Ziauddin Sardar argues why Islamic reform is necessary, Bruce Lawrence sees Muslim cosmopolitanism as the future, Parvez Manzoor declares jihad on the idea of 'the political', Samia Rahman gets to the root of Muslim misogyny, Michael Muhammad Knight explains his taqwacore beliefs, Soha al-Jurf has problems with orthodoxy, Carool Kersten suggests that critical thinkers and reformers are often seen as heretics, and Ben Gidley on what keeps Muslims and Jews apart and what can bring them together. Also in this issue: Stuart Sim takes a sledgehammer to the 'profit motive', Andy Simons argues that Jazz is just as Muslim as it is American, Robin Yassin-Kabbab meets the new crop of Iraqi writers in Erbil, Said Adrus visits a Muslim cemetery in Woking, Ehsan Masood confesses he spent his youth reading the extremist writer Maryam Jameelah, Iftikar Malik dismisses pessimism about Pakistan, Hassan Mahamdallie explores what it means to be an American, Jerry Ravetz discovers the Arabic Maimonides, Vinay Lal assesses the legacy of Edward Said, and Merryl Wyn Davies takes a train to 9/11. Plus a brilliant new story from Aamer Hussein and four poems by the celebrated Mimi Khalvati. About Critical Muslim: A quarterly publication of ideas and issues showcasing groundbreaking thinking on Islam and what it means to be a Muslim in a rapidly changing, interconnected world. Each edition centers on a discrete theme, and contributions include reportage, academic analysis, cultural commentary, photography, poetry, and book reviews.

Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and modes for self-critique as well as critique of others are inherent in Islam--indeed, critique is integral to its fundamental tenets and practices. Challenging common views of Islam as hostile to critical thinking, Ahmad delineates thriving traditions of critique in Islamic culture, focusing in large part on South Asian traditions. Ahmad interrogates Greek and Enlightenment notions of reason and critique, and he notes how they are invoked in relation to "others," including Muslims. Drafting an alternative genealogy of critique in Islam, Ahmad reads religious teachings and texts, drawing on sources in Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, and English, and demonstrates how they serve as expressions of critique. Throughout, he depicts Islam as an agent, not an object, of critique. On a broader level, Ahmad expands the idea of critique itself. Drawing on his fieldwork among marketplace hawkers in Delhi and Aligarh, he construes critique anthropologically as a sociocultural activity in the everyday lives of ordinary Muslims, beyond the world of intellectuals. Religion as Critique allows space for new theoretical considerations of modernity and change, taking on such salient issues as nationhood, women's equality, the state, culture, democracy, and secularism.

This book examines the evolution of Islam in our modern world. The renowned Tunisian scholar Mohamed Haddad traces the history of the reformist movement and explains recent events related to the Islamic religion in Muslim countries and among Muslim minorities across the world. In scholarly terms, he evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of theological-political renovation, neo-reformism, legal reformism, mystical reformism, radical criticism, comprehensive history and new approaches within the study of Islam. The book brings to life the various historical, sociological, political and theological challenges and debates that have divided Muslims since the 19th century. The first two chapters address failed reforms in the past and introduce the reader to classical reformism and to Mohammed Abduh. Haddad ultimately proposes a non-confessional definition of religious reform, reinterpreting and adjusting a religious tradition to modern requirements. The second part of the book explores perspectives on contemporary Islam, the legacy of classical reformism and new paths forward. It suggests that the fundamentalism embodied in Wahhabism and Muslim Brotherhood has failed. Traditional Islam no longer attracts either youth or the elites. Mohamed Haddad shows how this paves the way for a new reformist departure that synthesizes modernism and core Islamic values.

A Look Inside the Sacred Book of One of the World's Fastest-Growing Religions What used to be an exotic religion of people halfway around the world is now the belief system of people living across the street. Through fair, contextual use of the Qur'an as the primary source text, apologist James R. White presents Islamic beliefs about Christ, salvation, the Trinity, the afterlife, and other important topics. White shows how the sacred text of Islam differs from the teachings of the Bible in order to help Christians engage in open, honest discussions with Muslims.

Interviews with young Muslims in Chicago explore the complexity of identities formed at the crossroads of Islam and hip hop This groundbreaking study of race, religion and popular culture in the 21st century United States focuses on a new concept, “Muslim Cool.” Muslim Cool is a way of being an American Muslim—displayed in ideas, dress, social activism in the ’hood, and in complex relationships to state power. Constructed through hip hop and the performance of Blackness, Muslim Cool is a way of engaging with the Black American experience by both Black and non-Black young Muslims that challenges racist norms in the U.S. as well as dominant ethnic and religious structures within American Muslim communities. Drawing on over two years of ethnographic research, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer illuminates the ways in which young and multiethnic US Muslims draw on Blackness to construct their identities as Muslims. This is a form of critical Muslim self-making that builds on interconnections and intersections, rather than divisions between “Black” and “Muslim.” Thus, by countering the notion that Blackness and the Muslim experience are fundamentally different, Muslim Cool poses a critical challenge to dominant ideas that Muslims are “foreign” to the United States and puts Blackness at the center of the study of American Islam. Yet Muslim Cool also demonstrates that connections to Blackness made through hip hop are critical and contested—critical because they push back against the pervasive phenomenon of anti-Blackness and contested because questions of race, class, gender, and nationality continue to complicate self-making in the United States.

This book demonstrates why and how it is necessary to redesign Islamic Education curriculum in the K-12 sector globally. From Western public schools that integrate Muslim perspectives to be culturally responsive, to public and private schools in Muslim minority and majority contexts that teach Islamic studies as a core subject or teach from an Islamic perspective, the volume highlights the unique global and sociocultural contexts that support the disparate trajectories of Islamic Education curricula. Divided into three distinct parts, the text discusses current Islamic education curricula and considers new areas for inclusion as part of a general renewal effort that includes developing curricula from an Islamic worldview, and the current aspirations of Islamic education globally. By providing insights on key concepts related to teaching Islam, case studies of curriculum achievements and pitfalls, and suggested processes and pillars for curriculum development, contributors present possibilities for researchers and educators to think about teaching Islam differently. This text will benefit researchers, doctoral students, and academics in the fields of secondary education, Islamic education, and curriculum studies. Those interested in religious education as well as the sociology and theory of religion more broadly will also enjoy this volume.

As late as the last quarter of the twentieth century, there were expectations that Islam’s political and cultural influence would dissipate as the advance of westernization brought modernisation and secularisation in its wake. Not only has Islam failed to follow the trajectory pursued by variants of Christianity, namely confinement to the private sphere and depoliticisation, but it has also forcefully re-asserted itself as mobilisations in its name challenge the global order in a series of geopolitical, cultural and philosophical struggles. The continuing (if not growing) relevance of Islam suggests that global history cannot simply be presented as a scaled up version of that of the West. Quests for Muslim autonomy present themselves in several forms — local and global, extremist and moderate, conservative and revisionist — in the light of which the recycling of conventional narratives about Islam becomes increasingly problematic. Not only are these accounts inadequate for understanding Muslim experiences, but by relying on them many Western governments pursue policies that are counter-productive and ultimately hazardous for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Recalling the Caliphate engages critically with the interaction between Islam and the political in context of a post colonial world that continues to resist profound decolonisation. In the first part of this book, Sayyid focuses on how demands for Muslim autonomy are debated in terms such as democracy, cultural relativism, secularism, and liberalism. Each chapter analyses the displacements and evasions by which the decolonisation of the Muslim world continues to be deflected and deferred, while the latter part of the book builds on this critique and attempts to accelerate the decolonisation of the Muslim Ummah.