bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A History of Islamic Philosophy, 3d ed.
Authors: Mir Anita
Published: October 2020

That Majid Fakhry’s A History of Islamic Philosophy, first published in1970, has been brought out in a third revised edition can be of no surprise tothe many admirers of this most robust of scholars. Fakhry’s scholarship ismeticulous, and his style, even when handling the most complex ideas,remains simple and straightforward.As many of the theological questions raised by Islam’s key philosophers,particularly those pertaining to free will, justice, rights, and responsibilities,had political implications, each chapter in this book begins with ahistorical context. However, Fakhry only allows this context to play a subsidiaryrole, as a backdrop to the main narrative: the history of ideas. Thisapproach lends itself very well to an examination of the ideas held by bothindividual philosophers and schools of philosophy. Importantly, Fakhrydemonstrates how, during several key Islamic epochs, there was no onedominant system of thought, but rather, contending systems of thought. Hetakes us through these debates step by step, as in, for example, the first theologicalcontroversy on free will and predestination (qadar). It is in the presentationof these debates, more than anywhere else, that we see that while AHistory of Islamic Philosophy is distinguished from the work of many othergrand narrative histories by not being marred by a partisan viewpoint,Fakhry’s is by no means a clinically scientific approach.This book comprises thirteen chapters. It begins with “The Legacy ofGreece, Alexandria, and the Orient,” covers the watershed periods in the ...
Editorial
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: October 2020

Olivia of Illyria walks into the office of Jack Straw, Leader of the House ofCommons, and tells him that as a way to mourn her brother’s death:The element itself, till seven years’ heat,Shall not behold her face at ample view;But, like a cloistress, she will veiled walk.(William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 1)The Honourable Jack Straw tells her it is not British to wear a veil andso she ought to find another way to mourn. Confused, she turns to her companion,Cesario, and asks, puzzled: “What means he by this, O belovedCesario? Have not the noble ladies of England worn veils for many years?”Cesario replies: “My lady, when my eyes first lay upon the veil that coversyour face, indeed I felt affronted. Surely your beauty, grace, and radiantlight deserved a viewing by my gaze. Recallest not that day when I, a humblemessenger of dear Duke Orsino, didst first appear in your chambers, andrequested that you remove your veil that we might talk? But, as you say, ithas been an ancient tradition of this and other lands for women to wear veilswhen they leave their homes and also attend to their religious services. Iknow not what the Honourable Mr. Straw means by this notion.”Olivia affirms: “Indeed, humble Cesario, I do recall your brazen requestand how your forthrightness to a lady of honour didst cause me such distress.Since your appearance pleased my eye, I did agree to it, though I have notthe same response to this effrontery from Jack Straw. Recallest not how ourLord did command, in 1 Corinthians 1, that a woman ought to cover herhead? Why, even our Jewish sisters have worn veils for many centuries.”As they walk to their car, a tall, white, middle-age man spits at Olivia,yelling at her: “Go back to where you came from!”Cesario attempts to block the man’s anger, but cannot do so in time. “Ohonourable Lady Olivia, how did I fail you, and allow your self to be coveredin filth from such a man! What provoked him so?”Olivia, wiping the spittle from her veil, notes sadly: “Dear Cesario, inthese lands some people are hostile to those who dress differently. It is thesame in Illiyria, and all over the world these days … Look, Cesario, let ustake refuge in this church, a sanctuary in the turbulence of these times.” ...
Legitimizing Modernity in Islam
Authors: Abboud Samer
Published: October 2020

The question of Islam’s compatibility with modernity has primarily beenapproached from one of three methodological positions: First, Islam (asvariable) must adapt itself to modernity (as constant) by eliminating allbeliefs and practices that are incompatible with modernity; second,“Islamic modernity” rejects all modernist principles that are inconsistentwith Islamic teachings; and third, modernity and Islam are mutually compatibleand reconcilable when based on a particular (re)interpretation ofIslam. The author, who adheres to the third approach, thus questionswhether a society can be simultaneously Islamic and adhere to modernity’sgeneral criteria.His methodological approach consists of identifying specific categoriesin which to ground an intellectual reinterpretation of the Shari`ah.The five categories that he chooses are considered acceptable to jurists,and, as such, remain within the scope of Muslim jurisprudence: mandatory(wajib), recommended (mustahabb), indifferent (mubah), reprehensible(makruh), and prohibited (haram). Kassim uses these categories to framedebates over a range of issues in an attempt to find the intellectual spaceto accommodate modernity within Islam. His overarching argument is thatthe Islamic ethos can be interpreted as compatible with modernity’s fundamentalfeatures.Kassim begins by presenting modernity’s basic tenets: rationality anduniversalism. While universalism is a feature of both modernity and theShari`ah, rationality is not typically ascribed to Islamic thought. Kassimattempts to redress the neglect of rationality in Islamic thought by arguingthat a Muslim modus vivendi drawn from Mu`tazilite rationalism can find itsplace in modernity. He thus grounds his analysis in Mu`tazilism, a theologydeveloped in the eighth century CE that was eventually adopted by the ...
Editorial
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: October 2020

