Toward an Islamic Reformation

Toward an Islamic Reformation

Author: Abdullahi Ahmed An Na'im

Publisher: Syracuse University Press

Published: 1996-07-01

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 9780815627067

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Toward an Islamic Reformation is an ambitious attempt to modernize Islamic law, calling for reform of the historical formulations of Islamic law, commonly known as Shari'a that is perceived by many Muslims to be part of the Islamic faith. As a Muslim, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is sensitive to and appreciative of the delicate relationship between Islam as a religion and Islamic law. Nevertheless, he considers that the questions raised here must be resolved if the public law of Islam is to be implemented today. An-Na'im draws upon the teachings and writings of Sudanese reformer Mahmoud Mohamed Taha to provide what some have called the intellectual foundations for a total reinterpretation of the nature and meaning of Islamic public law.


A Challenge to Islam for Reformation

A Challenge to Islam for Reformation

Author: Günter Lüling

Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publishe

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 654

ISBN-13: 9788120819528

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As a Protestant theologian and diciple of renowned critics of Christianity, Albert Schweitzer and Martin Werner, the Author wanted since long to contribute to the breakthrough of their resolute nontrinitarian position which has throughout the twentieth century by all and every Western Christian university theology been silenced by pretending tacitly and tenaciously the non-existence of their strong argument.


The Last Crusade

The Last Crusade

Author: Michael A. Palmer

Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1612343538

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The United States, argues Michael A. Palmer, is engaged in a political crusade to modernize the Islamic world. Americanism is in the vanguard of modernity's relentless advance, promoting capitalist markets and democratic institutions. To compete, Islamic societies must adopt a more secular and material approach, as have the West and South and East Asia. But these principles conflict with Islamic fundamentals. Once a vibrant force, much of the Muslim world spent four centuries as prisoner of an Ottoman Empire that embraced feudalism while the West jettisoned it. In the absence of a renaissance or enlightenment, modernization in the Islamic world has been painful and unsuccessful. While many in the West long for an "Islamic reformation," Palmer argues that Islamists such as Osama bin Laden are the face of that reformation. Just as Protestant reformers sought a return to the purity of early Christianity, jihadists desire a return to the halcyon days of conquest and expansion, when the Caliphate controlled a united and powerful Muslim community. American actions have not provoked this conflict, nor can American withdrawal end it, Palmer contends. For example, China, also a once-powerful civilization subjected to Western imperialism, has not produced homicide bombers. Instead, the Chinese are busy modernizing. Islam's failure to modernize is the root cause of the current situation. Bin Laden and other jihadists understand, correctly, that if Islam is to avoid the materialism and secularism that come with modernity, they must Islamize the West by force.


Revival and Reform in Islam

Revival and Reform in Islam

Author: Fazlur Rahman

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2021-01-21

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0861541278

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This authoritative book argues that what is considered today to be Islamic fundamentalism is inconsistent with the true meaning of this faith. Rahman demonstrates that the true roots of Islamic teachings advocate adaptability, creativity, and innovation.


Heretic

Heretic

Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2015-03-24

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 006233395X

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Continuing her journey from a deeply religious Islamic upbringing to a post at Harvard, the brilliant, charismatic and controversial New York Times and Globe and Mail #1 bestselling author of Infidel and Nomad makes a powerful plea for a Muslim Reformation as the only way to end the horrors of terrorism, sectarian warfare and the repression of women and minorities. Today, she argues, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims can be divided into a minority of extremists, a majority of observant but peaceable Muslims and a few dissidents who risk their lives by questioning their own religion. But there is only one Islam and, as Hirsi Ali shows, there is no denying that some of its key teachings—not least the duty to wage holy war—are incompatible with the values of a free society. For centuries it has seemed as if Islam is immune to change. But Hirsi Ali has come to believe that a Muslim Reformation—a revision of Islamic doctrine aimed at reconciling the religion with modernity—is now at hand, and may even have begun. The Arab Spring may now seem like a political failure. But its challenge to traditional authority revealed a new readiness—not least by Muslim women—to think freely and to speak out. Courageously challenging the jihadists, she identifies five key amendments to Islamic doctrine that Muslims have to make to bring their religion out of the seventh century and into the twenty-first. And she calls on the Western world to end its appeasement of the Islamists. “Islam is not a religion of peace,” she writes. It is the Muslim reformers who need our backing, not the opponents of free speech. Interweaving her own experiences, historical analogies and powerful examples from contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, Heretic is not a call to arms, but a passionate plea for peaceful change and a new era of global toleration. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo murders, with jihadists killing thousands from Nigeria to Syria to Pakistan, this book offers an answer to what is fast becoming the world’s number one problem.


