morethan seventy percent pray daily.1 He also notes that with 1,200 mosquesnationwide, Islam will soon surpass Judaism as America’s second largest religion,if it has not already done so.2 However, he opines that althoughAmericans’ commitment to religion may run deep, their knowledge of it runsshallow. In her “Americans get an ‘F’ in religion,” Cathy Lynn Grossman,discussing Prothero’s book, writes: “Sometimes dumb sounds cute: Sixtypercent of Americans can’t name five of the Ten Commandments, and 50%of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married.”3I wonder how American Muslims – who a recently publicized PewResearch Center poll shows to be 65 percent foreign-born but middle class,mainstream and “highly assimilated into American Society” – would performon a similar test.4 In my introductory courses, I have had Muslim studentsidentify minbar as “minibar.” Once, when asked to write their nameand its meaning on a piece of paper, a student named Muhammad wrote: “Idon’t know the meaning of my name, but I will find out and will let youknow next week!”Colleagues who teach “Introduction to Islam” courses usually havesatirical stories of their own. Discussing Grossman’s article, Tazim Kassam,editor of the American Academy of Religion’s Spotlight on Teaching,cautions that dumb may be cute, but, more importantly, that “dumb is dangerousand has terrible consequences.”5 The opposite is also true, for thescholarly production of knowledge can be dangerous and have terrible consequences(and thus can hardly be considered “cute”). For example, we candiscern more than mere hints of these dangerous consequences in tracesdeposited by the academically produced “clash of civilizations” thesis on thesociopolitical landscape. In any event, knowledge production (or the lackthereof) is a product of historical processes that, as Edward Said has shown,leaves “its traces without necessarily leaving an inventory of them.” ...
The Formation of the Classical Tafsir Tradition
Authors: Rizvi Sajjad H.
Published: October 2020

While one may question the title of the book under review, there is littledoubt that Walid Saleh’s revised Yale doctoral dissertation is a major developmentin Qur’anic studies and, in particular, of the exegetical traditions inIslam. Al-Tha`labi was important, but remains neglected in the field. A Sunniauthor widely cited by Shi`i exegetes and polemicists, a traditionist who drew upon Sufi commentaries, and a Muslim thinker interested in pre-Islamicreligious lore, he had a major influence on the development of the IslamicEast’s exegetical traditions. This is signalled by citations from his famousexegesis Al-Kashf wa al-Bayan, a monumental work that still awaits a criticaledition, and by the disputes during the medieval period over his probityand reliability.After a useful introduction to the problematic of exegesis, the bookcomprises seven chapters. The introduction is not, however, free from contention.Saleh would like to argue that al-Tha`labi represents the “intellectualvictory” of Sunnism during a period when it was “weak but most culturallyopen”; Sufi exegesis was co-opted some time before al-Ghazzali,Shi`ism through the incorporation of philo-`Alid material, and rationalism“dethroned by proclaiming the salvific power of belonging to the Muslimcommunity.” I am not so sure. While Al-Kashf was influential, al-Tha`labiwas widely derided in the medieval Sunni tradition, not least by everyIslamicist’s favourite bête noire Ibn Taymiyya. His supposed “inclusive”Sunnism was clearly not favored in a time when Sunni political power dominatedand was institutionally perpetuated in the madrasah. The gradualdevelopment of the nature of Sunni consensus and hegemony probablyexplains the process of al-Tha`labi’s work and its reception ...
The Black Death in Egypt and England
Authors: Burke Jeffrey C.
Published: October 2020

