This study examines why some Muslim women in Syria are turning towards an Islamist faith practice and devoutness in the context of the Syrian da‘wa movement. Based on interviews and participant observation from 2006 – 2011 it demonstrates that the quest for the power to live authentic religious lives as devout Muslims lies at the heart of the phenomenon. It argues that the individual development as illustrated by the in-depth profiles of five women, is facilitated by the new access to religious education for women in mosques and private lessons through female preachers that was advocated by the male religious elite. In previous research the compliance of women with restrictive Islamist practices such as veiling has often been explained as empowering women through aiming at mobility and the participation in public space. This thesis argues that the extent to which the participants went in adapting their lives to the Islamist ideal cannot be sufficiently explained by this hypothesis. Rather, it points at their religious motivations to gain a meaningful, emotionally satisfying and correct religious practice in the hope of divine reward. In addition, this thesis analyses the ambiguity of the question of female empowerment as experienced by women in the social and political sense and as religious leaders on one hand and on the other the participants' own concept of empowerment as divine enablement to submission. Thus it contributes to a fuller understanding of devout Islamist women according to their values and self-perception, and offers insights into the unique Syrian context.

The life histories of Muslim teachers in Birmingham schools have been collected in this research. This interpretive research involved a systematic gathering and analysis of data using semi-structured in-depth interviews. Thirteen primary school teachers voluntarily participated for this to happen. This thesis is about Muslim teachers. It focuses on those Muslims who have, in principle, succeeded in education, and are deemed to be opinion-makers, models and leaders. It explores their conceptions, the meanings and significance which they attach to their decisions, their experiences, and events in their professional and personal lives. It concentrates on their views about the recruitment of teachers from underrepresented communities, and highlights the role of spirituality in their life. It reveals their understanding of what it means to be a Muslim teacher in contemporary Britain, and describes their aspirations and sentiments about the future. Much of the research on teachers’ lives, careers and work has been viewed predominantly from the perspective of class, gender and race. This research concludes that the experiences of teachers are not entirely affected by these configurations. Through the exploration of the life histories of Muslim teachers this thesis suggests that the significance of faith in the lives of teachers should be added to this genre.

This thesis seeks to better understand and evaluate the practice of Islamic finance. In order to do this, the thesis employs a practice-dependent, or constructivist, approach with the aim of identifying the principle or principles that inform, constrain and guide Islamic finance practices. The thesis proceeds by arguing that Islamic finance is a salient site of justice, with a clearly identifiable set of participants and shared set of aims. Having established this, the thesis goes on to demonstrate, through an analysis of the rules and operation of Islamic finance, that a distinct conception of justice can be identified as informing the practice. The central claim of the thesis is that the practice of Islamic finance is guided by a sufficiency-constrained luck egalitarian principle. This principle, it is argued, not only helps us to better understand Islamic finance, but can also help us to evaluate existing Islamic finance practices and, where they are found wanting, offer guidance on how best to reform those practices.

Prior to September 11, 2001, a calculated image problem related to America’s defence strategy in the Near East and its foreign policy of exceptionalism culminated in its unfavourable perception in the Muslim world. To counter this setback, leading think-tanks recommended that US public diplomacy must lead the way in order for America to reclaim its positive image. During the Bush administration, this guidance was applied through the expansion of public diplomacy measures such as the State Department’s “Brand America” campaign and the “Shared Values Initiative”. Whilst they were successful at applying secular approaches to engaging international Muslim audiences, both campaigns failed to reach the core of Islamic society. This study contends that to reach this core, the crucial requirement must be to apply direct communicative engagement with local networks in order to restore trusted relations. In defining a new way forward, this study breaks new ground by examining the origin of this problem for America from the angle of communication. By acknowledging the many setbacks caused by various public diplomacy measures, we examine the prospects for the State Department in applying the post-secular communication strategy, Interfaith Diplomacy, to enrich political communication between US diplomats and key religious players in the Muslim world. Findings reveal that communication training under an Obama administration is essential for improving US-Muslim world relations, and this requires the recruitment of a Religion Attaché Officer Corps within the United States Foreign Service. A new Religion Attaché, equipped with a background in broad religious affairs and communication training in Interfaith Diplomacy, is likely to make significant headway in counteracting the tension caused by the US-Muslim world communication problem.

