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This article reviews the new developments that have occurred in the past ten to fifteen years in the field of Islam and science: (1) the emergence of a “new generation” of thinkers, Muslim scientists who accept modern science's fundamental methodology, theories, and results, and try to find ways to “harmonize” it with Islam; and (2) the exponential increase in the popularity of the I‘jaz ‘Ilmiy “theory,” the “miraculous scientific content of the Qur'an” (and, some say, the Hadith) as well as the continuation of the traditionalist school (Iqbal and others, following Nasr) among a section of the Muslim intelligentsia. The author then focuses on the next phase of issues, that is the “challenges” that this “new generation” must address, including the integration of methodological naturalism and evolution (biological and human) in the Islamic worldview, and positions to adopt regarding divine action and miracles. The author also mentions “educational and social issues” where Islam and science interface, and concludes with “the way forward.”

British involvement in Muslim affairs in the Straits Settlements (Malacca, Penang and Singapore) was done at the behest of Muslim subjects in the colony. Arab Muslims, who were a minority in the region, exhorted British authorities to take charge of the administration of Muslim marriages and divorces. In this way, authority was vested by these Muslims in colonial legal institutions. Instead of trying to wrest religious authority from the secular colonial power, petitioners essentially attempted to remove religious authority from the hands of Muslim qāḍis by granting more control to non-Muslim British colonial authorities. Though British authorities were initially reluctant to take on the mantle of administering legal lives of Muslim subjects who formed fifteen percent of the British Crown Colony, a petition in 1875 subsequently led to the application of legal codes and case law devised in British India in 1880 through the Mahomedan Marriage Ordinance that was brought into effect in 1882. This led to an unprecedented development in the administration of Islamic law in Southeast Asia. Thereafter, colonial legal practitioners relied heavily on this corpus of precedents and knowledge prepared by their predecessors in British India. Their conception of Islamic law was in other words based on a universal view of Islamic law, minimally affected by local understandings and customs. A universal view of Islam, coupled with centralized colonial bureaucracy suited the needs of highly mobile Arabs who traversed the Indian Ocean as they craved accountability on the part of legal administrators.

Malaysia's Islamic judiciary has undergone noteworthy transformations in recent decades, especially in the new millennium. Two distinct periods of ethnographic observation in Malaysia, separated by a quarter of a century, afford comparative-historical perspectives on the same (but ultimately very different) Islamic court and on an illustrative case heard there in 2012. Building on Pierre Bourdieu's work on juridical fields, these perspectives allow us to contextualize and thus better understand various discourses concerning Islamic law (syariah), Islamization, bureaucratization, and corporatization encountered today in different quarters of Malaysian society and globally. They also allow for a clear view of how these discourses and the social forces relevant to them play out on the ground, in the context of an increasingly corporate Islamic governmentality.

The article proposes a framework for generating Islamic-based knowledge on International Relations (IR) that takes advantage of the explanatory power of western IR theory without adherence to its philosophical foundation. To this end, the article proposes that Islamic engagement with western IR theory should commence at the foundational level. It articulates Islam as a foundational commitment held by Muslim IR researchers different from foundational commitments in the discipline. More pointedly, it focuses on agency, specifically, Islamic agency in IR as a theoretical effort that demonstrates that Islamic foundational commitments are necessary for Islamic-based knowledge production. The article concludes not by calling on Muslim IR researchers to “abandon” the study of Western-oriented IR, but by calling on them to first bring on board their Islamic knowledge and worldview, and only then to assess Western conceptualizations of the social arrangements of IR accordingly.

This article argues that the academic representation of Islamic history as a single timeline, which was established in the nineteenth century and continues to predominate to the present, is a primary issue restricting fruitful readings of Islamic historical materials. Utilizing insights in thinking about history that favor multiple temporalities, I suggest that scholars in Islamic studies can expand the possibilities of their work by paying attention to the diversity of ways in which time is conceptualized within original materials. As illustrations for the rethinking I advocate, I provide readings of the structures and literary affects of three Persian works in different genres, produced circa 1490–1540 ce. I suggest that a foundational reorientation in the field of Islamic historiography has the potential to help us break out of binds identified in the critique of orientalism provided by Edward Said and others and would lead to better ways to approach developments in Muslim societies.

