Islam Books

Book Synopsis The education provided by Canada’s faith-based schools is a subject of public, political, and scholarly controversy. As the population becomes more religiously diverse, the continued establishment and support of faith-based schools has reignited debates about whether they should be funded publicly and to what extent they threaten social cohesion. These discussions tend to occur without considering a fundamental question: How do faith-based schools envision and enact their educational missions? Discipline, Devotion, and Dissent offers responses to that question by examining a selection of Canada’s Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic schools. The daily reality of these schools is illuminated through essays that address the aims and practices that characterize these schools, how they prepare their students to become citizens of a multicultural Canada, and how they respond to dissent in the classroom. The essays in this book reveal that Canada’s faith-based schools sometimes succeed and sometimes struggle in bridging the demands of the faith and the need to create participating citizens of a multicultural society. Discussion surrounding faith-based schools in Canada would be enriched by a better understanding of the aims and practices of these schools, and this book provides a gateway to the subject. Trade Review``The editors' choice to concentrate on only Catholic, Jewish, and Islamic schools ... achieves the stated goal of allowing the reader to reflect on different perspectives surrounding debates over religious schools. The focus on three religions also serves the discussion regarding three important aspects of the debate. In the first part, it affords the reader the opportunity to become more familiar with the approach to education particular to each of the studies religions. In the second, we consider the integration of Canadian multicultural values into religious teachings, while in the third we are exposed to the openness of religious schools to internal pluralism. In this fashion, the readers comes to appreciate different facets of the daily functioning of such schools, grasping a more holistic portrait of their reality.... In sum, since religious schooling in Canada is a subject that has been scarcely treated in academic literature, even though it regularly occupies the public attention, a sort of demystification of religious schools emerges in this book. This reveals that even while respecting a religious faith and structure, such institutions can encourage students to be a part of a tolerant and open society. These contradictions in experiences within religious schools are well-discussed in the book's conclusion, ââ¬ËDiversity and Deliberation in Faith-Based Schoolsââ¬â¢ (Mintz), a chapter that, without trying to eliminate the controversy, shows how such schools have a place in the quest for Canadian identity.'' -- Sivane Hirsch, Universitè de Montrèal -- Canadian Jewish Studies/Ãâ°tudes juivres canadiennes, Vol. 20, No. 1, 2012``Religious education is a particularly contentious topic in an increasingly secular society. And yet there is surprisingly little scholarly literature on this topic. The editors seek to address this gap through this excellent and much needed contribution to the field.... Given this ongoing controversy in Canada, Discipline, Devotion, and Dissent can ideally help foster a healthier and more informed debate about the role of religious schools there.'' -- Aruba Mahmud, Western University, London, ON -- American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, Volume 31, number 3, Summer 2014Table of Contents Discipline, Devotion, and Dissent: Jewish, Catholic, and Islamic Schooling in Canada, edited by Graham P. McDonough, Nadeem A. Memon, and Avi I. Mintz Introduction Graham P. McDonough, Nadeem A. Memon, and Avi I. Mintz Part A: Aims and Practices 1. The Jewish Day Schools of Canada Seymour Epstein 2. The Distinctiveness of Catholic Education Mario O. D'Souza, csb 3. Between Immigrating and Integrating: The Challenge of Defining an Islamic Pedagogy in Canadian Islamic Schools Nadeem A. Memon Part B: Faith and Citizenship 4. Jewish Education, Democracy, and Pluralistic Engagement Greg Beiles 5. Canadian Catholic Schools: Sacred and Secular Tensions in a Free and Democratic Society J. Kent Donlevy 6. London Islamic School: Millstone or Milestone? Asma Ahmed Part C: Dissent and Critical Thinking 7. The Changed Context for Jewish Day-School Education Alex Pomson and Randal F. Schnoor 8. Teaching Subject Matter That is Controversial among Catholics: Implications for Intellectual Growth in the Church Graham P. McDonough 9. A Canadian Islamic School in Perspective: A Critique of the “Moderate” and “Strong” Categories in Faith-Based Schooling Qaiser Ahmad Conclusion 10. Diversity and Deliberation in Faith-Based Schools: Implications for Educating Canadian Citizens Avi I. Mintz Glossary The Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisA concise history of the Muslim countries. It begins with Rome and Persia and the pre-Islamic Bedouins and ends with the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols (1258), and in the West with the fall of Granada to the Christians (1492). The author seeks to unravel the many motivations and influences that went into the making of Islamic history and to expound and evaluate them. He frequently reminds the reader of economic and cultural developments taking place at the same time as, and often in intimate connection with, the more overtly political events. In her introduction, Jane Hathaway shows the connection between the history of Islamic civilization and world history.

