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This book documents and explores a ninth century Muslim thinker’s response to an emergent information technology—widely available books written on rag-paper. By 850, in Baghdad rag-paper books were all the rage. A book market, with its professionals: stationers, copyists, booksellers and authors, emerged. A cosmopolitan society responded enthusiastically. Al-Jā?i? had, for most of his life, earned his living as an influential counselor, a special adviser to the elite. By the time of his death in 868/9, he had become a professional author. Al-Jā?i? was a bibliomaniac and prided himself on his expertise in Kalām, a dialectical method for ascertaining the truth, the predominant intellectual discipline of his day, a rigorous study of the nature of God and the universe derived from close observation of creation and informed by inferential and analogical reasoning about the suprasensible world. Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books concentrates on The Book of Living, the most important work by al-Jā?i?, a documentation of almost all creation, from insect life, such as beetles and flies, to reptiles, such as lizards and snakes, to birds and mammals. The primary focus of the study is the extensive praise of books that The Book of Living contains. This is also the story of how al-Jā?i? thought that his book would save his society from the disorder it had fallen into through its addiction to argument and dissent, an addiction that created social tumult.

More than any other issue in early and medieval Islamic theology, anthropomorphism (tashbīh) stood at the heart of many theological debates. These debates were not purely intellectual; they were intrinsically linked to political struggles over hegemony. The way a scholar interpreted the anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Qur’an and the Hadith (for instance, God’s hand, God’s laughter or God’s sitting on the heavenly throne) often reflected his political and social stature, and his theological affinity. This book focuses on aḥādīth al-ṣifāt – the traditions that depict God and His attributes in an anthropomorphic language. The book reveals the way these traditions were studied and interpreted in the circles of Islamic traditionalism which included ultra-traditionalists (the Hanbalites and their forerunners) and middle-of-the-road traditionalists (Ash’arites and their forerunners). The book presents an in-depth literary analysis of aḥādīth al-ṣifāt while considering the role of the early scholars of Hadith in shaping the narrative of these anthropomorphic texts. The book also offers the first scholarly and systematic presentation of hand, face, and bodily gestures that the scholars performed while transmitting the anthropomorphic traditions. The book goes on to discuss the inner controversies in the prominent traditionalistic learning centres of the Islamic world regarding the way to understand and interpret these anthropomorphic traditions. Through a close, contextualized, and interdisciplinary reading in Hadith compilations, theological treatises, and historical sources, this book offers an evaluation and understanding of the traditionalistic endeavours to define anthropomorphism in the most crucial and indeed most formative period of Islamic thought.

Taking as its point of departure the symbolic and cognitive roles of language, this book investigates how Arabic is involved in ideological and cultural debates in which conflict is a defining feature. The book shows how discussions about the inimitability of the Qur’an in the pre-modern period were, at some deep level, concerned with issues of ethnic election against the background of inter-ethnic strife among Arabs and non-Arabs, mainly Persians. Discussions of the (un)translatability of the Qur’an in this period are further shown to be related to this notion of ethnic election. In this respect, theology and ethnicity emerge as partners in theorizing language. Staying within the symbolic role of language, the book further investigates the role of paratexts and literary production in disseminating language ideologies and in cultural contestation. Language symbolism is also shown to be relevant in ideological debates about hybrid or cross-national literary production in the Arab milieu. Language ideology appears to be everywhere, including in discussions of the cognitive role of language in linking thought to reality to which a whole chapter is devoted

This collection of nine case studies provides an understanding of genealogy in Muslim societies and highlights how ideas about kinship and descent have shaped communal and national identities in such societies. The volume provides a window onto Muslim societies, particularly with regard to the generation, preservation and manipulation of genealogical knowledge. The case studies draw on primary sources from across the Middle East, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from works of classical Arabic heritage to oral testimonies gained from fieldwork. They stress the malleability of kinship and memory, along with the interests that this malleability serves. They also address questions about how genealogical knowledge has been generated, how it has empowered political and religious elites, and how it has shaped our understanding of the past. Finally, the book examines the authenticity, legitimacy, and institutionalisation of genealogical knowledge, Muslim hierarchy, and the basis of sectarian, tribal, ethnic and other identities.

