New Books in Islamic Studies

Skepticism is a familiar term to many of us conjuring up notions of doubt, uncertainty, and perhaps even unbelief. Yet, Skepticism did not always have such a narrow meaning. In fact Skepticism has helped formulate a number of important religious and intellectual positions throughout history. Paul L. Heck‘s new book Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion (Routledge, 2013) is perhaps the first major treatment of skepticism in the Islamic context. This book explores the critical role skepticism played in the development of Islamic theology from the 10th through 14th centuries. Paul Heck suggests we should not understand skepticism as atheism. Rather, it is the admission that one cannot convincingly demonstrate a truth claim with certainty. Heck surveys a number of important Islamic scholars, such as Al-Jahiz, al-Amiri, Al-Ghazali, and Ibn Taymiyya, concluding they all acknowledged such impasses only to be inspired to find new ways to resolve the conundrums they faced. In his book Paul Heck examines the way these key thinkers, among others, in classical Islam faced perplexing theological and philosophical questions, all the while walking a fine line between belief in God’s message as revealed in the Qur’an and the power of the mind to discover truths on its own. Although this is a book about Islamic skepticism, Heck wants to stimulate scholars in the field of religious studies to inquire into how skepticism has formed, and continues to form, a constitutive part of religious reasoning and how we understand the nature of religion. Seeking to put Islam on the map of the broader study of the history of skepticism, I believe this book will be of interest to scholars and students of Religion, History, Islamic Studies, and Philosophy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In Gender Hierarchy in the Qur’an: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Dr. Karen Bauer tackles one of the foremost hot-button questions of the day: What is the role of gender in the Qur’an? Dr. Bauer’s adroit study will leave the reader informed but perhaps also disrupted, given the vast spectrum of competing, sometimes contradictory, interpretive paradigms that she explores. A key strength of the text, moreover, is that in addition to its meticulous investigation of primary texts from medieval and modern traditions of Qur’anic exegesis, Dr. Bauer also conducts numerous in-person interviews with prominent scholars across the Muslim world, including Iran and Syria. Thus, from a literary perspective, the text presents the reader with a compelling style seldom found in Qur’anic studies publications, seamlessly weaving together close textual analysis and ethnographic fieldwork. Notably, Bauer also gives attention to Sunni as well as Shi’i perspectives on her study, thus offering provocative comparison and breadth of analysis. Given the careful scholarship of the book combined with its equally careful presentation, Bauer’s masterful monograph will almost certainly become standard reading for anyone interested in questions related to the Qur’an and gender. It will also interest scholars, more broadly, in the fields of Qur’anic studies, gender studies, law, political science, and the history of Islamic thought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

How can a perspective on Islamic law and jurisprudence be constructed responding to the lives and practices of diasporic Muslims while remaining deeply grounded in the foundational texts of the religion? In The Islamic Worldview: Islamic Jurisprudence–An American Muslim Perspective, Volume One, feminist philosopher and legal scholar Azizah al-Hibri (Univ. of Richmond Law School) engages in precisely this task. Providing an overview of the central sources and methods of law and jurisprudence in the Islamic tradition, al-Hibri elaborates what she calls the “Islamic worldview,” based in principles of harmony, equality, and justice. This guides her work to engage in sustained textual analysis of passages from the Qu’ran and hadith and to think through questions of gender, the family, and politics in Islam.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

In her wonderful new book Polygyny: What it Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands (University Press of Florida, 2015), Debra Majeed, Professor of Religious Studies at Beloit College, provides an analytically robust and moving account of the aspirations, paradoxes, and problems attached to polygyny in the African American Muslim community. By combining ethnography, history, and performance studies, Majeed seamlessly weaves together the theological, legal, and sociological dynamics of living polygyny. Readers of this book are treated to a riveting and incredibly lucid portrayal of a complicated phenomenon that brings together intimate individual stories and the broader historical and societal conditions that generate those stories in a remarkably effective fashion. In our conversation, we talked about the idea of Muslim Womanism, the methodology of dialogical performance, the Qur’an and polygyny, the paradoxes of polygyny, Imam W.D Mohammed’s teachings on polygyny, and the emotional and psychological impact of polygyny n children and women. This is among those rare books that are at once methodologically exciting and complex and yet astonishingly accessible and well written. Polygyny should also make an excellent reading in courses on gender and Islam, Islamic law, American Islam, and American Religion more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

