The Modern Muslim World

An anthropological study of Syriac Orthodox Christian identity in a time of displacement, upheaval, and conflict. For some Syriac Orthodox Christians in Bethlehem, their self-articulation - the means by which they connect themselves to others, things, places and symbols - is decisively influenced by their eucharistic ritual. This ritual connects being siryāni to a redeemed community or 'body', and derives its identity in large part from the Incarnation of God as an Aramaic-speaking Bethlehemite.

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a great increase in the use of the printed word and the press by non-European actors to express and disseminate ideas and to participate in the intellectual life of both their home societies and a wider international context. This book examines the French-language writings of Ottoman and Algerian writers between 1890 and 1914.

The current volume is an annotated translation of selections from a noteworthy Muslim theologian Said Nursi (1876-1960) on the Quranic theme of oneness of God (tawhid). Given the scarcity of theological themes in Islamic literature in English as well as the lack of studies on Said Nursi, who wrote in Ottoman Turkish, the book is an important contribution to the field. It offers a contemporary peek into the view that faith in God could be profoundly meaningful and fulfilling spiritual path.

How was the past imagined by Hui Muslims in late nineteenth and early twentieth century China? Chen argues that this was a productive time for historical thought, bookended by the establishment of a robust Sino-Islamic knowledge base by Liu Zhi on one end and Republican China on the other end. This book explores histories that unify vast stretches of time and place: from genesis to the modern era, from Arabia to China. Hui historians create narratives that transform China into an Islamic space and Islam into a Chinese religion.

This book explores the process, effects, and results of codification of Egyptian personal status laws as seen through the eyes of the ‘ulamā’. The codification process began in the mid-1800s and continued until the abolishment of the Sharī‘a courts in 1955 with the absorption of personal status statutes into the newly drafted civil code and the national courts that administered them.

This groundbreaking study investigates theories of Islamic constitutionalism as expressed and implemented throughout the history of Islam. To achieve this, it first traces the roots of caliphate embedded within the seminal legal and political works of classical and modern Muslim thinkers. In its concluding chapters, the study maps out and discusses the subsequent transition of Islamic and Muslim governance into twentieth-century approaches to constitutionalism. Longo's resourceful and meticulous approach sheds new light on constitutionalism within the contemporary Muslim world and how it continues to be informed by, or departs from classical theories of Islamic and Muslim governance.