ISA RC22 News and Events

Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson’s Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare in Egypt, Israel, Italy, and the United States (Indiana University Press, 2012) has been awarded the gold medal in the Religion category of the Independent Publishers Book Awards, which recognize books by university and independent presses. The book also won the Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association. The book focuses on common strategies used by religiously orthodox (what some would call “fundamentalist”) movements around the world. Rather than using armed struggle or terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of taking over civil society. Claiming Society for God tells the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States, showing how these movements, grounded in a communitarian theology, are building massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals and clinics, rotating credit societies, schools, charitable organizations, worship centers, and businesses. These networks are already being called states within states, surrogate states, or parallel societies, and in Egypt have now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to control of parliament and the presidency. This bottom-up, entrepreneurial strategy is aimed at nothing less than making religion the cornerstone of society.

The Facebook page for the book, which includes news stories on orthodox movements and study questions for the book is at www.facebook.com/ClaimingSocietyForGod.

Islam and Society: Sociological Explorations

Riaz Hassan

· Paperback $59.99

Sociological Explorations

The central focus of this volume is to explore and highlight the nexus between the ideology of Islam and social and cultural milieus with the aim of reconceptualising the sacred as a socially constructed reality and not a transcendental supernatural phenomenon. From this perspective, human agency and society become the main focus for shaping, perpetuating and institutionalising religious beliefs, ideas and practices, opening up space for empirical and sociological analyses of religious phenomena. The seven essays in this volume seek to explore and examine some of the key debates in contemporary sociology of Islam. The topics explored are: social factors in the origins of Islam; social theory and Muslim society; Islam and politics in South Asia; Muslim piety; anti-Semitism; the social foundations of Muhammad’s prophetic mission, with a special reference to Arab historical memory and the role of his first wife Khadija bint Khuwaylid; and the barriers to social inclusion of Australian Muslims in Australian society.

About the author

Professor Riaz Hassan has published extensively on Muslim societies in an academic career that has spanned more than 40 years.

Publisher Melbourne University Press

- See more at: https://www.mup.com.au/items/9780522862560#sthash.TGZeQ1zG.dpuf

NEW BOOK FROM PETER LANG

Islam in the West: Iraqi Shi’i Communities in Transition and Dialogue

By Kieran Flynn

Oxford: Peter Lang

259 pp. | ISBN 978-3-0343-0905-9 | £40.00

This book studies the historical, religious and political concerns of the Iraqi Shi‘i community as interpreted by the members of that community who now live in the United Kingdom and Ireland, following the 2003-2010 war and occupation in Iraq. It opens up a creative space to explore dialogue between Islam and the West, looking at issues such as intra-Muslim conflict, Muslim–Christian relations, the changing face of Arab Islam and the experience of Iraq in the crossfire of violence and terrorism – all themes which are currently emerging in preaching and in discussion among Iraqi Shi‘a in exile. The book’s aim is to explore possibilities for dialogue with Iraqi Shi‘i communities who wish, in the midst of political, social and religious transition, to engage with elements of Christian theology such as pastoral and liberation theology.

Contents: Shi‘i Muslim Migration and Settlement in Ireland and the UK – Shi‘i Religious Narratives in History and Ritual Memory – The Narrative of Emancipation Among Shi‘a in Iran – Narrative Shi‘i Opposition and Emancipation in Iraq – Shi‘i Political Empowerment in Iraq – Shi‘i Sermons and Narratives – Catholic Theology in Dialogue with Shi‘i Narratives.

Available from <http://www.peterlang.com?430905>

Writing Religion. The Making of Turkish Alevi Islam Markus Dressler Oxford University Press, 2013

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/British/Since1945/?view=usa&ci=9780199969401

Description

In the late 1980s, the Alevis, at that time thought to be largely assimilated into the secular Turkish mainstream, began to assert their difference as they never had before. The question of Alevism’s origins and its relation to Islam and to Turkish culture became a highly contested issue. According to the dominant understanding, Alevism is part of the Islamic tradition, although located on its margins. It is further assumed that Alevism is intrinsically related to Anatolian and Turkish culture, carrying an ancient Turkish heritage, leading back into pre-Islamic Central Asian Turkish pasts.

Dressler argues that this knowledge about the Alevis-their demarcation as “heterodox” but Muslim and their status as carriers of Turkish culture-is in fact of rather recent origins. It was formulated within the complex historical dynamics of the late Ottoman Empire and the first years of the Turkish Republic in the context of Turkish nation-building and its goal of ethno-religious homogeneity.