This issue was put together as we moved into a new year (according to theGregorian calendar, that is). This year, the New Year holiday coincided withthe hajj and Eid al-Adha (Day of Sacrifice) celebrations. That such importantMuslim celebrations closely followed Hannukah and Christmas was awonderful reminder of the benefits and importance of interfaith harmonyand mutual understanding. Though each holy day has a slightly differentfocus – Hannukah commemorates the Temple’s rededication and the miracleof the burning oil, Christmas celebrates Jesus’ (pbuh) birth, and Eid al-Adha commemorates Prophet Ibrahim’s (pbuh) obedience to God (swt) byshowing his willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail (pbuh) – each event consistsof a joyous string of rituals that bring families and congregationstogether. To borrow a metaphor from mathematics, inside each concentriccircle (the faith) there was peace, joy, and family happiness. And sincethese circles overlapped in time, it was a wonderful chance to share whatwas going on in one circle with those in the other circles – overlapping concentriccircles.In many places, interfaith groups took advantage of this overlap. But asmost people are not involved in interfaith groups, the positive potential ofgood interfaith relations was cancelled by dissension over seemingly trivialmatters: whether to wish people “Merry Christmas,” to call the schoolvacation the “Christmas” or the “winter” holidays, and to call the pine treeserected in public squares “Christmas trees.”A wide-ranging and very public debate over whether a store employeeshould say “Merry Christmas” to a customer becomes a flashpoint of tension,because a society lives out its traditions in these customary greetings,practices, and terminologies. In addition, the traditions it chooses to honorconnect adults to their childhood and their ancestors. These small traditionsembody (or at least are thought to embody) an essential identity, values thata society holds dear. So even though for many people Christmas has lost itsreligious significance, its celebratory aspect remains salient. Although manyobservant Christians feel offended by this holiday’s growing materialism,nevertheless at this time of year, both religious and non-religious peoplecome together and experience a sense of unity and togetherness ...
The Muslims of Thailand
Authors: Lukens-Bull Ronald
Published: October 2020

Thailand is about the last place one would associate with Muslims. Oneimagines Buddhist wats, saffron-robed monks, and fun-loving people. Onedoes not imagine women in headscarves, minarets, and the call to prayer.Indeed, 90 percent of Thais are Buddhists. However, the majority of theremainder is Muslim (about 8 percent of the total population). In this slimvolume, Gilquin provides a solid introduction to the Muslim communities ofThailand. It is a sweeping overview, and in that task it does its job very well.Personally, I would have preferred a more detailed analysis of the everydaylives of Thai Muslims.Gilquin calls Thailand’s Muslims a heterogeneous minority. Althoughone might imagine that Islam is limited to the provinces closest to Malaysia,the author demonstrates that this is far from true. However, 85 percent of theMuslim population lives in the south, and so their issues and concerns figureprominently in this account. Since the country’s Muslims have differentnational origins, legal/ritual schools, and levels of commitment or interest inSufism, the only characteristic that seems to define them is their morereserved approach to socializing. He notes that in a country noted for its fun(sanuk) and merry-making outings, Muslims are conspicuously absent in ...
Islam and the Abolition of Slavery
Authors: Haque Muhammad M.
Published: October 2020

This book delves into Islam and its connection with slavery in historical andetiological terms by presenting the synthesis in an almost axiomatic mannerthat “slavery has always been a part and parcel of the basic core and a centraltenet of Islam.” The author relies on various scholarly sources, including theQur’an and the hadiths, with the bulk of information coming from non-Islamic sources. Providing quotes from various scholars (e.g., Lewis, Muir,Berlioux, Hughes, Garrett, Margoliouth, Roberts, and DeJong) (pp. 16-17),Clarence-Smith brings out of a set of synergistic syllogisms on the assumptiveplane that the Qur’an failed to eliminate slavery, that removing this practicewould shake the faith itself, that the Prophet was totally unaware of theconcept of abolition as an idea as well as in practice, and, importantly, thatthe whole Islamic social structure with its attendant system was based on atype of slavery associated with the organization of the harem.Hence, from the author’s point of view, Islam in essence kept slaverywithin a massive infrastructure and played a negligible role in its demise.Moreover, the system was abolished mostly due to western effort rather thanany purely religious guidelines or impetus. This organized form of slaveryincluded singing girls, concubines, common soldiers from the ranks of warcaptives as well as non-war captives, cannon fodder, bond maidens, haremguards, and chattel similar to livestock – collectively often reaching into themillions. While there were examples of slaves rising to the position of amir,such instances are exceptions and extremely rare.The author defends his argument’s basic propositions in eleven highlycondensed chapters. The first chapter, “Introduction,” basically details hiscentral thesis with supporting arguments, including the intensity of the slavesystems as highlighted above. The concluding segment, “Envoi,” outlinesthe current responsibilities of different religious groups for a greater cooperationand unity toward the process of slavery’s final elimination and apologizingfor past misdeeds ...
Un-reading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an
Authors: Barlas Asma
Published: October 2020

