"In 929 C.E. the eighth Umayyad ruler of al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) assumed caliphal titles and prerogatives and reasserted Umayyad dynastic claims to the leadership of the Muslims against contemporary rivals, the Abbasids and Fatimids. He and his successor actively promoted th…
"Defence Against Disaster - in accurately determining the positions ofthe Companions after the death of the Prophet by Qadi Abu Bakr ibn al-'Arabi is an unparalleled study of the controversies and trials that arose among the first generations of Islam, starting with the sedition…
This dissertation evaluates the political history of Islam through the prism of the Sunni conception of authority. It finds an historical red thread that explains the legal and political evolution of different types of Islamic government that have, instead of a European-type sov…
This dissertation is a study of Rashid Rida's thought and activities in relation to the caliphate. It discusses Rida's thought within the social, cultural, and political context of his time, especially the increasing Western influence in the Middle East. The dissertation traces …
The purpose of this work is to provide a political narrative of the Abbasid dynasty during the 11ᵗʰ and 12ᵗʰ centuries showing that the caliphs were key figures in the political-cultural arena rather than impotent puppets as we have often portrayed them in the secondary literatu…
Hizb ut Tahrir (HT) is a rapidly growing trans-national Islamic movement which aims to revive the classical Islamic Caliphate. Consequently, it has come under increasing international focus as a result of its rapid expansion beyond its traditional heartland of the Middle East in…
This dissertation examines the relationship between the medieval Sunni Islamic theory of the caliphate and the debate over the revival of the caliph in Egypt between the abolition of the Ottoman caliph by Ataturk in 1924 and the failure of the General Conference for the Caliphat…
This dissertation focuses on how the Marrakech-based Almohads and their independent Muslim rivals in eastern al-Andalus contested spiritual and temporal power. The rulers of Sharq al-Andalus opposed Almohad claims to a divinely-granted authority rooted in a new messianic interpr…
The central question addressed in this dissertation is how the Qur' an was used in political rhetoric during the career of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun (r. 198-218/813-833). Chapter I is an introduction to the topic, and includes a discussion of my theoretical framework and meth…
Chapter 1, "Introduction and Overview: Changing the Tools," introduces my dissertation as an attempt to answer two sets of calls: calls for Burkean scholarship on social movements to be updated and calls for case studies of online rhetoric. I explain how social movements have be…
This comparative dissertation analyzes Muslim perceptions of religious and social crisis precipitated by the sudden absence of a significant Islamic political institution, the caliphate, in the thirteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite the obvious disparities of chronological,…
In his landmark work, The Venture of Islam , Marshall Hodgson asks the question: How is it that Islamic civilization, so clearly dominant during the medieval period, could fall completely under Western hegemony during the modern age? My dissertation addresses this issue through …
