Drawing on the work of Hegel, this book proposes a framework for understanding modernity in the Muslim world and analyzes the discourse of prominent Muslim thinkers and political leaders. Chapter by chapter, the book undertakes a close textual analysis of the works of Mohammad Iqbal, Abul Ala Maududi , Sayyid Qutb , Fatima Mernissi, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, Mohammad Mojtaehd Shabestari, Mohammad Khatami, Seyyed Hussein Nasr and Mohamad Arkoun, drawing conclusions about contemporary Islamic thought with reference to some of the most significant markers of modernity.
Drawing on the work of Hegel, this book proposes a framework for understanding modernity in the Muslim world and analyzes the discourse of prominent Muslim thinkers and political leaders. Chapter by chapter, the book undertakes a close textual analysis of the works of Mohammad Iqbal, Abul Ala Maududi , Sayyid Qutb , Fatima Mernissi, Mehdi Haeri Yazdi, Mohammad Mojtaehd Shabestari, Mohammad Khatami, Seyyed Hussein Nasr and Mohamad Arkoun, drawing conclusions about contemporary Islamic thought with reference to some of the most significant markers of modernity.
Interrogating the development and conceptual framework of economic thought in the Islamic tradition pertaining to ethical, philosophical, and theological ideas, this book provides a critique of modern Islamic economics as a hybrid economic system. From the outset, Sami Al-Daghistani is concerned with the polyvalent methodology of studying the phenomenon of Islamic economic thought as a human science in that it nurtures a complex plentitude of meanings and interpretations associated with the moral self. By studying legal scholars, theologians, and Sufis in the classical period, Al-Daghistani looks at economic thought in the context of Sharī'a's moral law. Alongside critiquing modern developments of Islamic economics, he puts forward an idea for a plural epistemology of Islam's moral economy, which advocates for a multifaceted hermeneutical reading of the subject in light of a moral law, embedded in a particular cosmology of human relationality, metaphysical intelligibility, and economic subjectivity.
In Mapping the Role of Intellectuals in Iranian Modern and Contemporary History, Jahanbegloo and contributors examine the role of Iranian intellectuals in the history of Iranian modernity. They trace the contributions of intellectuals in the construction of national identity and the Iranian democratic debate, analyzing how intellectuals balanced indebtedness to the West with the issue of national identity in Iran. Recognizing how intellectual elites became beholden to political powers, the contributors demonstrate the trend that intellectuals often opted for cultural dissent rather than ideological politics.
The essays in this volume on the subject of equality are the work of scholars at Bard College and West Point. Their research falls within the areas of history, religion, legal theory, social science, ethics and philosophy. The regions covered include the Middle and Far East, Europe, and America; the time periods studied are both contemporary and historical. Each essay is a well-detailed exploration which assumes the reader has no prior acquaintance with the topic. Together, the studies reveal both conflicting standards of equality as well as patterns of pernicious inequality. In an ideal world, equality and inequality among humans would vary in acceptable proportion, increase of the one ensuring decrease of the other. Unfortunately, as the studies illustrate, any such expectation of progress in the real world is almost routinely thwarted. Despite the wide variety of topics, a common thread binds these essays. Human nature seems to harbor a moral deficiency lying deeper than any written laws and those traditional customs which promote inequality and breed injustice. The fault is prominent in those who champion unjust laws or who willingly enforce discrimination but it is no less active in the silent many who condone the practice. The essays reveal the same persistent and unappealing trait which social groups from the remote past to the present manifest in various ways: blind determination to perpetuate whatever advantages one group believes it enjoys over another, convinced that its own members are more equal than theirs. Being made unequal, the others too easily become targets who are considered less worthy, sometimes even less human.