There are a number of competing and complementary analytic keys to understanding the architecture and institutions of the late medieval Islamic city. My discussion of the socioeconomic place of Islamic architecture within the late medieval city is built around three arguments. The first point is that by the late medieval period, there were a number of crucial institutions, many with recognizable building types, which could be found in most cities in the lands of Islam. Some of these buildings, such as the madrasa, were distinctively Muslim in that they answered to specific needs within Muslim society, in general, and the late medieval period in particular. Others, such as the mausoleum, though found in many societies, formed crucial parts of the late medieval cities of the Islamic world. My second theme is that the study of Islamic architecture and urbanism of the past two decades tells us as much about changes in historiographic focus as it does the special role of architecture within society. Part of this is due to the fact that the field of Islamic urban studies is a relatively new one that has been enriched as well as caught in the search for its own identity. Searches for Iranian, Turkish, and Arab elements not to mention Mediterranean or Asian ones have pushed the field in a number of sometimes conflicting directions that make the study of Islamic architecture and institutions difficult, but as my third point argues, not impossible. My third point is reflected in new and exciting scholarship that focuses on the great urban historians of the medieval period who have left us detailed descriptions of the cities and buildings of the Muslim world.

This article gives an overview of Islamic ethical thought and its relationship to bioethical issues. It argues that Islamic bioethics can be viewed both as a cumulative tradition building on the Islamic ethical resources and as an ongoing discourse that captures the effort to understand and implement Islamic moral precepts pertaining to a wide range of issues including the beginning and end of human life, treatment of the human body, and proper attitudes towards the environment. After a brief introduction on the term ‘bioethics’ and its history, the article is divided into three main sections exploring the foundations of Islamic (bio)ethics, the evolution and development of medical ethics in the Islamic tradition, and the main challenges confronting contemporary Islamic bioethical discourses.

After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, some of China's Muslim peoples, previously known by the term “Hui” — were officially recognized as members of a “Muslim Nationality,” the “Huizu.” “Huizu” identity became technically inheritable from parent to child, and was thus politically separated from a notion of Islamic belief or religious practice. This short study looks to advertisements in Muslim newspapers and journals as a source of information for this critical period of transformation both for China and the wider Muslim world. Of particular note are the changes in the term qingzhen, a term which was applied to a wide variety of facets of Islamic life in traditional China but which came to take a much narrower meaning during this period. I propose that the advertisements in Republican-era Muslim periodicals, which were published in every corner of the Chinese cultural area, had to adopt a common language reflecting changes in linguistic regimes within China's minority Muslim communities that later shaped state policies.

In 2006 a forum to discuss Article 11 of the Malaysian constitution on religious freedom sparked a major and unexpected pushback. Many Muslim and Malay NGOs and concerned citizens argued that they were defending Islam from the onslaught of liberalising forces in Malaysia. The clash between what could be termed liberal human rights discourses and/or reformist Islam and reactionary Islam is also one about Islamic theology in Malaysia. It is an example of how theology can be internally divisive and presents a problematic case study for an anthropological encounter and engagement with multiple theologies, debates about history and the anthropological project. This article charts one path for the encounter between an anthropologist and his ethnographic other that aims to understand these diverse perspectives and also seeks to understand both the project of writing an anthropology of Islam that incorporates Islamic theology and Muslims' lifeworlds that form the basis for it.

Islamic bioethics is in good health, this article argues. During the twentieth century, academic researchers had to deal with a number of difficulties including the scarcity of available Islamic sources. However, the twenty-first century witnessed significant breakthroughs in the field of Islamic bioethics. A growing number of normative works authored by Muslim religious scholars and studies conducted by academic researchers have been published. This nascent field also proved to be appealing for research-funding institutions in the Muslim world and also in the West, such as the Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). On the other hand, the article argues that contemporary Islamic bioethics is in need of addressing news issues and adopting new approaches for the sake of maintaining and improving this good health in the future.

