Pub Date : 2022-08-16DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2112481
C. Tieszen
ʿAmmār al-Basṛīwas a theologian in the Church of the East (East-Syrian or ‘Nestorian’), operating from the city of Basra in the latter half of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries. He was the first Christian theologian to write a systematic theology in Arabic and among the first to respond in systematic form to Muslim theological reflection. He even engaged in theological debate with the leading Muslim intellectuals of his time. As such, he is an important figure in the field of Christian–Muslim encounter and the history of Christians writing and speaking in Arabic. Michel Hayek’s discovery and editions of two of ʿAmmār’s works appeared in in the late-1970s. Even so, ʿAmmār has received relatively little attention in scholarly discussion. Mark Beaumont is one scholar who is giving ʿAmmār more considered attention, regularly writing essays about him since 2003. For this reason, Beaumont is an adept commenter on ʿAmmār’s life and work and his most recent book, The Theology of ‘Ammār al-Basrī, is the first book-length study of this early-medieval theologian. In it, Beaumont offers commentary on the major theological themes that ʿAmmār discusses in two of his treatises: ‘The Book of the Proof concerning the Course of the Divine Economy’ and ‘The Book of Questions and Answers’. Following an introduction, which sketches the book’s overall makeup, Beaumont’s first chapter situates ʿAmmār in his historical and cultural context. Here, Beaumont discusses ʿAmmār as an East-Syrian theologian and the context of East-Syrians living under Muslim rule. Especially helpful in Chapter 1 is Beaumont’s treatment of East-Syrian Christological reflection as an ongoing discussion within a wider Christological context that included a variety of Christian traditions. This diversity in Christian theology helped to shape the ways in which a theologian like ʿAmmār laid out his own theology, attempting systematically to address the broad streams of Christian thought while also weaving them together according to a divine economy and in dialogue with other traditions. But it was not just Christian theological reflection with which ʿAmmār needed to interact. In Chapter 2, Beaumont takes up the first theological theme, which was ʿAmmār’s argument for one Creator. So many studies on aspects of Christian–Muslim relations focus on thought within Christian and Muslim traditions, neglecting other belief systems that were also present. For ʿAmmār, perhaps the most predominant religion of his context was not Islam, the religion of his rulers, but Zoroastrian belief, perhaps the majority religion in the region at the time. For this reason, ʿAmmār had to engage with Persian beliefs and Beaumont refreshingly brings focus to this feature of ʿAmmār’s work, wherein he sets God’s oneness against the dualism of Zoroaster. The remaining chapters follow the overall approach of Chapter 2, with a general discussion of a particular theological theme as treated by ʿAmmār and Beaumont’s
{"title":"The Theology of ‘Ammār al-Basrī: Commending Christianity within Islamic Culture","authors":"C. Tieszen","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2112481","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2112481","url":null,"abstract":"ʿAmmār al-Basṛīwas a theologian in the Church of the East (East-Syrian or ‘Nestorian’), operating from the city of Basra in the latter half of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries. He was the first Christian theologian to write a systematic theology in Arabic and among the first to respond in systematic form to Muslim theological reflection. He even engaged in theological debate with the leading Muslim intellectuals of his time. As such, he is an important figure in the field of Christian–Muslim encounter and the history of Christians writing and speaking in Arabic. Michel Hayek’s discovery and editions of two of ʿAmmār’s works appeared in in the late-1970s. Even so, ʿAmmār has received relatively little attention in scholarly discussion. Mark Beaumont is one scholar who is giving ʿAmmār more considered attention, regularly writing essays about him since 2003. For this reason, Beaumont is an adept commenter on ʿAmmār’s life and work and his most recent book, The Theology of ‘Ammār al-Basrī, is the first book-length study of this early-medieval theologian. In it, Beaumont offers commentary on the major theological themes that ʿAmmār discusses in two of his treatises: ‘The Book of the Proof concerning the Course of the Divine Economy’ and ‘The Book of Questions and Answers’. Following an introduction, which sketches the book’s overall makeup, Beaumont’s first chapter situates ʿAmmār in his historical and cultural context. Here, Beaumont discusses ʿAmmār as an East-Syrian theologian and the context of East-Syrians living under Muslim rule. Especially helpful in Chapter 1 is Beaumont’s treatment of East-Syrian Christological reflection as an ongoing