This is the first single-volume study of the Islamisation of Indonesia from the first evidence of the acceptance of Islam by indigenous peoples until the present day. It offers an overview of the religion’s growing significance in the formation of what is now the largest and most populous Muslim country in the world, the greatest political power in Southeast Asia, and a growing player on the world scene. With close to a quarter of a billion Muslims, Indonesia is still overlooked by historians of Islam and other specialists in the Muslim world, while Southeast Asianists often underestimate the importance of Islam in the shaping of Indonesia. This survey provides a comprehensive insight into the different roles played by Islam in Indonesia throughout history: From the earliest evidence of its presence in the late thirteenth century; the importance of Indian Ocean networks for connecting Indonesians with the wider Islamic world; the religion’s role as a means of resistance and tool for nation building; and postcolonial attempts to forge an ‘Indonesian Islam’.

This book explores the ways in which Islam and European colonialism shaped modernity in the Indo-Malay world. Focusing on Indonesia and Malaysia, it looks at how European colonial and Islamic modernising powers operated in the common and parallel domains of organization, government and politics, law and education in the first half of the twentieth century. Through its critical approach to the interplay of Islamic religious rfrom and dynamics of both British and Dutch colonialisms, this work of comparative history illuminates perspective on the rather different shapes that Islam and Muslim societies have taken in the neighboring nation-states of modern Malaysia and Indonesia. It shows that colonialisation was able to co-exist with Islamisation, arguing that Islamic movements were not necessarily antithetical to modernisation, nor that Western modernity was always anathema to Islamic and local custom. Rather, in distinguishing religious from worldly affairs, they were able to adopt and adapt modern ideas and practices that were useful or relevant while maintaining the Islamic faith and ritual that they believed to be essential. Moving beyond binaries such as Orientalist versus Islamic and modernity versus Islam, it offers historical evidence and theoretical engagement with Islamic religious reform and European colonial modernisation in particular, and with religion, modernity, and tradition in general. In developing an understanding of the common ways in which Islam was defined and treated in Indonesia and Malaysia, we can gain a new insight to Muslim politics and culture in Southeast Asia.

This book asks a number of questions: Do Islamic financial institutions perform better than their Western counterparts during periods of financial crisis? How do Islamic financial institutions manage risk, given their unique characteristics and the need for Sharī’ah compliance? The book looks at the challenges for Islamic financial institutions in an international post-Basel II system where banks are required to have more capital and liquidity. It also examines the influence of governance on client and investor perceptions and their implications for institutional stability and sustainability. It concludes by suggesting how the Islamic financial industry can better fulfil both the legal and social requirements of Sharī’ah.

This book studies the complex relationship of religion to modernity, arguing that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, if the new intellectual landscape of the 19^th century. The lens of Islamic Modernism is used to uncover the underlying epistemology and methodology of historicism that penetrated the Middle East and South Asia in this period, forcing and enabling a recalibration of the definition, nature, function and place of religion. Muslim Modernists engaged in a sophisticated project of theological reform designed to marry their twin commitments to religion and modernity; they were in conversation with European scholarship and Catholic Modernism, but more importantly, with their own complex Islamic traditions. This book provides a new framework for conceptualizing the relationship between Western and non-Western modernities. It demonstrates that Islamic Modernists adopted intellectual frameworks that first emerged in Europe, then deployed them to argue for the superiority of Islam. For Islamic Modernists, Islam had historically been, and could once again become a motor of modernity and the solution to contemporary ‘backwardness.’ Islamic Modernists considered in this book include Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (Iran), Imam Bayezidof (Russia), Namik Kemal (Ottoman Empire) and Syed Ameer Ali (India).