The current and future impact of Islamic feminism within the political framework of the Arab world is profound. In order to understand the current relevance of Islamic feminism, this article first examines the roots of feminism in the Arab world, analyzing the fundamental differences and commonalities that Islamic feminism has with western feminism. The diverse categories of Islamic feminism are then discussed, focusing on universalism within the framework of hermeneutic Islamic discourse. Islamic feminism is then reconstructed around its methodologies. This article asserts that the hermeneutic strain of Islamic feminism is the overarching paradigm to be employed, as it presents women's rights within the context of the Qur'an and women's right to perform ijtihad (personal interpretation based on logical reasoning), rejecting patriarchal influences. Islamic feminism and its place within the rise of modern Islam theorizing is then shown as a viable explanatory factor in the recent shaping of political and cultural discussions on the role of religion in the political sphere, especially in the context of the Arab Spring.

This article examines the, hitherto comparatively unexplored, reception of Greek embryology by medieval Muslim jurists. The article elaborates on the views attributed to Hippocrates (d. ca. 375 BC), which received attention from both Muslim physicians, such as Avicenna (d. 1037), and their Jewish peers living in the Muslim world including Ibn Jumayʽ (d. ca. 1198) and Moses Maimonides (d. 1204). The religio-ethical implications of these Graeco-Islamic-Jewish embryological views were fathomed out by the two medieval Muslim jurists Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 1285) and Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350). By putting these medieval religio-ethical discussions into the limelight, the article aims to argue for a two-pronged thesis. Firstly, pre-modern medical ethics did exist in the Islamic tradition and available evidence shows that this field had a multidisciplinary character where the Islamic scriptures and the Graeco-Islamic-Jewish medical legacy were highly intertwined. This information problematizes the postulate claiming that medieval Muslim jurists were hostile to the so-called ‘ancient sciences’. Secondly, these medieval religio-ethical discussions remain playing a significant role in shaping the nascent field of contemporary Islamic bioethics. However, examining the exact character and scope of this role still requires further academic ventures.

The field of medicine provides an important window through which to examine the encounters between religion and science, and between modernity and tradition. While both religion and science consider health to be a 'good' that is to be preserved, and promoted, religious and science-based teachings may differ in their conception of what constitutes good health, and how that health is to be achieved. This paper analyzes the way the Islamic ethico-legal tradition assesses the permissibility of using vaccines that contain porcine-derived components by referencing opinions of several Islamic authorities. In the Islamic ethico-legal tradition controversy surrounds the use of proteins from an animal (pig) that is considered to be impure by Islamic law. As we discuss the Islamic ethico-legal constructs used to argue for or against the use of porcine-based vaccines we will call attention to areas where modern medical data may make the arguments more precise. By highlighting areas where science can buttress and clarify the ethico-legal arguments we hope to spur an enhanced applied Islamic bioethics discourse where religious scholars and medical experts use modern science in a way that remains faithful to the epistemology of Islamic ethics to clarify what Islam requires of Muslim patients and healthcare workers.

The Nation of Islam (NOI) is an African American religious movement that originated in Detroit, Michigan, during the 1930s based on a rather heterodox form of the Muslim religion. Founded by the enigmatic Wallace D. Fard and taken over by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad upon Fard’s disappearance in 1934, the NOI came to exert important economic, political, and cultural influence in the African American community with its program of economic independence and charismatic high profile members such as Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali. Advocating the complete separation of Black people from the White race of “blue-eyed devils”, the NOI was a lightning rod for controversy. With Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975, leadership of the organization passed into the hands of Warith Deen Mohammed, who dropped the name “Nation of Islam” and radically reorganized the group along quasi-Sunni Islamic lines. However, in 1977, long time NOI member Minister Louis Farrakhan reestablished the Nation of Islam according to Elijah Muhammad’s doctrine, and subsequently propelled it back into America’s national consciousness with his controversial involvement in Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential campaign and the 1995 Million Man March in Washington D.C. Although the NOI has done much to popularize Islam in the U.S., the Nation’s religious beliefs bear little resemblance to traditional Islamic theology. While the Nation shares a common vocabulary with Muslims around the world, the NOI’s teachings concerning God, cosmology, Prophet Muhammad and the afterlife can be deemed heterodox, or even heretical, by Islamic standards. But despite its vast ideological differences from the international Muslim community, the NOI has come to be seen like a partner, even an ally, by many in the Arab and Muslim worlds. This paper explores the NOI’s trajectory and ideology, together with the reasons behind that apparent paradox, and shows it to be built on common interest rather than a common faith.

