scholarly journals Daniel W. Brown A New Introduction to Islam, 2nd ed.

2011 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-152
Author(s):  
Tauseef Ahmad Parray

A New Introduction to Islam is an excellent undergraduate textbook presentinga thorough history of Islam. It introduces students to the historyand development of Islamic studies as a discipline—showing how Islamicstudies has shaped our understanding of Islam—and it also examineshow the vibrant religious culture of the Near East produced a unique andbrilliant intellectual and religious tradition spanning the fields of Islamiclaw, theology, philosophy, and mysticism. In addition, it shows the waysin which the Islamic tradition has enriched the world, and in turn, how ithas been enriched by interaction with other civilizations. And against thebackground of social and cultural contexts that extend from North Africato South and Southeast Asia, it also considers the opportunities and challengesfacing Muslims today and provides a new and illuminating perspectiveof the development of Muslim beliefs and practices ...

Author(s):  
Azyumardi Azra

Muslims in Southeast Asia are overwhelmingly dominant by group of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jamaah (Aswaja), the so-called Sunni. They contributed a great deal to the formation of distinct Islamic tradition that can stillibe observed today. In Indonesia, the history of the Aswaja can be considered as the continuous consolidation of orthodoxy which appeared through some successive reforms and santrinization. This consolidation has, of course, played important role for strengthening Malay-Indonesian ulama relationship. This study focusses on the literature used by Malay-Indonesian ulama and reforms performing their idea to their society. This study argues that the Malay-Indonesian ulama were mostly responsible for earliest reforms of Islamic teaching an Muslim life in the archipelago.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Wilson

La bohème is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world. But how did it come to be so adored? Drawing on an extremely broad range of sources, Alexandra Wilson traces the opera’s rise to global fame. Although the work has been subjected to many hostile critiques, it swiftly achieved popular success through stage performances, recordings, and filmed versions. Wilson demonstrates how La bohème acquired even greater cultural influence as its music and dramatic themes began to be incorporated into pop songs, film soundtracks, musicals, and more. In this cultural history of Puccini’s opera, Wilson offers a fresh reading of a familiar work. La bohème was strikingly modern for the 1890s, she argues, in its approach to musical and dramatic realism and in flouting many of the conventions of the Italian operatic tradition. Considering the work within the context of the aesthetic, social, and political debates of its time, Wilson explores Puccini’s treatment of themes including gender, poverty, and nostalgia. She pays particular attention to La bohème’s representation of Paris, arguing that the opera was not only influenced by romantic mythologies surrounding the city but also helped shape them. Wilson concludes with a consideration of the many and varied approaches directors have taken to the staging of Puccini’s opera, including some that have reinvented the opera for a new age. This book is essential reading for anyone who has seen La bohème and wants to know more about its music, drama, and cultural contexts.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-269
Author(s):  
Galina M. Yemelianova

The article analyzes the social, political, and symbolic functions of Islam in contemporary Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. Over many centuries, Central Asians developed a particular form of Islam based on a productive and fluid synergy among Islam per se, their tribal legal and customary norms, and Tengrian and Zoroastrian beliefs and practices. It is characterized by a high level of doctrinal and functional adaptability to shifting political and cultural environments, the prevalence of mystical Islam (Sufism) and oral, rather than book-based, Islamic tradition. These qualities have defined distinctive Islamic trajectories in post-Soviet Central Asia, which differ significantly from those in other Muslim-majority countries and in Muslim communities in the West. At the same time, the common Eurasian space and lengthy shared political history of Central Asians and other peoples of Muslim Eurasia are also reflected in the considerable similarities in their Islamic trajectories.


1999 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
David S. Whitley ◽  
Ronald I. Dorn ◽  
Joseph M. Simon ◽  
Robert Rechtman ◽  
Tamara K. Whitley