discussion within a wider Christological context that included a variety of Christian traditions. This diversity in Christian theology helped to shape the ways in which a theologian like ʿAmmār laid out his own theology, attempting systematically to address the broad streams of Christian thought while also weaving them together according to a divine economy and in dialogue with other traditions. But it was not just Christian theological reflection with which ʿAmmār needed to interact. In Chapter 2, Beaumont takes up the first theological theme, which was ʿAmmār’s argument for one Creator. So many studies on aspects of Christian–Muslim relations focus on thought within Christian and Muslim traditions, neglecting other belief systems that were also present. For ʿAmmār, perhaps the most predominant religion of his context was not Islam, the religion of his rulers, but Zoroastrian belief, perhaps the majority religion in the region at the time. For this reason, ʿAmmār had to engage with Persian beliefs and Beaumont refreshingly brings focus to this feature of ʿAmmār’s work, wherein he sets God’s oneness against the dualism of Zoroaster. The remaining chapters follow the overall approach of Chapter 2, with a general discussion of a particular theological theme as treated by ʿAmmār and Beaumont’s","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"20 1","pages":"403 - 405"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84859771","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-26DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2143231
Adam Dodds
In this work, Stephen Shoemaker writes about an under-researched topic: a critical perspective on the Qur’an’s historical origin. He follows the historical-critical methodology of religious studies and biblical scholarship in order to untangle the thorny issues regarding its date, transmission and composition. His intention is to seek ‘to understand the world behind the text and how the text came to be in the first place’ (3). In the first two chapters, Shoemaker explains his rejection of the traditional narrative about the ʿUthmānic recension, and instead argues that it was ʿAbd al-Malik (d. 86/705) who, ‘with the assistance of al-Ḥajjāj, standardized the Qur’an in the unvarying form that has come down to us today’ (43). He envisages different regional codices of proto-Qur’ans, one of which was ʿUthmān’s, that were later collected, collated and edited under ʿAbd alMalik. In his argument, Shoemaker demonstrates fluency with contemporary scholarship, on which he builds, and he enlists witnesses from within and without the Islamic tradition with persuasive force. Chapter 3, on radio-carbon dating, explains the unreliability of this approach for establishing accurate time-frames. Chapter 4 concerns the Hijaz in Late Antiquity, and builds particularly on Patricia Crone’s Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam. Shoemaker contends that Mecca and Yathrib were economically insignificant and culturally isolated, thereby rejecting the belief, propounded by W. Montgomery Watt, that they were important hubs on a trade route. Furthermore, the audience of the Qur’an must have been educated and familiar with biblical and post-biblical traditions. This does not fit with the central Hijaz, which had no significant Christian population at all, thus indicating that the Qur’an’s origins lie elsewhere. Shoemaker examines the linguistic environment of the Qur’an in Chapter 5. He draws on studies of Arabian rock inscriptions and, in examining the so-called Hijazi dialect, locates its origin in the Levant.
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Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2107263
Adam Dodds
ABSTRACT Nicolai Sinai notes the importance of an intertextual study of the Qur’an, observing how the Qur’an adapts and retells biblical and post-biblical stories in line with its own theological concerns. This article investigates the theological adaptation in the Qur’an’s Adam narratives, extending and nuancing earlier qur’anic Adam research. These narratives are examined, noting their distinctive features. Next, a broader qur’anic anthropology is described, before an analysis of whether and how the qur’anic Adam narratives align with this broader qur’anic anthropology. The divergences between the biblical and qur’anic accounts of Adam are studied and three are examined in detail: human responsibility, khalīfa and imago Dei, and divine response. These are shown to have significant theological implications, which are discussed. These divergences are considered in the light of a broader qur’anic anthropology and the Qur’an’s own theological vision. The article shows that, regarding the Adam narratives, the Qur’an’s broader theological vision shapes its individual narratives in a way that contrasts with their biblical and post-biblical antecedents. The theological differences embedded in the biblical and qur’anic Adam stories are best interpreted as representative of two distinct theological visions.
