This issue of AJISS opens with a guest editorial by Louay Safi, who reflects on the relationship between scholarship and social engagement while considering the remarkable career of his friend Sulayman Nyang (d. 2018). The first research article of this issue, Youssef J. Carter’s “Black Mus­limness Mobilized: A Study of West African Sufism in Diaspora,” argues that a powerful sense of diasporic identification and solidarity is cultivated by Mustafawi sufis in South Carolina and Senegal. The second article, Abdullah Al-Shami and Kathrine Bullock’s “Islamic Perspectives on Basic Income,” suggests that, although distinct from Western rationales, Islamic concepts and ethical-legal mechanisms have much in common with basic income programs. A review essay by Charles E. Butterworth contextualizes and considers the educational reform project of an ‘integration of knowledge’. Following the book reviews, Enes Karić’s “Goethe, His Era and Islam” traces the complex relationship between Goethe and Islam, as examined in recent literature in Bosnia and beyond. Finally, closing out this new issue of AJISS, Altaf Hussain’s obituary acts as a tribute to the life and work of Dr. Nyang.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS), established in 1984, is a quarterly, double blind peer-reviewed and interdisciplinary journal, published by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and distributed worldwide. The journal showcases a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world including subjects such as anthropology, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam. Submissions are subject to a blind peer review process.

The papers in this special issue and the one preceding it have their roots in a panel titled “Ethnography, Misrepresentations of Islam, and Advocacy,” which Timothy Daniels and Maryem Zaman organized for the 116th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. Offering key insights into critical debates on the construction, management and destruction of heritage in Muslim contexts, this volume considers how Islamic heritages are constructed through texts and practices which award heritage value. It examines how the monolithic representation of Islamic heritage (as a singular construct) can be enriched by the true diversity of Islamic heritages and how endangerment and vulnerability in this type of heritage construct can be re-conceptualized. Assessing these questions through an interdisciplinary lens including heritage studies, anthropology, history, conservation, religious studies and archaeology, this pivot covers global and local examples including heritage case studies from Indonesia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, and Pakistan.

The Reform in Higher Education in Muslim Societies is in sum a paradigm shift in perspective driven by important considerations including the aims of education itself. It may require reforming existing disciplines, inventing new ones, as well as working in conjunction with current knowledge(s) and discourses by taking effective account of the ethical, spiritual norms of Muslim society, the guiding principles that it operates under, which in turn mark the underlying basis of its makeup and spiritual identity. Rather than creating divisions, reform of Higher Education in Muslim Societies recognizes the plurality and diversity of the modern networked world, and seeks to replace sterile and uniform approaches to knowledge with a broader and more creative understanding of reality as lived on different soils and different cultures. Moderation, balance and effective communication are paramount features of the underlying philosophy.

The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences (AJISS) is an interdisciplinary journal that publishes a wide variety of scholarly research on all facets of Islam and the Muslim world: anthropology, economics, history, philosophy and metaphysics, politics, psychology, religious law, and traditional Islam. Submissions are subject to a blind peer review process.