Qurʾan and Context

The historical context that gave rise to the Qurʾan remains one of the most persistent mysteries from the end of antiquity. Although the Islamic historical tradition contains abundant details concerning the Qurʾan’s origins, the information in these accounts was written down at least 100 or 200 years after the fact. Accordingly, most critical scholars view these reports with considerable skepticism for understanding the nature of the Qurʾan’s historical milieu. Little is definitively known about the context or conditions in which the Qurʾan first came to be; in many respects it seems to appear out of thin air into a world already saturated with Abrahamic monotheisms. Modern Qurʾanic scholarship has been largely governed by traditional Islamic views of the Qurʾan. Even many scholars who seek deliberately to undertake historical-critical study of this text remain under the powerful influence of the Islamic tradition’s pull, at times without fully realizing it. When the Qurʾan and the process of its composition are analyzed outside of the faith tradition, questions arise regarding the nature of its historical matrix. The cultures of the central Hijaz in Muhammad’s lifetime were, according to the current consensus, fundamentally nonliterate. Therefore, we must assume that if this is where the Qurʾan first was born, it likely would have circulated orally for several decades before being written down. Given what we know about human memory and oral transmission, this means that the text of the Qurʾan was continually composed and recomposed for decades after Muhammad’s death. Therefore, it likely would have circulated orally for several decades before being written down, and its written form was likely ultimately determined by his followers once they had settled in as a regnant minority alongside the other Abrahamic monotheists of the late ancient Near East, particularly Jews and Christians. Although scholars have frequently assumed a sizable Christian presence in the Hijaz, since the Qurʾan engages extensively with Christian traditions, it must be noted that there is no evidence for any Christian presence in the central Hijaz during Muhammad’s lifetime or before; the closest Christian communities that we know of were at around 700 kilometers distant from Mecca and Medina. In the absence of any evidence indicating a Christian presence in the central Hijaz, it seems most likely that most of the Christian traditions included in the Qurʾan were learned by Muhammad’s followers—and thus added to the emerging collection of scriptural traditions—after and in the context of the occupation of the Near East.

Muslim Pilgrimage Traditions in West Africa

The hajj, or greater pilgrimage to Mecca, is required of every able-bodied and financially capable Muslim at least once in their lifetime. As such, it comes as no surprise that wherever Islam spreads, a pilgrimage tradition also emerges. In line with this reality, records of the first West African conversions to Islam contain indications about their pilgrimage journeys. Early Arab sources about pilgrims to Mecca notably contain references to al-Barnawi and al-Takruri, pilgrims from the Kingdoms of Borno and Takrur (11th century). It is, however, important to note that, because of the generic use of the appellation “Takarir” in these early sources to refer to pilgrims of West African origin, it is not always possible to ascertain their exact provenance. Royal pilgrims from the kingdoms of Borno and Takrur, as well as from the Kingdom of Mali, feature prominently in the existing literature on West African pilgrims to Mecca. Up to the end of the 19th century, pilgrimages were undertaken for three main interwoven reasons: piety, trade, and the search for knowledge. One could add for diplomatic reasons, particularly in the case of royal pilgrimages, as well as credentialing reasons for scholars seeking to establish their credibility. At the turn of the 20th century, the advent of the colonial state and technological innovations led to major changes in this pilgrimage tradition. A journey hitherto done on foot or camelback could now be undertaken by steamboat and, subsequently, by plane. In addition, technological innovations brought about the democratization of sources of knowledge, making the search for knowledge a far less salient objective of pilgrims to Mecca. The advent of the colonial state also brought about a structure (control) over the organization of pilgrimages hitherto absent. Requiring a travel document and having specific health requirements (immunization) led to a limitation on the number of those who could undertake the journey any given year. This limitation would later be a contributing factor in the rise to prominence of local pilgrimage (ziyara) practices. Toward the end of the 19th century, several charismatic Sufi figures emerged in West Africa. Today, their mausoleums have become important Sufi shrines, engendering a rich tradition of pious visitation or ziyara. Some of the most prominent of these “pious visitations” take place in present-day Senegal and in northern Nigeria, bringing together millions of pilgrims from the subregion and the diaspora. As such, paying attention to Islamic pilgrimage traditions in West Africa, both hajj and ziyara, can yield germane insights into some of the forces shaping the practice of Islam in the region.