In this cross-regional comparative study, Stuart Borsch marshals medievaleconomic data to address why, following the Black Death, “Egypt’s centralizedand urban landholding system was unable to adapt to massive depopulation,while England’s localized and rural landholding system had fullyrecovered by the year 1500” (dust jacket). After making a quick dispatch ofantiquated theories and flawed research, he introduces new findings onmedieval Egypt’s sharp financial downturn in contrast to England’s economicstabilization and upswing.The author points out that both states were centralized monarchies withsimilar population levels and agrarian-based economies overseen by “bigstick” aristocracies. Egypt had a modicum of arable land along the Nile;England had large areas of pastoral land and far more arable soil (pp. 16-17).In addition, Egypt’s nonhereditary ruling Mamluk elite, imported Caucasianand Central Asian slave children (some of whom actually ruled), becameiron-handed absentee landholders: “A vast gulf separated the Mamlukwarrior-landholder from the Egyptian peasant. A barracks-trained TurkishorCircassian-speaking Mamluk and a village peasant were probably as ...
The Experience of Islamic Art on the Margins of Islam
Authors: Rührdanz Karin
Published: October 2020

This volume is the fifteenth publication in the Giorgio Levi Della Vida ConferencePapers series, each of which contains the lecture presented by therecipient of the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award for excellence in Islamicstudies along with contributions by other scholars dedicated to a specialtopic. For the first time ever, in 1996 the award was presented to an art historian,Oleg Grabar, who chose “The Experience of Islamic Art on theMargins of Islam” as the theme of the fifteenth conference. 

The crossing of boundaries by artifacts, decorative elements, or figuralsubjects from one cultural hemisphere into another, as well as the perceptionof the “inherited” monuments of other cultures, is a broad and still largelyunexplored field. While studies following the wandering of motifs are quitenumerous, the reasons for their selection and tacit integration into new contexts,along with their reshaping and revaluation, are not dealt with veryoften. Each of the five articles directs our attention to a particular border areaof Islamic culture during a particular period, ranging from the Middle Agesto the present. Each contribution also approaches the question of how(regardless of the way) acquired Islamic objects and monuments weredealt with from a specific angle. The result is a small and very diverse collectionof experiences that surely does not offer an overview of all responsesto Islamic art. However, it convincingly demonstrates how revealing researchon the cultural margins can be ...
Towards Understanding the Relation between Religions and Cultures in Southeast Asia
Authors: Fernando Joseph I.
Published: October 2020

In the face of modernity and its erosion of traditional values, weneed to preserve something of the wisdom of traditional culture.The traditional cultures have taken thousands of years to evolveand are necessary to preserve. They are the carriers of the accumulatedwisdom of the people since Antiquity. They give man asense of belonging, acceptance, and assurance. They enshrine thevalues, which define meaning, guide, motivate, and lead peopleto fulfillment. We find cultural traditions still alive in the ruralcommunities of Southeast Asia. It is to these communities thatwe need to turn to guide us on our road to the future ...
Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: October 2020

Western anthropologists are typically concerned with interpreting thenon-western world’s unfamiliar cultures for western audiences. TheFrench law banning the hijab from public schools presents itself as just asbaffling as any non-western custom. Thus, it is fully understandable thatit would take anAmerican anthropologist to interpret this event, especiallyfor those in Anglo-Saxon cultures, where in spite of Islamophobia anddiscrimination against the hijab, concepts of religious tolerance and multiculturalismhave generally translated into legal protections for womenand girls who wish to wear it in public spaces. So with a catchy titledesigned to appeal to thiswidespread bafflement, the author seeks to explainthe intellectual underpinnings and political processes that led to this banningof “ostentatious” religious symbols in public schools on March 15,2004.Bowen, whose earlier work looked at religion and social change inIndonesia, focuses on the public deliberations about the issue of the hijab aswell as on wider issues related to Muslim integration in France. He interviewspoliticians, bureaucrats, academics, journalists, public intellectuals,Muslim leaders, Muslim women, and (importantly, since it was a missingdimension, as he points out, in the lead up to the law) Muslim high schoolgirls. He studies public texts and focuses especially on the crucial roleplayed by an often hysterical media in forming and firming up public opinionin support of the law ...
Islam in History and Politics
Authors: Kersten Carool
Published: October 2020

