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The Islamic Paradox
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Book Synopsis The Islamic Paradox by : Reuel Marc Gerecht
Download or read book The Islamic Paradox written by Reuel Marc Gerecht and published by A E I Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph concludes that, paradoxically, those who have hated the United States the most now hold the keys to spreading democracy in the Muslim Middle East.
Book Synopsis Mass Religious Ritual and Intergroup Tolerance by : Mikhail A. Alexseev
Download or read book Mass Religious Ritual and Intergroup Tolerance written by Mikhail A. Alexseev and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops a new theory of the conditions under which in-group pride can facilitate out-group tolerance.
Download or read book Hidden Iran written by Ray Takeyh and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher description
Download or read book What Is Islam? written by Shahab Ahmed and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-17 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new conceptualization of Islam that reflects its contradictions and rich diversity What is Islam? How do we grasp a human and historical phenomenon characterized by such variety and contradiction? What is "Islamic" about Islamic philosophy or Islamic art? Should we speak of Islam or of islams? Should we distinguish the Islamic (the religious) from the Islamicate (the cultural)? Or should we abandon "Islamic" altogether as an analytical term? In What Is Islam?, Shahab Ahmed presents a bold new conceptualization of Islam that challenges dominant understandings grounded in the categories of "religion" and "culture" or those that privilege law and scripture. He argues that these modes of thinking obstruct us from understanding Islam, distorting it, diminishing it, and rendering it incoherent. What Is Islam? formulates a new conceptual language for analyzing Islam. It presents a new paradigm of how Muslims have historically understood divine revelation—one that enables us to understand how and why Muslims through history have embraced values such as exploration, ambiguity, aestheticization, polyvalence, and relativism, as well as practices such as figural art, music, and even wine drinking as Islamic. It also puts forward a new understanding of the historical constitution of Islamic law and its relationship to philosophical ethics and political theory. A book that is certain to provoke debate and significantly alter our understanding of Islam, What Is Islam? reveals how Muslims have historically conceived of and lived with Islam as norms and truths that are at once contradictory yet coherent.
Book Synopsis The Politics of Islamic Law by : Iza R. Hussin
Download or read book The Politics of Islamic Law written by Iza R. Hussin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Politics of Islamic Law, Iza Hussin compares India, Malaya, and Egypt during the British colonial period in order to trace the making and transformation of the contemporary category of ‘Islamic law.’ She demonstrates that not only is Islamic law not the shari’ah, its present institutional forms, substantive content, symbolic vocabulary, and relationship to state and society—in short, its politics—are built upon foundations laid during the colonial encounter. Drawing on extensive archival work in English, Arabic, and Malay—from court records to colonial and local papers to private letters and visual material—Hussin offers a view of politics in the colonial period as an iterative series of negotiations between local and colonial powers in multiple locations. She shows how this resulted in a paradox, centralizing Islamic law at the same time that it limited its reach to family and ritual matters, and produced a transformation in the Muslim state, providing the frame within which Islam is articulated today, setting the agenda for ongoing legislation and policy, and defining the limits of change. Combining a genealogy of law with a political analysis of its institutional dynamics, this book offers an up-close look at the ways in which global transformations are realized at the local level.
Book Synopsis The Pakistan Paradox by : Christophe Jaffrelot
Download or read book The Pakistan Paradox written by Christophe Jaffrelot and published by Random House India. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 525 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of Pakistan stands riddled with tensions. Initiated by a small group of select Urdu-speaking Muslims who envisioned a unified Islamic state, today Pakistan suffers the divisive forces of various separatist movements and religious fundamentalism. A small entrenched elite continue to dominate the country’s corridors of power, and democratic forces and legal institutions remain weak. But despite these seemingly insurmountable problems, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan continues to endure. The Pakistan Paradox is the definitive history of democracy in Pakistan, and its survival despite ethnic strife, Islamism and deepseated elitism. This edition focuses on three kinds of tensions that are as old as Pakistan itself. The tension between the unitary definition of the nation inherited from Jinnah and centrifugal ethnic forces; between civilians and army officers who are not always in favour of or against democracy; and between the Islamists and those who define Islam only as a cultural identity marker.
