Beyond death : the mystical teachings of ʻAyn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī /
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The twelfth-century Iranian mystic 'Ayn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī (d. 1131) wrote vividly of his explorations of death as a state of consciousness which he experienced while alive. This state and his visions of Doomsday and the innumerable non-corporeal worlds that lie past the world of matter confront him with paradoxical realities that upset the notional understanding of faith. The present book concerns itself with a discussion on the subject of death as it is viewed by one of the defining mystic scholars of medieval Iran. Based on medieval manuscripts and primary sources in classical Persian and Arabic, this book explores the significance of this important Iranian mystic and his insights on the nature of reality in light of death.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047427599 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Excellence and Precedence : Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership /
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This volume focuses on how legitimate leadership came to be defined in the formative period of Islam in terms of two key Qur'anic concepts: moral excellence ( faḍl/faḍīla ) and precedence ( sābiqa ). These two concepts undergirded a specific discourse on leadership which developed in the first century of Islam. This discourse is reconstructed through careful scrutiny of the manāqib literature in particular, which contains detailed accounts of the excellences attributed to the Rāshidūn caliphs. This book stresses that all early factions, including the proto-Shī'a, subscribed to the Qur'ānically-mandated vision of a righteous polity guided by its most morally excellent members. Such a conclusion forces us to rethink the nature of leadership in the earliest period and reconsider the criteria invoked to establish its legitimacy.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004492196
9789004120433
Women, leadership and mosques : changes in contemporary Islamic authority /
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The acceptance of female leadership in mosques and madrassas is a significant change from much historical practice, signalling the mainstream acceptance of some form of female Islamic authority in many places. This volume investigates the diverse range of female religious leadership present in contemporary Muslim communities in South, East and Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America, with chapters discussing its emergence, the limitations placed upon it, and its wider impact, as well as the physical and virtual spaces used by women to establish and consolidate their authority. It will be invaluable as a reference text, as it is the first to bring together analysis of female Islamic leadership in geographically and ideologically-diverse Muslim communities worldwide.
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1 online resource (xvii, 581 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004209367 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ibn Taymiyya's theodicy of perpetual optimism /
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The Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) is famous for polemic against Islamic philosophy, theology and rationalizing mysticism, but his positive theological contribution has not been well understood. This comprehensive study of Ibn Taymiyya's theodicy helps to rectify this lack. Exposition and analysis of Ibn Taymiyya's writings on God's justice and wise purpose, divine determination and human agency, the problem of evil, and juristic method in theological doctrine show that he articulates a theodicy of optimism in which God in His essence perpetually wills the best possible world from eternity. This sets Ibn Taymiyya's theodicy apart from Ashʿarī divine voluntarism, the free-will theodicy of the Muʿtazilīs, and the essentially timeless God of other optimists like Ibn Sīnā and Ibn ʿArabī.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.--University of Birmingham, 2002) under the title: An Islamic theodicy : Ibn Taymiyya on the wise purpose of God, human agency, and problems of evil and justice. :
1 online resource (xii, 270 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047420194 :
0169-8729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religion and conflict attribution : an empirical study of the religious meaning system of Christian, Muslim and Hindu students in Tamil Nadu, India /
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Religion can play a dual role with regard to conflict. It can promote either violence or peace. Religion and Conflict Attribution seeks to clarify the causes of religious conflict as perceived by Christian, Muslim and Hindu college students in Tamil Nadu, India. These students in varying degrees attribute conflict to force-driven causes, namely to coercive power as a means of achieving the economic, political or socio-cultural goals of religious groups. The study reveals how force-driven religious conflict is influenced by prescriptive beliefs like religious practice and mystical experience, and descriptive beliefs such as the interpretation of religious plurality and religiocentrism. It also elaborates on the practical consequences of the salient findings for the educational process.