This collection of essays consists primarily of the output of Australia’s firstmajor conference on SouthAsian Islam, held in 1996.Most of the contributionsto this somewhat delayed volume, then, were written by scholars working in the Australian and New Zealand academe. Editor Asim Roy has triedto close the intervening decade with an at times polemical introductionfocusing on the Islamophobia that has been rising steadily since the conferencewas held.The book opens with Francis Robinson’s conference keynote address. Aprofessor at Royal Holloway in London and former president of the RoyalAsiatic Society, Robinson is one of the most prominent scholars on (early)modern Islam in South Asia. His presentation discusses the shift from an“other-worldly” to a “this-world Islam” and the consequences that thisinward turn had for the individual Muslim’s sense of responsibility. As theulama lost their monopoly on the interpretation of Islam in this process,reformists and modernists – and Muslim women in particular – were allthrown back on their own devices for re-evaluating the role of religion inwhat had become, to a large extent, a disenchanted world ...
Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism
Authors: Kennedy-Day Kiki
Published: October 2020

A new collection of Sufi writings is, of course, greatly welcome. This book,geared to discussing gnosis (ma`rifah), features selections by al-Hujwiri,Suhrawardi, and al-Qushayri, among others, although with the incomprehensibleomission of Ibn al-`Arabi. The idea for this collection is to presentworks by important Sufi authors on the knowledge of God, both exoteric(`ilm) and esoteric (ma`rifah). The introduction gives a brief snapshot ofnon-Sufi literature, brief biographies of Sufi authors, and a short review ofthe “post-classical” age. Part 2 features a selection of translations from theworks of nine authors. The biographies are separated from the works of theirauthors, which may lead to a certain amount of flipping back and forth.For al-Ghazali, Renard translates book 21 of Ihya’ `Ulum al-Din. ForSuhrawardi, he gives us three chapters of `Awarif al-Ma`arif. Renard has,however, selectively edited the texts: that is, he omits the honorifics andpolite exclamations after the name of God and the Prophet. Although hestates that he does this to save space and smooth out the reading (p. 5), theomission is distracting, because (a) you know the words should be there and ...
Infidel
Authors: Kueny Kathryn
Published: October 2020

In Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s goal is to provide “a subjective record (p. xii)”of her extraordinary life, a life that straddles six countries – Somalia, SaudiArabia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Holland, and the United States – in merely threedecades. The book’s title, however, suggests that this personal narrativeprobes well beyond the travels and escapades of a young African girl intimes of deep economic strife and political instability. Rather, Infidel mapsout a spiritual journey in reverse, what might be described as an anti-Islamicemigration “from the world of faith to the world of reason – from the worldof excision and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation” (pp.347-48).The work is divided into two parts. The first, “My Childhood,” tracksHirsiAli’s early years on the move with hermother, sister, and brother as herfather, beloved but perpetually absent, waged coup after coup againstMuhammad Siad Barre with the Somali Salvation Democratic Front(SSDF). Often he was deported or jailed.As a result, family life for HirsiAliwas far fromideal.After narrating her own birth, six weeks early, shemuses,“[p]erhaps my parents were happy” (p. 17). Tales of economic destitution,political corruption, and a mother who possessed all the symptoms of asevere depressive or schizophrenic suggest the young girl suffered greatphysical and emotional violence throughout her early years.Clearly, at a young age, her coping strategy was to lash out against herelders through ridicule and rebellion, despite the inevitable consequences.As a child, HirsiAli often spat at her grandmother.When hermother orderedher to make ink for the ma`alim who taught her the Qur’an, HirsiAli lockedherself in the bathroom and refused to come out for hours.Another time, shewas too tired to wash up the dishes after dinner, so she hid them all, crusted,in the refrigerator for a day. As a teenager, she devoured sensual romancenovels and trashy thrillers that aroused in her sexual feelings, even thoughshe “knew that doing so was resisting Islam in the most basic way” (p. 94).She also stole visits and kisses with a number of boyfriends, knowing fullwell her family’s disapproval.These seemingly petty alternatives to direct conflict with authority figuresand institutions were, perhaps, the only avenues available to the youngHirsi Ali to assert any control over hostile forces that denied her power overher own existence. These episodes reveal a world that, for Hirsi Ali, is ...
Islamic Political Radicalism
Authors: Rizvi Sajjad H.
Published: October 2020