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Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2096949
Christopher J. van der Krogt
were shown the Oriental manuscript collection of the Escorial. I personally appreciate this work as a rich source book that accords much space to historical context and detail, with a serious footnote apparatus that even includes the original Spanish quotes. Eloy Martín Corrales has been publishing on Spain’s (and in particular Catalunya’s) relations with North Africa for more than 35 years, and this book clearly brings together many threads of his work. It also does an excellent job in presenting the archival findings of other scholars from Spain who usually publish only in Spanish, Catalan or French. In this regard, the professional translation of this book’s manuscript into English, by Consuelo López-Morillas, must be lauded as a valuable contribution to the broader field. The index is unfortunately too sketchy to serve as a reliable tool for navigating this large book, but the 70-page bibliography presents a good overview of the fascinating work on the historical presence of Muslims in Spain that has been done there over the past decades. Less prominent in this synthesizing oeuvre is international research published in English; and Arabic and Ottoman sources are only used if they were available in Spanish translation. With these limitations in mind, this is a colourful guidebook to Spanish scholarship on the broader history of Christian–Muslim relations in Europe, and an invitation to collate more pieces of the overall picture.
{"title":"Incitement: Anwar al-Awlaki’s Western Jihad","authors":"Christopher J. van der Krogt","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2096949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2096949","url":null,"abstract":"were shown the Oriental manuscript collection of the Escorial. I personally appreciate this work as a rich source book that accords much space to historical context and detail, with a serious footnote apparatus that even includes the original Spanish quotes. Eloy Martín Corrales has been publishing on Spain’s (and in particular Catalunya’s) relations with North Africa for more than 35 years, and this book clearly brings together many threads of his work. It also does an excellent job in presenting the archival findings of other scholars from Spain who usually publish only in Spanish, Catalan or French. In this regard, the professional translation of this book’s manuscript into English, by Consuelo López-Morillas, must be lauded as a valuable contribution to the broader field. The index is unfortunately too sketchy to serve as a reliable tool for navigating this large book, but the 70-page bibliography presents a good overview of the fascinating work on the historical presence of Muslims in Spain that has been done there over the past decades. Less prominent in this synthesizing oeuvre is international research published in English; and Arabic and Ottoman sources are only used if they were available in Spanish translation. With these limitations in mind, this is a colourful guidebook to Spanish scholarship on the broader history of Christian–Muslim relations in Europe, and an invitation to collate more pieces of the overall picture.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"25 1","pages":"326 - 328"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74994463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2093502
Christopher Anzalone
Muslim views on violence, and specifically conceptions of jihad (al-jihād fī sabīl Allah; ‘striving for the sake/in the path of God’), continue to be a topic of debate amongst scholars and policymakers, with the focus heating up following the 9/11 al-Qaeda hijackings and suicide attacks on the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001. Scholarship over the past couple of decades has shed more light on the factors and dynamics at play in the Late Antique milieu in which Islam emerged and expanded, and on how these may have influenced the development of the new monotheistic faith. In Violence in Early Islam, Marco Demichelis argues against claims that violence has been an essential part of Islam since its founding, exploring how the first Muslims were influenced by neighbouring civilizations including the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. The book draws upon various types of primary sources including historical writings of both the first Muslims and their non-Muslim contemporaries, archaeological and numismatic sources (through the use of studies by specialists in these fields), and early Islamic pietistic works and literature on Hadith and war-and-peace. Demichelis builds on the arguments put forward by Fred Donner that the early Muslim community did not see itself as exclusivist but rather as a more ecumenical umbrella for monotheistic believers – this inclusivity persuading disaffected Arab Christian tribes living in Byzantine territories in Syria and Palestine to side with the emerging Arab-Muslim political order against the stagnant Byzantine and Sasanian imperial systems. Muslim historical writings from the eighth century onward, such as those by AbūMikhnaf (d. 774) and Ibn Isḥāq (d. circa 767), significantly influenced later Islamic historical writing by introducing a ‘“politicalreligious” understanding’ (46) of the Arab conquests of the seventh century. This frame, which Demichelis argues is not based on concrete historical or archaeological evidentiary foundations, was subsequently adopted by later Muslim historians including Ibn Hishām (d. 835), al-Wāqidī (d. circa 823), Ibn Saʿd (d. 845), al-Balādhurī (d. 892) and al-Ṭabarī (d. 923). Contrary to what become the dominant Islamic narrative of these later historians, there was a significant degree of ‘political-religious continuity in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine’ (59) following the Arab conquest of these territories. The shift by Muslims towards the implementation of a more exclusivist form of religious identity did not take place until the late seventh and early eighth centuries under the Umayyad caliphs, such as ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (d. 705; r. 685–705), who began building a more distinct Islamic socio-political order (68, 72). Jihad as a professional form of warfare and military activity – differing from the individualized ascetic understandings of jihad held by early Muslim frontier warriors such as ʿAbdullāh ibn al-Mubārak (d. 797) – began to
穆斯林对暴力的看法,特别是对圣战的概念(al-jihād f ' sabub l Allah;“为了上帝的缘故/在上帝的道路上奋斗”),继续成为学者和政策制定者之间争论的话题,随着2001年9/11基地组织劫机和对弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿五角大楼和纽约市世贸中心的自杀式袭击,焦点升温。在过去的几十年里,学者们对伊斯兰教在古代晚期出现和扩张的环境中发挥作用的因素和动力,以及这些因素和动力如何影响了新的一神论信仰的发展,有了更多的了解。在《早期伊斯兰教的暴力》一书中,马可·德米凯利斯反驳了暴力自伊斯兰教建立以来一直是伊斯兰教重要组成部分的说法,探讨了第一批穆斯林是如何受到包括拜占庭帝国和萨珊帝国在内的邻近文明的影响的。这本书借鉴了各种类型的主要来源,包括第一批穆斯林和他们的非穆斯林同时代人的历史著作,考古和钱币来源(通过使用这些领域的专家研究),以及早期伊斯兰教的虔诚作品和关于圣训和战争与和平的文学作品。Demichelis建立在Fred Donner提出的论点上,即早期的穆斯林社区并不认为自己是排他性的,而是一神教信徒的一个更普世的保护伞——这种包容性说服了生活在叙利亚和巴勒斯坦拜占庭领土上的不满的阿拉伯基督教部落站在新兴的阿拉伯-穆斯林政治秩序一边,反对停滞不前的拜占庭和萨珊帝国体系。8世纪以后的穆斯林历史著作,如AbūMikhnaf(公元774年)和伊本Isḥāq(大约公元767年)的著作,通过引入对7世纪阿拉伯征服的“政治宗教”理解(46),对后来的伊斯兰历史著作产生了重大影响。Demichelis认为这个框架并不是基于具体的历史或考古证据基础,后来的穆斯林历史学家包括伊本Hishām(公元835年),al-Wāqidī(大约公元823年),伊本萨伊德(公元845年),al-Balādhurī(公元892年)和al-Ṭabarī(公元923年)都采用了这个框架。与后来这些历史学家主导的伊斯兰叙事相反,在阿拉伯征服这些领土之后,“伊拉克、叙利亚和巴勒斯坦的政治-宗教连续性”在很大程度上是存在的。直到七世纪末和八世纪初,在乌马亚哈里发(如al- Abd al-Malik ibn Marwān(公元705年)的统治下,穆斯林才开始转向一种更排外的宗教身份形式;(约685-705),他开始建立一个更独特的伊斯兰社会政治秩序(68,72)。圣战作为一种专业的战争和军事活动形式——不同于早期穆斯林前线战士如伊·Abdullāh伊本al-Mubārak(公元797年)对圣战的个人禁欲主义理解——开始出现在逊尼派法学家的法律著作中,包括al-Shāfi伊·al-Mubārak(公元820年),并在后来的学者如al-Māwardī(公元1058年)的著作中得到进一步发展。德米切利斯认为,圣战的“封圣”直到八世纪末和九世纪初才发生,这是一个受到禁欲主义者ghāzīwarrior和驻扎在穆斯林和非穆斯林敌人的土地之间边界(thughūr)的突袭者(ribāt)的理想化形象的高度影响的过程。穆斯林的法律和政治观点
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Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2096761
Brynjar Lia, Mathilde Becker Aarseth
ABSTRACT In contrast to common assumptions, jihadist movements’ view of Christian minorities in the Middle East has been neither unambiguous nor static. It changes according to the overall political conflict in the region and is characterized by specific, unpredictable struggles that arise locally. By studying the official statements of al-Qaeda and ISIS, their ideological and strategic writings and their conduct vis-à-vis indigenous Christians in the Middle East, this article seeks to paint a more complex picture of how jihadists perceive this minority. One key finding is that the Christians of the Middle East and the foreign Christian ‘Crusaders’ are not a single phenomenon or foe in the conceptual worldview of jihadists. Second, rather than seeking to eradicate Christians completely, jihadist movements wish primarily to demonstrate the dominance of Muslims and their role as legitimate rulers over Christian minorities. Third, terrorist attacks on Christians and churches have been devastating and deadly, especially in Egypt and Iraq, but local Christian minorities are not a top priority target for most jihadist groups.
