Putting Islam to Work

Putting Islam to Work PDF Author: Gregory Starrett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520919303
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
The development of mass education and the mass media have transformed the Islamic tradition in contemporary Egypt and the wider Muslim world. In Putting Islam to Work, Gregory Starrett focuses on the historical interplay of power and public culture, showing how these new forms of communication and a growing state interest in religious instruction have changed the way the Islamic tradition is reproduced. During the twentieth century new styles of religious education, based not on the recitation of sacred texts but on moral indoctrination, have been harnessed for use in economic, political, and social development programs. More recently they have become part of the Egyptian government's strategy for combating Islamist political opposition. But in the course of this struggle, the western-style educational techniques that were adopted to generate political stability have instead resulted in a rapid Islamization of public space, the undermining of traditional religious authority structures, and a crisis of political legitimacy. Using historical, textual, and ethnographic evidence, Gregory Starrett demonstrates that today's Islamic resurgence is rooted in new ways of thinking about Islam that are based in the market, the media, and the school.

Putting Islam to Work

Putting Islam to Work PDF Author: Gregory Starrett
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520919303
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
The development of mass education and the mass media have transformed the Islamic tradition in contemporary Egypt and the wider Muslim world. In Putting Islam to Work, Gregory Starrett focuses on the historical interplay of power and public culture, showing how these new forms of communication and a growing state interest in religious instruction have changed the way the Islamic tradition is reproduced. During the twentieth century new styles of religious education, based not on the recitation of sacred texts but on moral indoctrination, have been harnessed for use in economic, political, and social development programs. More recently they have become part of the Egyptian government's strategy for combating Islamist political opposition. But in the course of this struggle, the western-style educational techniques that were adopted to generate political stability have instead resulted in a rapid Islamization of public space, the undermining of traditional religious authority structures, and a crisis of political legitimacy. Using historical, textual, and ethnographic evidence, Gregory Starrett demonstrates that today's Islamic resurgence is rooted in new ways of thinking about Islam that are based in the market, the media, and the school.

Improvisational Islam

Improvisational Islam PDF Author: Nur Amali Ibrahim
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501727885
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
"In this landmark account, Nur Amali Ibrahim paints a nuanced, detailed portrait of students seeking to reconcile some of the major social forces that inflect everyday life across the Muslim world—Islam, liberalism, radicalism, and secularism—as they strive to both find and define their place in a fast-changing, democratizing nation. Ibrahim demonstrates the critical importance of scholarly attention in both anthropology and religious studies to this vibrant country—the world’s largest Muslim nation." ―Daromir Rudnyckyj, Associate Professor, University of Victoria, and author of the award-winning Spiritual Economies Improvisational Islam is about novel and unexpected ways of being Muslim, where religious dispositions are achieved through techniques that have little or no precedent in classical Islamic texts or concepts. Nur Amali Ibrahim foregrounds two distinct autodidactic university student organizations, each trying to envision alternative ways of being Muslim independent from established religious and political authorities. One group draws from methods originating from the business world, like accounting, auditing, and self-help, to promote a puritanical understanding of the religion and spearhead Indonesia’s spiritual rebirth. A second group reads Islamic scriptures alongside the western human sciences. Both groups, he argues, show a great degree of improvisation and creativity in their interpretations of Islam. These experimental forms of religious improvisations and practices have developed in a specific Indonesian political context that has evolved after the deposal of President Suharto’s authoritarian New Order regime in 1998. At the same time, Improvisational Islam suggests that the Indonesian case study brings into sharper relief processes that are happening in ordinary Muslim life everywhere. To be a practitioner of their religion, Muslims draw on and are inspired by not only their holy scriptures, but also the non-traditional ideas and practices that circulate in their society, which importantly include those originating in the West. In the contemporary political discourse where Muslims are often portrayed as uncompromising and adversarial to the West and where bans and walls are deemed necessary to keep them out, this story about flexible and creative Muslims is an important one to tell.

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty

Islam without Extremes: A Muslim Case for Liberty PDF Author: Mustafa Akyol
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393081974
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
“A delightfully original take on…the prospects for liberal democracy in the broader Islamic Middle East.”—Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.

Making Muslim Women European

Making Muslim Women European PDF Author: Fabio Giomi
Publisher: Central European University Press
ISBN: 9633863686
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 410

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Book Description
This social, cultural, and political history of Slavic Muslim women of the Yugoslav region in the first decades of the post-Ottoman era is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of the issues confronting these women. It is based on a study of voluntary associations (philanthropic, cultural, Islamic-traditionalist, and feminist) of the period. It is broadly held that Muslim women were silent and relegated to a purely private space until 1945, when the communist state “unveiled” and “liberated” them from the top down. After systematic archival research in Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, and Austria, Fabio Giomi challenges this view by showing: • How different sectors of the Yugoslav elite through association publications, imagined the role of Muslim women in post-Ottoman times, and how Muslim women took part in the construction or the contestation of these narratives. • How associations employed different means in order to forge a generation of “New Muslim Women” able to cope with the post-Ottoman political and social circumstances. • And how Muslim women used the tools provided by the associations in order to pursue their own projects, aims and agendas. The insights are relevant for today’s challenges facing Muslim women in Europe. The text is illustrated with exceptional photographs.

