published by
Routledge, London
September 2008
Edited by Andrew
Rippin
Department of
History
The lament that the Euro-American world still does not
understand or appreciate the Islamic world sufficiently continues to be heard
widely, despite the continuing flow of published books and other educational
material. The demand for more readily available information, packaged in an attractive,
stimulating and accessible manner, continues to be felt. The Islamic World,
appearing within the major reference series “The Worlds” published by Routledge, responds
to this demand, bringing together leading scholarship, broad coverage and
functional illustration.
The Islamic World will find an
immediate role as a reference work for undergraduate and graduate student use
in libraries. The final goal is to issue a paperback version that would have
potential application as a general reading work and as well as a class text in
courses designed to provide an overview of Islamic civilization.
The Islamic World provides an
overview of the culture of those who maintained, and continue to maintain, adherence
to the religion of Islam in all of its geographical and historical diversity.
The notion of diversity provides the main focus for the work as it aims to
define the fundamental question of what we mean by the frequently used phrase, “The Islamic world”. The essays which
comprise this volume are unified by their common quest for the definition of
this phrase. Each essay enunciates its goal and scope by focusing on the
central theme of the volume: What is it about the topic of the essay that helps
define what we mean by “the Islamic World”? Can we define “the Islamic World” through the topic of the essay? What is it, as reflected in the
topic of the essay, that makes “the Islamic World” distinctive and to what extent is that distinctiveness uniform across
Muslim-populated countries and historical eras? By having each essay address
these questions, the volume comprises an intellectually stimulating attempt to
define the topic reflected in the title of the work while, at the same time, it
provides an authoritative and accessible source of information on topics of
interest.
In order to accomplish this goal, a variety of
approaches are included within the volume in order to organize approaches to
the topic. Geography is used as the initial organizational category in section one. Each geographical area is dealt with in
terms of the presence of an Islamic identity through history. Attention is paid
to governing dynasties in the medieval period ending with the modern emergence
of the nation state in the geographical areas.
Given that the concept of “Islam” underpins the notion of the Islamic
World, section two covers the fundamentals of the
Islamic religion while paying attention to the diversity of thought and
manifestation in both history and geography. While Islam is a convenient
concept by which to try to define the Islamic world, once again the diversity
of its attributes and the features of cultural adaptation does
mean that beyond sharing a limited set of common symbols, the Islamic basis of
the Islamic world is a concept which needs to be explored and carefully
defined.
The intellectual world of Islam, as it manifests
itself in thought about the world, provides the next theme in section three by which the manifestation of Islam may
be understood. The organization of knowledge on both the theoretical and
applied levels as enunciated by leading intellectuals from different time
periods will provide a measure of how the Islamic world both understood itself
and created a tradition of cultural knowledge.
Material culture is often interpreted to provide
tangible evidence of the presence of Islam in the world, and that provides the
focus of section four. The reality is, however, that
this is an aspect which is overwhelming in its diversity across the Islamic
world, The various manifestations of art,
architecture, urban design, music, and literature throughout Islamic history
and across the geographical range centrally raise the question of what makes
this Islamic?
Finally, the structuring of the social world of Islam,
founded in Islamic law and finding its manifestation in a range of historical
and geographically conditioned manners, is crucial to providing an
understanding of how individual Muslims live their lives as a part of the “Islamic world”. In section
five the essays come closest to providing a definitive answer to what makes
something or somewhere Islamic as attention is paid to the social organization
of individuals and how they create and maintain
their own sense of identity as Muslims.
In moving towards that overall emphasis of the volume,
each essay takes into account the latest research in the field of study and
points to important areas for future research as a stimulus to future scholars.
