Islam and the Secular State

Islam and the Secular State
Title Islam and the Secular State PDF eBook
Author Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im
Publisher Harvard University Press
Total Pages 346
Release 2010-03-30
Genre Law
ISBN 0674261445

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What should be the place of Shari‘a—Islamic religious law—in predominantly Muslim societies of the world? In this ambitious and topical book, a Muslim scholar and human rights activist envisions a positive and sustainable role for Shari‘a, based on a profound rethinking of the relationship between religion and the secular state in all societies. An-Na‘im argues that the coercive enforcement of Shari‘a by the state betrays the Qur’an’s insistence on voluntary acceptance of Islam. Just as the state should be secure from the misuse of religious authority, Shari‘a should be freed from the control of the state. State policies or legislation must be based on civic reasons accessible to citizens of all religions. Showing that throughout the history of Islam, Islam and the state have normally been separate, An-Na‘im maintains that ideas of human rights and citizenship are more consistent with Islamic principles than with claims of a supposedly Islamic state to enforce Shari‘a. In fact, he suggests, the very idea of an “Islamic state” is based on European ideas of state and law, and not Shari‘a or the Islamic tradition. Bold, pragmatic, and deeply rooted in Islamic history and theology, Islam and the Secular State offers a workable future for the place of Shari‘a in Muslim societies.

Islam and the Limits of the State

Islam and the Limits of the State
Title Islam and the Limits of the State PDF eBook
Author R. Michael Feener
Publisher BRILL
Total Pages 269
Release 2015-10-27
Genre Religion
ISBN 900430486X

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This book examines the complex relationships between the state state implementation of Shariʿa and diverse lived realities of everyday Islam in contemporary Aceh, Indonesia.

Between Islam and the State

Between Islam and the State
Title Between Islam and the State PDF eBook
Author Berna Turam
Publisher Stanford University Press
Total Pages 248
Release 2007
Genre Social Science
ISBN 9780804755016

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Examines how shifting power dynamics between the state and Islamic forces during the 1990s have transformed both Islam and the Turkish state.

Between the State and Islam

Between the State and Islam
Title Between the State and Islam PDF eBook
Author Charles E. Butterworth
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Total Pages 278
Release 2001-01-15
Genre History
ISBN 9780521789721

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How Middle Eastern peoples in the past two centuries lived outside the region's politico-religious structures.

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State

The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State
Title The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State PDF eBook
Author Noah Feldman
Publisher Princeton University Press
Total Pages 200
Release 2009-01-10
Genre History
ISBN 1400824079

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Perhaps no other Western writer has more deeply probed the bitter struggle in the Muslim world between the forces of religion and law and those of violence and lawlessness as Noah Feldman. His scholarship has defined the stakes in the Middle East today. Now, in this incisive book, Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the shari'a--the law of the traditional Islamic state--in the modern Muslim world. Western powers call it a threat to democracy. Islamist movements are winning elections on it. Terrorists use it to justify their crimes. What, then, is the shari'a? Given the severity of some of its provisions, why is it popular among Muslims? Can the Islamic state succeed--should it? Feldman reveals how the classical Islamic constitution governed through and was legitimated by law. He shows how executive power was balanced by the scholars who interpreted and administered the shari'a, and how this balance of power was finally destroyed by the tragically incomplete reforms of the modern era. The result has been the unchecked executive dominance that now distorts politics in so many Muslim states. Feldman argues that a modern Islamic state could provide political and legal justice to today's Muslims, but only if new institutions emerge that restore this constitutional balance of power. The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State gives us the sweeping history of the traditional Islamic constitution--its noble beginnings, its downfall, and the renewed promise it could hold for Muslims and Westerners alike.

Islam, IS and the Fragmented State

Islam, IS and the Fragmented State
Title Islam, IS and the Fragmented State PDF eBook
Author Anoushiravan Ehteshami
Publisher Routledge
Total Pages 210
Release 2020-07-02
Genre Religion
ISBN 100009782X

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This book provides a pioneering and original study of the regional effects of political Islam. It sets out the multifaceted interactions between Islam and politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, focussing in particular on the so-called Islamic State (IS) organization in its broad discussion of political Islam. Utilizing a trans-disciplinary perspective, the book interacts with social constructivism and complex realism theories to analyse the clash between the modern notion of the state and that of identity in the region. Looking at issues such as the rise of IS and its attempts to establish a caliphate, the book offers three different, yet complementary, levels of analysis for its discussion. These being: Regional (dis)order, the erosion of state power and its boundaries, and the role of non-state actors in shaping the politics of the MENA region. Each of these levels are addressed in detail in turn in order to build a comprehensive picture of state and political Islam in the Arab core of the MENA region. What emerges is a comprehensive analysis of the interlinked relationships between political and Islamic elements of Arab polities and societies. As such, this book will be of great interest to academics and policymakers focusing on matters relating to the study of Islam, Islam and politics, study of religion more broadly, and security studies and area studies, particularly in the MENA region.

The State of Islam

The State of Islam
Title The State of Islam PDF eBook
Author Saadia Toor
Publisher Pluto Press
Total Pages 0
Release 2011-08-15
Genre History
ISBN 9780745329901

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The State of Islam tells the story of the Pakistani nation-state through the lens of the Cold War, and more recently the War on Terror, in order to shed light on the domestic and international processes behind the rise of militant Islam across the world. Unlike existing scholarship on nationalism, Islam, and the state in Pakistan, which tends to privilege events in a narrowly-defined political realm, The State of Islam is a Gramscian analysis of cultural politics in Pakistan from its origins to the contemporary period. The author uses the tools of cultural studies and postcolonial theory to understand what is at stake in discourses of Islam, socialism, and the nation in Pakistan. Among other things, The State of Islam seeks to explain how Pakistan went from being a place where the strategic battle for hegemony was fought between two secular forces -- the liberal nationalists and the Marxist cultural Left or Progressives -- to one where the national discourse has become increasingly defined by the agenda of the religious right. Toor argues how this was directly tied to the Cold War context in which political Islam was advanced, along with the marginalization and active repression of the organized Left and attempts to marginalize its alternate visions of Pakistani society.