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The Fatimids’ apocalyptic vision of their central place in an imminent utopia played a critical role in transfiguring the intellectual and political terrains of North Africa in the early tenth century. Yet the realities that they faced on the ground often challenged their status as the custodians of a pristine Islam at the end of time. Through an examination of a variety of sources including works of taʾwīl or symbolic interpretation, this book illustrates some of the specific structures and functions of Fatimid apocalypticism. It then examines how various components of the apocalyptic myth—especially the utopia that it promised—evolved in response to shifting historical circumstances. The book also focuses on how the evolution of apocalyptic symbolism was related to the Fatimids’ consolidation of authority. The book ends with an extensive analysis of both the ritual and textual dimensions of another apocalyptic event linked to a Fatimid lineage: the Nizari Ismaili declaration of the end of time on August 8, 1164.

Current popular and academic discussions make certain assumptions regarding Islam and its lack of compatibility with pluralism. Some notable liberal thinkers have even argued that pluralism itself is inherently antithetical to Islam. This volume addresses these assumptions by bringing clarity to some of their key suppositions and conjectures. It seeks to go beyond the parameters of political correctness by engaging in a dialogue that refutes these postulations in a direct, frontal debate. In this volume scholars from around the world explore notions of pluralism, discussing the broad spectrum of its relevance and application to modern-day societies, from secularism and multiculturalism to democracy, globalization, and the pivotal role of civil society.

The temptation to invoke idealised histories of Islamic cosmopolitanism as the antithesis to the militancy associated with contemporary groups, such as the Islamic State (IS), is quite powerful. Many writers have pointed to the flourishing of al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula and the mobile societies of the premodern Indian Ocean as paradigmatic examples both of the storied past and the potential future of cosmopolitan forms of religious vitality. However, if one pushes beyond nostalgic images of coexistence, pluralism and mobility, it is also possible to discern more complex stories. The chapters in Challenging Cosmopolitanism, specifically direct attention to the historical experiences of Muslims in China and Southeast Asia to explore such complexities. Marked by considerable inflows of Muslim migrants that further complicated the demographics of already heterogeneous populations, the experiences of Muslim communities in these regions provide insights into contests to define legitimate forms of difference. Spanning from the 16th through 21st centuries, this volume presents case studies of itinerant Sufis who overthrew governments in the Indian Ocean and religious shrines patronized by warlords in early Java; of thinkers who promoted ‘Islamic military cosmopolitanism’ in Qing-era China and Americans who supported US-Ottoman cooperation in the pacification of the Philippines; of Muslim rebels in early 20^th-century Malaya who resisted borders and Afghan refugees in China whose experience reflects contemporary dynamics of ‘armoured’ forms of 21^st century cosmopolitanism. Through such explorations, this volume illuminates the fraught relationships between mobility, coercion and border-crossing, thereby contributing to more nuanced frameworks of analysis for Islamic cosmopolitanism.

The resurgence of Islam, geopolitical crises involving Muslim nations, violence associated with Islam and the immigration of millions of Muslims to Western countries have generated a strong interest in understanding Islamic law. The challenges of these new realities have impressed upon Muslims the need to rethink classical jurisprudence, and a powerful contemporary ihad – the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources – has unleashed a tremendous intellectual energy that is transforming legal systems across the Muslim world. This book explores the limits and controversies of this development in the context of the diverse needs of Muslim cultures and communities living in Muslim and non-Muslim nations and continents including Europe and North America. It explains diverse bodies of Islamic law, including fiqh, qanun and siyar; supplements Arabic terms from the Basic Code with English substitutes; and analyses the forces shaping contemporary ijtihad.

Writing letters was an important component of intellectual life in the Middle Islamic period, telling us much about the cultural history of pre-modern Islamic society. This book offers an analysis of letter-writing, focusing on the notion of the power of the pen. The author looks at the wider context of epistolography, relating it to the power structures of Islamic society in that period, and also attempts to identify some of the similarities and differences between Muslim modes of letter-writing and those of western cultures. One of the strengths of the book is that it is based on a wide range of primary Arabic sources, thus reflecting the broader epistemological importance of letter-writing in Islamic society. The book evaluates the background to letter-writing as the principal representation of state documents and communication; takes a close look at the literary principles employed in that process; considers the important social and intellectual role of the secretary and how he fitted into the power structure of Islamic society during this period; argues that the voluminous collections of letters, written mainly in artistic prose, can be classified as an epistolary genre in their own right; and shows that Islamic letter-writing was very culture specific.

