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This paper explores the effects of religion and Islamic sects on bilateral trade activities by employing an extended version of the gravity model. A stratified sample of 33 countries for the average period 1996-99 is selected. Although gravity models have been extensively used in the literature, to the best of our knowledge, they have neither been used to examine the impact of Islamic sects on bilateral trade nor to estimate religion within a model that incorporates oil-exporting countries, culture, regional trading arrangements, and political freedomessential control variables for the specification of the model. Findings reveal that Muslim majority countries trade less than their Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or other counterparts. In addition, when disaggregating the Muslim sample into Sunni and Shia sects, results show that Sunni majority countries trade more than their Shiite counterparts. Other results and policy implications are discussed.

Bâtinism is one of the remarkable subjects in terms of the meanings it contains. On one side of the medallion, there are those who consider themselves lucky because they rely on intuition, emotion and their chosen charismatic leaders in reaching information. On the other side, we see communities that are demonized and excluded because they challenge the absolutized beliefs of mainstream politico-religious societies and states. There are social, economic, political and religious reasons for their emergence. Undoubtedly, Yezidis are one of the most important esoteric sects that emerged in Islamic societies. While bâtinism is generally associated with Shia in Islamic societies, the identity of Yezidis is based on different foundations. The Yazidis, as they often prefer, have experienced an "ambiguous" process in the historical sense and have survived to the present day.

This volume analyses the transformation of social sectarianism into political sectarianism across the Arab world. Using a framework of social theories and socio-historical analysis, the book distinguishes between 'ta'ifa', or 'sect', and modern 'ta'ifiyya', 'sectarianism', arguing that sectarianism itself produces 'imaginary sects'. It charts and explains the evolution of these phenomena and their development in Arab and Islamic history, as distinct from other concepts used to study religious groups within Western contexts.

Cover -- Series Page -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- I: The Origins of Kalām -- II: Pharaonic History in Medieval Egypt -- III: Magian Cheese: An Archaic Problem in Islamic Law -- IV: Early Islamic Dietary Law -- V: 'Anan and Islam: The Origins of Karaite Scripturalism -- VI: Weber and Islamic Sects -- VII: The Heraclian Dynasty in Muslim Eschatology -- VIII: Eschatology and the Dating of Traditions -- IX: An Early Islamic Apocalyptic Chronicle -- X: The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam -- XI: Ibn Qutayba and the Monkeys -- XII: A Koranic Codex Inherited by Mālik from his Grandfather -- Index.

"Studying Muslim fundamentalisms, this book compares key movements, examining their commonalities, differences and intricate relations, as well as their achievements and failures. Muslim fundamentalisms have the sympathy of approximately half of the Muslim population in the world. Yet, they are divided among themselves and are in a constant state of controversy. The research dwells on the leading fundamentalist movements, such as the Muslim Brothers, Tablighi Jamaʻat, al-Qaeda, and ISIS, and illustrates how differently they think about the West and its culture, democracy, and women's presence in the public sphere. By identifying these trends, and studying them comparatively, the book enables the interested reader to make sense of the plethora of fundamentalist movements, which are otherwise lumped together by the media and are barely discernible for the reader. Whereas most studies of Muslim fundamentalism focus on organizational or militant actions that the movements perform, this study concentrates on their efforts to Islamize society through everyday life in a peaceful manner. Identifying the different strands of Muslim fundamentalisms, the book will be a key resource to a wide range of readers including researchers and students interested in politics, religious, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies"--

The task confronting the person who seeks to survey the current state of the literature dealing with Islam as a religion is both enormous and complex. Since Muslims have traditionally considered themselves to be a religious commonwealth whose very identity is fixed by a shared religious commitment, it follows that virtually every writing on any subject whatsoever having to do with Muslims might be considered to fall within the field of religion. Even if one restricts his attention, as we propose to do here, to a more narrow view of religion, the task is still formidable. Muslims have been no less prolific than other major religious communities in producing dissident opinions from within their own fold. The history of Islamic sects, each with its own peculiar thought system and religious practice, is a field of study in itself and one that might well challenge the most energetic scholar. Far from being monolithic, as many of the scholarly cliches about Islam presuppose (e.g. Islam is a religion of Law, Islam is a religion of the Book, etc.), the religious experience of Muslims is diverse and multiform, defying the most sophisticated attempts to reduce it to order and system. No informed approach to the religiousness of Muslims can deal solely with a narrowly marked out "normative Islam". The deviations from the norm are also part of the reality of historic Islamic experience and cannot be set aside in favor of what one may prefer as religiously or conceptually pure. It quickly becomes clear to the perceptive inquirer that the meaning of Islam is an historical phenomenon cannot be stated in terms of a unified doctrinal system, a universally accepted set of rites, or common institutions.