Fairuz

The Lebanese singer Fairuz is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed performers in the history of Arab musical arts. Born Nuhad Haddad in 1935, Fairuz attained extraordinary success, in great part, through her cultivation of an exceptional command of the voice, her development of a deep individual artistry, and her solid rooting in the performance practices of Lebanese and Arab art and popular song. From early in her career, this achievement was in collaboration with the Rahbani family of composer-poets. Assi Rahbani (b. 1923–d. 1986) and Mansour Rahbani (b. 1925–d. 2009) were siblings who worked together as the duo known as the Rahbani Brothers. Fairuz and the Rahbani Brothers met at the Lebanese Radio Station, where she took her professional name, and they began a collaboration there that gave rise to their first international hit in 1952. Occasionally, younger brother Elias Rahbani (b. 1938–d. 2021) joined in the composing as well. Following the marriage of Fairuz and Assi in 1954, Fairuz gave birth to their first child, Ziad Rahbani (b. 1956), who was raised in the presence of some of the most accomplished artists from across Arab society and who similarly showed a remarkable aptitude for musical arts early in life. Following the death of Assi in 1986, Ziad became the primary composer for Fairuz, after which her lyrical and musical style to some extent began increasingly to reflect more of the sensibilities of a younger generation. Since their beginnings, the Fairuz-Rahbani team has changed with the times and given rise to a prodigious artistic output that has included the production of operettas, musical theater sketches, musical films, and over a hundred record albums. Thematically, the wide-ranging repertoire has sometimes addressed universalistic spiritual matters with references to God, eternity, prayer, and other mystical subjects. The artists also have presented material of more expressly religious character that mentions churches, mosques, and houses of worship; that covers esteemed geographical locales, such as Jerusalem and Mecca; and that presents traditional repertoire like Good Friday chanting and Christmas carols. While Fairuz and the Rahbani composers are Christians, their repertoire has appealed across society irrespective of religious and sectarian affiliation. In the process, Fairuz has become a multifaceted icon to listeners from diverse backgrounds in Lebanon, throughout the eastern Mediterranean, across Arab society, and in the diaspora. As for transliteration of the names from Arabic into Latin script, “Rahbani” is fairly consistent, but “Rahbany” also occurs. The plural (i.e., three or more) is “Rahabina” and also is found in the forms “Rahbaniyun” and “Rahbaniyin” while in English it appears as “Rahbanis” as well. While the duo of the Rahbani Brothers has been consistently translated into English in this way, the Arabic form is either “al-Akhawan Rahbani” or “al-Akhawayn Rahbani” (i.e., the two Rahbani Brothers). “Fairuz,” which means “turquoise” in Arabic, has numerous variants in transliteration stemming, in part, from the various possibilities for each syllable of the name (e.g., Fairouz, Fayruz, etc.), but some degree of standardization has come, in part, from the use of this spelling by Voix de l’Orient, the record label that has produced the bulk of her recordings.

Karbala in Shiʿi Ritual

The ten-day battle of Karbala that occurred in 7th-century Iraq has remained a key event in the history of Islam, as it marked a split between Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims. In the battle, the grandson of the Prophet and his followers were martyred, and their history tied together the entire community of Shiʿi Muslims. In contemporary debates, the impact of this protest and resistance transgressed the limits of Shiʿi devotion and extended further into a symbol of new Muslim identity discourse. Recent studies have recognized this shift, and most observe it as a specific mode of identity discourse, known as the “Karbala Paradigm.” Throughout the world, various levels of ritual and narrative practices of Shiʿi Muslims and the battle of Karbala display a diversified mode of Islam. Despite its status as a minority sect, Shiʿi Muslims take on an assertive role, as well as a clearly marked identity, separating themselves from the dominant Muslim practices and narratives. This aspect of diversity and a different mode of narrative tradition in Shiʿism actually begins with its intriguing history itself. Since then, Shiʿism has become a major school of thought and practice in Islam, referring specifically to the followers of ʿAli, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. ʿAli and his family, including his wife, Fatima, and sons, Hasan and Husain—often spelled Husayn—took the role of the heirs of the Prophet, and their sacrifices for the community remain the center of the Karbala narrative both in global and local Islams. Each year during the month of Muharram, the first month in the Islamic calendar, thousands of Muslims including Shiʿa and Sunni, join to commemorate the battle of Karbala and the martyrdom of Hasan and Husain. However, Shiʿi and Sunni Muslims participate in different sets of storytelling and devotional practices that represent their different viewpoints of the history and legacy of the Prophet. Undoubtedly, the history and theology of Shiʿi Muslims impact the making of many everyday practices of Shiʿism. In order to understand the contours of several everyday practices of Shiʿism, we need to learn about their specific practices, such as the ten-day commemorations during the month of Muharram, and their narrative and ritual practices surrounding this event. According to these definitions, it is imperative to comprehend the contours of various living practices within the larger frame of the conceptual issues that Shiʿi Muslims, and even non-Muslims in various other contexts, involved in different rituals and narrative performances of Shiʿi Islam. Along with the overview and the section on the living Shiʿism as related to the battle of Karbala, this bibliography also includes Karbala-based studies on the public event of Muharram, Shiʿi literary and narrative cultures, and interactions among Shiʿi Muslims, Sufis, and non-Muslims. Most practices of Shiʿi Muslims hinge largely on their agreements and disagreements with these specific groups of communities. Daily practices of Shiʿism are inseparable from its historical memory, such as the battle of Karbala and the concept of the martyrdom of Husain. Shiʿi Muslims participate in their everyday devotional life while remembering these events from the history of Karbala martyrdom. Many rituals commemorate the memory of the battle of Karbala, religious gatherings (majalis) dwell deep on these historical details, and visitations to the symbolic shrines of the martyrs (ʿalam or taziyeh) also highlight this memory.