As jihadi ideology shifts from articulating a perpetual conflict against the“far enemy” (read: the United States and its allies) and the “near enemy”(read: the United States’ clients) within the Middle East and the wider Muslimworld to taking the conflict to the heart of the far enemy in NorthAmericaand Western Europe, it is time for academics to take stock of what hashappened, how it has happened, and why. The “radicalization” debate, as itis called, tries to ask the pertinent question of why some Muslim male citizensof these “western” states feel so disenchanted, dis-integrated, and alienatedfrom their immediate communities that they can perpetrate such grossacts of violence as the bombings in Madrid in March 2004 and 7/7 in London.The challenge of such violent radicalism (and it is important to qualifyit as such, since radicalism traditionally has been a political virtue of the Leftdemanding change) affects security policy as well as the integrity and dignityof Muslim communities. Tahir Abbas, a reader in sociology at the University of Birmingham anda leading expert on the sociology of Britain’s Muslim communities, hasassembled a vibrant interdisciplinary circle of specialists, comprisingMuslimand non-Muslim academics and activists, to tackle this question. The collectionbrings together studies in political science, political sociology (the primaryfocus for the debate on radicalism), anthropology, psychology, criminology,and related disciplines.The contributors concentrate on Britain, albeitwithin a European context, and thus this book might be of value for thosestudying Islamismin otherMuslim-minority contexts (particularly the UnitedStates) and even in Muslim-majority contexts as a base of comparison ...
Gender, Modernity, and Liberty – Middle Eastern and Western Women’s Writings
Authors: Aviv Efrat E.
Published: October 2020

This book presents a dialogue between western and Middle Eastern womenthat is often presumed never to have happened. It supplies us with a collectionof extracts fromOttoman, Egyptian, British, andAmericanwriters, eachaccompanied with a biography and literary introduction of its writer. Thebook covers 100 years, beginning with 1837, and focuses on writings bywomen from Istanbul and Cairo, key locations for the flowering of MiddleEastern feminism. As mentioned in the “Introduction,” the articulation ofwomen’s views was particularly advanced in these two cities.The historical background of this period, as well as its effects uponwomen in both the Ottoman Empire (toward the establishment of the TurkishRepublic) and Egypt (marked by Arab nationalism and the country’smove toward independence) is well explained in the editors’ introductionand photo essay, which displays the collection’s main theme. In a nutshell,this period witnessed the emergence of organized feminism in both theWestand the East and, at the same time, marked the start of a significant growthin the number of European visitors to both cities due to the increased availabilityof regular steamship travel.Based upon the information provided, it seems that Middle Easternwomen followed the conditions and campaigns of western women with greatinterest, even though they proffered a cogent critique of western liberation’slimitations and adopted only select western feminist ideas. The writers’ very“staunch” feminism was strongly based on opinionated materials that aresubversive even in our times. For example, Lady Anne Brassey (1839-87) isquoted as writing: “Turkey would never take its proper place till…the softeningand purifying influence of women was allowed to be felt” (p. 128).Prior to that, she asserts: “It is a great mistake of the Turks to think that they ...
The Syro-Aramaic Reading of the Koran
Authors: Langermann Y. Tzvi
Published: October 2020

Christoph Luxenberg’s (a pseudonym) highly controversial book, now availablein English, has caused some to see in him an important ally in the waragainst Osama bin Laden and others to shake his book off as “orientalism.”There has been, in English at least, little substantive reporting on the actualarguments advanced. I will try to present a critical review of the main contentionsand types of arguments Luxenberg offers in support.This book has two theses: one brazen and sweeping, the other a collectionof specific arguments and analyses. The sweeping thesis is that theQur’an was originally a lectionary, a collection of texts fromthe Hebrew andChristian Bibles to be read out loud (p. 104). It was set down in Karshuni, aform of Syriac written inArabic characters; however, the Qur’an employedan alphabet more primitive than the one now in use. In particular, diacriticaldots were lacking. Given this double bind, so to speak, its first students hadgreat difficulty understanding the text, particularly insofar as they mistakenlytook it to be written in Arabic. Hence the large amount of significantmisreadings, the individual reinterpretations of which collectively formwhat I call the book’s second thesis.This is clearly not a book that will convince the faithful. But even if onesets aside one’s personal beliefs, some major problems emerge. For example,who was responsible for establishing the Qur’anic text? A key role is ...
The Fifth Annual Duke-UNC Graduate Islamic Studies Conference
Authors: Mian Ali Altaf
Published: October 2020

