Carool Kersten - Böcker

Exploring the relations between the concepts of peace and violence with aesthetics, nature, the body, and environmental issues, The Poesis of Peace applies a multidisciplinary approach to case studies in both Western and non-Western contexts including Islam, Chinese philosophy, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Established and renowned theologians and philosophers, such as Kevin Hart, Eduardo Mendieta, and Clemens Sedmak, as well as upcoming and talented young academics look at peace and non-violence through the lens of recent scholarly advances on the subject achieved in the fields of theology, philosophy, political theory, and environmentalism.

This book presents an intellectual history of today’s Muslim world, surveying contemporary Muslim thinking in its various manifestations, addressing a variety of themes that impact on the lives of present-day Muslims. Focusing on the period from roughly the late 1960s to the first decade of the twenty-first century, the book is global in its approach and offers an overview of different strands of thought and trends in the development of new ideas, distinguishing between traditional, reactionary, and progressive approaches. It presents a variety of themes and issues including: The continuing relevance of the legacy of traditional Islamic learning as well as the use of reason; the centrality of the Qur’an; the spiritual concerns of contemporary Muslims; political thought regarding secularity, statehood, and governance; legal and ethical debates; related current issues like human rights, gender equality, and religious plurality; as well as globalization, ecology and the environment, bioethics, and life sciences.An alternative account of Islam and the Muslim world today, counterbalancing narratives that emphasise politics and confrontations with the West, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars of Islam.

This book presents an intellectual history of today’s Muslim world, surveying contemporary Muslim thinking in its various manifestations, addressing a variety of themes that impact on the lives of present-day Muslims. Focusing on the period from roughly the late 1960s to the first decade of the twenty-first century, the book is global in its approach and offers an overview of different strands of thought and trends in the development of new ideas, distinguishing between traditional, reactionary, and progressive approaches. It presents a variety of themes and issues including: The continuing relevance of the legacy of traditional Islamic learning as well as the use of reason; the centrality of the Qur’an; the spiritual concerns of contemporary Muslims; political thought regarding secularity, statehood, and governance; legal and ethical debates; related current issues like human rights, gender equality, and religious plurality; as well as globalization, ecology and the environment, bioethics, and life sciences.An alternative account of Islam and the Muslim world today, counterbalancing narratives that emphasise politics and confrontations with the West, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars of Islam.

Located on the eastern periphery of the historical Muslim world, as a political entity Indonesia is barely a century old. Yet with close to a quarter of a billion followers of Islam it is now the largest and most populous Muslim country in the world. As the greatest political power in Southeast Asia, and a growing player on the world scene, Indonesia presents itself as a bridge country between Asia, the wider Muslim world and the West. In this survey Carool Kersten presents the Islamisation of Indonesia from the first evidence of the acceptance of Islam by indigenous peoples in the late thirteenth century until the present day. He provides comprehensive insight into the different roles played by Islam in Indonesia throughout history, including the importance of Indian Ocean networks for connecting Indonesians with the wider Islamic world, the religion’s role as a means of resistance and tool for nation building, and postcolonial attempts to forge an ‘Indonesian Islam’.

Located on the eastern periphery of the historical Muslim world, as a political entity Indonesia is barely a century old. Yet with close to a quarter of a billion followers of Islam it is now the largest and most populous Muslim country in the world. As the greatest political power in Southeast Asia, and a growing player on the world scene, Indonesia presents itself as a bridge country between Asia, the wider Muslim world and the West. In this survey Carool Kersten presents the Islamisation of Indonesia from the first evidence of the acceptance of Islam by indigenous peoples in the late thirteenth century until the present day. He provides comprehensive insight into the different roles played by Islam in Indonesia throughout history, including the importance of Indian Ocean networks for connecting Indonesians with the wider Islamic world, the religion’s role as a means of resistance and tool for nation building, and postcolonial attempts to forge an ‘Indonesian Islam’.

