The Contemporary Islamic Revival

Abstract

This book is the twentieth volume to appear in the Bibliographies andIndexes in Religious Studies series published by Greenwood Press. It isdivided into two parts: a) the introductory chapters, and b) the main bodyof the bibliography and the indexes. The three introductory chapters givean overview of contemporary Islamic revivalist movements from somewhatdifferent perspectives and address many critical issues that are difficultto deal with adequately in just three chaptets.Chapter one discusses such issues as the factors behind the growth ofrevivalist movements, fundamental issues that provide the primary focusfor revivalist writings, the bias of scholars in the West who write andconduct research on Islamic and Middle Eastem studies, and the establishmentof Shari'ah schools in Muslim countries. However, this chaptercontains many less-than-authentic statements or, in other words, somemethodological misinformation. For example, the author refers to a1'Arabi and a1 Muslim a1 Mu 'air as "two Kuwaiti magazines" that triedto promote an intellectual controverjy on "whether the companions of theProphet Muhammad were leftist or rightist and whether the sources of theformative period of Islam can be subjected to modem re-interpretation tojustify claims of Islamic precedent to proponents of 'Islamic left' and'Islamic right"' (p. 5). The author does not document the reasons for thisconclusion, in spite of the fact that the two magazines are different bothin their natures and their contents. AZ 'Arabi is a monthly magazine thatdiscusses current issues for a wide public in the Arab world, whereas a1Muslim a1 Mu'iisir is a quarterly publication that contains various typesof articles related to the Islamization of knowledge.The author of this chapter has attempted to cover a variety of historical,political, and socioeconomic issues. Unfortunately, the attempt ismarred by its inconsistency. For instance, English literature on contemporaryIslamic revivalism, the use of modem media for the disseminationof Islamic literature, and the status and role of Muslim womenwere discussed twice in different parts of the chapter. Many critical termsappear without satisfactory justification: "terrorists," "zealots," "militants," ...