Authors:Marcia K. Hermansen Abstract: Comparative Islamic Studies mourns the loss of editorial board member, Dr. Arthur Buehler, who passed away in Tucson, Arizona April 1, 2019. Before pursuing his doctorate at Harvard University under Annemarie Schimmel, he had mastered the Arabic language and spent several years in Yemen and Oman teaching English. Before his retirement Dr. Buehler had been Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He had also taught Islamic Studies at several American Universities.Art Buehler was a scholar of Sufism, especially the Persianate Sufism of South and Central Asia. In addition to numerous articles, his books include: Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (1998); Revealed Grace: The Juristic Sufism of Ahmad Sirhindi, 1564–1624 (2011), and Recognizing Sufism: Contemplation in the Islamic Tradition (2016). PubDate: 2019-08-08 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2019)
Authors:Timothy Gutmann Abstract: In this article, I examine how the project of modern mass education conscripts and alters older understandings of knowledge, vocation, and politics in Islamic thought. First, I explore how reformist ʿulamāʾ such as Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–1873) and Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) understood education as a universal human right and a moral, religious, and political obligation. I contrast these modern arguments with those of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (1058–1111), who says that while all Muslims need to understand their faith, only the few who will serve as religious authorities need to spend many years in formal study. I contrast these two to show how understandings of the self and the community have changed subject to progressive power. PubDate: 2019-04-08 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2019)
Authors:Johanne Louise Christiansen Abstract: Routledge Handbook on Early Islam edited by Herbert Berg. Routledge. Taylor & Francis Group, 2018. 392 pp., Hb. £ 165.00. ISBN: 9781138821187. PubDate: 2019-01-03 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2019)
Authors:Uriya Shavit Abstract: The al-Ghazali Enigma and Why Shariʿa is Not Islamic Law, by Haifaa G. Khalafallah.Equinox Publishing, 2017. 288 pp. Hb. £75.00/$100.00. ISBN-13:9781781792957; E-Book £75.00/$100.00. ISBN-13: 9781781794661. PubDate: 2019-01-03 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2019)
Authors:Abu Bakr Sirajuddin Cook, Salih Yucel Abstract: There is a growing scholarly interest in Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ engagement with Islam. This interest has highlighted some significant historical points of contact, such as with the Makassan fishermen, the Afghan cameleers, and the Malay pearl divers. Historical engagements with Islam, such as these, have influenced the contemporary identity formation for some Indigenous peoples, by acknowledging the historical connections without embracing Islam or identifying as a practicing Muslim. That some Indigenous people with no known familial historical engagement with Islam have embraced Islam has raised surprise, concern, and confusion. As it has primarily been historians, sociologists, and anthropologists that have heretofore been attempting to document and understand Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ engagement with Islam, it is unsurprising that the suggested reasons for such engagement have been historical, sociological, and anthropological. Without dismissing or contradicting the existing research, this article will suggest that current literature does not explicitly account for philosophical and spiritual convergences between the belief structures of Australia’s Indigenous peoples and Islam in the explanation of both historical and contemporary engagements. PubDate: 2019-01-02 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2019)
Authors:Frank Peter Abstract: The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the Contradictions of Secularism, byMayanthi L. Fernando. Duke University Press, 2014. 328pp., $99.95. ISBN-13: 9780822357346. PubDate: 2018-12-05 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
Authors:H. Şule Albayrak Abstract: For decades the authoritarian secularist policies of the Turkish state, by imposing a headscarf ban at universities and in the civil service, excluded practising Muslim women from the public sphere until the reforms following 2010. However, Muslim women had continued to seek ways to increase their knowledge and improve their intellectual levels, not only as individuals, but also by establishing civil associations. As a result, a group of intellectual women has emerged who are not only educated in political, social, and economic issues, but who are also determined to attain their socio-economic and political rights. Those new actors in the Turkish public sphere are, however, concerned with being labeled as either “feminist,” “fundamentalist” or “Islamist.” This article therefore analyzes the distance between the self-identifications of intellectual Muslim women and certain classifications imposed on them. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with thirteen Turkish intellectual Muslim women were carried out which reveal that they reject and critique overly facile labels due to their negative connotations while offering more complex insights into their perspectives on Muslim women, authority, and identity. PubDate: 2018-11-13 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
