History Commons^™

Christological Apologetics: How Late Antique Christians Contextualized Christology In Inter-Faith Dialogue With Muslims, Andrew P. Hillaker

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The earliest Christian-Muslim dialogue offers a unique glimpse into how Christians viewed the religion of their neighbors. Much of contemporary American scholarship misplaces focus geographically and linguistically in the West, chronologically late, and theologically narrow. These biases neglect those who had the earliest interaction with Islam, allowing for misunderstanding of how Christians originally understood Islam. This study examines the apologetic arguments of representatives under Islamic rule, in the late 7th to early 9th centuries, and both inside and outside theological orthodoxy, to understand how they used Christology to distinguish Christianity from Islam, whether as a heretical group or a distinct …

(Dis)Locating Meaning: Toward A Hermeneutical Response In Education To Religiously Inspired Extremism, Farid Panjwani

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

A key epistemological assumption in the ideologies of many of the groups termed extremist is that there is an unmediated access to a Divine Will. Driven by this assumption, and facilitated by several other factors, a range of coercive actions (including violence) to force others into submission to the perceived Will of God are seen as justified by some of these groups. A consideration of how religion is discussed in various contexts, from seminaries and schools to media and policy discourses, shows that this assumption about unmediated access to Divine Will is widely shared and that most children grow up …

Sunan Kalijaga: The Birth Of A Self-Actualized Pilgrimage Culture, F. P. Meachem

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Javanese Islam is incredibly unique in its style and practice. Despite boasting a Muslim population larger than the entire Middle East, Indonesia and its Islamic cultural practices are largely unknown in academic circles. This has made an introduction to Islam in the archipelago even more difficult for the rare interested Western reader. Frustratingly, what is lost on the rest of the world is basically second nature to 155 million Javanese Muslims, who learn from their families, schools, and pilgrimages about the Wali Songo, a group of nine semi-mythical figures credited with spreading Islam to Java. When we stop casting …

Understanding An American Paradox: An Overview Of The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Spearit

Articles

In The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes Religious Freedom, Sahar Aziz unveils a mechanism that perpetuates the persecution of religion. While the book’s title suggests a problem that engulfs Muslims, it is not a new problem, but instead a recurring theme in American history. Aziz constructs a model that demonstrates how racialization of a religious group imposes racial characteristics on that group, imbuing it with racial stereotypes that effectively treat the group as a racial rather than religious group deserving of religious liberty.

In identifying a racialization process that effectively veils religious discrimination, Aziz’s book points to several important …

Global Issues In A Globalized World: The Unescapable Dialogue Between SharīʿA And The Constitution, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

In an increasingly globalized world, a world in flux, which is constantly subject to rapid circulation of information, change is a dimension that we all experience in our lives with ever increasing frequency. Change, be it that of customs and fashion or that of laws and systems of government, is something which now seems impossible to escape. Change is an integral part of our unstable contemporaneity.

This is not only a continuous change but also a rapid one. In such a social and political environment, at a global and local level, it is more and more difficult to find a …

Ritual, Spectacle, And Theatre In Late Medieval Seville (Chapter 1), Christopher B. Swift

Publications and Research

From the fall of Islamic Išbīliya in 1248 to the conquest of the New World, Seville was a nexus of economic and religious power where interconfessional living among Christians, Jews, and Muslims was negotiated on public stages. From out of seemingly irreconcilable ideologies of faith, hybrid performance culture emerged in spectacles of miraculous transformation, disciplinary processionals, and representations of religious identity. Ritual, Spectacle, and Theatre in Late Medieval Seville reinvigorates the study of medieval Iberian theater by revealing the ways in which public expressions of devotion, penance, and power fostered cultural reciprocity, rehearsed religious difference, and ultimately helped establish Seville …

2021-2022 Annual Report, Muslim Student Life At Syracuse University

Muslim Student Life

This report is a concise overview of the 2021/2021 academic year, and it displays only some of the programs and accomplishments of Muslim students at Syracuse University. It shows that they continue to excel academically, socially, and spiritually. You will recognize that our impact, reach, and presence is not just on the SU campus but goes beyond it.

Who Is A Muslim?: Orientalism And Literary Populisms [Toc], Maryam Wasif Khan

Literature

Who is a Muslim? Orientalism and Literary Populisms argues that modern Urdu literature, from its inception in colonial institutions such as Fort William College, Calcutta to its dominant forms in contemporary Pakistan—popular novels, short stories, television serials—is formed around a question that is and historically has been at the core of early modern and modern Western literatures. The question—who is a Muslim—is predominant in eighteenth-century literary and scholarly orientalist texts, the English oriental tale chief amongst them, but takes on new and dangerous meanings once it travels to the North-Indian colony, and later to Pakistan. A literary-historical study …

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 …

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 …

Morality At The Margins: Youth, Language, And Islam In Coastal Kenya [Table Of Contents], Sarah Hillewaert

Sociology

This book considers the day-to-day lives of young Muslims on Kenya’s island of Lamu, who live simultaneously on the edge and in the center. At the margins of the national and international economy and of Western notions of modernity, Lamu’s inhabitants nevertheless find themselves the focus of campaigns against Islamic radicalization and of Western touristic imaginations of the untouched and secluded.

