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
An Introduction to Islamic Finance /
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Although the principles of Shari'ah require banks and financial institutions to be structured on an interest-free basis, this does not mean that such institutions are charitable concerns. As long as a person advancing money expects to share in the profits earned (or losses incurred) by the other party, a stipulated proportion of profit is legitimate. The philosophy is enshrined in the traditional Islamic concepts of musharakah and mudarabah, along with their specialized modern variants murabahah, ijarah, salam, and istisna'. This invaluable guide to Islamic finance clearly delineates the all-important distinctions between Islamic practices and conventional procedures based on interest. Justice Usmani of Pakistan, who chairs several Shari'ah supervisory boards for Islamic banks, clearly explains the various modes of financing used by Islamic banks and non-banking financial institutions, emphasizing the necessary requirements for their acceptability from the Shari'ah standpoint and the correct method for their application. He deals masterfully with practical problems as they arise in the course of his presentation, and offers possible solutions in each instance.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004479913
9789041116192
Virtues of the Flesh - Passion and Purity in Early Islamic Jurisprudence /
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Robust sexuality, profound spirituality and elaborate legalism are, at first glance, strange bedfellows. The conventional Western wisdom has long conceived of these several modes as comprising an antagonistic trichotomy, in which each component is opposed to the others. Classical Islam, on the other hand, envisioned a unique system of cooperation between the sensual, the ethereal and the forensic. This study employs the vast and hitherto neglected literature of Islamic purity law as a looking glass through which to examine early Muslim attitudes to the romantic and erotic. Probing Qur'ān, Ḥadīth, Tafsīr and Fiqh, it opens a window on a world of unexpectedly explicit and unrestrainedly joyful sexual expression -- a world located squarely within the confines of God's sacred law and its elucidation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047406235
9789004140707
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.
Public Islam and the Common Good /
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This book explores the public role of Islam in contemporary world politics. "Public Islam" refers to the diverse invocations and struggles over Islamic ideas and practices that increasingly influence the politics and social life of large parts of the globe. The contributors to this volume show how public Islam articulates competing notions and practices of the common good and a way of envisioning alternative political and religious ideas and realities, reconfiguring established boundaries of civil and social life. Drawing on examples from the late Ottoman Empire, Africa, South Asia, Iran, and the Arab Middle East, this volume facilitates understanding the multiple ways in which the public sphere, a key concept in social thought, can be made transculturally feasible by encompassing the evolution of non-Western societies in which religion plays a vital role.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047402824
9789004136212
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.
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.
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.
Secular and Islamic feminist critiques in the work of Fatima Mernissi /
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This book presents a detailed critical analysis of the work of Fatima Mernissi. Mernissi is considered to be one of the major figures in Feminist thought for both Morocco and Muslim society in general. This work discusses Mernissi's intellectual trajectory from 'secular' to 'Islamic' feminism in order to trace the evolution of so-called Islamic feminist theory. The book also engages critically with the work of other Muslim feminists, using frameworks and approaches developed in the works of Muslim reformist thinkers, namely Mohammad Arkoun and Nasr Abu Zaid, with the aim of engaging the theorization of this emerging feminism.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-285) and index. :
9789047429609 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Economics of an Islamic economy /
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This book challenges the interventionist stance of Islamic economics as well as its presumption that riba equals interest. An Islamic economy, it argues, is essentially a market economy, but it differs from capitalist economies because both its institutions and the structure of, for example, property rights are specifically Islamic, deriving from Qurʾān and other sources of Islamic law. The book also focuses on the similarities and differences between riba and interest, establishes the often neglected connection between the two, and explores the ramifications of this connection for Islamic financial systems.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047441724 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Speaking for Islam : religious authorities in Muslim societies /
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Who speaks for Islam? To whom do Muslims turn when they look for guidance? To what extent do individual scholars and preachers exert religious authority, and how can it be assessed? The upsurge of Islamism has lent new urgency to these questions, but they have deeper roots and a much longer history, and they certainly should not be considered in the light of present concerns only. The present volume - grown out of an international symposium at the Free University, Berlin in 2002 - is not so much concerned with religious authority , but with religious authorities , men and women claiming, projecting and exerting religious authority within a given context. It addresses issues such as the relationship of knowledge, conduct and charisma, the social functions of the schools of law and theology, and the efforts on the part of governments and rulers to organize religious scholars and to implement state-centred hierarchies. The volume focuses on Middle Eastern Muslim majority societies in the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and the individual papers offer case studies elucidating important aspects of the wider phenomenon. Individually and collectively, they highlight the scope and variety of religious authorities in past and present Muslim societies. This book is also available in paperback .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047408864 :
1385-3376 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Islamic jurisprudence on the regulation of armed conflict : text and context /
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In Islamic Jurisprudence on the Regulation of Armed Conflict: Text and Context, Nesrine Badawi argues against the existence of a "true" interpretation of the rules regulating armed conflict in Islamic law. In a survey of formative and modern seminal legal works on the subject, the author sheds light on the role played by the sociopolitical context in shaping this branch of jurisprudence and offers a detailed examination of the internal deductive structures of these works.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004410626
Knowledge, Authority and Change in Islamic Societies : Studies in Honor of Dale F. Eickelman /
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Senior scholars of Islamic studies and the anthropology of Islam gather in this volume to pay tribute to one of the giants of the field, Dale F. Eickelman. In diversely arrayed, rigorous and compelling chapters, leading historians, anthropologists, and political scientists elaborate through their own original research on Dale's unique contributions to the study of the modern Muslim world. Eickelman's reflections on the diverse intellectual traditions of Muslim societies and the scholars and laypersons who enact them remain defining as a framework for intellectual inquiry into the modern Muslim world and the profound changes that are transpiring within it.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004443341
9789004439528
Freedom through Submission: Muslim-talk in Contemporary Denmark /
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"In Freedom through Submission Johannes Renders explores Danish-Muslim statements on human freedom. Within a context where public talk of Islam is largely mediated by an incessant succession of controversies, the notion of freedom is weaponized both by and against a growing Muslim community. Danish Muslims take issue with liberal associations of the notion with autonomy and choice, and seek to reconfigure the public debate that pits freedom against Islam. This book brings out a sophisticated and reflective Muslim discourse, in which freedom is something individuals must simultaneously exercise, surrender, and achieve in a cultivated relinquishing of the will to Allah"--
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004448957
9789004448940
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
Pentecostalism, globalisation, and Islam in northern Cameroon : megachurches in the making? /
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Pentecostalism is among the fastest growing social movements in the 21th century. This volume discusses global aspects of Pentecostal churches in northern Cameroon, by describing how the local congregations interact with civil society, traditional religion, and Islam. Extensive fieldwork and descriptions of the complex historical context within which the churches emerge, makes the author draw attention to Pentecostal leaders as social entrepreneurs inspired both by local traditions and by a global flow of images and ideas. This indicates that Pentecostalism can be interpreted both as a social and as a religious movement which manages to encounter mainline churches and Islam with flexibility and spiritual authority.
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1 online resource (x, 260 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004244979 :
0169-9814 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.