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"Powers, David Stephan"
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Islamic Ecumene
The essays in Islamic Ecumene address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways. The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernization, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals.
Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that is reflected in the multivalent practices of the more than one billion people across the planet who identify as Muslims.
eBook
Sinless, Sonless and Seal of Prophets: Muḥammad and Kor 33, 36-40, Revisited
Abstract
In his article, \"Between History and Exegesis: the Origins and Transformation of the Story of Muḥammad and Zaynab bt Ǧaḥš,\" published in Arabica, 65/1-2 (2018), p. 31-63, Andreas Görke argues that the reference in Kor 33, 37 to Muḥammad's marriage to the former wife of a man named Zayd \"seems to refer to an historical event\" and that later exegetical expansions of the episode are based on an \"historical kernel.\" He adds that these exegetical expansions were modeled on the encounter between David and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11-12 and that the connection between the Islamic and biblical episodes stands at the beginning of the Muslim \"preoccupation\" with v. 37. Building upon Görke's scholarship, I show how the early Muslim community created a plausible Sitz im Leben for the episode; establish with greater precision the starting point of the Muslim \"preoccupation\" with the connection between Muḥammad's marriage to Zayd's former wife and David's marriage to the wife of Uriah the Hittite; and suggest that the qurʾānic treatment of the episode contains a seed of what would become the doctrine of ʿiṣma or the impeccability of prophets. Finally, I propose that the important question for historians is not the event to which the episode purportedly refers but rather the larger geo-political context for the emergence of the qurʾānic proclamation that Muḥammad is ḫātam al-nabiyyīn or the Seal of Prophets. To this end, I seek to shift the scholarly gaze from a domestic crisis in the household of Muḥammad in Medina ca AH 5 to early Christian polemics against Islam and its Prophet and to Byzantine imperial ideology.
Journal Article
Islamic legal thought : a compendium of Muslim jurists
In Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists, twenty-three scholars each contribute a chapter containing the biography of a distinguished Muslim jurist and a translated sample of his work. Jurists of the formative, classical and modern periods are represented.
eBook
Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men
The Islamic claim to supersede Judaism and Christianity is embodied in the theological assertion that the office of prophecy is hereditary but that the line of descent ends with Muhammad, who is the seal, or last, of the prophets.While Muhammad had no natural sons who reached the age of maturity, he is said to have adopted a man named Zayd, and mutual rights of inheritance were created between the two. Zayd b. Muhammad, also known as the Beloved of the Messenger of God, was the first adult male to become a Muslim and the only Muslim apart from Muhammad to be named in the Qur'an. But if prophecy is hereditary and Muhammad has a son, David Powers argues, then he might not be the Last Prophet. Conversely, if he is the Last Prophet, he cannot have a son.In Muhammad Is Not the Father of Any of Your Men, Powers contends that a series of radical moves were made in the first two centuries of Islamic history to ensure Muhammad's position as the Last Prophet. He focuses on narrative accounts of Muhammad's repudiation of Zayd, of his marriage to Zayd's former wife, and of Zayd's martyrdom in battle against the Byzantines. Powers argues that theological imperatives drove changes in the historical record and led to the abolition or reform of key legal institutions. In what is likely to be the most controversial aspect of his book, he offers compelling physical evidence that the text of the Qur'an itself was altered.
eBook
The elusive neural signature of emotion regulation capabilities: evidence from a large-scale consortium
Cognitive reappraisal is a fundamental emotion regulation strategy for mental and physical well-being, but how its neural mechanisms relate to individual differences remains poorly understood. In a consortium effort analyzing 40 fMRI datasets (N=2,175), we examined the relationship between neural activation during reappraisal tasks and three core individual difference indices of reappraisal capabilities: (1) trait questionnaires, (2) task-based affective ratings, and (3) amygdala down-regulation. Strikingly, there was no shared overlap across these three common indices. Only a very weak correlation emerged between amygdala down-regulation and task-based affective ratings. Whole-brain analyses revealed no reliable neural associations with trait questionnaires, and associations with task-based affective ratings fell outside canonical emotion regulation networks (e.g., prefrontal circuitry). Moreover, amygdala down-regulation, often interpreted as a stable individual marker, was confounded by person-specific whole-brain responses — a limitation extending to fMRI research beyond the emotion regulation domain. These findings challenge the assumption that an individual’s prefrontal activity is a valid indicator of their reappraisal capabilities and suggest that common trait, behavioral, and neural measures might capture distinct facets of emotion regulation. More broadly, our results highlight concrete methodological challenges for fMRI research on individual differences, with implications extending beyond emotion regulation to the neuroscience of personality, psychopathology, and general well-being.
Paper