Family Matters

History has so far paid scant attention to Muslims in the earliest phase of colonizing the Americas. As a general policy, the Spanish Crown prohibited all non-Catholics from going to early Spanish America. Nevertheless, historians recognize that a few Muslims managed to secretly cross the Atlantic Ocean with the European settlers during the sixteenth century. Later they imported African Muslim slaves but historians considered both Africans and indigenous peoples passive participants in forming Latin American society until evidence refuted these erroneous views. Furthermore, the public had assumed that only single Spanish men went to the American unknown until historians challenged this view, and now women’s role is fully recognized in the colonizing enterprise. Additionally, despite the ban on non-Catholics, researchers found many Jews in the Americas, even if the Spanish Inquisition found out and killed almost all of them. In line with revisionist history, my research pioneers in three aspects. It demonstrates that Muslim men and women went to early Spanish America. Also, the Spanish Crown allowed Muslims to legally go to its American colonies. Additionally, the documents substantiate my new findings that Muslims went to sixteenth-century Latin America as complete families. They mostly proceeded out of Spain as the wards or servant-slaves of Spanish settlers after superficially converting to Catholicism. The present study follows two case studies that record Muslim families in early sixteenth-century Spanish America. Paradoxically, their very persecutor—the Spanish Church and its terrible Inquisitorial arm—established their contested belief in Islam.

The Irreconcilable Conflict between Islam and Liberalism

John Rawls used an apparently neutral apparatus to derive the principles of justice that all “rational” people ought to agree with because they provide the basis of coexistence in a pluralistic society. He believes that religious faith is consistent with the commitment to liberalism. The paper shows that the Rawlsian liberal “self” modelled in the original position is not consistent with the original position recognized by religion in general and Islam in particular. According to Islam, the human self is mukallaf (subject of God) while Rawls treats it non-mukallaf. This is so because Rawlsian original position presumes an atheist self behind the veil of ignorance. This conceptualization of self is not only inconsistent with but also hostile to religion. The claims about liberalism’s tolerance towards religion are superficial. The liberal self can express itself in various religious forms provided these are aligned with the system of rights acknowledged by the liberal atheist self.

The Roots of the Ecological Crisis in the Theological and Philosophical Landscape of Modern Civilization

According to contemporary Muslim philosopher and theologian Seyyed Hossein Nasr, the ecological crisis is a by-product of the modern Western worldview. The root cause of the crisis is the modern concept of nature, knowledge, and human, which has led to a spiritual crisis. For Nasr, the modern human has forgotten the vertical ascend and followed its echo and shadow in the earthly ambitions with the blind pursuit and application of modern science and technology (scientism). He desacralized knowledge and nature and sought infinite material progress in the finite world and thus brought about self-destruction in the form of ecological and environmental crises. For Nasr, the reign of quantity gave impetus to consumerism which resulted in the unprecedented destruction of nature. This paper analyzes Nasr’s views about the theological and philosophical causes of the ecological crisis and attempts to offer a realistic solution to it.

Heir of the Prophets

This article explores veneration of Ḥusayn b. ‘Alī (d. 61/680) and the place of his ritual visitation (ziyārah) and pilgrimage to his tomb in Karbala in the construction of Twelver Shī‘ī socio-religious identity. Following the theoretical approach of social identity theory, I argue that Twelver Shī‘ī veneration of Ḥusayn operates not only vertically, that is, to appeal to the divine, but also horizontally, that is, to secure a prominent socio-religious lineage for Twelver Shī‘īs vis-à-vis the non-Shī‘ī Muslim, Jewish, and Christian traditions. Through close reading and analysis of reports (ḥadīths/akhbār) compiled by Ibn Qūluwayh (d. 368-9/978-9) in his Kāmil al-Ziyārāt (The Complete Visitations), a fourth/tenth- century text devoted entirely to the theme of ritual pilgrimage, I conceptualize three levels of Twelver Shī‘ī socio-religious positioning. First, reports in this text encourage veneration of Ḥusayn and pilgrimage to his tomb as an indispensable feature of individual and communal Twelver Shī‘ī identity. Second, reports express veneration of Ḥusayn and his burial site as a marker of rivalry vis-à-vis the non-Shī‘ī Muslim tradition. Finally, the socio-religious place of Twelver Shī‘īs is further enhanced through reports depicting major figures from the Jewish and Christian traditions as participating in the veneration of Ḥusayn.

Islam and Environmental Ethics

The present paper deals with Islamic moral teachings of the environment from a Qur’ānic perspective. It attempts to correlate some familiar Qur’ānic terms with human moral responsibility towards the natural world. The paper investigates whether the Islamic view of the natural world supports the anthropocentric and bio-centric approach to environmental ethics or not. In so doing, the paper aims to present an Islamic balancing approach to the environment, show why such a unique approach is necessary to address the present environmental degradation, and how it can work for environmental sustainability.

Some Pointers and Reminders in Islamic Studies

Below are pointers and reminders (in no particular order) on how to go about navigating one’s way through the various stages of academic life in Islamic Studies. This document is intended for those who are training to be in, or are already in, the profession. Although in my own words, many of the items listed below are rephrased from counsel given by teachers and friends over the years.

Coffee was once Ḥarām?

This paper attempts to address many misconceptions regarding the coffee controversy, which engulfed the Muslim world in the tenth/sixteenth century. It argues that rather than there simply being an oppositional binary of scholars permitting or forbidding coffee, in fact, a number of other positions can actually be discerned in the legal debate, namely that of recommendation and disapproval. Furthermore, it argues that besides holding the balance of power insofar as being the majority position, jurists who deemed coffee to be a permissible substance resorted to a number of epistemically powerful indicators to refute the prohibitionists, such as experimentation and the testimony of numerous individuals that the drink did not intoxicate or bring about any adverse side effects. In addition, by referring to some important but oft-ignored conventions pertaining to fatwās, the author argues that not all scholars typically labeled as being prohibitionists of coffee may have deemed the drink to be forbidden. Instead, many of them simply based their answers exclusively on the information provided to them by the questioner, in accordance with the legal precept that “the jurisconsult is the prisoner of the questioner.” This paper is unique in its depth and comprehensiveness as it studies all the existing scholarly views on coffee. Furthermore, it provides a detailed study of the proceedings of the Meccan Assembly. Regarding the assembly, I argue that the attending jurists actually disagreed on the drink’s ruling and that the different forms of evidence provided by the prohibitionists are not persuasive from a legal viewpoint.

Hindu-Muslim Religious Encounters during the Delhi Sultanate Period

This article is an analytical reconsideration of the nature of the theological and cultural relationship that existed between Muslims and the Hindus in the Delhi Sultanate. It further aims at an examination of the religious attitudes of both communities towards each other. Historical links between Islam and Hinduism in the Indian subcontinent are extended into the very ancient past. Both religions have shared a long history that goes back to the early days of Islam. Religious interaction between Islam and Hinduism is a complex and multidimensional theme. It has its significance in the present world and in fact, it not only involves religious and theological issues but also many current socio-political and anthropological themes like race, gender, nation, and majority-minority relations are linked with the shared past of both communities in the Indian subcontinent. In this article, I explore the nature of the religious or theological interactions between both communities i.e., how Hindus generally and Brahmans particularly perceived and interpreted Islam and Muslims as newcomers to their land and what were the Muslim theological and intellectual perspectives on Indian traditions generally and on Hindus particularly.