Download Free Ismaili Modern Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Ismaili Modern and write the review.

The Isma'ili Muslims, a major sect of Shi'i Islam, form a community that is intriguing in its deterritorialized social organization. Informed by the richness of Isma'ili history, theories of transnationalism and globalization, and firsthand ethnographic f
This book explores the evolution of a Shia Ismaili identity in late colonial South Asia.
Despite being one of the key Shi'i Muslim communities, the Ismailis were until recently studied primarily on the basis of the accounts of their enemies. This new introduction is the first to be based on modern scholarship, taking account of recently recovered Ismaili texts. It covers all the main developments in the major phases of Ismaili history, from the early formative period, through the Fatamid golden age and the Alamut and post-Alamut periods, to more recent history. Dealing only with the most important historical developments, this is a comprehensive and accessible survey for all newcomers to the subject.
This volume examines the writings of ten Muslim intellectuals, working in the Muslim world and the West, who employ contemporary critical methods to understand the Qur'an. Their work points to a new trend in Muslim interpretation, characterised by a direct engagement with the Word of God while embracing intellectual modernity in a global context. The volume situates and evaluates their work and responses to it among Muslim and non-Muslim audiences.
The Ismaili Muslims, who belong to the Shia branch of Islam, live in over 25 different countries around the world, mainly in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Their history has typically been linked to the history of the various countries in which they live, but the worldwide community is united under Prince Karim Aga Khan, the spiritual leader and 49th Imam of the Ismaili Muslims. Few fields of Islamic studies have witnessed as drastic a change as Ismaili studies, due in part to the recent discovery of numerous historical texts, and author Farhad Daftary makes extensive use of these new sources in the Historical Dictionary of the Ismailis. This comprehensive new reference work is the first of its kind on the Ismailis and presents a summary of the findings of modern scholarship on the Ismaili Shia Muslims and different facets of their heritage. The dictionary covers all phases of Ismaili history as well as the main doctrines of the community. It includes an introductory chapter, which provides a broad historical survey of the Ismailis, followed by alphabetical entries on all major aspects of the community, such as key figures, institutions, traditions, and doctrines. It also contains a chronology, genealogical tables, a glossary, and a substantial bibliography. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Ismailis.
Shi`i Ismaili Muslims are unique in following for centuries a living, hereditary Imam (spiritual leader), whom they believe to be directly descended from the Prophet Muhammad. The Imam's duty has been to guide his community on the basis of Islamic principles adapted to the needs of the time. In this insightful book, M. Ali Lakhani examines how the ideas and actions of the current Ismaili Imam, and fourth Aga Khan, Prince Karim al-Husseini, provide an Islamic response to the challenges that face Muslims in the modern era. Prince Karim's programmes, implemented mainly through the broad institutional framework of the Aga Khan Development Network, are aimed at improving the quality of human life among the disadvantaged, regardless of their religion or ethnicity. Addressing global issues ranging from healthcare and education to culture and civil society, the Aga Khan's initiatives are founded on core Islamic principles and values. This book is the first to provide an extensive survey of the Aga Khan's aspirations, showing how the values of integrity and dignity are at the forefront of his work, with the traditional Muslim concepts of cosmopolitanism and social justice guiding his response to the stark challenges of the modern age. At a time when criticisms and misrepresentation surrounding Islam abound, Faith and Ethics explores the religion's universal principles and values, which the author holds to be central to the spiritual and ethical issues facing both Muslims and non-Muslims in the rapidly changing modern world. The book will be of special interest to scholars researching Islam, Muslim faith and ethics and the Ismailis, and to general readers wanting a deeper understanding of Islam.
