THEOLOGICAL AND INTELLECTUAL ROOTS IN DEOBANDI THOUGHTS: A PARADIGM FROM MUḤAMMAD QĀSIM NĀNAWTAWĪ’S DISCOURSES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HIS ḤUJJAT AL-ISLĀM

This article focuses on one of the important books of Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī—Ḥujjat al-Islām. Many of his 32 books, epistles and letters are written in response to Christian and Hindu missionaries. From the perspective of neo-ʿilm al-kalām (Islamic scholastic theology) they have great importance. These are the works through which a lay reader can understand Nānawtawī’s methodology in polemics and his various dialectical aspects, which are based on propositional logic and pragmatic philosophy and differ from the early discourses of ʿilm al-kalām. Most of his works include his critiques and strong refutation of both Christian theological anthropology and Hindu mythology. This article examines a limited part of Nānawtawī’s dialectic discussions which include the existence of God, His essence, meaning of the monotheism, including evidence in support of monotheism and his refutation of the Trinity.

Latina Muslim Producers of Online and Literary Countermedia:

Since 9/11, US English and Spanish language media have reported on the rise in Latino/a conversion to Islam. Western(ized) media images I examined for this essay about Latinas converting to Islam raise suspicions overpossible forced conversions, brainwashing, or abuse. What is evident and salient in these media portrayals, whether deliberately or unintentionally created, are the binaries (Western vs. non-Western, Christian vs. Muslim, and Arab vs. Latino) that limit understandings of how these women are self-empowered and make choices for themselves in their everyday lives as Latina Muslim converts.

Resisting Islamophobia: Muslims Seeking American Integration Through Spiritual Growth, Community Organizing and Political Activism

Since 9/11, second-generation Muslims have experienced an increase in religious discrimination that has presented several challenges to their American integration. Scholars have noted that Muslims are often marginalized and “othered” because of their religious beliefs, attire choices and non-Western ethnic origins. In New York, Arabs, South Asians and Africans are the predominant ethnic groups practicing Islam. Although Muslim communities are ethnically and racially diverse, they are categorized in ways that have transformed their religious identity into a racialized group. This new form of racial amalgamation is not constructed on underlying skin color similarities but on their religious adherence to Islam. The War on Terror has complicated the image of Muslims by circulating Islamophobia, or the fear of Muslims and Islam, onto American society. Political rhetoric targeting Muslim communities has also incited new ways of misinterpreting Qur’anic text to further marginalize them. Second-generation Muslim Americans are responding to Islamophobia by reframing the negative depictions about their identities through community-based activism. This paper takes an intersectionality approach to understanding how Muslims across the New York metro area are managing their religious identities as they seek to develop a sense of belonging in American society. This ethnographic case study addresses how second-generation Muslims are resisting Islamophobia through community building, civic engagement, and college student associations. Countering Islamophobia has become part of the everyday life experience for Muslims in New York and is currently their main trajectory for integration into American society.

Blackamerican Muslim Scholars and Leaders in New York City

Recent work has drawn attention to the state-led and media-driven discourse of "good" and "bad" Muslims. It is a flexible discourse, with benchmarks and shifting appraisals, that aims to mold American Muslims into "good" secular Muslims. Drawing on old Orientalist representations, this American Islamophobic framework strives to produce "good" Blackamerican Muslims through rendering them as invisible, voiceless, or under the control of allies of the U.S. secular power. The three ethnographic vignettes—a masjid fundraiser, two chaplains, and a political collective—demonstrate that Blackamerican Muslims scholars and leaders are not only disrupting this discursive project, but also undermining negative portrayals of Muslims and Islam more broadly. In addition, through their practice and discourse, these Blackamerican Muslim figures are formulating an emergent American Muslim religious identity.

Research Handbook on Islamic Law and Society

The premise of the adaptability, flexibility, and compatibility of Islamic normative teachings (sharīʿa) to new social contexts is already documented by many scholars, including John Bowen’s On British Islam: Religion, Law, and Everyday Practice in Shari‘a Councils and Michael G. Peletz’s Islamic Modern: Religious Courts and Cultural Politics in Malaysia. Unlike those works, this textbook is organized by theme which provides a unique contribution to our understanding of the overall function of contemporary Islamic law. Such an approach shows that the ‘right’ answer in one country is not necessarily the ‘right’ solution in another Muslim community, which explains the diverse application of Islamic law. The book challenges Wael Hallaq’s observation that the modern codification of Islamic law resulted in the absence of hermeneutical possibilities or led to a single mode of judicial application. Perhaps Hallaq’s proposition is accurate if we examine the function of Islamic law in a specific country. Nevertheless, the book provides concrete examples of the administrative and interpretive techniques of ‘neo-ijtihād’ today. To download full review, click on PDF.

