Bloomsbury Studies in Islamic Thought – serie

Freedom of Expression Debates in Europe and the Muslim World after 9/11 discusses freedom of expression debates as it relates to Islam that emerged in Europe after 9/11 and subsequent Muslim reaction. The major controversies covered are the Jyllands-Posten (2005) cartoons in Denmark, the Charlie Hebdo caricatures and the attacks on its offices in 2015 in France, as well as Dutch film controversy of 2008 are analyzed at length. Socio-political conditions in respective countries in relation to Muslims are also taken into account along with detailed description of the background of each controversy. The Western concept of freedom of expression and religion is examined both theoretically and in light of relevant laws at domestic, regional and international levels. Minor controversies regarding freedom of Muslim expression in different European countries are also surveyed with reactions of international human rights organizations. The Laws governing freedom of expression, freedom of religion and blasphemy in major European and Muslim countries are also given space. The book tries to find the answer to a burning question: i.e., what is freedom of expression and what are its limitations? In search of the answer, the book tries to encompass all relevant aspects of the debate both from the West in general, Europe in particular, and the Muslim World.

Heidegger, Ontology, and the Destiny of Islam: Thoughts and Reflections on the Nature of Islam in the World critiques Islam as a phenomenon set into motion from its beginning. It is a reflective work that addresses difficult questions about Islam through familiar historical concerns and grapples with the issues that arise in that process. Notably, it attests to making no substantive claims about Muslims and instead keeps to the course of analysis of the phenomenon that is Islam, which is taken as an assessable entity rather than a categorical construct. Understood largely in light of a history of observable realities, the ontological analysis of Islam reveals the general acquaintance with it to be imperfect. This suggests the reality of Islam is based on a primal truth that is only partially seen. The analysis then confronts two problems: firstly, that Islam is not what its historical “story,” as it were, proclaims and, secondly, that Islam is therefore not what is traditionally made out of the surviving historical narratives. It is not a question of “what” Islam is, but more critically, “how” Islam appears in the world.

Being Muslim in a Morally Relative World: The Dilemma of Contemporary Polarized Pakistani Society examines the challenges faced by Islamic societies in the 21st century, particularly in Pakistan, as they navigate the influences of globalization and Western intellectual movements. Muhammad Awais Shaukat offers a detailed analysis comparing the Islamic value system with the concept of moral relativism, exploring how these contrasting ethical frameworks shape individual and societal behaviors, values, and beliefs. The book investigates the conflict between traditional Islamic morality, rooted in the Qur’an and Sunnah, which upholds absolute and objective values, and the relativistic, subjective morality emerging from post-modernism. By leveraging his multidisciplinary expertise, the author illustrates how these conflicting values have intensified polarization within Muslim societies, amplified by media and intellectual discourse. The book contributes not only to academic discourse but also offers practical insights for policymakers, educators, and community leaders, offering a framework for developing pathways toward social harmony and cohesion.

The book develops an Islamic account of technology with a particular emphasis on the tradition of virtue ethics.Ehsan Arzroomchilar contends that technology, inherently imbued with cultural, social, and moral baggage, can never be neutral. As such, technology generates novel ethical challenges and raises questions which unsettle long-standing moral intuitions. In a rapidly advancing and religiously pluralistic world, an investigation of the intersection of technology and Islam, offered here, is both timely and imperative. Tapping into rich histories of intellectual and technological engagement within Sufism, this book contends that Sufism models one of the most promising frameworks for an ethics of technology today—not only because of its virtue-oriented orientation, which resonates with contemporary virtue-based approaches, but also due to the positive role it accords to material artifacts. By grounding an ethical consideration of technology within the lived experience and religion of Sufis, represented by a close study of calligraphy, Arzroomchilar uncovers profound insights into the significance of the body and technology in processes of moral and spiritual transformation offered by Sufism. This book weaves together historical, philosophical, religious, and ethical threads, providing a comprehensive and insightful exploration of Islam's role in navigating the challenges and opportunities presented by our technological age.

