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Islam plays a pivotal political role in Southeast Asian countries, where the governments that have ruled since independence have been concerned with influencing the trajectory, content, hermeneutic and style of the legal traditions of their Muslim citizens and reconciling them with the states' wider policy objectives. This contribution looks at one particular tool for this form of 'guiding' Islam - the codification of Islam - comparing the codes in two Muslim-majority countries (Malaysia and Brunei) and two Muslim-minority countries (Singapore and the Philippines). Utilising comparative law methodologies, this article explores the structure, style and content of the codes in order to explicate their explicit and implied function. These codes are less concerned with being a statement of substantive Islamic law than with setting up a state-sanctioned bureaucracy for the administration of law for Muslims. These bureaucratic institutions were the key instruments for the states to develop their own brand of Islam. In doing so, the state's approach towards socially engineering Islam oscillates among appropriation, accommodation, control and subjugation of Islam in different political and legal frameworks. (JCSA/GIGA)

Challenging the similarly romantic, a historic and irreconcilable notions of Islamic and Western cultures, this book cuts through conventional wisdom and common cliches to highlight the plurality and historicity of both. For Aziz Al-Azmeh, the Orientalist and racist view of Islam is nothing but the mirror-image of the myths propagated by the Islamic fundamentalists and radicals. In this book he demonstrates both views share an erroneous and an historical conception of Islam as an unchanging and monolithic entity. Moreover, this analysis dissects the mutual implication of both the dominant Western discourse and its supposed primary opponent, postmodernism, in this form of essentialism. There is no one, homogeneous Islam, and this book highlights the diversity and plurality of forms of the Muslim tradition, seeking to understand historically the phenomenon of fundamentalism, amongst other strands, as a profoundly modern ideology. Challenging the stereotypes and legends of both its opponents and proponents, the book traces how political Islam breaks with core elements of the Muslim tradition and, at the same time, roots many of its concepts in European reactionary and romantic thought

Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Abbreviations -- Transliteration -- Glossary of Non-English Terms -- Chapter 1 Introduction: Islam, liberalism and the nation state -- Chapter 2 The shifting foundations of Islamic Britain -- Chapter 3 Islamic education: Schooling for Naql-heads? -- Chapter 4 What is the future for Muslim personal law in Britain? -- Chapter 5 Muslims and the state: Neither agents nor enemies -- Chapter 6 Conclusion -- Notes -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Introduction: Islam, Liberalism and the Nation State -- Chapter 2: The Shifting Foundations of Islamic Britain -- Chapter 3: Islamic Education: Schooling for Naql-Heads? -- Chapter 4: What Is the Future for Muslim Personal Law in Britain? -- Chapter 5: Muslims and the State: Neither Agents Nor Enemies -- Chapter 6: Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index.

This article investigates why homosexual acts are still banned in 77 countries. It extends the current state of research by focusing on the religious roots of these bans. Previous studies have analysed the influence of Islam on prohibitions of same-sex sexual acts but produced contradictory findings. Moreover, the influence of the second world religion that condemns homosexuality in its scriptures – Christianity – has largely been ignored. This article shows that countries with a Muslim tradition tend to criminalise both male and female homosexuality, while predominantly Christian societies tend to prohibit only sex between men. However, the influence of the Christian tradition depends on the modernity of a country: the more modern a Christian society, the less influence traditional Christian sexual ethics have on legislation governing same-sex sexuality. This is particularly true for countries with a Protestant tradition.

This book examines the relationship between the state state implementation of Shari'a and diverse lived realities of everyday Islam in contemporary Aceh, Indonesia. With chapters covering topics ranging from NGOs and diaspora politics to female ulama and punk rockers, the volume opens new perspectives on the complexity of Muslim discourse and practice in a society that has experienced tremendous changes since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. These detailed accounts of and critical reflections on how different groups in Acehnese society negotiate their experiences and understandings of Islam highlight the complexity of the ways in which the state is both a formative and a limited force with regard to religious and social transformation

Published online: 03 Jan 2017 ; Post-Communist openings constituted the ideal foci for reimagining the relationship between the state and religion. Specifically, new opportunities were created to balance between rules of inclusion and exclusion regarding contending alternatives of a 'good life'. In line with their new democratic aspirations, all Balkan countries have gradually reshuffled their religious policies, formalized religious freedoms, and institutionalized a more equal playing field for their respective religious communities. Realizing an all-inclusive and equal-opportunity structure for all religious denominations, however, proved neither smooth nor automatic, especially when it came to the inclusion of the historically marginalized Muslim populations. The evolving institutional choices to incorporate these communities vacillated between the democratic urge for religious freedoms and equality, on the one hand, and the role of founding traditions and heritage of majority privileges, on the other. This article outlines the institutional compromises to accommodating Islam across plural polities which feature an unusual mix of denominations—Muslim, Christian Orthodox, Roman Catholics as well as atheist and agnostic groups—in the post-Communist Balkans.

Islam and Terrorism For many, making sense of Islam from the media coverage has been nothing less than confusing. Mark Gabriel, an former Muslim and former professor of Islamic history at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, explains why terrorists do what they do. His message is graphic and depicts the ruthless realities behind the teachings of Islam. (Creation House) Full description

Despite the intense media focus on Muslims and their religion since the tragedy of 9/11, few Western scholars or policymakers today have a clear idea of the distinctions between Islam and the politically based fundamentalist movement known as Islamism. In this important and illuminating book, Bassam Tibi, a senior scholar of Islamic politics, provides a corrective to this dangerous gap in our understanding. He explores the true nature of contemporary Islamism and the essential ways in which it differs from the religious faith of Islam. Drawing on research in twenty Islamic countries over three decades, Tibi describes Islamism as a political ideology based on a reinvented version of Islamic law. In separate chapters devoted to the major features of Islamism, he discusses the Islamist vision of state order, the centrality of antisemitism in Islamist ideology, Islamism's incompatibility with democracy, the reinvention of jihadism as terrorism, the invented tradition of shari'a law as constitutional order, and the Islamists' confusion of the concepts of authenticity and cultural purity. Tibi's concluding chapter applies elements of Hannah Arendt's theory to identify Islamism as a totalitarian ideology.