Search Results

Naima Saif’ullah’s biography depicts the religious conversion of a modern woman. Naima’s biography describes how she was able to break bad habits of smoking crack or marijuana, how her health conditions have improved, how she was able to realize and better fulfill her roles as a daughter, mother, and sister, and how she was able to attain psychic stability through her Islamic faith. The inclusion of an account of how Islam provides women with empowerment and courage to face problems as strong-willed adults is vital to this study because not only does this address general questions regarding African-American women who have adopted Islam, but it also embodies a historical account of the independent Sunni movements that occurred during the 1980s.

This chapter deals with the single greatest challenge facing Liu Zhi and his fellow Han Kitāb scholars: the translation of Islam's uncompromising monotheism into Chinese. Likely wishing to avoid attaching any possible negative or misleading implication to the sacred name of God, Liu Zhi did not resort to transliteration of the Arabic Allāh. Neither did he attempt to find a matching concept for Allah in the classical Chinese canon, for example, one of the ancient Chinese designations for divinity, such as Shangdi, tian (“Heaven”), or the more generic shen (“god”). Instead of his usual techniques, as a matter of fact, he opted to use newly coined Chinese terms for the most central concept of the Islamic faith, and in the process, whether consciously or unconsciously, he retraced the steps of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers in Chinese before him.

This chapter focuses on the role that Pakistani culture played in the lives of The Boys and the relationship they had with their Islamic faith. It is important to explore these influences because Pakistanis living in the UK bear complex identities, with a strong cultural and Islamic heritage. It has been noted by some commentators that multiple sets of values cause second and third generation Pakistanis to suffer an ‘identity conflict’. The chapter looks at some of the challenges The Boys found with certain aspects of Pakistani culture, and proceeds to uncover their thoughts and experiences of Pakistan, a place which they would refer to frequently as ‘back home’, a country which all had visited during some stage of their lives.

This chapter studies the Ofsted inspections and reports. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the main criticism of Park View Academy was that it was overly ‘Islamic’ and that this, in turn, was associated with a ‘plot’ to ‘Islamise’ other schools. Yet the ‘takeover’ of other schools was itself the normal process associated with the academies programme. There was a fourth school associated with the PVET, namely Al-Furqan primary school. It had been deemed ‘inadequate’ at its last Ofsted inspection, and had had an interim Executive Board and interim head teacher appointed. However, the school features neither in the EFA's review of the PVET, nor in the Clarke Report. What makes it so significant is that it was an Islamic faith school.

This chapter talks about The Boys' close relationship with prison, which includes consideration of their own experience of prison and its impact on them and their lives. A striking aspect of prison was how The Boys would become more devoted to Islamic faith while ‘inside’, and on their release would talk about Islam at some length. The chapter analyses why this was the case, and what factors contributed to The Boys becoming more religious when they were in prison. It also shows how, upon release, adjusting to outside life was at times exceptionally difficult, and The Boys faced various challenges in their attempt to reacquaint with the rest of the community.