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Book SynopsisThis book is an objective study of the state of Islam in Senegal and of the religious factors that influence it. Islam in Senegal is characterized by the strong intrenchment of a certain number of Sufi brotherhoods. In effect, the majority of Senegal's 7,600,000 Muslims consider adherence to a brotherhood, a tariqa, to be a religious obligation, in keeping with the well-known Sufi maxim ""He who does not have a shaykh will have Satan for a guide."" Mbacke traces the genesis and evolution of Sufism in order to explain the circumstances that permitted the emergence of Sufi brotherhoods. He describes the brotherhoods that are currently active in Senegal and depicts the means and manner of their diffusion, the lives of their founding figures, their basic teachings, their internal organization, the links they maintain with each other, and the role they play in the country's cultural, economic, social and political life. The book uses its study of the present condition of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods to speculate on their future evolution.

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Book SynopsisThis volume profiles Hamas (Harakat al-Mugawama al-Islamiya), main radical Islamic terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of the State of Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, smaller in size but equally committed to eliminating Israel through political violence. The aim of this book is not to glorify terrorist movements. Rather it is designed to provide an easily accessible reference for academics, policy makers, reporters, and other interested individuals on two of the most notorious Palestinian terrorist groups. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.Table of ContentsHighlights include: brief history; ideology; objectives; organizational tructure; areas of operation; headquarters; tactics and capabilities; targets; timeline; appendices; bibliography.

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Book SynopsisLouay M. Safi is professor of political science and Islamic philosophy at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar.

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Book SynopsisHeidegger, Ontology, and the Destiny of Islam: Thoughts and Reflections on the Nature of Islam in the World critiques Islam as a phenomenon set into motion from its beginning. It is a reflective work that addresses difficult questions about Islam through familiar historical concerns and grapples with the issues that arise in that process. Notably, it attests to making no substantive claims about Muslims and instead keeps to the course of analysis of the phenomenon that is Islam, which is taken as an assessable entity rather than a categorical construct. Understood largely in light of a history of observable realities, the ontological analysis of Islam reveals the general acquaintance with it to be imperfect. This suggests the reality of Islam is based on a primal truth that is only partially seen. The analysis then confronts two problems: firstly, that Islam is not what its historical story, as it were, proclaims and, secondly, that Islam is therefore not what is traditionally made out of the surviving historical narratives. It is not a question of what Islam is, but more critically, how Islam appears in the world.

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Book SynopsisThe rise of Ottoman Sarajevo in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is emblematic of a unified new Muslim community whose conversion to Islam and booming social and economic growth unified both the city and its hinterland. Primarily based on a wide array of Ottoman administrative sources, this monograph builds on earlier studies of Sarajevo and other Ottoman cities to analyze the critical social and economic factors behind these developments.Numerous references to manumitted slave converts to Islam can be found among Sarajevo’s pious foundations. Many of these manumitted slaves held hereditary posts in the pious foundations, thus becoming part of the urban elite. In the countryside, Muslims dominated rural elites from the initial Ottoman conquest onwards. The peasants and petty nobility converted much more gradually. Their steady conversion can be partially tied to the practice of disproportionately distributing privately-held arable land to Muslims and Muslim converts.These new converts became critical participants in the city’s newly emerging economy. The manumitted slaves who staffed the pious foundations often distributed cash credit at interest to the merchantry and urban notables, helping fuel further economic development. Arable land holders often used their privileges to sell their lands to the highest bidder. The state, which often sanctioned such purchases, helped promote higher grain production and the expansion of urban elites into the countryside.

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Book SynopsisSome scholars of Islam have argued that slavery and concubinage are permissible according to the Qur'an and the teachings and practice of the Prophet Muhammad. When faced with dissenting views on the disputed subject of the legitimacy of slavery in Islam, they often respond with a loaded question and a theological trap: "Did the Prophet Muhammad commit a grave moral wrong?" Others advance moral relativism. Georgetown University's Jonathan Brown, for example, controversially maintained that "slavery is wrong," but added the disclaimer that "as a Muslim myself, I cannot condemn it as grossly, intrinsically immoral across space and time. To do so would be to condemn the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad and God's law as morally compromised." As Dr. John Andrew Morrow makes clear in Islam & Slavery, there is not a single verse in the Qur'an that commands slavery. Slavery is neither an article of faith nor is it a religious obligation. In fact, the Qur'an encourages and even requires Muslims to emancipate enslaved people. As far as the exponents of Islam's spiritual, moral, ethical, and egalitarian tradition are concerned, the Qur'an, the Prophet, and Islam introduced a system that would reform the practice of slavery and abolish it entirely and forever. As God asks in the Qur'an: "What will make you know what the steep path is? It is the freeing of a slave.

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