Journey To Islamicisation Of Human Knowledge A Festschrift In Honour Of Mohd Kamal Hassan

International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) is pleased to bring out Journey to Islamicisation of Human Knowledge: A Festschrift in Honour of Mohd. Kamal Hassan. The publication of this festschrift – first of its kind by IIUM Press – marks a tribute to the late Emeritus Professor Tan Sri Dr Mohd. Kamal Hassan (1942-2023) and a recognition of his many contributions to the university. He served IIUM and its community – both formally and informally – in various capacities including being its third Rector. His attachment to IIUM spanned a long period from its inception in 1983 to the end of his active life. I hope this festschrift will help readers appreciate Kamal Hassan’s contributions and will encourage more scholarly work on his legacy. It will increase their interest in his ideas as well as in the mission and philosophy of IIUM. I congratulate the editors of and the contributors to this book for their inspired efforts to prepare its content, and IIUM Press for publishing this significant work.

A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.

Summary: "Since the rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the traditional Islamic schools known as the madrasa have frequently been portrayed as hotbeds of terrorism. For much longer, the madrasa has been considered by some as a backward and petrified impediment to social progress. However, for an important segment of the poor Muslim populations of Asia, madrasas constitute the only accessible form of education. This volume presents an overview of the madrasas in countries such as China, Indonesia, Malayisia, India and Pakistan."--Publisher description.

A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Persian is one of the great lingua francas of world history. Yet despite its recognition as a shared language across the Islamic world and beyond, its scope, impact, and mechanisms remain underexplored. A world historical inquiry into pre-modern cosmopolitanism, The Persianate World traces the reach and limits of Persian as a Eurasian language in a comprehensive survey of its geographical, literary, and social frontiers. From Siberia to Southeast Asia, and between London and Beijing, this book shows how Persian gained, maintained, and finally surrendered its status to imperial and vernacular competitors. Fourteen essays trace Persian’s interactions with Bengali, Chinese, Turkic, Punjabi, and other languages to identify the forces that extended “Persographia,” the domain of written Persian. Spanning the ages of expansion and contraction, The Persianate World offers a critical survey of both the supports and constraints of one of history’s key languages of global exchange.

Shia Islam is a central issue in contemporary politics. Often associated with Iran, Shiite communities actually exist in many Islamic countries. Focusing on the «other Shiites» outside Iran, this book offers a survey of their diversity and multiplicity in the last two centuries. The contributions cover three major topics. The first part deals with the relationship of Shia minorities to the Sunni regimes. Secondly the public affirmation of their identities through specific rituals and social attitudes is analysed. Finally, the third part of this volume examines the strengthening of these identities through traditional religious rituals and cultural performances, or through the re-interpretation and adaptation of these to present-day life. Coming from various academic backgrounds, the authors have used different methodologies and have been engaged in field-work.

"Once celebrated in the Western media as a shining example of a 'liberal' and 'tolerant' Islam, Indonesia since the end of the Soeharto regime (May 1998) has witnessed a variety of developments that bespeak a conservative turn in the country's Muslim politics. In this timely collection of original essays, Martin van Bruinessen, our most distinguished senior Western scholar of Indonesian Islam, and four leading Indonesian Muslim scholars explore and explain these developments. Each chapter examines recent trends from a strategic institutional perch: the Council of Indonesian Muslim scholars, the reformist Muhammadiyah, South Sulawesi's Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Shari'a, and radical Islamism in Solo. With van Bruinessen's brilliantly synthetic introduction and conclusion, these essays shed a bright light on what Indonesian Muslim politics was and where it seems to be going. The analysis is complex and by no means uniformly dire. For readers interested in Indonesian Muslim politics, and for analysts interested in the dialectical interplay of progressive and conservative Islam, this book is fascinating and essential reading." -Robert Hefner, Director Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs, Boston University

This paper offers a number of valuable insights gained from a long engagement with Islamic as well as global issues, with traditional as well as contemporary concerns. It not only surveys the field along with the powers and challenges at work, but also charts a way out of the present impasse. More immediately, it offers an updated review of the progress of the Islamization of Knowledge project and a timely clarification of the very concept itself. Clearly, that concept, though responsible for generating worldwide debate and action, has been so often misinterpreted and/or inflated. The gradational nature of the Islamizing project is all too obvious, and was never far from the minds of the authors of the 1982 declaration. It would certainly have been juvenile to think otherwise. And yet there is a need now to stress, as the present paper does, the ambitious (but also imperative) nature of the enterprise. For, despite the highly commendable effort invested in further elaboration and, in some brave instances, attempted implementation of the concept, the process of the Islamization of Knowledge remains at an intial, some might even say, prenatal stage. Much work needs to be done, many talents galvanized and resources pooled, institutions set up or reorganized, etc., before a truly genuine and sustainable realization of the concept can be said to have begun. Such a realistic vision needs to accompany and inform every stage of the way. To be lulled into a false or premature sense of achievement is a costly setback at a time when standing idly by for a day may have serious consequences for decades to come.