Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age

Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age
Author: Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 375
Release: 2012-10-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1107096456

This book explores some of the most fiercely debated issues facing the Islamic world today.

Islamic Religious Authority in a Modern Age

Islamic Religious Authority in a Modern Age
Author: Shaheen Amid Whyte
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2024
Genre: Islamic leadership
ISBN: 9819979315

This book situates Australian Muslim experiences of religious authority within the global context of Islam in the modern world. While drawing on examples of Muslim-majority states, new empirical findings indicate the growing diversity of Muslim religious actors in Australia, as well as the contextual realities shaping the way religious authority is legitimised and contested in democratic and authoritarian environments. In particular, the study challenges homogenous articulations of Islamic religious authority in unearthing new voices, epistemologies and socio-political factors shaping Muslim attitudes and experiences of religious authority. The book fills important gaps in the field, such as intra-Muslim relations, female religious authority, digital Islam and the relationship between traditional ulama, reformists and Muslim intellectuals in the West. Dr Shaheen Whyte is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation, Charles Sturt University. He holds a PhD from Deakin University, Australia. His research focuses on Islamic religious authority, Muslim minorities in the West, Islamic law and Middle Eastern politics.

Alternative Islamic Discourses and Religious Authority

Alternative Islamic Discourses and Religious Authority
Author: Dr Carool Kersten
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2014-01-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1472400534

Like anywhere else, the present-day Islamic world too is grappling with modernity and postmodernity, secularisation and globalisation. Muslims are raising questions about religious representations and authority. This has given rise to the emergence of alternative Islamic discourses which challenge binary oppositions and dichotomies of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, continuity and change, state and civil society. It also leads to a dispersal of authority, a collapse of existing hierarchical structures and gender roles. This book further argues that the centre of gravity of many of these alternative Islamic discourses is shifting from the Arabic-speaking 'heartland' towards the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world and expatriate Muslims in North America and Europe. At the same time, in view of recent seismic shifts in the political constellation of the Middle East, the trends discussed in this book hold important clues for the possible direction of future developments in that volatile part of the Muslim world.

What Is Religious Authority?

What Is Religious Authority?
Author: Ismail Fajrie Alatas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0691204292

An anthropologist's groundbreaking account of how Islamic religious authority is assembled through the unceasing labor of community building on the island of Java This compelling book draws on Ismail Fajrie Alatas's unique insights as an anthropologist to provide a new understanding of Islamic religious authority, showing how religious leaders unite diverse aspects of life and contest differing Muslim perspectives to create distinctly Muslim communities. Taking readers from the eighteenth century to today, Alatas traces the movements of Muslim saints and scholars from Yemen to Indonesia and looks at how they traversed complex cultural settings while opening new channels for the transmission of Islamic teachings. He describes the rise to prominence of Indonesia's leading Sufi master, Habib Luthfi, and his rivalries with competing religious leaders, revealing why some Muslim voices become authoritative while others don't. Alatas examines how Habib Luthfi has used the infrastructures of the Sufi order and the Indonesian state to build a durable religious community, while deploying genealogy and hagiography to present himself as a successor of the Prophet Muḥammad. Challenging prevailing conceptions of what it means to be Muslim, What Is Religious Authority? demonstrates how the concrete and sustained labors of translation, mobilization, collaboration, and competition are the very dynamics that give Islam its power and diversity.

Key Themes for the Study of Islam

Key Themes for the Study of Islam
Author: Jamal J. Elias
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1780746849

"Key Themes for the Study of Islam" examines the central themes and concepts indispensable to an informed understanding of Islamic religion and society. From Gender and History to Prayer and Prophecy, each authoritative chapter focuses on a single aspect of the religion and presents a critical discussion written by a world expert in that field. Exposing as false the idea that Islam and Muslims are incomprehensible to Western culture, this book will become the first choice for students and experts in religion from disparate fields, who wish to know how Islam relates to vital concepts in religion and society today.

Speaking for Islam

Speaking for Islam
Author: Gudrun Krämer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2006
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 900414949X

Focuses on Middle Eastern Muslim majority societies in the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. This work contains papers which highlight the scope and variety of religious authorities in Muslim societies.

Preaching Islamic Renewal

Preaching Islamic Renewal
Author: Jacquelene G. Brinton
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2015-10-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0520287002

Preaching Islamic Renewal examines the life and work of Muhammad Mitwalli Sha‘rawi, one of Egypt's most beloved and successful Islamic preachers. His wildly popular TV program aired every Friday for years until his death in 1998. At the height of his career, it was estimated that up to 30 million people tuned in to his show each week. Yet despite his pervasive and continued influence in Egypt and the wider Muslim world, Sha‘rawi was for a long time neglected by academics. While much of the academic literature that focuses on Islam in modern Egypt repeats the claim that traditionally trained Muslim scholars suffered the loss of religious authority, Sha‘rawi is instead an example of a well-trained Sunni scholar who became a national media sensation. As an advisor to the rulers of Egypt as well as the first Arab television preacher, he was one of the most important and controversial religious figures in late-twentieth-century Egypt. Thanks to the repurposing of his videos on television and on the Internet, Sha‘rawi’s performances are still regularly viewed. Jacquelene Brinton uses Sha‘rawi and his work as a lens to explore how traditional Muslim authorities have used various media to put forth a unique vision of how Islam can be renewed and revived in the contemporary world. Through his weekly television appearances he popularized long held theological and ethical beliefs and became a scholar-celebrity who impacted social and political life in Egypt.

Female Religious Authority in Shi'i Islam

Female Religious Authority in Shi'i Islam
Author: Mirjam Künkler
Publisher: EUP
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781474426602

This collection of case studies, covering the period from classical Islam to the present, and taken from across the Islamic world, compares the role of women across time and space.

The Clerics of Islam

The Clerics of Islam
Author: Nabil Mouline
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2014-11-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0300206615

Followers of Muhammad b. ’Abd al-Wahhab, often considered to be Islam’s Martin Luther, shaped the political and religious identity of the Saudi state while also enabling the significant worldwide expansion of Salafist Islam. Studies of the movement he inspired, however, have often been limited by scholars’ insufficient access to key sources within Saudi Arabia. Nabil Mouline was granted rare interviews and admittance to important Saudi archives in preparation for this groundbreaking book, the first in-depth study of the Wahhabi religious movement from its founding to the modern day. Gleaning information from both written and oral sources and employing a multidisciplinary approach that combines history, sociology, and Islamic studies, Mouline presents a new reading of this movement that transcends the usual resort to polemics.

Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change, Volume 1

Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change, Volume 1
Author: Masooda Bano
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2018-03-07
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1474433243

Explores the interconnected creative partnerships of the Wattses and De Morgans - Victorian artists, writers and suffragists