This article reviews the shari'a approach to markets and examines its treatment by certain twentieth-century Islamic economists such as Nejatullah Siddiqui, Nawab Haider Naqvi, Umer Chapra and M.A. Mannan. It characterises the arguments of these economists as largely statist, redistributive and socialist, possibly reflecting post-colonial intellectual experiences. Yet shari'a endorses negative freedom by proscribing price controls and guaranteeing consumer protection from coercion. Islamic law, this article argues, as evinced in both revealed knowledge and human exegesis, has endorsed a market-friendly, libertarian and limited-government philosophy.

Bosnian Muslims’ understandings of Islam and relationships with the sacred landscape have undergone significant transformations since the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia. I explore these transformations as I analyze discourses and debates on what constitutes “correct” Islamic tradition in Bosnia today, when Muslim practice has been exposed to a global Islamic orthodoxy and entangled in new supraregional hierarchies of power, values, and moral imagination. I specifically focus on how intracommunal Muslim politics intertwines with contemporary Bosnian Muslim shrine pilgrimages.

The publication of Islam's Quantum Question coincided with a burst of interest in the subject of Islam and science. This article first places the book in context (academic and cultural); in particular, an update is given on the two strong current trends of I'jaz, the “miraculous scientific content in the Qur’an” and Muslim creationism, and a note is made of the “Arab Spring” and its potential effect on science in the Arab-Muslim world. The second part is devoted to a discussion of the views presented by the four reviewers (Brooke, Hameed, Dajani, and Bagir): my “theistic science” approach, the similarities and contrasts between Christian and Islamic approaches to the scientific exploration of the world, the importance of relating religion and science in practice, not just in theory, the need for a theology of nature versus natural theology in Islam, and so on. The article concludes with an outlook on the issues that still need to be addressed in the field of Islam and Science.

The primary purpose of this essay is to review Nidhal Guessoum's Islam's Quantum Question from a perspective outside Muslim tradition. Having outlined the main contours and contentions of the book, general issues are raised concerning the reconciliation of religious belief with the sciences. Comparisons are drawn between the resources available to Christian and Muslim cultures for achieving reconciliation, with particular reference to scriptural exegesis and natural theology. Speculative questions are then raised concerning possible differences between the Christian and Islamic experience and whether these may shed any light on the facilitation in Europe of an enduring scientific movement.

The apparent contradictory relationship between Islam and evolution is important because it has been cited as an example of contradiction between religion and science by both thinkers in the West and Muslims. Muslim scholars and scientists mainly disagree with evolution's legitimacy. Islam's Quantum Question by Nidhal Guessoum is a unique narrative providing in one of its first chapters an overview of evolution from neo-Darwinists to creationists, including the views of scholars throughout Islamic history. Guessoum then proceeds to advocate for evolution. Drawing from Nidhal Guessoum's work, I highlight the reasons why there is an apparent contradiction between Islam and science—and, in particular, Islam and evolution—which include lack of freedom of thought and misinterpretation of the Qur’an. In doing so, I suggest setting the stage for a new Einsteinian theory of evolution, which involves the dimension of time and human cognition.

Islam's Quantum Question by Nidhal Guessoum offers a sophisticated approach to reconciling the results of modern science with Islamic tradition. The book provides a valuable critique of existing literature on Islam and science and advocates the promotion of good science and science education in the Muslim world. A central tension in the book revolves around Guessoum's efforts to promote a version of theistic science, while at the same establishing a clear boundary for science and scientific methodology. Although the latter works very well, the project of theistic science presented in the book is, at the very least, contentious. However, Islam's Quantum Question is a milestone in the literature on Islam and science and should be valuable for anyone interested in the search for meaning in both science and religion.