Islamic Print Media

The late 19th century saw the rise of a new textual object: Islamic print media. Whether journals, magazines, or books, these texts were self-consciously religious and reflected broader shifts in technology, literacy, and religious authority. Islamic print media was distinct from previous mediums for transmitting Islamic knowledge by its basic technological component: rather than a manuscript that must be copied by hand (and is thus produced in response to demand from particular purchasers), the cost of print media was bound up primarily in the original production process and erred on the side of greater, rather than lesser, diffusion. Over the past nearly century and a half, a still wider array of forms of Islamic print media have emerged, ranging from journals to magazines to short pocket-sized pamphlets. The rise and spread of Islamic print media was part and parcel of a broader shift in authority in Muslim-majority societies. It was a time of the decisive passing of an old order of urban notables by which prominent religious, economic, and military chiefs served as mediators between ruler and ruled. In its stead, new bureaucratic elites, often the product of state educational institutions, emerged as key participants in constituting a broader public sphere. In this context, the scholarly elite split between those who derived their authority primarily from association with modernizing states and others who sought to preserve the traditional independence of the ulama. It was a time during which Sufi orders struggled to retain their historic mediating function and declined in the face of an increasing powerful state (and the seizure of Islamic endowments controlled by these orders), as well as the rise of mass political movements. It was a time during which modernizing states laid increasing claim to the daily lives of its citizens through education, employment, and incarceration. It was also a time of rising literacy, which opened up new opportunities for scholars and lay men and women alike to define Islam for a broader audience. Crucially for those interested in affecting change, it was a time of popular protests across the Middle East and South Asia. Islamic print media was both a key technology and a central site of contestation in the midst of these momentous transformations. It would be used by lay persons who sought to challenge the old scholarly elite, as well as by these elites to retain or reconstitute their authority in radically different political, cultural, and religious circumstances. At the heart of the battle over Islamic print media was a basic question of authority: Who should be able to speak in the name of Islam? To what extent could Islamic print media producers take financial considerations into account? Should they include advertising, and if so, what kind of products were religiously legitimate? How should one treat an Islamic journal or magazine—was it a holy object or everyday ephemera? How was it similar to and different from non-Islamic print media? These tensions and questions, present in other forms of Islamic media today, would never be fully resolved.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (b. 1901–d. 1962) was a Turkish novelist, poet, critic, and historian of literature. He is considered to be one of the leading figures in modernist Turkish literature, writing five novels; sixteen stories; and many essays, letters, and diaries that constitute a rich resource for understanding the last century of the Ottoman Empire and the Early Republican Era. He belonged to the first generation of teachers educated in the Republican period. Although he served as a deputy of the Republican People’s Party in the Grand National Assembly between 1943 and 1946, he mainly focused on his literary studies and worked as a professor of Turkish literature in Istanbul University until he died in 1962. His two novels Huzur and Saatleri Ayarlama Enstitüsü are considered among the best novels written in Turkish. He was heavily influenced by Turkish poet and novelist Yahya Kemal Beyatlı as well as French poet Paul Valéry. He considered himself an outsider who rejected binary identifications of modernist versus traditionalist in Turkey’s intellectual life. As a result, he bemoaned the fact that he was ignored by his contemporaries. He only began to be embraced by the Turkish intelligentsia a decade after his death in the 1970s when Turkey was increasingly struggling with the dilemmas of modernization and the inevitable domestic conflicts that derived from it. While his critique of modernity was considered as a criticism toward the modernization endeavor of the Republican period, he was a proponent of many aspects of the revolution except for the language reform. His reconciliation of the supposedly contrasting themes like the Ottoman past versus modern Turkey, with the help of allegorical narratives, highlighted the duality of the Turkish modernization and made him a pioneer in the Turkish literature. His influence can be seen in many prominent Turkish authors including Oğuz Atay and Orhan Pamuk.

