The Modern Muslim World

An English translation of the Letters from Salonika by Jelena Dimitrijević, accompanied by a substantial critical introduction and a commentary. The book comprises author’s impressions from Salonika in the summer of 1908, in the midst of the Young Turk Revolution. The narrative focuses on the question of the “unveiling” of Muslim women, but also vividly portrays the vanished cityscape of Ottoman Salonika and gives accounts of the city’s Turkish, Jewish, Mu’min, and Greek communities.

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.

Middle Eastern Minorities and the Arab Spring: Identity and Community in the Twenty-First Century examines eleven minority groups in the early years of the so-called Arab Spring. Wide-ranging in scope, minorities of diverse religious and ethno-linguistic backgrounds are included from North Africa, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. Each has experienced the Arab Spring differently and uniquely depending upon their context. Of particular concern to the international team of scholars involved in this volume, is the interaction and reaction of minorities to the protest movements across the Arab World that called for greater democratic rights and end to respective autocratic regimes. While some minorities participated in the Arab Spring, others were wary of instability and the unintended effects of regime change – notably the rise of violent Islamism. The full effects of the Arab Spring will not be known for years to come, but for the minorities of the Middle East, the immediate future seems certainly tenuous at best.

In the present edited volume, a serious of internationally recognised scholars adopt an inter-disciplinary approach to the study of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion, through focusing on case studies and the religious affiliations and denominations of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. The aim of this book is to reconsider the ongoing debate between different communities of the so-called Islamic World regarding the nature of the nation and state, and the role of religion in a nation-state’s institutional ground, both as a viable integrative or segregating factor. It is through focusing on the state dimension, as the subject of collective action or socio- cultural and political representation, that the book proposes to reconsider the relationship between religion, politics and identity in the perspective of ‘religious nationalism’ and the ‘nationalization’ of religion in the contemporary Islamic World.

The present work deals with Islamic law and the law of the Muslim countries. More specifically, the author has studied the constitutional law of the Islamic legal tradition, starting from the perspective of the law of Caliphate. Moreover, this work focuses on the process of institutionalization, which, since the first half of 19th century, led to the adoption of civil law in both sunnī and šī‘ī world. Further, this study combines different methodological approaches, based on Islamic law, analyzing sources in Arabic, especially classical and contemporary fiqh booklets, and also following the approach of comparative public law to highlight how modern Constitutions of Muslim countries differ from western constitutionalism.