The annual Duke-University of North Carolina (UNC) Graduate IslamicStudies Conference for 2008, “Practice and Embodiment in Islam,” soughtto provide an interlocutory space for engaging the somewhat nascent turn tothe body. Held on 5-6 April 2008, this event focused on the theme of practiceand embodiment in Islamicate texts and contexts. Of late, the theorizationof the body has been a sustained topic of research in the humanities andthe social sciences.In his opening remarks, Omid Safi (UNC-Chapel Hill) highlighted thesignificance of inculcating a “culture of generosity,” since academic circlescan often generate feelings of estrangement. “The real challenge for us,” heemphasized, “is to step out of the comfort zones of our community.” Safithen introduced the keynote speaker: Shahzad Bashir (Stanford University).Bashir’s tour de force of fourteenth-fifteenth century Persianate hagiographyrevealed how the body, as an analytic category and interpretive lens,enables quite sophisticated and unprecedented readings and insights intoSufi hagiographies of this period.After claiming that such texts describe theoutward appearance and movements of Sufi shaykhs’ bodies in great detail,he suggested the accompanying miracle stories were usually, if not always,invoked to preserve, heal, feed, or discipline the bodies of others, particularlythose on the Sufi path. Bashir said that a majority of the miracles thushad to do with corporeal integrity and continuity. While historians usuallysee the preponderance of such miracles in hagiographies as unhelpfulsources, Bashir argued that these texts constitute an argument for sainthoodand that careful analysis of the patterns found therein represent one of ourbest windows into classical Sufism’s socio-intellectual world ...
Muslim Girl Studies
Authors: Khan Mahruq F. , Hermansen Marcia
Published: October 2020

A colloquium on “girl studies,” organized by Marcia Hermansen (director,IslamicWorld Studies) and Laura Miller (professor, Department of Anthropology)took place on 12 April 2008, at Loyola University Chicago.Presently, the study of adolescent females – increasingly referred to as girlstudies – as a separate realm of focus is a contested idea in academe.Supporters claim that girl studies is a worthwhile research domain due to theprior disregard for age within women’s studies and gender within youth studies.Detractors note that the category and boundaries of what is considered a “girl” are unstable and historically and culturally varied. More specifically,such scholars as Sharon R. Mazzarella, Norma Odom Pecora, and CatherineDriscoll have argued that over time, literature, popular reading, and consumerismhave become the means through which the mainstream culture instructsgirls on how to become women. In turn, many girls negotiate their interests,sexual expression, body image, and rites of passage in culturally approvedways. Other girls, however, engage in personal, subjective interpretation byrejecting hegemonic standards of femininity in a post-industrial western worldand often in the context of violence, displacement, and resistance.Loyola’s conference highlighted the impact of mainstream norms andethnocentrism in girl studies by including scholarship from a range ofAmerican and non-American cultural contexts. We investigated how girls’lives are constructed in an era of massive change as communities around theworld experience processes of both globalization and localization ...
Na`ar¥yOEt al-îukm and Ma§OEdir al-Shar¥`ah
Authors: Kayadibi Saim , Omar Raihanah
Published: October 2020