I would like to thank AMSS, and specially Jamin Zine, for inviting me toaddress your conference on “Islam: Tradition and Modernity” today. Since Iam in the midst of enjoying your splendid hospitality, I feel I should beginwith an apology for what I am about to say. A polite guest would havepraised the food and your conference and gone home without being criticalof anything. But unfortunately for you, I was born with an impolitic geneand so I am going to take this opportunity to critique the way in which yourconference is framed.The basic point I will make is a simple one: It is not very productive tostudy Islam through the lenses of tradition and modernity. This is not becauseone cannot say anything meaningful about Islam in those two contexts;rather, it is because binary modes of thinking are themselves problematic. Iwill make this point in two ways: first by critiquing the tradition vs. modernitybinary and binaries in general and, second, by sharing my own work onQur’anic hermeneutics as an example of how we might get beyond binaries.Whether my comments will serve to muddy the waters or to clarify themremains to be seen ...
The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam
Authors: Lawson Todd
Published: October 2020

This is an excellent book. With a beautiful, exemplary scholarly style, OmidSafi treats the reader to a deep sounding of accounts of the frequently marginalizedplayers and problems of Islamicate intellectual, religious, political, and social history. The welcome news is that we must learn to treat nothingas marginal in the formation of culture and thought. The audiences andconversations analyzed and interpreted here provide a previously largelyunnoticed door to some very serious truths about the rise, formation, andespecially the characteristic institutional formations of early and later medievalIslamicate society. While I think the title is a mistake (premodern producesinappropriate expectations), one is equally sympathetic with theauthor’s avoidance of the “M” word for a number of reasons. One of themost pernicious of these is that medieval frequently functions as a euphemismfor Islamic or Islamicate in a milieu still disinclined to appreciate theformative, creative, and enduring genius of this great civilization and thedebt that our world so profoundly owes it. Forgive the khutbah, but it seemsthat this cannot be repeated too often, unfortunately ...
Teaching the Study of Muslim Minorities in Higher Education in the United Kingdom
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: October 2020

In this paper, I reflect on my experiences of teaching sociology of Islam atan elite British university: the University of Birmingham. As a trained economistwith postgraduate degrees in social science and sociology and as a formerWhitehall civil servant, my foray into the world of Islamic studies hasonly been recent. Indeed, it was the events relating to British Muslimminorities between 1999 and 2001 (namely, the arrests, trial, and sentencingin relation to the mostly Birmingham-born “Seven in Yemen” in 1999; the9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, DC; and the urban disturbancesin northern England 2001) that propelled me to interact with this vast andrich field of learning and scholarship. These three events compounded mattersin relation to identity politics, Islamism, and international political economy.Having already researched and written on matters related to educationand class,1 entrepreneurship and culture,2 and Islamophobia and the printnews,3 my new focus on Muslim minority issues stemmed precisely frommy existing interests in ethnicity, culture, and multiculturalism.4Upon joining the University of Birmingham in 2003, I spent my first twoyears concentrating on teaching a specialized course, “Ethnic Relations inBritain,” to finalists. In 2005, I began to teach a new course, “Islam, Multiculturalism,and the State” to finalists. In this article, I discuss the resultinginsight into teaching to a largely non-Muslim audience issues relating toIslam and Muslim minorities ...
The United States Naval Academy’s Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies
Authors: Wheeler Brannon
Published: October 2020

In August 2005, the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studieswas established at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis,Maryland. This was the result of a multi-year review of the academy’scurriculum as part of far-reaching efforts under AdmiralRodney Rempt, the current superintendent, to provide a moreinternational and interdisciplinary curriculum to the students ...
Teaching Islam in Israeli Institutions of Higher Education
Authors: Talmon-Heller Daniella
Published: October 2020

The idea of a workshop dedicated to the teaching of Islam was conceived byIsraeli academics who teach “Introduction to Islam.” This course is obligatoryin all Islamic and Middle Eastern studies departments in Israeli universitiesand colleges, and is a popular elective course for students from variousfaculties. Indeed, it is a demanding mission. While teaching Islam or, forthat matter, any religious tradition to those who are new to the scholarly criticalapproach to religion may be challenging anywhere,1 the Israeli settingposes additional difficulties. It involves teaching in classes composed of amixed crowd of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students, some of whom aredeeply committed to their faith, while others are quite secular.The tense climate of the Arab-Israeli conflict inevitably shapes, in oneway or other, the learning environment. The uneven power relations insideIsrael, often unacknowledged yet very present, as well as the prevalent stereotypesand prejudices about Islam in Israeli society and media also impact theclasses and teachers. All that aside, many of the teachers who deliver thisintroductory course shared an urgent need to rethink and revise the “classical”syllabus, one formulated by the great founders of Islamic studies in Israeldecades ago. To this end, a good number of full professors, associate professors,young instructors, and some graduate students from all of Israel’s fiveuniversities, as well as from its colleges and seminaries for high-school teachers,got together for an intensive day of exchanging ideas ...
African Muslim Leaders and Turkey’s Diyanat
Authors: Haron Muhammed
Published: October 2020

