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Reviving Arab Reform seeks to understand the key factors that have inhibited a reliable reform programme in the Middle East following the 2010s Arab Spring riots and unrest. It also provides suggestions for policymakers on how to design, execute, and assess an effective reform program suitable for Arab circumstances.
Rooted in the world historical methodology of John O. Voll, this collection brings together a diverse group of scholars to investigate the ongoing impact of revival and reform movements beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing through to the present. Ranging from the MENA region to Africa, India, and China, and covering a variety of religious interpretations, from scripturalist to Sufism, these essays offer new perspectives on movements including the Wahhabis of Arabia, the Sokoto Caliphate, the neo-Sufism of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, Sufi scholars and networks on the African continent, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Contributors explore encounters between Islamic revival and reform and modernity with a focus on the ways in which Islamic reforms influence the political sphere. Concluding with contemporary reinterpretations of Islam in the digital arena, this volume examines, but also moves beyond, texts to include embodiments of religious practice, the development of religious culture and education, and attention to women’s contributions to education, cultural production, and community building.
Reviving Arab Reform seeks to understand the key factors that have inhibited a reliable reform programme in the Middle East following the 2010s Arab Spring riots and unrest. It also provides suggestions for policymakers on how to design, execute, and assess an effective reform program suitable for Arab circumstances.
Revival and Reform in Islam is at once an intellectual biography of Muhammad al-Shawkani, and a history of a transitional period in Yemeni history. This was a time when a society dominated by traditional Zaydi Shiism shifted to one characterised instead by Sunni reformism. The author traces the origins and outcomes of this transition, presenting the first systematic account of the ways in which the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century reorientation of the Zaydi madhhab, and consequent 'sunnification' of Yemeni society, were intricately linked to tensions within the political realm. In advocating juridical systematization of religious belief and practice, Shawkani espoused a socio-religious order which in its dominant features echoed key aspects of Western modernity. Yet he did so in a context bereft of Western ideational influence. This study then presents a textured account of eighteenth-century Islamic reformist thought and challenges the meaning of modernity in an Islamic context.
This authoritative book argues that what is considered today to be Islamic fundamentalism is inconsistent with the true meaning of this faith. Rahman demonstrates that the true roots of Islamic teachings advocate adaptability, creativity, and innovation.
An analysis of Islamist cultural politics through the ethnography of a thriving, grassroots women's piety movement in the mosques of Cairo, Egypt. Unlike those organized Islamist activities that seek to seize or transform the state, this is a moral reform movement whose orthodox practices are commonly viewed as inconsequential to Egypt's political landscape. The author's exposition of these practices challenges this assumption by showing how the ethical and the political are linked within the context of such movements.
Before 9/11, few Westerners had heard of Wahhabism. Today, it is a household word. Frequently mentioned in association with Osama bin Laden, Wahhabism is portrayed by the media and public officials as an intolerant, puritanical, militant interpretation of Islam that calls for the wholesale destruction of the West in a jihad of global proportions. In the first study ever undertaken of the writings of Wahhabism's founder, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1702-1791), Natana DeLong-Bas shatters these stereotypes and misconceptions. Her reading of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's works produces a revisionist thesis: Ibn Abd al-Wahhab was not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements. Rather, he was a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream 18th-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon a monotheism in which Muslims, Christians and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial and treaty relations. Eschewing medieval interpretations of the Quran and hadith (sayings and deeds of the prophet Muhammad), Ibn Abd al-Wahhab called for direct, historically contextualized interpretation of scripture by both women and men. His understanding of theology and Islamic law was rooted in Quranic values, rather than literal interpretations. A strong proponent of women's rights, he called for a balance of rights between women and men both within marriage and in access to education and public space. In the most comprehensive study of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's interpretation of jihad ever written, DeLong-Bas details a vision in which jihad is strictly limited to the self-defense of the Muslim community against military aggression. Contemporary extremists like Osama bin Laden do not have their origins in Wahhabism, she shows. The hallmark jihadi focus on a cult of martyrdom, the strict division of the world into two necessarily opposing spheres, the wholescale destruction of both civilian life and property, and the call for global jihad are entirely absent from Ibn Abd al-Wahhab's writings. Instead, the militant stance of contemporary jihadism lies in adherence to the writings of the medieval scholar, Ibn Taymiyya, and the 20th century Egyptian radical, Sayyid Qutb. This pathbreaking book fills an enormous gap in the literature about Wahhabism by returning to the original writings of its founder. Bound to be controversial, it will be impossible to ignore.
In this new book, Tariq Ramadan argues that it is crucial to find theoretical and practical solutions that will enable Western Muslims to remain faithful to Islamic ethics while fully living within their societies and their time. He notes that Muslim scholars often refer to the notion of ijtihad (critical and renewed reading of the foundational texts) as the only way for Muslims to take up these modern challenges. But, Ramadan argues, in practice such readings have effectively reached the limits of their ability to serve the faithful in the West as well as the East. In this book he sets forward a radical new concept of ijtihad, which puts context -- including the knowledge derived from the hard and human sciences, cultures and their geographic and historical contingencies -- on an equal footing with the scriptures as a source of Islamic law.
An accessible and wide-ranging survey of modern Arab culture covering political, intellectual and social aspects.
Reinventing Khomeini offers a new interpretation of the political battles that paved the way for reform in Iran. Brumberg argues that these conflicts did not result from a sudden ideological shift; nor did the election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 really defy the core principles of the Islamic Revolution. To the contrary, the struggle for a more democratic Iran can be traced to the revolution itself, and to the contradictory agendas of the revolution's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. A complex figure, Khomeini was a fervent champion of Islam, but while he sought a Shi'ite vision of clerical rule under one Supreme Leader, he also strove to mesh that vision with an implicitly Western view of mass participatory politics. The intense magnetism and charisma of the ayatollah obscured this paradox. But reformers in Iran today, while rejecting his autocratic vision, are reviving the constitutional notions of government that he considered, and even casting themselves as the bearers of his legacy. In Reinventing Khomeini, Brumberg proves that the ayatollah is as much the author of modern Iran as he is the symbol of its fundamentalist past.