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1 online resource (xii, 287 pages) : illustrations, color map. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004270862 :
2213-9729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Food and foodways of medieval Cairenes : aspects of life in an Islamic metropolis of the eastern Mediterranean /
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This is a pioneering study which analyzes the food cultures of medieval Cairenes on the basis of a large corpus of historical texts in Arabic. Individual chapters discuss what, why, and how the inhabitants of medieval Cairo ate what they did, and in which ways food shaped their everyday lives. Given the complex nature of "food" and "foodways" as areas of research, the book covers such diverse subjects as the genesis of the culinary culture of Egypt's capital and various practices related to food and eating. This monograph also considers several relevant social, political and economic circumstances in medieval Cairo, studying food culture in its broader context.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004206465 :
0929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Looking beneath the surface : medical ethics from Islamic and Western perspectives /
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Looking Beneath the Surface explores Arab-Islamic and Western perspectives on medical ethical issues: genetic research and treatment, abortion, organ donation, and palliative sedation and euthanasia. The contributions in this volume discuss the state of the (medical) art, the role of laws, counseling, and spiritual counseling in the decision-making process. The different approaches to the ethical issues, ways of moral reasoning, become clear in these contributions, especially the role of tradition for Islam and the importance of autonomy for the West. Beneath the differences, however, the reader will also discover common values, such as the role of dignity and the value of life, and similar practices. Some of the main differences are sociocultural in nature, rather than religious as such. Well-known experts in the fields of medicine and ethics have contributed to this volume from different religious and secular backgrounds. The book offers a carefully written introduction and final chapter on intercultural comparisons. Looking Beneath the Surface is more than a collection of writings on issues in medical ethics: it helps the reader to compare different paradigms of accountability and moral reasoning.
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1 online resource (xv, 324 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789401209830 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Le pouvoir de guérir : mythe, mystique et politique au Maroc /
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Au Maroc, les mythes fondateurs des cultes et rituels de guérison illustrent de manière probante les processus d'élaboration des significations et des dynamiques du pouvoir dans le passé proche et leurs articulations actuelles. Des dynamiques qui se déploient en termes généalogiques, initiatiques et en des capacités socialement reconnues de susciter une communication avec le monde surnaturel. L'analyse centrée sur la confrontation entre saints et rois permet, par ailleurs, d'élargir à la dimension nationale, et au-delà, le rapport, hiérarchique, de conflit et d'articulation entre charisme personnel et charisme sharifien. Le mythe et ses expressions rituelles ouvrent, ainsi, les possibilités du renouvellement sociopolitique par les marges, voire même, dans l'actualité, sous couleur d'une révolution à l'horizon d'un millénarisme du califat. In Morocco, the founding myths of healing cults and rituals illustrate conclusively the elaboration of the symbolism and dynamics of power, both in local and national contexts. These dynamics unfold specifically in terms of genealogical representations and mystical initiations, as well as in socially-recognized capacities to communicate with the supernatural. The analysis centered on the confrontation of saints and kings permits the expansion, to the national level and beyond, of the hierarchical tensions between personal charisma and sharifian charisma. Thus, the myth and its ritual expressions open up possibilities for socio-political renewal by the margins, or even more a renewal, taking place presently, in the form of a revolutionary millenarianism.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004261433
Chance and determinism in Avicenna and Averroes /
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This book examines the question whether medieval Muslim philosophers Avicenna (Arabic Ibn Sīnā 980-1037) and Averroes (Arabic Ibn Rushd 1126-1198) are determinists. With a focus on physics and metaphysics it studies their views on chance events in nature, as well as matter, in particular prime matter, and divine providence. In addition it sets their positions against the historical/philosophical background that influenced their response, the Greco-Arabic philosophical tradition - Aristotelian and Neoplatonic - on the one hand, and the tradition of Islamic theology ( kalām ) on the other. In comparing their philosophical systems, it lays emphasis on the way in which Avicenna and Averroes use these traditions to offer an original answer to the problem of determinism.
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Revision of the author's thesis (doctoral)--Oxford, 2004. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-239) and indexes. :
9789047419150 :
0169-8729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Muhammad 'Abduh and his interlocutors : conceptualizing religion in a globalizing world /
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In Muḥammad ʿAbduh and his Interlocutors: Conceptualizing Religion in a Globalizing World , Ammeke Kateman offers an account of Muḥammad ʿAbduh's Islamic Reformism in a context in which ideas increasingly crossed familiar geographical, religious and cultural frontiers. Presenting an alternative to the inadequate perspective of "Westernization", Kateman situates the ideas of Muḥammad ʿAbduh (Egypt, 1849-1905) on Islam and religion amongst those of his interlocutors within a global intellectual field. Ammeke Kateman's approach documents the surprising pluralism of ʿAbduh's interlocutors, the diversity in their shared conceptualizations of religion and the creativity of ʿAbduh's own interpretation. In this way, the conceptualizations of ʿAbduh and his contemporaries also shed light on the diversified global genealogy of the modern concept of religion.
