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Islamic Modernism and the Re-Enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History
This book studies the complex relationship of religion to modernity and argues that modernity should be understood as the consequence, not the cause, of the new intellectual landscape of the 19th century. Shows how the adoption of historicism in the 19th century engendered Islamic modernism as a theological reform movement.
Islamic Modernities in World Society
How is one 'authentically' modern? Substantively drawing on contemporary social theory, this book investigates the multiplicity of answers that Muslims have given to this question since the end of the nineteenth century. Through six historical and thematic case studies, the chapters examine the historical evolution of multiple modernities within Islam. The book argues that we can observe the rise and spread of a relatively hegemonic idea according to which a relation to Islamic traditions bestows projects of Muslim modernities with cultural authenticity. At the same time, the book provides an interpretation of this specifically Islamic discourse of modernity as an inherent part of global modernity in conceptual terms understood as the emergence of world society.
The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East
The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East integrates the study of the social dynamics in the Middle East within history, culture, and politics. The volume transcends a purely regional perspective to investigate the global nature of these dynamics and their impact on the life of people in the region. It provides a comprehensive perspective in connecting the vexed state-society relations in the region with movements of transformation and the affirmation of rights and creativity in the public arenas.
Religious Fundamentalism in the Age of Pandemic
The multidisciplinary anthology Religious Fundamentalism in the Age of Pandemic provides deep insights concerning the current impact of Covid-19 on various religious groups and believers around the world. Based on contributions of well-known scholars in the field of Religious Fundamentalism, the contributors offer about a window into the origins of religious fundamentalism and the development of these movements as well as the creation of the category itself. Further recommendations regarding specific (fundamentalist) religious groups and actors and their possible development within Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and Judaism round up the discussion about the rise of Religious Fundamentalism in the Age of Pandemic.
The Secular Imaginary
Given the popularity and success of the Hindu-Right in India's electoral politics today, how may one study ostensibly 'Western' concepts and ideas, such as the secular and its family of cognates, like secularism, secularisation and secularity in non-Western societies without assuming them simply as derivative, or colonial legacies or contrast cases of Western societies? While recognizing that the dominant language of political modernity of Western societies is not easily translatable in non-Western societies, The Secular Imaginary elaborates upon an intellectual history of secularity in modern India by focusing on the two most influential political leaders – M.K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. It is an intellectual history of both idea(s) and intellectuals, which sheds light on Indian narratives of secularity – the Gandhian sarva dharma samabhava, Nehruvian secularism, and unity in diversity. It revisits this dominant narrative of secularity of the twentieth century that influenced and shaped the imagination of the modern nation-state.
Buddhist Asia
This volume seeks to chart and elucidate the diverse relationships between the religious and secular spheres in regions of Asia that were significantly influenced – sometimes even dominated – by Buddhist discourses, ideas, and institutions. These regions include South Asia (India, Sri Lanka), East and Southeast Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam), Inner Asia (Buryatia, Mongolia, Tibet), and the Himalayan region (Bhutan). These regions were connected by communicative networks long before the global modern age. They constituted an intricately entangled discursive sphere, shaped by the cross-regional spread of concepts and ideas from Buddhism and, in East Asia, Confucianism. The volume shed...
Africa
This volume explores secularity in Sub-Saharan Africa, an area long considered to be, to quote John Mbiti, “notoriously religious”, or lurking in the secular shadows. Our sources question these assumptions by showing how contemporary secularities in Africa emerged from specific socio-cultural histories, and political conflicts and contestations, as well as from colonial impositions and African interventions. Organised thematically, the volume begins by showing how the constitutions of African post-colonial states regulate religion, with introductions providing the historical and political contexts of the specific configurations. The next sections deal with religionisation and culturalisa...
The Middle East and North Africa
This volume collects reflections on secularity from the Middle East and North Africa. To highlight proximate connections as well as resonances with debates elsewhere, it includes premodern contributions from the region as well as Jewish thought from Europe that have provided significant references for modern appropriations of secularity. The texts, for the most part previously untranslated, reflect commonalities within the region as well as its great diversity. Thus, while Islam is a common reference for most of our authors, the selections point to its varied invocations in the interest of differing political ends. Others write from a Christian or Jewish perspective, or subscribe to non-reli...
Modernity in Islamic Tradition
What does it mean to be modern? This study regards the concept of ‘society’ as foundational to modern self-understanding. Identifying Arabic conceptualizations of society in the journal al-Manar, the mouthpiece of Islamic reformism, the author shows how modernity was articulated from within an Islamic discursive tradition. The fact that the classical term umma was a principal term used to conceptualize modern society suggests the convergence of discursive traditions in modernity, rather than a mere diffusion of European concepts.
Postcolonialism and Social Theory in Arabic
Since Edward Said’s publication of Orientalism in 1978, so-called Western social theory and its claim to universal analytical validity has been exposed to severe criticism. Scholars from the field of postcolonial studies were most vocal in criticizing the Eurocentric nature of the conceptual apparatus of the social sciences. Indeed, contemporary social theory almost exclusively refers to the historical experiences of Western Europe and North America. Yet what is the alternative to these Eurocentric frameworks? Many postcolonial critics use very few non-English sources and tend to focus on the deconstruction of European and American theories. This chapters of this volume provide a turn of p...
