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From Crypto-Muslim To Muslim Polemicist: The Self-Writing Of Aḥmad Ibn Qāsim Al-Ḥajarī, Paige Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the self-writing of the Morisco writer Aḥmad ibn Qāsim al-Ḥajarī (b. 1569–1570) who fled his homeland in Spain for the Maghreb where he could live safely as a Muslim. While it may seem that the Moriscos were one static, monocultural group, studying them as individuals reveals the group’s diversity and complexity. Al-Ḥajarī is an excellent example of one Morisco writer who identifies more with the greater Muslim community than with the Iberian Moriscos. His most well-known work, Kitāb Nāṣir al-dīn, combines Arabic literary genres in order to create this self-portrait. Other Moriscos fought for their right to …

The Utilitarian Islamic Modernity Of Ḥasan Al-ʿAṭṭār (1766–1835), Ian Greer

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I describe and analyze the manifestations of modern thought in the life and works of Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1835), an Egyptian Islamic scholar who served as Shaykh al-Azhar in the 1830s, in concert with Muḥammad ʿAlī Pasha. These manifestations were significantly influenced by the writings and ideas of Ottoman ʿulamāʿ and political elites which al-ʿAṭṭār would have encountered during his 10-year journey across the Empire. The thesis will also explore the content of al-ʿAṭṭār’s political, legal and social thought, which was guided by a unique form of ‘Islamic utilitarianism’ which reaches across his writings and the reforms …

Aftermaths Of Opposition: Effectiveness Of Repression Against Reformist Islamists In Saudi Arabia, Londyn Lorenz

Honors Theses

Saudi Arabia has long been considered a religious, political, and economic hub of the Middle East and North Africa as the home of the two holiest cities in Islam: Mecca and Medina. The kingdom’s leaders, the Al Saud family, have relied on their Islamic clout to remain in power since the 1700s, but their Islamic credentials were called into question following their allowance of American troops on Saudi soil and alliance with Western ideals during and following the Gulf War of the 1990s. Islamist outrage against the throne poured out across the nation, bringing demands for political change and increased …

Terrorism: A Case Study Of The Global Security Threat Of Boko Haram And The Isis Alliance In Nigeria, Emmanuel Ben-Edet

Dissertations (2016-Present)

The literature on terrorism indicates that religion, cultures of origin, and environmental factors play globally critical roles in the emergence of terrorist groups worldwide. Terrorists use violence and threats to strike fear and intimidate people and governments into pursuing their religious, political, and ideological goals. One of the deadliest jihadist groups, Boko Haram, emerged in the early 2000s with a jihadist agenda mainly focused on Nigeria’s Islamization. In 2009, it launched violent attacks in Nigeria, which is Africa’s largest economy, and currently controls a large swathe of territory in its northeastern part. In its desire to create a caliphate, Boko …

The Notion Of Evil In The Qur'an And Islamic Mystical Thought, Irfan Asghar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

‘The Problem of Evil’ has continued to survive as one of the most contested issues in the history of philosophy of religion. This thesis aims at contributing to the existing literature by exploring the notion of evil in the Qur’an and Islamic Mystical thought as expressed in the writings of Jalal ad-Din Rumi and Muhammad Iqbal. The Qur’an sheds light on various shades of moral evil and explains how they are manifested through the actions of various agents. When it comes to natural evil and human suffering resulting from it, the Qur’an provides a utilitarian place for it in human …

Mes 160: Classical Islamic Literature & Civilization, Kirsten Beck

Open Educational Resources

This open resource includes a syllabus, class schedule, grading rubrics, and guidelines/examples for digital poetry annotation.

