A groundbreaking response to the challenges of interpreting Islamic religion in the post-9/11 and post-Orientalist era Rethinking Islamic Studies upends scholarly roadblocks in post-Orientalist discourse within contemporary Islamic studies and carves fresh inroads toward a robust new understanding of the discipline, one that includes religious studies and other politically infused fields of inquiry. Editors Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, along with a distinguished group of scholars, map the trajectory of the study of Islam and offer innovative approaches to the theoretical and methodological frameworks that have traditionally dominated the field. In the volume's first section the contributors reexamine the underlying notions of modernity in the East and West and allow for the possibility of multiple and incongruent modernities. This opens a discussion of fundamentalism as a manifestation of the tensions of modernity in Muslim cultures. The second section addresses the volatile character of Islamic religious identity as expressed in religious and political movements at national and local levels. In the third section, contributors focus on Muslim communities in Asia and examine the formation of religious models and concepts as they appear in this region. This study concludes with an afterword by accomplished Islamic studies scholar Bruce B. Lawrence reflecting on the evolution of this post-Orientalist approach to Islam and placing the volume within existing and emerging scholarship. Rethinking Islamic Studies offers original perspectives for the discipline, each utilizing the tools of modern academic inquiry, to help illuminate contemporary incarnations of Islam for a growing audience of those invested in a sharper understanding of the Muslim world.

The Indus region, comprising the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent (now Pakistan), has always had its distinct identity - racially, ethnically, linguistically and culturally. In the last five thousand years, this region has been a part of India, politically, for only five hundred years. Pakistan, then, is no 'artificial' state conjured up by the disaffected Muslim elite of British India. Aitzaz Ahsan surveys the history of Indus - as he refers to this region - right from the time of the Harappan civilization to the era of the British Raj, concluding with independence and the creation of Pakistan. Ahsan's message is aimed both at Indians still nostalgic about 'undivided 'India and their Pakistani compatriots who narrowly tend to define their identity by their 'un-Indianness'.

The Turn of the Tortoise looks at the challenges that Indian government and business sectors face as it looks towards the future.

First published in 1975, Robber Noblemen represents a break with traditional anthropological studies within the Indian subcontinent in the breadth of its coverage. A whole state, the Punjab, is discussed, with special reference to the social and political organization of its landowning Sikhs: the Jats. Joyce Pettigrew demonstrates that although the Punjab is included within the formal political framework of the Indian Union, it is nevertheless more closely allied to countries on its western border, by virtual of its social structure and value system. The caste system does not exist among the Sikhs. Values sustaining patterns of social and political action are not those pertaining to ritual purity and pollution but are those concerned with the extended family unit: honour, reputation, insult. The author shows how long-standing collaborative relationships between families compete with other similarly formed alliances or ‘factions’ for power and influence. This book will be of interest to students of anthropology, history, political science and South Asian studies.

Describes the expansion of the land-based paleomagnetic case for drifting continents and recounts the golden age of marine geoscience.