AKHBARISM AND ITS PLACE IN SHIITE JURISPRUDENCE

After Turks had accepted Islam as the official state religion, the Qur’an was translated into Turkic as a whole. The emergence of the Islamic religion in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to the VI-VII centuries. The adoption of Islam as the official state religion among the Turks corresponds to circa three centuries after the birth of Islam. Suppose some Turkic tribes and small communities are exempted. In that case, Idil (Volga), the first independent Muslim Turkic state accepting Islam as the official state religion, is the state of Volga (Idyll) Bulgaria. Thus, Volga (Idyll) Bulgarian Khanate, the first independent Turkic-Islamic state, was completely far from Islamic countries, Bulgarian territory joined the Islamic geography with the acceptance of this religion, and the Bulgarian nation also accepted the spiritual authority of the Abbasid Caliphate. The Qarakhanid Khanate, the Ghaznavid dynasty, and the Seljuq dynasty emerged as the Turkic-Islamic state in later periods. With the acceptance of Islam as the state religion, the translation of the Qur’an into Turkic accelerated. As the patron of the religion was a state institution in this way, translation activities gained an official quality. The first translations of the Qur’an into Turkic were made using the word-for-word translation technique, which is often referred to as interlinear translation. Turkic equivalents were given to each Arabic word mentioned in the Qur’an. This method called interlinear translation is the translation technique seen in the first early Qur’an translations. Bilingualism was taken as the basis in the translations of the Qur’an, which are supposed to be made in the region of Transoxiana. In other words, both Turkic and Persian equivalents were given to Arabic words in the Qur’an translations made in this region. In the 10th century, Persian and Turkic were common languages of culture in the regions of Samarkand and Bukhara. Today, Persian domination is discussed in this geography.

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 45, 4, 2020 © The Maghreb Review 2020 This publication is printed on FSC Mix paper from responsible sources IMAGINARY SPACES OF DEVOTION IN ANDALUSI MYSTICAL POETRY: CHRISTIAN MONKS AND MONASTERIES IN A QAṢĪDA BY ALSHUSHTAR Ī ANNA AYSE AKASOY* It is my pleasure to contribute this article in honour of Ronald Nettler and in appreciation of our conversations about religious dialogue, Jewish–Muslim relations and Sufism. In the 1960s, the Spanish tourism industry sought to attract visitors by declaring that ‘España es diferente’, ‘Spain is different’ – a phrase which can be traced back at least to the Spanish War of Independence in the early nineteenth century. Different, one assumes, from other destinations of northern European tourists, different, one assumes as well, on account of its history of religious, ethnic and cultural diversity. Different here amounts to exotic.1 Inside Spain as well, the declaration has been used for regional purposes.2 Inspired by this slogan, historians too have been considering this difference of Spain. Social, political and cultural patterns which have been identified for other regions of the European continent are sometimes seen as not applying to Spain. The question about Spain’s difference, however, predates the time when Spain became Spain. For related, or for entirely different reasons, al-Andalus, the area of the Iberian Peninsula under Muslim rule, was already different. Within the Islamic world, the most obvious difference of al-Andalus is that it did not remain part of this political and indeed religious sphere but was the only major landmass conquered during the first century or so of Islamic history that did not stay under Islamic rule. Other differences too come easily to mind. It was in al-Andalus, for example, that the Umayyad dynasty survived after its fall to the Abbasids in the mid-eighth century. As the Abbasids moved their capital eastward from Damascus to Baghdad, it was arguably geographical distance which allowed a second bloom of Umayyad rule in the West. The continuity of Umayyad rule in Iberia had further consequences, such as the almost uniform dominance of the Maliki legal school of Sunni Islam; this in turn had further consequences,3 * The Graduate Center, City University of New York An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Mediterranean Seminar in April 2017. I would like to thank Sharon Kinoshita and Brian Catlos as well as the participants for their comments. 1 For the commodification of Spain’s difference see Simon R. Doubleday and David Coleman (eds), In the Light of Medieval Spain. Islam, the East, and the Relevance of the Past (New York, 2008). 2 Eric Calderwood, ‘“In Andalucía, there are no Foreigners”: Andalucismo from Transperipheral Critique to Colonial Apology’, Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies 15/4 (2014), 399–417. 3 For an account of some of these developments in Islamic law see Maribel Fierro, ‘Proto- 722 ANNA AYSE AKASOY extending perhaps even to the absence of hospitals, which may have been a consequence of Maliki regulations for pious endowments (awqāf). Although the presence of hospitals in North Africa – likewise subject to Maliki law – suggests that an explanation might be better sought elsewhere, the very fact that hospitals or other institutions (such as madrasas) did not develop in al-Andalus until much later than elsewhere in the Islamic world remains noteworthy.4 Opportunities for identifying difference as it was recognised by contemporaries emerge from encounters between Andalusis and Mashriqis (‘Easterners’). Easterners found their way into the West comparatively rarely, but Westerners more or less frequently travelled to the East. Their motivations ranged from the pilgrimage and education to trade and diplomacy. Occasionally the sources produced in relation to such journeys provide us with glimpses into mutual perceptions of Easterners and Westerners within the Arabic-speaking world and beyond.5 They reveal different religious doctrines and practices, different political views, different Arabic vocabularies as well as different customs in clothing or eating. While some of these differences were noticed with curiosity, others resulted in judgement. Although the extent of social segregation and cultural identity remains unclear, Andalusis or Westerners in the Eastern Mediterranean appear to have constituted in some ways a recognisable community, especially...

