Muslim Textualities


Book Description

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, Muslim women writers located in Europe and American entered the cultural mainstream. Literary and visual productions negotiated static visual emblems of Islam, most prominently "the veil." They did so not by rejecting veiling practices, but by adapting Muslim resources, concepts and visual tradition to empowerment narratives in popular media. Mainstream reception of their works has often overlooked or misread these negotiations. Muslim Textualities argues for more flexible and capacious interpretation, with particular attention to visibility as a metaphor for political agency and to knowledge of cultural contexts. This provocative volume aims to articulate Muslim female agency through clear and accessible analysis of the theory and concepts driving the interpretation of these works. Scholars interested in the working representations of Muslim women, feminist subjectivities, and the complexities of gender roles, patriarchy, and feminism will find this volume of particular interest.




Textual Criticism and Qur'an Manuscripts


Book Description

This unique work takes a method of textual analysis commonly used in studies of ancient Western and Eastern manuscripts and applies it to twenty-one early Qur'an manuscripts. Keith Small analyzes a defined portion of text from the Qur'an with two aims in view: to recover the earliest form of text for this portion, and to trace the historical development of this portion to the current form of the text of the Qur'an. Small concludes that though a significantly early edited form of the consonantal text of the Qur'an can be recovered, its original forms of text cannot be obtained. He also documents the further editing that was required to record the Arabic text of the Qur'an in a complete phonetic script, as well as providing an explanation for much of the development of various recitation systems of the Qur'an. This controversial, thought-provoking book provides a rigorous examination into the history of the Qur'an and will be of great interest to Quranic Studies scholars.




Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750


Book Description

Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that “Sunnism” itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres—ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents—developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Contributors: Helen Pfeifer; Nabil al-Tikriti; Derin Terzioğlu; Tijana Krstić; Nir Shafir; Guy Burak; Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu; Grigor Boykov; H. Evren Sünnetçioğlu; Ünver Rüstem; Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer; Vefa Erginbaş; Selim Güngörürler.




African City Textualities


Book Description

The stereotype of Africa as a predominantly 'natural' space ignores the existence of vibrant and cosmopolitan urban environments on the continent. Far from merely embodying backwardness and lack, African cities are sites of complex and diverse cultural productions which participate in modernity and its dynamics of global flows and exchanges. This volume merges the concerns of urban, literary and cultural studies by focusing on the flows and exchanges of texts and textual elements. By analysing how texts such as popular and canonical fiction, popular music, self-help pamphlets, graffiti, films, journalistic writing, rumours and urban legends engage with the problems of citizenship, self-organisation and survival, the collection shows that despite all the problems of Africa, its cities continue to engender forward-looking creativity and hope. The texts collected here belong to several different genres themselves, and they are authored by both distinguished and younger scholars, based in and outside of Africa. The volume explores the textualities emerging from the cities of Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Above all, it calls for an end to disabling hierarchical categorisations of both texts and cities. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.




Law, Text, Terror


Book Description

The essays collected here under the governing signs, Law, Text, Terror have their origins in a singular and topical desire. Their motive is most immediately that of acknowledging the massive and eccentric contribution of the philologist, psychoanalyst and Romanist jurist Pierre Legendre to the study of legal institutions and juridical practices. He has unceasingly asked the question 'why law?' and in endeavouring to answer that question, in the course of over twenty-five books published during the last forty years, he has traversed a unique and uniquely idiosyncratic body of disciplines and knowledges relevant to the symbolic forms and institutional functions of the Western legal order. These essays reflect that singularity of drive as well as that diversity of scholarly interests by taking up, playing with, varying and developing the themes of text and terror, law and territory, that Legendre either introduced or made peculiarly his own.




Mixed Messages: Materiality, Textuality, Missions


Book Description

This collection of essays looks at missions, their complicity in European colonialism, and their postcolonial aftermath. It examines the spread of Christianity, ranging over the anthropological, textual, historical, and geographical dimensions of mission enterprises, with topics as diverse as the influence of mission printing and record-keeping on traditional life in Africa to the role of missions in changing styles of dress in India. Also, uniquely, the collection includes essays analyzing the role of proselytizing in Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as American liberal democratic capitalism. The volume is interdisciplinary, focusing on textual and material aspects of missions. Like Griffiths' earlier ground-breaking books in postcolonial studies, and Scott's well-known interdisciplinary work on missions and postcolonial literatures, this collection will be fascinating to scholars in postcolonial/cultural and mission studies and be useful as a teaching tool as well. Mixed Messages was listed among the 15 best books for 2005 in the Jan 2006 issue of The International Bulletin of Mission Studies .




