Religion

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111) is one of the most important theologians, philosophers, and Sufis of Islam. Born around 1056 in northeastern Iran, he became the holder of the most prestigious academic post in Islamic theology in Baghdad, only to renounce that position and teach at small schools in the provinces for no money. His contributions to Islamic scholarship range from responding to the challenges of Aristotelian philosophy to creating a new type of mysticism in Islam, and integrating both these traditions—falsafa and Sufism—into the Sunni mainstream. Using the most authoritative sources, including reports of his students, his contemporaries, and his own letters, this book reconstructs every stage in al-Ghazali’s turbulent career. The al-Ghazali that emerges still offers many surprises, particularly on his motives for leaving Baghdad and the nature of his “seclusion” afterwards. In its close study of al-Ghazali’s cosmology—meaning, how God creates things and events in the world, how human acts relate to God’s power, and how the universe is structured—the book reveals the significant philosophical influence on al-Ghazali. His cosmology has always been one of the most challenging aspects of his work. This book shows how al-Ghazali created a new discourse on cosmology that moved away from concerns held earlier among Muslim theologians and Arab philosophers. This new cosmology was structured to provide a framework for the pursuit of the natural sciences and a basis for science and philosophy in Islam to continue to flourish beyond the 12th century.

The aim of the present work is threefold. One, it intends to place the thought of Avicenna within its proper historical context, whether the philosophical-scientific tradition inherited from the Greeks or the indigenous influences coming from the medieval Islamic world. Thus, in addition to a substantive introductory chapter on the Greek and Arabic sources and influences to which Avicenna was heir, the historical and philosophical context central to Avicenna’s own thought is provided in order to assess and appreciate his achievement in the specific fields treated in that chapter. Two, the present volume aims to offer a philosophical survey of Avicenna’s entire system of thought ranging from his understanding of the interrelation of logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and medicine. The emphasis here is on how, using a relatively small handful of novel insights, Avicenna was not only able to address a whole series of issues that had troubled earlier philosophers working in both the ancient Hellenistic and medieval Islamic world, but also how those insights fundamentally changed the direction philosophy took, certainly in the Islamic East, but even in the Jewish and Christian milieus. Three, the present volume will provide philosophers, historians of science, and students of medieval thought with a starting point from which to assess the place, significance, and influence of Avicenna and his philosophy within the history of ideas.

There has been a proliferation of interest in youth issues in recent years, and Muslim youth in particular. Young Muslims have been thrust into the global spotlight in relation to questions about security, employment, migration, multiculturalism, conflict, human rights, and citizenship. This book interrogates the cultures and politics of Muslim youth in the global South and North to understand their trajectories, conditions, and choices. It shows that although the majority of young Muslims share many common social, political, and economic misfortunes, they exhibit remarkably diverse responses to their situations. Although groups of them are drawn into radical Islam, others embrace their religion more as an identity marker. Although some take Islam as a normative frame and subvert it to express and reclaim their youthfulness, their counterparts may exert themselves through a music of rage or via collective action using the tools of new media and communications technologies. Far from being “exceptional,” young Muslims in reality have as much in common with their non-Muslim global generational counterparts as they share among themselves. They permeate the spaces of culture and politics to navigate between being Muslim, modern, and young.

In this groundbreaking volume, eminent and up-and-coming scholars, representing a diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints, address the question of non-Muslim salvation: according to the Islamic ethos (however understood), what can be said about the status and fate of non-Muslims? Each of the volume’s contributors responds to this often asked “salvation question”—a question with profound theological and practical implications—from different angles: while some limit themselves to its historical dimensions, others approach it as theologians and philosophers, yet others focus on the relationship between this-worldly relations with Others and next-worldly conceptions of salvation. Individually and collectively, the essays comprising this volume advance the discourse on religious diversity and our understanding of Islamic thought and Muslim societies. Between Heaven and Hell is possibly the first ever multi-authored volume on salvation in Islamic thought, at least in English. It does not conclude with neat resolutions; instead, it offers fascinating expositions, debates, and points of departure for further contemplation. Aside from the editor of the volume, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, and the author of the foreword, Tariq Ramadan, the contributors include William C. Chittick, Farid Esack, Mohammad Fadel, David M. Freidenreich, Marcia Hermansen, Jerusha Lamptey, Bruce B. Lawrence, Muhammad Legenhausen, Yasir Qadhi, A. Kevin Reinhart, Sajjad Rizvi, Reza Shah-Kazemi, and Tim Winter.