{"title":"Crusader Hirelings or Loyal Subjects? Evolving Jihadist Perspectives on Christian Minorities in the Middle East","authors":"Brynjar Lia, Mathilde Becker Aarseth","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2096761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2096761","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In contrast to common assumptions, jihadist movements’ view of Christian minorities in the Middle East has been neither unambiguous nor static. It changes according to the overall political conflict in the region and is characterized by specific, unpredictable struggles that arise locally. By studying the official statements of al-Qaeda and ISIS, their ideological and strategic writings and their conduct vis-à-vis indigenous Christians in the Middle East, this article seeks to paint a more complex picture of how jihadists perceive this minority. One key finding is that the Christians of the Middle East and the foreign Christian ‘Crusaders’ are not a single phenomenon or foe in the conceptual worldview of jihadists. Second, rather than seeking to eradicate Christians completely, jihadist movements wish primarily to demonstrate the dominance of Muslims and their role as legitimate rulers over Christian minorities. Third, terrorist attacks on Christians and churches have been devastating and deadly, especially in Egypt and Iraq, but local Christian minorities are not a top priority target for most jihadist groups.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"12 1","pages":"255 - 280"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88191533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2121494
Ines Aščerić-Todd
ABSTRACT Attempts to explain the existence of a large indigenous Muslim population in Bosnia have resulted in two main academic trends, both subject to politicized and biased representations of the area’s history. The first, originating mostly in Serbian nationalist historiography, claims that Bosnian Christians were forcibly converted and has been used since the nineteenth century to galvanize support for Serbian expansionist ambitions in the shape of its ‘Greater Serbia’ project. The second and long the most popular view holds that the majority of Bosnian Christians who converted to Islam belonged to a heretical ‘Bogomil’ institution of the Bosnian Church. Although this theory has been questioned over time, one of its central premises – that there are similarities between the theology and practice of Bogomilism and those of Islam – has never undergone any scrutiny. This article examines both this crucial premise of the Bogomil Theory, and the theory’s provenance, and argues that, just as we should dismiss the Serbian (and Croatian) nationalist theories on the subject, we should also recognize the Bogomil Theory as a mythicized account of history, motived by both the personal prejudice and imperialist-colonialist agendas of its nineteenth-century authors.
{"title":"Patarenes, Protestants and Islam in Bosnia: Deconstructing the Bogomil Theory","authors":"Ines Aščerić-Todd","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2121494","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2121494","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Attempts to explain the existence of a large indigenous Muslim population in Bosnia have resulted in two main academic trends, both subject to politicized and biased representations of the area’s history. The first, originating mostly in Serbian nationalist historiography, claims that Bosnian Christians were forcibly converted and has been used since the nineteenth century to galvanize support for Serbian expansionist ambitions in the shape of its ‘Greater Serbia’ project. The second and long the most popular view holds that the majority of Bosnian Christians who converted to Islam belonged to a heretical ‘Bogomil’ institution of the Bosnian Church. Although this theory has been questioned over time, one of its central premises – that there are similarities between the theology and practice of Bogomilism and those of Islam – has never undergone any scrutiny. This article examines both this crucial premise of the Bogomil Theory, and the theory’s provenance, and argues that, just as we should dismiss the Serbian (and Croatian) nationalist theories on the subject, we should also recognize the Bogomil Theory as a mythicized account of history, motived by both the personal prejudice and imperialist-colonialist agendas of its nineteenth-century authors.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"34 1","pages":"213 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89548365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-07-03DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2096356
M. Kemper
state and, later, by the expansionist imperial interests of the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid Caliphates. To bolster his argument, Demichelis notes in Chapter 4 that the earliest non-Islamic chronicles that mention significant numbers of ‘an early kind of mujāhidīn’ (94) do not appear until the twelfth century and are absent from earlier non-Islamic sources as well as from earlier ninthand tenth-century Islamic sources, including the history of al-Ṭabarī. This calls into question the common assumption that Islam has from its founding been closely linked to a belief in sanctified forms of violence. Violence in Early Islam includes extensive textual analysis of both historical documents and qur’anic verses dealing with Muslim conceptions of violence and warfare. Demichelis also interacts deeply with the scholarship on early Islam, Islamic origins and Islam and violence. The book’s written style is dense and the author often presents an avalanche of information, making the reader’s task of following the different lines of thought and argumentation needlessly difficult. Despite these issues, this volume is a welcome addition to the historiographical literature on early Islam, its evolution and the development of Islamic thought on violence, conflict and war.
