On a general level, the problem taken up may be stated as that of the institutionalization of rational-legal rule in Iran, and its relation to Islam and the Islamic Law. The attempt to reconcile the principles of Islam with constitutionalism and parliamentary democracy has manif…
"219" Result
Sort By:
Interest was eliminated from banking in Pakistan in its attempt to move its economy into conformity with Islamic religious beliefs. Interest-free banking coexisted with traditional banking from 1981 to 1985, and supplanted the latter effective July 1985. The central bank, Pakist…
When the Nationalities Commission of the Soviet Union created the Uzbekistan Soviet Socialist Republic in October 1924, a small group of Uzbek women gained a public voice. As male Uzbek leaders promoted visions of a modern Uzbekistan, women who were associated with the governmen…
The common view that Islamic and Persianate painters were anonymous, lowly artisans, is primarily a result of the attitude which Islam demonstrated toward the plastic arts. In contrast, painters in the Europe of the Renaissance are thought to have enjoyed a life of prestige unkn…
The study examines the ways in which cyberspace functions as a rhetorical and cultural forum for North African and Arab women to assert their identity as lesbians. More directly, this project focuses on lesbian writing that considers the questions of survival and political chang…
The concealment of the Fatimid imam al-Tayyib following the assassination of his father al-Āmir in 524/1130 was a major turning point for the Yemeni Ismā`īlīs. They had to manage their lives and religion without the direct guidance of their infallible imam. This affected every a…
This dissertation develops an analytic framework to explain the emergence of Islamic banking: a "least likely case" of cultural persistence in the technocratic field of finance where the compulsion to standardize practices is most intense. I maintain that the origins and repercu…
This research asks the following questions: what are the considerations that determine how parents and students from the Islamic community in Andhra Pradesh, a state in India, choose their schools; and what policy interventions might be made to increase the number of Islamic stu…
This dissertation examines the development of an Indo-Islamic capital city in the age of colonialism. Between 1750 and 1950, Hyderabad served as the capital of the Asaf Jahs (known more popularly as the Nizams), a dynasty whose sovereignty was constrained by the pressures of Bri…
How does religion affect the transition to, and survival of democracy? Both scholars and policymakers have argued that the spread of democracy may be limited by cultural constraints imposed by certain religious traditions. In this study, I challenge the conventional wisdom and p…
The dissertation treats Hanafī jurisprudence from its formation through the nineteenth century using case studies concerning women's participation in group prayers. The focus is on the hermeneutic techniques used in interpreting the "canon," i.e. primarily the Qur'ān and the acc…
A first impression might lead one to characterize the Governance of the Solitary, the most famous treatise by the medieval Arabic-Islamic philosopher Ibn Bājjah, as favoring radical individualism, and thus as breaking with the political orientation of ancient philosophy. In fact…
Yemen is a water scarce country. Like many other developing countries, it is constrained by a lack of natural resources and finds it difficult to secure sufficient water for human consumption and for agricultural irrigation. This raises the question of how to design actions and …
In light of the growing phenomenon of Islamic schools in the United States and Europe, I will endeavor to determine whether these schools share similar traits with other religious schools while posing new challenges to education policy. To situate the philosophical discussion pr…
Five years after the sovereign-making 1979 Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) formally constructed the procedural rules and consensus about who are admitted to and excluded from its electoral regime. The 1984 intra-elite procedural compact, while excluding regime opp…
Utilizing the thesis that exposure and careful explication of foreign cultures within classroom settings can disarm cultural misconceptions and stereotypes, this study presents a methodology for acquiring “culturally-based” knowledge as content for curriculum. A strategy for det…
The art education curriculum in Saudi Arabia is characterized by two shortcomings: first, as is the case in the West, it equates art education with instruction in art; and second, art education, along with the rest of the curriculum, was imported almost wholesale from the West a…
The main focus of the study is to show how Islamic education in Nigeria and Kano State can be integrated with Western-style education so as to fit into existing Nigerian educational structures to benefit the millions of Nigerian Muslims, especially women, who are living in its r…
The dialectical method refers to the scholarly investigation of a subject through argumentation between two opponents. In the early centuries of Islam, dialectics constituted the method in the disciplines of theology, law and linguistics until its validity was challenged by the …