Ali Altaf Mian demonstrates how attention to genre and embodiment illuminates the concepts and practices of the Islamic tradition--and how theologians, Sufi mystics, and ordinary Muslims respond to the incapacitating tribulations of creaturely existence in modernity. Islamic Ethics and Spiritual Sovereignty is grounded in the vast textual archive ......
Encounters with the Angel of Death in Islamicate Thought and Culture
The archangel Azrael enforces the divine command that all living things must return to God in death. The very word islam implies submission to God's will, and yet Muslim saints, prophets, and sorcerers used charisma, magic squares, and their bare hands to defy Azrael and extend their lives on earth. Their efforts reveal tension between the ......
This collection of essays examines the evolving relationship between ethical values and ideas about individual nature throughout the history of Islamic thought. The authors trace the transformations and new directions of ethics whenever the "self" has been reconceptualized by different Muslim thinkers. Ranging from the Qur'an to medieval Sufi ......
Paul L. Heck's Political Theology and Islam offers a sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of sovereignty in Islamic society, beginning with the origins of Islam and extending to the present. This wide-ranging study sets out to answer an unassumingly tricky question: What is politics in Islam? Paul L. Heck's answer takes the form of a close ......
Tribulation and Refuge After the Syrian Revolution
Muslim charities and community organizations have assumed a significant role in refugee support since the Syrian catastrophe: in Jordan and Canada, as elsewhere, they deliver food aid, house orphans, and organize remedial education. But Islam is more than just a resource for humanitarian projects. The Dread Heights details how the Islamic ......
An interreligious dialogue on the central Christian and Islamic concepts of mercy and grace seeking to foster and model mutual respect for different faith traditions The themes of divine mercy and graciousness are among the most foundational concepts in both the Christian and Islamic traditions and scriptures. "Mercy" might seem more prominent in ......
An interreligious dialogue on the central Christian and Islamic concepts of mercy and grace seeking to foster and model mutual respect for different faith traditions The themes of divine mercy and graciousness are among the most foundational concepts in both the Christian and Islamic traditions and scriptures. "Mercy" might seem more prominent in ......
Ambiguity, Hermeneutics, and the Formations of Religious Identity in Islam
In this groundbreaking book, Tehseen Thaver offers a fundamental reevaluation of how one should think about the relationship between the Qur'an, Shi'ism, and religious identity. Beyond Sectarianism focuses on the literary Arabic Qur'an exegesis of the highly influential yet less studied poet, historian, and exegete al-Sharif al-Radi (d. 1015). ......
Paul Heck's Political Theology and Islam offers a sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of sovereignty in Islamic society, beginning with the origins of Islam and extending to the present. This wide-ranging study sets out to answer an unassumingly tricky question: What is politics in Islam? Paul Heck's answer takes the form of a close ......