Islam and the West African Novel Bangura, Ahmed S
Islam and the West African Novel: The Politics of Representation,
2000, 20000101
eBook
To many Muslims The Satanic Verses constitutes an utterly negative representation of Islam. ...this negative representation has been linked to the author's personal ideological hostility to Islam. ......the one good thing to have come out of this controversy may well be the revitalization of the debate on the "worldliness" of the literary system: the politics of textuality and representation, as well as the politics of interpretation. ...the novels, as I shall demonstrate, express at once the novelist's interpretation (representation) of social reality and articulate the writer's various alternatives for the overall reform of society. ...concepts as "Sufi Islam," "orthodox Islam," "revolutionary Islam," "Asharism," and "Mu'talizism" are used to provide explanation for attitudes and actions taken by characters in different social and historical contexts.
The Uzbekistan government has been criticized for its brutal suppression of its Muslim population. This 2011 book, which is based on the author's intimate acquaintance with the region and several ...years of ethnographic research, is about how Muslims in this part of the world negotiate their religious practices despite the restraints of a stifling authoritarian regime. Fascinatingly, the book also shows how the restrictive atmosphere has actually helped shape the moral context of people's lives, and how understandings of what it means to be a Muslim emerge creatively out of lived experience.
Does political inclusion produce ideological moderation? Schwedler argues that examining political behaviour alone provides insufficient evidence of moderation because it leaves open the possibility ...that political actors might act as if they are moderate while harbouring radical agendas. Through a comparative study of the Islamic Action Front party in Jordan and the Islah party in Yemen, she argues that the IAF in Jordan has become more moderate through participation in pluralist political processes, while the Islah party has not. The variation is explained in part by internal group organization and decision-making processes, but particularly by the ways in which the IAF has been able to justify its new pluralist practices on Islamic terms while the Islah party has not. Based on nearly four years of field research in Jordan and Yemen, Schwedler contributes both an important theory of ideological moderation and detail about these powerful Islamist political parties.
This book offers a comparative and cross-cultural history of Islamic reform and European colonialism as both dependent and independent factors in shaping the multiple ways of becoming modern in ...Indonesia and Malaya during the first half of the twentieth century.
Compulsion in Religion relies on extensive research with Ba’thist archives to investigate the roots of the religious insurgencies that erupted in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003. The ...Iraqi archival records demonstrate that by the 1990s, Saddam’s regime had developed institutions to control and monitor Iraq’s religious landscape. The regime’s ability to do so provided it with confidence to launch a national “Faith Campaign” and to inject religion into Iraqi politics in a controlled manner. Islam played a greater role in the regime’s symbols and Saddam Hussein’s statements in the 1990s than it had in earlier decades. This increase in religious rhetoric did not represent a shift from secular-nationalist ideology to Islamism, however. The regime’s official policies toward religious leaders and institutions remained remarkably consistent throughout the Ba’thist period; Saddam spoke derisively about all forms of Islamist politics in Iraq throughout his presidency. He promoted a Ba’thist interpretation of religion that subordinated it to Arab nationalism rather than depicting the religion as an independent or primary political identity. Saddam did so explicitly to undermine Islamists and the revolutionary religious movements that would emerge after 2003. When the American-led invasion of 2003 destroyed the regime’s authoritarian structures, it unhinged the forces that these structures were designed to contain, creating an atmosphere infused with politically instrumentalized religion but lacking the checks provided by the former regime. Sadrists, al-Qaida, and eventually the Islamic State emerged out of this context to unleash the insurgencies that have plagued post-2003 Iraq.
... Will have an impact on two important fields of scholarship:
social movement theory and the study of Islamic activist movements. -- John
Voll, Georgetown University This volume represents the ...first
comprehensive attempt to incorporate the study of Islamic activism into social
movement theory. It argues that the dynamics, processes, and organization of Islamic
activism can be understood as important elements of contention that transcend the
specificity of Islam as a system of meaning and identity and a basis for
collective action. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the contributors show how social
movement theory can be utilized to address a wide range of questions about the
mobilization of contention in support of Muslim causes. The book covers myriad
examples of Islamic activism (Sunni and Shi'a) in eight countries (Arab and
non-Arab), including case studies of violence and contention, networks and
alliances, and culture and framing.
The Ethical Soundscape Hirschkind, Charles
2006., 20061010, 2006, 2006-10-20, 20060101
eBook
Charles Hirschkind's unique study explores how a popular Islamic media form—the cassette sermon—has profoundly transformed the political geography of the Middle East over the last three decades. An ...essential aspect of what is now called the Islamic Revival, the cassette sermon has become omnipresent in most Middle Eastern cities, punctuating the daily routines of many men and women. Hirschkind shows how sermon tapes have provided one of the means by which Islamic ethical traditions have been recalibrated to a modern political and technological order—to its noise and forms of pleasure and boredom, but also to its political incitements and call for citizen participation. Contrary to the belief that Islamic cassette sermons are a tool of militant indoctrination, Hirschkind argues that sermon tapes serve as an instrument of ethical self-improvement and as a vehicle for honing the sensibilities and affects of pious living. Focusing on Cairo's popular neighborhoods, Hirschkind highlights the pivotal role these tapes now play in an expanding arena of Islamic argumentation and debate—what he calls an "Islamic counterpublic." This emerging arena connects Islamic traditions of ethical discipline to practices of deliberation about the common good, the duties of Muslims as national citizens, and the challenges faced by diverse Muslim communities around the globe. The Ethical Soundscape is a brilliant analysis linking modern media practices of moral self-fashioning to the creation of increasingly powerful religious publics.
The prophet Muhammad and the early Islamic community radically redefined the concept of time that they had inherited from earlier religions' beliefs and practices. This new temporal system, based on ...a lunar calendar and era, was complex and required sophistication and accuracy. From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, it was the Muslim astronomers of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires who were responsible for the major advances in mathematics, astronomy and astrology. This fascinating study compares the Islamic concept of time, and its historical and cultural significance, across these three great empires. Each empire, while mindful of earlier models, created a new temporal system, fashioning a new solar calendar and era and a new round of rituals and ceremonies from the cultural resources at hand. This book contributes to our understanding of the Muslim temporal system and our appreciation of the influence of Islamic science on the Western world.
In this engaging study, Matthew J. Kuiper tells the fascinating story of how Islam became a world religion and cultural phenomenon of immense scale, astonishing diversity and global impact. His ...starting point is the dramatic upsurge in da'wa: 'inviting' to Islam, or Islamic missionary activism.
