While many previous books have probed the causes of Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, few have focused on the power of religion in shaping a national identity over the decades leading up to it. ...Islamism and Modernism captures the metamorphosis of the Islamic movement in Iran, from encounters with Great Britain and the United States in the 1920s through twenty-first-century struggles between those seeking to reform Islam’s role and those who take a hardline defensive stance. Capturing the views of four generations of Muslim activists, Farhang Rajaee describes how the extremism of the 1960s brought more confidence to concerned Islam-minded Iranians and radicalized the Muslim world while Islamic alternatives to modernity were presented. Subsequent ideologies gave rise to the revolution, which in turn has fed a restructuring of Islam as a faith rather than as an ideology. Presenting thought-provoking discussions of religious thinkers such as Ha’eri, Burujerdi, Bazargan, and Shari‘ati, along with contemporaries such as Kadivar, Soroush, and Shabestari, the author sheds rare light on the voices fueling contemporary Islamic thinking in Iran. A comprehensive study of these interwoven aspects of politics, religion, society, and identity, Islamism and Modernism offers crucial new insight into the aftermath of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution fought one hundred years ago—and its ramifications for the newest generation to face the crossroads of modernity and Islamic discourse in modern Iran today.
Muslims have been shaping the Americas and the Caribbean for
more than five hundred years, yet this interplay is frequently
overlooked or misconstrued. Brimming with revelations that
synthesize area ...and ethnic studies, Crescent over Another
Horizon presents a portrait of Islam's unity as it evolved
through plural formulations of identity, power, and belonging.
Offering a Latino American perspective on a wider Islamic world,
the editors overturn the conventional perception of Muslim
communities in the New World, arguing that their characterization
as "minorities" obscures the interplay of ethnicity and religion
that continues to foster transnational ties.
Bringing together studies of Iberian colonists, enslaved
Africans, indentured South Asians, migrant Arabs, and Latino and
Latin American converts, the volume captures the power-laden
processes at work in religious conversion or resistance. Throughout
each analysis-spanning times of inquisition, conquest, repressive
nationalism, and anti-terror security protocols-the authors offer
innovative frameworks to probe the ways in which racialized Islam
has facilitated the building of new national identities while
fostering a double-edged marginalization. The subjects of the
essays transition from imperialism (with studies of
morisco converts to Christianity, West African slave
uprisings, and Muslim and Hindu South Asian indentured laborers in
Dutch Suriname) to the contemporary Muslim presence in Argentina,
Brazil, Mexico, and Trinidad, completed by a timely examination of
the United States, including Muslim communities in "Hispanicized"
South Florida and the agency of Latina conversion. The result is a
fresh perspective that opens new horizons for a vibrant range of
fields.
"One of the greatest authorities on medieval Islam" sheds "immensely stimulating" new light on cross-cultural relations in the Middle Ages ( Times Literary Supplement, UK). In Jews, Christians, and ...the Abode of Islam, historian Jacob Lassner examines the relationship between the three Abrahamic faiths that defined their political and cultural interaction during the Middle Ages—and continues to define them today. Examining the debates taking place in modern Western scholarship on Islam, Lassner sheds new light on the social and political status of medieval Jews and Christians in various Islamic lands from the seventh to the thirteenth century. Using a vast array of primary sources, Lassner balances the rhetoric of literary and legal texts from the Middle Ages with other, newly discovered medieval sources that describe life as it was actually lived among the three faith communities. Lassner demonstrates what medieval Muslims meant when they spoke of tolerance, and how that abstract concept played out at different times and places in the Christian and Jewish communities under Islamic rule. Finally, he considers how this new understanding of medieval Islamic civilization might affect the highly contentious global environment of today.
The Justice and Development Party (AKP) were elected to power in 2002 and since then Turkish politics has undergone considerable change. This book is a comprehensive analysis of the AKP, in terms not ...just of its ideological agenda, but also of its social basis and performance in office in the main theatres of public policy – political reform, and cultural, economic and foreign policies.
Based on an extensive analysis of official and party documents, interviews, academic sources and media coverage, the book outlines the main features of the current global debate on the relationship between Islam, Islamism and democracy. While most top AKP leaders come from an Islamist background, the party has behaved as a moderate, centre-right, conservative democratic party who are fully committed to democracy, a free market economy and Turkey’s EU membership. The book explores and analyses these changes in Turkish politics, and provides coverage of the workings of the contemporary Turkish political systems, policy and ideological issues that go to the heart of Turkish identity.