The Isma'ili Muslims, a major sect of Shi'i Islam, form a community that is intriguing in its deterritorialized social organization. Informed by the richness of Isma'ili history, theories of transnationalism and globalization, and firsthand ethnographic fieldwork in the Himalayan regions of Tajikistan and Pakistan as well as in Europe, Jonah Steinberg investigates Isma'ili Muslims and the development of their remarkable and expansive twenty-first-century global structures. Led by a charismatic European-based hereditary Imam, Prince Karim Aga Khan IV, global Isma'ili organizations make available an astonishing array of services--social, economic, political, and religious--to some three to five million subjects stretching from Afghanistan to England, from Pakistan to Tanzania. Steinberg argues that this intricate and highly integrated network enables a new kind of shared identity and citizenship, one that goes well beyond the sense of community maintained by other diasporic populations. Of note in this process is the rapid assimilation in the postcolonial period of once-isolated societies into the intensively centralized Isma'ili structure. Also remarkable is the Isma'ilis' self-presentation, contrary to common characterizations of Islam in the mass media, as a Muslim society that is broadly sympathetic to capitalist systems, opposed to fundamentalism, and distinctly modern in orientation. Steinberg's unique journey into remote mountain regions highlights today's rapidly shifting meanings of citizenship, faith, and identity and reveals their global scale.
An overwhelmingly Arab-centric perspective dominates the West’s understanding of Islam and leads to a view of this religion as exclusively Middle Eastern and monolithic. Teena Purohit presses for a reorientation that would conceptualize Islam instead as a heterogeneous religion that has found a variety of expressions in local contexts throughout history. The story she tells of an Ismaili community in colonial India illustrates how much more complex Muslim identity is, and always has been, than the media would have us believe. The Aga Khan Case focuses on a nineteenth-century court case in Bombay that influenced how religious identity was defined in India and subsequently the British Empire. The case arose when a group of Indians known as the Khojas refused to pay tithes to the Aga Khan, a Persian nobleman and hereditary spiritual leader of the Ismailis. The Khojas abided by both Hindu and Muslim customs and did not identify with a single religion prior to the court’s ruling in 1866, when the judge declared them to be converts to Ismaili Islam beholden to the Aga Khan. In her analysis of the ginans, the religious texts of the Khojas that formed the basis of the judge’s decision, Purohit reveals that the religious practices they describe are not derivations of a Middle Eastern Islam but manifestations of a local vernacular one. Purohit suggests that only when we understand Islam as inseparable from the specific cultural milieus in which it flourishes do we fully grasp the meaning of this global religion.
Crucial to understanding Islam is a recognition of the role of Muslim networks. The earliest networks were Mediterranean trade routes that quickly expanded into transregional paths for pilgrimage, scholarship, and conversion, each network complementing and reinforcing the others. This volume selects major moments and key players from the seventh century to the twenty-first that have defined Muslim networks as the building blocks for Islamic identity and social cohesion. Although neglected in scholarship, Muslim networks have been invoked in the media to portray post-9/11 terrorist groups. Here, thirteen essays provide a long view of Muslim networks, correcting both scholarly omission and political sloganeering. New faces and forces appear, raising questions never before asked. What does the fourteenth-century North African traveler Ibn Battuta have in common with the American hip hopper Mos Def? What values and practices link Muslim women meeting in Cairo, Amsterdam, and Atlanta? How has technology raised expectations about new transnational pathways that will reshape the perception of faith, politics, and gender in Islamic civilization? This book invokes the past not only to understand the present but also to reimagine the future through the prism of Muslim networks, at once the shadow and the lifeline for the umma, or global Muslim community. Contributors: H. Samy Alim, Duke University Jon W. Anderson, Catholic University of America Taieb Belghazi, Mohammed V University, Rabat, Morocco Gary Bunt, University of Wales, Lampeter miriam cooke, Duke University Vincent J. Cornell, University of Arkansas Carl W. Ernst, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Judith Ernst, Chapel Hill, North Carolina David Gilmartin, North Carolina State University Jamillah Karim, Spelman College Charles Kurzman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University Samia Serageldin, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Tayba Hassan Al Khalifa Sharif, United Nations High Commission for Refugees, Egypt Quintan Wiktorowicz, Rhodes College Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Brown University
This book explains the basic traditions and practices of one of Canada's newest immigrant groups, the Shia Ismaili Muslims, and how they have progressed under the guidance of their spiritual leader, the Aga Khan. The Aga Khan is believed to be a direct descendant of the prophet Mohamed and represents his Islamic faith through humanitarian work in international development. The Ismailites have, through volunteerism, pluralism, and humanitarianism, been eradicating poverty in developing countries by building schools, universities, and hospitals.