The course website can be found here: http://mes160.social.qwriting.qc.cuny.edu/

In this course, we will take a journey through history, literature, and ideas, traveling through Islamic civilization from 600-1250 CE. We will learn about and contemplate the major events and concerns of Islamic civilization, from the dawn of Islam through the expansions, transformations, and fragmentations of Islamic empires, up until the end of the 13th century. Works of Islamic literature from a variety of genres will fuel our journey. Along the way, we will learn how …

Palestinian Evangelical Christian Music In Bethlehem, Israel/Palestine, Abby Smith

Senior Honors Theses

Often the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is portrayed as Jewish vs. Muslim, Hebrew vs. Arab. There is little room in the international dialogue for minorities such as Arab Christians. Though Palestinians have a rich culture of Arabic musical and poetic heritage, they are unable to produce their own new songs. In this study I interviewed three members of Immanuel Evangelical Church on their experiences and opinions on local Christian worship. The findings show that Palestinian Christians may feel unable to write worship music because of a prevalent feeling of inadequacy and a lack of musical training. I propose several …

The Impact Of Islam On Sociopolitical And Spiritual Life In Central Asia, Ilhomjon Bekmirzaev, Irodaxon Gafurova

The Light of Islam

The authors, based on reliable sources and third-party studies, for the first time provide information that Central Asia, being an independent state entity, is one of the civilizations of the region, despite the anthropological, social, political, linguistic, religious and other changes that have taken place in it. for centuries, in the course of centuries of development, it has formed its own specific laws and principles. The author also argues the position that in the cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, which were considered central in the region, national values formed the basis of Islamic civilization. An analysis of primary sources and …

Warfare And Welcome: Practicality And Qur’Ānic Hierarchy In Ibāḍī Muslims’ Jurisprudential Rulings On Music, Bradford J. Garvey

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

While much ink has been spilled by musicologists on the legal standing of music in Islamic jurisprudential scholarship, few scholars have offered as comprehensive a view as Lois Ibsen Al-Faruqi. Thirty-five years after her major works on this issue, this article seeks to reassess her model of musical legitimacy within Muslim scholarship. Al-Faruqi places Qur’ānic recitation at the apex of a unidirectional continuum of sound art, with genres less similar to the recitation of the Qur’ān located progressively further away from it. Based on fieldwork in the Sultanate of Oman in 2015-17 and engaging with recent reinvigorations on the anthropological …

Islam, Democracy, And The Leadership Role Of Women In Government, Leea Collard

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis examines the relationship between Islam, democratic government, and the governmental leadership of women in the Middle East, North Africa, and Turkey (MENAT). In order to understand female leadership in this region, the compatibility between Islam and democracy is analyzed. This occurs through the examination of Sharia Law and democratic principles within Islam. Furthermore, a statistical analysis of the successes of democracies in the region will be presented. Each nation will be categorized by the constitutional provisions entrusted to its female citizens. Thus, this thesis will present the legality of the political participation of women in each of the …

Secularism In The Arab World: Contexts, Ideas And Consequences, Aziz Al-Azmeh, David Bond

In Translation: Modern Muslim Thinkers

Explores secularism and secularisation in Arab societies since the mid-19th century.

This book is a translation of Aziz al-Azmeh’s seminal work Al-'Ilmaniya min mandhur mukhtalif that was first published in Beirut in 1992. Both celebrated and criticised for its reflections on Arab secularisation and secularism in the modern history of the Arab World, it is the only study to date to approach its subject as a set of historical changes which affected the regulation of the social, political and cultural order, and which permeated the concrete workings of society, rather than as an ideological discussion framed from the outset by …

Islam, Emad Hamdeh

Publications

Islam, the religion of 1.2 billion people around the world, provides its followers guidance on how to live according to God’s teachings. The word “Islam” means submission, and in this context, refers to voluntary submission to will and teachings of God. The word Islam stems from the same root word as “peace” salām, by submitting to God one finds inner peace in this world and eternal peace and happiness in the next.

Lost & Found: New Harvest, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context.

Set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the 12th century, a great crossroads of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. The Lost & Found games project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens …

Tradition As Flow: Decolonial Currents In The Muslim Atlantic, Jason Sparkes

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study contributes a decolonial critique of the world-system from the longue durée perspective of the Muslim Atlantic. It connects contemporary Traditionalist Islamic discourse in North America to human networks developed since the long sixteenth century. Traditionalist Islam can be described as a discourse about traditional Islam. Genealogically, it draws upon many sources. Two important ones are (1) the oeuvre of French metaphysician and Sufi René Guénon, and (2) the Shâdhilî school of Sufism born in North Africa. Traditionalist Islam distinguishes itself from what it depicts as fundamentalist (or Salafist) and modernist (or progressive) currents, representing two extremes of …

