Islam And The Challenge Of Modernity

Tariq Ramadan attempts to demonstrate, using sources which draw upon Islamic thought and civilization, that Muslims can respond to contemporary challenges of modernity without betraying their identity. The book argues that Muslims, nurished by their own points of reference, can approach the modern epoch by adopting a specific social, political, and economic model that is linked to ethical values, a sense of finalities and spirituality. Rather than a modernism that tends to impose Westernization, it is a modernity that admits to the pluralism of civilizations, religions, and cultures. Table of Contents: Foreword Introduction History of a Concept The Lessons of History Part 1: At the shores of Transcendence: between God and Man Part 2: The Horizons of Islam: Between Man and the Community Part 3: Values and Finalities: The Cultural Dimension of the Civilizational Face to Face Conclusion Appendix Index Tariq Ramadan is a professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and a visiting professor in Identity and Citizenship at Erasmus University. He was named by TIME Magazine as one of the one hundred innovators of the twenty-first century

" In this first volume of the Yearbook of Sociology of Islam Georg Stauth brought together Islamologists and Sociologists who explore Islam and modern applications of Islamic thought as a way of demonstrating in a variety of social fields the ambiguity of the effective use of religious ideas and specifically Islamic models of social order to promote change. Far away from being apologetic, this collection of papers intends to show that the transcendental visions of Islam have been used as a foundational matrix for an indigenized ""Islamic Sociology"" as much as they played an important role in the modern restructuration of local symbolic and political orders. Analysis and discourse are privileged components in the scientific part of both the Islamic and the Western world. Accordingly, this volume attempts to contribute to the ongoing dialogue among sociologists about the effective ""history"" of exchange between Islamic visions and modernity. Contributors: Mona Abaza, Mohammed Arkoun, Friedemann Büttner, Fanny Colonna, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Peter Heine, Armando Salvatore, Reinhard Schulze, Georg Stauth, Karin Werner, Sami Zubaida Editor: Georg Stauth teaches sociology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. "

Since Europeans first colonized Arab lands in the 19th century, they have been pressing to have the area's indigenous laws and legal systems accord with Western models. Although most Arab states now have national codes of law that reflect Western influence, fierce internal struggles continue over how to interpret Islamic law, particularly in the areas of gender and family. From different geographical and ideological points across the contemporary Arab world, Haddad and Stowasser demonstrate the range of views on just what Islam's legal heritage in the region should be. For either law or religion classes, Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity provides the broad historical overview and particular cases needed to understand this contentious issue. Visit our website for sample chapters!

This book examines Dār al-Iftā, the official Saudi religious establishment for issuing fatwas, between 1971 and 1999. Specifically, it explores the challenges that this scholarly body encountered when applying Wahhābī interpretations of the Shari'a to late twentieth-century modernity.

This book presents an in-depth cultural and political analysis of the issue of political Islam as a potential source of tensions and conflict, and how this might be peacefully resolved. Looking at modernity from an Islamic point of view, the author analyses issues such as law, knowledge and human rights.