This volume explores the two themes of equity in employment for Muslim women, and the identity and aspirations of Muslim youth in an age of Islamophobia in Western countries through conceptual and empirical studies of employment discrimination and alienation in the UK and the Netherlands. To these accounts are added a worldwide perspective on how women (and especially ethnic minority and Muslim women) experience, and try to overcome ethno-religious discrimination in entry to employment. The themes of Muslim women and youth struggling to survive are illustrated by accounts of teachers from Gaza who are providing ‘alternative families’ for children traumatised and orphaned through Israeli attacks. The idea of peaceful resistance, and Islamic patience in the face of persecution is developed throughout the book, and applied in a variety of settings.
This book integrates humanist approaches in enabling both spiritual growth and social science knowledge in advocating for the emancipation of exploited women, children and youth, based on critical realism. Through an autoethnographic account of the first author’s journey from being a secular Jew, through Anglicanism, to Quakerism and then Islam, a pacifist-based social science methodology is developed. This approach describes attempts to understand and liberate sexually exploited youths in Bangladesh; exploited women and girls in Pakistan; and struggling women in Gaza, Palestine. The model attempts to integrate moral goals of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in seeking peaceful co-operation. Secular humanism is added, creating a research model which seeks the enhancement of human welfare through the universal ethic of the social contract, in which humans and their welfare are both interesting and exciting. A review of research on child sexual exploitation elaborates the model of child-centred humanism.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent “war on terror,” growing up Muslim in the U.S. has become a far more challenging task for young people. They must contend with popular cultural representations of Muslim-men-as-terrorists and Muslim-women-as-oppressed, the suspicious gaze of peers, teachers, and strangers, and police, and the fierce embodiment of fears in their homes. With great attention to quantitative and qualitative detail, the authors provide heartbreaking and funny stories of discrimination and resistance, delivering hard to ignore statistical evidence of moral exclusion for young people whose lives have been situated on the intimate fault lines of global conflict, and who carry international crises in their backpacks and in their souls. The volume offers a critical conceptual framework to aid in understanding Muslim American identity formation processes, a framework which can also be applied to other groups of marginalized and immigrant youth. In addition, through their innovative data analytic methods that creatively mix youth drawings, intensive individual interviews, focused group discussions, and culturally sensitive survey items, the authors provide an antidote to “qualitative vs. quantitative” arguments that have unnecessarily captured much time and energy in psychology and other behavioral sciences. Muslim American Youth provides a much-needed road map for those seeking to understand how Muslim youth and other groups of immigrant youth negotiate their identities as Americans.
Now in its third edition, this is the most comprehensive work available on the rich variety of paths available to today's spiritual seekers. More than an academic reference, it explores how religions can collaborate to help the world. Essays exploring the realm of building an interfaith community add to the book's detailed portraits of the major religious traditions. The Sourcebook also contains essays on spiritual practices as diverse as theosophy, wicca, and indigenous religions. This revised edition of the Sourcebook offers an unparalleled look at where spirituality is headed in the coming millennium.
Turkey has leapt to international prominence as an economic and political powerhouse under its elected Muslim government, and is looked on by many as a model for other Muslim countries in the wake of the Arab Spring. In this book, Jenny White reveals how Turkish national identity and the meanings of Islam and secularism have undergone radical changes in today's Turkey, and asks whether the Turkish model should be viewed as a success story or a cautionary tale. This provocative book traces how Muslim nationalists blur the line between the secular and the Islamic, supporting globalization and political liberalism, yet remaining mired in authoritarianism, intolerance, and cultural norms hostile to minorities and women. In a new afterword, White analyzes the latest political developments, particularly the mass protests surrounding Gezi Park, their impact on Turkish political culture, and what they mean for the future.
In the face of Islam's own internal struggles, it is not easy to see who we should support and how. This report provides detailed descriptions of subgroups, their stands on various issues, and what those stands may mean for the West. Since the outcomes can matter greatly to international community, that community might wish to influence them by providing support to appropriate actors. The author recommends a mixed approach of providing specific types of support to those who can influence the outcomes in desirable ways.
