Series Editor: Farouk Topan
The Exploring Muslim Contexts (EMC) series aims to explore issues that are critical to all contemporary societies, particularly those that remain relatively unexplored within Muslim environments. It examines the contemporary challenges faced by both Muslim-majority societies and Western countries with Muslim populations.
While the focus of research is on Muslim contexts, it is obvious that no such undertaking is possible without taking into account change at the global level. Muslim cultures and societies are integrally linked to and embedded in the processes and impacts of globalisation and transnational exchanges.
The Exploring Muslim Contexts series addresses questions pertaining to knowledge construction, social change, development and new forms of socio-economic, political and cultural practices and differentiations in Muslims contexts.
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Volume 7: Shaping Global Islamic Discourses : The Role of al-Azhar, al-Medina and al-Mustafa
Masooda Bano, Editor
Keiko Sakurai, Editor
Claims abound that Saudi oil money is fueling Salafi Islam in cultural and geographical terrains as disparate as the remote hamlets of the Swat valley in Pakistan and sprawling megacities such as Jakarta. In a similar manner, it is often regarded as a fact that Iran and the Sunni Arab states are fighting proxy wars in foreign lands.
This empirically grounded study challenges the assumptions prevalent within academic as well as policy circles about the hegemonic power of such Islamic discourses and movements to penetrate all Muslim communities and societies.
Through case studies of academic institutions, the volume illustrates how transmission of ideas is an extremely complex process, and that the outcome of such efforts depends not just on the strategies adopted by backers of those ideologies but equally on the characteristics of the receipt communities.
In order to understand this complex interaction between global and local Islam and the plurality in outcomes, the volume focuses on the workings of three universities with global outreach (Al-Azhar University in Egypt, International Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia, and Al-Mustafa International University in Iran) whose graduating students carry the ideas acquired during their education back to their own countries, along with, in some cases, a zeal to reform their home society.
Masooda Bano is Associate Professor and University Research Lecturer at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford; Keiko Sakurai is Professor at the Faculty of International Research and Education, School of International Liberal Studies, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.
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Volume 6: Contemporary Islamic Law in Indonesia : Sharia and Legal Pluralism
Arskal Salim
Indonesia has probably the fastest changing legal system in the Muslim world. This book represents the first ethnographic account of legal pluralism in the post-conflict and disaster situation in Aceh. It addresses changes in both the national legal system and the regional legal structure in the province.
Focusing on the encounter between diverse patterns of legal reasoning advocated by multiple actors and by different institutions (local, national and international; official and unofficial; judicial, political and social cultural) it considers the vast array of issues arising in the wake of the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Aceh.
It investigates disputes about rights to land and other forms of property, power relations, the conflict of rules, gender relationships, the right to make decisions, and prevailing norms. The cases involve various actors from villages, the courts, the provincial government and the legislature, the national Supreme Court and the central government of Indonesia.
Arskal Salim is Senior Lecturer at the Religion and Society Research Centre, School of Social Sciences and Psychology, University of Western Sydney, Australia.
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Volume 5: Genealogy and Knowledge in Muslim Societies : Understanding the Past
Sarah Bowen Savant, Editor
Helena de Felipe, Editor
Genealogy is one of the most important and authoritative organising principles of Muslim societies.
From the Prophet’s day to the present, ideas about kinship and descent have shaped tribal, ethnic, sectarian and other identities. An understanding of genealogy is therefore vital to our understanding of Muslim societies, particularly with regard to the generation, preservation and manipulation of genealogical knowledge.
This book addresses the subject through a range of case studies that link genealogical knowledge to the particular circumstances in which it was created, circulated and promoted. They stress the malleability of kinship and memory, and the interests this malleability served.
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Volume 4: Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts : Perspectives from the Past
Derryl N. MacLean, Editor
Sikeena Karmali Ahmed, Editor
Cosmopolitanism is a key concept in social and political thought, standing in opposition to closed human group ideologies such as tribalism, nationalism and fundamentalism. Much recent discussion of this concept has been situated within Western self-perceptions, with little inclusion of information from Muslim contexts.
This volume redresses the balance by focusing attention on instances in world history when cosmopolitan ideas and actions pervaded specific Muslim societies and cultures, exploring the tensions between regional cultures, isolated enclaves and modern nation-states. Models are chosen from four geographic areas: The Swahili coast, the Ottoman empire/Turkey, Iran and Indo-Pakistan.
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Volume 3: Ethnographies of Islam : Ritual Performances and Everyday Practices
Baudouin Dupret, Editor
Thomas Pierret, Editor
Paulo G. Pinto, Editor
Kathryn Spellman-Poots, Editor
This comparative approach to the various uses of the ethnographic method in research about Islam in anthropology and other social sciences is particularly relevant in the current climate. Political discourses and stereotypical media portrayals of Islam as a monolithic civilisation have prevented the emergence of cultural pluralism and individual freedom.
This book counters such discourses by showing the diversity and plurality of Muslim societies and by promoting reflection on how the ethnographic method allows the description, representation and analysis of the social and cultural complexity of Muslim societies in the discourse of anthropology.
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Volume 2: Development Models in Muslim Contexts : Chinese, 'Islamic' and Neo-liberal Alternatives
Robert Springborg, Editor
Recent discussions of the 'Chinese economic development model', the emergence of an alternative 'Muslim model' over the past quarter century and the faltering globalisation of the 'Washington Consensus' all point to the need to investigate more systematically the nature of these models and their competitive attractions.
This is especially the case in the Muslim world which both spans different economic and geographic categories and is itself the progenitor of a development model.
The 'Chinese model' has attracted the greatest attention in step with that country's phenomenal growth and therefore provides the primary focus for this book. This volume examines the characteristics of this model and its reception in two major regions of the world - Africa and Latin America.
It also investigates the current competition over development models across Muslim contexts. The question of which model or models, if any, will guide development in Muslim majority countries is vital not only for them, but for the world as a whole. This is the first political economy study to address this vital question as well as the closely related issue of the centrality of governance to development.
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Volume 1: The Challenge of Pluralism : Paradigms from Muslim Contexts
Abdou Filali-Ansary, Editor
Sikeena Karmali Ahmed, Editor
The volume discusses notions of pluralism and its specific relevance to Muslim societies. Current popular and academic discussions tend to make certain assumptions regarding Islam and its lack of compatibility with notions of pluralism. Some notable liberal thinkers have even argued that pluralism itself is inherently antithetical to Islam.
These assumptions are challenged by discussing the broad spectrum of relevance and application of the notion of pluralism to modern day societies, examining securalism, multiculturalism, democracy, globalisation and the pivotal role of civil society.