“Why are Muslim-majority countries less peaceful, less democratic, less developed?” This is the question Ahmet Kuru poses and seeks to answer in his Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment. Kuru's quite elaborate and complex causal explanation can be summarized as follows:The Muslim world was once unlike what it is today: specifically, between the eighth and twelfth centuries, it accommodated an ethnically and religiously pluralistic society, nurtured a vibrant intellectual-philosophical life, and made great advances in sciences, agriculture, urban development, theology, and commerce. The Muslim world enjoyed such a long period ofintellectual-scientific and economic progress thanks to the financial strength of merchants based on the vibrant role they played in international trade; the financial and institutional independence of ʿulama (religious scholars); the rulers and their reliance on merchants instead of the ʿulama; and the patronage extended by the rulers to scientists/philosophers. Yet, starting in the tenth century, a complex web of developments, such as the rise of the Shiʿi states, the formation of Sunni orthodoxy, declining agricultural productivity, and the spread of the iqta system, undermined the very conditions that made the Muslim “Golden Ages” possible. The political and economic upheavals that hit the Muslim world eventually pushed the rulers and the ʿulama to forge an alliance by the twelfth century (chapter 4).From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries the Muslim world endured a series of foreign invasions unleashed successively by the Crusades, the Mongols, and the Timurids. These invasions aggravated the security situation in the Muslim world, pushed the masses into the arms of the military elites, and thus strengthened the militaristic-orientation of the state and further consolidated the ʿulama-state alliance. The same context also facilitated the spread of Sufism and Sasanid political thought. Ostracized by the ʿulama and bereft of state patronage, philosophers were gradually and systematically distanced from the Muslim body politic. Merchants also lost their former financial strength and social status as the economy became more militarized. European merchants became more competitive in the international trade and Sufism and Sasanid political thought spread. The latter ideational forces also added to the strengthening of the ʿulama-state alliance and the weakening of philosophers and merchants. Sasanid political thought legitimized the ʿulama-state alliance by promoting the idea that the state and religion are inseparable. Sasanid political thought also idealized a particular social hierarchy that envisioned a lower social status for merchants and thus discouraged commerce. As a parallel development, Sufism undermined philosophy and displaced the latter's rationalism with mysticism (chapter 5).As of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Muslims could still establish major world empires, such as the Ottoman Empire, the Safavid Empire, and the Mughal Empire. Yet these empires could not, and in fact did not, even intend to revitalize the intellectual and commercial life the Muslim world once had. With the continued support of the state, ʿulama dominated the educational system and prevented the reflourishing of philosophy. The ʿulama even prevented the adoption of the new printing technology and stemmed the spread of literacy among the masses. Already weakened in the previous centuries, the merchants could neither challenge the ʿulama-state alliance nor recover their former vibrancy and political influence. In fact, by capitulating to foreign powers and granting trade concessions the ruling elites even further weakened the merchants in the Muslim world. In addition to actively opposing any step that might revitalize intellectual and commercial life, the ʿulama also crafted the economic institutions and laws that hindered the long-term economic development of the Muslim world (chapter 6).The Muslim world eventually fell under the political, economic, and cultural hegemony of Europe, with only a few regions escaping direct European colonization. Even though Muslim statesmen introduced extensive modernization reforms—for example, in the Ottoman Empire—they failed to stop the balance of power from shifting in favor of Europe. The failure of modernization reforms was in large part due to the top-down nature of reforms, which, even though they weakened the ʿulama-state class and created a new literate class, they focused solely on strengthening the state, not on social forces, such as free and critical thinkers/intellectuals and merchants, who could have generated economic development in the Muslim world. In other words, the reforms failed to address the root causes of why the Muslim world fell behind the West and continued to keep the agents that could have worked to revitalize Muslim intellectual and economic life weak (chapter 7).To reiterate the causal explanation Kuru proposes, the long-term consequence of the ʿulama-state alliance, forged by the twelfth century, and the consequent marginalization of intellectuals and merchants largely explains the economic underdevelopment of the Muslim world. This failure, in turn, hindered the development of democracy and contributed to the continued resilience of authoritarianism in the Muslim world. Authoritarianism has taken a peculiar form in the Muslim world, embracing an inward-looking developmental model with heavy state involvement in economy. This peculiar form of authoritarianism subsequently generated violence expressed in various forms, and including not only the interstate, but also intrastate, conflicts in the Muslim world. In a more concise formulation, Kuru suggests the ʿulama-state alliance built by the twelfth century brought economic underdevelopment, which served only to sustain authoritarianism, and authoritarianism generated violence (chapters 1–3).Kuru's causal explanation is in large part path-dependent. That is, he claims, it was precisely the ʿulama-state alliance forged by the twelfth century that had put the Muslim world on a historical path toward economic underdevelopment in the subsequent centuries. To explain how the Muslim world remained stuck on that historical path, Kuru relies on neo-institutional economic theory. Timur Kuran's The Long Divergence, in particular, prefigures critically in Kuru's causal explanation.1Yet Kuru also goes beyond neo-institutional economic theory in two critical ways. First, Kuru suggests, economically inefficient laws and institutions cannot survive themselves, but have to rely on the existence of a powerful social coalition for sustenance and implementation. Therefore, Kuru painstakingly shows that the ʿulama-state alliance was not just a one-time event, but rather a persistent development that continues to survive and flourish in the Muslim world. Second, and relatedly, Kuru seems to believe that economic underdevelopment was not predetermined as neo-institutional economic theory implies. At any moment in time, powerful actors—the rulers and the ʿulama—could have changed the historical course and put the