Nizar Qabbani

Nizar Qabbani was a Syrian poet, publisher, and diplomat. He was largely considered Syria’s national poet, and one of the most prominent contemporary figures in the Arab world. Born in Damascus on 21 March 1923, he studied law at Damascus University. After graduating in 1945, he worked for the Syrian Foreign Ministry, serving in several capital cities, including Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, Madrid, and London. By the time he tendered his resignation in 1966, he had established a publishing house in Beirut, which carried his name. He died in London on 30 April 1998, and was buried in Damascus. His work was featured not only in his two dozen volumes of poetry and in regular contributions to the Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat, but also in lyrics sung by Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, Iraqi, and other vocalists who helped popularize his work. He is one of the major Arab writers to have sparked major controversy and instigated change in Arab societies.

Muslim Television Preachers

Muslim television preachers, also called Muslim televangelists or media preachers, became popular with the rise of television, satellite networks, and the Internet. However, these individuals can trace their roots to earlier preachers who used newspapers, radio, and cassettes, as well as the phenomenon of popular storytellers from the medieval period. Today, Muslim television preachers are found worldwide, both inside and outside the Arab world, in countries such as Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, and more. Some of these preachers have traditional religious educations, with degrees from Al-Azhar or elsewhere, but many do not, instead holding degrees in subjects like business, accounting, or engineering. Like their counterparts from other religions, Muslim television preachers have also expanded beyond the realm of television and often spread their message through other means, such as seminars and lectures, book publications, websites, videos on YouTube, and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Prominent examples of Muslim television preachers include Amr Khaled and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, as well as others like Muhammad al-Sha‘rawi and Moez Masoud of Egypt, Muhammad Hassan and Wagdi Ghoneim (Salafi preachers from Egypt), Javed Ahmad Ghamidi and Farhat Hashmi of Pakistan, Zakir Naik of India, Abdullah Gymnastiar (Aa Gym) and Arifin Ilham of Indonesia, Tareq al-Suwaidan of Kuwait, and Ahmad al-Shugairi of Saudi Arabia, to name a few.

Khaled Al Siddiq

Khaled Mohamad Al Siddiq (also known as Kaled Mohamad Sidik) was born in Kuwait in 1945. He is best recognized as the director of what is considered the first feature film directed by a Gulf national, The Cruel Sea (Bas ya Bahar, 1972), which he also financed. It won the FIPRESCI award at the Venice Film Festival in its debut and went on to win awards at international film festivals in Chicago, Tehran, Damascus, and Carthage, and continues to play in film retrospectives around the world. It is a tragic portrait of the lives of pearl divers and their families, set in a pre-petroleum Gulf. It stars two of Kuwait’s most famous theater and television actors, Saad Al Faraj and Hayat Al Fahad, who play the parents of young man, played by Mohammed Al Mansour, determined to follow in his father’s steps and become a pearl diver, despite his parents’ pleas that he does not. His main goal is to make money so he can marry his neighbor, Noura (Amal Bakr), who is from a wealthier family. The film was censored in Kuwait before it screened there, deleting a rape scene during a wedding. Al Siddiq made only one other feature film, Wedding of Zain (Ors Zein, 1976), set in Africa and based on a story by the celebrated Sudanese writer Tayeb Saleh. It was selected for the Cannes Film Festival Director’s Fortnight in 1976. Since 1976, he has worked to finance several films, succeeding in co-producing two features: Heart of a Tyrant (1985, Hungary), directed by Milos Janco, and Forest of Love (Italy, 1983), directed by Alberto Bevilacqua. In 1990, Al Siddiq was editing a feature, Shaheen of Winter and Summer, filmed in Italy and Asia, but work stopped during the Kuwait invasion, during which some of the original footage were destroyed. He never released the film. Al Siddiq still lives in Kuwait. His father was a merchant trading with India, and Al Siddiq was educated at St. Peter’s High School in Bombay in the pre-oil era. He began his introduction to filmmaking volunteering at film studios in India. He also trained in filmmaking in Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. He made his first short film in 1965. Called Alia and Esam, it is based on a Bedouin poem about two lovers from rival tribes who sacrifice their lives to be together. Other shorts followed, all of which he independently financed and often acted in: Stage of Hope (1969), Faces of The Night (1968, Bronze Award, Tashkent Film Festival), Internal Security (1967), Last Voyage (1966). Al Siddiq appears as an actor in several of these films, and he was the first Kuwaiti director to transition Kuwaiti TV and theater actors into film actors. He received his first award at the Carthage Film Festival for the short documentary The Falcon (1965). Unlike his other films, which were self-financed, including The Cruel Sea, The Falcon was funded and commissioned by the government of Kuwait. Al Siddiq retains full rights to and copies of most of these short films, but declines to make them public. However, since the mid-2000s the Gulf countries, particularly the UAE and Qatar, began to invest heavily in film production and film festivals, and the concept of “Gulf cinema” developed. This has included training and festival categories just to support and encourage Gulf filmmakers, and this opened the door to looking back at what Gulf cinema already existed. That door always leads to The Cruel Sea, which up until the 2000s was the only Gulf-made film that had an international audience. This led to its revival in festival retrospectives. It has become the anchor film of the Gulf film history narrative. Al Siddiq has also directed Kuwaiti TV series and variety programs. From 1966 to 1973 he was a news reader with a Radio Kuwaiti English-language program. He has received honorary awards from the Dubai International Film Festival (2013), Doha Tribeca Film Festival (2012), and the Gulf Film Festival (2009). Since 1980 he has been on the board of directors of the Asia-Pacific Producers Association.