Chiara Bottici’s influential work on imaginal politics has provided a rich theoretical framework and incisive critical analysis with which to engage the contemporary world. Rethinking the image as a pictorial space of political activity located between the poles of the creative imagination of the self and social imaginary significations of the social collective, her work has provided a critical new resource not only in the academy, but for activists as well. This collection of essays by leading scholars debates Bottici’s account of imaginal politics from inter-disciplinary perspectives, ranging from critical theory and political philosophy, to psychoanalysis, and sociology. It provides the first systematic and interdisciplinary engagement with the imaginal field. The book is a must-read for all scholars interested in debates on the political, social transformation, social imaginaries, and the imagination, and will appeal to researchers and graduate students across a wide variety of disciplines as well as activists and politically-engaged readers.
Sculpting the Self addresses “what it means to be human” in a secular, post-Enlightenment world by exploring notions of self and subjectivity in Islamic and non-Islamic philosophical and mystical thought. Alongside detailed analyses of three major Islamic thinkers (Mullā Ṣadrā, Shāh Walī Allāh, and Muhammad Iqbal), this study also situates their writings on selfhood within the wider constellation of related discussions in late modern and contemporary thought, engaging the seminal theoretical insights on the self by William James, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michel Foucault. This allows the book to develop its inquiry within a spectrum theory of selfhood, incorporating bio-physiological, socio-cultural, and ethico-spiritual modes of discourse and meaning-construction. Weaving together insights from several disciplines such as religious studies, philosophy, anthropology, critical theory, and neuroscience, and arguing against views that narrowly restrict the self to a set of cognitive functions and abilities, this study proposes a multidimensional account of the self that offers new options for addressing central issues in the contemporary world, including spirituality, human flourishing, and meaning in life. This is the first book-length treatment of selfhood in Islamic thought that draws on a wealth of primary source texts in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Greek, and other languages. Muhammad U. Faruque’s interdisciplinary approach makes a significant contribution to the growing field of cross-cultural dialogue, as it opens up the way for engaging premodern and modern Islamic sources from a contemporary perspective by going beyond the exegesis of historical materials. He initiates a critical conversation between new insights into human nature as developed in neuroscience and modern philosophical literature and millennia-old Islamic perspectives on the self, consciousness, and human flourishing as developed in Islamic philosophical, mystical, and literary traditions.
Farzin Vahdat has written a trenchant analysis of the intellectual discourse of modernity in Iran. Although there have been several recent studies about Iranian intellectuals, this volume is unique in that it focuses almost entirely on intellectual discourse among the clergy. Vahdat first provides us with a solid foundation for understanding the key Critical Theory concept of subjectivity—especially as expounded in the writings of Jurgen Habermas. Then, he successfully shows how one Western philosophical approach does have universal applicability by demonstrating the concern of Iranian theorists such as Shariati, Motahhari, Khomeini, and Sorush with human subjectivity. By engaging the major theoretical discourses of modernity, the author attempts for the first time in a non-Western context to address some of the central theoretical issues involved in, modernity and Iran's experience of these issues. As such, this study can contribute to a profound understanding of modernity and its development in a Middle Eastern context. This book is an important addition to the growing body of work in Global Studies and Critical Theory as well as on contemporary Iran.
This edited volume explores various facets of Muslims’ civic engagement in Western post-secular societies, fundamentally challenging simplistic boundaries between Islamic ethical conduct and liberal-democratic norms and practice. Bringing together scholars from sociology, anthropology, and Islamic theology, the collection offers sound theoretical and empirical elaborations on the complex ways in which Islamic piety, principles and norms interact with, and shape, Muslims’ everyday practice of volunteering as a performance of active citizenship in liberal societies. The contributions cover diverse manifestations of Muslim volunteering in North America, Europe and Australia, from environmentalism to mental health volunteering, and critically examine the national and global socio-political context within which certain forms of Muslims’ civic engagement are viewed with skepticism and suspicion. It will be of use to students and scholars across sociology, political science, community studies and Islamic studies, with a focus on migrant integration, diaspora studies, and inter-ethnic relations.
