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Author: John van Schaik
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584201649
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
The word Islam means surrender to God. In our secular Western culture, it is difficult to imagine what that means. Among other things, it indicates dependence and predestination. But is this really the case? Isn’t this a superficial presumption? Allah calls on human beings to surrender in freedom to their God (Sura 96). Allah is merciful and forgiving. At the same time, however, Allah is the all-seeing one and the one who humbles. In Islam, free will and predestination have an uneasy relationship with each other—but isn’t this true for every religion?
In this collection of essays, three authors discuss various aspects of the tension between freedom and predestination in Islam from the perspective of Rudolf Steiner’s works. This background enables them to throw sometimes surprising light on the freedom impulse of Islam. It is the authors’ hope that this book may contribute to a more balanced view of Islam today.
This timely book offers interested non-Muslims a rare opportunity to examine a frequently misunderstood aspect of one of the world's fastest growing religions.
Author: John van Schaik
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584201649
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 278
Get Book
Book Description
The word Islam means surrender to God. In our secular Western culture, it is difficult to imagine what that means. Among other things, it indicates dependence and predestination. But is this really the case? Isn’t this a superficial presumption? Allah calls on human beings to surrender in freedom to their God (Sura 96). Allah is merciful and forgiving. At the same time, however, Allah is the all-seeing one and the one who humbles. In Islam, free will and predestination have an uneasy relationship with each other—but isn’t this true for every religion?
In this collection of essays, three authors discuss various aspects of the tension between freedom and predestination in Islam from the perspective of Rudolf Steiner’s works. This background enables them to throw sometimes surprising light on the freedom impulse of Islam. It is the authors’ hope that this book may contribute to a more balanced view of Islam today.
This timely book offers interested non-Muslims a rare opportunity to examine a frequently misunderstood aspect of one of the world's fastest growing religions.
Author: Daniel Philpott
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190908203
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
Since at least the attacks of September 11, 2001, one of the most pressing political questions of the age has been whether Islam is hostile to religious freedom. Daniel Philpott examines conditions on the ground in forty-seven Muslim-majority countries today and offers an honest, clear-eyed answer to this urgent question. It is not, however, a simple answer. From a satellite view, the Muslim world looks unfree. But, Philpott shows, the truth is much more complex. Some one-fourth of Muslim-majority countries are in fact religiously free. Of the other countries, about forty percent are governed not by Islamists but by a hostile secularism imported from the West, while the other sixty percent are Islamist. The picture that emerges is both honest and hopeful. Yes, most Muslim-majority countries are lacking in religious freedom. But, Philpott argues, the Islamic tradition carries within it "seeds of freedom," and he offers guidance for how to cultivate those seeds in order to expand religious freedom in the Muslim world and the world at large. It is an urgent project. Religious freedom promotes goods like democracy and the advancement of women that are lacking in the Muslim-majority world and reduces ills like civil war, terrorism, and violence. Further, religious freedom is simply a matter of justice--not an exclusively Western value, but rather a universal right rooted in human nature. Its realization is critical to the aspirations of religious minorities and dissenters in Muslim countries, to Muslims living in non-Muslim countries or under secular dictatorships, and to relations between the West and the Muslim world. In this thoughtful book, Philpott seeks to establish a constructive middle ground in a fiery and long-lasting debate over Islam.