The eight essays in this volume, written by scholars from six countries, narrate the continuing translations and adaptations of Islam and Muslims within Chinese culture through the writings of Sino-Muslim intellectuals. Progressing chronologically and interlocking thematically, they help the reader develop a coherent understanding of the intellectual issues at stake. How can people belong simultaneously to two cultures without alienating themselves from either? Muslims have lived in the Chinese culture area for over a millennium, and intellectuals among them have wrestled with this problem in print since the 17^th century. The Chinese written language never adopted vocabulary from “Islamic languages” to enable precise understanding of Islam’s religious and philosophical foundations, so Islam had to be translated into Chinese, a language dominated by Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, which lacks words and arguments to justify monotheism. Even in the 21^st century, culturally Chinese Muslims must still defend their devotion to a single God, avoidance of pork, regular worship at the mosque and other markers of their communities’ distinctiveness. These essays trace the intellectual evolution of Islam in Chinese, answering questions about the translation of exogenous traditions and opening new possibilities for comparison with other imported ideas, such as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Marxism, and modernism. Sino-Muslim intellectuals thought about Islam in Chinese, so close readings of their writings provide direct evidence of the contradictions and triumphs of their cultural simultaneity.

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Tracing its origins and development, this book reveals that the Minaret, long understood to have been invented in the early years of Islam as the place from which the muezzin gives the call to prayer, was actually invented some two centuries later to be a visible symbol of Islam. Drawing on buildings, archaeological reports, medieval histories, geographies, and early Arabic poetry, it reinterprets the origin, development, and meanings of the minaret. From early Islam to the modern world, and from Iran, Egypt, Turkey, and India to West and East Africa, the Yemen, and Southeast Asia, the book is a sweeping tour of the minaret's position as the symbol of Islam.

The authenticity of hadith—whether this or that report is correctly attributed—was a major subject of scholarship in the Middle Ages and has continued to be today. However, this collection of articles is primarily concerned with other problems involving hadith: changing interpretations over time, the use of hadith not to establish rules but to encourage godly behaviour, comparison between modern and premodern methods of hadith study, the collection and study of hadith among jurisprudents and Sufis as well as traditionists (hadith specialists), the development of hadith studies in the Levant and Turkey, and different approaches to hadith among modern Sunni and Shiʿi scholars.

There are few moments in human history where the forces of religion, culture and politics converge to produce some of the most significant philosophical ideas in the world. India, in the early 20th century, was the setting for one of these moments, which saw the rise of activist-thinkers like Nehru, Jinnah, and Gandhi. One of the most influential members of the group was the poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal. Commonly known as the “spiritual father of Pakistan,” the philosophical and political ideas of Iqbal not only shaped the face of Indian Muslim nationalism but also shaped the direction of modernist reformist Islam around the world. This book offers novel examinations of the philosophical ideas that laid at the heart of Iqbal's own. As such, by producing new developments in research on Iqbal's thought from a diversity of prominent and emerging voices within American and European Islamic studies, this book offers new and novel examinations of the ideas that lies at the heart of Iqbal's own thought: religion, science, metaphysics, nationalism and religious identity.

Cosmopolitan ideals and pluralist tendencies have been employed creatively and adapted carefully by Muslim individuals, societies, and institutions in modern Southeast Asia to produce the necessary contexts for mutual tolerance and shared respect between and within different groups in society. Organised around six key themes that interweave the connected histories of three countries in Southeast Asia — Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia — this book shows the ways in which historical actors have promoted better understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims in the region. Case studies from across these countries of the Malay world take in the rise of the network society in the region in the 1970s up until the early 21st century, providing a panoramic view of Muslim cosmopolitan practices, outlook, and visions in the region.

After an introduction by the editor this book presents fifteen studies from across Europe, including the eastern part, many of them comparative across countries. The chapters are arranged in four parts. The first focuses particularly on local and national elections, and the second part on broader questions of political integration, especially among women and youth. Part three looks out how institutions, Muslim and local or national, can facilitate and contribute to directing the particular ways in which political integration can be channelled or hindered. Finally, the fourth part investigates two examples of political activism which challenge accumulated political practices.

Preaching has been central to Muslim communities throughout the centuries. The liturgical Friday sermon, the khuṭba, is a prime example, although other genres that are less commonly known also serve important functions. This book addresses the ways in which Muslims relate various forms of religious oratory to authoritative tradition in twenty-first-century Islamic practice, while striving to adapt to local contexts and the changing circumstances of politics, media and society. This is the first book of its kind to look at homiletics beyond a specific country focus. Taking into consideration the historical developments of Muslim preaching, it offers a collection of thoroughly contextualised case studies of oratory in Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bosnia, Sweden and the USA. The analyses presented show shared emphasis on struggles for legitimacy, efforts to speak authoritatively, as well as discursive opportunities and constraints. The book is structured along four analytical themes: ritual and performance; power and authority; mediation; and identities.

