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The Kharijites were a splinter group that broke away from the main forces of Islam during the formative medieval period, purportedly refusing arbitration and committing bloody outrages against their fellow Muslims. Their influence in the political and theological life of the nascent faith has ensured their place in both critical and religious accounts of early Islamic history. Over the centuries, the Kharijites have repeatedly been invoked whenever militant opposition arose and today the label is frequently applied to extremist Islamic movements. After a brief look at Kharijite origins, this book focuses on contemporary Egypt. The book shows how religious images of the Kharijites have dominated public discussion about political opposition movements, effectively undermining attempts to discuss the real issues generating such movements.

This monograph is a comprehensive study of the thought of al-Kindī, the first self-described philosopher in Islam, and the first to write original treatises in Arabic. Al-Kindī’s writings are closely engaged with Greek philosophical and scientific texts, whose translation into Arabic he oversaw. Some of the philosophical views for which al-Kindī is known are reactions to Greek thinkers. For instance, he used ideas from Philoponus in arguing against the eternity of the world, and his discussion of divine attributes is based on Neoplatonic texts. However, the book also places al-Kindī’s thought within the context of 9th century Islamic culture, especially contemporary theological developments. The book covers every aspect of al-Kindī’s extant philosophical corpus, including not only his philosophical theology but also his theory of soul, his epistemology, and his ethics. Two chapters are devoted to al-Kindī’s works on the natural sciences (in particular pharmacology, optics, music, and cosmology). The book concludes by discussing how al-Kindī used Greek cosmological ideas in his account of divine providence.

Today there are more Muslims living in diaspora than at any time in history. This situation was not envisioned by Islamic law, which makes no provision for permanent as opposed to transient diasporic communities. Western Muslims are therefore faced with the necessity of developing an Islamic law for Muslim communities living in non-Muslim societies. This book explores the development of new forms of Islamic law and legal reasoning in the U.S. and Great Britain, as well as Muslims encountering Anglo-American common law and its unfamiliar commitments to pluralism and participation, and to gender, family, and identity. The underlying context is the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, the two attacks that arguably recast the way the West views Muslims and Islam. Islamic jurisprudence, the book notes, contains a number of references to various “abodes” and a number of interpretations of how Muslims should conduct themselves within those worlds. These include the dar al harb (house of war), dar al kufr (house of unbelievers), and dar al salam (house of peace). How Islamic law interprets these determines the debates that take shape in and around Islamic legality in these spaces. The book's analysis emphasizes the multiplicities of law, and the tensions between secularism and religiosity. It offers a close examination of the emergence of a contingent legal consciousness shaped by the exceptional circumstances of being Muslim in the U.S. and Britain in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century.

Judah Halevi, the great medieval Hebrew poet, abandoned home and family in Spain (al-Andalus) at the end of his life and traveled east to die in the Holy Land. This book narrates his journey, quoting from Arabic letters by Halevi and his friends, and explores its meaning through analysis of his Hebrew poems. The poems are presented both in Hebrew and in new English verse translations and are provided with full commentary. The discussion introduces Halevi’s circle of Jewish businessmen and intellectuals in al-Andalus and Egypt, examines their way of life, and describes their position vis-à-vis Arabic and Islamic culture. It also explores the interweaving of religious ideas of Jewish, Islamic, and Hellenistic origin in Halevi’s work. Although Halevi was partially motivated by a desire to repudiate the Judeo-Arabic hybrid culture and embrace purely Jewish values, the book demonstrates that his poetry and his pilgrimage continue to reflect the Judeo-Arabic milieu. His poetry and pilgrimage also show that while the Jews’ precarious situation as a tolerated minority weighed on Halevi, he was impelled to the pilgrimage not by a grand plan for ending the Jewish exile, as is widely thought, but by a personal religious quest. Chapters 1 through 3 each deal with one of the major themes of Halevi’s poetry that point in the direction of the pilgrimage. Chapters 4 through 6 are a narrative of the pilgrimage. Chapters 7 through 10 are a study of Halevi’s poems that are explicitly about the Land of Israel and about the pilgrimage. The epilogue explores the later legend of his martyrdom.

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.

This book offers the first sustained jurisprudential inquiry into Islamic natural law theory. It introduces readers to competing theories of Islamic natural law theory based on close readings of Islamic legal sources from as early as the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. In popular debates about Islamic law, modern Muslims perpetuate an image of Islamic law as legislated by God, to whom the devout are bound to obey. Reason alone cannot obligate obedience; at most it can confirm or corroborate what is established by source texts endowed with divine authority. This book shows, however, that premodern Sunni Muslim jurists were not so resolute. They asked whether and how reason alone can be the basis for asserting the good and the bad, and thereby obligations and prohibitions of the Shari'a. They theorized about the authority of reason amidst competing theologies of God. For these jurists, nature became the link between the divine will and human reason. Nature is the product of God's creative power. Nature is created by God and reflects his goodness; consequently nature is fused with both fact and value. As a divinely created good, nature can be investigated to reach both empirical and normative conclusions about the good to be pursued. By recasting the Islamic legal tradition in terms of legal philosophy, the book sheds substantial light on an uncharted tradition of natural law theory and offers critical insights into contemporary global debates about Islamic law and reform.

