Last month, Brill Publishers released The Hajj and Europe in the Age of Empire by Umar Ryad (Utrecht University). The publisher’s description follows:
The present volume focuses on the political perceptions of the Hajj, its global religious appeal to Muslims, and the European struggle for influence and supremacy in the Muslim world in the age of pre-colonial and colonial empires. In the late fifteenth century and early sixteenth century, a pivotal change in seafaring occurred, through which western Europeans played important roles in politics, trade, and culture. Viewing this age of empires through the lens of the Hajj puts it into a different perspective, by focusing on how increasing European dominance of the globe in pre-colonial and colonial times was entangled with Muslim religious action, mobility, and agency. The study of Europe’s connections with the Hajj therefore tests the hypothesis that the concept of agency is not limited to isolated parts of the globe. By adopting the “tools of empires,” the Hajj, in itself a global activity, would become part of global and trans-cultural history.
With contributions by: Aldo D’Agostini; Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste; Ulrike Freitag; Mahmood Kooria; Michael Christopher Low; Adam Mestyan; Umar Ryad; John Slight and Bogusław R. Zagórski.
Young British Muslims continue to generate strong interest in public discourse. However, much of this interest is framed in negative terms that tends to associate them with criminality, religious extremism or terrorism. Focusing instead on other aspects of being young, Muslim and British, this volume takes a multidisciplinary approach that seeks to ‘normalise’ the subjects and focus on their everyday lived realities. Structured into three sections, the collection begins by contextualising the study of young British Muslims, before addressing the sensitive social issues highlighted in the media and finally focusing on a variety of case studies which investigate the previously unexplored lived experiences of these young people. With contributions from scholars of religion, media and criminology, as well as current and former practitioners within youth and social work contexts, Young British Muslims: Between Rhetoric and Realities will appeal to scholars who have an interest in the fastest growing, most profiled minority demographic in the UK.
This book focuses on the Eastern Crisis of 1839-41, closely examining the first instance of coordinated Western intervention in the Middle East during the modern era. Readers can explore topics such as how culture, domestic politics, and ideology shaped diplomacy in this landmark crisis, and the importance role played by religion – including, alongside mainstream Christianity, the Protestant Zionist movement. Highly informative and fully researched, this book suggests that the Eastern Crisis – and its associated diplomatic and military efforts – marked the first of many modern-era attempts to “improve” the region by moulding it in a Western image, providing scholars with a new perspective on this period of history.
As Cardinal Hugolino and as pope, Gregory was one of the dominant figures in the history of the papacy of the High Middle Ages. His pontificate was a key stage in the development of papal relations with many of the realms of Christendom, as well as in legal and administrative history, the battle against heresy (especially with the foundation of inquisitions), the crusades, and the flowering of the Mendicants. Hugolino came to prominence during the pontificate of his relative, Pope Innocent III, and played an important political role, particularly as legate on various occasions, as well as being a major promoter of the new religious orders. As pope, his battle with Emperor Frederick II is one of medieval history’s most absorbing conflicts (though one which rarely receives a balanced treatment). But he also acted as peacemaker in England, as promoter of the crusades in the East and in Iberia, where he met with considerable success, as instigator of mission for the sake of conversion, as a reformer of the Curia, and as a passionate advocate of Church reform generally. His decretal collection, compiled by Ramon de Penyafort, served as the canon law of the Catholic Church from 1234 until 1917. Yet Gregory has not received much attention since an Italian biography by Salvatore Sibilia was published half a century ago and a full examination of his pontificate is now very long overdue. The current volume brings together a team of international scholars, each of them expert in dealing with a particular aspect of the pontificate, and provides what will be a volume of lasting scholarly value on a central figure of the medieval papacy.
This volume ethnographically explores the relation between secularities and religious subjectivities. As a consequence of the demise of secularization theory, we live in an interesting intellectual moment where the so-called ‘post-secular’ coexists with the secular, which in turn has become pluralized and historicized. This cohabitation of the secular and post-secular is revealed mainly through political dialectical processes that overshadow the subjective and inter-subjective dimensions of secularity, making it difficult to pinpoint concrete sites, agents, and objects of expression.
The right to freedom of religion or belief, as enshrined in international human rights documents, is unique in its formulation in that it provides protection for the enjoyment of the rights “in community with others”. This book explores the notion of the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief with a view to advance the protection of this right.
The challenges posed by the non-liquidity and non-diversity of the Islamic debts market make the market an inefficient tool on contributing to Muslim economic growth. Islamic scholars and experts created sukuk as an Islamic debt instrument to avoid riba (usury), but the sukuk market (especially in the Gulf) still struggles with the prohibition of the trade of debt due to the prohibition of the two Fiqh Academies.
Were slavery and social injustice leading to dire poverty in antiquity and late antiquity only regarded as normal, “natural” (Aristotle), or at best something morally “indifferent” (the Stoics), or, in the Christian milieu, a sad but inevitable consequence of the Fall, or even an expression of God’s unquestionable will? Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery shows that there were also definitive condemnations of slavery and social injustice as iniquitous and even impious, and that these came especially from ascetics, both in Judaism and in Christianity, and occasionally also in Greco-Roman (“pagan”) philosophy. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli argues that this depends on a link not only between asceticism and renunciation, but also between asceticism and justice, at least in ancient and late antique philosophical asceticism.
This illuminating new study considers the Bible as a political document in seventeenth-century England, revealing how the religious text provided a key language of political debate and played a critical role in shaping early modern political thinking. Kevin Killeen demonstrates how biblical kings were as important in the era’s political thought as any classical model. The book mines the rich and neglected resources of early modern quasi-scriptural writings – treatise, sermon, commentary, annotation, poetry and political tract – to show how deeply embedded this political vocabulary remained, across the century, from top to bottom and across all religious positions. It shows how constitutional thought, in this most tumultuous era of civil war, regicide and republic, was forged on the Bible, and how writers ranging from King James, Joseph Hall or John Milton to Robert Filmer and Thomas Hobbes can be better understood in the context of such vigorous biblical discourse.