Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith. By Vartan Gregorian. Brookings Institution Press, 2003. 164 pages. $15.95 (original) (raw)
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Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2009
Charles Taylor's new book A Secular Age constitutes a milestone in the study of religious faith and society. He offers an outstanding historical analysis of the process bringing to the present state of religious decline. At the same time the book introduces an original thesis about the dialectics between faith and secular humanism, where both resent of evident limits, and no one can prevail over the other side, without great social and cultural disruptions. The review engages in a critical dialogue with the author to show some shortcomings in the proposed analysis, as secularization requires more than an historical or ideological insight to be better understood, as some of the described plots deserve better reconstruction, and as the proposed symmetry between the religious and the secular side of the advanced societies is not easy to be shared.
The Cambridge Companion to American Islam
2013
The Cambridge Companion to American Islam offers a scholarly overview of the state of research on American Muslims and American Islam. The book presents the reader with a comprehensive discussion of the debates, challenges and opportunities that American Muslims have faced through centuries of American history. This volume also covers the creative ways in which American Muslims have responded to the myriad serious challenges that they have faced and continue to face in constructing a religious praxis and complex identities that are grounded in both a universal tradition and the particularities of their local contexts. The book introduces the reader to some of the many facets of the lives of American Muslims that can only be understood in their interactions with Islam's entanglement in the American experiment.
Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 2007
As is often the case with edited volumes such as this one, the thirteen contributions (including Introduction and Conclusion) vary considerably in quality and in approach to the overall topic. I shall therefore deal with them one by one. The Introduction by two of the editors gives a brief survey of the historical background to 9/11 and its immediate aftermath, and canvasses some of the ideas in the articles to follow. It points out, perhaps provocatively, that 'Al Qa'eda is not as marginal in Muslim society as is made out by the West and many analysts' (p. 9). The next four contributions are grouped as 'Part I: Theoretical Issues'. Theodore Gabriel argues that the relation between Islam and the West has more often been 'one of mutual interdependence' (p. 18) than enmity but that Muslims have genuine grievances against injustices done by the West, especially in the case of the Palestinians, and these lead to antagonism. John J. Shepherd, by contrast, argues unremittingly that the content of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scriptures conduce almost logically to extremism, whether that of Israeli West Bank settlers, Christian anti-Semites, Muslim terrorists, or others surveyed. The need is for greater self-criticism and a recognition that moral criteria stand above religious dogma: not an easy demand. Kenneth Cragg argues that the Meccan (rather than the Medinan) situation of Muhammad should guide current Muslim attitudes toward global politics. The argument is suggestive, creative but somewhat confusing, in a way typical of other writings of his that I have read. Ron Greaves presents the basic dilemma of modern Islam, the loss of its previous pre-eminence and the struggle to regain it, and four ideological positions into which most Muslims fall. He warns against identifying as 'moderate' those who most share the Western worldview, which claims to be pluralist but has its own absolutism, and he calls for a more genuine pluralism. The rest of the contributions are in 'Part II: Case Studies'. Marcia Hermanson deals with responses to 9/11, with the search for a 'good' or
In The Black Hole: James M. Dorsey on the Battle for the Soul of Islam
Pakistan ranks high on the list of Muslim-majority countries in which significant segments of the population are in religious terms militantly ultra-conservative. It’s a country where the impact of decades of Saudi funding of ultra-conservative religious thinking has left deep inroads. It’s also a country in which numerous people over the years have been killed or lynched by outraged individuals or mobs over allegations of blasphemy or for expressing opposition to harsh laws that mandate the death sentence for blasphemy. Since 1990, more than 80 people have been killed in such violence. This month, a Chinese national was remanded in custody after protesters accused him of blasphemy. This makes a discussion with a Pakistani audience about the battle for the soul of Islam, the rivalry in the Muslim world over what constitutes ‘moderate’ Islam, the need for reform of religious jurisprudence, and the competition for religious soft power in the Muslim world, particularly interesting.