Salman Rushdie


Book Description

Salman Rushdie (1947 ) Has Emerged Over The Years As One Of The Most Controversial Figures Of Our Times Who Excites Contrary Feelings. But Whether Admired Or Criticized, The Fact Remains That Rushdie, With His Commitment To Struggle For Freedom Of Expression, For Speech To The Silenced, For Power To The Disempowered, Is A Writer Who Cannot Be Ignored.One Of The Major Preoccupations Of Rushdie S Art Is The Issue Of Migrant Identity. Many Of His Characters Are Migrants Drifting From Shore To Shore In Search Of Some Imaginary Homeland , And Obviously The Author Identifies Himself With His Migrant Personae. Search For Identity Is Perhaps The One Recurring Theme In Rushdie S Works, And The Themes Of Double Identity , Divided Selves And Shadow Figures Persist In His Writings As Correlative For The Schismatic/Dual Identity Of The Migrant, As Well As The Necessary Confusion And Ambiguity Of The Migrant Existence. Rushdie Describes The World From This Unique Point Of View Of The Migrant Narrator. He Is Also Conscious Of His Role In This Regard In Re-Describing The World, And Thus Creating A New Vision Of Art And Life.By Exercising What He Describes As The Migrant Writer S Privilege To Choose His Parents Rushdie Has Chosen His Inheritance From A Vast Repertoire Of Literary Parents, Including Cervantes, Kafka, Melville, Et Al.His Novels And Stories Derive Their Special Flavour From The Author S Superb Handling Of The Characteristic Postmodern Devices Like Magic Realism, Palimpsest, Ekphrasis, Etc. Rushdie Has Been Rightly Compared With Such Literary Innovators Stalwarts Of Our Times As Gunter Grass, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Et Al. Readers Of The Present Volumes Will Be Taken Round The World Of Rushdie By Erudite Scholars Whose Well-Researched, Perceptive Articles Will Add Substantially To Their Enjoyment Of These Fantastic Imaginary Homelands .




The Qur’an in Rome


Book Description

Despite its relevance to the subsequent development of Western Islamic studies, the intellectual contribution of early modern Catholicism is still an under-researched area. The aim of this volume is to fill this gap, offering a series of essays dealing with the study of the Qur’an and Arabic language in early modern Catholic Europe. Focusing on the circulation of manuscripts, translations and printed books, the essays highlight how Catholic Orientalism contributed to the birth and spread of Western Islamic studies, although sometimes it was still directed towards religious polemics. Among the protagonists of this period of Islamic studies, the volume will focus on Catholic priests, missionaries, religious orders (Jesuits, Franciscans, Carmelites) Eastern Christians, converts, and other prominent figures in the Catholic culture of the time. Special attention will be given to the work of Ludovico Marracci, author of a fundamental edition of the Arabic text and Latin translation of the Qur’an with an introduction, notes, refutations and religious and linguistic insights. The volume is of interest to an audience of specialists and non-specialists interested both in Islamic and Qur'anic studies and in the history of modern Catholicism, missions, and Orientalism




Believing Women in Islam


Book Description

Does Islam call for the oppression of women? The subjugation of women in many Muslim countries is often used as evidence of this, while many Muslims read the Qur'an in ways that seem to justify sexual oppression and inequality. In this paradigm-shifting book, Asma Barlas argues that, far from supporting male privilege, the Qur'an actually affirms the complete equality of the sexes. Offering a historical analysis of religious authority and knowledge, Barlas shows how, for centuries, Muslims have read patriarchy into the Qur'an to justify existing religious and social structures. In this seminal volume, she takes readers into the heart of Islamic teachings on women, gender and patriarchy, offering an egalitarian reading of Islam's most sacred scripture. This revised edition includes two new chapters, a new preface, and updates throughout.




The Book


Book Description

A concise edition of the highly acclaimed Oxford Companion to the Book, this book features the 51 articles from the Companion plus 3 brand new chapters in one affordable volume. The 54 chapters introduce readers to the fascinating world of book history. Including 21 thematic studies on topics such as writing systems, the ancient and the medieval book, and the economics of print, as well as 33 regional and national histories of 'the book', offering a truly global survey of the book around the world, the Oxford History of the Book is the most comprehensive work of its kind. The three new articles, specially commissioned for this spin-off, cover censorship, copyright and intellectual property, and book history in the Caribbean and Bermuda. All essays are illustrated throughout with reproductions, diagrams, and examples of various typographical features. Beautifully produced and hugely informative, this is a must-have for anyone with an interest in book history and the written word.