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In later years an abundance of collected volumes on various aspects of "Islam" have appeared. T his "Islam" has been used as the element in common for a wide range of phenomena in a vast area. In this upsurge of interest it has not always been made sufficiently clear whether "Islam" really supplies the most suitable frame of reference for the phenomena described. Islam is obviously one religion, but could it meaningfully be treated as one culture, one social order, one political philosophy? Is the Islamic community, the umma, a more coherent entity than, say, Christendom? The present work is a case in point. It is based on fourteen papers read at an international symposium held in 1984 at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Although the volume allegedly treats "Islam: State and Society," it is in fact divided in three p arts: "On Contemporary Islamic Studies,"" Authority and the State," and "Secularization: Nation-State and Modernization." from JSTOR http://www.jstor.org (Dec. 10, 2012)

"State and Sufism in Iraq is the first comprehensive study of the Iraqi Baʻth regime's (r. 1968-2003) entanglement with Sufis and of Sunnī Sufi Islam in Iraq from the late Ottoman period until 2003 and beyond. For far too long, the secular and authoritarian Baʻth regime has been reduced to the dictator Saddam Husayn and portrayed as antireligious. Its growing political employment of Islam during the 1990s, in turn, has been interpreted either as an abstract Baʻthist-nationalist Islam or as an ideological U-turn from secularism to a form of Islamism that ultimately contributed to the spread of Islamist terrorism after 2003. Broadening the narrow focus on Saddam Husayn, this book analyses other leading regime figures, their close entanglement with Sufis, and Baʻth religious politics of a state-sponsored revival of Sufi Islam and Iraq's broad and distinct Sufi culture. It is the story of a secular regime's search for "moderate" Islam in order to overcome the challenges of radical Islamism and sectarianism in Iraq. The book's two-pronged interdisciplinary approach that deals equally with politics and Sufi Islam in Iraq makes it a valuable contribution to scholars and students in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Religious Anthropology and Sociology, Political Science, and International Relations"--

"How do centralized, institutional religions make peace with the modern state's displacement of their traditional prestige and power? What are the factors that can promote the mutual acceptance of religious communities and the secular rule of law? These are the questions posed in Jonathan Laurence's new book, which argues that Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam have trod surprisingly similar paths in their respective histories. Contemporary Roman Catholicism and Sunni Islam both descend from religious states and empires, the Papacy in the case of Catholicism and the Caliphate in the case of Islam. As religio-political orders, the Western Church and the Islamic Caliphate ruled vast territories and populations. Each set of religio-political institutions made law, controlled land, and governed people for roughly four centuries. Yet both suffered three similar upheavals and challenges: the end of empires, the rise of the modern national state, and significant outward migrations from the "home base" of the religious tradition. Laurence suggests that the historical experience of Catholicism offers a useful model for those concerned about the contemporary Sunni Muslim leadership's attitude toward the modern state. Just as Catholicism worldwide benefited from the survival of the Vatican micro-state and its ability to exert guidance over the religious belief and practice of Catholics worldwide, so (argues Laurence) Muslim-majority states should continue exert control over mosques, imam-training, and religious education -- to reconcile Islam with the rule of law and thus with the authority of the secular state. This book is based on prodigious archival research in Vatican and Ottoman Archives and on interviews conducted with senior officials responsible for Islamic affairs or public religious education in Algiers, Ankara, Casablanca, Istanbul, Oran, Rabat, Tunis; and with senior interior ministry and foreign ministry officials in various European capitals responsible for relations with North African, Turkish, Qatari, and Saudi ministries of Islamic and religious affairs"--

1. Transcendence and interpretation : introductory notes on the theology of the rule of law / Lior Barshack -- 2. Shari'a, faith and critical legal theory / Marinos Diamantides -- 3. One law against another? : reading the veil cases : the foundational reference, Shari'a and human rights / Adam Gearey -- 4. The gift of ambiguity : strategising beyond the either/or of secularism and religion in Islamic divorce law / Hassan El Menyawi -- 5. What is Islamic law? : a praxiological answer and an Egyptian case study / Baudouin Dupret -- 6. State of equalities : law, marriage and citizenship in the Islamic Republic of Mauritania / Satyel Larson -- 7. Entrepreneurs and morals / Gul Berna Ozcan -- 8. Religion, politics and the dilemma of national identity / Tasneem Kausar -- 9. Theorizing Islam without the state : Islamic discourses on the minority status of Muslims in the West / Alexandre Caeiro -- 10. Terror in the faculty lounge : addressing the politics of fear and the politics of difference in government security politics / Katherine E. Brown.

This book analyzes the transformation of the Ottoman Empire over the 19th and 20th centuries. It focuses on Muslim revivalist-fundamentalist movements which were contained by the Ottoman government's Islamist ideology and whose ideas fuelled a new kind of nationalist-religious ideology.