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What would it mean to imagine Islam as an immanent critique of the West? Sayyid Ahmad Khan lived in a time of great tribulation for Muslim India under British rule. By examining Khan's work as a critical expression of modernity rooted in the Muslim experience of it, Islam as Critique argues that Khan is essential to understanding the problematics of modern Islam and its relationship to the West. The book re-imagines Islam as an interpretive strategy for investigating the modern condition,...

In this ideal introduction to Sufi wisdom, Shah illustrates how traditional Sufi concepts can resolve our social, psychological, and spiritual problems, drawing on classic texts, the Eastem parables of Jesus, and encounters with contemporary teachers, students, and journalists.

Viewing Iraq from the outside is made easier by compartmentalising its people (at least the Arabs among them) into Shi'as and Sunnis. But can such broad terms, inherently resistant to accurate quantification, description and definition, ever be a useful reflection of any society? If not, are we to discard the terms 'Shi'a' and 'Sunni' in seeking to understand Iraq? Or are we to deny their relevance and ignore them when considering Iraqi society? How are we to view the common Iraqi injunction tha...

"This is a remarkable piece of scholarship that illuminates general and specific tendencies in Islamic education in South Thailand. Armed with an enormous amount of rich empirical detail and an elegant writing style, the author debunks the simplistic Orientalist conceptions of Wahhabi and Salafi influences on Islamic education in South Thailand. This work will be a state-of-the-art source for understanding the role of Islam and the ongoing conflict in this troubled region of Southeast Asia. The...

This book seeks to elucidate the concept of justice, not so much as it is expressed in law courts (retributive and procedural justice) or in state budgets (distributive justice), but as primary justice - what it means and how it can be grounded in the inalienable rights that each human being possesses qua human being. It draws inspiration from two recent works of philosopher Nicolas Wolterstorff, but also from the groundbreaking Islamic initiative of 2007, the Common Word Letter addressed by 138...

Women and Politics in the Islamic Republic of Iran looks at the rise and role of female activism in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. Since 1979 women have played a decisive role in elections and assumed political posts. This study assesses this role as well as the impact of domestic and international policies on women's activism, highlighting the contradictions between politics and religion within the Islamic Republic. It also seeks to evaluate political and economic developments and the transfo...

Nineteen authors from nine countries analyze reports of travels to the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and the nineteenth centuries. The volume discusses questions of perceptions of "otherness", the circulation of knowledge, intermedial relations, gender roles, and explores possibilities and limits of digital analysis.

Nonie Darwish lived for thirty years in a majority Muslim nation. Everything about her life?family, sexuality, hygiene, business, banking, contracts, economics, politics, social issues, everything?was dictated by the Islamic law code known as Sharia.But Sharia isn't staying in majority Muslim nations. Darwish now lives in the West and brings a warning; the goal of radical Islam is to bring Sharia law to your country. If that happens, the fabric of Western law and liberty will be ripped in two. U...

How apparently positive representations of Muslims in U.S. media cast Muslims as a racial population Portrayals of Muslims as the beneficiaries of liberal values have contributed to the racialization of Muslims as a risky population since the September 11 attacks. These discourses, which hold up some Muslims as worthy of tolerance or sympathy, reinforce an unstable good Muslim/bad Muslim binary where any Muslim might be moved from one side to the other. In Tolerance and Risk, Mitra Rastegar expl...

The Persatuan Islam (Islamic-Union) was a small group of Indonesian Muslim activists during the period from 1923-1957. Their efforts involved them in the great disputes of the time, namely the shape of the emerging Indonesian state as the region broke loose from colonial control, and the direction of Islamic discourse in that new nation. Deeply ideological, these activists called themselves "radical-revolutionaries". Their outlook, starting as a manifestation of Islamic Modernism, later became a...

In a series of essays this collected volume challenges much of the conventional wisdom regarding the intellectual history of Muslim Africa. Ranging from the libraries of Early Modern Mauritania and Timbuktu to mosque lectures in contemporary Mombasa the contributors to this collection overturn many commonly accepted assumptions about Africa's Muslim learned classes. Rather than isolated, backward and out of touch, the essays in this volume reveal Muslim intellectuals as not only well aware of th...

I was told to come alone. I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel ...For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for the Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing - Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other. In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accomp...

The present volume contains the proceedings of a workshop that took place as part of a larger project carried out by the Groningen Research School for the Study of the Humanities (GRSSH). The framework of the overall research perspective was a study of 'the autonomy of culture and its components'. In November 2006, colleagues from various departments at the University of Groningen who work in the field of Islamic studies jointly organised a workshop on the subject of 'autonomy and Islam'. For an...