Muslim women and sport

Contemporary Islam, 2008

This article analyses discussions about music in the new public sphere of the Arab world. First, it focuses on what states do to control musical expressions and what functions religious actors have in that control. Four cases are looked into: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. Then the article discusses theological arguments, in the public sphere, about music. The theologians are divided into three positions: moderates, hard-liners and liberals. It is argued that structural changes of the public sphere-especially with regards to new media and consumer culture-have caused a heated debate about music and morality. While hard-liners and moderates engage in a discussion about the legal and the forbidden in Islam, liberals stress the importance of allowing competing norms. Examples of extremist violence against musicians is discussed and contextualised.

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Schooling Islam: the culture and politics of Muslim …, 2007

, hundreds of radical Islamist paramilitaries sprang up in cities and towns across the country. Several boasted of their ties to Islamic schools. In late 2002, a handful among the country's 47,000 Islamic schools were discovered to have had ties to militants responsible for the October 2002 bombings in Bali, in which 202 people died, most of them Western tourists. For many analysts, these and other examples lent credence to the charge that madrasas are "jihad factories" and outposts of a backward-looking medievalism (see e.g. Haqqani 2002). Against this troubled backdrop, the contributors to this volume seek to shed light on the culture, practices, and politics of madrasas and Islamic higher education. The authors were participants in a ten-month Working Group on Madrasas and Muslim Education that, with the generous sup port of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Institute on Culture, Religion, and World Affairs (CURA) at Boston University, came together in Octo ber 2004 and May 2005 to examine the past, present, and likely future of Islamic education. Our concern was not with general or secular educa tion, but with institutions charged with transmitting Islamic knowledge and disciplines. The approach we adopted was comparative and theoreti cally eclectic, on the assumption that Islamic education is a total social phenomenon, in which knowledge, politics, and social networks interact in a complex and "generative" (Barth 1993, 5, 341) manner. The Working Group was organized with an eye toward interdisciplinary collaboration and included scholars from history, political science, anthropology, reli gious studies, and education. Although the story told by each author in this book is as different as the case study in question, the contributors share two points of view. The first is the conviction that Islamic education is characterized, not by lock-step uniformity, but by a teaming plurality of actors, institutions, and ideas. Islamic schooling is today carried out by government and nongovernment organizations, and its purpose and organization are matters of great de bate. At the heart of the dispute lie two important questions: just what is required to live as an observant Muslim in the modern world? And who is qualified to provide instruction in this matter? Disputation of this sort, in which different groups argue publicly about who they are and what their institutions should do, is a clear sign that the madrasa is anything but unchanging or medieval. On the contrary, Islamic education has been drawn squarely into the reflexive questioning and public-cultural debate so characteristic of modern plural societies. Indeed, if there is a struggle for the hearts and minds of Muslims taking place around the world, which there certainly is, madrasas and religious education are on its front line. This first point leads to a second. The members of the Working Group felt it important not to allow the sound and fury of recent political events to obscure the fact that this contest for Muslim hearts and minds began

International Islamic University Malaysia, 2023

This humble work is a compilation of our short articles that were published in online news portals. In realizing the importance of the message carried in the articles, as authors, we have decided to publish them in a book format. The language of this book has been made easy for everyone’s read, especially students. The topics discussed in this book are mainly on the contemporary issues of the Muslim World. As academicians of the Department of Fundamental and Inter-Disciplinary Studies at IIUM, we teach subjects related to Islamic Worldview, Islamic Civilization, Ethics, Creative Thinking and the current state of affairs in the Muslim World. In many places in the book, you will find mention of the Golden Age of the Muslims (750-1258) and the reasons behind the fall of the Islamic Civilization which started with the fall of Baghdad in 1258. From there on, one after another all Muslim empires fell inviting a host of many other problems into the Muslim World. After the colonization of the Muslim lands till today, the Muslim World is lagging behind others in the areas of science, technology and good governance. In order to fix these pressing issues, the Muslim World needs less politicking and more thinking. Besides dwelling on the glorious past of the Muslim Civilization, we have also discussed contemporary issues like the brain drain phenomenon, matters of spirituality, human rights violation, co-existence, an idealism for world peace, the political turmoil in the Middle East that led to the Muslim diasporic community in the West, etc. Lastly, the aim of this humble work is not to create a reef between Muslims and others, but it is a call for coexistence that can create a better world for humanity where people live abiding by the philosophy of loving, caring and sharing.