Turkish-African relations began with the formation of the Ottoman Empire.Early relations were confined to parts of modern-day Tunisia, Libya andEgypt, which the empire ruled for centuries. Later on, the empire spread toother parts of Africa, as shown by such emerging scholars as Hatice Ugur,who wrote Osmanli Afrikasi’nda Bir Sultanlik Zengibar (Istanbul: 2005),and the scholarly works of Eric Germaine and others. Their research hasbeen bolstered by the variety of extant documents that still need to be studied and explored (cf. A. Kavas, ed. Solidarity of Ottoman-African Muslims:Under the Light of the Documents [Istanbul: 2006]). However, emergingAfrican scholars interested in these manuscripts will have to be trained inand come to grips with Ottoman Turkish before making any headway.Renewed efforts are now undeway to forge links with Africa’s Muslimcommunities and representatives. The Research Center for Islamic History,Art, and Culture (IRCICA), an international institution that falls under theauspices of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), has created thenecessary opportunities to cement and strengthen links with African Muslimcommunities via specific structures, such as the Islamic University of Ugandaand the University of Johannesburg. In the wake of these significant efforts,the Presidency of Religious Affairs (more popularly known in Turkey as theDiyanat [hereinafter Presidency]) has also shown its desire to pursue externalrelations with religious communities outside Turkey. Over the past fewyears, the Presidency has played a significant role in “religious affairs” bothin and beyond Turkey in order to pursue its religious portfolio and religiousagenda. Although the predominantly Muslim societies of the Muslim heartlandsview Turkey, in general, as the most secular Muslim society, a strand ofreligiosity has been observed in its various social levels and sectors.Therefore, Turkish society cannot be said to be exclusively secular ...
Islam & Mammon
Authors: Abboud Samer
Published: October 2020

In this brilliant contribution, Timur Kuran weaves six chapters into asound critique of the assumptions and practices of Islamic economics. In essence, he attacks the very foundation of Islamic economics, the prohibitionof interest, and then extends his critique to whether Islam’s traditionalredistributive instruments in achieving contemporary economic goalis feasible. The author’s intention is not simply to critique Islamic economics,but to bring the ideas espoused by the discipline into the realm ofmainstream social sciences and encourage serious scholarly consideration.The first two chapters summarize the basic tenets of Islamic economicswhile grounding the discipline in two central claims: that existing economicsystems have failed and that Islamic history proves the Islamic system’ssuperiority over others. Kuran dismisses the latter by revealing thatmodern economic problems had historical counterparts, that many conceptsand methods utilized by Islamic economists originated outside theIslamic world, and that applying ancient solutions to present problems isan inadequate approach.Islamic economics’ material expression has been confined to Islamicbanking, for which prohibiting interest is the sine qua non, and redistributionefforts. Profit and loss sharing techniques, namely, mudarabah andmusharakah, have been derived from classical Islamic jurisprudence inorder to avoid interest. These terms refer to practices whereby an individualentrusts an entrepreneur or an investor with an amount of capital that willyield a specified return. Kuran attacks these practices, asserting that theyremain mechanisms for charging interest on the grounds that since modernbanking is based on profit and loss sharing, these classical methods simplyallow bankers to avoid using the term interest ...
Palestinians Born in Exile
Authors: Shiblak Abbas
Published: October 2020

There is a striking lack of studies on the Palestinian diaspora. Undoubtedlythe pioneering work of Edward Said (“Reflections on Exile,” in Out There:Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures, eds. Russell Ferguson [TheMIT Press: 1990]) on exile and Rashid Khalidi (Palestinian Identity: TheConstruction of Modern National Consciousness [Columbia UniversityPress: 1997]) both touch on many of the related issues of collective memory,cultural identity, and the relationship between the “center” (the homeland)and the diasporic communities and how these issues manifestedthemselves in the Palestinian case. More recently, Abbas Shiblak (Reflectionson Palestinian Diaspora in Europe [2000]), Sari Hanafi (Here andThere: Analyses of the Relationship between Diaspora and the Centre [2001:in Arabic]), and Helena Schulz and Juliane Hammer (The Palestinian Diaspora:Formation of Identities and Politics of Homeland [Routledge: 2003])explore different aspects of the Palestinian diaspora.Juliane Hammer’s new study examines young Palestinian returnees aspart of a larger social, historical, political, and cultural framework (p. 114).She conducted her research in the mid-1990s, a crucial period between twophases: one of peace and hope following the signing of the Declaration ofPrinciples in 1993, and another one that started in 1997 with the deteriorationand breakdown of the peace talks, and, consequently, with the eruption of thesecond Intifada in 2000. For her survey, she chose a sample of two main categoriesof young returnees: those of the Palestinian Authority strata (a`idin)and the children of Palestinian expatriates who live in the West but mainly inthe United States (Amerikans). The interviewees were mainly adolescent oryoung men and women from and around Ramalla and Jerusalem.The return process has been described chronologically, as a series offive steps or stages ranging from the decision to return to plans for the nearfuture. As the study argues, this return entails a process of the returnees’rewriting aspects of their identities. Hammer does not see, however, that thechronological approach is the only way of looking at the process of return.She sees the transformation (what she calls the “rewriting of identities”) alsoby dividing “identity” into different aspects, and then investigating how therespondents remembered these aspects from their childhood and youth in the ...
Conference on Champa 2007
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

