Islamic Symbols And Sufi Rituals For Protection And Healing Religion And Magic In The Writings Of Ahmad Ibn Ali Al Buni

Ritual and practice are one of the most distinctive features of religion, and they are linked with its central beliefs. Islam is no exception here, and this Handbook covers many aspects of those beliefs and practices. It describes the variety of what takes place but mainly why, and what the implications of both the theory and practice have for our understanding of Islam. The book includes accounts of prayer, food, pilgrimage, mosques, and the various legal and doctrinal schools that exist within Islam, with the focus on how they influence practice. The volume is organized in terms of texts, groups, practices, places, and others. An attempt has been made to discuss the wide range of Muslim ritual and practice and provide a sound guide to this significant aspect of the religious life of one of the largest groups of believers in the world today.

The progenitor of "Muslim punk rock" and one of today's freshest spiritual voices pushes back against the common assumption that the historic faiths have no occult or magical tradition in this richly learned historical and personal journey through the practice of magic in Islam. Magic in Islam offers a look at magical and occult technologies throughout Muslim history, starting with Islam's earliest and most canonical sources. In addition to providing a highly accessible introduction to magic as it is defined, practiced, condemned, and defended within Muslim traditions, Magic in Islam challenges common assumptions about organized religion. Michael Muhammad Knight's deeply original book fills a gap within existing literature on the place of magic in Islamic traditions and opens a new window on Islam for general readers and students of religion alike. In doing so, the book counters and complicates widespread perceptions of Islam, as well as of magic as it is practiced outside of European contexts. Magic in Islam also challenges our view of "organized religions" as clearly defined systems that can be reduced to checklists of key doctrines, texts, and rules. As a result, Magic in Islam throws a monkey wrench into the conventions of the "intro to Islam" genre, threatening to flip popular notions of a religion's "center" and "margins."

Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt (The Secrets of the Upper and the Lower World) offers fascinating new insights into magic as a cultural feature of the Islamic world focusing on historical developments, key figures, and modern-day practices.

The just-discovered story of how two enigmatic circus performers and the cultural ferment of the Gilded Age sparked the Black Muslim movement in America Delving into new archives and uncovering fascinating biographical narratives, secret rituals, and hidden identities, historian Jacob Dorman explains why thousands of Americans were enthralled by the Islamic Orient, and why some came to see Islam as a global antiracist movement uniquely suited to people of African descent in an era of European imperialism, Jim Crow segregation, and officially sanctioned racism. The Princess and the Prophet tells the story of the Black Broadway performer who, among the world of Arabian acrobats and equestrians, Muslim fakirs, and Wild West shows, discovered in Islam a greater measure of freedom and dignity, and a rebuttal to the racism and parochialism of white America. Overturning the received wisdom that the prophet was born on the East Coast, Dorman has discovered that Noble Drew Ali was born Walter Brister in Kentucky. With the help of his wife, a former lion tamer and “Hindoo” magician herself, Brister renamed himself Prophet Noble Drew Ali and founded the predecessor of the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple of America, in the 1920s. With an array of profitable businesses, the “Moors” built a nationwide following of thousands of dues-paying members, swung Chicago elections, and embedded themselves in Chicago’s dominant Republican political machine at the height of Prohibition racketeering, only to see their sect descend into infighting in 1929 that likely claimed the prophet’s life. This fascinating untold story reveals that cultures grow as much from imagination as inheritance, and that breaking down the artificial silos around various racial and religious cultures helps to understand not only America’s hidden past but also its polycultural present.

The two-volume Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture bridges the gap between monograph and survey text by providing a new level of access and interpretation to Islamic art. The more than 50 newly commissioned essays revisit canonical topics, and include original approaches and scholarship on neglected aspects of the field. This two-volume Companion showcases more than 50 specially commissioned essays and an introduction that survey Islamic art and architecture in all its traditional grandeur Essays are organized according to a new chronological-geographical paradigm that remaps the unprecedented expansion of the field and reflects the nuances of major artistic and political developments during the 1400-year span The Companion represents recent developments in the field, and encourages future horizons by commissioning innovative essays that provide fresh perspectives on canonical subjects, such as early Islamic art, sacred spaces, palaces, urbanism, ornament, arts of the book, and the portable arts while introducing others that have been previously neglected, including unexplored geographies and periods, transregional connectivities, talismans and magic, consumption and networks of portability, museums and collecting, and contemporary art worlds; the essays entail strong comparative and historiographic dimensions The volumes are accompanied by a map, and each subsection is preceded by a brief outline of the main cultural and historical developments during the period in question The volumes include periods and regions typically excluded from survey books including modern and contemporary art-architecture; China, Indonesia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Sicily, the New World (Americas)

The notion of adab is at the very heart of the Islamicate cultures. Born in the crucible of the Arabic and Persian civilisations of the Late Antiquity period, nourished by Greek, Syriac and Indian influences, this polysemic notion could cover a variegated range of meanings, ranging from good behaviour, good manners, etiquette, proper knowledge of the rules, to belles-lettres, and finally, literature. This volume addresses the notion of adab through four perspectives, which correspond to the four parts into which it is divided: “Origins”; “Transmissions”; “Metamorphosis” of the “Origins” and finally “Origins” through the lens of modernity.