Notwithstanding the enduring and rich “legacy of islah (Islamic reform)”, the study of it is relatively scarce and remarkably limited to modern times. The present study attempts to shed some light on this legacy by evaluating the contribution of an outstanding pre-modern Muslim scholar, al-Ghazali. Surprisingly, some studies create an absolutely positive picture of him, while others portray him in an extremely negative light. Thus, this study raises the question of whether it is justifiable to classify him as a muslih (Islamic reformer). In the light of the analysis of the concept “islah” and the complexity of Al-Ghazali’s time, the study demonstrates his life-experience and verifies that he devoted himself to general islah at a late period of his life, after succeeding in his self-islah. Further the study assess his islahi teachings in general, namely those formulated in the Ihya’ and evaluates the claimed effects of his attempts at islah. The study also highlights a number of strengths and weaknesses of al-Ghazali’s efforts and critically discusses some of the criticism directed at him. By weighing up the points for and against al-Ghazali, this study concludes by asserting that classifying him as a muslih appears to be fairly justified.

In the last 30 years English law has seen a small but steady proliferation of shari’a councils though exact numbers are unknown. They have been set up to meet the religious needs of the British Muslim population focussing on providing a forum for the resolution of marital disputes. Shari’a councils offer mediation and reconciliation services as well as issuing religious divorce certificates. In the academic research to date it is apparent that the primary applicants to shari’a councils are Muslim women. In order to understand why one must investigate Islamic law which differentiates between the way in which men and women may divorce. Muslim men are free to pronounce a unilateral divorce without seeking the approval of any judicial body. Muslim women are arguably not granted any equivalent rights and must either secure their husband’s consent or apply to an authority to provide them with a religious determination. Shari’a councils have emerged to meet that need. My research demonstrates that whilst Muslim women are generally satisfied with the outcome of a shari’a council ruling they are critical of the processes. This becomes even more apparent to them when they compare their experiences of shari’a councils with the civil court system. Nonetheless, civil law alone is insufficient to meet the women’s needs and access to a religious authority remains a vital resource for many Muslim women. There is, however, a dynamic and evolving relationship emerging between Muslim family law practices and English law, which is still only at the embryonic stage.

This study examines the justifications and regulations for going to war in both international and domestic armed conflicts under Islamic law. It studies the various kinds of use of force by both state and non-state actors in order to determine the nature of the Islamic law of war, specifically, whether Islamic law sanctions “holy war”, offensive war or only defensive war. It discusses international armed conflicts, i.e., war against non Muslims, in the first four chapters: Chapters One, Two and Three treat the justifications for war in the Sīrah biographies of the Prophet)literature, Tafsīr (exegesis) literature, and classical and modern juridical literature respectively. Chapter Four treats the Islamic regulations for war in international armed conflicts. Chapter Five is devoted to the justifications and regulations for the use of force in internal armed conflicts. It investigates the permissibility under Islamic law of resorting to the use of force to overthrow the governing regime and discusses the Islamic treatment of terrorism and the punishment of terrorists and their accomplices. It also discusses the claim that contemporary acts of domestic and international terrorism perpetrated by Muslims are motivated and justified by jihād. This study is limited to the four Sunni schools of Islamic law and also refers in some cases to the extinct Zāhirī school. It studies the writings of classical and modern Muslim jurists and scholars and compares them with the western literature on the subject. This study finds that Jihād, in the sense of international armed struggle, as the term is currently used, is a defensive war justified in cases of aggression on the Muslim nation and fitnah, i.e., the persecution of Muslims. It also finds that the core justification in Islamic law for the use of force in domestic armed conflicts, and which may give an indication to future conflicts in the Muslim world, is the violations of the rules of the sharī‛ah. The study concludes that the Islamic law of war as maintained by the majority of mainstream Muslims scholars has great potential for contributing to international peace and security in the modern world, particularly with regard to the humanization of armed conflicts and the peaceful resolution of internal conflicts.

This research has been conducted to explore certain elements of Islamic business ethics and the roles they adopt to shape particular types of organisational culture, and thus the impact of organisational culture on attitudes toward strategic growth amongst a very specific population, which are SMEs that are owned or managed by Muslims in the UK. Previous research showed that a better understanding of organisational culture, and its main components, leads to effective and successful planning to achieve strategic changes. The research has been conducted based on a mixed methodology, combining qualitative and quantitative methods of research. The research began positively with a conceptual and theoretical model reflecting the author's research methodology approach. However, one part of the conceptual model, the "elements of Islamic business ethics factor" was ambiguous, because there were fewer contributions to be found in this area. Therefore, a set of in-depth, semi-structured interviews was planned to identify and clarify this part, followed by a well-designed questionnaire that was distributed across the whole UK. Principally, the elements of Islamic business ethics were discovered within the first stage, and many of the participants have mentioned the important impact of Islamic business ethics on shaping particular types of organisational culture, specifically, when the owner or manager has a strong spirituality. Moreover, the statistical results show that the type of organisational culture plays a significant role on the owner or manager's attitude to attain a certain alternative plan for strategic growth.

In many ways, Jonathan Edwards and Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhāb are about as far apart as two figures could possibly be. Without minimizing their very real differences, however, this comparative study finds numerous parallels that beckon even the most conservative of Christians and Muslims to take a second look at their own faith, as well as the faith of the other. Encompassing a variety of disciplines, and spanning the globe from North America to the Arabian Gulf, this study examines the major themes in the lives and works of the Reverend and the Shaykh, two traditionalist icons of the eighteenth century in Christianity and Islam. With implications in diverse fields such as politics, law, philosophy, theology, religion, history, warfare, and even gender issues, this research unearths numerous striking parallels in Edwards and Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhāb that have heretofore gone unnoticed or largely ignored. Surprising congruences in their respective contexts, as well as in their conceptions of God, humanity, and the faith of the other, suggest that religious conservatives who revere these figures stand much to gain from a reassessment of long-held views that could lead to wholly new patterns of global engagement.