Muslims at the American Vigil

The 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting at a gay dance club in Florida fomented a surge in Islamophobia, as pundits blamed the perpetrator’s Muslim identity for his hateful act. In the aftermath of the violence, vigils across the United States offered forums for Muslim American and other groups to publically express their shared grief and to address homophobia and Islamophobia together. The people affected most intensely by the tragedy were LGBTQ Muslims, who were simultaneously subjected to both intensified homophobia and Islamophobia in the wake of the shooting. This local ethnographic study of Orlando vigils in Michigan examines how the Orlando aftermath encouraged debate about the issue of LGBTQ Muslim visibility and conversation about the potential for Muslim civic leaders and mosque leaders to serve as their allies. During the Orlando vigils, LGBTQ Muslims, allies, and faith leaders drew on, negotiated, and/or resisted various repertoires of mourning and advocacy. Their responses to the Orlando moment provide valuable information about how connections among faith, sexuality, race, and protest are shaping the emergence of LGBTQ Muslim visibilities in the United States today.

Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition

Collections of poems from the Islamic mystical tradition are not at all unusual on the American market. Yet most of these collections have been published by presses that specialize in spirituality, so it is quite remarkable to see this collection of poetry translated and edited by Omid Safi being published by Yale University Press. Safi is a Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University in North Carolina, and he is author of numerous books such as Progressive Muslims (2003), The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam (2006) and Memories of Muhammad: Why the Prophet Matters (2009). Yet he is prob-ably better known as a public intellectual through his blogs and columns. To download full review, click on PDF.

Islam without Europe: Traditions of Reform in Eighteenth-Century Islamic Thought

It is hard to exaggerate the scope or scale of this major monograph from one of the foremost Arab Muslim scholars of his generation, Ahmad Dallal, formerly Provost at the American University of Beirut, and now Dean of Georgetown University Qatar.In carefully orchestrated arguments, with massive documentary evidence, Dallal addresses eighteenth century theological/juridical issues across the span of the Muslim world. He touches on intellectual giants and reform movements from Senegal to Syria, from Yemen to India, delving deeply into complex debates that continue to resonate. Islam without Europe catapults Dallal into the company of revisionists who are also global historians, those looking for a way to redefine Islam outside the parameters of European historical conventions. To download full review, click on PDF.

Guest Editorial

The papers in this special issue and the one preceding it have their roots in a panel titled “Ethnography, Misrepresentations of Islam, and Advocacy,” which Timothy Daniels and I organized for the 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association. We were joined on this panel by Alisa Perkins, Katrina Thompson, Robert Hefner, and Yamil Avivi, where we all grappled with our struggles with the increasingly political nature of our work on Islam. Although we work in a variety of geographic regions, with diverse subjects, we all shared similar concerns regarding the complexity of accurately depicting the Muslim communities we study while challenging the anti-Muslim stereotypes that exist in popular culture and contemporary news media. At the same time, we did not wish to reify popular divisions between “good” and “bad” Muslims or inaccurately depict the lives of our research subjects in order to cater to that popular division. To download full editorial, click on PDF.

Sharī‘a Scripts: A Historical Anthropology

While the Yemen seems to be stumbling from one disaster into the next, it is good to see how some of the best experts in Yemeni studies continue their work in ways that will be useful in the country’s future. The present volume is not only bound to become recognized soon as the magnum opus by Brinkley Messick, professor of anthropology and Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies at Columbia University and one of the world’s leading experts in Yemeni studies today. More importantly still, Sharī‘a Scripts features all the qualities required for a true academic milestone in Yemen-related scholarship for decades to come, with potential ramifications for the historical and legal anthropology of the Middle East at large. This volume is based on half a lifetime of analytical and comparative studies that began during the author’s first fieldwork period in the central and southern highlands of northern Yemen during the 1970s. Messick meticulously examines the structures of jurisprudence (the “library” in his terms) with the methodologies and techniques of textual scholarship, while relating it to the “archive” of records concerning everyday interactions in legal life as embedded within the practical interplay of fields between orality and scriptural statements. To download full review, click on PDF.