This dissertation examines the convergence of the global religious resurgence and economic globalization through the concept "spiritual economy." Drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic research, the majority of which took place at Krakatau Steel in Banten, the dissertation a…
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This dissertation is a case study of contemporary Sufism in practice. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and manuscript research, I trace the private experience and public expression of institutional Sufism in postcolonial Pakistan and Malaysia. With attention to both texts and c…
This is a study of two compilations that originated in western Iran before the Mongol conquest. The research contributes to the ongoing discussion of the organization and preservation of knowledge in literate societies. The Muh[dotbelow]ad[dotbelow]arat a1-udaba' wa-muh[dotbelow…
This dissertation examines the spread of Islam into South and Southeast Asia through the lens of translation processes, linguistic change and literary transmission. The textual materials analyzed are those produced by Muslim communities in three of the regions' major languages--…
This study explores the flexibility in the practice and interpretation of Islam in the realm of music in two regions in Sumatra with very strong Islamic leanings. The flexibility is the antipode of rigid observance of the religious doctrines. The genres being analyzed are the fe…
In this dissertation I attempt to trace the trajectory of Islamic discourse under the New Order regime in Indonesia. By examining sermons and lectures in mosques and other fora in the city of Ujung Pandang (Makassar), South Sulawesi, I try to delineate the way Muslims came to di…
The goal of this research was to examine how inner jihad is an essential inner practice on the path of Islamic Sufism. The Arabic term jihad translates as effort, struggle, or striving. This effort and striving is an integral aspect of the transformation of the nafs (self) that …
Islamic law is manifestly concerned with the categorization and regulation of human actions, including bodily movements, verbal utterances, and material circumstances affected by human activity. In addition to these "exterior" dimensions, Muslim jurists also assume that human ac…
This research project entailed an investigation of whether the degree of similarity between various Islamic and pre-Islamic middle Eastern societies, overall patterns of drug plant prescription, as calculated using principles of numerical taxonomy, would correlate with the known…
This dissertation concerns the stylized carto -ideographs--specifically representations of the world--that illustrate medieval Islamic geographical manuscripts. There are hundreds of cartographic images scattered throughout the medieval and early modern Arabic, Persian, and Turk…
Egypt was incorporated into the Islamic empire in 20 AH/641 CE. Like so many conquerors before them, early Muslim settlers faced the challenge of defining their own civilization in the shadow of the country's ancient monuments. Egypt was the first province in the Islamic empire …
The focus of this dissertation is the Islamic architecture of western India (Gujarat and Rajasthan). The monuments span the mid-twelfth through fourteenth centuries. The hypothesis is that there was a continuity between the indigenous temple architecture and the buildings erecte…
In spite of its apparent decline in popularity as a method of explanation, causal explanation has always been an important approach for a rational understanding of the relationships among events. It is argued that the way causal explanation is presented in any work of history (s…
The last 20 years have seen an upsurge in the establishment of faith-based schools in America. This research explores the factors that have contributed to the sudden rise of faith-based schools in Orange County, Southern California, and suggests that there are certain historical…
This study reconstructs the intellectual history of the concept of mas[dotbelow]lah[dotbelow]a in Sunni legal philosophy from the fourth/tenth to the eighth/fourteenth centuries. Early works on legal theory treated mas[dotbelow]lah[dotbelow]a as a rather vague concept. By the mi…
Human Rights in Contemporary Islamic Thought is an experiment in comparative religious ethics. I analyze the writings of Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi, and Abdolkarim Soroush to show how a range of Islamic thought contributes to the cross-cultural dialogue necessary for the pro…
Based on fourteen months of archival and ethnographic field research in Kano, Nigeria, this study examines discourses of healing and possession associated with the pantheon of Hausa spirits called bori over the last two centuries. Since the 1804-1812 jihad of Shehu Usman 'dan Fo…
The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the process of autocratic modernization in Iran that lead to the Revolution of 1978-79. This study also examines the impact of Iran's Islamic post revolutionary regime's political culture on the formation and implementation of t…
Much of the literature that has examined transnational actors' attempts to shape states' interests within international institutions portrays the international arena as a level-playing ground. Network theory posits that transnational actors participating in a network are horizon…