The book offers fresh insight into the recent political development and contrasting experiences of four Maghreb countries: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. The Arab Spring affected them in different ways. Tunisia underwent profound change as Ben Ali was overthrown in a fortnight. Yet in Algeria, President Bouteflika won an unprecedented fourth term in office despite being too ill to campaign. What explains these variations? Why did Ben Ali’s regime fall and Bouteflika’s survive? Why has Morocco not gone the same way as Tunisia? And what of Mauritania, the often forgotten other Maghreb country? This book addresses these and other questions by using Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way’s celebrated model for examining political transitions to analyse and compare the political development of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania over the last ten years.

Recent discussions of the‘Chinese economic development model’, the emergence of an alternative ‘Muslim model’ over the past quarter century, and the faltering globalisation of the ‘Washington Consensus’ all point to the need to investigate more systematically the nature of these models and their competitive attractions. This is especially the case in the Muslim world, which both spans different economic and geographic categories and is itself the progenitor of a development model. The ‘Chinese model’ has attracted the greatest attention in step with that country's phenomenal growth and therefore provides the primary focus for this book. This volume examines the characteristics of this model and its reception in two major regions of the world — Africa and Latin America. It also investigates the current competition over development models across Muslim contexts. The question of which model or models, if any, will guide development in Muslim majority countries is vital not only for them, but for the world as a whole. This political economy study addresses this vital question as well as the closely related issue of the centrality of governance to development.

Why, in the years around 1920, did the concept of ‘minority’ suddenly spring to prominence in public affairs worldwide? Within a decade of World War One, the term became fundamental to public and academic understandings of national and international politics, law and society: ‘minorities’, and ‘majorities’ with them, were taken to be an objective reality, both in the present and the past. This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as ‘minorities’. Despite French attempts to create territorial, political and legal divisions, the mandate period saw the consolidation of the nation-state form in Syria: a trend towards a coherent national territory with fixed borders, uniform state authority within them and the struggle to control that state played out in the language of nationalism – developments in the post-Ottoman Levant which closely paralleled those in contemporary Europe, after the demise of the Austro-Hungarian and tsarist empires. Through close attention to what changed in French mandate Syria, and what those changes meant, the book argues for a careful rethinking of a term too often used as an objective description of reality.

The character and range of Arab folk literature are investigated in this collection. Arranged into three sections, the book looks first at historical developments in the relationship between Arab folk literature and that of the elite, the gradual elaboration of certain genres, and the producers of folk literature. It then devotes a substantial section to the consideration of single or related texts. Finally, the book searches for evidence of social and cultural implications and for differences of attitudes of folk and elite towards sensitive issues. The book features a standardised transcription system based on pronunciation of the language — far more suited for oral forms of literature.

Does political Islam have a specific vision of global politics? How has the foreign policy of Islamist forces developed in order to impose their ideas onto the diplomatic agenda of other countries? How do these actors perceive the world, international affairs, and the way Islamic countries should engage with the international system? Eager to break with the dominant grammar of international relations, and instead to fuse Muslim states in a unique religious and political entity, Muslim actors have had to face up to the realities that they had promised to transform. Drawing on a series of case studies, this collective work sheds light on six national trajectories of Islamism: in Morocco (the Party of Justice and Development), Tunisia (Ennhada), Egypt (the Muslim Brotherhood), Palestine (Hamas), Lebanon (Hizbullah) and Turkey (AKP). It looks at what has been produced by the representatives of political Islam in each case, and the way these representatives have put their words and their ideological aspirations into action within their foreign policies.

