Producing Islamic knowledge in Western Europe: discipline, authority, and personal quest (original) (raw)
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2020
This chapter introduces Islamic practices and rituals. Rituals such as pilgrimage, ablution, prayer, and recitation of the Qur'ān are essential components of Islamic law and spirituality. These rituals are meant to have a positive impact on the societal and individual level. Therefore, each ritual is introduced followed by a reflection on its perceived benefits.
Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West
Routledge Handbook of Islam in the West, ed. R. Tottoli (introduction by R.Tottoli, pp. 1-15, London – New York, Routledge, 2015 [2014], xiii + 478 pp. , 2015
Islam has long been a part of the West in terms of religion, culture, politics and society. Discussing this interaction from al-Andalus to the present, this Handbook explores the influence Islam has had, and continues to exert; particularly its impact on host societies, culture and politics. Highlighting specific themes and topics in history and culture, chapters cover: European paradigms Muslims in the Americas Cultural interactions Islamic cultural contributions to the Western world Western contributions to Islam
History and Theory, 2019
Efforts to define the concepts “Islam” and “history” have separately engendered rich debates with long intellectual genealogies. Both debates serve as a foundation for this essay's attempt to delimit the subject of “Islamic history.” However, the essay also argues that a close examination of the interaction between the two categories offers its own insights. Chief among these is the argument that a reliance on subjects’ self‐ascription as “Muslims” for definitions of “Muslim” and “Islamic” is far more than the empty or “nominal” approach that some critics have described. Rather, Islamic self‐ascription is historically entangled, both an artifact of historical processes and an evocation of them, even an integral element of the phenomenon it seeks to define. The essay begins with an evaluation of the “islams not Islam” approach to defining the Islamic, rooting the argument not only in self‐ascription—a common social‐science tool for category definition and boundary making—but also in Islamic historical traditions themselves. It then demonstrates this historical rootedness through an unusually difficult test case: Chinese‐language Islams that eschewed the words “Islam” and “Muslim.” After proposing a definition of “Islamic history,” one that is particularly open and expansive, the article outlines some common characteristics of Islamic history across its many forms, asking what makes it distinct and where it can contribute to a global comparative historiography. Finally, it argues that when we generalize about these traditions, describing the features most widely shared among them, we find an Islamic history that reflects and substantiates the centrality of self‐ascription in delineating the scope of Islam.
Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition
American Journal of Islam and Society
The goal of this book “is to provide a way of conceptualizing the Islamic traditionthat is different from that proposed by conventional scholarship”(p. 6). The author wants to highlight howMuslims themselves view modernitybecause their own views have been overshadowed by western scholarshipand have problematized assumptions founded on the oppositionaldichotomies of modern versus traditional or secular versus sacred. Sheargues that a tradition is not simply the recapitulation of previous beliefs andpractices, but that each successive generation confronts its own particularproblems via an engagement with a set of ongoing arguments. Therefore, theauthor asserts, one effective way of addressing Islam is to approach it asMuslims do – as a discursive tradition embodied in the practices and institutionsof their communities.Haj intends to attain her goals and highlights these problems by analyzingthe work of two significant Muslim reformers: Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-87) and Muhammad...