On 17 October 2008, the Academy of Islamic Studies held its first seminaron Na`ar¥yOEt al-îukm and Ma§OEdir al-Shar¥`ah (NAZMAS1/2008) at theUniversity of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We would like to thank allof the lecturers and students of the Department of Shari`ah and Law, especiallyAhmad Hidayat Buang (dean of the Apium) and Siti Mashitoh btMahamood (head, Department of Shari`ah and Law), for their support andencouragement.The seminar originally sought to bring together students, researchers, andscholars interested in Islamic law studies from all over the world. Due to thelimited time available for academicians and scholars to prepare their papers,as well as holding it right after Ramadan, however, was the event to be scaleddown to a local seminar limited to the Academy of Islamic Studies,University of Malaya. It was, nevertheless, a highly fruitful and successfulevent.Given the international focus on Islamic studies and law, the seminarwas structured around the fundamental principles of Islamic law and howthey can be embraced by elaborating upon their vital principles to makethem better understood.After the chairmen’s introductory remarks, seminar director Saim Kayadibi(senior lecturer, Department of Shari`ah and Law) gave an openingspeech that emphasized the importance of studying the Shari`ah’s fundamentalprinciples and how the seminar could make a constructive contributionto advancing the participants’ knowledge and understanding of the innerdimension of the aúkOEm and ma§OEdir al-Shar¥`ah. Mahamood then openedthe seminar ...
Preservation of the Heritage
Authors: Ben-Ami Naama
Published: October 2020

Books Reviewed: Kamal Boullata and Kathy Engel, eds. We Begin Here:Poems for Palestine and Lebanon. Northampton, Massachusetts: Interlink,2007; Nadia G. Yaqub. Pens, Swords, and the Springs of Art: The OralPoetry Dueling of Palestinian Weddings in the Galilee. Leiden and Boston:Brill, 2007; Laleh Khalili. Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics ofNational Commemoration. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which hasmade headlines for decades, showsno sign of abating, for each side is convinced that it is in the right anddemands to live upon its ancestral land. The Palestinian “problem,” whichhas produced a plethora of books, goes back to Israel’s 1948war of independenceand remains unresolved. In this essay, I shall review two books that dealdirectly with the Palestinian problem and their overall situation (especially ofthe Palestinian refugees in Lebanon) and one on oral poetic duels amongPalestinians in Israel. This latter book provides some between-the-linesinsights about how Israeli Arabs cope with the Palestinian problem ...
Debating Arab Authoritarianism
Authors: Gandolfo K. Luisa
Published: October 2020

The Middle East has long contended with the title of the region most lackingin democratic state structures, and while several countries endeavor toenforce a form of democracy, yet others preserve the frameworks that efficientlysustain their monarchies, revenue, and power status in the area. Thetwin questions of how and why democracy has proved elusive in theMiddleEast forms the crux of the collection of essays comprised within Schlumberger’stome: Debating Arab Authoritarianism: Dynamics and Durabilityin Nondemocratic Regimes.Spanning Morocco to Oman, via Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, theauthoritarian mode of governance is surveyed through an assessment of thedurability of regimes, the role of Islamist political parties, intra-regimedynamics, and the economic aspects of political reform. Divided into foursections, the book’s structure incorporates key elements of Arab authoritarianism:“State-Society Relations and Political Opposition,” “The Regimes,”“The Economy and the Polity,” and “The InternationalArena.” That the sectionsretain a subtle reluctance to address the link between the repressivecapacities ofArab states and their longevity, as well as the concept that Islamis incompatible with democracy, is conspicuous, yet prudent. Far fromretreadingworn theories, the contributors provide fresh conceptual and comparativeanalyses of individual countries and the region on a wider level, inaddition to prospects for the respective regimes ...
Indonesian Islam in a New Era
Authors: Hashim Rosnani
Published: October 2020

