Islam

The authors of this book lived for six months with a Palestinian refugee family in Gaza at the beginning of the intifada, and this book offers a gritty, poetic portrait of the time. The book provides an unrivalled documentary of the underground media the authors collected during the course of their time spent in the area. Although they could not have surmised as much at the beginning, they soon found themselves led through these media into the world of the suicide bomber. Their early study, notably, anticipated the spread of suicide missions years in advance. Dispensing with the platitudes and dogma that typify discourse on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, this book shows that the suicide bomber is a complex, contradictory construction, and can be explained neither in terms of cold efficacy nor sheer evil.

Sayyid Qutb is considered to be the notorious godfather of the militant Islam that perpetrated the September 11^th attacks. The purpose of the book is to understand the man and his ideas. The first part reviews the course of Qutb’s life, starting from his birth in 1906 in southern Egypt, and then later in Cairo, going from his secular, nationalist years as a modern poet and literary critic, to his turn toward moderate Islam, and then closing as he becomes more conservative and radical. In 1948, he traveled to the United States where he confirmed his preconceived aversions to the West. He supported Jamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 revolution, but soon soured as his organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, suffered increasing repression. He served 10 years in prison. Just two years after his release, he was re-arrested, tried for treason, and executed in 1966. The second part documents Qutb’s philosophy and his ideas for revitalization, starting with its current decadence (“jahiliyya”), ending with the utopia of Islam’s ideal political economy and social history (“hakimiyya”), and set in motion by different types of struggle (“jihad” of the heart, tongue, hand, and sword). This campaign is then legitimated by a moral history of Islam. The standard one-dimensional stereotype of Qutb is dispelled with a candid appraisal of his impact. Jihadist organizations arose in the 1970s and 1980s to address problems that even the milder Muslim Brotherhood could not solve. These groups were crushed in the 1990s. Remnants traveled to Afghanistan to establish al-Qa’ida and others wormed their way into the Brotherhood so that even now, after the uprising of January, 2011, Qutb and his followers remain a serious challenge in Egyptian politics.

Silenced describes the dire effects of blasphemy and apostasy restrictions in contemporary Muslim-majority countries, and the promotion of such restrictions internationally, and in the West. In the Muslim world, religious minorities and Muslim reformers are subject to state persecution and targeted by widespread societal violence aimed at silencing any expression that does not conform to the prevailing religious and political ideology. Internationally, for two decades the Organization of the Islamic Conference has been trying within the United Nations to subject Western law and international human rights standards to their own blasphemy and apostasy restrictions. In the West, those accused of insulting Islam can be subject to new quasi blasphemy laws and extralegal threats and violence. Victims include politician, writers, cartoonists, scholars and Muslim reformers. These curbs on perceived anti-Islamic speech – whether called blasphemy, defamation of Islam, insulting Islam, or hate speech – are incompatible with democracy and individual human rights. Blasphemy restrictions forcibly silence criticism of dominant religious ideas, especially when those ideas support, and are supported by, political power. When politics and religion are intertwined, there can be no free political debate if there is no free religious debate. As Silenced’s three Muslim contributors make clear, blasphemy rules are bitterly contested within the Muslim world, and "confine the world's Muslim population to a bleak, colorless prison of socio-cultural and political conformity." Without a vigorous defense of individual freedoms of speech and religion, much of the West is heading toward a similar fate.

This work is a scholarly introduction and translation of an important classical work on spiritual wisdom and refinement of the self by one of Sufism's most illustrious and influential masters. The introduction situates the text in the context of the modern controversy over Sufism, alongside the relevance of this tradition to the challenges confronting Islam and Muslims in the modern world, including the relationship between Islam and the West. The translation captures the tone, essence, and illocutionary force of the author's presentation in the straddled context(s) of the pre-modern and modern Islamic traditions.

Current global tensions and the spread of terrorism have resurrected a largely negative perception of Islamic society in the West, an ill will fueled by centuries of conflict and prejudice. Shedding light on the history behind these hostile feelings, this book traces the Western image of Islam from its earliest days to recent times. The book establishes four basic themes around which the image of Islam gravitates throughout history: the Prophet as Antichrist, heretic, and Satan; the Prophet as Fallen Christian, corrupted monk, or Arab Lucifer; the prophet as sexual deviant, polygamist, and charlatan; and the Prophet as Wise Easterner, Holy Person, and dispenser of wisdom. A feature of the book is a strong portrayal of Islam in literature, art, music, and popular culture, drawing on such sources as Cervantes's Don Quixote; the Orientalism of numerous visual artists; the classical music of Monteverdi and Mozart; and more recent cultural manifestations, such as music hall artists like Peter Dawson, Charles Trenet, and Edith Piaf; and stage or silver screen representations like The Garden of Allah, The Sheik, Aladdin, and The Battle of Algiers. The book argues that an outpouring of positive information on basically every aspect of Islamic life has yet to vanquish the hostile and malformed ideas from the past. Conflict, mistrust, and misunderstanding characterize the Muslim-Christian encounter, and growing examples of cooperation are often overshadowed by anger and suspicion.

The Republic of Turkey has recently gone through remarkable political and socioeconomic transformations. As Turkish democracy and civilian rule have been consolidated, the country has also witnessed a transformation in national orientation, once again playing a leadership role in the heart of the Muslim world. Turkey's example of being a dynamic Muslim democracy and emerging economic power has inspired reformists in the Arab world and beyond. In order to fully grasp these historic transformations, one has to consider the central intellectual and social rule played by the followers of the Turkish religious leader and reformist Fethullah Gülen. Gülen and his movement have been hailed by supporters as being pivotal in forging a Muslim path toward modernity that is compatible with liberal democracy and socioeconomic development. Critics, however, view the movement as being far from benign and argue that it promotes a covert authoritarian and fundamentalist agenda. This book provides a critical understanding of Gülen and his movement. The book examines the interplay between ideology, faith, and socioeconomic and political factors in fostering pathways to specific forms of modernity and development. This book provides a theoretically guided and empirically rooted narrative of alternative Islamic forms of modernity by focusing on Turkey and the Gülen movement. It argues that the Gülen movement represents not only an alternative Islamic form of modernity but also a force to recast the boundary between state and society; the self and community; and between reason and revelation. The book concludes that the Gülen movement embodies Janus‐faced features of modernity: liberal yet communitarian; cosmopolitan yet puritan; both national and transnational. By tracing the movement's historical and social development, the book provides a convincing narrative of how a marginalized and persecuted pietistic community evolved into a major transnational religious and social reform movement with the aim of fostering an Islamic Enlightenment. The book's analysis and conclusions are highly relevant for not only understanding transformational developments in Turkey but also potentially in a number of other major Muslim countries as well.

Today there are more Muslims living in diaspora than at any time in history. This situation was not envisioned by Islamic law, which makes no provision for permanent as opposed to transient diasporic communities. Western Muslims are therefore faced with the necessity of developing an Islamic law for Muslim communities living in non-Muslim societies. This book explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam. Islamic jurisprudence, the book notes, contains a number of references to various “abodes” and a number of interpretations of how Muslims should conduct themselves within those worlds. These include the dar al harb (house of war), dar al kufr (house of unbelievers), and dar al salam (house of peace). How Islamic law interprets these determines the debates that take shape in and around Islamic legality in these spaces. The book's analysis emphasizes the multiplicities of law, and the tensions between secularism and religiosity. It offers a close examination of the emergence of a contingent legal consciousness shaped by the exceptional circumstances of being Muslim in the U.S. and Britain in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.