What does it mean to be young, modern, and Muslim here? How are these denominators imagined and enacted in daily encounters? Documenting the everyday lives of Lamu youth, this ethnography explores how young people negotiate cultural, religious, political, and …

A Fractured Family And Its Heirs: Seljuq Power And The “Sunni Revival” In The Middle East, 1000-1200 Ce, Elijah Sloat

History Summer Fellows

The Seljuq Turks were a group of nomadic warriors who converted to Sunni Islam by the end of the tenth century. Over the course of the next half century the Seljuqs conquered the majority of what we now call the Middle East. One Seljuq dynasty in particular, known to historians as the Great Seljuqs, positioned themselves as the dominant political power in the region as well as champions of Sunni Islam. Scholars refer to this period of Seljuq control as the “Sunni Revival” and debate heavily whether Seljuq political and religious practices were the cause of this “Revival,” as well …

Supplanting The Wrong With The Right: A Synoptic Overview Of Christian And Islamic Reactions Towards The Subject Of Heresy, Brett G. Barnard

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Whenever there is a faith that is claiming to be the “one true religion,” just what is it that defines that most sinister of opposition known as “heresy?” Is it the choices made by these aforementioned “heretics” to hold beliefs that are contrary to the mainstream? Or is the way in which “orthodox” authorities have historically asserted their own superiority while legally eliminating the competition? When overlooking monotheistic belief systems that claim universal theological authority, such as Christianity and Islam, what stands out the most is the fact that the greatest threat almost always comes not from exterior rivals, but …

Salafism, Wahhabism, And The Definition Of Sunni Islam, Rob J. Williams

Honors Program: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

My capstone deals with the historical definition of Sunni Islam, and how it has changed in approximately the past 200 years. Around 1800, Sunni Islam was pretty clearly defined by an adherence to one of four maddhabs, or schools of law: the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools and are all based in nearly a millennium of legal scholarship. Since 1800, however, numerous reform movements have sprung up which disavow previous scholarship and interpret Islamic law their own way. However, certain reformist groups, such as Traditionalist Salafis and Wahhabis, claim that their version of Islam is the only “pure” …

Muslimska Församlingar Och Föreningar I Malmö Och Lund – En Ögonblicksbild, Leif Stenberg, Rickard Lagervall

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Islam Enligt Den Islamiska Staten - En Islamologisk Kommentar, Leif Stenberg

Faculty & Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Development And Dissemination: Deliberations On Spanish Renaissance Music, Lindsey E. Pfeifer

Music and Worship Student Presentations

Throughout history, every musical culture grew and developed under a specific set of influences, whether political, philosophical, or geographical. Varying sets of influences created likewise varying types of music. Spanish music, in particular, enjoyed an especially unique array of influences during the fifteenth century. My presentation explores these influences. How did the interaction of Spain’s three major religions—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—affect musical development? How did the newly unified government, ruled by Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, influence the musical culture? How did Spain’s discovery and conquest of the New World facilitate the spread of Spanish music …

Should Obama Have Compared Isis To The Crusades?, Walker Reid Cosgrove

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Over a week ago President Obama mentioned the crusades in his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast. How should one respond to such a statement? Is it valid or not to compare the context of the crusades to the twenty-first century context of ISIS?"

Posting about Obama comparing ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) to the medieval crusades from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/should-obama-have-compared-isis-to-the-crusades

An Oral History Of The Islamic Center Of Maine, Orono, Kyle Franklin

Honors College

In January 2002, the first freestanding mosque in the state of Maine was built near the University of Maine campus. Called the Islamic Center of Maine (ICM), it was established to serve the growing Muslim population in the Orono area, in particular the student and faculty population at the University. The establishment of this Islamic Center was due to the efforts and hard work of Muslim faculty and students, as well as families in the area and generous contributions from Muslims around the United States and other countries. A new, larger center was constructed in 2010, again to meet the …

Muslim Vs Islamic, Jan-E-Alam Khaki

Institute for Educational Development, Karachi

No abstract provided.

The National Muslim Forum Nepal: Experiences Of Conflict, Formations Of Identity, Megan Adamson Sijapati

Religious Studies Faculty Publications

With Nepal's recent transition to state secularism, the politicization of Muslim religious identity has emerged with increasing vitality. One particular pan-Nepali Muslim organization, the Rastriya Muslim Mane Nepal (National Muslim Forum Nepal), offers a window into the complex relationship between national and religious identity that animates this politicization. Through analysis of the National Muslim Forum's earliest discourses, produced between 2005 and 2006, both immediately before and after the people's revolution that resulted in the declaration of Nepal as a secular state, this essay highlights the ways that experiences of conflict coupled with a national political transition shape and contribute to …

Institutions, The Rise Of Commerce And The Persistence Of Laws: Interest Restrictions In Islam And Christianity, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

Why was economic development retarded in the Middle East relative to Western Europe, despite the Middle East being far ahead for centuries? A theoretical model inspired and substantiated by the history of interest restrictions suggests that this outcome emanates in part from the greater degree to which early Islamic political authorities derived legitimacy from religious authorities. This entailed a feedback mechanism in Europe in which the rise of commerce led to the relaxation of interest restrictions while also diminishing the Church's ability to legitimise political authorities. These interactions did not occur in the Islamic world despite equally amenable economic conditions.

Between Realism And Resistance: Shi'i Islam And The Contemporary Liberal State, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

No abstract provided.

From Nationalization Of Islam To Privatization Of Nationalism: Islam And Turkish National Identity, Tamer Balci

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article traces the origins of various proposals to nationalize Islam in Turkey. The initial Turkish proposals failed because none of them had a feasible philosophical base to facilitate the co-existence of Islam and secularism. Aside from the previous studies on the nationalization of Islam, this article carries the topic to the Cold War by arguing that the Turkish-Islamic Synthesis was the last stage on the nationalization of Islam. Since TIS had no vision to alter the official ideology, Kemalism, and it claimed the compatibility of Islam, nationalism, secularism as well as Kemalism, it fulfilled the need of a national …

The Revealed Word And The Struggle For Authority: Interpretation And Use Of Islamic Terminology Among Algerian Islamists, Leif Stenberg

Book Chapters / Conference Papers

No abstract provided.