Author: Andrei Younis
Publisher: SteinerBooks
ISBN: 1584201851
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 256
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Book Description
Islam came into being around AD 600 as a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion revealed through the Prophet Muhammad. Awareness of Islam in the West has grown dramatically in the twenty-first century, but there remains much misunderstanding of the interrelationship between Islam and Christianity, both their commonalities and differences. Andrei Younis elucidates esoteric reasons behind the emergence of Islam from the perspective of Steiner’s Spiritual Science. He draws on more than thirty years of studying Steiner’s works, as well as on first-hand knowledge gained from living in various Islamic countries and cultures. His purpose is to reconcile the origins, beliefs, and meanings of Islam and Christianity. Looking closely at the history and various manifestations of Islam, Younis discusses the spiritual impulses behind Islamic beliefs and practices, grounding his commentary in both the Koran and the Bible. Comprehending this anthroposophic perspective on the emergence of Islam is key to understanding why Islam manifests as it does today. Whereas this book will be enlightening and even surprising to most open-minded Western readers, it is not meant to be a foundation for beliefs (or non-belief), but as a springboard for thought and new avenues of understanding and compassion in a dangerous time.
Author: Mark Durie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
In the classical Islamic ideology of conquest, the first choice offered to non-Muslims was conversion to Islam; the second choice was the sword; and the third was surrender. Mark Durie's innovative book exposes the history and ideology of surrender - the 'Third Choice' - which has determined the lived reality of non-Muslims - known as 'dhimmis' - living under Muslim rule. Durie grounds his analysis of the dhimmi condition in the teachings of Islam and the life of Muhammad. His ground-breaking analyses show how the ideology of the terms of surrender ' known as a 'dhimma' pact ' determines life for non-Muslims under Islamic dominance. The worldview of dhimmitude, he argues, offers indispensable keys for understanding current trends in global politics, including the widening impact of sharia revival, deterioration of human rights in Islamic societies, jihad terrorism, recurring patterns of Western appeasement, and the increasingly fraught relationship between migrant Muslim communities in the West and their host societies.
Author: Lamin O. Sanneh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199351619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 377
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Book Description
Over the course of the last 1400 years, Islam has grown from a small band of followers on the Arabian peninsula into a global religion of over a billion believers. How did this happen? The usual answer is that Islam spread by the sword-believers waged jihad against rival tribes and kingdoms and forced them to convert. Lamin Sanneh argues that this is far from the whole story. Beyond Jihad examines the origin and evolution of the African pacifist tradition in Islam, beginning with an inquiry into the faith's origins and expansion in North Africa and its transmission across trans-Saharan trade routes to West Africa. The book focuses on the ways in which, without jihad, the religion spread and took hold, and what that tells us about the nature of religious and social change. At the heart of this process were clerics who used religious and legal scholarship to promote Islam. Once this clerical class emerged, it offered continuity and stability in the midst of political changes and cultural shifts, helping to inhibit the spread of radicalism, and subduing the urge to wage jihad. With its policy of religious and inter-ethnic accommodation, this pacifist tradition took Islam beyond traditional trade routes and kingdoms into remote districts of the Mali Empire, instilling a patient, Sufi-inspired, and jihad-negating impulse into religious life and practice. Islam was successful in Africa, Sanneh argues, not because of military might but because it was made African by Africans who adapted it to a variety of contexts.
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004417346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
Migration and Islamic Ethics, Issues of Residence, Naturalization and Citizenship addresses how Islamic ethical and legal traditions can contribute to current global debates on migration and displacement; how Islamic ethics of muʾakha, ḍiyāfa, ijāra, amān, jiwār, sutra, kafāla, among others, may provide common ethical grounds for a new paradigm of social and political virtues applicable to all humanity, not only Muslims. The present volume more broadly defines the Islamic tradition to cover not only theology but also to encompass ethics, customs and social norms, as well as modern political, humanitarian and rights discourses. The first section addresses theorizations and conceptualizations using contemporary Islamic examples, mainly in the treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees; the second, contains empirical analyses of contemporary case studies; the third provides historical accounts of Muslim migratory experiences. Contributors are: Abbas Barzegar, Abdul Jaleel, Dina Taha, Khalid Abou El Fadl, Mettursun Beydulla, Radhika Kanchana, Ray Jureidini, Rebecca Gould, Said Fares Hassan, Sari Hanafi, Tahir Zaman.