This work examines the negotiations that Indonesian Muslim women havemade in certain areas of life in the post-Suharto era, an era of socio-politicalreform in which “it is possible to question accepted attitudes and break newground” (p. 16), and their religious practices and identities. The editorsclaim that their work breaks new ground in that (a) it informs readers of“how the women themselves experience their religion and actively engagewith it in their lives” (p. 1); (b) it focuses on women and Islam in the post-Suharto period, in which Islam is more prominent and it is more acceptableto put forward feminist views in Indonesia and within Islam; and (c) it isthe effort of insiders – Indonesian women with western and Islamic training– who can bridge the gap between western and Indonesian scholarshipon Islam and women. The editors state up front that the book does notdeliberately engage in a critical feminist theory and that they are not feministwriters; rather, they are influenced by feminism and desire to show thatwomen are active participants and not mere “passive victims of maleoppression” (p. 2) ...
The Maghrib in the New Century
Authors: Newcomb Rachel
Published: October 2020

The Maghrib in the New Century: Identity, Religion, and Politics offers atimely addition to the literature on North Africa. Edited by Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine, this collection explores the socioeconomicand political challenges facing North Africa in the twenty-first century. Theeditors have divided the book into four sections broadly concerned with historyand identity; the status of the ruling regimes in the face of processessuch as globalization and Islamism; economic development; and the NorthAfrican presence in France.Benjamin Stora’s introduction to the collection neatly sums up many ofthe issues this region faces, including the aftereffects of colonialism, the falloutfrom the Algerian civil war, identity movements and the questionedlegitimacy of ruling regimes, emigration, terrorism, and battles overwomen’sstatus. In the first section, Mickael Bensadoun analyzes Moroccan nationalidentity under the nascent rule ofMohammedVI. This is followed by RobertMortimer’s examination of Algerian identity through literature. Maddy-Weitzman’s essay provides an insightful discussion of how Berber/Amazighactivists have sought to construct Amazigh identity in both Algeria andMorocco by reinterpreting history.The collection segues into a longer section focusing on the politicalchallenges facing the region’s dictatorial regimes, particularly inAlgeria andMorocco. In the fallout from the Algerian civil war, analyses of the currentsituation in Algeria by Gideon Gera, Louisa Aït-Hamadouche, and YahiaZoubir are particularly welcome. Zisenwine analyzes the first eight years ofMohammed VI’s rule, while Michael Willis gives a thorough overview ofthat country’s Islamist movements. Finally, in one of the few pieces to concentrateon Tunisia,Michele PennerAngrist offers a number of astute explanationsfor the strength of the Ben Ali regime ...
Muslim Legal Thought in Modern Indonesia
Authors: Hefner Robert W.
Published: October 2020

Although it is themost populous country in theMuslim world, Indonesia haslong been overlooked in scholarly discussions of modern Muslim legalthought. This neglect has been compounded by the fact that western scholarshipon this Southeast Asian country has been dominated by historians,anthropologists, and political scientists rather than scholars conversant withthe Islamic sciences. Since the mid-1990s this situation has begun to change,however, as a new generation of scholars trained in classical and modernIslamic scholarship have come on the scene. These young researchers havemade Islamic thought in Indonesia available to a global English-languagereadership for the first time.Fluent inArabic aswell as Indonesian, R.Michael Feener has establishedhimself as among the most important members of this new generation of studentsof Indonesian Islam. The present book, a significant revision, updating,and expansion of his 1999 dissertation, seeks to provide a “road map” of“major trends in IndonesianMuslim thought on issues of law and society” (p.xvii) by focusing on the intellectual currents from the 1920s to the early2000s. The author argues, correctly I believe, that this effort is significant notjust because Muslim thought in Indonesia has yet to receive the attention itdeserves, but because “Indonesia has become arguably the world’s mostvibrant center for contemporary Islamic thought” (p. 225) ...
Nation, Citizenship, and Belonging
Authors: Memon Nadeem , Eidoo Sameena
Published: October 2020

