This volume draws attention to and moves beyond the traditional methodological frames that have governed knowledge production in the academic study of Islam. Departing from Orientalist and largely textual studies, the chapters collected herein revolve around three main themes: gender, the political, and what has come to be known as "lived Islam." The first involves ascertaining how to read gender and gender issues into traditional sources. The second encourages an attunement to the often delicate intersection between the spheres of religion and politics. The final provides a corrective to our traditional over-emphasis on the interpretation of texts and a preoccupation with studying (mainly male) elites. Taken as a whole, this volume encourages a multi-methodological approach to the study of Islam. Contributors include Abbas Aghdassi, Aaron W. Hughes, Eva Kepplinger, Taira Amin, Betül Avcı, Ali Abedi Renani and Seyyed Ebrahim Sarparast Sadat, Meral Durmuş and Bahattin Akşit, Walid Ghali, Isabella Crespi and Martina Crescenti, Brian Arly Jacobsen, Pernille Friis Jensen, Kirstine Sinclair, and Niels Valdemar Vinding, Magdalena Pycińska, Zahraa McDonald, Emin Poljarevic, Abdessamad Belhaj.

Built on the foundation of their landmark Handbook of Qualitative Research, it extends beyond the investigation of qualitative inquiry itself to explore the indigenous and non-indigenous voices that inform research, policy, politics, and social justice.

This is a major and innovative contribution to our understanding of the historical unfolding of Islamic law. Scrutinizing its historical contexts, Salaymeh proposes that Islamic law is a continuous intermingling of innovation and tradition. The book's interdisciplinary approach provides accessible explanations and translations of complex materials and ideas.

A groundbreaking response to the challenges of interpreting Islamic religion in the post-9/11 and post-Orientalist era Rethinking Islamic Studies upends scholarly roadblocks in post-Orientalist discourse within contemporary Islamic studies and carves fresh inroads toward a robust new understanding of the discipline, one that includes religious studies and other politically infused fields of inquiry. Editors Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, along with a distinguished group of scholars, map the trajectory of the study of Islam and offer innovative approaches to the theoretical and methodological frameworks that have traditionally dominated the field. In the volume's first section the contributors reexamine the underlying notions of modernity in the East and West and allow for the possibility of multiple and incongruent modernities. This opens a discussion of fundamentalism as a manifestation of the tensions of modernity in Muslim cultures. The second section addresses the volatile character of Islamic religious identity as expressed in religious and political movements at national and local levels. In the third section, contributors focus on Muslim communities in Asia and examine the formation of religious models and concepts as they appear in this region. This study concludes with an afterword by accomplished Islamic studies scholar Bruce B. Lawrence reflecting on the evolution of this post-Orientalist approach to Islam and placing the volume within existing and emerging scholarship. Rethinking Islamic Studies offers original perspectives for the discipline, each utilizing the tools of modern academic inquiry, to help illuminate contemporary incarnations of Islam for a growing audience of those invested in a sharper understanding of the Muslim world.

Ramon Harvey revisits the Muslim theologian Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944) from Samarqand and puts his system, and that of the Māturīdī school, into lively dialogue with modern thought to show that a contemporary Muslim philosophical theology (kalām jadīd) can provide original and constructive answers to perennial theological questions.

Exploring the increasing impact of the Internet on Muslims around the world, this book sheds new light on the nature of contemporary Islamic discourse, identity, and community. The Internet has profoundly shaped how both Muslims and non-Muslims perceive Islam and how Islamic societies and networks are evolving and shifting in the twenty-first century, says Gary Bunt. While Islamic society has deep historical patterns of global exchange, the Internet has transformed how many Muslims practice the duties and rituals of Islam. A place of religious instruction may exist solely in the virtual world, for example, or a community may gather only online. Drawing on more than a decade of online research, Bunt shows how social-networking sites, blogs, and other "cyber-Islamic environments" have exposed Muslims to new influences outside the traditional spheres of Islamic knowledge and authority. Furthermore, the Internet has dramatically influenced forms of Islamic activism and radicalization, including jihad-oriented campaigns by networks such as al-Qaeda. By surveying the broad spectrum of approaches used to present dimensions of Islamic social, spiritual, and political life on the Internet, iMuslims encourages diverse understandings of online Islam and of Islam generally.