This first-ever conference convened by the Champa peoples, of whom theCham (both Muslim and non-Muslim) are an important component, focusedon the “Sociocultural Issues of Champa 175 Years after Its Disappearance(1832-2007).” Held on 7-8 July 2007, in San Jose, CA, it was opened byChuck Reed (mayor, San Jose), Musa Porome (chairman, Organizing Committee),Ahmad Yahya (Member of Parliament, Cambodia; founder, RadioSapCham [Voice of the Cham]), and R. Obleo (a representative of theChampa people of the Central Highlands, Vietnam, now living in America).Session One, “Language and Culture,” moderated by Mohammad ZainBin Musa (University Kebangsaan Malaysia), began with Marc Brunelle(University of Ottawa, Canada), who spoke on “Diglossia, Bilingualism,and Literacy: Can Eastern Cham Be Revitalized?” Brunelle, a fluent Chamand Vietnamese speaker, touched upon a core problem; the Cham languagehas not developed enough to accommodate modernity. Thus, the easternCham are generally bilingual, the formal language is limited to importantevents, the spoken language contains many Vietnamese words, regional pronunciationshave appeared, Cham-language written literature is very rare,and the community (traditionally) has opposed the script’s romanization. Hesees two choices to ensure its survival: romanize or simplify the script.David G. Sox (United States Coast Guard Pacific Command, Oakland,CA) presented “Toward a Book/CD-ROM of the Culture and Customs ofAncient Champa and Modern Champa Peoples.” He is seeking the community’sactive participation in documenting Champa’s geography, prehistory ...
Editorial
Authors: Bullock Katherine
Published: October 2020

This year AJISS turns twenty-five. In 1983, during a meeting of the Associationof Muslim Social Scientists’ (AMSS) executive board in Plainfield,Indiana, the pros and cons of establishing a journal were discussed in greatdetail and at length. The board members, Dr.Waheed Fakri (president), Dr.Sulayman S. Nyang (vice president), and Dawood Zwink (treasurer) agreedthat the United States needed a Muslim-led and Muslim-organized scholarlypublication to address important issues at home and abroad. In theirvision, the journal would educate university and college students, as well aspolicymakers, with respect to the life and conditions ofMuslims in the socialsciences. In addition, the journal would be a vehicle for articulating andaggregating Muslim views and understanding of the social sciences.Another objective was to provide a forum for Muslim scholars, andespecially for those associated with the AMSS, to publish their research.At the time, it was felt that Muslim scholars engaged in social scienceresearch projects with an Islamic perspective found mainstream scholarlyjournals inhospitable. The board thought that the proposed journal wouldbecome – as it has – a forum for cutting-edge research in the social sciencesand the humanities, employing both the standard social scienceresearch methodologies as well as the Islamic theoretical and methodologicalperspectives.Two issues were critical: (1) obtaining the financial resources needed tosustain the proposed journal and (2) its viability and effectiveness. After thego-ahead decision had been taken, and in order to establish the journal, theboard members drew upon the intellect and services of AMSS members aswell as friends and sympathizers. With this in mind, Dr. Mumtaz Ahmad, arespected and activeAMSS member and friend of Dr. Nyang, was proposedas the journal’s co-editor. Dr. Nyang became the editor-in-chief and Dr.Ahmad, a former editor of a scholarly journal in Pakistan, became the editor.Several prominent Muslims were invited to serve on the advisory boardto widen the circle of involvement ...
The Last Jews of Baghdad
Authors: Monaghan Sean
Published: October 2020

“It is all but impossible to pinpoint a date or an event with which the positionof the Jews of Iraq began to deteriorate and take the course leading finally, inevitably, to the destruction of community,” writes Nissim Rejwan near theend of his memoir The Last Jews of Baghdad (p. 188). Yet their centurieslongpresence was such that, as the author notes, for those Jews who wereborn and grew up in Baghdad before the mass exodus of 1950-51, the presenceof a mere handful of elderly Jews in the city today is “a state of affairs[that] is hard to imagine” (p. 1). Rejwan’s endearing memoir traces out aperiod of Iraqi history that saw the disappearance of a community that hadbeen an integral part of the human map and the city’s history. The author’syouth, from his birth in 1926 to his irrevocable departure in 1952 for Israel,condemns him to what he refers to as a state of permanent unbelonging.Rejwan was born in a Baghdad, where Jews were an indigenous, integratedcommunity that participated fully in the city’s sociocultural life.Although relations with Muslims and Christians may have been characterizedby a certain aloofness due to the logic of custom and faith, Rejwan’sportrayal of the Baghdad of his childhood is such that the spatial organizationand interpenetration of the communities in the quotidian illustrate a cityof shared economic struggles, neighborhood vernaculars, and an interminglingthat came to life in “[t]he shouts…the endless disputations and argumentsand the extremely juicy curses…[and] the encounters [that] were inthe nature of veritable revelations” for the young author (p. 31). The paramountcyof marriage for his siblings, the negotiated dowries, and the interfamilialpolitics of social position and responsibility translate a world ofintra-communal mores where life’s rhythms were dictated by that which hadcome before ...
Persian Love Poetry
Authors: Armani David , Gormley Louise
Published: October 2020