{"title":"Muslims in Spain, 1492-1814: Living and Negotiating in the Land of the Infidel","authors":"M. Kemper","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2096356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2096356","url":null,"abstract":"state and, later, by the expansionist imperial interests of the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid Caliphates. To bolster his argument, Demichelis notes in Chapter 4 that the earliest non-Islamic chronicles that mention significant numbers of ‘an early kind of mujāhidīn’ (94) do not appear until the twelfth century and are absent from earlier non-Islamic sources as well as from earlier ninthand tenth-century Islamic sources, including the history of al-Ṭabarī. This calls into question the common assumption that Islam has from its founding been closely linked to a belief in sanctified forms of violence. Violence in Early Islam includes extensive textual analysis of both historical documents and qur’anic verses dealing with Muslim conceptions of violence and warfare. Demichelis also interacts deeply with the scholarship on early Islam, Islamic origins and Islam and violence. The book’s written style is dense and the author often presents an avalanche of information, making the reader’s task of following the different lines of thought and argumentation needlessly difficult. Despite these issues, this volume is a welcome addition to the historiographical literature on early Islam, its evolution and the development of Islamic thought on violence, conflict and war.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"5 1","pages":"324 - 326"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81412515","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2072061
Rachel Woodlock
Faruque takes seriously the descriptive self and its regimes of power over the normative self but refuses to reduce the self thereto; this is a necessary intervention in modern, Western thought. The light criticism here is only that Faruque sometimes constructs his normative self in a way that reads as private and individualistic even as he asserts that it is compassionate and relational. The socio-cultural self suggests that the normative self should not only care for others in a one-on-one relationship, but also work to overturn structures of oppression and construct structures of liberation so that more and more people can pursue the philosophicospiritual ideal freely and with fewer impediments. Notwithstanding, the constructive and critical insights Faruque brings to the Western philosophical traditions from the pre-modern, early modern and modern Islamic philosophical traditions are tremendous. For this, he is to be praised; his book advances cross-cultural philosophical dialogue, compels Western academic departments of philosophy, sociology, cognitive science and so on to take seriously insights from outside the Euro-American traditions, and challenges all of us to be critical of discourses, movements and practices that presume that humans can be reduced to biology, society, culture or cognitive experiences.
{"title":"Minority Religions under Irish Law: Islam in National and International Context","authors":"Rachel Woodlock","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2072061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2072061","url":null,"abstract":"Faruque takes seriously the descriptive self and its regimes of power over the normative self but refuses to reduce the self thereto; this is a necessary intervention in modern, Western thought. The light criticism here is only that Faruque sometimes constructs his normative self in a way that reads as private and individualistic even as he asserts that it is compassionate and relational. The socio-cultural self suggests that the normative self should not only care for others in a one-on-one relationship, but also work to overturn structures of oppression and construct structures of liberation so that more and more people can pursue the philosophicospiritual ideal freely and with fewer impediments. Notwithstanding, the constructive and critical insights Faruque brings to the Western philosophical traditions from the pre-modern, early modern and modern Islamic philosophical traditions are tremendous. For this, he is to be praised; his book advances cross-cultural philosophical dialogue, compels Western academic departments of philosophy, sociology, cognitive science and so on to take seriously insights from outside the Euro-American traditions, and challenges all of us to be critical of discourses, movements and practices that presume that humans can be reduced to biology, society, culture or cognitive experiences.","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"51 Suppl 53 1","pages":"320 - 322"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78787812","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-06DOI: 10.1080/09596410.2022.2069939
A. M. Oaks Takács
{"title":"Sculpting the Self: Islam, Selfhood, and Human Flourishing","authors":"A. M. Oaks Takács","doi":"10.1080/09596410.2022.2069939","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2022.2069939","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45172,"journal":{"name":"Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations","volume":"1 1","pages":"313 - 320"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79871175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}