How does the Islamic tradition create space for, and resist, constructive inter-religious dialogue? In this book, Adis Duderija considers the conditions necessary for inter-religious dialogue, comparative theological learning, and theological growth within an Islamic context. Applying the writings of Catherine Cornille, Duderija presents fresh discussions of the Qur'an, hadith, and orthodox Islamic doctrines (takfir, tashabbuh bi-l-kuffar, bid‘a, and al wala’ wal bara’) from the perspective of comparative theology. Primarily focusing on Islamic dialogue with Christianity and Buddhism, Duderija juxtaposes the work of foundational Islamic scholars, revealing how each promote various forms of inter-religious dialogue.

This volume challenges a long history of normalizing patriarchal approaches to the Qur’an and calls for a questioning of the interpretive credibility of many inherited Qur’anic commentaries. The author presents a fresh reading of the sacred text and Islamic teaching traditions as the rediscovery of a lost humanitarian and gender-egalitarian textual richness that has been poorly and loosely handled for centuries. The book stresses the importance of reviewing the interpretive linguistic choices that jurists and exegetes over the last fourteen centuries have adopted to semantically reshape the Qur’anic text. The vigilant reading the author provides of carefully chosen texts and commentaries suggests that many interpretive approaches to the Qur’an are dominated by sociopolitical factors alien to the intrinsic values of the text itself. More importantly, inconsistencies across putatively sound books of tafsir indicate that the Qur’anic text often suffers from historical and systematic drainage of its humanitarianism, gender-egalitarianism, and religious pluralism.

What forms can a religiously informed, ethical Muslim life take? This book presents two important accounts of ideal Muslim subjectivity, one by 9th century moral pedagogue, al-Harith al-Muhasibi (d. 857) and the other by 20th century Kurdish Quran scholar, Said Nursi (d. 1960). It reconstructs Muhasibi’s and Nursi’s accounts of ideal Muslim consciousness and analyzes the discursive practices implicated in its formation and expression. The book discusses the range of psychic states and ethical relations that Muhasibi and Nursi consider critical for living an authentically Muslim life. It highlights the importance of discursive practices in Muslim religious and moral self-production. The author draws on Foucault's insights about ethics and practices of self-care to examine familiar Muslim discourses in ways that enrich contemporary conversations about identity, individuality, community, authority, moral agency and virtue in the fields of religious studies, Islamic studies and Muslim ethics. The book deepens our understanding of the fluidity and fragility of both the more familiar, obligation-centered ethics in Islamic thought and the less familiar, belief-centered modes of religio-moral being.

Theology is a rational endeavor to understand everything about God, from within a faith tradition and its scriptures, and in response to problems posed by the conditions of a particular time and place. God in Islamic Theology: Tawhid in Classical Islamic Theology and Said Nursi’s Risale-i Nur engages and gleans classical and contemporary understandings on the central tenets of God in Islam. The book makes a substantive contribution to Islamic Studies in four main ways. First, it grasps and justifies the use of the language and genre of theology in relation to scholarly efforts to relate Qur’anic teachings about God to human understanding. The development of Islamic theology and its evolving scope are explored to produce a fresh framework in the study of Islamic theology. Second, it directly addresses some of the challenges facing Islam, including its multi-layered theological positions and how these influence its internal coherence and its external relations, especially with Abrahamic faith traditions and Western philosophy generally. Third, presenting a new understanding of Islamic epistemology, it drives to the prime essential of Islamic theology in its attempting to prove the existence, oneness, and relatability of God. Fourth, it highlights and justifies the place of Said Nursi as an informed and theologically rigorous contemporary source in Islamic theology.

Driven by a detailed hermeneutical investigation of the Qur'anic story of creation, this book questions the hybrid Biblical/Qur'anic narrative that gradually erased the lines that define the authentic Qur'anic account. Abla Hasan argues that humanity's divine status is the bedrock from which to investigate the meaning of human religiosity and address the problem of pain and suffering. The detailed analysis in this book answers many linguistic and logical pending questions in the Qur'an and is a serious departure from popular Muslim narratives that seek to alleviate our pain and suffering.