This dissertation analyses the process of de-secularization of the Malaysian state. It identifies the political role of Islam as an important element in explaining how the Malaysian state sustains the language of special ethnic ‘rights’ to negate the ideal of common citizenship in Malaysia. The historical dominance and constant politicization of Islam reinvents the notion of special citizenship ‘rights’ for the majority Malay citizens, which has serious impacts upon equal opportunities and fundamental liberties of minority citizens. This process is further buttressed by legal apparatus that separates Syariah jurisdiction from civil courts, leading to unequal public access to justice and public deliberation in favour of reasons grounded in religious doctrine. Drawing on Rawlsian-informed critique of power, the thesis advances previous work on Malaysian democracy to critically assess the role of religion in politics that defends state-sanctioned differential citizenship rights. The condition of pluralism in Malaysia is an important case study for a robust understanding of the value of secularism as a principle of state practices. In doing so the thesis makes the normative claim that religion should not reside within the state where it can be politicized with the cost of justifying differential citizenship in a multi-cultural democratic society.

This thesis is concerned with the role played by the Christian scholar ‘Ammār al-Baṣrī in theologizing in the Islamic milieu of the ‘Abbasids in the 9th century. His Kitāb al-Burhān, one of his only two surviving works, will therefore be thoroughly studied from two perspectives: the Islamic perspective as it is found in contemporary anti-Christian polemical texts; and the Christian perspective, through a comparison of ‘Ammār’s treatise with the works of Arab Christian theologians of his day. The present study aims at demonstrating the level of translatability of Christian theology into the Islamic intellectual milieu, as ‘Ammār al-Baṣrī saw it. It is therefore natural that we should examine Kitāb al-Burhān as an example of “contextualized” theology in Dār al-Islām. ‘Ammār’s Burhān stands a witness to the numerous attempts made by Arab Christians to reconcile their heritage (the world of Islam) with their inheritance (Christian theology). Such a reconciliation is essential for the future existence of Arab Christians, particularly in the Arab World.

This thesis provides a thematic comparative review of some of the English translations of the Qur'an, including the works of Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Muhammad Asad, Taqiuddin Hilali and Muhsin Khan, and Zafarlshaq Ansari/Sayyid Mawdudi. In this study, a new and unique approach is used to review and compare these translations along with their commentaries. They are reviewed based on the following four Qur'anic themes: Injunctions, Stories, Parables, and Short Chapters. These are some of the key themes where the Qur'an translations, especially the ones with commentary, often differ from each other and can be assessed objectively. For each theme, three to four examples are taken as samples from the Qur'an, and they are studied from different points of view. For example, the translation of the verses with injunctions will be reviewed for their relative emphasis over the letter versus the spirit of the law, consideration of jurisprudence knowledge, overall objectives of Islamic law, issues of this age, and impact of the translator's environment. This approach is intended to identify further requirements for offering more accurate and more communicative translations of the Qur'an in the English language.

Futures Studies, or the study of future, is a post-Enlightenment new field of inquiry in Western history of intellectual tradition. It attempts to study the probable, possible and desirable futures for human. Nevertheless, the study and concern on future is not a unique Western phenomenon. Indeed, every society and civilization has its own version of “futures studies”, as found in astrology, numerology, palm reading and so on and so forth. Islam - as the religion of fitrah (primordial nature) - regards future within an eternal conception of time – the dunyā and the akhīrah. With the influence of Western analysis on future, this research attempts at firstly recognizing the notion of future in both Islam and Western traditions. In so doing, we chose two Muslim scholars, Ziauddin Sardar and Mahdi Elmandjra, who are both prominent in the study of future, and also two Western scholars, Alvin Toffler and Daniel Bell as representatives of Western tradition in studying future. Secondly, this research traces the development of futures thinking in both Western and Islamic context and argues that futures thinking, indeed Futures Studies, has become a significant mode of thinking in Western society within its reception of modernity, and now postmodernity. The development of Futures Studies and futures thinking on their Muslim counterpart shows similar interest, though with much slower pace. Our analysis therefore focuses on the thematical aspects of the scholars’ thoughts and compares the divergences between both Muslim and Western views on future, as well as their resemblances. We then conclude that the significance of futures thinking and Futures Studies should be urgently recognized by the Muslims in order to resolve their present condition in which they become part of the contributing factor. This, as we argue and believe, should be realized through an ijtihādic struggle – to be ready to criticize oneself, and recognize one’s weaknesses and mistakes in understanding and practicing one’s own religion and then to set forward the best resolution to be implemented for a desirable future. Only through this process of self-criticism and self-awareness that we can contemplate a self-renewal process for ourselves, and most importantly, for the Muslim society and its civilization in the future.

