About two years after publishing so called Muhammad cartoons in Denmark, the Swedish regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda in Orebro published an editorial on self-censorship. A drawing of Prophet Muhammad as a Roundabout dog, drawn by Lars Vilks, was illustrating the article. Publishing of Muhammad drawing was followed by reactions both in Sweden and in some other countries especially in the muslim world. There are many differences and similarities between the publishing in Denmark and Sweden. There are differences and similarities between the two cases even regarding to the reactions in muslim countries. Mass media have certainly played an important role in mediating information about the publishing to people in muslim countries. Which information and how they were mediated are significant for shaping perceptions and thereby the reactions that followed the publishing of Muhammad drawing in Sweden. This essay is investigating how newspapers and online newspapers (web newspapers) in nine muslim countries reported about the publishing of Muhammad drawing. The subjects that newspapers were interesting of and the discourses domination reporting are in focus for this investigation. This essay will also investigate how newspapers and online newspapers in muslim countries covered two issues which were well covered by Swedish media, A threat against Lars Vilks from organization "Islamic State in Iraq" and a statement from the Iranian president Ahmadinejad regarding the Muhammad drawing in Nerikes Allehanda.

Over the last fourteen-hundred years, Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah (d. 632) has been depicted and portrayed in a variety of ways by numerous scholars, theologians, and polemicists. My dissertation offers a unique approach to the “historical Muhammad” as it develops a new method to examine extant primary sources related to his life. I include available sources that provide pertinent information on Muhammad’s life, including the Qur’an, hadith literature, sira-maghazi (biographies and expeditions), and non-Muslim accounts. My research is original because it adopts current historical Jesus scholarship, particularly modern cognitive studies of memory, and uses it on extant sources related to Muhammad’s life. More specifically, I explore how memory, oral tradition, and oral transmission play vital roles in understanding how Muslims remembered their Prophet and how the circumstances of later generations shaped and influenced their commemoration of his life. By adopting this scholarship, which will be contextualized to examine early Muslim literature, I offer a new perspective on surviving sources, the context of seventh-century Arabia, and the function of memory for the nascent Muslim community. I also apply my method on eight significant, polemical, or neglected events that are traditionally believed to have taken place during Muhammad’s life in Mecca and Medina. In sum, my dissertation offers a dynamic cross-disciplinary venture, encompassing the intersection of innovative, modern critical inquiry and early Islamic literature. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation examines the field of the “historical Muhammad” and applies a new method on extant primary sources related to Muhammad’s life. I conduct a literature review of scholars’ reconstructions of his life, beginning as early as the seventh century. I also explore numerous primary sources on Muhammad, pointing out their benefits and disadvantages. Next, I overview the quests for the historical Jesus and analyze methods that were established over the last hundred years. In my dissertation, I adopt historical Jesus scholarship, namely memory studies, to develop an original method that provides a unique understanding and fresh perspective of the historical Muhammad. Over the last two chapters, I conduct eight case studies employing my method on events from Muhammad’s life in Mecca and Medina. This dissertation demonstrates that we could reconstruct a reasonably coherent picture of events surrounding Muhammad’s life.

Tradition is characterised by the dynamics of simultaneous innovation and continuity. The Islamic tradition is a case-in-point where its internal elements are reconstructed through transmission, reception and interpretation. A vast body of texts, rituals and institutions, I contend has been subject to scrutiny and modification by Muslim scholars. Muhammad al-Ghazali’s works are examined, alongside those of his predecessors and peers, in this study for the purpose of establishing the facets of continuity and innovation in his thought. Twentieth century Muslim reformers such as al-Ghazali were heirs of the turath (Arabo-Islamic heritage) constructed over a period of 14 centuries. The tendency of tajdid (renewal) is implicated in a web of authoritative texts, juristic methods and moral norms. Calls to revive the practice of ijtihad (independent judgement) to interpret Islamic law, enveloping ethics and politics, were motivated by the search for the authentic spirit of Islam in the past. This search was also accompanied by the recovery of the ideal norms contained in the texts of the Shari’ah (the way). Reformist thinking since the eve of the twentieth century has privileged the maqasid al-Shari’ah (objectives of the Shari’ah) to varying degrees. In this study, I consider a range of Muslim scholars from the classical period until the present who espoused the ethos of tajdid. Moreover, I seek to propose an alternative reading of tradition contrary to the account of a dynamic modernity and a static tradition. The application of tradition as a concept of interpretation in this study seeks to situate al-Ghazali’s thought in the broader current of tajdid part of a vibrant past. I aim to provide a thick description of the works of al-Ghazali as an important example of a reformist venture maintaining the continuity of tradition. Additionally, the examination of a diversity of Muslim scholars aims to illustrate the patchwork composition of tradition in the past and the present.