This book investigates how Turkish nationalism was constructed by two closely related groups: Ottoman-Turkish prisoners of war in Russia and Egypt during the First World War, and Ottoman-Turkish psychiatrists who examined and diagnosed the prisoners following their post-war repatriation. The book first explores what the prisoners understood of nation, tradition, and Islam in the confines of prison camps as they attempted to identify the ills of their nation and empire. As the problems were identified and various solutions proposed, some of these views came to clash and sometimes converge. Second, turning to the doctors, it examines the role science played in the nation they wanted to build after the war. The prisoners’ and other soldiers’ shattered nerves became grounding points of profound social anxieties about the present and future of the Turkish nation. During the interwar years, when the military’s health was still taken to be a reflection of the nation’s health, the psychiatrists projected this worrisome picture, which they viewed as signs of national degeneration, onto the nation at large. Much like the officer prisoners in the camps discursively excluded the ignorant peasants from the nation, the psychiatrists wanted to reject those they deemed as a biological threat to the nation’s body. This book aims to broaden the discussion of nationalism to include both ideological and biological factors to consider how each influenced the other.

Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) is one of the most influential and important Muslim thinkers in history. Ibn Khaldun has inspired at least as much interest among modern scholars as his immediate contemporaries. Legions of sociologists, anthropologists and historians have studied his philosophy of history, treating the Muqaddimah as a timeless piece of philosophy. Most studies of Ibn Khaldun ignore the fascinating story of his own life and times. Rejecting portrayals of Ibn Khaldun as a modern mind lost in medieval obscurity, this book demonstrates how Ibn Khaldun's ideas were shaped by his historical context and personal motivations. Relying on original Arabic sources, most importantly Ibn Khaldun's unique autobiography, this is the first complete, scholarly biography of Ibn Khaldun in English. Demonstrating the rich and complex nature of Ibn Khaldun's memoirs, the book not only tells the life story of Ibn Khaldun, but also introduces readers to the fourteenth-century Mediterranean world. Seen in the context of a politically tumultuous and religiously contentious fourteenth-century Mediterranean, Ibn Khaldun's ideas about tribalism, identity, religion and history are even more relevant to pressing, modern concerns.

This book situates the evolution of citizenship at the centre of state formation under the quasi-colonial mandate administration in Palestine. The book presents a new understanding of the Arabs' reactions to colonialism and Jewish immigration into Palestine by framing resistance to mandate policies and the early stages of the development of the political project of Palestinian nationalism through the articulated appeals, discussions, ideologies and demands for a political, as opposed to simply legal, identity. It traces how, and to what extent, citizenship became politically linked to nationality and civic identity as a reaction to the legal parameters of the British-created citizenship status in the post-1918 period.

This book could easily be called ‘A Guide for the Modern Muslim’. The author spells out what, for him, is the essential message of Islam, followed by a history of its unfolding through the person of the Prophet Muhammad, who was a visionary seeking to change the ideals, attitudes, and behaviour of the society in which he lived. The message and its history are delineated as two separate things, conflated by tradition. The author confronts those difficult questions with which Muslims are struggling, attempting to reconsider them from a moral and political perspective that is independent of the framework produced by tradition.

This comparison of Islamic and Christian mysticism focuses on the mystic journey in the two faith traditions — the journey that every believer must make and which leads to the Divine. The author clears away misconceptions and highlights similarities and differences in the thought and lives of six key mystics, three Islamic — Al-Kalabadhi, Al-Daylami, Al-Qushayri — and three Christian: Julian of Norwich, Thomas A. Kempis, and Teresa of Avila. He considers the ways of Perfection on the Mystic Path and asks in what ways these authors have embarked on the mystic journey. The author looks at the themes they have in common, as well as their differences, and asks how they envisage the concept of ‘union’ with the Deity. Readers will gain a broad understanding of the interdisciplinary and intertextual nature of the subject, as well as its diverse intellectual and historical contexts. The book surveys themes as diverse as secular chivalry and union with the Divine; examines the role of al-Khidr/al-Khadir/Elijah/Elias/St George in both the Islamic and Christian mystical traditions; and considers the negative and positive articulations of each tradition. It is a companion volume to Islam, Christianity and Tradition: A Comparative Exploration by Ian R. Netton.

