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Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Dedication -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Introduction: The Development of Secularism -- The European Experience: From Empire to Nation-States -- Nation or State? -- Europe's Age of Religious Warfare -- Separating Religious from Political Authority -- The Reality of Secularism -- 2 Islamic Decentralization and Initial Responses -- The Medieval Islamic World -- Decentralizing Pressures in the Arab World -- Sources of Islamic Political Fragmentation -- Caliphal Attempts to Consolidate Central Control -- The First Foreign Invasions -- Intellectual Responses to Caliphal Decentralization -- A Reformulation of Islamic Thought -- Distinguishing Religious from Political Unity -- Conditional Political Authority -- 3 The Ottoman Interlude -- The Ottomans Assume the Caliphal Legacy -- Ottoman Success Is Fleeting -- Conditions in the Arab Provinces -- Ottoman Egypt -- Syria -- European Attempts to Keep the Ottoman World Weak -- The Wahhabi Affair -- The First Stirring of Arab Nationalism -- 4 The Emergence of National Self-Awareness in Syria and Egypt -- Education as Catalyst -- Syrian Arab Nationalism -- Sectarian Rivalry Invites European Intervention -- Egyptian Nationalism -- Europe as Catalyst to Emerging Nationalism -- Al-Afghani -- Al-Afghani's Legacy: 'Abduh -- Europe Exploits Waning Ottoman Power in Egypt -- Renewed Ottoman Pressure Boosts Syrian Nationalism -- Syrian and Egyptian Nationalism Progress -- Egyptian Political Organization -- Syrian Political Organization -- 5 The Arab Revoit and Its Aftermath -- The Nationalists Find a Leader -- The Arab Revolt -- European Treachery -- Initial Arab Responses and British Reassurance -- Europe's Blueprint for Arab Instability -- The Palestine Problem -- More European Assurances -- "The Counterfeit Peace" -- The Will of the Population.

The gravitation of some disaffected young Muslims toward radical demagogues has raised questions in recent years about leadership in Muslim communities. While global media have made terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden household names, few can name even one religious authority who represents the Muslim majorities whose rejection of terrorism is reflected in global opinion polls. Who speaks for them? Is there a leadership crisis among Muslims? This paper argues that far from there being too few religious leaders among Arab Sunni Muslims, there are more than ever. As in earlier eras, epochal political upheaval has resulted in gradual evolution of perceptions of religious authority. Earlier eras saw the transition from prophetic to scholarly authority. In the modern era, charismatic community members have joined traditionally trained scholars in offering guidance for coping with an unprecedented range and rate of change. But two features stand out: Despite differences in education, traditional and modern leaders share essential terms of reference in their interpretations. And in the rejection of some interpretations as extreme and unacceptable, the community itself increasingly assumes the role of arbiters of religious authority. The article concludes that religious leadership today, therefore, reflects both continuity with inherited Islamic discourse, and change.

Although muslims make up less than two percent of South Africa's total population, they are a well-established community with high visibility. In 1994 South Africans will celebrate 300 years of Islam in South Africa. The introduction of Islam to South Africa is usually attributed to Sheikh Yusuf, a Macasser prince exiled to South Africa for leading resistance against Dutch colonization in Malaysia. But the first Muslims in South Africa were actually slaves, imported by the Dutch colonists to the Cape mainly from India, the Indonesian archipelago, Malaya and Sri Lanka beginning in 1667. The Cape Muslim community, popularly but inaccurately known as "Malays" and known under the apartheid system as "Coloureds," therefore, is the oldest Muslim community in South Africa. The other significant Muslim community in South Africa was established over 100 years later by northern Indian indentured laborers and tradespeople, a minority of whom were Muslims. The majority of South African Indian Muslims now live in Natal and Transvaal. Indians were classified as "Asians" or "Asiatics" by the apartheid system. The third ethnically identifiable group of Muslims in South Africa were classified as "African" or "Black" by the South African government. The majority of Black Muslims are converts or descendants of converts. Of the entire Muslim population of South Africa, some 49% are "Coloureds," nearly 47% are "Asians," and although statistics regarding "Africans" are generally unreliable, it is estimated that they comprise less than four percent of the Muslim population. Less than one percent of the Muslim population is "White."