The Second Formation of Islamic Law: The Hanafi School in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Cambridge UP, 2015) is a new contribution to the study of Islam and more specifically to the history of Islamic Law and its development. Guy Burak, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies librarian at New York University, explores the Ottomans’ adoption of one branch of the Hanafi legal tradition as the official school (madhhab) of the dynasty. The period of time in which this process occurred was during the 15th to 18th centuries, and Burak focuses on the lands of Greater Syria. What Burak seeks to illustrate is that through the adoption of an official school of law, the Ottoman hierarchy played a significant role in how the school of law was shaped. Examples Burak provides to demonstrate this phenomenon are the institutionalization of the position of mufti, the formalization of genealogical literature (tabaqat), and the canonization process of books essential to the school. In addition to examining the propagators of official Ottoman positions, Burak also examines how scholars not part of the Ottoman mainstream branch functioned and responded to these changes. Overall, this work represents and important contribution to the study of Islam, the history of Islamic Law, and Ottoman Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Researching the communal killings that occurred in North Maluku, Indonesia during 1999 and 2000, Christopher Duncan was struck by how participants “experienced the violence as a religious conflict and continue to remember it that way”, yet outsiders–among them academics, journalists, and NGO workers–have tended to dismiss or downplay its religious features. Agreeing that we need to move beyond essentialist explanations, Duncan nevertheless insists that the challenge for scholars “is to explain the role of religion in the violence without essentializing it”. In Violence and Vengeance: Religious Conflict and Its Aftermath in Eastern Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2013) he takes up the challenge. Drawing on over a decade of research in North Maluku, and informed by time spent in the region prior to the conflict, Duncan speaks with impressive authority about the before, during and after of the bloodshed. Utilizing work by scholars of political violence and the management of memory like Stanley Tambiah and Steve Stern, he shows how participants themselves produced and reproduced master narratives of holy warfare. In the process, he critiques scholarship that overstates elite agendas and machinations, remaining too focused on the causes of violence and losing sight of how, in the words of Gerry Van Klinken, “a runaway war can become decoupled from its initial conditions”. Violence and Vengeance makes a powerful case for why study of vernacular understandings of conflict matter. The book also is exemplary in demonstrating how such study can and should be done. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

What are some of the key features and characteristics of the Muslim feminist Qur’an exegetical tradition and what are some of the tensions and ambiguities found in that tradition? Those are the central questions addressed by Aysha Hidayatullah, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Theology at the University of San Francisco, in her path clearing new book, Feminist Edges of the Qur’an (Oxford University Press, 2014). In this shining book, Hidayatullah presents a detailed and nuanced explanation of the varied paradigms of Muslim feminist Qur’an exegeses, primarily though not exclusively focusing on the work of scholars in the US. She also considers and highlights some of the limitations of such feminist exegetical projects, concluding that perhaps patriarchal readings of the Qur’an cannot be entirely or conclusively dismissed as impossible. In this book, Hidayatullah seamlessly and brilliantly combines intellectual history, discursive analysis, and critical theological reflections. Written with exemplary clarity, Feminist Edges of the Qur’an introduces non-specialists to the fascinating yet complicated terrain of feminist and indeed modernist Qur’an exegesis while offering specialists more familiar with this terrain groundbreaking conceptual interventions and new avenues of thought and research. This incredibly lucid book should also work splendidly in undergraduate and graduate courses on the Qur’an, gender, feminist thought, Muslim modernism, and Islam in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Exploring various perspectives on Muhammad's life, including historicity, miraculous events, relationships, sexual ethics, revisionism, and Western interpretations. Delving into Muhammad's key relationships, marriages, and societal impact. Highlighting the evolution of biographical works on Muhammad and the portrayal of his wives, Khadija and Aisha. Discussing translation discrepancies, Islamic ethics, and the diverse narratives surrounding Muhammad's life and legacy.

In his lyrical and brilliant new book Who is Allah? (UNC Press, 2015), the legendary scholar of Islam Bruce B. Lawrence, Professor Emeritus of Religion at Duke University, wrestles with the question of Who is Allah? through a dazzling range of textual, aesthetic, and performative registers. Who is Allah? treats readers to a delectable buffet of the breadth and depth of Muslim spirituality. How do Muslims invoke, remember, define, and debate Allah, while seeking to live a life that accords with His norms and template of piety? That is the central question addressed in this book as Lawrence introduces readers to major facets of Muslim ritual life and intellectual traditions-both past and present. In our conversation, we talked about the idea of “performing Allah,” the intellectual history of the idea of Allah, Allah in the thought of the Muslim mystics Ibn ‘Arabi and Bawa Muhaiyuddin, the mobilization of Allah by Sayyid Qutb and Usama bin Laden, Allah online, and the Indian artist M.F Husain. Who is Allah? is a fascinating page turner that will make a great gift to family, friends, acquaintances and indeed strangers, and that should work splendidly in the context of classroom discussions on Muslim theology, Sufism, ritual practice, performance studies, and the fine arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies

Professor James Gelvin joins host Jonathan Judaken to discuss the Arab Uprisings, democratization in the Middle-East and Northern Africa, ISIS, al-Qaeda, terrorism, and America’s role imposing neo-liberal economic policies in the Middle East that have strongly shaped the political economy of the region. James Gelvin is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of California, Los Angeles. His most recent book is the revised and updated edition of The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2012). If you want to be informed about what’s going on in the Middle East today, this short, easy-to-read book is the best work out there. For more information on James Gelvin, you can click here to visit his UCLA website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/islamic-studies