This article explores the changes in attitudes among Islamic and secular groups in Turkey through an analysis of their discourses regarding Islam, democracy, secularism, and dialogue. We present the findings of a longitudinal study (Q study) conducted in Turkey in 2002 and 2007. The time period under investigation marks the first uninterrupted five-year-long term of an Islamic-leaning government, Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP, Justice and Development Party), in office since the inception of the Turkish Republic in 1923. We suggest that the continuous electoral success of the AKP has played an important role in shaping Islamic and secular discourses in the Turkish public sphere. In contrast with its predecessor, the AKP has employed a rights-based paradigm when defining the place of Islam in a secular society. This, we suggest, has softened the divide between Islamic and secular discourses in Turkey. In this article, after defining the core characteristics of both discourses that remained the same in both 2002 and 2007, we focus on the major shifts in discourses that have occurred during these five years. Our research reveals that during this time, both Islamic and secular discourses underwent important shifts with respect to Islam's place in a democratic society. We interpret the AKP's discursive shift toward a rights-based paradigm and the increasing emphasis on dialogue in both Islamist and secular discourses as promising signs for expanding the scope for democratic polity in Turkey.

In January 1985, about 80 Muslim religious scholars and biomedical scientists gathered in a symposium held in Kuwait to discuss the broad question “When does human life begin?” This article argues that this symposium is one of the milestones in the field of contemporary Islamic bioethics and independent legal reasoning (Ijtihād). The proceedings of the symposium, however, escaped the attention of academic researchers. This article is meant to fill in this research lacuna by analyzing the proceedings of this symposium, the relevant subsequent developments, and finally the interplay of Islam and the West as a significant dimension in these discussions.

The Mu‘tazila was a current of thought that flourished in Iraq in the third/ninth century, but whose creative influences continued at least into the twelfth century. It had a fundamental role in Islamic history and thought, particularly in the early period when it became the state theology under the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun. The Mu‘tazila developed a type of rationalism, partly influenced by Greek philosophy, based around three fundamental principles: the oneness and justice of God, human freedom of action and the creation of the Qur’an. During the history of Islamic thought, these ideas were challenged and then abandoned in the name of an orthodoxy that found expression particularly in Ash‘arism. Despite this crisis, the Mu‘tazila survived in Islamic thought, most importantly in relation to Shi‘ite theology. In modern times it has seen a revival, at a moment when the evolution of Islamic history has been obliged to confront the modern world. Many contemporary Islamic thinkers have looked to the rationalism of the Mu‘tazila and its principles in an attempt to give new life to Islamic thought, seeking to equip it to face the challenges of history.

This paper, a noncomparative study which without trying to prove that Islam is the best system to follow, argues that in order to understand Islamic provisions on labor rights, one needs to look at original sources, i.e., Quran and Sunnah. The current article explores the possibility of using Islam as the basic source in creation and adoption of labor codes in Muslim world. This article also identifies the role of government in employment relationship through Hisbah institution. By comparing Islamic teachings on labor relations with the current situation in the most Islamic state in the world, we find out that it is not religion which is oppressing the individual and collective rights in the Muslim world, rather, these are the rulers which interpret religion in such a way to legitimize their un-Islamic rules.

In recent decades, certain prominent Muslim academics have produced works written in English that portray Islam as a pluralistic faith, specifically one that affirms the salvific efficacy of other religious traditions. These advocates of Islamic pluralism hold that even a non-Muslim who has a deep understanding of Islamic revelation yet chooses to remain as an ‘Other’ may attain salvation and dwell in Paradise. Although these scholars tend to reference similar passages of the Quran in making their case for religious ecumenism and against exclusivism, their approaches and assumptions tend to vary significantly. Whatever one makes of their diverse arguments, they are unlikely to attract a significant following among traditionally trained Muslim theologians in the near future. Nevertheless, the debate that the contemporary pluralist discourse has generated involves important discussions, pertinent not just to scholars of Islamic thought, but also to participants in interfaith and interreligious dialog.

This article explores the main trajectories of contemporary scholarship on women and religious learning in early and classical Islam. It focuses on women's transmission of h · adith (sayings attrib- uted to the Prophet MuIammad which are decisive in formulating Islamic laws, rituals, and creed). The article reviews the main points of Sunno¯ legal discourse on the permissibility of educating women and surveys contributions in the arena of social history which have illuminated various aspects of women's religious education in early and classical Islam. In the process, the author proposes questions for future studies in this area.