The Islamic Enlightenment

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The Islamic Enlightenment

Author : Christopher de Bellaigue
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1448139678
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (481 download)

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Book Synopsis The Islamic Enlightenment by : Christopher de Bellaigue

Download or read book The Islamic Enlightenment written by Christopher de Bellaigue and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 'An eye-opening, well-written and very timely book' Yuval Noah Harari 'The best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent and illuminating' Pankaj Mishra 'It strikes a blow...for common humanity' Sunday Times The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise and adapt. Yet in this sweeping narrative and provocative retelling of modern history, Christopher de Bellaigue charts the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment – the social movements, reforms and revolutions that transfigured the Middle East from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Modern ideals and practices were embraced across the region, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from purdah and the development of democracy. The Islamic Enlightenment looks behind the sensationalist headlines in order to foster a genuine understanding of Islam and its relationship to the West. It is essential reading for anyone engaged in the state of the world today.

Toward an Islamic Enlightenment

Author : M. Hakan Yavuz
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199927995
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis Toward an Islamic Enlightenment by : M. Hakan Yavuz

Download or read book Toward an Islamic Enlightenment written by M. Hakan Yavuz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-31 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: M. Hakan Yavuz offers an insightful and wide-ranging study of the Gulen Movement, one of the most controversial developments in contemporary Islam. Founded in Turkey by the Muslim thinker Fethullah Gulen, the Gulen Movement aims to disseminate a ''moderate'' interpretation of Islam through faith-based education. Its activities have fundamentally altered religious and political discourse in Turkey in recent decades, and its schools and other institutions have been established throughout Central Asia and the Balkans, as well as western Europe and North America. Consequently, its goals and modus operandi have come under increasing scrutiny around the world. Yavuz introduces readers to the movement, its leader, its philosophies, and its practical applications. After recounting Gulen's personal history, he analyzes Gulen's theological outlook, the structure of the movement, its educational premise and promise, its financial structure, and its contributions (particularly to debates in the Turkish public sphere), its scientific outlook, and its role in interfaith dialogue. Towards an Islamic Enlightenment shows the many facets of the movement, arguing that it is marked by an identity paradox: despite its tremendous contribution to the introduction of a moderate, peaceful, and modern Islamic outlook-so different from the Iranian or Saudi forms of radical and political Islam-the Gulen Movement is at once liberal and communitarian, provoking both hope and fear in its works and influence.

Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840

Author : Humberto Garcia
Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421403536
Total Pages : 367 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 by : Humberto Garcia

Download or read book Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 written by Humberto Garcia and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2012-01-30 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A corrective addendum to Edward Said’s Orientalism, this book examines how sympathetic representations of Islam contributed significantly to Protestant Britain’s national and imperial identity in the eighteenth century. Taking a historical view, Humberto Garcia combines a rereading of eighteenth-century and Romantic-era British literature with original research on Anglo-Islamic relations. He finds that far from being considered foreign by the era’s thinkers, Islamic republicanism played a defining role in Radical Enlightenment debates, most significantly during the Glorious Revolution, French Revolution, and other moments of acute constitutional crisis, as well as in national and political debates about England and its overseas empire. Garcia shows that writers such as Edmund Burke, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Percy and Mary Shelley not only were influenced by international events in the Muslim world but also saw in that world and its history a viable path to interrogate, contest, and redefine British concepts of liberty. This deft exploration of the forgotten moment in early modern history when intercultural exchange between the Muslim world and Christian West was common resituates English literary and intellectual history in the wider context of the global eighteenth century. The direct challenge it poses to the idea of an exclusionary Judeo-Christian Enlightenment serves as an important revision to post-9/11 narratives about a historical clash between Western democratic values and Islam.

Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands in Enlightenment Europe

Author : Isabelle Dolezalek
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000519171
Total Pages : 236 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands in Enlightenment Europe by : Isabelle Dolezalek

Download or read book Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands in Enlightenment Europe written by Isabelle Dolezalek and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the provenance of early modern and medieval objects from Islamic lands was largely forgotten until the "long" eighteenth century, when the first efforts were made to reconnect them with the historical contexts in which they were produced. For the first time, these Islamicate objects were read, studied and classified – and given a new place in history. Freed by scientific interest, they were used in new ways and found new homes, including in museums. More generally, the process of "rediscovery" opened up the prehistory of the discipline of Islamic art history and had a significant impact on conceptions of cultural boundaries, differences and identity. The book will be of interest to scholars working in the history of art, the art of the Islamic world, early modern history and art historiography.

Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment

Author : Ali Mirsepassi
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139493256
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment by : Ali Mirsepassi

Download or read book Political Islam, Iran, and the Enlightenment written by Ali Mirsepassi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ali Mirsepassi's book presents a powerful challenge to the dominant media and scholarly construction of radical Islamist politics, and their anti-Western ideology, as a purely Islamic phenomenon derived from insular, traditional and monolithic religious 'foundations'. It argues that the discourse of political Islam has strong connections to important and disturbing currents in Western philosophy and modern Western intellectual trends. The work demonstrates this by establishing links between important contemporary Iranian intellectuals and the central influence of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. We are also introduced to new democratic narratives of modernity linked to diverse intellectual trends in the West and in non-Western societies, notably in India, where the ideas of John Dewey have influenced important democratic social movements. As the first book to make such connections, it promises to be an important contribution to the field and will do much to overturn some pervasive assumptions about the dichotomy between East and West.

The Republic of Arabic Letters

Author : Alexander Bevilacqua
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674985672
Total Pages : 360 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (749 download)

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Book Synopsis The Republic of Arabic Letters by : Alexander Bevilacqua

Download or read book The Republic of Arabic Letters written by Alexander Bevilacqua and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-23 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Longman–History Today Book Prize Finalist Winner of the Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize A Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year “Deeply thoughtful...A delight.” —The Economist “[A] tour de force...Bevilacqua’s extraordinary book provides the first true glimpse into this story...He, like the tradition he describes, is a rarity.” —New Republic In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a pioneering community of Western scholars laid the groundwork for the modern understanding of Islamic civilization. They produced the first accurate translation of the Qur’an, mapped Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters is the first account of this riveting lost period of cultural exchange, revealing the profound influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the Enlightenment understanding of Islam. “A closely researched and engrossing study of...those scholars who, having learned Arabic, used their mastery of that difficult language to interpret the Quran, study the career of Muhammad...and introduce Europeans to the masterpieces of Arabic literature.” —Robert Irwin, Wall Street Journal “Fascinating, eloquent, and learned, The Republic of Arabic Letters reveals a world later lost, in which European scholars studied Islam with a sense of affinity and respect...A powerful reminder of the ability of scholarship to transcend cultural divides, and the capacity of human minds to accept differences without denouncing them.” —Maya Jasanoff “What makes his study so groundbreaking, and such a joy to read, is the connection he makes between intellectual history and the material history of books.” —Financial Times

Foucault in Iran

Author : Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452950563
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Foucault in Iran by : Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi

Download or read book Foucault in Iran written by Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-08-08 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were the thirteen essays Michel Foucault wrote in 1978–1979 endorsing the Iranian Revolution an aberration of his earlier work or an inevitable pitfall of his stance on Enlightenment rationality, as critics have long alleged? Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi argues that the critics are wrong. He declares that Foucault recognized that Iranians were at a threshold and were considering if it were possible to think of dignity, justice, and liberty outside the cognitive maps and principles of the European Enlightenment. Foucault in Iran centers not only on the significance of the great thinker’s writings on the revolution but also on the profound mark the event left on his later lectures on ethics, spirituality, and fearless speech. Contemporary events since 9/11, the War on Terror, and the Arab Uprisings have made Foucault’s essays on the Iranian Revolution more relevant than ever. Ghamari-Tabrizi illustrates how Foucault saw in the revolution an instance of his antiteleological philosophy: here was an event that did not fit into the normative progressive discourses of history. What attracted him to the Iranian Revolution was precisely its ambiguity. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich, this interdisciplinary work will spark a lively debate in its insistence that what informed Foucault’s writing was not an effort to understand Islamism but, rather, his conviction that Enlightenment rationality has not closed the gate of unknown possibilities for human societies.