This little book is a beguiling collection of Persian love poems drawn fromboth classical and modern poetry, but united by the theme of love in its myriadinterpretations. Included are poems that explore the spiritual lovebetween humans and God, the magical love between lovers or spouses, theaffectionate love between family members and between friends, and eventhe patriotic love for one’s homeland. Each poem is accompanied with a preciousPersian chef d’oeuvre from the British Museum and, in particular, numerous illustrations of Persian miniatures. The editors come to this subjectwith vast expertise: Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis is curator of Islamic andIranian coins in the British Museum, and Sheila R. Canby is an assistantkeeper in the British Museum specializing in Islamic Iran. Both have publishedon Persian art, art history, archaeology, and myths, among other topics.Their aim is not to produce a well-researched and exhaustive collectionof Persian love poetry, but rather “to encourage readers to delve further intothe wealth of Persian literature” (p. 5). With its modest aim of capturing theinterest of novice western readers, theirs is a delightful book that charms itsway to success.As explained in the “Introduction,” Iranians and other Persian (Farsi)speakers treasure poetry not only because of the beauty of the poetic languageitself, but also because they derive joy and comfort from the poets’ perspectivetoward the world. The most famous Persian poets often have a mystical(Sufi) viewpoint toward life, whereby passion is a path to reach God and thetruth. Interwoven into the people’s social consciousness, poetry holds arevered place in Persian culture. A single verse from the best-known Persianpoems can capture an idea with elegant brevity. Iranians and other Persian(Farsi) speakers still recite poetry as a succinct and powerful way to expressa point, thought, or emotion. To explain how deeply embedded poetry is inthe Persian psyche, many oft-quoted proverbs draw much of their meaningand message from Persian poetry ...
The Holy Land in Transit
Authors: Kiel Doug
Published: October 2020

In The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan, StevenSalaita explores not just similar, but identical aspects of settler colonialismin the New World and the Holy Land. Indeed, on both continents ethnocentriccolonial discourse forged the “noble savage” and “chosen people”dichotomy. On this basis, the author compellingly argues that the UnitedStates and Israel are not merely bound politically and strategically, but alsohistorically and philosophically: both have transformed theological narrativesinto national histories. In this groundbreaking comparative analysis of theHoly Land pathos (labeled “pernicious mythology” and “messianic extremism”)across national boundaries, Salaita explicates theManifest Destiny processof “wresting Edenic land from savages in the name of prophesy andprogress” (p. 119).Armed with Biblical narratives and garrison force, covenantal “chosenpeople” set out to cultivate a bountiful “promised land” presumed to bevacant in the New World and the Near East. Newcomers escaping persecutionon a quest for Canaan justified their occupation of foreign territory byplacing the subjugation of inferior indigenous “Canaanites” within a Biblical ...
Arab Representations of the Occident
Authors: Ben-Ami Naama
Published: October 2020

In his Orientalism (Vintage Books: 1978), literature teacher and culturalcritic Edward Said claimed that the entire corpus of academic, literary, andartistic knowledge about the Orient in general and theMuslim world in particularthat the West had accumulated and shaped was built up solely toserve its desire to conquer, control, and subjugate the Orient. His thesis waswidely discussed and influenced the study of the Middle East and the attitudesof numerous scholars.According to Said, theWest depicts the Orientas stagnant, static, exotic, submissive, and retarded, in contrast to the supposedlyenlightened and superior West. Some thirty years after the furor caused by this book, Rasheed El-Enany’s Arab Representations of the Occident: East-West Encounters inArabic Fiction challenges Said’s theory, at least with respect toArabic literature.El-Enany claims that Said only presented the western perspective andignored the Oriental resistance to it. In response, he presents the East-Westencounter through his own eyes, those of anArab intellectual who was bornand raised in Cairo and moved to Great Britain in 1977 during his twenties ...
Marriage, Money, and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society
Authors: Holtzman Livnat
Published: October 2020

