Becoming Better Muslims

Becoming Better Muslims PDF Author: David Kloos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176655
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today’s personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency.

Becoming Better Muslims

Becoming Better Muslims PDF Author: David Kloos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176655
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today’s personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency.

Becoming Better Muslims

Becoming Better Muslims PDF Author: David Kloos
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400887836
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

Get Book

Book Description
How do ordinary Muslims deal with and influence the increasingly pervasive Islamic norms set by institutions of the state and religion? Becoming Better Muslims offers an innovative account of the dynamic interactions between individual Muslims, religious authorities, and the state in Aceh, Indonesia. Relying on extensive historical and ethnographic research, David Kloos offers a detailed analysis of religious life in Aceh and an investigation into today’s personal processes of ethical formation. Aceh is known for its history of rebellion and its recent implementation of Islamic law. Debunking the stereotypical image of the Acehnese as inherently pious or fanatical, Kloos shows how Acehnese Muslims reflect consciously on their faith and often frame their religious lives in terms of gradual ethical improvement. Revealing that most Muslims view their lives through the prism of uncertainty, doubt, and imperfection, he argues that these senses of failure contribute strongly to how individuals try to become better Muslims. He also demonstrates that while religious authorities have encroached on believers and local communities, constraining them in their beliefs and practices, the same process has enabled ordinary Muslims to reflect on moral choices and dilemmas, and to shape the ways religious norms are enforced. Arguing that Islamic norms are carried out through daily negotiations and contestations rather than blind conformity, Becoming Better Muslims examines how ordinary people develop and exercise their religious agency.

Being Muslim

Being Muslim PDF Author: Asad Tarsin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780985565923
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
A brief manual designed to help Muslims learn how to live and practice their faith. Different from theoretical treatments of Islam, this book gives readers practical and useful knowledge that can help them understand what it means to be Muslim.

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim PDF Author: Mahmood Mamdani
Publisher: Harmony
ISBN: 0385515375
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In this brilliant look at the rise of political Islam, the distinguished political scientist and anthropologist Mahmood Mamdani brings his expertise and insight to bear on a question many Americans have been asking since 9/11: how did this happen? Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a provocative and important book that will profoundly change our understanding both of Islamist politics and the way America is perceived in the world today.

Chinese Ways of Being Muslim

Chinese Ways of Being Muslim PDF Author: Wai Weng Hew
Publisher: Nias Monographs
ISBN: 9788776942106
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Many recent works on Muslim societies have pointed to the development of ‘de-culturalization’ and ‘purification’ of Islamic practices. Instead, by exploring architectural designs, preaching activities, cultural celebrations, social participations and everyday practices, this book describes and analyses the formation and contestation of Chinese Muslim cultural identities in today’s Indonesia. Chinese Muslim leaders strategically promote their unique identities by rearticulating their histories and cultivating ties with Muslims in China. Yet, their intentional mixing of Chineseness and Islam does not reflect all aspects of the multilayered and multifaceted identities of ordinary Chinese Muslims – there is not a single ‘Chinese way of being Muslim’ in Indonesia. Moreover, the assertion of Chinese identity and Islamic religiosity does not necessarily imply racial segregation and religious exclusion, but can act against them. The study thus helps us to understand better the cultural politics of Muslim and Chinese identities in Indonesia, and gives insights into the possibilities and limitations of ethnic and religious cosmopolitanism in contemporary societies." -- Provided by publisher.

Muslim Becoming

Muslim Becoming PDF Author: Naveeda Khan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822352311
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
This thoughtful ethnography of Islam in Pakistan moves from the smallest scale—a single worshiper striving to be a better Muslim who is seeking guidance at a neighborhood mosque—to the largest, examining the thought of poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, considered to be the spiritual visionary of the country.

Muslim Cool

Muslim Cool PDF Author: Su'ad Abdul Khabeer
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479894508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, “Muslim Cool.” Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between “Black” and “Muslim.” Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are “foreign” to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested—critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.

Getting to Know & Love Islam

Getting to Know & Love Islam PDF Author: The Sincere Seeker Collection
Publisher: The Sincere Seeker Collection
ISBN: 1735326011
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 31

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Book Description
The love of Allah is already instilled in our children’s hearts, and it is our duty as parents to help nurture and sustain that love. We must teach our children at an early stage what Islam is, who our Creator is, and what the Holy Quran is, so they can develop a strong and loving bond for them, making it easier for them to grow up with a healthy Islamic mindset and lifestyle. Getting to Know & Love Islamchildren’s bookaims to introduce the basics of Islam to kids in an easy, fun, and educational way. Every page introduces a vital component of Islam, along with an illustration for your child to better understand & appreciate. This is one of the best Islamic Children's books on Amazon!

Straying from the Straight Path

Straying from the Straight Path PDF Author: Daan Beekers
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785337149
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
If piety, faith, and conviction constitute one side of the religious coin, then imperfection, uncertainty, and ambivalence constitute the other. Yet, scholars tend to separate these two domains and place experiences of inadequacy in everyday religious life – such as a wavering commitment, religious negligence or weakness in faith – outside the domain of religion ‘proper.’ Straying from the Straight Path breaks with this tendency by examining how self-perceived failure is, in many cases, part and parcel of religious practice and experience. Responding to the need for comparative approaches in the face of the largely separated fields of the anthropology of Islam and Christianity, this volume gives full attention to moral failure as a constitutive and potentially energizing force in the religious lives of both Muslims and Christians in different parts of the world.

What Is Religious Authority?

What Is Religious Authority? PDF Author: Ismail Fajrie Alatas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691204292
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
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.