Authors:Doris H. Gray Abstract: Female Islamic leadership in Morocco is marked by male patronage and fragmentation. Women in leadership positions—in the religious, political or economic realm—rise and remain dependent on male power. This article focuses on the religious/political arena where leading women do not pursue a common goal, but have varying understandings of gender justice or equality. Various developments in Morocco point to the creation of a middle ground for female activism between Western secularism and Islamism. Such developments can easily be overlooked when more radical voices gain the spotlight and generate media controversy. PubDate: 2018-11-13 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
Authors:Merieme Yafout Abstract: This article offers insights into the process of ijtihād undertaken by the Sisters for Eternity, a female movement that began within the Al Adl Wal Ihsane movement in Morocco. These women separated from the party in early 2012. They continue, however, to meet and engage in interpretations of theological and legal Islamic teachings. Their process and conclusions on several issues will be illustrated, demonstrating how reflections on terms and concepts from within the Islamic tradition can result in emancipatory readings for women. The distinct role of women equipped to engage with the classical tradition as scholars or ʿālimāt (the female of ulema) illustrates the scope and depth of authority claimed by women in this group. PubDate: 2018-11-13 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
Authors:Samar Barghouthi Abstract: This article provides a detailed analysis of the blog of an Egyptian female activist, Nawara Negm, during the critical period of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The analysis presents the contents of the blog thematically, through identifying strategies and values and in terms of the author’s shifting terminology by undertaking a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Negm’s changing lexicon. The intersection of gender, nationalism, political activism, and Islam make this individual and her blog important examples of new spaces for the female voice in Arab Muslim contexts. PubDate: 2018-11-13 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
Authors:Agata S. Nalborczyk Abstract: The history of the Islamic presence in Poland goes back over 300 years. In the past, Muslim Tatar women played an important role in their communities by preserving and passing on the faith. In the twentieth century their role expanded, with a substantial number of women present at the highest levels of Muslim leadership. The article presents a case study of seven Polish Tatar women who have held the post of official elected presidents of local Muslim communities. These examples are presented in order to research the source of authority on which female leadership is based. The article uses three kinds of authority distinguished by Max Weber: legalrational, charismatic and traditional authority. The article is based on interviews with these female presidents and other members of their communities in order to reconstruct their authority as social and religious leaders and their impact on their respective communities. PubDate: 2018-09-21 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
Authors:Maryam Salem, Maryam Kheradmand Abstract: Mullā Ṣadrā (1572–1640) can, as we will argue in this article, be considered the greatest philosopher in Islamic world, because he has tried to eliminate the shortcomings of all previous schools. He claimed that man unites with the Active Intellect in the process of his intellectual perception, which is the highest perceptive status of the soul. This union, in its intense form, dissolves the human soul in the Active Intellect. In this theory, Mullā Ṣadrā assimilates some specific principles which belong only to what Seyyed Hossein Nasr has defined as Transcendent Theosophy: the primacy of existence, graded unity of being, substantial motion, the evolutional motion of the soul in all perceptive steps, the unity of the intellect, the intelligent, and the intellegible and identity of knowledge and being. Since the Active Intellect is the archetype of humanity from Mullā Ṣadrā’s view, i.e. among the horizontal intellects or the same Platonic Ideas, and there is no plurality in the world of intellect, the main problem raised is how an Active Intellect is distinguished from other intellects, and the human soul is united with and eventually destroyed. Hence, Mullā Ṣadrā, in his theory of expanded emanation, envisages that the plurality of the universe is due to the quiddity, which is an ideational (ʾiʿtibāri) thing. Thus, according to him, we can say that the plurality of the world of the intellect is subjective and comes to the fore to justify the relation of God to the world of pluralities; so the theory of intellects is based on the substantive and natural view into the universe, which is the general view of the philosophers; however, the theory of expanded emanation is a particular view of Mullā Ṣadrā, which is in full harmony with important philosophical foundations of him. The present study tries to explain these issues through Mullā Ṣadrā’s texts. PubDate: 2018-09-17 Issue No:Vol. 12 (2018)
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