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South Africa's unique location helped shape the distinct character of Islam there, principally through contact with Asia, Egypt, Iran, and the Arabian Peninsula, allowing beleaguered South African Muslims to look beyond their borders for support. As early as 1626, Shaykh Yusuf, a Sufi saint brought from Indonesia by the Dutch East Indian Company, founded an active Muslim community. Later, Muslims from India came to Natal and the Transvaal, and differences between the communities remained pronounced over such issues as political activism, the place of women, and the use of Arabic. In recent times, Imam Abdullah Haron emerged as a martyr following his death at the hands of police in 1969. Extremist groups like Achmat Cassien's Qiblah and People Against Gangsters and Drugs (PAGAD) resorted to terrorism under the guise of Islam. Muslim numbers remain among the lowest in any country in Africa, and the historic split between ancients and moderns, conservatives and progressives, remains undiminished.

The Usuli ulama were not without competitors. Aside from the Akhbari school and Sufism, the Shaykhi school emerged as the ideas articulated by Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i gained prominence during the late 18th and early 19th century. This chapter examines the ideas of Shaykh Ahmad on the issue of religious authority and shows the rich variety of influences that shaped his thinking. Shaykh Ahmad was a defender of the rationalism of the Usulis, yet the ideas of the philosopher Suhravardi are reflected in his belief that the jurist receives illumination (ishraq) from the Hidden Imam. It is argued that Shaykh Ahmad's ideas resemble those of clerics who turned to the Ni'matu'llahi Sufi order in the 19th century, though Shaykh Ahmad himself scorned Sufism and vehemently opposed blind obedience of a Sufi pir. To be a religious leader, according to Shaykh Ahmad, one must have great knowledge of jurisprudence (i.e., be trained in the Usuli school) but, in addition, he must have mystical insight. In other words, authority is “visionary yet rational, esoteric yet in accord with the literal text of scripture, and ethical in such a way as to put contemporary state practices inevitably under judgment.”.

This chapter examines the frictions that exist between nongovernmental projects for promoting piety and those initiatives that are explicitly aligned with the interests of the state, paying specific attention to the importance of discretion in the ethics of hagiographic writing. Disputes concerning friends of God can be divided into those over the manner in which these men are to be represented and those over what qualifies a man as God's friend. The problem of representation can itself be broken down into questions about the ethics of writing about friends and the place of the marvel in these texts. This chapter considers the problem of representation by focusing on the hagiographies of Shaykh Jaʻfar Mojtahedi and Shaykh Rajab ʻAli the tailor. It also discusses various criticisms against marvels, including the argument that they are distractions not only for the readers of hagiographies but even for the friends of God who possess them.

This chapter examines one key question haunting modern Shiʻi hagiographies and its political implications: what qualifies a person as a friend of God or, better, what disqualifies him from achieving such a station? If occult practices are a subject of dispute, there are other accusations leveled at some ostensible friends of God that incite strong vehemence. Chief among these is the charge of Sufism. Whenever governmental or nongovernmental actors draw on mysticism to promote Islamic piety, they are forced to reckon in some fashion with anti-Sufi rhetoric. This chapter considers the criticisms against Shaykh Jaʻfar Mojtahedi and Shaykh Rajab ʻAli. It also discusses another topic of contention over the friends of God: their political allegiances.

This chapter analyzes Egypt's foreign policy toward the Palestine Question against the background of the conflict between the Turco-Hashimite Entente and the Triangle Alliance. The timing of the proposal by Saudi Arabia and Egypt to create a new security network in the Middle East suggests that other considerations were also at work in the minds of King Faruq, Shaykh Hafiz Wahba, and Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha. Specifically, it suggests that Palestine loomed large in their calculations. One question strikes at the heart of the matter: was it simply by chance that the proposal to graft a regional defense organization onto the Arab League coincided with the trip to London of Jordan's prime minister? Many historians have studied the famous conversation between Ernest Bevin and Tawfiq Abu'l-Huda. It was Abd al-Rahman Azzam who explicitly raised the status of Jordan in connection with the Arab-bloc proposal. The only solution to the problem of regional defense, therefore, lay in creating an alliance between the Arab League and Britain.