Despite Rumi’s (d. 1273) recent emergence as a best-selling poet in the English-speaking world, fundamental questions about his teachings, such as the relationship of his Sufi mysticism to the wider Islamic religion, remain contested. This book reaches to the heart of the matter by examining Rumi’s teachings on walāya (Friendship with God) in light of earlier discourse in the wider Sufi tradition and juridico-theological Islam. Walāya is not only central to Rumi’s teachings, but also forms the basis for the celebration of intimacy, communication with the Divine, and transcendence of conventional religiosity in his poetry. And yet walāya is the aspect of Sufism which has proven the most difficult to reconcile with juridico-theological Islam. The book presents, in addition, an analysis of the historical development of the discourse on walāya in the formative centuries of Sufism. This period coincides with the time when juridico-theological Islam rose to dominance, as reflected in the harmonizing efforts of theoretical Sufi writings, especially the manuals of the tenth and eleventh century. In this way, Mojaddedi’s analysis facilitates a contextualized evaluation of Rumi’s teachings on walāya, which had already attracted a range of views before his time. In the process, the book enables a fresh evaluation of the influential early Sufi manuals in their historical context, while also highlighting the significance for juridico-theological scholars of fundamental dogma, such as “the Seal of Prophethood” (khatm al-nubuwwa) in the process of consolidating their own dominance.

A recent influx of one hundred thousand West African immigrants is creating an enclave that Harlem residents now cal, Little Africa. Because most Americans view Islam as an Arab religion, many disregard the Muslim identity of these Black immigrants. Black Mecca, however, begins not here but with an African desire to attain the American dream. Arrival is met with a host of challenges, including the meaning of Black identity and notions of belonging. Since most of these immigrants come from Francophone countries, the difficulty they face in an English-speaking world is much more than they anticipated, and American English in particular poses an interesting dilemma. Despite these and other issues, African Muslims primarily from Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea have created religious activities and institutions that have transformed Harlem into a new kind of sacred city. Yet, as in most cities, urban residents without proper means undergo their own unique set of problems, which force African Muslims to redefine this jihad or struggle on their own terms. Most work an inordinate amount of time, taking a little money for themselves but sending more to relatives back home. While family is generally a tremendous resource abroad, New York presents special circumstances where some are called to become matchmakers for friends and embrace local residents as kin. In the end, Black Mecca is a book about hope and what we can learn from the West African Muslim search for it in a place like Harlem.

This book offers an ethnographic study of African-American Muslims. Drawing on hundreds of interviews conducted over a period of several years, the author provides a look inside the little-understood world of black Muslims. He discovers that the well-known and cultlike Nation of Islam represents only a small part of the picture. Many more African Americans are drawn to Islamic orthodoxy, with its strict adherence to the Quran. The author takes us to the First Cleveland Mosque, the oldest continuing Muslim institution in America, on to a permanent Muslim village in Buffalo, and then inside New York’s maximum-security prisons to hear testimony of the powerful attraction of Islam for individuals in desperate situations. He looks at the aftermath of the assassination of Malcolm X, and the ongoing warfare between the Nation of Islam and orthodox Muslims.

Religiously motivated terrorism is a religious phenomenon; thus the psychology of religiously motivated terrorism is the psychology of religion. For many decades the author of this book has been working in the discipline of the psychology of religion as both a professor of religious studies and a practicing clinical psychologist. Here he applies that work to the topic of religious terrorism, addressing it from both perspectives. Both the clinician’s concern with the dynamics of individual personalities and the scholar’s knowledge of the diversity and complexity of the religious life enter into this book. This book analyzes the psychological dynamics involved in religiously motivated violence and discusses how understanding those dynamics can contribute to understanding both the psychology of religion and contemporary, religiously motivated terrorism. In the literature on this topic there is a paucity of discussion of both of these factors—the psychodynamics of religious terrorism and the religious aspect itself. This dual perspective on a topic of obvious interest and importance is unique to this book. Besides the psychology of religiously motivated terrorism, chapters include contemporary terrorism as seen from multiple perspectives, Islamic terrorism in the context of world religions, Aum Shrinkyo, American apocalyptic Christianity, what this perspective tells us about religion, and religious responses to terrorism.

Iran is a key player in some of the most crucial issues of our time. But because of its relative diplomatic isolation and the partisan nature of conflicting accounts voiced by different interest groups both inside and outside the country, there is a shortage of hard information about the scale and depth of social change in today's Iran. This book offers chapters on the nature and evolution of Iran's economy, significant aspects of Iran's changing society, and the dynamics of its domestic and international politics since the 1979 revolution, focusing particularly on the post-Khomeini period.