This research aims to explore how representations of Saudi Arabia in German travel literature, pilgrimage accounts and online media have transformed the Saudi Arabian space and its place in the European imagination. German travelers, pilgrims, and expatriates enter the foreign Saudi Arabian space, and decipher it in their narratives. The diachronic analysis of several representative texts by German authors from the 18th and 19th centuries narrating their journey to what is today known as Saudi Arabia, shows that the images conveyed in their writings should be conceived in a multidimensional way beyond the lens of historical analysis, taking into account notions of gender, personal motivations, nationality and religion. Analysis of pilgrimage accounts by German converts from the 20th and 21st century reveals an unreflected representation of Western societies and German people in the Middle East. These narratives play a fundamental role in building a bridge connecting Muslim immigrants living in the diaspora with German converts. However, to quote Marcia Hermansen (1999) "even though Western Muslim narrators avoid the excesses of their Christian precursors, they are not completely free from a colonial gaze and "Orientalist" attitudes": in their narratives both the desert and the Bedouins become an imagined and fictionalized trope. In the last part of my dissertation I explore the blogosphere produced by German expatriates living in Saudi Arabia, arguing that expatriate blogs have become a space for cultural representation and othering, that share similarities with the genre of travel writing.

Although a prolific writer of history, Sakhawi is, primarily, a traditionist. As such, accuracy both in utterance and writing would, by the very nature of his training, be his first objective. Modern writers appear to have neglected the importance of his contribution to the understanding of the history of his century. accept for a few articles, comparatively little has been written. It is, therefore, strange that such a mine of information as Sakhawi's writing presents has remained so long in oblivion. In this thesis an attempt has been made to evaluate that contribution together with an edition of part of his work. The study has been divided into three sections, the first dealing with Sakhawi’s life and times. This part of the study is based largely on his autobiography which was written but a few months before he died. During research no reference was discovered to this most informative work. The section falls into three chapters, the first of which endeavours to show the political and educational aspects of Cairo during the early part of Sakhawi's lifetime. Cairo was his native city and, as such, made great impact on his early life. In the second chapter the position of his family, his Shaykhs, the academic journeys he made, his residence in Hijaz and the last phase of his life are portrayed. The third chapter deals with his activities as an adult, his reputation as a traditionist together with a survey of his works as presented in his autobiography. In the second part, the study deals exclusively with Sakhawi as a historian of the 9th/15th century. This part also is divided into two chapters, the first of which considers the following aspects: - I Sakawi's works on the century; II His motives, methods and literary style and III His treatment of the history of the century. The second chapter collates Sakhawi's methods of selecting his information and the painstaking efforts he made to verify them, together with his historical achievements, while the last two topics endeavour to evaluate his task as a historian in that century. Section three presents the hitherto unedited part of Wajiz al-Kalam... which deals with the history of the 9th/15th century. This section also falls into the three divisions of preface, text and annotations. The last divides again into two groups one of which deals with the textual variants mentioned in the footnotes and the other attempts to deal with the interpretation of most of the idiom, colloquial expressions and the names of places and personalities mentioned in the supplement to the text.

Book Summary: This work is the fourth Small Wars Journal anthology focusing on radical Sunni Islamic terrorists and insurgent groups. It covers this professional journals writings for 2016 and is a compliment to the earlier Global Radical Islamist Insurgency anthologies that were produced as Vol. I: 2007-2011 (published in 2015) and Vol. II: 2012-2014 (published in 2016) and Jihadi Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Islamic State spanning 2015 (published in 2017). This anthology, which offers well over 900 pages of focused analysis, follows the same general conceptual breakdown as the earlier works and is divided into two major thematic sectionsone focusing on Al Qaeda and Islamic state activities in 2016 and the other focusing on US-Allied policies and counterinsurgent strategies.

While the intersection of sport and the Civil Rights era has been well documented from a number of angles and approaches, perhaps no athlete has been so thoroughly connected to this period in history as Muhammad Ali. His stances on Vietnam, race relations and religion during this period have provided a fountain of historical research and narratives on this very turbulent period. However, what about the political and social activities of Ali’s contemporaries? Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman were not just heavyweight champions, but also individuals who were profoundly affected by the mass exodus of Blacks out of the South and into the cities of the North and West. Known to history as the Great Migration, this movement not only affected these men physically, but also helped to shape their ideas and understandings about racial identity, civil rights and race relations in their adult lives. The purpose of this research is to examine the political and social activities and experiences throughout the lives of Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier and George Foreman. In addition to exploring the narratives surrounding their migration experiences, it will display the differences in opinion each man had regarding issues such as segregation and how they defined themselves against Ali’s largely ignored, hardline segregationist stance. Finally, it will explore the possibilities for reexamining not just the popularly accepted narratives of these four men, but also of Ali himself.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-237). Also available on Internet.

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