Following the events of 11th September 2001 in the USA, and more especially, the bombings on the London underground on 7th July 2005 and the incident at Glasgow Airport on 30th June 2007, an increasing amount of public attention has been focused upon Muslims in Britain. Against the backdrop of this debate, this book sets out a series of insights into the everyday lives of Muslims living in contemporary Britain, in an attempt to move beyond prevalent stereotypes concerning what it means to be ‘Muslim’. Combining original empirical research with theoretical interventions, this collection offers a range of reflections on how Muslims in Britain negotiate their everyday lives, manage experiences of racism and exclusion, and develop local networks and global connections. The chapters explore a broad range of themes including gender relations; educational and economic issues; migration and mobility; religion and politics; racism and Islamophobia; and the construction and contestation of Muslim identities. Threaded through the treatment of these themes is a unifying concern with the ways in which geography matters to how Muslims negotiate their daily experiences as well as their racialised, gendered and religious identities. Above all, attention is focused upon the role of the home and local community, the influence of the economy and the nation, and the power of transnational connections and mobilities in the everyday lives of Muslims in Britain.

The interchange between Muslims and Europe has a long and complicated history, dating back to before the idea of ‘Europe’ was born, and the earliest years of Islam. There has been a Muslim presence on the European continent before, but never has it been so significant, particularly in Western Europe. With more Muslims in Europe than in many countries of the Muslim world, they have found themselves in the position of challenging what it means to be a European in a secular society of the twenty-first century. At the same time, the European context has caused many Muslims to re-think what is essential to them in religious terms in their new reality. This work analyses the prospects for a European future where pluralism is accepted within unified societies, and the presence of a Muslim community that is of Europe, not simply in it.

After the fall of the Fatimid Empire in 1171 and the emergence of a new Sunni polity under the Ayyubids, Sufism came to extraordinary prominence in Egypt. The state founded and funded hospices to attract foreign Sufis to Egypt; local charismatic Sufi masters appeared throughout Upper and Lower Egypt; organized Sufi brotherhoods emerged in the urban centers of Cairo and Alexandria; and even Jews took up the doctrines and practices of the Sufis. By the middle of the Mamluk period in the fourteenth century, Sufism had become massively popular. How and why did this popularisation happen? This book is the first to address this issue directly, surveying the social formation and histories of several different Sufi collectivities from this period. Adopting an agentival approach, the book argues that the popularization of Sufism during this time was the direct result of deliberate and variegated Sufi programs of outreach, strategies of legitimation, and performances of authority across Egypt. The book situates these programs, strategies, and performances within the social and political contexts of the institutionalization of Sufism, audience participation, and Ayyubid and Mamluk state policies.

Ottoman or ‘Turkish’ prisons regularly conjure images of Oriental brutality in Western imaginations. Contrary to this stereotypical image, Ottoman prisons were sights of immense reform and contestation during the nineteenth century. In fact, prisons were key components for Ottoman nation-state construction and acted as ‘microcosms of modernity’ wherein many of the pressing questions of Ottoman modernity played out. These included administrative centralisation, the rationalisation of Islamic criminal law and punishment, issues of gender and childhood, prisoner rehabilitation, bureaucratic professionalization, identity, and social engineering. This work juxtaposes state mandated reform with the reality of prison life and investigates how these reforms affected the lives of local prison officials and inmates. These individuals actively conformed, contested, and manipulated new penal policies and practices for their own benefit. This work, therefore, heavily critiques Michele Foucault’s approach to punishment, state power, and society by demonstrating that penal institutions are not just instruments of social control and domination, but are complex social institutions that act as effective windows into broader cultural, ideological, and social issues during this volatile time in late Ottoman history. Key issues dealt with in this book include juvenile delinquents, female prisoners and gendered incarceration, corruption and prisoner abuse, and the transformation of Islamic criminal law.