Lost Enlightenment

Author : S. Frederick Starr
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691165858
Total Pages : 694 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Lost Enlightenment by : S. Frederick Starr

Download or read book Lost Enlightenment written by S. Frederick Starr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-02 with total page 694 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The forgotten story of Central Asia's enlightenment—its rise, fall, and enduring legacy In this sweeping and richly illustrated history, S. Frederick Starr tells the fascinating but largely unknown story of Central Asia's medieval enlightenment through the eventful lives and astonishing accomplishments of its greatest minds—remarkable figures who built a bridge to the modern world. Because nearly all of these figures wrote in Arabic, they were long assumed to have been Arabs. In fact, they were from Central Asia—drawn from the Persianate and Turkic peoples of a region that today extends from Kazakhstan southward through Afghanistan, and from the easternmost province of Iran through Xinjiang, China. Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects. They gave algebra its name, calculated the earth's diameter with unprecedented precision, wrote the books that later defined European medicine, and penned some of the world's greatest poetry. One scholar, working in Afghanistan, even predicted the existence of North and South America—five centuries before Columbus. Rarely in history has a more impressive group of polymaths appeared at one place and time. No wonder that their writings influenced European culture from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas down to the scientific revolution, and had a similarly deep impact in India and much of Asia. Lost Enlightenment chronicles this forgotten age of achievement, seeks to explain its rise, and explores the competing theories about the cause of its eventual demise. Informed by the latest scholarship yet written in a lively and accessible style, this is a book that will surprise general readers and specialists alike.

Reopening Muslim Minds

Author : Mustafa Akyol
Publisher : St. Martin's Essentials
ISBN 13 : 1250256070
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Reopening Muslim Minds by : Mustafa Akyol

Download or read book Reopening Muslim Minds written by Mustafa Akyol and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating journey into Islam's diverse history of ideas, making an argument for an "Islamic Enlightenment" today In Reopening Muslim Minds, Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and opinion writer for The New York Times, both diagnoses “the crisis of Islam” in the modern world, and offers a way forward. Diving deeply into Islamic theology, and also sharing lessons from his own life story, he reveals how Muslims lost the universalism that made them a great civilization in their earlier centuries. He especially demonstrates how values often associated with Western Enlightenment — freedom, reason, tolerance, and an appreciation of science — had Islamic counterparts, which sadly were cast aside in favor of more dogmatic views, often for political ends. Elucidating complex ideas with engaging prose and storytelling, Reopening Muslim Minds borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes), to offer a new Muslim worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion. While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Author : Mustafa Akyol
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393081974
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (93 download)

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Book Synopsis Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty by : Mustafa Akyol

Download or read book Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty written by Mustafa Akyol and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A delightfully original take on…the prospects for liberal democracy in the broader Islamic Middle East.”—Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.

The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times

Author : Christopher de Bellaigue
Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631493337
Total Pages : 560 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times by : Christopher de Bellaigue

Download or read book The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times written by Christopher de Bellaigue and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2017-04-04 with total page 560 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The finest Orientalist of his generation” (Wall Street Journal) rewrites everything we thought we knew about the modern history of the Islamic world. In this “stylishly written, surprisingly moving chronicle” (Harper’s), Christopher de Bellaigue presents an absorbing account of the political and social reformations that transformed the lands of Islam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. “The best sort of book for our disordered days” (Pankaj Mishra), The Islamic Enlightenment “is at once new, fascinating and extraordinarily important” (Wall Street Journal) as it challenges ossified perceptions in Western culture that self- righteously condemn the Muslim world as hopelessly benighted. This false perception belies the fact that Islamic civilization has long been undergoing its own anguished transformation, and that the violence of an infinitesimally small minority is the blowback from this process. In reclaiming the stories of the “fascinating . . . individuals who would grapple with reform and modernization” (New York Times Book Review), de Bellaigue’s “eye-opening, well-written, and very timely” (Yuval Harrari) history shows the folly of Westerners demanding modernity from people whose lives are already drenched in it.

Religion as Critique

Author : Irfan Ahmad
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 1469635100
Total Pages : 300 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (696 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion as Critique by : Irfan Ahmad

Download or read book Religion as Critique written by Irfan Ahmad and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2017-11-20 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and modes for self-critique as well as critique of others are inherent in Islam--indeed, critique is integral to its fundamental tenets and practices. Challenging common views of Islam as hostile to critical thinking, Ahmad delineates thriving traditions of critique in Islamic culture, focusing in large part on South Asian traditions. Ahmad interrogates Greek and Enlightenment notions of reason and critique, and he notes how they are invoked in relation to "others," including Muslims. Drafting an alternative genealogy of critique in Islam, Ahmad reads religious teachings and texts, drawing on sources in Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, and English, and demonstrates how they serve as expressions of critique. Throughout, he depicts Islam as an agent, not an object, of critique. On a broader level, Ahmad expands the idea of critique itself. Drawing on his fieldwork among marketplace hawkers in Delhi and Aligarh, he construes critique anthropologically as a sociocultural activity in the everyday lives of ordinary Muslims, beyond the world of intellectuals. Religion as Critique allows space for new theoretical considerations of modernity and change, taking on such salient issues as nationhood, women's equality, the state, culture, democracy, and secularism.