Enlightenment discourse advanced an idiosyncratic cognitive framework and epistemology that rationalized the overturning of usury laws. Under capitalism, money innately changed as banks gained the institutional right to create credit and lend it into existence at interest. The implicit ideologies of this discourse instantiated a reframing of traditional conceptions about money and interest worldwide. In contradistinction, Islam prohibits riba, a term approximated as usury/interest, presenting ethical problems to banking practice. This conflict has yielded Islamic banking and finance (IBF), bolstered by a small cadre of Shariah scholars, even though it continues to fail in its stated social justice imperatives. IBF evidently charges what is commensurate to interest while declaring it does not, promoting its products as ‘Shariah compliant’ – a term producing different meanings to different interpreters. This study adopts an Islamic maqasid methodology and analyzes discourses in reframing how such an industry emerged, how its practice departed from its claims, how it sustains itself, and asks why Muslims have not moved beyond it towards alternatives that procure greater possibilities for social and environmental justice. It reexamines discourses connected to the historical and contextual reframing of money, usury, interest and riba, and isolates the associated semantic obfuscations that power has influenced.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the manner in which the Qur’an and sunna depict female personalities in their narrative literature. It is a comprehensive study of all the female personalities mentioned in the Qur’an, and is selective in the personalities of the sunna to the three prominent women of ahl al-bayt, Khadi>ja, Fa>t}ima, and Zaynab. The sources examined here are the major sources of Ima>mi> Shi>‘i> Islam, including the exegetical compilations of the eminent Shi>‘i> religious authorities of the classical and modern periods; as well as the authoritative books of Shi>’i> traditions. The results reached here are that female personalities are portrayed as human beings, and that they display feminine qualities, which are often viewed positively and are sometimes commendable traits for men, at least as far as the spiritual domain is concerned. The hypothesis, particularly about women’s humanity, will be tested against the depiction of womanhood in the h}adi>th literature, with special emphasis on Nahj al-Bala>gha. The study recommends that future research on the subject of “women in Islam” widen the scope of what it considers to be its data, outside the domain of the law.

In my thesis, I aim to develop a systematic and philosophically coherent thesis of ultimate reality for Ibn Arabi. In this pursuit, I adopt the style of analytic philosophy, seeking to employ and utilise some of its methods and theories. The philosophical aspects of Ibn Arabi’s doctrine are in dire need of conceptual clarification and systematic analysis with a closer focus on argumentation. The analytic tradition will prove most helpful in this regard. In my thesis, I begin by tracing Ibn Arabi’s related views and concepts as they are dispersed throughout his writings. I then clarify, sharpen and, in many cases, develop these views and concepts into fully constructed forms. Finally, I weave the developed concepts and views into a systematic thesis or set of sub-theses. Where necessary, I provide my own (or borrowed) arguments and concepts to help substantiate and strengthen the structure of Ibn Arabi’s thesis. I propose that Ibn Arabi’s various, and sometimes apparently inconsistent, views are best presented in terms of three main concepts: the concept of ultimate reality as existence (wujud), which has long been known as Ibn Arabi’s thesis of the oneness of existence (wahdat al-wujud); the concept of ultimate reality as the Divine Self (dhat); and the concept of ultimate reality as God (ilah). The three concepts neither represent different ultimate realities nor different perspectives of the same ultimate reality. Instead, they represent the same ultimate reality but each one has its own unique scope and encompassment. The three concepts are aimed at encompassing Ibn Arabi’s various views and concepts of ultimate reality in a consistent and systematic manner.

This thesis is a study of the Qur'ānic discourse on knowledge and its impact on the Muslim world. It focuses in particular on the division of knowledge into the Revealed or Religious sciences and the Rational sciences. The thesis asks whether both Revealed knowledge and Rational knowledge are considered religiously praiseworthy and questions what the purpose is in acquiring knowledge. The thesis then examines the impact of the Qur’anic discourse on the Muslim community through the development of the revealed and the rational sciences and through the development of educational institutions. Finally it asks why it is that in the present day the two branches are isolated from each other when there was clearly a great deal of overlap and cross-fertilisation during the medieval period. The findings were that the purpose of acquiring knowledge in Islam is to understand God and oneself. It found that within the Qur'ānic discourse the revealed sciences and the rational sciences enjoy a symbiotic relationship. This relationship did not however always manifest in society. The educational institutions did incorporate the rational sciences during times of prosperity but when under political or economic pressure they regressed back to only teaching the revealed sciences.

This study argues that the use of reflected self-image as a tool for interpreting Christian anti-Muslim polemic allows such texts to be read for the self-image of their authors instead of the image of just those they attacked. This self-image is further described as the author’s assertion of Christian identity in light of Islam. As such, polemic becomes a set of boundaries authors offered to their communities, helping them to successfully navigate inter-religious living. Using this interpretive tool, two sets of medieval anti-Muslim polemic from Spain – four treatises from the third/ninth century and four from the fifth/eleventh-sixth/twelfth centuries – are analysed in order to discern how their authors defined themselves in light of Islam, and in turn, how they hoped their readers would distinguish themselves from Muslims. The research found differences in both the strategies deployed by the different sets of texts and the definitions of Christian identity that result from them. In the first case, Christian defamation of Islam is used to define Christians by their isolation from Muslims. In the second case, familiarity with Islam and Muslim culture reveals a definition of Christianity more supportive of the cultural proximity to Muslims even as Christians’ religious distinctiveness is emphasised.