Reformist Muslims in Contemporary America

In the last two centuries, Muslims have made efforts to reform Islamic tradition and thought. Reform attempts have often focused on the advancement of the Islamic tradition and reconfiguration of Muslim thought and practices in light of changing sociopolitical circumstances and human knowledge. Reforming Islam has been a particularly central focus since Muslims’ direct encounters with modernity in the early 20th century. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (b. 1838–d. 1897), Muhammad Abduh (b. 1849–d. 1905), Muhammad Rashid Rida (b. 1865–d. 1935), and Fazlur Rahman (b. 1919–d. 1988) are the prominent figures of the reformist trend in recent history. Since the 1990s, an increasing number of Muslims have migrated to the United States, and rising Muslim populations have led to the emergence of reformist Muslim intellectuals there. Many of these reformists are professors or public intellectuals working at American institutions, and they come from different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds. Reformist American Muslim intellectuals should not be considered as an entirely and internally homogenous group; instead, it should be seen as an umbrella term covering various critical reconstructivist approaches to the Islamic tradition and modernity in the context of the United States and globalization in the last three decades. These thinkers call themselves “reformists,” “progressives,” or “critical Muslims” in their works. Referring to them as “reformist American Muslim intellectuals” was preferred for this article because they live and work in the United States and want change, but they are not advocating for revolution or radical social upheaval. Instead, reformist Muslims mainly focus on building democratic, pluralist, and ethical theories or practices from a Muslim perspective while prioritizing the development of indigenous Islamic arguments for their agendas and ideas. Thus, their intellectual projects often simultaneously challenge (a) apologetic, exclusivist, premodern socio-legalistic thoughts, and epistemologies promoted by Muslim fundamentalists, Islamists, and traditionalists; and (b) Western-centric, secularized, reductionist views found in some popular Western discourses. Ultimately, reformists attempt to deconstruct the hegemonic assumptions of (neo)orientalist perspectives and dogmatic discourses about Muslims in order to reconstruct democratic, pluralists, and just interpretations of the Islamic tradition for the sake of contemporary Muslims. The themes of reformists’ writings reveal a correspondence to the sociopolitical issues of contemporary Muslims in the West and the global scene. For example, reformist Muslims’ writings have focused on themes such as the critique of traditional Islam in the aftermath of 11 September 2001 and the resurgence of radical groups, extremist ideas, and authoritarianism in Muslim communities. Thus, reformist Muslims often focus on debates about Islam’s compatibility with modernity and democracy, the role of religion in public life, human rights, religious freedom, pluralism, and gender justice. As a result, reformist Muslims in the United States can be seen as a continuation of Islamic modernism that started in the 19th century in the Islamic world but has been significantly shaped by the conditions of the modern American society and circumstances of Muslims. In other words, it is reasonable to say that reformist Muslim discourses do not emerge or exist in a vacuum. Thus, their writings can be seen as the production of a dialectical engagement between Islamic tradition and modernity at large.