Author: Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742562066
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Islam on the Street deals with the popular side of Islam, as described not only in tracts and manuals written by Sufi shaykhs and Islamist thinkers from among the more militant groups in Islam, but also in writings by other, more secular thinkers who have also influenced public opinion. A scholar of Arabic literature, Muhsin al-Musawi explains the growing rift that has occurred between the secular intellectual--the forerunner of Arab and Islamic modernity since the late nineteenth century--and the upsurge of Islamic fervor in the street, at the grassroots level, and what these secular intellectuals can do to reconnect with the masses. Using some of the most important Arabic and Islamic poetry, prose, and fiction to come out of the twentieth century, Al-Musawi provides context for the complex images of Arab and Islamic culture given by the various social, religious, and political groups, providing the motivations. Readers interested in the influence of religion and secularism within modern Islamic Arabic literature will find that the author addresses the presence of Islam and Sufism in ways that secular commentators have been incapable of doing.
Islam on the Street
Author: Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742562066
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Islam on the Street deals with the popular side of Islam, as described not only in tracts and manuals written by Sufi shaykhs and Islamist thinkers from among the more militant groups in Islam, but also in writings by other, more secular thinkers who have also influenced public opinion. A scholar of Arabic literature, Muhsin al-Musawi explains the growing rift that has occurred between the secular intellectual--the forerunner of Arab and Islamic modernity since the late nineteenth century--and the upsurge of Islamic fervor in the street, at the grassroots level, and what these secular intellectuals can do to reconnect with the masses. Using some of the most important Arabic and Islamic poetry, prose, and fiction to come out of the twentieth century, Al-Musawi provides context for the complex images of Arab and Islamic culture given by the various social, religious, and political groups, providing the motivations. Readers interested in the influence of religion and secularism within modern Islamic Arabic literature will find that the author addresses the presence of Islam and Sufism in ways that secular commentators have been incapable of doing.
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742562066
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Islam on the Street deals with the popular side of Islam, as described not only in tracts and manuals written by Sufi shaykhs and Islamist thinkers from among the more militant groups in Islam, but also in writings by other, more secular thinkers who have also influenced public opinion. A scholar of Arabic literature, Muhsin al-Musawi explains the growing rift that has occurred between the secular intellectual--the forerunner of Arab and Islamic modernity since the late nineteenth century--and the upsurge of Islamic fervor in the street, at the grassroots level, and what these secular intellectuals can do to reconnect with the masses. Using some of the most important Arabic and Islamic poetry, prose, and fiction to come out of the twentieth century, Al-Musawi provides context for the complex images of Arab and Islamic culture given by the various social, religious, and political groups, providing the motivations. Readers interested in the influence of religion and secularism within modern Islamic Arabic literature will find that the author addresses the presence of Islam and Sufism in ways that secular commentators have been incapable of doing.
Mecca and Main Street
Author: Geneive Abdo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195332377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Islam is Americas fastest growing religion, with more than six million Muslims in the United States, all living in the shadow of 9/11. Who are our Muslim neighbors? What are their beliefs and desires? How are they coping with life under the War on Terror? In Mecca and Main Street, noted author and journalist Geneive Abdo offers illuminating answers to these questions. Gaining unprecedented access to Muslim communities in America, she traveled across the country, visiting schools, mosques, Islamic centers, radio stations, and homes. She reveals a community tired of being judged by American perceptions of Muslims overseas and eager to tell their own stories. Abdo brings these stories vividly to life, allowing us to hear their own voices and inviting us to understand their hopes and their fears. Inspiring, insightful, tough-minded, and even-handed, this book will appeal to those curious (or fearful) about the Muslim presence in America. It will also be warmly welcomed by the Muslim community.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195332377
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
Islam is Americas fastest growing religion, with more than six million Muslims in the United States, all living in the shadow of 9/11. Who are our Muslim neighbors? What are their beliefs and desires? How are they coping with life under the War on Terror? In Mecca and Main Street, noted author and journalist Geneive Abdo offers illuminating answers to these questions. Gaining unprecedented access to Muslim communities in America, she traveled across the country, visiting schools, mosques, Islamic centers, radio stations, and homes. She reveals a community tired of being judged by American perceptions of Muslims overseas and eager to tell their own stories. Abdo brings these stories vividly to life, allowing us to hear their own voices and inviting us to understand their hopes and their fears. Inspiring, insightful, tough-minded, and even-handed, this book will appeal to those curious (or fearful) about the Muslim presence in America. It will also be warmly welcomed by the Muslim community.
Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty
Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393081974
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
“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.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393081974
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
“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.
If Olaya Street Could Talk
Author: John Paul Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979043604
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
It is in parts a travelogue, a sociological examination, a historical documentary, a love story, health care development and political commentary. The author is one of few Americans to have lived in the country during this period of time who had access to Saudis at all levels of society and freely traveled throughout a large portion of the country. No other book, in English or Arabic, covers this period of Saudi Arabia's transformation to a modern nation, the period from 1978 to 2003. The motivation for writing the book was to render a realistic image of the people of Saudi Arabia, as well as to examine some of the basis for the American misperceptions of this country and region, in the hope that it will inspire others to take steps towards ending the current policy of war without end.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780979043604
Category : Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
It is in parts a travelogue, a sociological examination, a historical documentary, a love story, health care development and political commentary. The author is one of few Americans to have lived in the country during this period of time who had access to Saudis at all levels of society and freely traveled throughout a large portion of the country. No other book, in English or Arabic, covers this period of Saudi Arabia's transformation to a modern nation, the period from 1978 to 2003. The motivation for writing the book was to render a realistic image of the people of Saudi Arabia, as well as to examine some of the basis for the American misperceptions of this country and region, in the hope that it will inspire others to take steps towards ending the current policy of war without end.
Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road
Author: Johan Elverskog
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In the contemporary world the meeting of Buddhism and Islam is most often imagined as one of violent confrontation. Indeed, the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 seemed not only to reenact the infamous Muslim destruction of Nalanda monastery in the thirteenth century but also to reaffirm the stereotypes of Buddhism as a peaceful, rational philosophy and Islam as an inherently violent and irrational religion. But if Buddhist-Muslim history was simply repeated instances of Muslim militants attacking representations of the Buddha, how had the Bamiyan Buddha statues survived thirteen hundred years of Muslim rule? Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road demonstrates that the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction is much richer and more complex than many assume. This groundbreaking book covers Inner Asia from the eighth century through the Mongol empire and to the end of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century. By exploring the meetings between Buddhists and Muslims along the Silk Road from Iran to China over more than a millennium, Johan Elverskog reveals that this long encounter was actually one of profound cross-cultural exchange in which two religious traditions were not only enriched but transformed in many ways.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812205316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
In the contemporary world the meeting of Buddhism and Islam is most often imagined as one of violent confrontation. Indeed, the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001 seemed not only to reenact the infamous Muslim destruction of Nalanda monastery in the thirteenth century but also to reaffirm the stereotypes of Buddhism as a peaceful, rational philosophy and Islam as an inherently violent and irrational religion. But if Buddhist-Muslim history was simply repeated instances of Muslim militants attacking representations of the Buddha, how had the Bamiyan Buddha statues survived thirteen hundred years of Muslim rule? Buddhism and Islam on the Silk Road demonstrates that the history of Buddhist-Muslim interaction is much richer and more complex than many assume. This groundbreaking book covers Inner Asia from the eighth century through the Mongol empire and to the end of the Qing dynasty in the late nineteenth century. By exploring the meetings between Buddhists and Muslims along the Silk Road from Iran to China over more than a millennium, Johan Elverskog reveals that this long encounter was actually one of profound cross-cultural exchange in which two religious traditions were not only enriched but transformed in many ways.
Polymaths of Islam
Author: James Pickett
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501750259
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501750259
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description
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.
A Mosque in Munich
Author: Ian Johnson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547488688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335
Book Description
In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547488688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335
Book Description
In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today
Heretic
Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006233395X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities. Today, she argues, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Hirsi Ali shows, there is no denying that some of its key teachings—not least the duty to wage holy war—are incompatible with the values of a free society. For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali has come to believe that a Muslim Reformation—a revision of Islamic doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity—is now at hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a new readiness—not least by Muslim women—to think freely and to speak out. Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims have to make to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first. And she calls on the Western world to end its appeasement of the Islamists. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” she writes. It is the Muslim reformers who need our backing, not the opponents of free speech. Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of global toleration. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders, with jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this book offers an answer to what is fast becoming the world’s number one problem.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 006233395X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities. Today, she argues, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Hirsi Ali shows, there is no denying that some of its key teachings—not least the duty to wage holy war—are incompatible with the values of a free society. For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali has come to believe that a Muslim Reformation—a revision of Islamic doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity—is now at hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a new readiness—not least by Muslim women—to think freely and to speak out. Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims have to make to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first. And she calls on the Western world to end its appeasement of the Islamists. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” she writes. It is the Muslim reformers who need our backing, not the opponents of free speech. Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of global toleration. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders, with jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this book offers an answer to what is fast becoming the world’s number one problem.
What Is Islam?
Author: Shahab Ahmed
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400873584
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 629
Book Description
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.
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400873584
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 629
Book Description
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.
The Prophet of Zongo Street
Author: Mohammed Naseehu Ali
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060523549
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
The Prophet of Zongo Street is a dazzling collection of stories that calls to mind Ben Okri and Chinua Achebe. Mohammed Naseehu Ali, the tradition's acclaimed new practitioner, offers up ten powerful and beautifully rendered tales. Set primarily on the fictitious Zongo Street -- a close-knit community of wonderfully quirky characters who hold tight to superstition, religion, and family -- these stories are anchored by the uproarious, the embarrassing, the poignant, and the rawest moments of life.
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060523549
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 228
Book Description
The Prophet of Zongo Street is a dazzling collection of stories that calls to mind Ben Okri and Chinua Achebe. Mohammed Naseehu Ali, the tradition's acclaimed new practitioner, offers up ten powerful and beautifully rendered tales. Set primarily on the fictitious Zongo Street -- a close-knit community of wonderfully quirky characters who hold tight to superstition, religion, and family -- these stories are anchored by the uproarious, the embarrassing, the poignant, and the rawest moments of life.