Madrasas in the Age of Islamophobia

Madrasas in the Age of Islamophobia
Author: Ziya Us Salam
Publisher: Sage Publications Pvt. Limited
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2019-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789353289294

Light on Madrasas′s glorious past, shaky present as centres of restricted learning and stigmatised institutions and future that demands transformation.

Stealing from the Saracens

Stealing from the Saracens
Author: Diana Darke
Publisher: Hurst & Company
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2020
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1787383059

Europeans are in denial. Against a backdrop of Islamophobia, they are increasingly distancing themselves from their cultural debt to the Muslim world. But while the legacy of Islam and the Middle East is in danger of being airbrushed out of Western history, its traces can still be detected in some of Europe's most recognisable monuments, from Notre-Dame to St Paul's Cathedral. In this comprehensively illustrated book, Diana Darke sets out to redress the balance, revealing the Arab and Islamic roots of Europe's architectural heritage. She tracks the transmission of key innovations from the great capitals of Islam's early empires, Damascus and Baghdad, via Muslim Spain and Sicily into Europe. Medieval crusaders, pilgrims and merchants from Europe later encountered Arab Muslim culture in journeys to the Holy Land. In more recent centuries, that same route through modern-day Turkey connected Ottoman culture with the West, leading Sir Christopher Wren himself to believe that Gothic architecture should more rightly be called 'the Saracen style', because of its Islamic origins. Recovering this overlooked story within the West's long history of borrowing from the Islamic world, Darke sheds new light on Europe's buildings and offers rich insights into the possibilities of cultural exchange.

Inside the Tablighi Jamaat

Inside the Tablighi Jamaat
Author: Ziya Us Salam
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2020-07-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9353579287

Not much is known about what is arguably the world's, and certainly India's, largest Islamic organization -- the Tablighi Jamaat. From poverty-stricken peasants of Bihar to dairy farmers of Mewat, its members attend three-day retreats in local mosques, and at times, the Markaz in Delhi. They come of their own free will, at their own expense. The Tabligh tells its members to look within, that life is about internal cleansing with regular prayer that paves the path to spiritual uplift. Unlike other Islamic organizations that balance the here and the hereafter, the Tabligh is concerned only about 'matters beyond the sky and under the earth'. Its steadfast refusal to take a political stand has stood it in good stead. It is the 'ideal Muslim organization' for some -- focused solely on introspection in isolation. Now, for the first time, author Ziya Us Salam provides an inside view of the organization that unwittingly became a 'hotspot' during the novel coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood

Madrasas and the Making of Islamic Womanhood
Author: Hem Borker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2018-06-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0199092060

This in-depth ethnography looks at the everyday lives of Muslim students in a girls’ madrasa in India. Highlighting the ambiguities between the students’ espousal of madrasa norms and everyday practice, Borker illustrates how young Muslim girls tactically invoke the virtues of safety, modesty, and piety learnt in the madrasa to reconfigure normative social expectations around marriage, education, and employment. Amongst the few ethnographies on girls’ madrasas in India, this volume focuses on unfolding of young women’s lives as they journey from their home to madrasa and beyond, and thereby problematizes the idealized and coherent notions of piety presented by anthropological literature on female participation in Islamic piety projects. The author uses ethnographic portraits to introduce us to an array of students, many of whom find their aspirational horizon expanded as a result of the madrasa experience. Such stories challenge the dominant media’s representations of madrasas as outmoded religious institutions. Further, the author illustrates how the processes of learning–unlearning and alternate visions of the future emerge as an unanticipated consequence of young women’s engagement with madrasa education.

The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization

The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization
Author: Richard W. Bulliet
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2006-03-22
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0231127979

The 'clash of civilisations' so often talked about in connection with relations between the West and Arab nations is, argues Richard Bulliet, no more than dangerous sophistry based on misconceptions in American government. He sets out the common ground between Islam and Christianity.

America and the Production of Islamic Truth in Uganda

America and the Production of Islamic Truth in Uganda
Author: Yahya Sseremba
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2023-05-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000868583

This book investigates the ways in which the war on terror has transformed the postcolonial state in Africa. Taking American intervention in Islamic education in Uganda as the entry point, the book demonstrates how state control over Islamic truth production and everyday Muslim life has increased. During the colonial period, the Muslims in Uganda were governed in two ways: partly as lesser citizens within the Christian-dominated civil sphere and partly as members of a distinct Muslim domain. In this domain, a local system of Islamic education developed with a degree of autonomy that reflected the limits of the colonial state in shaping the Muslim subject. In the subsequent postcolonial period, systems of patronage and clientalistic networks dominated, and Muslim leaders were co-opted by the state, but without much real interference in the day-to-day lives of ordinary Muslims. However, as part of the war on terror, the US State Department seeks to bring the mechanisms of Islamic truth production, especially the madrasa, under direct state control and civil society scrutiny. This book argues that the "Muslim domain as a separate entity is coming to an end as it is being absorbed into the civil sphere, unifying the state’s domination of society." The book also analyzes local Ugandan Muslim initiatives to modernise and contextualize their own education and religion and how these initiatives are shaped by and transcend the dominant power. A thorough exploration of US foreign policy and Islamic education, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Political Studies, African Studies and Religious Studies.