Like anywhere else, the present-day Islamic world too is grappling with modernity and postmodernity, secularisation and globalisation. Muslims are raising questions about religious representations and authority. This has given rise to the emergence of alternative Islamic discourses which challenge binary oppositions and dichotomies of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, continuity and change, state and civil society. It also leads to a dispersal of authority, a collapse of existing hierarchical structures and gender roles. This book further argues that the centre of gravity of many of these alternative Islamic discourses is shifting from the Arabic-speaking 'heartland' towards the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world and expatriate Muslims in North America and Europe. At the same time, in view of recent seismic shifts in the political constellation of the Middle East, the trends discussed in this book hold important clues for the possible direction of future developments in that volatile part of the Muslim world.

Like anywhere else, the present-day Islamic world too is grappling with modernity and postmodernity, secularisation and globalisation. Muslims are raising questions about religious representations and authority. This has given rise to the emergence of alternative Islamic discourses which challenge binary oppositions and dichotomies of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, continuity and change, state and civil society. It also leads to a dispersal of authority, a collapse of existing hierarchical structures and gender roles. This book further argues that the centre of gravity of many of these alternative Islamic discourses is shifting from the Arabic-speaking 'heartland' towards the geographical peripheries of the Muslim world and expatriate Muslims in North America and Europe. At the same time, in view of recent seismic shifts in the political constellation of the Middle East, the trends discussed in this book hold important clues for the possible direction of future developments in that volatile part of the Muslim world.

Exploring the relations between the concepts of peace and violence with aesthetics, nature, the body, and environmental issues, The Poesis of Peace applies a multidisciplinary approach to case studies in both Western and non-Western contexts including Islam, Chinese philosophy, Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Established and renowned theologians and philosophers, such as Kevin Hart, Eduardo Mendieta, and Clemens Sedmak, as well as upcoming and talented young academics look at peace and non-violence through the lens of recent scholarly advances on the subject achieved in the fields of theology, philosophy, political theory, and environmentalism.

This book uses literary texts featuring themes and references related to Islam and the Muslim world to offer new perspectives on non-Western intellectual history and contemporary European literature. Shifting from abstraction to sublimation by highlighting individualized interpretations of religion by authors from both Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds, it asks how and why present-day European authors, from Albania, France, Germany, Spain and the former Yugoslavia, write fiction or fictionalized works that engage with Islamic religious themes and Europe's Islamic past. This thematic focus contributes to the interrogation of Eurocentric understandings of literary canons and points out ways of decolonizing the curriculum in the humanities by reading contemporary European literature through the lens of cosmopolitanism, cultural hybridity and in-betweenness.

Dramatic political events involving Muslims across the world have put Islam under increased scrutiny. However, the focus of this attention is generally limited to the political realm and often even further confined by constrictive views of Islamism narrowed down to its most extremist exponents. Much less attention is paid to the parallel development of more liberal alternative Islamic discourses. The final decades of the twentieth-century has also seen the emergence of a Muslim intelligentsia exploring new and creative ways of engaging with the Islamic heritage. Drawing on advances made in the Western human sciences and understanding Islam in comprehensive terms as a civilisation rather than restricting it to religion in a conventional sense their ideas often cause controversy, even inviting accusations of heresy. Cosmopolitans and Heretics examines three of these new Muslim intellectuals who combine a solid grounding in the Islamic tradition with an equally intimate familiarity with the latest achievements of Western scholarship in religion. This cosmopolitan attitude challenges existing stereotypes and makes these thinkers difficult to categorise. Underscoring the global dimensions of new Muslim intellectualism, Kersten analyses contributions to contemporary Islamic thought of the late Nurcholish Madjid, Indonesia's most prominent public intellectual of recent decades, Hasan Hanafi, one of the leading philosophers in Egypt, and the influential French-Algerian historian of Islam Mohammed Arkoun. Emphasising their importance for the rethinking of the study of Islam as a field of academic inquiry, this is the first book of its kind and a welcome addition to the intellectual history of the modern Muslim world.