Hands Off Our Hijab: Muslim Women Putting Liberal Hypocrisy On Trial

Hands Off Our Hijab: Muslim Women Putting Liberal Hypocrisy On Trial PDF Author: Farhat Amin
Publisher: Farhat Amin
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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Book Description
Why are liberal politicians banning our hijabs and niqabs? Under the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, France had the audacity to ban Muslim women and girls under the age of 18 from wearing the hijab in public. What was the response from the liberal progressive world? Shameful silence. So as Muslim women, how should we react to this attack on our Islamic dress code? Why do non-Muslims politicians and governments hate our hijab? How can Muslims individually and collectively support the challenges sisters are facing? These are the questions I will be tackling in Hands off our Hijab, and I believe we need to put liberal hypocrisy on trial. I sincerely want to help Muslimahs make sense of the challenging situation and take back control of the narrative but not on their own terms: on Allah's terms. Inshallah, I pray this book will help you make sense of the world right now so you can move forward confident and comfortable in your hijab. It may seem like our enemies have the upper hand, but we have Allah on our side: the creator of the universe. To read Farhat Amin's other books, please visit www.smartmuslima.com. Review Sister Farhat Amin is in the front line of many women’s issues of the day. She is also a student of knowledge and a researcher of history and Islamic rulings. I have read her material and listened to her podcasts. All this is to say that Sister Farhat is uniquely positioned to know and to respond to these issues in the most appropriate manner as a person of wisdom that is well-grounded in our religious tradition. Her contributions in this area are very important and urge everyone to purchase the book and listen to her work. Thank you Sister Farhat for all your work in helping us understand and navigate a path forward to helping our youth and young adults. Azmat Mukhtar, Ilmtree.org

Colonising Egypt

Colonising Egypt PDF Author: Timothy Mitchell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520911660
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Extending deconstructive theory to historical and political analysis, Timothy Mitchell examines the peculiarity of Western conceptions of order and truth through a re-reading of Europe's colonial encounter with nineteenth-century Egypt.

Islam and America

Islam and America PDF Author: Anouar Majid
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442214120
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
is the enemy of future progress." --Daniel Martin Varisco, Hofstra University, author of Islam Obscured: The Rhetoric of Anthropological Representation --

William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur'an

William S. Burroughs vs. The Qur'an PDF Author: Michael Muhammad Knight
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1593764766
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
When Michael Muhammad Knight sets out to write the definitive biography of his “Anarcho-Sufi” hero and mentor, writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), he makes a startling discovery that changes everything. At the same time that he grows disillusioned with his idol, Knight finds that his own books have led to American Muslim youths making a countercultural idol of him, placing him on the same pedestal that he had given Wilson. In an attempt to forge his own path, Knight pledges himself to an Iranian Sufi order that Wilson had almost joined, attempts to write the Great American Queer Islamo-Futurist Novel, and even creates his own mosque in the wilderness of West Virginia. He also employs the “cut-up” writing method of Bey’s friend, the late William S. Burroughs, to the Qur’an, subjecting Islam’s holiest scripture to literary experimentation. William S. Burroughs vs. the Qur’an is the struggle of a hero-worshiper without heroes and the meeting of religious and artistic paths, the quest of a writer as spiritual seeker.

Progressive Muslims

Progressive Muslims PDF Author: Omid Safi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 178074045X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 579

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Book Description
Developed in response to the events of September 11, 2001, these 14 articles from prominent Muslim thinkers offer a provocative reassessment of Islam's relationship with the modern world. Confronting issues such as racism, justice, sexuality and gender, this book reveals the real challenges faced by Muslims of both sexes in contemporary Western society. A probing, frank, and intellectually refreshing testament to the capacity of Islam for renewal, change, and growth, these articles from fifteen Muslim scholars and activists address the challenging and complex issues that confront Muslims today. Avoiding fundamentalist and apologetic approaches, the book concentrates on the key areas of debate in progressive Islamic thought: "Contemporary Islam," "Gender Justice," and "Pluralism." With further contributions on subjects as diverse and controversial as the alienation of Muslim youth; Islamic law, marriage, and feminism; and the role of democracy in Islam, this volume will prove thought-provoking for all those interested in the challenges of justice and pluralism facing the Muslim world as it confronts the twenty-first century.

Gang Leader for a Day

Gang Leader for a Day PDF Author: Sudhir Venkatesh
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440631891
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
A New York Times Bestseller "A rich portrait of the urban poor, drawn not from statistics but from vivid tales of their lives and his, and how they intertwined." —The Economist "A sensitive, sympathetic, unpatronizing portrayal of lives that are ususally ignored or lumped into ill-defined stereotype." —Finanical Times Foreword by Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics When first-year graduate student Sudhir Venkatesh walked into an abandoned building in one of Chicago’s most notorious housing projects, he hoped to find a few people willing to take a multiple-choice survey on urban poverty--and impress his professors with his boldness. He never imagined that as a result of this assignment he would befriend a gang leader named JT and spend the better part of a decade embedded inside the projects under JT’s protection. From a privileged position of unprecedented access, Venkatesh observed JT and the rest of his gang as they operated their crack-selling business, made peace with their neighbors, evaded the law, and rose up or fell within the ranks of the gang’s complex hierarchical structure. Examining the morally ambiguous, highly intricate, and often corrupt struggle to survive in an urban war zone, Gang Leader for a Day also tells the story of the complicated friendship that develops between Venkatesh and JT--two young and ambitious men a universe apart. Sudhir Venkatesh’s latest book Floating City: A Rogue Sociologist Lost and Found in New York’s Underground Economy—a memoir of sociological investigation revealing the true face of America’s most diverse city—is also published by Penguin Press.