'Sectarianism' is one of the most over-discussed yet under-analysed concepts in debates about the Middle East. Despite the deluge of commentary, there is no agreement on what 'sectarianism' is. Is it a social issue, one of dogmatic incompatibility, a historic one or one purely related to modern power politics? Is it something innately felt or politically imposed? Is it a product of modernity or its antithesis? Is it a function of the nation-state or its negation? This text seeks to move the study of modern sectarian dynamics beyond these analytically paralyzing dichotomies by shifting the focus away from the meaningless '-ism' towards the root: sectarian identity.

This article seeks to address the problem of historiography and perspective in Middle East studies concerning dominated ethno-nations, especially the Kurds, while examining the religio-political confrontations between the Islamic empires and their significant socio-political consequences in Kurdistan through a historical study (primarily) based on secondary sources. With the dominance of the early Islamic Caliphate from the 7th century, the political powers of the Kurds' ancestors were removed and the non-Muslim population severely declined. From the middle of the Abbasid Caliphate period (750-1258) Kurdish governments grew again. After the Abbasids, various Islamic sects gained power and Kurdistan gradually becoming the battlefield of various political powers. With the emergence of two empires, the Sunni Ottoman and Shiite Safavid (and its successors) in the 16th century, the internal conflicts in the Islamic world culminated and lasted until the early 20th century. Between the 7th and the early 20th century religio-political confrontations converging in Kurdistan have severely affected the land's socio-political situation. This article examines how the Islamic empires used religion politically as a means to fight each other, as well as engage with the Kurdish revolts.

This chapter addresses the designation of Ṣūfi Master Javād Nūrbakhsh (1926–2008) and the Niʿmatullāhī 'Khaniqahi' Order or Khāniqāh-i-Niʿmat Allāhī as sectarian. Within the field of Islamic Studies, or even the broader scope of the study of Islam, there is no sufficient term that equates with 'sect' or 'sectarian'. Generally, Islamic history—from early on—is replete with examples of divisions between political alliances/parties (for example, shīʿat ʿAlī or shīʿat Muʿāwiya) pertaining to leadership (imāma) and schools of thought (madhhab) and to methods of reading and practicing the religion. Yet it has to be cautioned that none of these are tantamount to the 'church-sect typology' as set out in the sociology of religion for the Western Christian context. Max Weber (1922) and Ernst Troeltsch (1912) used the typology as a heuristic tool. In their theorising, the church was equated with the larger bureaucratic state-sponsored organisation that ministered to the general population, whilst the sect was the smaller evangelical group that adopted a radical stance towards the state. Bryan R. Wilson (1959, 1992) later modified the typology to define sects by the way in which they positioned themselves in opposition to social values or demonstrated their indifference to societal norms. In this sense, it has been more about a study that assists in the categorisation of dissention and along with it claims about the return to true religion. As such, and despite my own reservations about the application of 'sectarian' to groupings within Islam, one point of entry into the debate might very well be the combined issue of the interpretation of religion and legitimation of rule that both dominated early debates and forced Muslims to pick sides. Obviously, Muslims gradually became aware of partisanship, dissention, apostasy (ridda), and secession (khawārij), although more sharply once a sense of orthodoxy had begun to take shape.

At a time when so-called fundamentalism has become the privileged analytical frame for understanding Muslim societies past and present, this study offers an alternative perspective on Islam.

This is a reconstruction of the history of the Muslim community in China known today as the Hui or often as the Chinese Muslims as distinct from the Turkic Muslims such as the Uyghurs. It traces their history from the earliest period of Islam in China up to the present day, but with particular emphasis on the effects of the Mongol conquest on the transfer of central Asians to China, the establishment of stable immigrant communities in the Ming dynasty and the devastating insurrections against the Qing state during the nineteenth century. Sufi and other Islamic orders such as the Ikhwani have p