The African Renaissance and the Afro-Arab Spring addresses the often unspoken connection between the powerful call for a political-cultural renaissance that emerged with the end of South African apartheid and the popular revolts of 2011 that dramatically remade the landscape in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia. Looking between southern and northern Africa, the transcontinental line from Cape to Cairo that for so long supported colonialism, its chapters explore the deep roots of these two decisive...

Engaging the Madrasa delves into the intellectual and political challenges that the Muslim scholarly community faces across the globe.The rapid developments of the modern age have given rise to complex theological and philosophical challenges for Muslim scholarly communities. To confront these questions, editors Ebrahim Moosa and Joshua Lupo have curated a collection of essays offering balanced and nuanced perspectives that amplify the richness of the Isla...

Muslim Theological Encounters with Science dismantles the 'Islamic decline' narrative by showing how science and theology have long coexisted in Muslim civilization. Premodern thinkers navigated enduring tensions between reason and revelation, ensuring that intellectual disagreement fostered growth rather than hostility. Modern friction between science and Muslim theology-driven by colonialism, limited scientific literacy, and the absence of a science-attuned common sense among theologians...

This book offers a glimpse into Syrian refugee women’s stories of defiance and triumph in the aftermath of the Syrian uprising.The al-Zaatari Camp in northern Jordan is the largest Syrian refugee camp in the world, home to 80,000 inhabitants. While al-Zaatari has been described by the Western media as an ideal refugee camp, the Syrian women living within its confines offer a very different account of their daily reality. Defiance in Exile: Syrian Refugee Women ...

Medicine and Shariah brings together experts from various fields, including clinicians, Islamic studies experts, and Muslim theologians, to analyze the interaction of the doctors and jurists who are forging the field of Islamic bioethics.Although much ink has been spilled in generating Islamic responses to bioethical questions and in analyzing fatwas, Islamic bioethics still remains an emerging field. How are Islamic bioethical norms to be generated? Are I...

This authoritative book argues that what is considered today to be Islamic fundamentalism is inconsistent with the true meaning of this faith. Rahman demonstrates that the true roots of Islamic teachings advocate adaptability, creativity, and innovation.

Abu Hamid al-Ghazālī, a Muslim jurist-theologian and polymath who lived from the mid-eleventh to the early twelfth century in present-day Iran, is a figure equivalent in stature to Maimonides in Judaism and Thomas Aquinas in Christianity. He is best known for his work in philosophy, ethics, law, and mysticism. In an engaged re-reading of the ideas of this preeminent Muslim thinker, Ebrahim Moosa argues that Ghazālī’s work has lasting relevance today as a model for a critical encounter with...

An indispensable guide to Islamic political thought from Muhammad to the twenty-first centuryThe first encyclopedia of Islamic political thought from the birth of Islam to today, this comprehensive, authoritative, and accessible reference provides the context needed for understanding contemporary politics in the Islamic world and beyond. With more than 400 alphabetically arranged entries written by an international team of specialists, the volume focuses on the ori...

Taking us inside the world of the madrasa — the most common type of school for religious instruction in the Islamic world — Ebrahim Moosa provides an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to understand orthodox Islam in global affairs. Focusing on postsecondary-level religious institutions in the Indo-Pakistan heartlands, Moosa explains how a madrasa can simultaneously be a place of learning revered by many and an institution feared by many others, especially in a post-9/11 world....

This comprehensive introduction explores the landscape of contemporary Islam. Written by a distinguished team of scholars, it:provides broad overviews of the developments, events, people and movements that have defined Islam in the three majority-Muslim regionstraces the connections between traditional Islamic institutions and concerns, and their modern manifestations and transformations. How are medieval ideas, policies and practices refashioned to address modern c...

The five daily prayers (Salāt) that constitute the second pillar of Islam deeply pervade the everyday life of observant Muslims. Until now, however, no general study has analyzed the rules governing Salāt, the historical dimensions of its practice and the rich variety of ways that it has been interpreted within the Islamic tradition. Marion Holmes Katz's richly textured book offers a broad historical survey of the rules, values and interpretations relating to Salāt. This innovative study o...