This book undertakes to correlate practical ethical decisions in modern medical practice to principles and rules derived from Islamic juridical praxis and theological doctrines. This study links these rulings to the moral principles extracted from the normative religious texts and historically documented precedents. Western scholars of Islamic law have pointed out the importance of the historical approach in determining the rules and the juristic practices that were applied to the cases under consideration before the judicial opinions were issued within a specific social, economic, and political context. These decisions reflected aspects of intellectual as well as social history of the Muslim community engaged in making everyday life conform to the religious values. Ethical decisions are an important part of interpersonal relations in Islamic law. Practical guidance affecting all facets of individual and collective human life, have been provided under the general rules of “Public good” and “No harm, no harassment.” However, no judicial decision that claims to further public good is regarded authoritative without supporting documentation from the foundational sources, like the Qur‘an and the Sunna (the exemplary tradition of the Prophet). Hence, Muslim jurists, in order to infer fresh rulings about matters that were not covered by the existing precedents in the Qur‘an and the Sunna, undertook to develop rational stratagems to enable them to solve problems faced by the community. This intellectual activity led to the systematic formulation of the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, which has assumed unprecedented importance in connection with the distinct field of medical ethics in the Islamic world that shares the modern medical technology with the West. The book argues that there are distinct Islamic principles that can serve as sources for Muslim biomedical ethics that can engage in dialogue with both secular and other religiously oriented bioethics in the context of universal medical practice and research.

This book tackles head-on the rulings of Islamic jurists that make Islam seem incompatible with modern, scientifically, and technologically advanced, democratic societies. The book argues that it is crucial to find theoretical and practical solutions that will enable Western Muslims to remain faithful to Islamic ethics while fully living within their societies and their time. It notes that Muslim scholars often refer to the notion of ijtihâd (critical and renewed reading of the foundational texts) as the only way for Muslims to take up these modern challenges. But, the book argues, in practice such readings have effectively reached the limits of their ability to serve the faithful in the West as well as the East. This book sets forward a radical new concept of ijtihâd, which puts context—including the knowledge derived from the hard and human sciences, cultures, and their geographic and historical contingencies—on an equal footing with the scriptures as a source of Islamic law. This global and comprehensive approach, it says, seems to be the only way to go beyond the current limits and face up to the crisis in contemporary Islamic thought: Muslims need a contemporary global and applied ethics. After setting out this proposal, the book applies a new methodology to several practical case studies involving controversial issues in five areas: medical ethics, education, economics, marriage and divorce, culture, and creativity.

Islamism is often associated with oppositional social movements. However, increasingly, Muslim states too have served as agents of Islamism. They have adopted Islamization strategies, and realigned state ideology and policy‐making to reflect Islamist ideals and to fulfill demands of Islamic ideology. They have done so not only as a reaction to Islamist challenges from below but also to harness the energies of Islamism to expand state power and capacity. By co‐opting Islamism, they have strengthened the postcolonial state. Pakistan during the Zia ul‐Haq period, and Malaysia under Mahathir Mohammad have been at the forefront of this trend, devising Islamization from above strategies that allowed these weak states to effectively alleviate limitations before exercise of state power and to pursue goals such as economic growth. The Islamization of the postcolonial state underscores the importance of religion and culture to state power and capacity.

Why are there so few Muslim terrorists? With more than a billion Muslims in the world—many of whom supposedly hate the West and ardently desire martyrdom—why don't we see terrorist attacks every day? Where are the missing martyrs? This counterintuitive book demonstrates that terrorist groups are thoroughly marginal in the Muslim world. Drawing on government sources, public opinion surveys, election results, and in-depth interviews with Muslims in the Middle East and around the world, the book finds that young Muslims are indeed angry with what they see as imperialism—and especially at Western support for local dictatorships. But revolutionary Islamists such as al-Qaida and the Taliban have failed to reach them, as can be seen from the terrorists' own websites and publications, which constantly bemoan the dearth of willing recruits. It takes only a small cadre of committed killers to wreak unspeakable havoc. But as easy as terrorism is to commit, few Muslims turn to violence. With each bombing, the terrorists lose support among Muslims. The threat of Islamist terrorism is real, but its dimensions are, so far, tightly confined.

The debate over educational disparities across religious communities in India, especially those concerning the Muslims, is as old as the history of the modern education system in the country. This debate has yielded several explanations for educational backwardness among the Muslims which evoke a supposedly low value placed on modern education by Islamic theology, the status of Indian Muslims as a minority, and invidious discrimination against the Muslims in India. Largely cast in a polemical and impressionistic mode, this debate has long awaited empirical underpinnings. The recent upsurge in empirical studies on the topic requires an explanatory frame that admits of precision and complexity. Despite the renewed interest in this subject following the Sachar Committee Report, considerable knowledge gaps continue to exist in our understanding of the dynamics between religion and access to education. The present work brings to fore the spatially contextualized historical trajectories that have shaped educational development and various forms of disparities therein. It argues that religious communities, such as the Muslims, have to be seen as spatially and economically differentiated across regions rather than as homogeneous socio-cultural aggregates. This argument draws upon disaggregation of national-level secondary data and is supplemented by a primary fieldwork-based comparison of the educational status of Muslims in Patna and Purnia districts of Bihar. The relative educational backwardness of the Muslim community is thus seen to have underlying spatial and class patterns that are often overlooked.

Which way will Egypt go now that Husni Mubarak's authoritarian regime has been swept from power? Will it become an Islamic theocracy similar to Iran? Will it embrace Western-style liberalism and democracy? This book reveals that Egypt's secularists and Islamists may yet navigate a middle path that results in a uniquely Islamic form of liberalism and, perhaps, democracy. The book draws on in-depth interviews with Egyptian judges, lawyers, Islamic activists, politicians, and businesspeople. It utilizes major court rulings, political documents of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the writings of Egypt's leading contemporary Islamic thinkers. The book demonstrates that, in post-Mubarak Egypt, progress toward liberalism and democracy is likely to be slow. Essential reading on a subject of global importance, this edition includes a new introduction that takes stock of the Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood's victories in the 2011–2012 elections.