The Special Collections of the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham hold seven early Qur’ānic pieces on parchment and papyrus dating from the seventh century. Alphonse Mingana purchased them from the antiquarian dealer von Scherling in 1936. Through investigation of the private correspondence of Mingana and archival documents, this research provides new information about the origin and history of the fragments, whose reception has been influenced by the European cultural context at the beginning of the twentieth century, in contrast with the public image proposed in catalogues, official documents and previous studies. Furthermore, this research is an attempt to initiate an alternative perspective in analysing and editing the physical objects and texts of early Qur’ānic manuscripts by applying digital philology, thus using XML-encoded expressions to transcribe all of the richness of manuscripts in reconstructing the history of their transmission. This perspective interprets the process of the making of the manuscript text and the context in which the manuscript was written, thus editing its mobile and multi-layered text, differently from previous examples of the edition of early Qur’ānic manuscripts.

This research is based upon a collection of generally unutilized ḥadīth literature, and is not only concerned with a study of “authenticity” of the ḥadīth, but is also concerned with the science of ḥadīth transmission as advanced by the master critic, Ibn Ḥibbān al-Bustī (d. 354/965). Although the focus of modern ḥadīth scholarship has placed greater emphasis on transmitter evaluation of the second/eight and the third/ninth centuries, it still the case that a great part of the reliability of ḥadīth transmitter was not simply adopted by ḥadīth critics of the fourth/tenth century, as Ibn Ḥibbān has distinctly demonstrated. By scrutinizing Ibn Ḥibbān’s introduction to his al-Taqāsim wa al-Anwāʿ (“The Divisions and the Categories”) famously known as Ṣaḥīḥ Ibn Ḥibbān, we are afforded a unique insight into the application of his transmitter evaluation, authentic ḥadīth criterion and the concept of khabar and sunna. As the title suggests, this was a very clear conception of the degree to which his work is a collection dealing with the body of ḥadīth by the divisions and the categories which are interpreted with legal theory. Furthermore, there is no consensus on the topic of evaluating persona and it is not germane among Muslim scholars. Thus, we present a synopsis of the history of ḥadīth criticism until the time of Ibn Ḥibbān as well as the techniques that the early critics employed to determine the evaluation of transmitters. Even though a comprehensive analysis of whole of Ibn Ḥibbān’s biographical dictionary of impugned transmitters (namely Maʿrifāt al-Majrūḥīn wa al-Dhuʿafāʾ min al-Muḥaddithīn) would be exceedingly beneficial, this study only concentrates on the introduction of the book. Our discursive approach has pointed out the state of disagreement of transmitter evaluation that occured in the fourth/tenth century and the compelling contribution of Ibn Ḥibbān’s works to the subsequent literature on the science of ḥadīth transmission. The final part of this study is concerned with some of the ways in which Ibn Ḥibbān has presented the biography of the Prophet and the early scholars in the Islamic tradition. The task involves a short analysis of the purposes, history, organization, total of figures, and basic strategies used in Ibn Ḥibbān’s biographical dictionaries. Apart from biographical material of reliable transmitters in the Ṣaḥīḥ, it manifests clearly that Ibn Ḥibbān’s approval of a transmitter is due to the inclusion both in Kitāb al-Thiqāt and Mashāhīr al-ʿUlamāʾ al-Amṣār. The ḥadīth transmitters whose biographies are contained in the Thiqāt and the Mashāhīr are thus presented as the successors of the Prophet through the arrangement of ṭabaqāt. In this manner, Ibn Ḥibbān could reveal of the genealogy of authority since both sources yield information of reliable transmitters who lived during a period of 300 years after the Prophet’s death.