Book Description

"Rethinking Islam and Human Rights is the first book to delineate an original way of understanding the organic production of Islamic knowledge on human rights that overcomes the fragmented nature of the ('rapprochement') literature that focuses on change in the context of either Islamic scripture (formalized Islamic knowledge) or Islamic sensibility (experiential Islamic knowing). Thus, this book combines an appreciation for both facets of religious knowledge with an emphasis on the symbiotic relationship between the two. To achieve this, this book weaves together theoretical insights from a range of disciplines, while reworking process tracing methodology, to focus on a single case study analysis of Hizmet's practices (also known as the 'Gülen movement') to flesh out the dynamics of this interactive change and the centrality of practice-based knowledge production therein. In doing so, this book analytically demonstrates how and why social movement practice organically, unassumingly, unintentionally and, often-times, counter-intentionally produces socially transformative formalized Islamic knowledge on human rights. As a result, this book shows how it is possible to account for the production, assimilation, legitimization, and externalization of Islamic knowledge through a single relational process on some of the most intransigent issues in the context of Islam and human rights, that is apostasy and women's rights. Consequently, this book offers us an original, distinctive and important pathway of re-assessing age-old challenges at the cross-sectional impasse of change, stability, and religious knowledge production, which extends beyond those associated with Islam and human rights"--