Review Of The Practice Of Islam In America: An Introduction, Aisha Ghani

The Journal of Social Encounters

The demand, indeed urgency, within the American Academy for courses on Islam has perhaps never been greater than at current. Yet, the very conditions that create this urgency also produce anxieties for those fulfilling this pedagogical role. The challenge confronting many of us - knowing that our students will enter the classroom with ideas/questions about Islam stemming, in large part, from what they’ve encountered through popular media and the news – is how to carry out this work in a way that both acknowledges this abiding, even if delimiting, contemporary context without allowing our teaching to be subsumed by it. …

Islam And Buddhism: The Arabian Prequel?, Anna Akasoy

Publications and Research

Conventionally, the first Muslim-Buddhist encounters are thought to have taken place in the context of the Arab-Muslim expansions into eastern Iran in the mid-seventh century, the conquest of Sind in 711 and the rise of the Islamic empire. However, several theories promoted in academic and popular circles claim that Buddhists or other Indians were present in western Arabia at the eve of Islam and thus shaped the religious environment in which Muhammad’s movement emerged. This article offers a critical survey of the most prominent arguments adduced to support this view and discusses the underlying attitudes to the Islamic tradition, understood …

Historiographical Perspectives Of The Third Reich: Nazi Policies Towards The Arab World And European Muslims, Jesus Montemayor

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This historiographical essay examines major works on the interaction of Nazi Germany and the Arab World in general and the European Muslims in particular. The essay argues that despite the claims of revisionist studies that emerged after 9/11 terrorists attacks, the Nazi influence among the Arab and European Muslims was not deep enough to produce sufficient Muslim and Arab support for the Nazi cause.

How Muslims Understand Democracy: An Empirical Investigation, Shireen Alazzaw, Moamen Gouda

Topics in Middle Eastern and North African Economies

This study examines how Muslims understand democracy and its essential components. We hypothesize that, although Muslims tend to value democracy as high as non-Muslims, Muslims have a unique understanding of procedural, as well as substantive, components of democracy, that stems from both their historical, and current, socioeconomic experiences. Employing the latest data from World Values Survey, our descriptive statistics suggest that while Muslims highly value democracy, and believe they don’t have enough of it, their notion of democracy is distinct from that of non-Muslims. Muslims tend to associate democracy with its perceived outcomes, and do not have a substantial reservation …

Al-Ghazālī'S Conception Of The Purification Of The Self: Reflections From Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm Al-Dīn (Revival Of The Religious Knowledge), Soha Ahmad Helwa

Theses and Dissertations

Al-Ghazālī's name and his book Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn are attached to self-purification, which is an essential part in the religion of Islam. This study does not seek to analyze all the details of Al-Ghazālī's program to purify the self. Rather, it focuses on delineating a framework - from Iḥyā’ ‘Ulūm al-Dīn - concerning his understanding of self-purification. This framework mainly includes his method of purifying the self. In the midst of this, many of Al-Ghazālī's psychological insights are extracted, under the umbrella of the Islamic perspective of psychology. Among these insights are some related to his perception of the human …

The Formative Years Of An Iconoclastic Salafi Scholar, Emad Hamdeh

Publications

Despite his great influence on modern Salafism and Islamic studies, relatively few works focus on the life of Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999), a scholar whose life and brand of Salafism are marked by controversy and stand in stark contrast to madhhab Traditionalism. This article provides a translation of one of his autobiographical interviews. I shed light on the biographical details of Albānī’s formative years, namely his sour relationship with his father, quarrels with the Albanian community in Syria, and his controversial professorship at the University of Medina. Among the arguments I make is that Albānī created an image …

The Fallen Female: A Testimony, Husney Farwa Naqvi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of thematically related nonfiction works that offers a cultural critique of the author’s three cultures – Pakistani, American, and Muslim – through a feminist lens. The author attempts to offer an intersectional feminist’s insight based on her lived experiences as a Pakistani American woman – born in Karachi, raised in Louisiana and the Rio Grande Valley in Deep South Texas. It explores feminist theory, focusing heavily on rape culture (“Shame and Regrets,” “Bollywood’s Rape Fetish”) and religious influences (“Infallible,” “The Hijab”). It also details the author’s experience as a Muslim woman who chose to observe …

About The Contributors

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

No abstract provided.