Muslim world onto a different historical path. But, alas, they did not.The links, first between economic underdevelopment and authoritarianism and then between authoritarianism and violence, are heavilytheory-based. In suggesting these links Kuru relies on rich and relevant political science literatures. Yet, he also claims that the rulers and the ʿulama made their own contributions to the sustenance of economic underdevelopment, authoritarianism, and violence in the Muslim world all along. By remaining thoroughly scholastic and medieval even to the present day and opposing original and critical thinking, the ʿulama, for example, could not effectively counter Salafi-Jihadism and thus indirectly contributed to religiously sanctioned violence in the Muslim world (chapter 1).In substantiating his causal explanations Kuru marshals not only theories, but also empirical materials, contemporary as well as historical. Kuru's empirical materials come from a wide variety of sources and hence are of wildly different kinds. Yet, all of them, be it a major historical event, like the Crusades, or an individual biography, like that of al-Ghazali, are fit together to illustrate one grand narrative. And that grand narrative is multilayered. To use Marx's terminology, Kuru's account not only takes into account structural (economic base) and superstructural (ideas, theologies, regimes, and laws) factors, but it also remembers the agent.Throughout the text Kuru engages in various theoretical debates. Consistently, though, he dismisses two major explanations for the backwardness of the Muslim world: colonialism and Islam. In dismissing colonialism Kuru emphasizes the role of agency. Kuru points to the experiences of East Asian countries and claims that the colonial past did not pre-ordain East Asia to economic underdevelopment. In dismissing Islam, Kuru advances two arguments: first, Islam is open to multiple interpretations and hence has no one single essence. Second, Islam did not prevent the Muslim world from experiencing scientific and economic flourishing during the eighth to twelfth centuries.Three fundamental issues come to mind with regard to the book. First, Kuru too easily dismisses the colonialism argument. The book disregards two other major cases that confirm the argument: Latin America and Africa. Furthermore, the book ignores the fact that the two most successful casesfrom East Asia—Japan and China—had never been under any colonial administration, and the third most successful case, South Korea, had never been under any Western one. The case of South Korea, when compared to the case of North Korea, and, of course, Taiwan, merits closer inspection, especially the role the United States played in its economic development, if it is to be used to dismiss the colonialism argument. Other cases from East Asia, such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Vietnam do not discredit but rather confirm the colonialism argument.Second, Kuru's causal explanation rests on a particular reading of the rise of Europe, which gives primacy to the role played by merchant-bourgeoisie and philosophers-scientists. Once these two groups emerge and begin to play their historical roles, the rest is simply history. This reading oversimplifies the rise of Europe and totally dismisses a host of factors, such as extreme political fragmentation and a competitive state-system, geographical location, and climate. It is fair to say that merchants and philosophers played their historical roles in bringing about the rise of Europe at the expense of other regions of the world within a special and unusual constellation of factors.The rise of Europe was more like a one-time unique event, which was, as Immanuel Wallerstein would say, something like the agricultural revolution or the coming into being of the universe. That is to say, the absence or suppression of some factors, thought to be the engine of the rise of Europe, in some other part of the world might not sufficiently explain the contemporary backwardness of that part vis-a-vis Europe. To put it more plainly, even if merchants and philosophers were not suppressed, the Muslim world could eventually have ended up in the same global status vis-a-vis Europe today.The rise of Europe has not only changed the balance of power between Europe and the rest, but also transformed the latter into a position, out of which, as Kuru is well-aware, the latter could have escaped with a strong state-building and economic development program. That is how Germany and Italy, which were not short in merchants and philosophers/scientists, yet still fell behind Britain, France, or the Dutch Republic, recovered in the late nineteenth century. Japan pursued a similar path during the same period. In the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea and Taiwan were able to replicate the same achievement. Now China seems to be doing it. Then why did the Muslim world fail to do the same? This question is obviously rather central to the book's argument. Yet it is not addressed.This leads to the third and last issue with the book. According to Kuru, the Muslim world has developed “an inward-looking model of governance” and therefore failed to replicate what East Asia achieved in economic development. The obviously critical question is why the Muslim world could not develop a better version of authoritarianism, which could have been conducive to economic development? Kuru does not specifically address this question. This is, in large part, because Kuru provides a rather superficial account of the last 200 years: Chapter 4 (seventh to eleventh centuries) comprises a total of forty-eight pages; chapter 5 (twelfth to fourteenth centuries),forty-four pages; chapter 6 (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries) thirty-eight pages; and chapter 7, which covers the critical centuries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, during which the Muslim world could have potentially developed economically successful authoritarianism, comprises just twenty-one pages. Moreover, Kuru devotes only six pages in chapter 7 to his discussion of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century state-building reforms. The book could have been better balanced by devoting more space to how the Muslim world failed to meet the European challenge and thus made an even more critical contribution to our understanding of the contemporary backwardness of the Muslim world.Despite these issues, Ahmet Kuru must be applauded for his audacity. The book is ambitious in every imaginable way. Kuru poses a really momentous question, covers an expansive geographical space, traces a long historical period, and yet manages to propose a neat answer, provide an incredible array of empirical materials to back up his claims, and goes beyond the restrictionsof his scholarly specialty and thereby transcends the academically well-established borders and walls. Scholars of particular fields, periods, regions, and countries will certainly find something to disagree with in this book. Yet, all in all, Kuru's Islam, Authoritarianism, and Underdevelopment is an admirable work of scholarship.