Features

- Extensive examination of marginalized religious groups who figure significantly in the modern formulation of secular Turkish nationalism

Reviews

“Writing Religion is at once the first ‘critical genealogy’ of the field of Alevi studies and an outstanding investigation into the impact of Euro-American concepts commonly used in the study of religion on the representation, scholarly examination, and governmental management of religious communities outside western contexts. Dressler sets a new standard in the study of ‘Alevism’ in Turkey and simultaneously makes a major contribution to methodology in the study of religion.” –Ahmet T.

Karamustafa, Professor of History, University of Maryland

“Writing Religion is a masterful study that attends to method for history’s sake. It is at once a revealing cautionary tale about the missteps of ‘back reading’ history and a guide for moving forward with analyses unencumbered by classic modernist constraints. Markus Dressler’s keen study of Alevism–and its myriad constructions in the hands of scholars and politicians, among others–establishes a veritable roadmap for ‘thinking Islam’ in fresh ways.” –Greg Johnson, author of Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition

“This thought-provoking and provocative but historically sensitive contribution is the best examination I have seen of the political foundation for the Kizilbas communities renamed ‘Alevis.’ Dressler’s interpretation will be a prime resource for both scholarship and public policy concerning the religio-secular debate in Turkey.” –M. Hakan Yavuz, author of Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gülen Movement

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Prologue: Alevism Contested

Introduction: Genealogies and Significations Part 1: Missionaries, Nationalists, and the Kizilbas-Alevis Chapter 1: The Western Discovery of the Kizilbas-Alevis Chapter 2: Nationalism, Religion, and Inter-Communal Violence Chapter 3: Entering the Gaze of the Nationalists Part 2: Mehmed Fuad Köprülü (1890-1966) and the Conceptualization of Inner-Islamic Difference Chapter 4: Nationalism, Historiography, and Politics Chapter 5: Religiography: Taxonomies of Essences and Differences Chapter 6: Alevi and Alevilik in the Work of Fuad Köprülü and His Legacy

Conclusion: Tropes of Difference and Sameness – The Making of Alevism as a Modernist Project Notes Bibliography Index

Risky Liasons?

Democracy and Religion: reflections and case studies.

G.J Buijs, J.T. Sunier and P.G.A. Versteeg (eds.) VU University Press, 2013

http://www.vuuitgeverij.com/149-risky-liaisons

In a democracy, there is always the risk of antagonism, conflict and opposition rising to the surface. Most people in the West take these risks for granted and are predisposed to accept the imperfections of the system. Globally, however, democracy is not as self-evident. Actually, its acclaimed universality is highly contested. To what extent is democracy a Western, Eurocentric Project? And to what extent is this form of government compatible with other cultural and value systems?

Ιn this book, the authors address these questions by revealing how democracy is informed by religious values from a variety of traditions.

In doing so, they make clear that religion and democracy are not as neatly separated as the secularist point of view would have us believe.

They also question the popular opinion that Islam is at odds with democratic government, for example in the analysis of shura, an Islamic form of consultation with the people. Democratic traditions and religious value systems can, therefore, interact and co-exist in more than one way. Any reader who wants to examine these interactions, and the challenges that they pose for contemporary plural society will find this book useful.

With contributions from John Anderson, Ina ter Avest, Edien Bartels, Christoph Baumgartner, Lenie Brouwer, Herman de Dijn, Yaser Ellethy, Mohammed Girma, Matthew Kaemingk, Michiel Leezenberg, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, Siebren Miedema, Frans van der Velden, and John Witte.

Nancy Davis and Robert Robinson’s Claiming Society for God: Religious Movements and Social Welfare in Egypt, Israel, Italy, and the United States (Indiana University Press, 2012) has been awarded the gold medal in the Religion category of the Independent Publishers Book Awards, which recognize books by university and independent presses. The book also won the Scholarly Achievement Award of the North Central Sociological Association.

The book focuses on common strategies used by religiously orthodox (what some would call “fundamentalist”) movements around the world. Rather than using armed struggle or terrorism, as much of post-9/11 thinking suggests, these movements use a patient, under-the-radar strategy of taking over civil society.

Claiming Society for God tells the stories of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the Sephardi Torah Guardians or Shas in Israel, Comunione e Liberazione in Italy, and the Salvation Army in the United States, showing how these movements, grounded in a communitarian theology, are building massive grassroots networks of religiously based social service agencies, hospitals and clinics, rotating credit societies, schools, charitable organizations, worship centers, and businesses. These networks are already being called states within states, surrogate states, or parallel societies, and in Egypt have now brought the Muslim Brotherhood to control of parliament and the presidency.

This bottom-up, entrepreneurial strategy is aimed at nothing less than making religion the cornerstone of society.

The Facebook page for the book, which includes news stories on orthodox movements and study questions for the book is at www.facebook.com/ClaimingSocietyForGod.