This book draws on extensive fieldwork among Muslims in Nepal to examine the local and global factors that shape contemporary Muslim identity and the emerging Islamic revival movement based in the Kathmandu valley. Nepal's Muslims are active participants in the larger global movement of Sunni revival as well as in Nepal's own local politics of representation. The book traces how these two worlds are lived and brought together in the context of Nepal's transition to secularism, and explores Muslim struggles for self-definition and belonging against a backdrop of historical marginalization and an unprecedented episode of anti-Muslim violence in 2004. Through the voices and experiences of Muslims themselves, the book examines Nepal’s most influential Islamic organizations for what they reveal about contemporary movements of revival among religious minorities on the margins--both geographic and social--of the so-called Islamic world. It reveals that Islamic revival is both a complex response to the challenges faced by modern minority communities in this historically Hindu kingdom and a movement to cultivate new modes of thought and piety among Nepal’s Muslims.

Based on personal interviews with their members, participation in their programs, and translations and analyses of their Urdu discourses, I detail the ways in which these organizations address the concerns of creating a unified minority identity and leading meaningful Muslim lives in a Hindu majority environment. I suggest that violence and conflict, in varying forms, have been a major component of this dialectical process of, as well as the concern with, producing modern Nepali forms of Islamic religious and political identity.

Ethnic and nationalist movements surged forward in Nepal after restoration of democracy in 1990. This book analyses the rise in ethnic mobilization, the dynamics and trajectories of these movements and their consequences for Nepal.

This book chronicles individual perspectives and specific iterations of Muslim community, practice, and experience in the Himalayan region to bring into scholarly conversation the presence of varying Muslim cultures in the Himalaya. The Himalaya provide a site of both geographic and cultural crossroads, where Muslim community is simultaneously constituted at multiple social levels, and to that end the essays in this book document a wide range of local, national, and global interests while maintaining a focus on individual perspectives, moments in time, and localized experiences. It presents research that contributes to a broadly conceived notion of the Himalaya that enriches readers’ understandings of both the region and concepts of Muslim community and highlights the interconnections between multiple experiences of Muslim community at local levels. Drawing attention to the cultural, social, artistic, and political diversity of the Himalaya beyond the better understood and frequently documented religio-cultural expressions of the region, this book will be of interest to academics in the fields of Anthropology, Geography, History, Religious Atudies, Asian Studies, and Islamic Studies.

This authoritative book argues that what is considered today to be Islamic fundamentalism is inconsistent with the true meaning of this faith. Rahman demonstrates that the true roots of Islamic teachings advocate adaptability, creativity, and innovation.

This book describes the countries of South Asia, and examines the reason for their successes and failures. It addresses the interrelationships among the states in the region and their roles in the international system, and discusses the political development of the region.