Spanning some twenty-five years of research and writing, the essays in this volume fall into two categories: historiography and Indo-Islamic civilization. The former deals with how historians structure and answer the questions they choose to ask of the past, the latter covers case studies of particular historical communities in India.
The essays in this volume, written over the course of the last quarter century, are intended to contribute to understanding the role that Islamic symbols and identities have come to play in Northern India and, since 1947, in Pakistan. Above all these essays offer a challenge to current negative stereotypes of the Muslim faith, demonstrating that the religion is not characterised by political militancy nor dominated by static traditionalism.
Bringing together a diverse number of prominent and emerging scholars, from backgrounds in political science, philosophy and religious studies, this book offers novel examinations of the philosophical ideas that laid at the heart of Iqbal's own.
In this illuminating collection of esays, Ainslie Embree examines the complex interplay of indigenous Indian culture with Islamic and western civilizations. He argues that civilization is not a fixed residue handed down from the past, but rather an enduring structure with adaptive mechanisms that permit it to be both a historically determined and continuously creative force.
Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: The scholars are the heirs of the Prophets, for the Prophets did not leave behind dinars or dirhams, rather they left behind knowledge, so whoever gains knowledge has gained great good fortune. Hadith by al-Tirmidhi, classed as Sahih by al-Albaani Islam has become synonymous with global political jihad today, and Islamic spirituality is often mistaken for orthodoxy. Then how do young Muslims hold on to their faith? How do they open the door for others to appreciate the true beauty of their religion?In his attempt to understand Islam in its true form, social activist and entrepreneur Raamish Siddiqui brings together the most thought-provoking works of eminent scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. Through the Maulana's writing, Raamish discovers that it was Prophet Muhammad who first lay the foundations of universal secular education, that Islam believes in gender equality and allegiance to the nation one is born in, and that the Quran makes it obligatory for its adherents to not engage in violence except in self-defence. In a deeply introspective introduction, Raamish talks about his own dilemmas after 9/11 and how he transformed as a person when he learnt to differentiate between the true spirit of Islam and its misappropriation by those who have politicized it. Deeply insightful and, in some ways, provocative, this is a vitally important guide to the most misunderstood religion of modern times.
Light upon Light: Essays in Islamic Thought and History in Honor of Gerhard Bowering brings together studies that explore the richness of Islamic intellectual life in the pre-modern period. Leading scholars around the world present nineteen studies that explore diverse areas of Islamic Studies, in honor of a renowned scholar and teacher: Professor Dr. Gerhard Bowering (Yale University). The volume includes contributions in four main areas: (1) Quran and Early Islam; (2) Sufism, Shiʿism, and Esotericism; (3) Philosophy; (4) Literature and Culture. These areas reflect the enormous breadth of Professor Bowering’s contributions to the field over a lifetime of scholarship, teaching, and mentoring. Contributors: Hussein Ali Abdulsater, Mushegh Asatryan, Shahzad Bashir, Jonathan Brockopp, Yousef Casewit, Jamal Elias, Janis Esots, Li Guo, Matthew Ingalls, Tariq Jaffer, Mareike Koertner, Joseph Lumbard, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Mahan Mirza, Bilal Orfali, Gabriel Reynolds, Nada Saab, Amina Steinfels & Alexander Treiger.
Over the past few decades, a new form of Orientalism has been developing. As exemplified by Elie Kedourie and Bernard Lewis, it points to Islam as the West's archenemy. The rise of political Islam and its opposition to Western domination of the Islamic world are seen as evidence of a deep, abiding hatred of all things Western. Accordingly, the new Orientalists call for thorough reforms, among them regime changes, wars, and the imposition of 'democracy' on Islamic societies. They warn that if the West shrinks from this challenge, the Islamists will surely gain power and destroy the West. The essays in this book "written after 9-11" dispute the new Orientalist presumption of an unchanging Islam, opposed to "Western" values and incapable of adapting to the modern world. The not-so-hidden objective of the new Orientalism is to promote acceptance of the US and Israel's imperialist push into the Islamic world as both a security imperative and a civilizing mission. Alam argues that the new Orientalists claim of a categorical split between Islam and the West is based on a biased, inaccurate interpretation of history. While recognizing the political and economic failings of the Islamic world, Alam shows that they are legacies of two centuries of Western imperialism and are shared by all regions at the periphery of the prevailing global capitalism. If the Islamic world lags behind China and India, it is because of two factors that have given a new edge to Western involvement in West Asia and North Africa: oil and Zionism. In Alam's view, Israel is a powerful destabilizing force in the region, whose survival depends upon turning the Western-Islamic conflict into a hot war. Not surprisingly, many of the new Orientalists are strong partisans of Israel.
Peter Lamborn Wilson proposes a set of heresies, a culture of resistance, that dispels the false image of Islam as monolithic, puritan, and two-dimensional. Here is the story of the African-American noble Drew Ali, the founder of “Black Islam” in this country, and of the violent end of his struggle for “love, truth, peace, freedom, and justice.” Another essay deals with Satan and “Satanism” in Esoteric Islam; and another offers a scathing critique of “Authority” and sexual misery in modern Puritanist Islam. “The Anti-caliph” evokes a hot mix of Ibn Arabi’s tantric mysticism and the revolutionary teachings of the “Assassins.” The title essay, “Sacred Drift,” roves through the history and poetics of Sufi travel, from Ibn Khaldun to Rimbaud in Abyssinia to the Situationists. A “Romantic” view of Islam is taken to radical extremes; the exotic may not be “True,” but it’s certainly a relief from academic propaganda and the obscene banality of simulation. "This is my brand of Islam: insurrectionary, elegant, dangerous, suffused with light – a search for poetic facts, a donation from and to the tradition of spiritual anarchy." —Hakim Bey "Peter Lamborn Wilson, in his book Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam, offers an interesting window into the early evolution of Islamic ideas among African Americans." —Abbas Milani, New Republic Peter Lamborn Wilson lives in New York and works for Semiotext(e) magazine, Pacifica Radio, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. A long decade in the Orient (1968-1981) inspires his writing, including The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry and Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy. He also investigates Celtic psychoactive plants in his book Ploughing the Clouds which is also published by City Lights Publishers.