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Revision of author's thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2016, titled Shared questions, diverging answers : Muḥammad ʻAbduh and his interlocutors on 'religion' in a globalizing world. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004398382 :
0169-8834 ;
Health and ritual in Morocco : conceptions of the body and healing practices /
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In Health and Ritual in Morocco , Josep Lluis Mateo Dieste analyzes the many notions of the body that appear in various Moroccan medical and religious systems. Viewing these issues from anthropological and historical perspectives to the development of Islamic medicine in Morocco, this study highlights the elements of power that define these representations and practices. Mateo Dieste shows that most of the healing rituals challenge the strict division between physical and mental afflictions. Health and Ritual in Morocco provides a valuable structure for understanding Moroccan conceptions of the person, rites of passage, gender differences, and reproductive practices. It offers insights into the weight of the notions of impurity and purification of the body in the daily life of the contemporary Moroccan population.
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Title from PDF title page (viewed on Nov. 7, 2012). :
1 online resource (vi, 366 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004234482 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Pieties and gender /
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Taking up the challenge of Saba Mahmood to feminist studies in religion, that there is a liberalist understanding of agency and a tendency to mix the feminist political project with the analytical, the authors of this anthology discuss the relations between pieties and politics, pieties and methodologies, virtuous masculinities, and symbolic gender representations. Several articles discuss highly controversial questions: Muslim piety, religion in the European Union between the Vatican and the Muslim populations, the religiously motivated abstinence policies of the US. Furthermore, there is an interesting section about religious masculinities in a historical and contemporary perspective.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047440611 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The book of noble character : critical edition of Makārim al-aklāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʼiʻ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʼib al-tashbīhāy, attributed to Abū Manṣūr al- Thaʻālibī (d. 429/1...
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This critical Arabic text edition of K. Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt ( Book of Noble Character, Excellent Conduct, Admirable Descriptions, and Curious Similes ) is a substantial work of adab attributed to the prominent littérateur Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039) that consists of a short introduction and three chapters. The first chapter addresses acquiring noble character and excellent conduct ( al-taḥallī bi-makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb ); the second addresses shunning away from base character and ugly traits ( al-tazakkī ʿan masāwiʾ al-akhlāq wa-maqābiḥ al-shiyam ); and the third addresses admirable descriptions and curious similes ( badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt ). At the end of the text one finds a relatively large collection of widely circulating proverbs ( amthāl sāʾira ) that are alphabetically arranged. Makārim al-akhlāq is in essence an anthology of "good conduct" and of quotations suitable for social and literary discourse. It reflects the three ingredients of adab : behavior, literary culture, and learning. The work is introduced by an analytical study discussing the attribution of the work, the related genres, and the unique manuscript of the text.
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Critical edition.
Introduction in English. :
1 online resource (26, 274 pages) : some color illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004300934 :
0929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The 1720 Imperial Circumcision Celebrations in Istanbul : Festivity and Representation in the Early Eighteenth Century /
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The 1720 Imperial Circumcision Celebrations in Istanbul offers the first holistic examination of an Ottoman public festival through an in-depth inquiry into different components of the 1720 event. Through a critical and combined analysis of the hitherto unknown archival sources along with the textual and pictorial narratives on the topic, the book vividly illustrates the festival's organizational details and preparations, its complex rites (related to consumption, exchange, competition), and its representation in court-commissioned illustrated festival books (sūrnāmes). To analyze all these phases in a holistic manner, the book employs an interdisciplinary approach by using the methodological tools of history, art history, and performance studies and thus, provides a new methodological and conceptual framework for the study of Ottoman celebrations.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004437562
9789004437555
Le Cercle des lettres de l'alphabet = Da'irat al-ahruf al-abjadiyya ; un traite pratique de magie des lettres attribue a Hermes /
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Le Kitāb dā'irat al-aḥruf al-abjadiyya est un traité de magie pratique attribué à Hermès. Ce texte composite, qui ne peut être daté avec précision, est un ouvrage de magie basée sur la doctrine de la science des lettres ( 'ilm al-ḥurūf ). Le présent livre offre la première édition critique du texte, accompagnée d'une traduction annotée et d'une étude historique et philologique exposant les principes théoriques à la base des procédés décrits dans les recettes ainsi que des entités, objets et ingrédients utilisés (noms des anges invoqués, types de fumigations et d'encres, dessins et figures, et cetera). Il s'agit d'une des premières éditions critiques d'un traité de magie pratique des lettres, genre encore fort méconnu bien qu'abondamment représenté dans les manuscrits arabes. The Kitāb dā'irat al-aḥruf al-abjadiyya is a composite treatise of letter magic attributed to Hermes. The edition and annotated translation of the Arabic text are accompanied by an explanation of the theoretical principles underlying the procedures described in the recipes, and a discussion of the entities, objects and ingredients used. These include names of the angels to be summoned, types of incenses and inks to be used, sketches and images to be drawn, et cetera This is one of the first critical editions and translations of a full-length text of practical magic containing recipes pertaining to 'ilm al-ḥurūf (the science of letters). The book is addressed to Arabists and to any non-Arabist interested in the tradition of magic.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004321540 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religious perspectives on religious diversity /