Through a very meticulous reading in numerous Arabic sources, YossefRapoport, author of Marriage, Money, and Divorce in Medieval IslamicSociety, challenges the commonplace assumption that women in medievalArabic society were subordinated to male domination. Drawing from therich Arabic literature written during the Mamluk period (1250-1517), he notonly skillfully depicts marital life in Cairo, Damascus, and Jerusalem, butalso reveals novel facts that might undermine common stereotypes ofwomen in medieval Islamic society. For example, not only was there a highrate (about 30 percent) of divorce in these three Mamluk urban societies, butwomen were also single-handedly capable of providing for themselves andtheir children. Elite women were economically independent, thanks to thegenerous dowries they received upon marriage, while lower-class womenworked for their living, particularly in the textile industry. True, “repudiation”(talaq) was a unilateral privilege reserved for the husband only; however,there were many cases of consensual separation (khul`).The women in this book do not appear as passive and submissive at all.Quite the contrary, some put a price on various aspects of their relationshipswith their husbands, including a “bed-fee” (haqq al-firashah), while othersappeared before the court to complain about their husbands’ misbehavior.More often than not, the court sided with them by ordering the husbands tobe flogged or thrown into jail. All of these facts, carefully supported bydozens of textual proofs and cautiously analyzed and contextualized, enablethe reader to catch a glimpse of the intimate lives of medieval Muslim families,a glimpse that is free of prejudice and self-righteousness ...
Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an
Authors: Hartmann Noga
Published: October 2020

The Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an (hereinafter EQ) is a multi-volume collectionof reference texts on the holy book of Islam that appeared in westernlanguages from 2001 until 2006. The Qur’an (lit. “the Recitation”), whichMuslims believe to be the word of God delivered to Muhammad by theangel Gabriel, is systematically analyzed by the diverse contributing writersaccording to its different layers.The different Qur’anic strata embrace numerous themes, among themtheology, Islamic jurisprudence, Biblical narratives, primary figures inIslamic history (e.g., the Prophet’s Companions and adversaries), historicalevents, rituals and customs, polemics, and the Qur’an’s literary structure andliterary language, which combines poetry with rhymed prose. Each level iscarefully examined and explored by leading scholars of Islamic studies.Therefore, this work is highly significant for those who wish to learn aboutthe Qur’an’s different aspects from a reliable objective source.Jane Dammen McAuliffe, the general editor, has focused on two parallelspheres: Muslim traditional scholarship and non-Muslim inquisitiveresearch. This approach enables the potential audience to gain Qur’anicknowledge from the scholarship of pious Muslims, although the scientificcharacter of this academic work prevails. The articles vary widely in lengthand discuss diverse themes. Both Muslim and non-Muslim approaches, aswell as traditional Islamic and modern investigative attitudes to the holytext, are introduced. Extensive reference is made to the classical and contemporaryIslamic exegetical traditions. Written in English to make the EQ ...
Islaamic Rulings for Incarcerated Muslims
Authors: Kowalski Mumina
Published: October 2020

Even in an age of digital research, printed books that can be held in one’shands and read are far from being relics of the past. This is doubly true inthe restricted environment of an American prison, where access to theInternet is out of bounds but books may be obtained through mail order orprison libraries. This publication seeks to overcome this Internet access gapby printing questions from an online Prison Q &A Forum as a slim booklet.It represents the new challenge posed by the fatwa-on-line phenomena, itsinfluence in diverse settings, and the complexities of conflicting notions ofreligious authority. Eighty questions, purportedly from incarcerated Muslimsin American prisons, are answered by thirteen shaykhs and publishedby a bookstore, self-described as “revolutionizing authentic salafee publishing”(back cover).Numerous questions in this booklet are familiar toMuslim prison chaplains,who are professionally trained to prioritize and negotiate religiousaccommodation within correctional institutions. For example, Question 11reads: “I am locked in the cell with another Muslim and there is not enoughroom for us to pray side-by-side. Can we then pray with one of us in frontof the other?” (p. 19). One shaykh says that it is permissible to do so becauseof the situation, reflecting the principle that necessity may alter prescribedritual requirements. However, addressing this and other questions without an ...
Quest for Divinity
Authors: Fluehr-Lobban Carolyn
Published: October 2020

This important book critically examines the religious and political thoughtof Mahmud Muhammad Taha, a significant twentieth-century reformistthinker who is hardly known outside of Sudanese studies. Other works inEnglish on Taha include Abdullahi al-Na`im’s translated The SecondMessage of Islam (Syracuse University Press: 1987), written by a disciplewhose own reformist positions derive from Taha’s methodology andthought. This study provides an introduction to Taha’s thought for scholarsof twentieth-centuryMuslim reformers. It highlights the radical nature of hisSufi-grounded thought and the originality of his interpretations of theQur’an and the hadith based upon Muslim scholars as well as westernDarwinian and Marxist-Hegelian thought. The author stresses the importanceand originality of Taha’s thoughtwithin the broader context of the contemporaryMuslim world. His appearance on the scholarly “radar screen”has not yet fully been realized; indeed, al`Na`im has drawn more attentionin theWest than his mentor Taha ever did.As the founder of the nationalist al-Hizb al-Jamhuri in 1945, whichlater became the Republican Brotherhood (al-Jamhouriyeen), Taha wasboth a significant political figure and a controversial theologian who wasfamously tried and executed for the “crime” of apostasy in 1985. His executionis widely viewed as having sparked the democratic uprising (intifada)that overthrew Numeiri’s military dictatorship, which had engineered hisexecution ...
Knowledge Triumphant
Authors: Rizvi Sajjad H.
Published: October 2020

Brill’s new “Classics in Islam” series, a systematic reprinting of some ofthe seminal works in Islamic studies that have been out of print fordecades, is a welcome initiative.As Dimitri Gutas, a former student, indicatesin his introduction, Rosenthal’s achievement in this monograph is outstandingwithin an exceptionally productive and influential career. It isalso somewhat unusual that a work first published over thirty years ago stillremains unsurpassed, even if one may question some of the argument’sdetails and tendencies. Rosenthal often worked with manuscripts andunedited sources and, while we have the luxury of criticizing his judgmentsbased on our access to superior critical editions, the contribution of the bookremains singular.