This study aims to determine the history of the development and reform of Islamic family law in Indonesia and Malaysia. The writing method of this article uses a comparison. It compares the history of the development and reform of Islamic family law in Indonesia and Malaysia. As a result, Indonesia and Malaysia have experienced dynamic developments and reforms in the Islamic family law pre and post-independence. Both countries are Muslim-majority countries, so Islamic law, especially the Islamic family, will develop over time. As for the difference, in Indonesia, even though the Muslim majority is more than 85%, discussion of the draft law on Muslim marriage or family always becomes an issue. It is related to establishing the State Foundation of Pancasila, which accommodates all religions. After the 1998 reform, democracy was broadly applicable. It causes the desire to formalize Islamic teachings into a positive legal system to become increasingly stronger. In Indonesia, there is some difficulty in reforming family law regarding the issue between Islamists, nationalists, Muslims, and followers of other religions. It differs from Malaysia, which established Islam as the official state religion. Malaysia is a Muslim-majority country in Southeast Asia and became the most dynamic in reviewing its Muslim family law provisions. Keywords: Islam, family law, history, Indonesia, Malaysia

Since the advent of Islam, women have played a significant role in shaping social and religious dynamics, epitomized by figures like Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. This study employs a qualitative library research method, utilizing content and thematic analysis of relevant literature, to explore the patterns and implications of women's roles in contemporary Islamic preaching (da'wah) from a gender studies perspective. Using Indonesia as a case study, the research investigates how communication strategies in da'wah shape religious beliefs and behaviors. The findings reveal that while traditional structures often limit women to supportive roles, the rise of digital platforms and female leadership in Muslim-majority countries has facilitated a significant shift. The analysis identifies three key themes: the reclamation of female Islamic scholarship, the use of social media for creating inclusive religious narratives, and the strategic negotiation of gender norms within religious discourse. The study concludes that empowering women in da'wah is crucial not only for gender equity but also for fostering a more dynamic and responsive Islamic discourse in the modern era, offering a critical framework for understanding the evolving agency of Muslim women in religious spheres