TheAssociation ofMuslim Social Scientists of NorthAmerica (AMSS) heldits fifth annual Canadian Regional Conference in Waterloo, Ontario, atWilfred Laurier University (WLU) on 21 May 2009. The Muslim StudiesOption Program Committee and the Department of Religion and Culture atWLU cosponsored this event, and Jasmin Zine (WLU) andMeena Sharify-Funk (WLU) were the cochairs. The Tessellate Institute, a CanadianMuslimthink tank, coordinated and cosponsored the keynote panel.The theme, “Nation, Citizenship, and Belonging: Muslim CulturalPolitics in Canada,” brought together academics, emerging scholars, andcommunity activists to explore critical questions about the space in the middlewhere engaged Muslim Canadians stand. In her opening remarks,Sharify-Funk identified that space as being located on an isthmus betweenthe realities of abject discrimination and the potentialities of citizenship. Sheremarked that this conference sought to ask the difficult questions aboutwhetherMuslim Canadians can engage the challenges and move beyond theinternal contradictions that inherently shape Muslim cultural politics ...
In Pursuit of “Islamic Art and Architecture”
Authors: Gaber Tammy
Published: October 2020

Books Reviewed: Richard Yeomans. The Art and Architecture of IslamicCairo. United Kingdom: Garnet Publishing, 2006; Doris Behrens-Aboseif.Cairo of the Mamluks: A History of the Architecture and Its Culture. UnitedKingdom: I.B. Tauris, 2007. GeorgeMichell. The Majesty ofMughalDecoration:The Art and Architecture of Islamic India. New York: Thames andHudson, 2007.Many people take it for granted that the blanket term Islamic art and architectureis sufficient to convey the vast production carried out in the name ofIslam; however, they often have a limited vision of what this term actuallyentails. Islam’s time span (fourteen centuries and counting) and geography(historically ranging from Spain to China) simply means that the art andarchitecture produced in its name deserves a more detailed and accountablepresentation of fact. In other words, it would be unthinkable for scholars touse a term like Christian art and architecture instead of such specific termsas Byzantine, Romanesque, and Gothic, each of which relates to a specifictime and place. Thus, the vocabulary of understanding the production of artand architecture in Islam’s name requires the use and understanding of clearterms and deserves specific publication and study ...
Reliving Karbala
Authors: Takim Liyakat
Published: October 2020

Most studies on the epic events in Karbala and the martyrdom in 680 ofHusayn, the Prophet’s grandson, have focused on the possible ramificationsof his sacrifice and the paradigmatic models that can be constructed fromthis event. Other studies have examined the various genres of Shi`i ritualsenacted to commemorate Husayn’s martyrdom. Akbar Hyder’s RelivingKarbala examines this death from very different perspectives.The author does not claim to provide a systematic exposition of the historicalevents or philosophy of Husayn’s martyrdom. He neither focuses onthe written texts of history nor presents a normative reading of Karbala.Rather, he transcends the traditional Shi`i-coded understanding by offeringa more trans-sectarian and trans-communal, as well as multiple readings, ofthis entire episode. The book also covers Karbala’s influence on the SouthAsian cultural and literary landscape, demonstrating, in the process, how thisnarrative is appropriated and lived in the contexts and memories of SouthAsian Muslims and non-Muslims at different times.Hyder uses a wide array of sources, ranging from classical Islamic textsto modern twentieth-century discourses and incorporates citations from Iqbal, Premchand, Gandhi, and others. The book opens a window on how variousinterpretive strategies can be utilized to read a seventh-century event and howthey can shape social milieus inhabited by more than a billion people ...
The Taqwacores
Authors: Rippin Andrew
Published: October 2020

Novels are ideal vehicles for learning and teaching about the situation ofmodern Islam. The narrative form facilitates the reader’s understanding thatthe pressing questions of contemporary religion are ones faced by humanactors in their individual day-to-day lives and cannot (and should not) be generalizedto all believers in a given faith everywhere. My own favorite in manyyears of teaching Islam in the context of an introductory course on “western”religions has been Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (originallypublished in French [1962; English translation 1963]), which broachesall of the fundamental tensions of modernity in the African and French contexts.But that book is now distant in time and cultural space, especially foryoung North American audiences, and stands only, I fear, as a historical portraitof the debate. Kane’s work remains helpful in understanding how mattersgot to where they are today, but perhaps less so for engaging its readersin cultural debates immediately relevant to their lives ...