No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2004.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität, Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2000.

Muslim heresiographers present the medieval rationalist school of theology known as the Mu‛tazila as heretics, while modern Western and modernist Muslim scholarship almost invariably present the Mu‛tazila as the original free-thinkers of Islam. The result is a polarized view of the Mu‛tazili tradition; Islamists view the Mu‛tazila as a heresy best forgotten while modernists, Muslim and Western, as historical proof of Islam’s essentially rational character. The present study is an attempt to problematize both perspectives by reexamining the concepts of reason (or rationalism) and tradition (or traditionalism) in light of Mu‛tazilite theology and ethics. This analysis shows that the modern heirs of Mu‛tazili thought are not be sought in Muslim scholastic theology or Enlightenment liberalism, but in the postmodern critiques of Western Muslim scholars such as Tariq Ramadan and Khaled Abou El Fadl.

By examining first the life and works of Muhammad ibn Murtada al-Fayd al-Kashani (1007/1598-1091/1680), we hope this will serve as an introduction to some of his viewpoints. We will consider his theories of muraqabat al-nafs (self-supervision) and muhasabat al-nafs (self-accounting) as expounded in his book al-Mahajjah al-Bayda', which was written as a work to enhance Ihya' al-'Ulum by al-Ghazali, (450/1058-505/1111) from a Shi'ah perspective. We will also compare the views of al-Fayd and al-Ghazali as expressed in their respective books. / Self-supervision and self-accounting are two main terms of ethical terminology that enjoy a rich history in Islamic philosophy. Al-Fayd's views on the subject, as a philosopher and an ethicist of the School of Isfahan are studied in this work. The sources of al-Ghazali and al-Fayd are discussed, and differences between the approaches of al-Fayd and al-Ghazali are also covered.

Female genital cutting (FGC) has received much attention since the early 1980s. Decried as both a human rights violation and a barbaric example of the patriarchal subjugation of women and girls in developing nations, FGC has only recently been examined within the cultural framework in which it takes place. This thesis will focus on the Muslim communities in Egypt and Sudan who continue to engage in FGC as a required Muslim practice. Starting from the notion that FGC has a limiting effect on a woman's overall health, this thesis will use three foundational notions from Islamic medical ethics to argue against the continuation of FGC. Specifically, it will elaborate and draw on the Islamic position in favor of organ transplantation, thus further illustrating the argument against FGC. By using principles and notions from Islamic medical ethics, this thesis will argue against FGC from within Islam.

Cette recherche a pour objectif d’examiner l’influence de la religion musulmane sur la pratique du marketing. Elle présente les principes, valeurs et normes islamiques indispensables pour adapter les stratégies et les outils du marketing au marché islamique. Afin d’étudier le degré d’adaptation et d’intégration de ces valeurs et normes dans les pratiques des entreprises qui s’adressent au marché islamique, une étude exploratoire a été menée auprès de ces entreprises. Puis une seconde étude exploratoire a été réalisée auprès des consommateurs dans le but d’étudier leurs positions et comportements vis-à-vis de ces pratiques ainsi que leurs perceptions sur l’arrivée d’un marketing islamique universel. Les résultats obtenus montrent que si le degré d’engagement des entreprises et le niveau d’adaptation du marketing dépendent de plusieurs variables, une adaptation et intégration complète est cependant possible. Ainsi, il apparait que l’on peut anticiper l’arrivée future d’un marketing islamique cadré, avec des outils et techniques définis, clairs à adapter et prêts à être appliqués. / This research aims to examine the influence of Islam in the marketing field. It presents Islamic fundamentals, values and norms required to adapt marketing strategies and tools on the Islamic market. To study the degree of adaptation and integration of these values and standards into companies that target Islamic market, an exploratory study was conducted with these companies. Then a second exploratory study was conducted with consumers in order to study their behavior towards these practices and their perceptions about the arrival of a universal Islamic marketing. The results show that the engagement degree of companies and the level of marketing adaptation, depend on several variables, and a full adaptation and integration is possible and affirmed. Thus, it appears that there is a high probability of the arrival of an Islamic marketing with well-defined tools and techniques, ready to be applied.

