Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of Anthropology, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references.

In a time when “traditional” Islam and Islamic education are seen as incommensurable with American society and ideals, American Muslims are mobilizing traditions of Islamic scholarship within liberal arts institutional frameworks to articulate and establish the future possibilities of Islam and being Muslim in North America. This research shows how the Islamic discursive tradition is being critically engaged by the scholars and students of Zaytuna College to craft an “American Islam” based on a shared moral and ethical system that draws from and is relevant to the heterogeneous experiences of diverse Muslims and their material circumstances. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, and in the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area, this study’s methodological approach is grounded in participant-observation, interviews, and visual ethnography.

In a time when “traditional” Islam and Islamic education are seen as incommensurable with American society and ideals, American Muslims are mobilizing traditions of Islamic scholarship within liberal arts institutional frameworks to articulate and establish the future possibilities of Islam and being Muslim in North America. This research shows how the Islamic discursive tradition is being critically engaged by the scholars and students of Zaytuna College to craft an “American Islam” based on a shared moral and ethical system that draws from and is relevant to the heterogeneous experiences of diverse Muslims and their material circumstances. Based on eighteen months of ethnographic research at Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, and in the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area, this study’s methodological approach is grounded in participant-observation, interviews, and visual ethnography.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1993.

This thesis is a study of the history of Islam in China during the T'ang and Song periods, based on Chinese and Arabic sources. After investigation of the early contacts between the Muslims and China during the T'ang era (618--907), the thesis analyzes the reasons for the spread of Islam into southern Chinese Turkistan. The thesis then goes on to examine the Muslim commercial activities in Song China (960--1276). This study will lead to the conclusion that Muslim military campaigns in Chinese Turkistan and Muslim merchants' commercial activities in China's south-east coastal provinces during the T'ang and Song dynasties contributed to the early spread and development of Islam in China.

This thesis deals with the history, life cycle and doctrines of the Black Muslim social movement as a framework for the comparison of the beliefs of the Black Muslims and Orthodox Moslems. It has been hypothesized that the basic differences in the secular and religious doctrines of the Black Muslim social movement and Orthodox Moslems--such as anti-white attitudes, beliefs in Black superiority and white inferiority, and a disbelief in Heaven and Hell--are directly related to racial problems in the United States. Various concerns of the Black Muslim social movement (e.g. an independent economic and educational system) are seen as the means to achieve self-respect and self-determination and to remove stereotypes about Blacks in white American society.

No description available.

This Ph.D. thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out amongst Muslims of Malian origin in Bouaké, Côte d'lvoire, between February 1993 and June 1995. The dissertation is concerned with the description of processes of identification in the context of urban life and international migration within West Africa. The investigation focused on these processes as they unfold in Islamic youth associations, female place-of-origin associations, madrasas (Islamic schools), and compound life. Marriage practices, the sociohistorical construction of age groups and gender, and the negotiation of differing worldviews are central to the analysis. In the thesis I argue that in the contemporary sociopolitical scene in Côte d'lvoire, Muslims of Malian origin identify with two ensembles of ethnic labels: the Dioula label and several identity labels tied to places of origin in Mali. However, for a number of young men and women, Islam, rather than ethnicity, plays a central role in their self-identity and their sense of belonging. This argument requires an examination of the respective influences of the life course and of patterns of social change in these processes of identification. In order to support this argument, I describe the politics of identity in Côte d'lvoire in the post-Houphouët-Boigny period, elements of social change over the past thirty years affecting Islamic institutions and the educational trajectories of young men and women, and the logic of marriage practices in an urban setting marked by ethnic heterogeneity. The empirical chapters of the thesis analyse versions of Islam produced within Islamic youth associations and the negotiation of conflicting worldviews in the life trajectories of Muslim women.

No description available.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine a major segment of Islamic international relations theory as expounded by Sunni jurists of the classical period of the Islamic Fiqh (661-1258 AD). It consists of that portion which is concerned with peaceful relations as distinct from that other major segment which is about Jihad or Islamic warfare. The thought of Muslim scholars on this topic provides a major part of an ideal model for political life under Islam, and its appeal has continued to exert a strong influence on the lives and thoughts of all Muslims throughout the centuries. Within this segment of Islamic international relations theory attention is focused on the key concepts of treaties, including alliance, and neutral status. One part of this is, however, omitted. It is what in Western political philosophy would be called private (not public) relations, and which in an Islamic classical Fiqh context - where the private/public distinction, it will be argued, is absent - can be termed social relations. The argument put forward will be that Islamic international relations are the totality of relations between Muslims and non-Muslims, and never relations between Muslims. Islamic law, it will be argued, governs this relationship, ensuring Islamic international relations theory is essentially normative. The thesis will further suggest that Muslim relations with non-Muslims are fundamentally pacific, not hostile, if the legitimate purposes of Jihad are properly assessed. The thesis will also be concerned to assess the extent to which peaceable Muslim relations with non-Muslims can be organised through the different forms of treaty which are recognised in classical Sunni Fiqh. It will be argued that the anti-Iraq coalition alliance of 1990-91 fulfilled the conditions of a genuine Islamic alliance treaty, contrary to the view of numerous contemporary Muslim scholars and publicists. Finally, it will be argued that neutrality, as well as neutralisation, were possible during the period of classical Sunni Fiqh.