Introduction Andrew
Rippin
Section I: The
Geo-political Islamic World
1 The
Arab
2
3 East
4
5
6 Central
7
8
9 The
Diaspora in the West --- Amir Hussain
Section
II: The Religious Islamic World
10 The Qurʾān --- Gordon Nickel and Andrew Rippin
11 Muḥammad --- Michael Lecker
12 Sunnī Law --- Robert Gleave
13 Theology:
Freewill and Predestination --- Suleiman Ali Mourad
14 Ritual
Life --- Zayn Kassam
14 sidebar Rites
of Passage --- Zayn Kassam
15 Sufism --- Art
Buehler
16 Shiʿism --- William Shepard
17 The Ibāḍīs --- Valerie J. Hoffmann
18 Relations
with Other Religions --- David Thomas
Section III: The
Intellectual Islamic World
19 The
Arabic Language --- Mustafa Shah
20 Philosophy --- Oliver
Leaman
21 The
Scientific Tradition --- George Saliba
22 Education --- Jeffrey
C. Burke
23 The
Transmission of Knowledge --- Paul L. Heck
24 Travel --- David
Waines
BIOGRAPHIES
25 ʿAbd al-Jabbār --- Gabriel
Said Reynolds
26 Niẓām
al-Mulk --- Neguin Yevari
27 Al-Ghazālī --- Frank
Griffel
28 Ibn ʿArabī --- Sajjad H. Rizvi
29 Ibn Taymiyya --- David
Waines
30 Nāṣir
al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī --- Zayn Kassam
31 Al-Suyūṭī --- Suleiman
Ali Mourad
32 Shāh Walī Allāh --- Marcia Hermansen
33 Bediüzzaman
Said Nursi --- Zeki Saritoprak
34 Sayyid Quṭb --- William Shepard
35 Fazlur
Rahman --- Earle H. Waugh
Section IV: The
Cultural Islamic World
36 Art --- Hussein
Keshani
37 Architecture --- Hussein Keshani
38 Material
culture --- James E. Lindsay
39 Military
Organization and Warfare --- Niall Christie
40 Popular Piety and Cultural Practices --- Earle H. Waugh
41 Music --- Michael Frishkopf
42 Cinema --- Günül Dönmez-Colin
Section V:
Social Issues and the Islamic World
43 Civilization
--- Akbar
Ahmed
44 Social
Change --- Ebrahim Moosa
45 Secularism --- Amila
Buturovic
46 Public
Ethics --- Amyn B. Sajoo
47 Marriage,
Family, and Sexual Ethics --- Kecia Ali
48 Women, Gender and Human Rights ---
49 Religious Minority Rights --- Christopher Buck
49 sidebar International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (extracts)
Glossary
index
Andrew Rippin taught for 20 years in the Department of
Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, and then joined the University
of Victoria and the Department of History
in 2000 as Professor and Dean of the
Faculty of Humanities. His major research areas are the Qur’an and the history of its interpretation, and the formative period
of Islamic civilization in the Arab world. Among the works he has published are
the following:
· (editor), Approaches to the
history of the interpretation of the Qur’an.
· Textual sources for the study of
Islam, co-edited with Jan Knappert.
· Muslims, their religious beliefs
and practices, volume 1: The formative period.
· Muslims, their religious beliefs
and practices, volume 2: The contemporary period.
· (editor), The Qur'an: formative
interpretation.
· Muslims, their religious beliefs
and practices, second edition (two volumes combined in one with new
material added).
· (editor), The Qur'an: style and
contents.
· The Qur’an and its interpretative tradition.
· Classical
Islam: a sourcebook of religious literature, co-edited with Norman
Calder and Jawid Mojaddedi.
· (editor), The Blackwell Companion
to the Qurʾān.
· (editor), Defining Islam: a
reader,
·
(editor), World Islam: Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies,
· Coming
to Terms with the Qur’an, co-edited with
Other articles specifically on the language of the Qur’an include:
· "The
poetics of Qur’anic punning," Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies, LVII(1994),
193-207.
· "The commerce of
eschatology," in S. Wild (ed.), The Koran as Text.
· "
‘Desiring the face of God’: the
Qur’anic symbolism of personal responsibility", in
I. J. Boullata (ed.), Literary Aspects of Religious Meaning in the Qur’an.
· "Muhammad
in the Qur’an: reading scripture in the 21st
century," in H. Motzki (ed.), The Biography of the Prophet Muhammad:
the Issue of the Sources.
· “Western Scholarship and the Qur’an,” in Jane D. McAuliffe
(ed.),
· “Syriac in the Qurʾān: classical Muslim theories,” in G. S.
Reynolds, The Qurʾan in its Historical
Context.
· “The Muslim Samson: Medieval, modern and scholarly
interpretations,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies,
71 (2008), 239-53.