Leadership of Kiai and Students' Obedience in Islamic Boarding School

Islamic boarding schools (pesantren) are non-formal Islamic educational institutions where students (santri) live together in a cottage (dormitory) to study Islamic religious scholarship under the guidance of the caretaker of the cottage who is often referred to as a kiai. The pesantren, which from its inception, prioritized religious knowledge and pesantren culture, was easily able to apply the slogan sam'an watha'atan (submission and obedience) to the kiai which later became the principle of santri in everyday life. However, along with the development of increasingly modern pesantren, this principle has been displaced by various experiences and knowledge. The disobedience of santri to the kiai as a leader in the pesantren is caused by various factors, one of which is the perception of the santri towards the leadership of the kiai.

Women in Mauritania

Women in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania have significantly influenced their country’s social, economic, religious, political, and artistic realms. How they have done so has been affected by the country’s nomadic past, severe droughts, history with slavery, and rapid urbanization following independence. Women have participated in trade, influenced politics, made decisions for their families, shaped their marriages, and contributed to religious scholarship. Mauritanian women have also exercised significant power as compared to some of their counterparts elsewhere in the Muslim world, being able to initiate divorce, speak publicly, and act as heads of household. Despite such influence, their gender has also disadvantaged them, making it difficult to access many of the opportunities that are available to men. Likewise, women’s varying social ranks, socioeconomic statuses, ethnicities and regional locations have affected their abilities to maneuver and assert power.

Crossing the Borders: Beckett in the Eastern World

Beckettian scholars are of the view that Beckett is an autonomous artist and has never been a religious scholar, so his works should be read as an artistic expression without using any 'religious barometer. Beckett's obsessed quest about theology and his selected plethora of references about Christianity and God almost always capture the attention of critics by encouraging them to read Beckett through a religious angle. Such a stance of Beckett leads the scholars to categorise him as a secular writer who freely deals with religious themes. It is interesting to note that most of Beckett's religious scholarship revolves around Christianity and Western critical traditions. This means that Beckett's connection with other religions or religious traditions has been overlooked. This paper examines Beckett's attachment with religions, namely Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. In conclusion, the paper advocates that Beckett was aware of Eastern religious traditions.

Versions of Varro

Is this the Varronian moment? After decades of comparative neglect, especially in Anglophone scholarship, the late republican polymath is suddenly everywhere. There are conferences and conference panels dedicated to his work, some subsequently published as edited volumes. Varro is the subject of dissertations and monographs, either on his own or as a prime exhibit in discussions of such diverse subjects as ancient agricultural writing and late republican religious scholarship. Much needed new editions of his work have appeared or are in preparation. Thus we can look forward to Robert Rodgers' OCT of De re rustica, Giorgio Piras’ Teubner of De lingua Latina and a Loeb edition of Varronian fragments by Joseph McAlhany.

Crossing Borders: ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya and Her Travels

Arabic scholarship and literature flourished during the Mamlūk period, and scholars and students from across the Muslim world were drawn to Cairo and Damascus. This led to opportunities for travel, education, and employment, yet these opportunities were available almost exclusively to men. In Syria and Egypt, and most of the medieval world, women’s involvement in travel, education, and public life, was often restricted. However, there were exceptions, including the prolific writer and poet ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya (d. 1517). As a woman, she crossed a number of social and cultural borders in order to enter into the domain of religious scholarship and literary production. Drawing from historical and biographical sources, and especially from ʿĀʾisha al-Bāʿūniyya’s writings, I examine her social and intellectual background, her travels and scholarly interactions in order to highlight some of the social trends and intellectual forces at work in the late Mamlūk period.

Creaturehood and Deification as Anchors for an Ethics of Gene Editing

This chapter considers what it means to be human in an era of gene editing technologies, using ideas from philosophical and religious scholarship. I call these ideas “visions of the human being.” These visions are central to understanding the relationship between gene editing and human flourishing because they are “at work” in the definition of human flourishing, and they shape people’s responses to the technologies. Proposed is a postsecular, Christian vision of the human being and flourishing in the context of gene editing as the successful navigation between two elements of human existence: “creaturehood” and “deification.” Both elements are important for developing a robust conception of human flourishing and for allowing us to respond well to the uses of gene editing applications.

Bukhara under the Mongols

In Muharram ah 617/March 1220 ce Chinggis Khan led his armies to Bukhara as part of a larger campaign against the Khwārazmshāh Empire (616–621/1220–1225). The city quickly surrendered and was rapidly integrated into the growing Mongol Empire. In the subsequent decades, Bukhara enjoyed a speedy recovery under the stewardship of a series of Mongol officials, who patronized religious institutions, repaired the damage caused by the invasion, and mitigated some of the excesses of the Mongol armies stationed in Transoxania. Yet this revival was stunted in the second half of the 13th century when the Mongol Empire was divided by war. During this period different factions contested control of Transoxania, and Bukhara became the target of periodic raids and attacks. A full rehabilitation of the city had to wait until after 716/1317–1318, when alliances between the Mongol military elites and the popular religious leaders of Bukhara facilitated a new period of stability that would last until the fall of the last effective khan, Qazān Sultan, in 746/1346. Bukhara’s status as an intellectual, economic, and political capital of Transoxania was diminished during the period of Mongol rule. Samarqand was designated as the administrative capital of Transoxania for much of this period, and the presence of Mongol forces in Nakhshab saw Bukhara subordinated to the itinerate court of the Chaghadaid-Mongol princes. Nevertheless, the city continued to be seen as an important center of religious scholarship, and its prestige was boosted by the fact that it served as the base for two of the leading Sufi movements of its time, the Kubrawiyya and the Naqshbandiyya.

Theology and Race

This study develops a Christian theological response to the problems of race and anti-black racism in conversation with black theology and womanist theology. It provides a detailed introduction to multiple voices, developments, and tensions in these two theological traditions over the last half century. It offers an overview of James Cone’s arguments and their reception. It considers turns toward pragmatism and genealogy in black religious scholarship, focusing on Cornel West, Peter Paris, Dwight Hopkins, Victor Anderson, Anthony Pinn, Bryan Massingale, J. Kameron Carter, and Willie Jennings. It analyzes womanist theological treatments of intersectionality, narrative, and embodiment through Jacquelyn Grant, Katie Cannon, Delores Williams, Emilie Townes, Karen Baker-Fletcher, Kelly Brown Douglas, Diana Hayes, and M. Shawn Copeland. Finally, it suggests some open questions related to hybridity, sexuality, and ecology. Ultimately, it argues that the credibility of Christian theological witness depends significantly on the quality of Christian theology’s response to anti-black racism.