The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia

The Origins of Islamic Reformism in Southeast Asia

Author: Azyumardi Azra

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780824828486

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Professor Azra's meticulous study, using sources from the Middle East itself, shows how scholars in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were reconstructing the intellectual and socio-moral foundation of Muslim societies.


Old Texts, New Practices

Old Texts, New Practices

Author: Etty Terem

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2014-04-16

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 0804790841

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In 1910, al-Mahdi al-Wazzani, a prominent Moroccan Islamic scholar completed his massive compilation of Maliki fatwas. An eleven-volume set, it is the most extensive collection of fatwas written and published in the Arab Middle East during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Al-Wazzani's legal opinions addressed practical concerns and questions: What are the ethical and legal duties of Muslims residing under European rule? Is emigration from non-Muslim territory an absolute duty? Is it ethical for Muslim merchants to travel to Europe? Is it legal to consume European-manufactured goods? It was his expectation that these fatwas would help the Muslim community navigate the modern world. In considering al-Wazzani's work, this book explores the creative process of transforming Islamic law to guarantee the survival of a Muslim community in a changing world. It is the first study to treat Islamic revival and reform from discourses informed by the sociolegal concerns that shaped the daily lives of ordinary people. Etty Terem challenges conventional scholarship that presents Islamic tradition as inimical to modernity and, in so doing, provides a new framework for conceptualizing modern Islamic reform. Her innovative and insightful reorientation constructs the origins of modern Islam as firmly rooted in the messy complexity of everyday life.


Islam and the Challenge of Civilization

Islam and the Challenge of Civilization

Author: Abdelwahab Meddeb

Publisher: Fordham University Press

Published: 2013-04-29

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0823251888

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Abdelwahab Meddeb makes an urgent case for an Islamic reformation, located squarely in Western Europe, now home to millions of Muslims, where Christianity and Judaism have come to coexist with secular humanism and positivist law. He is not advocating “moderate” Islam, which he characterizes as thinly disguised Wahabism, but rather an Islam inspired by the great Sufi thinkers, whose practice of religion was not bound by doctrine. To accomplish this, Meddeb returns to the doctrinal question of the text as transcription of the uncreated word of God and calls upon Muslims to distinguish between Islam’s spiritual message and the temporal, material, and historically grounded origins of its founding scriptures. He contrasts periods of Islamic history—when philosophers and theologians engaged in lively dialogue with other faiths and civilizations and contributed to transmitting the Hellenistic tradition to early modern Europe—with modern Islam’s collective amnesia of this past. Meddeb wages a war of interpretations in this book, in his attempt to demonstrate that Muslims cannot join the concert of nations unless they set aside outmoded notions such as jihad and realize that feuding among the monotheisms must give way to the more important issue of what it means to be a citizen in today’s postreligious global setting.


The Making of Salafism

The Making of Salafism

Author: Henri Lauzière

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-11-17

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0231540175

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Some Islamic scholars hold that Salafism is an innovative and rationalist effort at Islamic reform that emerged in the late nineteenth century but gradually disappeared in the mid twentieth. Others argue Salafism is an anti-innovative and antirationalist movement of Islamic purism that dates back to the medieval period yet persists today. Though they contradict each other, both narratives are considered authoritative, making it hard for outsiders to grasp the history of the ideology and its core beliefs. Introducing a third, empirically based genealogy, The Making of Salafism understands the concept as a recent phenomenon projected back onto the past, and it sees its purist evolution as a direct result of decolonization. Henri Lauzière builds his history on the transnational networks of Taqi al-Din al-Hilali (1894–1987), a Moroccan Salafi who, with his associates, participated in the development of Salafism as both a term and a movement. Traveling from Rabat to Mecca, from Calcutta to Berlin, al-Hilali interacted with high-profile Salafi scholars and activists who eventually abandoned Islamic modernism in favor of a more purist approach to Islam. Today, Salafis tend to claim a monopoly on religious truth and freely confront other Muslims on theological and legal issues. Lauzière's pathbreaking history recognizes the social forces behind this purist turn, uncovering the popular origins of what has become a global phenomenon.