Centering Pakistan in a story of transnational Islam stretching from South Asia to the Middle East, Simon Wolfgang Fuchs offers the first in-depth ethnographic history of the intellectual production of Shi'is and their religious competitors in this "Land of the Pure." The notion of Pakistan as the pinnacle of modern global Muslim aspiration forms a crucial component of this story. It has empowered Shi'is, who form about twenty percent of the country's population, to advance alternative conceptions of their religious hierarchy while claiming the support of towering grand ayatollahs in Iran and Iraq. Fuchs shows how popular Pakistani preachers and scholars have boldly tapped into the esoteric potential of Shi'ism, occupying a creative and at times disruptive role as brokers, translators, and self-confident pioneers of contemporary Islamic thought. They have indigenized the Iranian Revolution and formulated their own ideas for fulfilling the original promise of Pakistan. Challenging typical views of Pakistan as a mere Shi'i backwater, Fuchs argues that its complex religious landscape represents how a local, South Asian Islam may open up space for new intellectual contributions to global Islam. Yet religious ideology has also turned Pakistan into a deadly battlefield: sectarian groups since the 1980s have been bent on excluding Shi'is as harmful to their own vision of an exemplary Islamic state.

Many global film industries fail in expanding the role of Muslims on screen. Too often they produce a dichotomy between "good" and "bad" Muslims, limiting the narrative domain to issues of national security, war, and terrorism. Naturally, much of the previous scholarship on Muslims in film focused on stereotypes and the politics of representation. This collection of essays, from an international panel of contributors, significantly expands the boundaries of discussion around Muslims in film, asking new questions of the archive and magnifying analyses of particular cultural productions. The volume includes the exploration of regional cinemas, detailed analysis of auteurs and individual films, comparison across global cinema, and new explorations that have not yet entered the conversation. The interdisciplinary collection provides an examination of the multiple roles Islam plays in film and the various ways Muslims are depicted. Across the chapters, key intersecting themes arise that push the limits of how we currently approach issues of Muslims in cinema and ventures to lead us in new directions for future scholarship. This book adds new depth to the matrix of previous scholarship by revisiting methodological structures and sources, as well as exploring new visual geographies, transnational circuits, and approaches. It reframes the presiding scholarly conventions in five novel trajectories: considering new sources, exploring new communities, probing new perspectives, charting new theoretical directions, and offering new ways of understanding conflict in cinema. As such, it will be of great use to scholars working in Islamic Studies, Film Studies, Religious Studies, and Media.

Theory and Method are two words that cause considerable consternation in the academic study of religion. Although everyone claims to be aware of and to engage them, the fact of the matter is that they remain poorly understood. Some see the terms as irritants that get in the way of data interpretation and translation. Others may invoke them sporadically to appear in vogue but then return quickly and myopically to their material and with little concern for the larger issues that such terms raise. To contribute to these debates, the present volume reproduces select articles from Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (MTSR) from the first 25 volumes of the journal, and allows a group of younger scholars to introduce and review them, asking if the issues raised are still relevant to the field. Contributors include: Matt Sheedy, Robert A. Segal, James B. Apple, Neil McMullin, Rebekka King, Russell McCutcheon, Craig Martin, Donal Wiebe, Emma Cohen, Robert N. McCauley, E. Thomas Lawson, Steven Engler, Mark Q. Gardiner, Bruce Lincoln, Sarah E. Rollens, Burton Mack, Yasmin Merchant, Herb Bergh, Jennifer Hall, Darlene Juschka, Ella Paldam, and Armin Geertz.

This book presents the first comprehensive introduction to methods and methodologies in the humanities and social sciences in general, and Islamic Studies in particular, from a critical rationalist point of view. The book aims to be a self-sufficient theoretical and practical guide to the topics that it introduces. It contains a large selection of fully worked out review activities and review questions plus topics for further discussion which are devised to assist readers to better understand the issues which are discussed in the book. Last but not least, all efforts have been made to make sure that most (if not all) of the reading materials which are recommended in the book are not only of the highest quality but also freely available on the internet.