Routledge, Discovering Islam Making Sense of Muslim History.pdf

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Contents
Preface to the Revised Edition
ix
Foreword by Lawrence Rosen
xiii
Preface
xix
1
Introduction: discovering Islam
1
Part One
The Pattern of Islamic History
2
Muslim ideal: holy Book and Prophet
15
3
A theory of Islamic history
30
1
Ideal caliphs
33
2
Arab dynasties: Umayyads and Abbasids
38
3
The flowering of Islamic civilization
44
4
Decline and fall
51
5
Shias: revolution in the revolution
55
6
Mahdism and millenarian movements
61
4
The great Muslim empires: Ottomans, Saffavids and
Mughals
65
1
Ottomans: facing Europe
65
2
Saffavids: Shia state
69
3
Mughals: encounter with Hinduism
72
4
Obsession and synthesis
86
5
Sufis and scholars
90
1
Sufis, saints and mystics
91
2
Two scholars of Islam: Al Beruni and Ibn Khaldun
98
vii
CONTENTS
6
Islam of the periphery
107
1
On the periphery
107
2
The Muslim minority in China
110
3
Muslims in the USSR
111
7
Under European rule: the colonial impact on Muslim
society
117
1
The disintegration of society
118
2
The myth of the noble savage: Muslim tribesman
132
Part Two
Contemporary Muslim Society
8
Princes and paupers: Muslim societies in Saudi Arabia
and south India
143
1
Saudi Arabia: the reawakening of the peninsula
144
2
The Andalus syndrome in south India: à la recherche du
temps perdu
158
9
Muslim society turned inside out: ethnicity, women
and refugees
172
1
‘Dubai chalo’: ethnic encounters between Middle Eastern
and South Asian Muslim societies
172
2
Muslim women
184
3
Afghan refugees: displacement and despair
196
10
The reconstruction of Muslim thought
200
1
Contemporary Muslim scholarship
200
2
Creating Islamic social sciences
208
11
Only connect
217
1
American society: Great Satan or paradise on earth?
217
2
Connecting
221
3
Conclusion: the discovery of Islam
227
Appendix: Muslim chronology
232
Glossary of Islamic terminology
237
Bibliography: suggested readings
238
Index
240
viii
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Preface to the Revised Edition
On his death in Karachi my father implored me to write a history of Islam. It is
dangerously misunderstood, he pleaded; it would be the greatest contribution
any scholar could make. The message of the great scholars and saints of Islam,
sulh-i-kul or ‘peace with all’, was in danger of being lost in the anger and hatred
that could be seen in and around Muslim society. I loved and respected my
father, a man of wisdom and gentle compassion. But I refused. As a
straightforward social anthropologist bristling with the orthodox jargon recently
acquired after my Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London I felt I was simply not qualified.
What I did not know at Princeton—where I was spending a year at the
Institute for Advanced Study—was that my father was dying. When visitors
came to see him he would become animated about the book on Islam he wanted
me to write. When I rang from Princeton to talk to him I was stunned to be told
he had passed away. I fought back the tears; the public exhibition of raw
emotion must be controlled in the institutions of higher learning. A colleague
walked into my office and asked what I was working on. In a daze, as if from far
away, I heard myself saying: ‘A book on Islam’.
I embarked on a journey after that event to understand Islamic history and
society. It has been a long, sometimes difficult, journey and it has not ended. The
book that became Discovering Islam also started a journey twenty years ago, a
journey I have been observing with fascination. Discovering Islam grew into the
BBC six part television series called Living Islam and the accompanying book
of the same title. From Living Islam came Islam Today: A Short Introduction to
the Muslim World . Lord Nazir Ahmed launched Islam Today at the House of
Lords in London in 1999. The cultural commentator, Melvyn Bragg and Chris
Smith, the then Culture Secretary, spoke with warmth about the book and its
value in building bridges between Islam and the West.
When on September 11, 2001, the hijackers of the four American planes
ix

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