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Abstract This paper focuses on the sociocultural and historical context in which the Egyptian poet Muḥammad Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm (c. 1872-1932) represented contemporary constitutional movements in the Muslim world, with special emphasis on developments in the Ottoman Empire and in late nineteenth- to early twentieth-century Egypt - back then, at least nominally, still a part of it - and extending to Iran's Constitutional Revolution. References in Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm's poetry to constitutionalism in Japan will also be discussed in order to point out that the poet, while closely following constitutional movements in the Ottoman Empire and in Iran, in fact viewed constitutionalism as an historical process transcending geographical and cultural boundaries. Therefore, we shall also try to identify the general idea of history underlying Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm's portrayal of constitutionalism. Comparative references to constitutional poetry in Iran of that time are intended to point out the supra-regional dimension both of constitutionalism itself and of poetical modes of imagining it. Likewise, this approach is designed to make the point that constitutional poetry in the Muslim world at that time was more than just poetic commentary on constitutional movements; it was itself part of them.

This essay examines the role of Anglo Protestant missions in the Persian Gulf in racializing “the Moslem world” for the emergent white world order at the beginning of the 20th century. More specifically, I consider the way Protestant missionaries extracted knowledge about Islam, racializing “the Moslem world” as a civilizational “unit” devoid of energetic life—and therefore incompatible with the modern world—even as they simultaneously mediated the rise of oil extraction along the Persian Gulf in that same period. Extraction was not only evident in the material relations of empire, but also in the way Protestant missionary discourse shaped “the Muslim world” into a racial unit in need of management and optimization. I consider two energetic grammars used by Protestant missionaries to signify the changes occurring in “the Moslem World”, namely, Samuel Zwemer’s use of “disintegration” and Basil Mathews use of “ferment”. I argue that it was in these material and discursive entanglements of oil extraction where knowledge about Islam became an important tool of European colonial governance, and where energetic grammars of religion became critical to the biopolitical production and management of racialized Muslim populations.

Abstract The destruction of the Baghdadi libraries has been a powerful image connected to the Mongol conquest of 1258, often claimed to have precipitated the decline of Muslim civilization. This study, however, challenges this claim by reconstructing the state of libraries in Ilkhanid Baghdad, revealing a thriving intellectual community. Based on a close reading in Arabic biographical dictionaries and analysis of samāʿ and book lists, it elucidates the functions of libraries in Ilkhanid Baghdad, identifies channels of knowledge transmission, and offers a glimpse of the libraries' holdings. Finally, it analyzes the Mongols' role in invigorating local scholarship and the impact their rule had on Baghdad's intellectual life.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution entailed establishing Iran's hegemony in the region and promotion of shi'ite doctrinal values in the Muslim world. The Iranian State under the leadersip of Ayatullah Khomeini was tasked to design a strategy of organizing and connecting the non-Iranian Shi'ites and Sunnite sympathisers of the revolution particulary in the Muslim world with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Networking with the non-Iranian Shi'ites and Sunnite sympathizers of the revolution was crucial for support for Iran's hegemony and export of the revolution. The Islamic Republic established Ahl-ul-bayt World Assembly (ABWA) to carry out its networking diplomacy. ABWA's objectives, networking strategies and activities in Afghanistan and Malaysia suggest that the non-Iranian Shi'ites and Sunnite sympathizers of the Revoltion are political and strategic asset and Iran under the guise of the narrative of exporting revoltion expects their loyalty and sympathy rather than to the state of their citizenship and residence. Unlike Malaysia, ABWA's networking activity in Afghanistan also entails integrating the Afghan Shi'ites into sensitive positions in the post-Taliban political system, indeed a breach of the claim that ABWA is apolitical and neutral institution.

The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims traces how governments across Western Europe have responded to the growing presence of Muslim immigrants in their countries over the past fifty years. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews with government officials and religious leaders in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Morocco, and Turkey, Jonathan Laurence challenges the widespread notion that Europe's Muslim minorities represent a threat to liberal democracy.

