In 1926, the newly founded Turkish Republican government adopted the first of many European codes of law in an attempt to distance itself from its Ottoman and Islamic past. Among these legal adoptions was the 1889 Royal Italian criminal code, a law known for its liberal and demo…
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This study explores the concept of sainthood in the medieval Islamic tradition. A close reading of the unexplored writings of two 14th C. mystical thinkers, Muh[dotbelow]ammad and `Ali Wafa', shows the presence of at least three distinct currents of thought regarding sainthood. …
This study is part of a growing research focus on Islamic apocalypticism and divination in medieval Islamic culture. Though some work is being done on magic (sihr ) and astrology (tanjîm ), there is less scholarly interest in Islamic apocalyptic writings, including prophetic tra…
Islamic Law in Canada: Marriage and Divorce provides an analysis of how Canadian society and the Canadian judicial system have responded to the use of the Shari'a to resolve issues relating to Islamic marriage and divorce in Canada. This dissertation explores two instances where…
In studies on Islamic and Jewish narratives on the early biography of the forefather Abraham, scholars have looked only fleetingly at the themes embedded in the texts, dwelling instead on determining the primacy of one tradition over another. Such a practice ignores the dynamism…
As originally enacted, Article 2 of the Egyptian Constitution contained the following clause: "the principles of the Islamic Shari`a are a chief source of legislation" (mabadi' al-Shari`a al-Islamiya mas[dotbelow]dar ra'isi li'l-tashri` ). Under pressure from Islamists in 1980, …
The dissertation examines the conditions under which social movements were able to successfully campaign for democratic change with recourse to progressive Islamic discourses in one case, Indonesia, and not the other, Iran. While both societies have generated over the past half …
This study examines sainthood in early modern Islamic societies as a site of contested authority. It focuses on a reform movement that operated within Sufi communities, with the figure of the Muslim saint as the prime agent of reform. This study offers a comparative analysis of …
Western foreign policy makers do not fare well with Islamic fundamentalist groups. Why? In this thesis, I will argue that Islamic fundamentalists pose such difficulties for Western governments not because the Islamic fundamentalists are terrorists prone to violence, for they are…
This dissertation employs a multi-disciplinary and comparative approach to examine the historical and sociocultural origins of Islamic reformist movements, called Ahl-as-Sunna, in Burkina Faso and Ghana from 1950 to the end of the millennium. It explains the rise of these moveme…
This dissertation takes distance from scholarship on Pakistan that considers sectarianism to be the exclusive preserve of religious politics. It fails to ask how and why sectarianism has found support among Pakistanis. I claim sectarianism has to be studied not only as politics …
This is a study of how Muslims have adjusted legal methods and ideas to meet socio-political changes throughout history. It aims to fill a lacuna in Islamic legal history at a time when the important dimensions of Islamic thought are too often obscured by sensational headlines. …
This work is an attempt to understand and correctly interpret the commentaries of the early Muslim historians on the Umayyad caliph Mu`awiya ibn Abi Sufyan (ruled 41-60 A.H./661-680 C.E.). Mu`awiya's depiction in the early Muslim narratives is very much dependent on the period i…
In the past thirty-five years the study of medieval Islamic historiography has shifted away from believing that Muslim chroniclers wanted to convey the facts to the belief that chroniclers had a story to tell. Nevertheless, while genuine authorship has been widely accepted for a…
This dissertation examines how the 'ulama' of the Benadir Coast of Somalia and the urban patricians in Brava in particular responded to European colonial expansion. The 'ulama' evoked their resistance through mystical writings and poetry, especially at Brava, and the thesis disc…
This work is an attempt to explore the role of religion, particularly Islam, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a factor both motivating the conflict and as a potential resource for its resolution. It examines whether religious beliefs, commitments, traditions shape or influ…
Several authors have approached the issue of the decline of jurisprudence in the medieval period. Wael Hallaq for instance, has challenged the long held view, popularized by Joseph Schacht, that "the gate of ijtihad " closed in Islamic law as early as the tenth century. He has a…
Full time Islamic schools are a new phenomena in the United States. The majority of them have been established within the last ten years. This case study focused on exploring the religious and cultural issues that appear in the Islamic school within the American context and the …
This dissertation investigates the purposes Islamic nonprofits pursue within the broader context of the nonprofit sector in relation to the notions of citizenship and participation, and the changes they have incurred due to the events 9/11. The research question is 'how do leade…