The book, Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani: Life and legacy is an academic attempt to highlight the socio-political thoughts of al-Nabhani (1909-1977), an Islamic scholar, ideologue, thinker and one of the influential personalities of recent past who witnessed the major geo-political transformations of the twentieth century. The book is an important contribution in the academia and would be a valuable reference for researchers and academicians of the field. The book not only provides a biographical account of al-Nabhani but also deliberates on his practical orientations of his thought and his efforts to work for the betterment of the humanity as a whole.
Sayyid Qutb is widely considered the guiding intellectual of radical Islam, with a direct line connecting him to Osama bin Laden. But Qutb has too often been treated maliciously or reductively-"the Philosopher of Islamic Terror," as Paul Berman famously put it in the New York Times Magazine. James Toth offers an even-handed account of Sayyid Qutb and shows him to be a much more complex figure than the many one-dimensional portraits would have us believe. Qutb first gained notice as a novelist, literary critic, and poet but then turned to religious and political criticism aimed at the Egyptian government and Muslims he deemed insufficiently pious. After a two-year sojourn in the U.S., he returned to Egypt even more radicalized and joined the Muslim Brotherhood, eventually taking charge of its propaganda operation. When Brotherhood members were accused of assassinating Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the group was outlawed and Qutb imprisoned. He was executed in 1966, becoming the first martyr to the Islamist cause. Using an analytical approach that investigates without passing judgment, Toth traces the life and thought of Qutb, giving attention not only to his well-known Signposts on the Road, but also to his less-studied works like Social Justice in Islam and his 30-volume Qur'anic commentary, In the Shade of the Qur'an. Toth's aim is to give Qutb's ideas a fair hearing, to measure their impact, and to treat him like other intellectuals who inspire revolutions, however unpopular they may be. In offering a more nuanced account of Qutb, one that moves beyond the cartoonish depictions of him as the evil genius lurking behind today's terrorists, Sayyid Qutb deepens our understanding of a central figure of radical Islam and, indeed, our understanding of radical Islam itself.
The phenomenon of political Islam continues to dominate the political and social map of the Arab world, with the increasingly open struggle between ruling elites and Islamists becoming the main source of political instability in many states. This volume offers an in-depth analysis of the rise of Islamic and fundamentalist movements in the Middle East and North Africa. Through detailed case studies, the contributors examine the various manifestations of political Islam, highlighting differences across movements and evaluating the varying circumstances in which they arise. They also assess the influence of such movements on the emerging post?Cold War order in the region and consider questions of a general nature, such as Islamic state theories and the impact of Islamicism on international relations.
The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.
New Religious Movements tend to start their lives with a number of unequivocal statements, not only of a theological nature but also about the world and appropriate behaviours for the believer. Yet these apparently inalienable Truths and their interpretations frequently become revised, ’adjusted’ or selectively adopted by different believers. This book explores different ways in which, as NRMs develop, stagnate, fade away, or abruptly cease to exist, certain orthodoxies and practices have, for one reason or another, been dropped or radically altered. Sometimes such changes are adapted by only a section of the movement, resulting in schism. Of particular concern are processes that might lead to violent and/or anti-social behaviour. As part of the Ashgate/Inform series, and in the spirit of the Inform Seminars, this book approaches its topic from a wide range of perspectives. Contributors include academics, current and former members of NRMs, and members of ’cult-watching’ movements. All the contributions are of a scholarly rather than a polemic nature, and brought together by Eileen Barker, the founder of Inform.
In this comprehensive examination of the one of the world's most ancient societies, Talhami describes Egypt's quest for a sense of national identity and the factors that have affected the Egyptian identity. Generally polarized over the identity issue since the nineteenth century, Egyptians debated the significance of Sudanese bonds as a definer of Egypt's historic and national development before they debated the significance of Arab, particularly Palestinian, involvement. Nasser's rise to power, Talhami argues, amounted to an inevitable swing in the direction of pan-Arabism because of the strategic developments surrounding the rise of Israel. The author also examines Egypt's foreign policy in light of the identity question. The major conclusion of this study is that Egypt is destined to face northwards and reject isolationism because of strategic developments related to the rise of Israel. Economic and Arab leadership considerations will always impel Egypt to seek a larger role in the Arab world, but this cannot be done without sponsorship of the Palestinian issue. These conclusions challenge the accepted wisdom regarding the Camp David agreements. Those who believe that Egypt can find safety and security by linking itself with a great power while ignoring the historically-proven strategic relevance of the northeast region will find this book startling. Although the identity debate often becomes a tool of the practicing politician, the historian, the ideologue, and the military strategist, its outcome is most likely to be determined by historical events. Egypt was bound to search for a modern sense of identity. What makes this book unique is its use of the work of literary figures, historians and politicians to investigate the cumulative impact of the changes which occurred during the Sadat period. Talhami's work places the Camp David era against the historical background of the identity debate. The fact that this debate remains unresolved today is a measure of Egypt's uncertain future as a nation and as a political community. While the majority of Egyptians recognize the inevitability of Palestinian involvement, they do not agree on the best course of action. The Persian Gulf War and Egypt's decision to side with the United States in this inter-Arab dispute constitute yet another onslaught on the Palestinians and on Arab identity. Scholars focusing on the Arab world and on Middle Eastern history and politics will find this book provocative and essential reading.
Numerous studies have been done on Imam al-Ghzali (1058-1111) in almost all major languages. So much is the academic attention given to him, and deservedly so, that it is difficult to find any element of originality in a new study on him. Various aspects of his life and thought have yet to be adequately studied, one of them being his role in islah (Islamic reform). It is also true that the study of islah as a separate topic is somewhat new, and available literature on the subject is limited within the views and the achievements of a number of distinguished scholars in the modern times. This work attempts to discover part of the rich legacy of the reformers by introducing a pre-modern scholar as Imam al-Ghazali.
For the first time, Muslims are faced with a worldwide positivism which is working to use knowledge, the sciences and their discoveries and achievements in a manner which severs the relationship between the Creator, the created universe and man, thereby disregarding the world of the unseen and driving a wedge between science and values. Lacking even the most modest store of vital Islamic doctrine on the intellectual level, university students and researchers in the Islamic world are confronted with doctrines and philosophies which are presented to them together with a flimsy, miserable defense of Islam. There is not a single academic institution in the Islamic world in which Islamic thought is taught and in which the Islamic vision is given a deep-rooted foundation with the same force and persuasiveness with which Western ideas and the Western vision are taught to students in the West, in a coherent, comprehensive manner accompanied by seriousness and commitment on the part of all. The books argues that this approach is diametrically opposed to the Islamic perspective and that we must disengage human scientific achievement from positivistic philosophical premises and reemploy these sciences within a systematic epistemological framework based on divine revelation, conferring honor upon all forms of knowledge, as having been bestowed upon man by their Creator.