As befits a social and intellectual historian, Rosenthal’s survey commenceswith the philology of the word knowledge (`ilm) and works throughinstances in early Islam andArabic poetry before moving on to chapters ondefinition, theology, Sufism, philosophy, and finally concluding with a chapteron the social contexts and uses of knowledge. While there are now anumber of works that deal with aspects of these chapters, no one hasattempted to reconstruct a survey quite like this. Each chapter could well bethe subject of monographs and, as Gutas suggests, numerous sections couldact as inspiration for “untold dissertations.” Rosenthal begins with the claimthat civilizations tend to revolve around meaningful concepts of an abstractnature that,more than anything else, give themtheir distinctive nature; in thecase of Islam, this is the centrality of knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge.While he shifts from the plural to the singular and back, one retains thecentral point that the field of knowledge is unified. The fact is that Muslimscholars in very different fields of inquiry were able to retain a concept of`ilm that was broadly cognate and transferable ...
Arabic, Islam, and the Allah Lexicon
Authors: Farghal Mohammed
Published: October 2020

Divided into five chapters plus a bibliography and an index, Arabic,Islam, and the Allah Lexicon explores Allah-centric expressions in Arabicand their far-reaching influence on the linguistic behavior of native Arabicspeakers in particular and Muslims speaking their own languages in general.It clearly demonstrates how Islam’s advent constituted a turning point in thehistory of theArabic language by introducing numerous theocentric expressionsreflecting God’s oneness, as opposed to the practice of polytheism inthe pre-Islamic era. These expressions have successfully become the bannerof day-to-day communication in Arab communities and, to a lesser extent,in non-ArabMuslim cultures. TheAllah lexicon inArabic has indeed shapedthe concept of God inArab and/or Muslim culture; henceAllah’s omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience are linguistically felt in times of prosperityand adversity alike ...
Crossing Boundaries
Authors: Willoughby Jay
Published: October 2020

On 24-25 October 2008, the thirty-seventh annual conference of theAssociation of Muslim Social Scientists of North America (AMSS) washeld at the Harvard Divinity School, thanks to the efforts of the late Dr.Louis Cantori (an AMSS board member) and the gracious support of DeanWilliam Graham. Given the expanding role of religion in American foreignpolicy and public life, the conference’s seven panels were structured aroundfinding common ground in a religiously pluralistic world, healing inter-religiousand intra-religious rifts, and using religion to promote (or at least mitigate)international conflicts.AliA. Mazrui (Binghamton University, andAMSS President) welcomedthe audience and spoke of how America, the world’s “first and only universalcountry,” has not always welcomed non-Anglo/non-Christian immigrants.He contended that the country might be in the process of accommodatingIslam, as witnessed by the Clinton administration’s hosting of iftar dinnersand the Bush administration’s extension of Ramadan greetings to the MuslimAmerican community ...
Between Foreigners and Shi`is
Authors: Sarshar Houman
Published: October 2020

After twenty-seven centuries of uninterrupted presence on the Persianplateau, the Jews of Iran have become so inextricably ingrained in everypossible aspect of Iranian life, culture, religion, and history that any valuablework of scholarship in Judeo-Persian studies, such as the one at hand,must by necessity entail an interdisciplinary approach. Between Foreignersand Shi`is, a ground-breaking work that will henceforth prove indispensableto any researcher ofmodern Judeo-Persian studies, is ameticulous pieceof scholarship that brings as much novelty to its own field as it does tomodernIranian historiography, Middle Eastern political studies, and Islamicstudies.Daniel Tsadik’s book provides a history of the religious, political, andsocial life of Iranian Jews under Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848-96).Relying on a wealth of previously untapped archival material, the authorexamines in particular detail episodes of persecution in Barforush in 1866-67 (pp. 60-78), in Shiraz at the hands of Hajj Sayyid `Ali Akbar Fal Asiri(pp. 130-37), in Isfahan at the hands of ShaykhMohammad Taqi Najafi (pp.137-49), and in Hamadan at the hands of Mullah `Abdallah (pp. 155-77).Examining these and other episodes of anti-Semitic persecution against thebroader backdrop of socio-political events throughout Iran at large, such asthe Tobacco Rebellion of 1891 and the great famine, he brings to light a hithertounnoticed dynamic in which Iran’s Jewish community emerges as therope in a three-way tug of war between the Shi`ite clergy, the Qajar court,and western diplomats, with each jostling for dominance in the fledglingnation that was becoming modern Iran ...