All of the texts chosen for this volume are interesting in their own right, but the collection of these sources into a single volume, with helpful introductions and bibliographies, makes this book an invaluable resource for the study of Arabic Christianity and, indeed, the history of Christianity more broadly. ? Hugoye: Journal of Syriac StudiesArabic was among the first languages in which the Gospel was preached. The Book of Acts mentions Arabs as being present at the first Pentecost in Jerusalem, where they heard the Christian message in their native tongue. Christian literature in Arabic is at least 1,300 years old, the oldest surviving texts dating from the 8th century. Pre-modern Arab Christian literature embraces such diverse genres as Arabic translations of the Bible and the Church Fathers, biblical commentaries, lives of the saints, theological and polemical treatises, devotional poetry, philosophy, medicine, and history. Yet in the Western historiography of Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is treated only peripherally, if at all.The first of its kind, this anthology makes accessible in English representative selections from major Arab Christian works written between the eighth and eigtheenth centuries. The translations are idiomatic while preserving the character of the original. The popular assumption is that in the wake of the Islamic conquests, Christianity abandoned the Middle East to flourish elsewhere, leaving its original heartland devoid of an indigenous Christian presence. Until now, several of these important texts have remained unpublished or unavailable in English. Translated by leading scholars, these texts represent the major genres of Orthodox literature in Arabic.Noble and Treiger provide an introduction that helps form a comprehensive history of Christians within the Muslim world. The collection marks an important contribution to the history of medieval Christianity and the history of the medieval Near East.

From the cleric-led Iranian revolution to the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan, many people have been surprised by what they see as the modern reemergence of an antimodern phenomenon. This book helps account for the increasingly visible public role of traditionally educated Muslim religious scholars (the `ulama) across contemporary Muslim societies. Muhammad Qasim Zaman describes the transformations the centuries-old culture and tradition of the `ulama have undergone in the modern era--transformations that underlie the new religious and political activism of these scholars. In doing so, it provides a new foundation for the comparative study of Islam, politics, and religious change in the contemporary world. While focusing primarily on Pakistan, Zaman takes a broad approach that considers the Taliban and the `ulama of Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and the southern Philippines. He shows how their religious and political discourses have evolved in often unexpected but mutually reinforcing ways to redefine and enlarge the roles the `ulama play in society. Their discourses are informed by a longstanding religious tradition, of which they see themselves as the custodians. But these discourses are equally shaped by--and contribute in significant ways to--contemporary debates in the Muslim public sphere. This book offers the first sustained comparative perspective on the `ulama and their increasingly crucial religious and political activism. It shows how issues of religious authority are debated in contemporary Islam, how Islamic law and tradition are continuously negotiated in a rapidly changing world, and how the `ulama both react to and shape larger Islamic social trends. Introducing previously unexamined facets of religious and political thought in modern Islam, it clarifies the complex processes of religious change unfolding in the contemporary Muslim world and goes a long way toward explaining their vast social and political ramifications.

The French government's 2004 decision to ban Islamic headscarves and other religious signs from public schools puzzled many observers, both because it seemed to infringe needlessly on religious freedom, and because it was hailed by many in France as an answer to a surprisingly wide range of social ills, from violence against females in poor suburbs to anti-Semitism.Why the French Don't Like Headscarvesexplains why headscarves on schoolgirls caused such a furor, and why the furor yielded this law. Making sense of the dramatic debate from his perspective as an American anthropologist in France at the time, John Bowen writes about everyday life and public events while also presenting interviews with officials and intellectuals, and analyzing French television programs and other media. Bowen argues that the focus on headscarves came from a century-old sensitivity to the public presence of religion in schools, feared links between public expressions of Islamic identity and radical Islam, and a media-driven frenzy that built support for a headscarf ban during 2003-2004. Although the defense oflaïcité(secularity) was cited as the law's major justification, politicians, intellectuals, and the media linked the scarves to more concrete social anxieties--about \"communalism,\" political Islam, and violence toward women. Written in engaging, jargon-free prose,Why the French Don't Like Headscarvesis the first comprehensive and objective analysis of this subject, in any language, and it speaks to tensions between assimilation and diversity that extend well beyond France's borders.

Can Islam Be French? is an anthropological examination of how Muslims are responding to the conditions of life in France. Following up on his book Why the French Don't Like Headscarves, John Bowen turns his attention away from the perspectives of French non-Muslims to focus on those of the country's Muslims themselves. Bowen asks not the usual question--how well are Muslims integrating in France?--but, rather, how do French Muslims think about Islam? In particular, Bowen examines how French Muslims are fashioning new Islamic institutions and developing new ways of reasoning and teaching. He looks at some of the quite distinct ways in which mosques have connected with broader social and political forces, how Islamic educational entrepreneurs have fashioned niches for new forms of schooling, and how major Islamic public actors have set out a specifically French approach to religious norms. All of these efforts have provoked sharp responses in France and from overseas centers of Islamic scholarship, so Bowen also looks closely at debates over how--and how far--Muslims should adapt their religious traditions to these new social conditions. He argues that the particular ways in which Muslims have settled in France, and in which France governs religions, have created incentives for Muslims to develop new, pragmatic ways of thinking about religious issues in French society.

This chapter contains sections titled: A Topography of Anxiety and Admiration ‘New Turks’, Old Antichrists Staged Conversions and Converted Stages References and Further Reading