Quartz, the most common mineral on earth, is almost universally associated with shamans. Why this ritual association occurred worldwide has remained unexplained scientifically, at least in part because western scientific thinking assumes that religious beliefs and practices are epiphenomenal and not worthy of study. This association is archaeologi-cally evident at Sally's Rocksheiter, a small rock engraving-vision quest site in the Mojave Desert, where quartz rocks were placed as offerings in cracks around the rock art panel. SEM and electron microprobe foreign materials analyses of Mojave rock engravings show that the association between quartz and rock art was common: almost 65 per cent contained remnants of quartz hammerstones, used to peck the motifs. A combination of ethnohistory and physical sciences explains why quartz, shamans and vision questing were so strongly associated: triboluminescence causes quartz to glow when struck or abraded, which was believed a visible manifestation of supernatural power. Recognition that this belief and behavioural association were based on quartz's physical properties aids our ability to identify the antiquity of the vision quest in the far west, suggesting that Mojave Desert shamanism is the oldest continuously practiced religious tradition so far identified in the world.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
VALERIA GIACOMIN

Malaysia and Indonesia account for 90 percent of global exports of palm oil, forming one of the largest agricultural clusters in the world. This article uses archival sources to trace how this cluster emerged from the rubber business in the era of British and Dutch colonialism. Specifically, the rise of palm oil in this region was due to three interrelated factors: (1) the institutional environment of the existing rubber cluster; (2) an established community of foreign traders; and (3) a trading hub in Singapore that offered a multitude of advanced services. This analysis stresses the historical dimension of clusters, which has been neglected in the previous management and strategy works, by connecting cluster emergence to the business history of trading firms. The article also extends the current literature on cluster emergence by showing that the rise of this cluster occurred parallel, and intimately related, to the product specialization within international trading houses.


1981 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Baker

It was rather bold of Furnivall, less than a decade after the event, to announce that the Depression had brough to an end the history of European overseas expansion over almost half a millennium. Against a background of renewed disorder in the international economy, the current historiography seems to be taking this bold suggestion fairly seriously. The 1930s slump is now the accepted starting point for studies of the relations between the west and the rest in the postcolonial era.


Author(s):  
C. Dijk ◽  
M.C. Ricklefs ◽  
L.A. Hoedemaker ◽  
S.C. Graaf van Randwijck ◽  
G.J. Knaap ◽  
...  

- C. van Dijk, M.C. Ricklefs, A history of modern Indonesia. C. 1300 to the present, London and Basingstoke, The MacMillan Press Ltd., 1981. xii + 335 pp. MacMillan Asian Histories Series. - L.A. Hoedemaker, S.C. Graaf van Randwijck, Handelen en denken in dienst der zending (Oestgeest 1897-1942), 2 delen, Den Haag Boekencentrum, 1981. - G.J. Knaap, Hubert Jacobs SJ, Documenta Malucensia II (1577-1606), annotated by Hubert Jacobs SJ, Monumenta Missionum Societatis Iesu volumen XXXIX, Missiones Orientalis, Rome, Jesuit Historical Institute; 1980, XXXI + 65* + 794 blz. - David S. Moyer, H. Sutherland, The making of a bureaucratic elite; The colonial transformation of the Javanese Priyayi, Asian studies association of Australia, Southeast Asia publication series no. 2, Heinemann educational books (Asia), Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, 1979, xx + 182 pp. - S.A. Niessen, Garrett Solyom, The world of the Javanese Keris, 1978, East-West Centre, Honolulu, Hawaii., Bronwen Solyom (eds.) - S.A. Niessen, Anne Leonard, Patterns of Paradise; The styles and significance of bark cloth around the world, 1980, Field museum of natural history., John Terrell (eds.) - S.A. Niessen, Kirk Endicott, Batek Negrito Religion, 1979, Oxford Clarendon Press. - J. Noorduyn, Olivier Carré, L’Islam et l’état dans le monde d’aujourd’hui, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1982. 270 p. - H.A. Poeze, Joop Morriën, Indonesië los van Holland. De CPN en de PKI in hun strijd tegen het Nederlands kolonialisme, Pegasus Amsterdam, 1982, 272 pp.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdul Wahid

<p>Theology faculty as the vessel of developing basic Islamic studies that has an important position among the other faculties. The experience of changing institution to be university shown that theology faculty “desert” of applicants. Therefore, readiness and progress of Islamic Theology faculty under the State Islamic University (UIN) of course determine the future history of Islamic Theology.This struggle would be faced with all the seriousness of the academic community. Establishing the Faculty of Islamic Theology in the new form to be a demand. On the other hand, the academic communities of Islamic Theology Faculty are required to initiate a new paradigm in the world of work.</p>


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