ABSTRACTThe original 1972 Constitution of Bangladesh incorporated a provision for secularism. The 1979 Fifth Amendment deleted the principle of secularism and incorporated Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim (In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful). The 1988 Eighth Amendment declared Islam to be the official state religion. The High Court Division (HCD) of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh declared the removal of secularism from the Constitution illegal in 2005. The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh upheld the decision of the HCD and the Constitution was amended in 2011 by the Parliament so that the provision for secularism was restored. The Constitution still lists the state religion as Islam and retains the declaration Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim, but these inclusions have been deeply controversial. This article will examine the concept of secularism as it is understood in Bangladesh and the implications of the concept of secularism for the constitutionality of Bismillah-ar-Rahman-ar-Rahim and the state religion Islam provisions. The article argues that there is no contradiction between the concept of secularism and these inclusions in the Constitution because they operate merely as an acknowledgement of Bangladesh's status as a Muslim majority country and do not, in practice, undermine the constitutional guarantees of equal rights and protection of all citizens including religious minorities.

Bernard Bailyn's Barbarous Modernity

The relationship between religious doctrine and national identity remains a critical discourse in the Muslim world. The object of this research is Wasathiyatul Islam (Islamic Moderation) in Indonesia, which serves as a theological framework for balancing religious observance with social justice. However, the emergence of rigid transnational ideologies poses a significant challenge to this harmony, creating a potential disconnect between religious doctrine and local culture. To address this issue, this research aims to analyze how the values of Wasathiyatul Islam are transformed and harmonized within the dialectics of Indonesian society. The study employs a descriptive qualitative method with a phenomenological approach. Data were collected through literature reviews and social observations, then analyzed using an interactive model to interpret the "lived experience" of moderation. The results reveal that the harmonization process is manifested through four key indicators: national commitment, tolerance, anti-violence, and accommodation of local culture. A synthesis of these findings demonstrates that moderation in Indonesia is not merely a top-down state policy but an organic, bottom-up cultural practice where local wisdom serves as a vessel for religious values. In conclusion, Wasathiyatul Islam successfully functions as a unifying instrument, creating a "State of Consensus" where Indonesian Muslims practice their faith devoutly while maintaining unwavering loyalty to the nation.