Schooling Islam

Schooling Islam
Author: Robert W. Hefner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2010-12-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1400837456

Since the Taliban seized Kabul in 1996, the public has grappled with the relationship between Islamic education and radical Islam. Media reports tend to paint madrasas--religious schools dedicated to Islamic learning--as medieval institutions opposed to all that is Western and as breeding grounds for terrorists. Others have claimed that without reforms, Islam and the West are doomed to a clash of civilizations. Robert Hefner and Muhammad Qasim Zaman bring together eleven internationally renowned scholars to examine the varieties of modern Muslim education and their implications for national and global politics. The contributors provide new insights into Muslim culture and politics in countries as different as Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. They demonstrate that Islamic education is neither timelessly traditional nor medieval, but rather complex, evolving, and diverse in its institutions and practices. They reveal that a struggle for hearts and minds in Muslim lands started long before the Western media discovered madrasas, and that Islamic schools remain on its front line. Schooling Islam is the most comprehensive work available in any language on madrasas and Islamic education.

DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN SECURITY AND GOVERNANCE

DIFFERENT DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN SECURITY AND GOVERNANCE
Author: Imran Ahmad Khan
Publisher: INTERDISCIPLINARY INSTITUTE OF HUMAN SECURITY & GOVERNANCE
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2022-09-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 8195515932

This book contains twenty-nine Best Paper Award-winning articles presented in the IIHSG International Conference 2022 on Human Security and Governance organised by Interdisciplinary Institute of Human Security & Governance, Delhi, India in collaboration with Amity Institute of Liberal Arts, Amity University Mumbai; Centre for Conflict Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Monterey, CA, USA, Security Women, United Kingdom; Department of International Relations; Central University of Jharkhand, India; Department of Defence & Strategic Studies, Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India and Department of International Relations, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Total 537 human security experts presented paper in this virtual event from every corner of the globe like Italy, Poland, Nigeria, Philippines, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Pakistan, UK, USA, Bangladesh, Canada and so on. Best articles written by them is added in this volume. This book, Different Dimensions of Human Security & Governance tries to address various contemporary human security issues in global arena like – Health and Governance; Human Security, Education and Governance; Human Rights and Governance, Human Security and Sustainable Development; Women in Governance and Human Security; Human Security and Non-state Actors; Child Security and Governance; Human Security and Pandemic; Human Security and Law; Governance, State, Politics and Human Security’, Food Security and Governance and Defense, Strategy and Human Security’. I hope that this collection of essays can become a benchmark for the future as well as spur new research agendas and projects that will put the region into a much-needed conversation on the recent trends of human security and the modalities of tackling it by different types of governance.

Shaheen Bagh

Shaheen Bagh
Author: Ziya Us Salam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2020-08-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 939007794X

From Delhi to Chennai, a million Shaheen Baghs. A copy of the Constitution in one hand, the tricolour in the other, Shaheen Bagh became a symbol of a vibrant democracy and secular pilgrimage. But who were these women who braved it all? Shaheen Bagh: From a Protest to a Movement is a moving tale of the brave women of Shaheen Bagh-patient, persevering and unbelievable peaceniks-who raised their voice for the deprived and the discriminated. Initially starting out as a cry of anguish against the allegedly discriminatory laws of the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens, it soon became a modern-day Gandhian movement for equal rights for all citizens. The book is a result of the authors' abiding focus on the movement, including spending time with the brave hearts almost every day of the protest from dawn to dusk and beyond. The authors slept in the open near the protest site to understand what it takes for a ninety-year-old woman to leave the comfort of her bed during a chilly winter night and stand up for the future of each one of us as equal citizens of the country. The book recounts how the women did not abjure ahimsa even when their opponents stooped to barbs and bullets. It recaptures for the reader the riveting cry for democracy that was Shaheen Bagh. Authors Ziya Us Salam and Uzma Ausaf take us on this glorious journey of the making of Shaheen Bagh and how it became a metaphor for resistance, spawning a hundred Shaheen Baghs across the country in a bid to restore the sanctity of the Constitution, the national flag and the national anthem.

Nikah Halala

Nikah Halala
Author: Ziya Us Salam
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2020-07-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9389611490

Muslim society in India remains in a state of denial when it comes to nikah halala. The Quran allows divorce twice. After that the spouses either live together happily or divorce gracefully. Nowhere does it allow marriage with a pre-arranged date of divorce to a new man only to go back to the former husband. Nikah Halala: Sleeping with a Stranger is a probing exercise that exposes the cycle of instant triple talaq followed by a fake marriage, which too ends with another instant triple talaq that allows the woman to marry the former husband. While the holy book does not mention instant triple talaq, this tradition is unique to the Indian subcontinent that claims to bring squabbling couples together but ends up making a mockery of the faith and punishes women for the crimes of men. The first ever book to talk of the subject, Nikah Halala presents the sordid reality of mock marriages against the background of Quranic injunction on the subject and exposes the departure in practice from the teachings of the holy book that gives divorced women complete freedom to follow their path.