A contest is afoot in Muslim discourses around the world in the twenty-first century. Prevalent norms and acts are subject to competing motivations, trends and forces. The image of a monolithic Islam is thus wholly inadequate to identify and interpret the different expressions of Muslim thought and practice in their specific yet connected contexts. This book proposes competing and persuasive perspectives for interpreting what Muslims say, do and think in collective settings or in the light of common frames of reference. The chapters contained in this book reflect a diversity of disciplines and interests. Nonetheless, a common thread of the preoccupation with meanings in context unites the contributors and the approaches to their chosen examples. Islam is not a discrete category that is taken for granted. Instead, the cacophony of voices in the Muslim world situated in specific contexts, variously national, regional or global, is allowed to inform each chapter. Here one encounters contemporary Muslims participating in discourses with a contested character that create opportunities to augment or question orthodox dictates or transmit or alter existing beliefs and practices. What emerges are nuanced portraits of contemporary Muslim thought and practice that reveal a far from monolithic Islam to which all things Islamic can be reduced.
Emi Goto is assistant professor at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Mohammed Moussa is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University.
Introduction: Beyond Modernity? Interpreting Muslim Thought and Practice Mohammed Moussa Chapter 1: Problematizing the Compatibility of Islam and Democracy through a Hermeneutical Approach Ahmet Kemal Bayram Chapter 2:The Urgency of Changing the Arab World: The Case of Adonis, Mohammed Abed Al-Jabry, and Mohammed Arkoun Atef Alshaer Chapter 3: Reconstruction of the Maqasid al-Shari'a in Ibn 'Ashur's Legal Philosophy Hitomi Ono Chapter 4: The Hijab between Competing Masculinities in Contemporary Turkey Ravza Altuntas-Cakir Chapter 5: The Wahhabi Ascendancy and the Decline of the Ashraf in Saudi Arabia Kenichiro Takao Chapter 6:Jawdat Said's Path Towards Nonviolence Mohammed Moussa Chapter 7: A Turn to Hermeneutics: Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd's Rethinking of Religion and Tradition in Japan Emi Goto Chapter 8: Religious Authority and the Making of al-Sistani's Charismatic Leadership in Post-2003 Iraq Fouad J Kadhem Bibliography About the Authors