This chapter discusses the life of Abdus Salam. He was born in British India and was a subject of George V, who was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, and Emperor of India. In 1947, what had been British India was torn into two new nations — India, with a majority Hindu population, but with no official state religion, and a new Muslim country, Pakistan. Salam became a citizen of Pakistan while he was an undergraduate at Cambridge University. Among his achievements are setting up his International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, under the banner of the United Nations. He received the Nobel Prize in 1979, which he shared with American scientists Sheldon Glashow and Steven Weinberg.

The Injustice to Dou E (窦娥冤) by Guan Hanqing is a masterpiece of Chinese drama that has been translated into English many times by different people, as is reflected in the multiple variations of its title in the target language: The Injustice Done to Tou Ngo, Injustice to Tou O, Snow in Midsummer, and The Injustice to Dou E. Despite enormous stylistic differences among various English translations and adaptations of this text, one thing remains fairly constant in the process of cultural translation; that is, these translated texts are always anthologized either as a representative piece of a particular historical period or as a sample of its author’s literary oeuvre. The former situation, for instance, applies to Six Yuan Plays, where The Injustice Done to Tou Ngo is selected as an exemplary piece of dramatic literature that characterizes the culture of Yuan Dynasty of China, whereas the latter situation can be found in Selected Plays of Kuan Han-ching, where Snow in Midsummer is anthologized as a constituent part of Guan Hanqing’s overall theatrical craftsmanship. Little, however, is mentioned of the fact that The Injustice to Dou E is one of the greatest tragedies ever produced in the history of Chinese literature. There are many reasons why the “generic” identity of this text as well as many others that belong to the same subcategory of dramatic literature has been neglected in the institutional practice of anthologizing translated Chinese texts. First among them is the pervasive misbelief that tragic art is absent from Chinese and most other Asian cultures with the quietist Buddhist religion being the main culprit. “All men are aware of tragedy in life,” so says George Steiner in his 1961 book, “but tragedy as a form of drama is not universal. Oriental art knows violence, grief, and the stroke of natural or contrived disaster; the Japanese theater is full of ferocity and ceremonial death. But that representation of personal suffering and heroism which we call tragic drama is distinctive of the western tradition.” Steiner’s statement is obviously inapplicable to The Injustice to Dou E, where the audience witness not only untold suffering heaped upon a kindhearted woman but also unparalleled heroic resistance on the part of the protagonist that is deemed to be essential to tragedy. Another reason often used against reading The Injustice to Dou E as a tragic text is that, like most Chinese dramas of woe, the play contains a happy finale, which is considered detrimental to tragedy. What the naysayers fail to see is that “happy ending” is actually a common occurrence both in Greek tragedy and its Renaissance successor. The fact that happy ending occurs both in Western and Chinese dramas of woe suggests that it should not be viewed as an enemy to tragedy but rather as a different structural manifestation of tragic art. Most scholars today are of the view that tragedy as a form of art has witnessed two periods of prosperity in its entire history of development: one in ancient Greece of fifth century BC and the other in Renaissance Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but there are also theorists like Raymond Williams who try to expand the history of tragedy into the modern era, where playwrights such as Henrik Ibsen and Arthur Miller continue to narrate stories of human suffering. What this paper hopes to reveal is that independent of the Western tradition, the Yuan Dynasty of China also witnessed a small surge of tragic drama of its own. Many dramas of woe (苦戏) were produced in this historical period, including The Injustice to Dou E, Autumn in Han Palace, The Orphan of Zhao, and The Story of Pipa. By repositioning them as members of the tragic genre in the global context, we can better appreciate these texts not only as representative works of a particular period or a specific individual writer but also as different manifestations of tragic art as a universal language of human agony. This offers us one more dimension of literary art where playwrights from the East and the West exchange views on the most fundamental moral and political issues often reflected in tragedy.