Book Synopsis Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy by : Paul M. Sniderman
Download or read book Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy written by Paul M. Sniderman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-08 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2005, twelve cartoons mocking the prophet Mohammed appeared in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, igniting a political firestorm over demands by some Muslims that the claims of their religious faith take precedence over freedom of expression. Given the explosive reaction from Middle Eastern governments, Muslim clerics, and some Danish politicians, the stage was set for a backlash against Muslims in Denmark. But no such backlash occurred. Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy shows how the majority of ordinary Danish citizens provided a solid wall of support for the rights of their country's growing Muslim minority, drawing a sharp distinction between Muslim immigrants and Islamic fundamentalists and supporting the civil rights of Muslim immigrants as fully as those of fellow Danes—for example, Christian fundamentalists. Building on randomized experiments conducted as part of large, nationally representative opinion surveys, Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy also demonstrates how the moral covenant underpinning the welfare state simultaneously promotes equal treatment for some Muslim immigrants and opens the door to discrimination against others. Revealing the strength of Denmark’s commitment to democratic values, Paradoxes of Liberal Democracy underlines the challenges of inclusion but offers hope to those seeking to reconcile the secular values of liberal democracy and the religious faith of Muslim immigrants in Europe.
Book Synopsis Islam and the Secular State by : Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
Download or read book Islam and the Secular State written by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-30 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.
Book Synopsis Gender, Islam, Nationalism and the State in Aceh by : Jaqueline Aquino Siapno
Download or read book Gender, Islam, Nationalism and the State in Aceh written by Jaqueline Aquino Siapno and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out to open up the space for interpretation of history and politics in Aceh which is now in a state of armed rebellion against the Indonesian government. It lays out a groundwork for analysing how female agency is constituted in Aceh, in a complex interplay of indigenous matrifocality, Islamic belief and practices, state terror, and political violence. Analysts of the current conflict in Aceh have tended to focus on present events. Siapno provides a historical analysis of power, co-optation, and resistance in Aceh and links it to broader comparative studies of gender, Islam, and the state in Muslim communities throughout the world.
Book Synopsis Questioning Secularism by : Hussein Ali Agrama
Download or read book Questioning Secularism written by Hussein Ali Agrama and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.
Download or read book Politics of Piety written by Saba Mahmood and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. The author's exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are linked within the context of such movements.
Book Synopsis Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought by : Roxanne L. Euben
Download or read book Princeton Readings in Islamist Thought written by Roxanne L. Euben and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most authoritative anthology of Islamist texts This anthology of key primary texts provides an unmatched introduction to Islamist political thought from the early twentieth century to the present, and serves as an invaluable guide through the storm of polemic, fear, and confusion that swirls around Islamism today. Roxanne Euben and Muhammad Qasim Zaman gather a broad selection of texts from influential Islamist thinkers and place these figures and their writings in their multifaceted political and historical contexts. The selections presented here in English translation include writings of Ayatollah Khomeini, Usama bin Laden, Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan al-Banna, and Moroccan Islamist leader Nadia Yassine, as well as the Hamas charter, an interview with a Taliban commander, and the final testament of 9/11 hijacker Muhammad Ata. Illuminating the content and political appeal of Islamist thought, this anthology brings into sharp relief the commonalities in Islamist arguments about gender, democracy, and violence, but it also reveals significant political and theological disagreements among thinkers too often grouped together and dismissed as extremists or terrorists. No other anthology better illustrates the diversity of Islamist thought, the complexity of its intellectual and political contexts, or the variety of ways in which it relates to other intellectual and religious trends in the contemporary Muslim world.
Book Synopsis Religion of the Gods by : Kimberley Christine Patton
Download or read book Religion of the Gods written by Kimberley Christine Patton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many of the world's religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, a seemingly enigmatic and paradoxical image is found--that of the god who worships. Various interpretations of this seeming paradox have been advanced. Some suggest that it represents sacrifice to a higher deity. Proponents of anthropomorphic projection say that the gods are just "big people" and that images of human religious action are simply projected onto the deities. However, such explanations do not do justice to the complexity and diversity of this phenomenon. In Religion of the Gods, Kimberley C. Patton uses a comparative approach to take up anew a longstanding challenge in ancient Greek religious iconography: why are the Olympian gods depicted on classical pottery making libations? The sacrificing gods in ancient Greece are compared to gods who perform rituals in six other religious traditions: the Vedic gods, the heterodox god Zurvan of early Zoroastrianism, the Old Norse god Odin, the Christian God and Christ, the God of Judaism, and Islam's Allah. Patton examines the comparative evidence from a cultural and historical perspective, uncovering deep structural resonances while also revealing crucial differences. Instead of looking for invisible recipients or lost myths, Patton proposes the new category of "divine reflexivity." Divinely performed ritual is a self-reflexive, self-expressive action that signals the origin of ritual in the divine and not the human realm. Above all, divine ritual is generative, both instigating and inspiring human religious activity. The religion practiced by the gods is both like and unlike human religious action. Seen from within the religious tradition, gods are not "big people," but other than human. Human ritual is directed outward to a divine being, but the gods practice ritual on their own behalf. "Cultic time," the symbiotic performance of ritual both in heaven and on earth, collapses the distinction between cult and theology each time ritual is performed. Offering the first comprehensive study and a new theory of this fascinating phenomenon, Religion of the Gods is a significant contribution to the fields of classics and comparative religion. Patton shows that the god who performs religious action is not an anomaly, but holds a meaningful place in the category of ritual and points to a phenomenologically universal structure within religion itself.