This chapter explains the process of Wahhabism institutionalisation that occurred during the period of the third Saudi state, as well as the proselytic mechanism that has been part of Saudi-led pan-Islamism since the 1960s. It focuses mostly on the opinions of Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al al-Shaykh, Ibn Baz and Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani, especially with regard to funeral architecture and the legality of visits to graves by women. In the case of al-Albani, the chapter looks at the methodology he advocated in relation to the fulfilment of Salafi goals. It also identifies some of the patterns regarding opposition to the Saudi regime, such as those associated with Juhayman al-ʿUtaybi and Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, both of whom were influenced by the Saudi propagation of tawhīd and iconoclasm. This chapter also describes the internal mechanisms and structures of the official Saudi religious establishment, especially its fatwā institutions.

The organization which became known as Jamā'at al-Takfir wa al-Hijira (Society of Repudiation and Holy Flight) was a relatively small extremist group that carried out one of the most daring assaults perpetrated in the name of religion since the Muslim Brothers' attempt on 'Abd al-Nasir's life in 1954. Anxieties roused by the confrontation starting in Upper Egypt flared up again due to the crisis of Iran in 1978 and the emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The image of this fully turbaned and bearded mullah at the head of a revolutionary Islamic government provided a rallying point for a sudden wave of mobilization. The assault on Shaykh al-Dhahabi, who personified the official Islamic establishment upholding the state, clearly alerted others associated with these institutions that they were regarded as standing in the way of an advancing political order with the Qur'an as its basis.

This chapter begins by examining a sermon that was preached on the special occasion of the visit of President Sadat to Minya in December 1978. This was the chief executive's first visit to this provincial. It examines the integrity of the revealed word; the Qur'an as source; the Qur'an and the Bible; and displaying Qur'anic reasoning. Looking also at a preacher named Shaykh Umar, this chapter addresses very specifically the principles that must be followed in order to correctly interpret the Qur'an.

The progression of status changes represents a preacher describing a movement on the part of the Prophet through a series of social transformations. This advance follows a pattern of steps that may easily be restated in terms of Arnold van Gennep's three famous phases: separation, liminality, and incorporation. Moreover, the focus of the preacher is largely concentrated on the intermediary stage, the liminal or “non-structural” phase which is dramatized by the Prophet's experiences in the desert, marked by his encounter with the jinn, who grant him security, and later his negotiations to settle in Medina and then the actual emigration. Meanwhile, Shaykh Uthman takes seriously the role of the mosque as engine of security.

The sermon delivered by Shaykh Mustafa on May 18, 1979, represents a local version of the most common type of preaching heard in the government mosques of Egypt. The mood of dissatisfaction and unrest with shades of depression among the young professionals working in government service who are caught up in these conditions seems especially hard on mosque preachers posted far from home. Their highly public religious identity excludes them from partaking inconspicuously in many of the leisure activities that are available to their professional colleagues in other fields who might share their incommodious exile. In Minya itself, as well as in several of the surrounding villages, there are a number of these preachers from the Delta assigned to work in mosques, men of roughly Shaykh Mustafa's own age.

This chapter discusses another sermon, delivered on Friday, December 15, 1978, by Shaykh Uthman. There he served to demonstrate the rhetoric strategy associated with metaphor. This technique, based on the presentation of extended allegories and aided by nimble leaps of code-switching, produces the calculated transfer of properties from the sacred to the mundane. The fact that Shaykh Uthman rejects standard religious garb while playing lightly with possible substitutes also fits together with his entirely secular education and his career choice. He is a product of that liberal era that regarded the ignorance and backwardness of Muslims as the major obstacle to progress toward an Islamic Order that would incorporate the science of the West into the spiritual culture of Islam.