This dissertation examines how Indian Muslim thinkers participated in and contributed to regional and global debates about the concept of minority as a category of governance and identity constituted through law, politics, and daily life. Focusing on the period from the end of the Crimean War in 1856 to the 1947 partition of India, it follows the writings of Islamic modernists, a transregional group of thinkers who championed an egalitarian view of Islam as an alternative vision for universal rights and ethics. Using periodicals, letters, memoirs, pamphlets, treatises, official documents, and other sources (mainly in Urdu, Arabic, Russian, and, English, and, to a lesser extent, in Persian, Hebrew, and French) mostly from archives and libraries across India, Britain, and Israel/Palestine, this dissertation traces how Britain’s classification of Indian Muslims as a minority put them at the center of global conversations about rights, citizenship, and emancipation. It also shows how South Asian Islamic modernists, in dialogue with one another and political and intellectual projects across the British Empire, Khedival Egypt, Ottoman and post-Ottoman Middle East, Tsarist Empire, and Soviet Russia and Central Asia, formulated novel modes of belonging that challenged both colonial rule and national territorial partitions. The concept of a Muslim minority emerged in the context of the trans-imperial “Muslim Question”—i.e., how European powers sought to “manage” Muslim subjects, and how Muslims responded to such politics and sought to transform them. After the Crimean War (1853-56), Britain began to link its governance over Muslims in the Indian subcontinent to its diplomacy with the Ottoman Empire and Khedival Egypt. On the one hand, British officials now invoked their status as rulers over the largest Muslim population in the world to increase their influence in Ottoman and Egyptian politics. On the other hand, these officials pointed to their military and diplomatic support of Ottoman sovereignty in the Crimean War in an attempt to win over “Indian Muslim public opinion.” At the same time, by creating the categories of “Muslim minority” and “Hindu majority” through technologies of enumeration and identification, most notably the All-India Census of 1871-1872, Britain quantified and politicized religious difference among Indians. Amidst these upheavals, Islamic scholars and activists in North India joined hands and articulated new visions of rights, identity, and unity across difference. However, this was not only a subcontinental story. Rather than historicizing the minority question only via European imperial or local lenses, this dissertation breaks new ground by showing how Islamic modernists interpreted, applied and produced models of mutilingualism, multiconfessionalism, and federalism from and across the British, Ottoman, and Tsarist empires and Khedival Egypt, and, after 1917, Soviet Russia and Central Asia to challenge both imperial and national “solutions” to the minority question. Taking an interdisciplinary view of “minority” as a complex interplay between demography, bureaucracy, discourse, practice, and experience, “Recasting Minority” argues that the concept of minority structured core debates about and in modern South Asia and the Middle East and their transregional linkages, from the conception of halal meat, to questions of Arabic as a language of belonging for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, to the creation of anticolonial solidarities. In so doing, this dissertation questions the dominant historiography that binds minority within European genealogies of nation-state formation and politicization of religious difference. Rather than regarding minority solely as a persecuted group or a predicament produced by “secular governance,” this dissertation shows that the emergence of this concept in trans-imperial geopolitics, and the precarious position of Muslims working within and beyond them, enabled Islamic modernists to produce alternative visions of sovereignty, religious difference, and worldmaking. In so doing, my dissertation synthesizes the global intellectual history of the concept of minority with the socio-political and cultural history of South and West Asia and Eurasia, helping explain the enduring potency of this concept in these regions today.

The preoccupation of Islamic thinkers with the formation of moral subjects (themselves and others) motivated their deployments of different conceptual frameworks to satisfy paradigmatic moral requirements. These intellectual pursuits are portrayed as technologies involved in “caring for the self,” that is, in forming the subject/agent of the broader community. Reconstructing historical debates that draw on the works of a selection of Islamic authors, mainly between the 10th and 13th centuries CE, this dissertation addresses the related paradigmatic features of various forms of Islamic leadership (e.g. ulū al-amr, mujtahid, ahl al-ḥall, imām, and quṭb). The Qurʾānic world of interconnected meanings related to amr (authority, command, matter…) and those vested with it assumes a concern for the morality, if not outright infallibility, and the intellectual merit of a leader. Through an analysis of types of authorship and terms of discourse, ḥadīth literature on verse 4:59 from the Shīʿī tradition sheds light on the rise of various Sunnī strategies addressing the question of infallible juristic leadership (taṣwīb al-mujtahid). Another case of leadership appears in the Ṣūfī mystical strand of Sunnī thought, where the spiritual leader, or quṭb, may be seen as analogous to the Shīʿī Imām in terms of moral excellence and presence-in-absence (ghaybah). My analyses of these distinct features and forms of leadership culminate with a case study on the Mahdī in modernity, an anticipated savior figure at the crossroads of Sunnī, Shīʿī and Ṣūfī thought, in which the adapting of earlier lines of reasoning exhibits strategies for the purpose of subject-formation. Each of these case studies demonstrates not only that the interpretive frameworks of Islamic thinkers were invested in moral subject-formation but also that a holistic reading of such thought can identify their authorial activity itself as one form among the different forms of leadership that revolve around subject-formation.

No description available.

No description available.