International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 2020

This research paper explores the trends of presenting political and social realities in Arabic children's literature through a content analysis of 26 awardwinning Arabic children's books published between 2011 and 2018after the Arab Spring. The origins of Arabic children's books are first investigated from a number of different standpoints, and are shown to have traditional, religious, and global ties. I also explore the recent rise of interest in creating Arabic literary works for young children. I deduce that the causes of this increase are a cultural reawakening, globalization, and government support and funding. Finally, the 26 children's books studied show links between the ethnicity of their authors, their dates of publication, and the illustrations and themes that appear in them. This provides support for the idea that Arabic political reality is often reflected in Arabic children's literature.

2015

WINDS OF CHANGE The Challenge of Modernity in the Middle East and North Africa Edited by Cyrus Rohani and Behrooz Sabet, ADVANCE INFORMATION 978-0-86356-388-1 Release date: November 7, 2019 (Advance publication: July 2019) Politics/Sociology/Middle East/Islam PB Royal 352 pp £25 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface by Cyrus Rohani, Behrooz Sabet Foreword by Christopher Buck (pp. iii–viii) 1. Toward a discursive framework of change, Behrooz Sabet and Cyrus Rohani 2. Culture for openness and coexistence: How can we create it? Abdul Hamid Al-Ansari 3. Guiding principles of leadership for the 21st Century: An essay on leadership, Cyrus Rohani 4. Confronting Violence through Policies of Dialogue: Towards establishing a ‘citizenship that incorporates religious diversity’ in post-ISIS Era, Saad Salloum 5. Nonviolence and the challenges in the Middle East, Ramin Jahanbegloo 6. Religion of peace: Islamic principles of good governance, Christopher Buck (pp. 87–111) 7. Traditionalist and reformist discourses pertaining to Islamic revival, Armin Eschraghi 8. Defining Islamic social principles: a preamble, Christopher Buck (pp. 125–133) 9. Human rights in the Middle East, Nazila Ghanea 10. Reason in Islam: Taking back their own, Ian Kluge 11. “Be just”: Quranic ethics as benchmarks for Islamic law, Christopher Buck (pp. 168–181) 12. Education in the Middle East, Behrooz Sabet 13. Globalization and the Middle East: Reflections on a conceptual reorientation, Shahrzad Sabet 14. Environment and sustainability in the Middle East, Arthur Lyon Dahl 15. Connecting electronically to the public About the Contributors Behrooz Sabet holds a doctorate from the State University of New York at Buffalo. For more than twenty years, Dr Sabet has been intellectually engaged in research and writing on the intersection of religion, science and culture in the Middle East. He has been a university professor, academic dean and consultant on aspects of education and culture in the Middle East, and has translated and written extensively on religious, ethical, educational, philosophical and social themes. Dr Sabet is a renowned scholar of religion, contemporary political thought and movements in Iran, and the conceptual and historical origins of modernity and its impact on Islam and Middle Eastern societies Cyrus Rohani is an advisor on social and economic development, and a management and education consultant. He studied at the American University of Beirut and later received an MBA from Sacred Heart University, Connecticut, USA. He worked with Shell-Qatar and then with Qatar Petroleum (oil and gas). https://saqibooks.com/?post_type=product&p=10902 ARABIC EDITION (Slightly different organization and content.) Winds of Change in the Middle East and North Africa: Crisis, Catharsis, and Renewal, ed. Behrooz Sabet and Gamal H. M. Hassan. Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan (رياح التغيير: في الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا). Beirut: Dar al-Saqi, 2018. Pp. 17–24. (Release date: November 1, 2018.) ISBN: 9786140320994. Contributions by the present writer: Christopher Buck, “Introduction.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 17–24. Idem, “Chapter 5: Religion of Peace: Islamic Principles of Good Governance.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 133–166. Idem, “Chapter 6: Defining Islamic Social Principles: A Preamble.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 167–180. Idem, “Chapter 7: ‘Be Just’: Quranic Ethics as Benchmarks for Islamic Law.” Arabic translation of English original by Gamal Hassan. Pp. 181–198.