This chapter discusses a sermon chosen to exemplify that type of preacher who legitimates his function by assuming the culturally constituted duty of “struggle” or jihād. The sermon was delivered by Shaykh Umar on April 6, 1979, shortly after the first series of arrests in Minya had shown that official patience with the provocative actions by religious extremists had run out. The identification of Shaykh Umar with the entire community signals an ultimate form of metonym as the leader in the form of the warrior and apologist overreaches the implications of transcendence and all but substitutes ideology for religion.

Badr al-Din al-Maqdisi's life story is recounted by a great Egyptian historian. There is very little information about his life as a whole. Much is missing in his story, and this chapter is able to reconstruct only those parts relating to events in which he was an active participant. The document, concerning the inheritance of Hajj Husayn al-Qassab, shaykh of the butchers' guild (gazzarin) in Husayniya, specifies that it was drafted “in the presence of Sayyid Badr al-Din al-Hanafi, mufti and teacher at the Mashhad al-Husayni.” The shaykh thus wielded great influence over the popular forces centered in the suburb. Badr's absence may be due to the dearth of sources, but possibly also to the reluctance of al-Jabarti to dwell on those events—as a well-off bourgeois of Cairo he had little sympathy for such movements.

This chapter explores two modalities of Sufi warfare on the Indonesian island of Java; a reputed cosmopolitan one deriving from courts as well as religious scholars and a seemingly localized one centred on shrine polities. The latter indeed proves intrinsically embedded in Java through holy graves and miraculous sites of worship. This does not entail, however, that their armed endeavours were stirred by local concerns only. To the contrary, overseas trade networks and elaborate diplomatic ties shaped the military interventions of shrine polities like that of Giri in East Java and also bolstered their armies. On the other hand, the scripture-based campaigns of ‘holy war’ made by sultanates like that of Banten and scholars like al-Maqassārī, faltered due to their inability to connect to political concerns of the wide range of Islamic polities and actors involved.

Compared to other annual mulid celebrations, the August mulid of Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qurna is a relatively small-scale affair but it is nevertheless significant. The celebrations take place in the midst of al-Hurubat and the Noble. They begin with a procession to the saint's shrine high up on the hill to fit the symbolic tomb with a new green cloth cover. When the formalities have been completed, the level plain below Ramose's tomb becomes the location for displays of horsemanship. This chapter views and interprets different beliefs which define the character of the Theban Necropolis and the surrounding fields and villages. It gives a striking account of the spiritual claims and cosmological views that compete for attention, access to, and ownership of the physical landscape of the Theban west bank.

This chapter presents an overview of the social history of the Hamawiyya, one of the two main Sufi orders that are the dominant institutional forms through which Islam has been practiced in the region for more than a century. It traces the emergence of the Hamawiyya under French colonialism, the appeal of and opposition to Shaykh Hamallah, his persecution, and the repression of his followers. By looking at the Sufi order in the postcolonial period, it focuses on what is called an economy of martyrdom around a religious community that largely defines itself in relation to its absent leader and in opposition to other Muslims.

The shift from Marwanid to Abbasid rule involved a measure of violence so intense and systematic that it exceeded the cultural limits which normally prevailed. In the eyes of Sharik b. Shaykh and those like-minded, the principles for which the Hashimiyya had fought had been betrayed. This chapter discusses the notions of blood and tyranny in the context of the Abbasid revolution, and aims to show that the violence which accompanied this revolution exceeded the normal limits of Arabic-Islamic culture. It also demonstrates that the Abbasid revolution was accomplished through widespread blood-letting, executions, unrestrained killings, mutilation of the corpses of the caliphs, and unbroken promises of safety to exact vengeance and destroy the Umayyads and their supporters.

This chapter seeks to examine the reception of Ibn 'Arabī' hagiology by the Ottoman Shaykh al-Islām (seyhülislām), Ibn Kemāl, also known as Kemālpasāzāde, was regarded by admirers as the ‘Avicenna of Anatolia’. Discussions in this chapter include: the early Ottoman reception under the rule of Qaysarī and Fenāri; and Ghazali's Amr Bi-L-Ma'ūf.