Objectives. Scholars have debated Max Weber's theory of the relationship between religion and capitalism for almost 100 years. Still, the debate is clouded by confusion over Weber's claims about religious doctrine and over the supporting evidence. The purpose of this study is to clarify Max Weber's claims regarding the concept of the calling and the related "anti-mammon" injunction and concept of "good works" and substantiate with historical evidence the religious doctrine Weber describes. Methods. Comparative analysis of early Protestant Lutheran and Calvinist documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was used to flesh out a history of ideas to determine whether evidence exists to support Weber's claims related to religious doctrine. Results. Historical analyses revealed that the concept of the calling pre-dated Luther in the Bible. Luther's innovation was not in his use of the word beruf but in his application of the concept of the calling to the common people and his teaching of that idea. The idea of sanctified work was key in both Lutheran and Calvinist documents. There was an increased emphasis on work and encouragement to accumulate wealth in Calvinist documents. Conclusion. Weber's etymological evidence surrounding Martin Luther's use of the word beruf in his German translation of the bible is idiosyncratic and not important to the transmission of the concept of the calling. Luther's application of the concept of the calling to the laity and idea of sanctified work, however, is the foundation on which the Protestant ethic rests, as Weber claims. Weber's other claims regarding the concept of work in early Protestantism are also supported here. Weber did not overstate the implications for societal transformation in early Protestant theology.

The discovery of America, which was in itself a fateful event in European history, coincided with the crucial transformations taking place in the religious sphere. The development of printing technology, the creation of national translations of the Bible, the rethinking of the established forms of religiosity — all these innovations contributed to the creation of a special religious and religio-political climate of the era. England, which became one of the most successful colonial powers, was at the same time a country experiencing these religious transformations in an especially profound manner. Having proclaimed its ecclesiastical independence from Rome earlier than many other countries, England became a space for an intensive search for a new religious identity and a melting pot of various proto-messianic concepts. In addition, the competition of these new religious doctrines, existing in the shadow of potential and actual state-sanctioned oppression of dissidents, has created a specific environment that makes the issue of political freedom especially relevant and pertinent to the context of Christianity. Having received additional development in America and combined with an increased spread of the anti-colonial nationalist message, all these ideological streams could give a start to one of the most remarkable aspects of early American socio-political thought and identity, within which liberalism, republicanism, providentialism, messianism, and Christian religiosity are woven into a single composition. The debate about the influence of this ideological complex on the development of American identity and statehood continues to this day, sometimes leading to conflicting assessments. However, it seems that this phenomenon is, in one way or another, a remarkable factor in American history, which, to some extent, remains a relevant topic of discussion for modern America.

Liberal Islam has become increasingly prominent in academic discourse with its argument that Islam is the necessary foundation to human rights in the Muslim world. This article argues that this theoretical premise is misguided. Instead of whether or not the rights regime makes sense given political, economic, and social context in Muslim-majority states, in a liberal Islam paradigm the question becomes whether or not there are convincing doctrinal arguments regarding the place of human rights in Islamic law. This accepts, in essence, the need for literalist religious justifications for human rights, making an argument for rights a dispute over religious doctrine: a dispute that takes place on an elite, juristic field on which reformers have little claim to institutional authority, human rights scant normative power, and that is disconnected from everyday political and normative realities. More dangerously, it risks reifying the notion that Islam monopolizes the Muslim public sphere, rather than leaving space for normative diversity. Human rights foundations must be based in the theoretical premise that political change flows out of inherently pluralistic normative environments, and that this is as true in the Muslim world as it is elsewhere.

In this ambitious and extensive project, Khaled el-Rouayheb aims to destroy the historiographical biases that belittle the value of early modern intellectual history in the Islamic world. Ironically, multiple perspectives have rendered derogatory verdicts on the legacy of the early modern period –perspectives that have otherwise been extensively challenged in fields other than intellectual history.

By the seventeenth century, Arabo-Persian scholarship in China had adopted elements from Muslim and Chinese book cultures and synthesized them into a new form of scholarship, attested by the hundreds of Arabo-Persian manuscripts extant in repositories in China and around the world and the hundred of copies of printed Chinese works on Islamic themes. This article surveys the history of Chinese participation in Muslim book culture, beginning with a review of the history and general features of texts, in terms of their language and period of composition. The second part of the article provides a more nuanced analysis of texts that circulated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries throughout China, on the study of Arabo-Persian languages. These linguistic aids and primers of Arabic and Persian highlight the way in which these texts were read and interpreted, in turn, providing meaningful insight into the foundation of China’s intellectual engagement with the Islamicate world.