Filling a gap in the existing Turkish and English literature on the subject, this book will be an important contribution to Political Science, particularly the areas of Turkish politics, Middle Eastern studies, Islamic studies and comparative politics.
Introduction: Islamism, Democracy and the Turkish Experience Part 1: The AKP’s History, Ideology, Social Bases and Organization 1. The History of Islamist Parties in Turkey: From the National Order Party to the Justice and Development Party (AKP) 2. The AKP’s Ideology: Conservative Democracy 3. The AKP’s Social Bases: A New Centre-Right Coalition? 4. Party Organization Part 2: The AKP in Government 5. Democratizing Reforms and Constitutional Issues 6. Cultural Policies: Creeping Islamisation or Politics of Avoidance? 7. The AKP Government and the Military 8. The AKP and the Turkish Economy 9. Foreign Policy and the AKP Conclusions, Assessments and Expectations
Ergun Ozbudun is Professor of Constitutional Law and Political Science at Bilkent University.
William Hale is the former Professor of Turkish Politics in the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London. He is a specialist on the politics of the Middle East, especially Turkey, and has written a number of papers and books on modern Turkish politics and history.
"This is a well written and highly useful work. Its strongest point is demonstrating that in the so-called Islamist parties, religion is but one of the multiplicity of inputs that determine what the party does and who supports it. The book is the most comprehensive work available on the AKP and as such a must for anyone who is interested in Turkish politics, Islam and politics, Islam and democracy." - Ilter Turan, Istanbul Bilgi University; Journal of Islamic Studies, vol 23, no 1, January 2012
"The book by William Hale and Özbudun is a significant analysis of the origin, policies, and impacts of the AKP. It rightly portrays the AKP as a party of paradoxes, which constantly tries to keep a balance between generally contradictory processes…" – Ahmet T. Kuru, San Diego State University, Political Science Quarterly (Summer 2010)
One of the most dynamic aspects of the Islamic revival during the past two centuries has been the rethinking of Islamic political thought. A broad range of actors, ideas, and ideologies characterize ...the debate on how Islamic ethics and law should be manifested in modern institutions. Yet this aspect of the "return to Islam" has been neglected by policymakers, the media, and even many scholars, who equate "political Islam" with merely one strand, labeled "Islamic fundamentalism." Bringing together ten essays from six volumes of the Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics, this book gives a rounded treatment to the subject of Islamic political ethics.
Examining a series of processes (Islamization, Arabization, Africanization) and case studies from North, West and East Africa, this book gives snapshots of Muslim societies in Africa over the last ...millennium. In contrast to traditions which suggest that Islam did not take root in Africa, author David Robinson shows the complex struggles of Muslims in the Muslim state of Morocco and in the Hausaland region of Nigeria. He portrays the ways in which Islam was practiced in the 'pagan' societies of Ashanti (Ghana) and Buganda (Uganda) and in the ostensibly Christian state of Ethiopia - beginning with the first emigration of Muslims from Mecca in 615 CE, well before the foundational hijra to Medina in 622. He concludes with chapters on the Mahdi and Khalifa of the Sudan and the Murid Sufi movement that originated in Senegal, and reflections in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001.
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.
Islam Tottoli, Roberto
2021, 2020, 2020-10-28, 2020-10-27, Volume:
1
eBook
Exploring complex relations between Muslim visions and critical stances, this textbook is a compact introduction to Islam, dealing with the origins of its forms, from early developments to ...contemporary issues, including religious principles, beliefs and practices. The author’s innovative method considers the various opposing theories and approaches between the Islamic tradition and scholars of Islam.
Each topic is accompanied by up-to-date bibliographical references and a list of titles for further study, while an exhaustive glossary includes the elementary notions to allow in-depth study. Part I outlines the two founding aspects, the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad, highlighting essential concepts, according to Islamic religious discourse and related critical issues. In Part II, the emergence of the religious themes that have characterised the formation of Islam are explored in terms of historical developments. Part III, on contemporary Islam, examines the growth of Islam between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age.
Advanced readers, already familiar with the elementary notions of Islam and religious studies will benefit from Islam that explores the development of religious discourse in a historical perspective. This unique textbook is a key resource for post-graduate researchers and academics interested in Islam, religion and the Middle East.