This book offers a unique comparative exploration of the role of tradition in Islam and Christianity. The idea of ‘tradition’ has enjoyed a variety of senses and definitions in Islam and Christianity, but both have cleaved at certain times to a supposedly ‘golden age’ of tradition from the past. In comparing the role of tradition in Islam and Christianity, this book explores the following key themes: the roles of authority, fundamentalism, the use of reason and ijtihad (independent thinking). It suggests that there has been a chain of thinkers from classical Islam to the twentieth century who share a common interest in ijtihad. Drawing on past and present evidence, and using Christian tradition as a focus for contrast and comparison, the book highlights the seemingly paradoxical harmony between tradition and ijtihad in Islam. It draws on a variety of primary and secondary sources including contemporary newspaper and journal articles, documents and letters, adding immediacy to the text, which proposes a new vocabulary for the articulation of Islam, offers original comparisons between Salafism and Lefebvrism, and articulates the yearning amongst today's Muslim and Christian traditionalists for a revival of a ‘golden age’ from whence, they believe, all good traditions derive.

In the past decade, Islamic finance has grown at rates exceeding 20 per cent a year, and is now a US $200 billion industry, with operations in over seventy countries. This book explains the paradox of a system rooted in the medieval era thriving in the global economy. It traces the evolution of Islamic finance, explores its significance from a historical and comparative perspective, and considers the strategic, marketing, managerial, political, economic, regulatory and cultural challenges faced by Islamic institutions. Coverage is comprehensive, defining Islamic finance in its broadest sense to include banks, mutual funds, securities firms and insurance companies. The author places Islamic finance in the context of the global political and economic system, and covers core issues including the moral economy of Islam; differences between countries such as Pakistan, Iran, the Sudan and Malaysia; and religious issues and challenges. Based on rigorous academic research as well as considerable empirical work, the book is a reference work for all those with an interest in Islamic and Middle Eastern economics, business and finance.

Debt finance involving interest payments – the standard method in the global economy – goes against Qur'anic teaching and Shariah law. Wealth creation is therefore one of the greatest challenges facing Muslims and the Islamic world. This book explores the longer-term issues of Islamic capital accumulation and its contribution to the development of Muslim societies in the East and West. Although many of these societies remain poor, it is shown that there is much positive experience to learn from – especially that wealth creation is most successful when the institutions created to harness and deploy funds share the values of the societies they serve. It can be seen that adherence to religious values brings social development, and that moral financing makes good business sense. The book includes: evaluation of Asian Islamic banking experiences; assessment of Islamic banking efficiency and service quality; analysis of Islamic insurance and risk management; and equity finance and venture capital. Countries covered include: Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Kuwait, Egypt, Malaysia, Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. The book provides a comprehensive discussion of the various aspects of Islamic finance, focusing on key countries and institutions in a coherent manner, and bringing both breadth and depth to the subject.

Based on twelve case studies (Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zanzibar and the Comoros), this books provides the first comprehensive analysis of Muslim movements of reform in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. It looks at patterns and peculiarities of different traditions of Islamic reform, considering both Sufi- and Salafi-oriented movements of reform in their respective historical and regional contexts. It stresses the importance of the local context to explain the different trajectories of development. The books studies the social, religious, and political impact of these reform movements in both historical and contemporary times and asks why some movements of reform have become successful as popular mass movements, gaining influence among African middle class groups, while others failed to attract substantial audiences. It considers jihad-minded movements in contemporary Mali, northern Nigeria and Somalia and looks at modes of transnational entanglement of movements of reform. Equally, the book discusses the biographies of major reformist scholars and addresses the importance of generational dynamics in the development of movements of reform. Against the background of a general inquiry into what constitutes “reform”, the text responds to the question of what “reform” actually means for Muslims in contemporary Africa.

How did medieval Sufis express their system of everyday morality? Sufism attracts much attention in the West, yet its ethical dimension is often overlooked. Jawanmardi – a key element of Persian Sufism – was the ethic that encouraged the Sufi to put others before himself and to overlook the sins committed by others, representing a humane and liberal understanding of Islam. Many writers in the Persian tradition wrote about jawanmardi, and this book presents three of the key medieval texts in translation: Kitab al-futuwwa by Shihab al-Din Umar Suhrawardi, Futuwwat nama of Mirza 'Abd al-'Azim Khan Qarib, and Risala-yi Hatim al-Tayy by Husayn Wa'iz-i Kashifi. The texts are drawn from across the medieval period, reflecting different timeframes and audiences. This allows the reader to identify shifts in the ethic of jawanmardi and Sufism more generally. An introduction highlights the main contours and developments of jawanmardi, and each text is prefaced by a contextualising introduction including information about the author. The texts reflect the political, social, and gender issues of the time.