This book investigates the ways in which the war on terror has transformed the postcolonial state in Africa. Taking American intervention in Islamic education in Uganda as the entry point, the book demonstrates how state control over Islamic truth production and everyday Muslim life has increased. During the colonial period, the Muslims in Uganda were governed in two ways: partly as lesser citizens within the Christian-dominated civil sphere and partly as members of a distinct Muslim domain. In this domain, a local system of Islamic education developed with a degree of autonomy that reflected the limits of the colonial state in shaping the Muslim subject. In the subsequent postcolonial period, systems of patronage and clientalistic networks dominated, and Muslim leaders were co-opted by the state, but without much real interference in the day-to-day lives of ordinary Muslims. However, as part of the war on terror, the US State Department seeks to bring the mechanisms of Islamic truth production, especially the madrasa, under direct state control and civil society scrutiny. This book argues that the "Muslim domain as a separate entity is coming to an end as it is being absorbed into the civil sphere, unifying the state’s domination of society." The book also analyzes local Ugandan Muslim initiatives to modernise and contextualize their own education and religion and how these initiatives are shaped by and transcend the dominant power. A thorough exploration of US foreign policy and Islamic education, this book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Political Studies, African Studies and Religious Studies.
A classic, pioneering account of the lives of women in Islamic history, republished for a new generation This pioneering study of the social and political lives of Muslim women has shaped a whole generation of scholarship. In it, Leila Ahmed explores the historical roots of contemporary debates, ambitiously surveying Islamic discourse on women from Arabia during the period in which Islam was founded to Iraq during the classical age to Egypt during the modern era. The book is now reissued as a Veritas paperback, with a new foreword by Kecia Ali situating the text in its scholarly context and explaining its enduring influence. “Ahmed’s book is a serious and independent-minded analysis of its subject, the best-informed, most sympathetic and reliable one that exists today.”—Edward W. Said “Destined to become a classic. . . . It gives [Muslim women] back our rightful place, at the center of our histories.”—Rana Kabbani, The Guardian
This book arises out of a recognition that student affairs professionals have little preparation or guidance in dealing with matters of spirituality, religion, secularity, and interfaith work at a time of greater diversity in students’ beliefs and, from a broad recognition that there is a need to engage with this aspect of student life. For those who don’t know how to begin and may be nervous about tackling a topic that has the potential to lead to heated disagreements, this book provides the resources and practical guidance to undertake this work.With the aim of providing student affairs practitioners and faculty with the tools they need to increase their comfort level and enable their ability to engage in discussions about belief both in and out of the classroom, the contributors provide foundational knowledge, concrete teaching ideas, sample activities, and case studies that can be used in a variety of settings. This book serves multiple audiences in student affairs by providing teaching ideas for practitioners who want to include a session or two about interfaith in their programs as well as ideas for student affairs faculty who may be teaching one session on this topic or a whole course. The book is divided into four sections. The first offers context, provides the findings of research, and asks readers to reflect on the framework they use to embark on this work, whether a social justice framework that aims to highlight issues of power and privilege or an interfaith cooperation framework that aims to create religious pluralism. Part Two provides concrete ideas for creating courses, activities, events, and programs focused on spirituality, religion, secularity, and interfaith engagement, as well as ideas for incorporating these topics into courses typically offered in student affairs preparation programs. Part Three presents case studies to engage students, practitioners, and faculty in thinking about campus situations related to religious diversity. Part Four provides some basic information about a variety of religions and worldviews held by college students.
The 1979 revolution fundamentally altered Iran’s political landscape as a generation of inexperienced clerics who did not hail from the ranks of the upper class—and were not tainted by association with the old regime—came to power. The actions and intentions of these truculent new leaders and their lay allies caused major international concern. Meanwhile, Iran’s domestic and foreign policy and its nuclear program have loomed large in daily news coverage. Despite global consternation, however, our knowledge about Iran’s political elite remains skeletal. Nearly four decades after the clergy became the state elite par excellence, there has been no empirical study of the recruitment, composition, and circulation of the Iranian ruling members after 1979. Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook provides the most comprehensive collection of data on political life in postrevolutionary Iran, including coverage of 36 national elections, more than 400 legal and outlawed political organizations, and family ties among the elite. It provides biographical sketches of more than 2,300 political personalities ranging from cabinet ministers and parliament deputies to clerical, judicial, and military leaders, much of this information previously unavailable in English. Providing a cartography of the complex structure of power in postrevolutionary Iran, this volume offers a window not only into the immediate years before and after the Iranian Revolution but also into what has happened during the last four turbulent decades. This volume and the data it contains will be invaluable to policymakers, researchers, and scholars of the Middle East alike.