Islamic Activists

Author : Deina Ali Abdelkader
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781783714063
Total Pages : 93 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (14 download)

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Book Synopsis Islamic Activists by : Deina Ali Abdelkader

Download or read book Islamic Activists written by Deina Ali Abdelkader and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 93 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An explanation of Islamic scholarship on democracy.

The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree

Author : Shokoofeh Azar
Publisher : Europa Editions
ISBN 13 : 1609455665
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree by : Shokoofeh Azar

Download or read book The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree written by Shokoofeh Azar and published by Europa Editions. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A grieving family flees Tehran after the Islamic Revolution in this novel of “magical realism with a Persian twist” translated from Farsi (The Guardian, UK). When their home in Tehran is burned to the ground by zealots, killing their thirteen-year-old daughter Bahar, a once-prominent family flees to a small village. There, they hope to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land and its people. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness. The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Iranian novelist Shokoofeh Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime. “[Azar’s] book is a great journey. It moves places and it moves us as readers, in an emotional and intellectual sense.” —Robert Wood, The Los Angeles Review of Books

The Muslim Renegade

Author : Majid Rafizadeh
Publisher : Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN 13 : 9781534612686
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (126 download)

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Book Synopsis The Muslim Renegade by : Majid Rafizadeh

Download or read book The Muslim Renegade written by Majid Rafizadeh and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Renegade is the harrowing memoir of a boy becoming a man in a culture he opposes. Born and raised to be a devout fundamental Muslim, in both Iran and Syria, the author has provided a very intimate view of a tumultuous culture as it progresses through its most violent civil war to date. The beliefs of his ancestors were engrained in him from the first breath taken yet a desire persists within, to change a cruel and unforgiving belief system. As he witnesses how quickly life can change, he begins to recognize that the inflexibility of Islam can only lead to further tragedies. Though his views are unique in the culture that surrounds him, a passion arises within to make a change. He doesn't just want to change his own beliefs, but to open the eyes of others.

The Islamic Enlightenment

Author : Christopher de Bellaigue
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 9780099578703
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (787 download)

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Book Synopsis The Islamic Enlightenment by : Christopher de Bellaigue

Download or read book The Islamic Enlightenment written by Christopher de Bellaigue and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 'An eye-opening, well-written and very timely book' Yuval Noah Harari 'The best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent and illuminating' Pankaj Mishra 'It strikes a blow...for common humanity' Sunday Times The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise and adapt. Yet in this sweeping narrative and provocative retelling of modern history, Christopher de Bellaigue charts the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment - the social movements, reforms and revolutions that transfigured the Middle East from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Modern ideals and practices were embraced across the region, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from purdah and the development of democracy. The Islamic Enlightenment looks behind the sensationalist headlines in order to foster a genuine understanding of Islam and its relationship to the West. It is essential reading for anyone engaged in the state of the world today.

Polymaths of Islam

Author : James Pickett
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501750259
Total Pages : 381 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Polymaths of Islam by : James Pickett

Download or read book Polymaths of Islam written by James Pickett and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Polymaths of Islam analyzes the social and intellectual power of religious leaders who created a shared culture that integrated Central Asia, Iran, and India from the mid-eighteenth century through the early twentieth. James Pickett demonstrates that Islamic scholars were simultaneously mystics and administrators, judges and occultists, physicians and poets. This integrated understanding of the world of Islamic scholarship unlocks a different way of thinking about transregional exchange networks. Pickett reveals a Persian-language cultural sphere that transcended state boundaries and integrated a spectacularly vibrant Eurasia that is invisible from published sources alone. Through a high cultural complex that he terms the "Persian cosmopolis" or "Persianate sphere," Pickett argues that an intersection of diverse disciplines shaped geographical trajectories across and between political states. In Polymaths of Islam he paints a comprehensive, colorful, and often contradictory portrait of mosque and state in the age of empire.