Review of "Magic in Islam" by Michael Muhammad Knight (original) (raw)
Related papers
American Journal of Islam and Society, 2016
What if someone wrote an introduction to Islam that was “not Sunnī-centered,or male-centered, or law-centered” (p. 4)? What if it did not focus on a theoreticalArab Muslim heartland and “let only the classical male theologians andjurists speak” (p. 4)? And what if “magic became the primary lens that informedthe author’s priorities” (p. 4)?Magic in Islam is what would happen. Through “magic,” Knight pokesholes in narratives about Islam held by Muslims (such as the notion of a monolithic,static Islamic orthodoxy) and the general populace (such as the “clashof civilizations” narrative). Title aside, Magic in Islam is really about AmericanIslam, not magic; that is, it implicitly compares Islam’s esoteric heritagewith the dry, hyper-logical brand of Islam popular in American MSAs and atISNA, as well as “Protestant-ish” assumptions about Islam in the broaderAmerican discourse. Knight presents himself as neither a specialist in nor apractitioner of the esoteric, and readers expecting a cat...
Mystical Dimensions of Islam by Annemarie Schimmel (z-lib.org)
FOREWORD to the 35th Anniversary Edition Mystical Dimensions of Islam, from its first appearance in 1975, has become the standard English-language handbook on the subject of Sufism or Islamic mysticism. Readers have appreciated the way the book combines careful and wide-ranging scholarship with a direct and approachable style, making it an excellent introduction to the topic. In the original foreword, Annemarie Schimmel described the dauntingly difficult character of Islamic mysticism as a subject of academic research. At the same time, she acknowledged that it was the repeated demands of her students at Harvard that caused her to put her lectures into book form. What is it about this book that has made it such a classic? Most academics would agree that no scholar in the last half of the twentieth century had a greater impact on the study of Islamic mysticism than Annemarie Schimmel (1922-2003), formerly professor of Indo-Muslim studies at Harvard University. Among her many achievements, she earned two doctorates from German universities, the first from Berlin in Arabic and Islamic studies at the age of nineteen and the second, ten years later, from Marburg in the history of religion. Her work embraced many other languages of Islamic civilization besides Arabic, including Persian, Turkish, and Urdu, as well as other languages of South Asia. She authored over eighty books and countless articles on all aspects of Islamic culture, but clearly Sufism was her first love.
Magic and the Occult in Islam and Beyond | March 2-3, 2017 | Yale University
This two-day symposium at Yale University addresses the place of the occult in Islamic epistemology broadly construed, by bringing together an array of scholars across several disciplines and areas of expertise. As a branch of knowledge, the occult sciences came to occupy a very important and often quite normative role in numerous arenas of religious authority and social praxis, from the court to the madrasa, and beyond. In this two-day symposium, participants will present and discuss papers on a variety of issues that pertain to the theme of occult learning in Islamic history, touching on such topics as: statecraft and astronomical divination, demonology, sorcery, and exorcism, material and visual cultures of the occult, bibliomancy, talismans, and magic bowls, parallels and precedents in the diverse religious milieu of Mesopotamia and beyond, the cultivation of occult learning by the religious elite and its transmission and circulation across religious communities, the epistemic frameworks governing the modern scholarly reception of the occult, and reform and modern adaptations and continuations of pre-modern practices. Sponsored by The Council on Middle East Studies, The Department of Near Eastern Studies & Civilizations, The Department of Religious Studies, The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, The Edward J. & Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund.
Magic in Islam between Protestantism and Demonology: A Response to Günther and Pielow's Response
Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, 15/1 (2020), 132-39
A response to the editors' response to my review essay, in MRW 14/2, on Sebastian Günther and Dorothee Pielow, eds., Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt: Magie im Islam zwischen Glaube und Wissenschaft (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Their response is here: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/760667 . My original essay is here: https://www.academia.edu/41490499/Magic\_in\_Islam\_between\_Religion\_and\_Science .