Ottoman Arabia And The Holy Hijaz, 1516-1918, Willaim Ochsenwald

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

Governments in Arabia today usually ignore the Ottoman Empire’s history in the region, but the Ottomans from 1516 to 1918 played a key role in coastal regions, especially in the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina. While Ottoman administrations intermittently ruled in Yemen and eastern Arabia, their influence was greatest in the holy Hijaz, the site of the worldwide pilgrimage. However, Ottoman rule was limited by Istanbul’s distance from Arabia. Religion played a significant role in determining the nature of Ottoman control, helping to legitimize the state among its subjects. A detailed analysis of one province, the Hijaz, with …

Libération Sexuelle Ou Aliénation Textuelle : La Subalterne Peut-Elle Parler De Son Corps ?, Carla Calargé, Alexandra Gueydan-Turek

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article analyzes two erotic works : L’amande and La traversée des sens. It aims to look at whether the sexual liberation of the female protagonists succeeds in defining a subversive discourse which allows Arab women to escape binary representations made of them or whether, on the contrary the author reproduces such representations. After a quick overview of the difficult situation in which Arab feminists often find themselves both the East and the West, this study examines if Nedjma’s two novels adopt a feminist posture or if they fail to reach the objectives that critics have attributed to them.

Why Daghestan Is Good To Think: Moshe Gammer, Daghestan, And Global Islamic History”, Rebecca Ruth Gould

Rebecca Gould

During the final decade of his productive life, Moshe Gammer (1950-2013) edited the first major English-language series on Daghestani philology. This chapter examines key aspects of Gammer’s legacy, while offering an overview of Daghestani philology from the colonial period to the present, and outlining how this field of inquiry enables us to revise regnant paradigms concerning language, law, and the circulation of culture within contemporary Islamic Studies. I concentrate on the potential of Daghestan’s Islamic archives to contribute to the study of linguistic and legal modernity, transregional Arabic in its interface with the vernacular, and the multiplicity of Islamic modernities. …

The Image Of Women In The Interpreted Qur'an: Translations Of Pickthall, Ali, Hilali And Abdel Haleem, Yassmine Muhammad Mahfouz Muhammad

Theses and Dissertations

The Image of Women in the Interpreted Qur’ān: Translations of Pickthall, Ali, Hilālī, and Abdel Haleem By Yassmine Muhammad Mahfouz (Under the supervision of Professor Tahia Abdel Nasser, The American University in Cairo). I have intended this work with the premise of shedding light on the rights of women in the Qur’ān through examining its English translations since this topic has undergone much controversy between patriarchal and Islamophobic camps. However, through the examination of the translations, I have touched on how translation cannot only be problematic but also dangerously influential in presenting the sacred text. The main finding was that …

Thoughts On Islam, Gender, And The Hizmet Movement, Semiha Topal

Consensus

No abstract provided.

Nadīr Ad-Durgilīs (St. 1935) Nuzhat Al-Adhhān Fī Tarāğim 'Ulamā’ Dāġistān, Eds., Michael Kemper And Amri R. Shixsaidov, Rebecca Gould

Rebecca Gould

No abstract provided.

Learning To Be Muslim—Transnationally, Louise Cainkar

Social and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

This essay discusses the religious upbringing experiences and reflections upon them articulated by 53 Muslim American youth who were interviewed as part of a larger sociological study of Arab American teenagers living transnationally. On extended sojourns in their parents’ homelands, these youth—most were born in the US although some migrated to the US at a young age—were taken “back home” to Palestine and Jordan by their parents so they could learn “their language, culture, and religion." They were asked about learning to be Muslim in the US and overseas in the context of a much larger set of questions about …

The Impossible, Highly Desired Islamic Bank, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

The purpose of this Article is to explore, and explain the stubborn persistence of, a central paradox that is endemic to the retail Islamic bank as it operates in the United States. The paradox is that retail Islamic banking in the United States is impossible, and yet it remains highly desired. It is impossible because the principles that are supposed to underlie the practice of Islamic finance deal with the trading of assets and the equitable sharing of risks, profits and losses among bank, depositor and portfolio investment. It is true that much of this can be, and is, circumvented …