Book Synopsis Legal Pluralism in Muslim Contexts by : Norbert Oberauer
Download or read book Legal Pluralism in Muslim Contexts written by Norbert Oberauer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Approaches to legal pluralism vary widely across the spectrum of different disciplines. They comprise normative and descriptive perspectives, focus both on legal pluralist realities as well as public debates, and address legal pluralism in a range of different societies with varying political, institutional and historical conditions. Emphasising an empirical research to contemporary legal pluralist settings in Muslim contexts, the present collected volume contributes to a deepened understanding of legal pluralist issues and realities through comparative examination. This approach reveals some common features, such as the relevance of Islamic law in power struggles and in the construction of (state or national) identities, strategies of coping with coexisting sets of legal norms by the respective agents, or public debates about the risks induced by the recognition of religious institutions in migrant societies. At the same time, the studies contained in this volume reveal that legal pluralist settings often reflect very specific historical and social constellations, which demands caution towards any generalisation. The volume is based on papers presented at a conference in Münster (Germany) in 2016 and comprises contributions by Judith Koschorke, Karen Meerschaut, Yvonne Prief, Ulrike Qubaja, Werner de Saeger, Ido Shahar, Katrin Seidel, Konstantinos Tsitselikis, Vishal Vora and Ihsan Yilmaz.
Book Synopsis Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey by : Günes Murat Tezcür
Download or read book Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey written by Günes Murat Tezcür and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moderation theory describes the process through which radical political actors develop commitments to electoral competition, political pluralism, human rights, and rule of law and come to prefer negotiation, reconciliation, and electoral politics over provocation, confrontation, and contentious action. Revisiting this theory through an examination of two of the most prominent moderate Islamic political forces in recent history, Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey analyzes the gains made and methods implemented by the Reform Front in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. Both of these groups represent Muslim reformers who came into continual conflict with unelected adversaries who attempted to block their reformist agendas. Based on extensive field research in both locales, Muslim Reformers in Iran and Turkey argues that behavioral moderation as practiced by these groups may actually inhibit democratic progress. Political scientist Güneş Murat Tezcür observes that the ability to implement conciliatory tactics, organize electoral parties, and make political compromises impeded democracy when pursued by the Reform Front and the Justice and Development Party. Challenging conventional wisdom, Tezcür's findings have broad implications for the dynamics of democratic progress.
Book Synopsis Development, Power, and the Environment by : Md Saidul Islam
Download or read book Development, Power, and the Environment written by Md Saidul Islam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unmasking the neoliberal paradox, this book provides a robust conceptual and theoretical synthesis of development, power and the environment. With seven case studies on global challenges such as under-development, food regime, climate change, dam building, identity politics, and security vulnerability, the book offers a new framework of a "double-risk" society for the Global South. With apparent ecological and social limits to neoliberal globalization and development, the current levels of consumption are unsustainable, inequitable, and inaccessible to the majority of humans. Power has a great role to play in this global trajectory. Though power is one of most pervasive phenomena of human society, it is probably one of the least understood concepts. The growth of transnational corporations, the dominance of world-wide financial and political institutions, and the extensive influence of media that are nearly monopolized by corporate interests are key factors shaping our global society today. In the growing concentration of power in few hands, what is apparent is a non-apparent nature of power. Understanding the interplay of power in the discourse of development is a crucial matter at a time when our planet is in peril — both environmentally and socially. This book addresses this current crucial need.
Book Synopsis The Paradox of Liberation by : Michael Walzer
Download or read book The Paradox of Liberation written by Michael Walzer and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the successful campaigns for national liberation in the years following World War II were initially based on democratic and secular ideals. Once established, however, the newly independent nations had to deal with entirely unexpected religious fierceness. Michael Walzer, one of America’s foremost political thinkers, examines this perplexing trend by studying India, Israel, and Algeria, three nations whose founding principles and institutions have been sharply attacked by three completely different groups of religious revivalists: Hindu militants, ultra-Orthodox Jews and messianic Zionists, and Islamic radicals. In his provocative, well-reasoned discussion, Walzer asks why these secular democratic movements have failed to sustain their hegemony: Why have they been unable to reproduce their political culture beyond one or two generations? In a postscript, he compares the difficulties of contemporary secularism to the successful establishment of secular politics in the early American republic—thereby making an argument for American exceptionalism but gravely noting that we may be less exceptional today.