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Religious Perspectives on Religious Diversity addresses fundamental and controversial questions raised by religious diversity. What are members of religious traditions to say about outsiders, their views, and their salvific status? And what are they to say about the religions of outsiders - about, say, whether those religions are inspired or salvifically effective or worthwhile or legitimate? Discussion of some Muslim, Christian, and Jewish perspectives is combined with more methodological work. The authors of these ground-breaking and original, yet readable and accessible, essays include established scholars and younger scholars whose reputation is growing. Contributors are: Imran Aijaz, David Basinger, Paul Rhodes Eddy, Jerome Gellman, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Eugene Korn, Daniel A. Madigan, Robert McKim, John Sanders, and Diego R. Sarrió Cucarella. \'Judaism, Christianity and Islam's attitudes to other religions are thoughtfully examined in this collection, both with fine historical sensibility as well as original constructive contributions from leading scholars in the field. A series of helpful meta-reflections follow on: typologies in theology of religions; the act of comparison between traditions; and a plea for informed tolerance when difference is confronted. A rare treat: an edited collection that is of uniformly high quality, throwing immense light on the subject. It will help specialists and undergraduate students approaching the subject of religious pluralism.\' - Professor Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol, September 2016.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004330436 :
2452-2953 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Probing the depths of evil and good : multireligious views and case studies /
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In the few years since the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, evil has become a central theme in the media and human consciousness: the evil of terrorism, the evil of secular culture, concern for poverty, and climate change... Yet different cultures and religious traditions have different ideas of what evil is and what its root causes are. Although there is no massive clash of cultures, many disagreements and also conflicts in the world arise from the deep differences in views of evil. This volume explores religious views of evil. Scholars from different religions and from various parts of the world describe how people probe the depths of evil-and by necessity that of good-from their own background in various worldviews. In their explorations, almost all address the need to go beyond morality, and beyond legalistic definitions of evil and of good. They point to the radical depths of evil in the world and in human society and reinforce our intuition that there is no easy solution. But if we can gain a better understanding of what people from other worldview traditions and cultures consider evil, we are that much closer to a more peaceful world.
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1 online resource (377 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789401204620 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religion and Time.
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The essays in this volume, all freshly written for this purpose, focus on the concept of time in the major religious traditions. Two essays prepare the methodological grounds - by elaborating the phenomenological and existential conceptions of time and their religious significance. The theme of time, so central to the religious point of view, offers a focal point for fruitful interreligious dialogue. The essays also demonstrate that the complexities of the understanding of time in any religious tradition no longer permit the use of familiar but outdated clichés.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378773
Religion in times of crisis /
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Religion is alive and well all over the world, especially in times of personal, political, and social crisis. Even in Europe, long regarded the most "secular" continent, religion has taken centre stage in how people respond to the crises associated with modernity, or how they interact with the nation-state. In this book, scholars working in and on Europe offer fresh perspectives on how religion provides answers to existential crisis, how crisis increases the salience of religious identities and cultural polarization, and how religion is contributing to changes in the modern world in Europe and beyond. Cases from Poland to Pakistan and from Ireland to Zimbabwe, among others, demonstrate the complexity and ambivalence of religion's role in the contemporary world.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource (pages) :
9789004277793 :
1061-5210 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religion and internet /
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While the churches are emptying, other virtual religious places - as the religious websites - seem to be filling up. The researcher focusing on religion and internet or digital religion as an object of study must seek answers to a number of questions. Is computer-mediated religious communication a particular communication process whose object is what we conventionally call religion? Or is it a modern, independent form of religious expressiveness that finds its new-born status in the web and its particular language? To examine the questions above, and others, the book collects more empirical data, claiming that the Internet will have a specific or novel impact on how religious traditions are interpreted. The blurring of previous boundaries (offline/online, virtual/local, illegitimate/legitimate religion) is another theme common to all the contributions in this volume.
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1 online resource (xi, 217 pages) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004302549 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.