Author: Reuel Marc Gerecht
Publisher: A E I Press
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 76
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Book Description
This monograph concludes that, paradoxically, those who have hated the United States the most now hold the keys to spreading democracy in the Muslim Middle East.
Author: Niall Christie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317040112
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 427
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Book Description
In 1105, six years after the first crusaders from Europe conquered Jerusalem, a Damascene Muslim jurisprudent named ’Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) publicly dictated an extended call to the military jihad (holy war) against the European invaders. Entitled Kitab al-Jihad (The Book of the Jihad), al-Sulami’s work both summoned his Muslim brethren to the jihad and instructed them in the manner in which it ought to be conducted, covering topics as diverse as who should fight and be fought, treatment of prisoners and plunder, and the need for participants to fight their own inner sinfulness before turning their efforts against the enemy. Al-Sulami’s text is vital for a complete understanding of the Muslim reaction to the crusades, providing the reader with the first contemporary record of Muslim preaching against the crusaders. However, until recently only a small part of the text has been studied by modern scholars, as it has remained for the most part an unedited manuscript. In this book Niall Christie provides a complete edition and the first full English translation of the extant sections (parts 2, 8, 9 and 12) of the manuscript of al-Sulami’s work, making it fully available to modern readers for the first time. These are accompanied by an introductory study exploring the techniques that the author uses to motivate his audience, the precedents that influenced his work, and possible directions for future study of the text. In addition, an appendix provides translations of jihad sermons by Ibn Nubata al-Fariqi (d. 985), a preacher from Asia Minor whose rhetorical style was highly influential in the development of al-Sulami’s work.
Author: Lila Abu-Lughod
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674727509
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 231
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Book Description
Frequent reports of honor killings, disfigurement, and sensational abuse have given rise to a consensus in the West, a message propagated by human rights groups and the media: Muslim women need to be rescued. Lila Abu-Lughod boldly challenges this conclusion. An anthropologist who has been writing about Arab women for thirty years, she delves into the predicaments of Muslim women today, questioning whether generalizations about Islamic culture can explain the hardships these women face and asking what motivates particular individuals and institutions to promote their rights. In recent years Abu-Lughod has struggled to reconcile the popular image of women victimized by Islam with the complex women she has known through her research in various communities in the Muslim world. Here, she renders that divide vivid by presenting detailed vignettes of the lives of ordinary Muslim women, and showing that the problem of gender inequality cannot be laid at the feet of religion alone. Poverty and authoritarianism—conditions not unique to the Islamic world, and produced out of global interconnections that implicate the West—are often more decisive. The standard Western vocabulary of oppression, choice, and freedom is too blunt to describe these women's lives. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is an indictment of a mindset that has justified all manner of foreign interference, including military invasion, in the name of rescuing women from Islam—as well as a moving portrait of women's actual experiences, and of the contingencies with which they live.
Author: Irfan Ahmad
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469635100
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and modes for self-critique as well as critique of others are inherent in Islam--indeed, critique is integral to its fundamental tenets and practices. Challenging common views of Islam as hostile to critical thinking, Ahmad delineates thriving traditions of critique in Islamic culture, focusing in large part on South Asian traditions. Ahmad interrogates Greek and Enlightenment notions of reason and critique, and he notes how they are invoked in relation to "others," including Muslims. Drafting an alternative genealogy of critique in Islam, Ahmad reads religious teachings and texts, drawing on sources in Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, and English, and demonstrates how they serve as expressions of critique. Throughout, he depicts Islam as an agent, not an object, of critique. On a broader level, Ahmad expands the idea of critique itself. Drawing on his fieldwork among marketplace hawkers in Delhi and Aligarh, he construes critique anthropologically as a sociocultural activity in the everyday lives of ordinary Muslims, beyond the world of intellectuals. Religion as Critique allows space for new theoretical considerations of modernity and change, taking on such salient issues as nationhood, women's equality, the state, culture, democracy, and secularism.
