This is one of the first books in English to explore Arab responses to Western culture and values in modern Arab literature. Through in-depth research El-Enany examines the attitudes as expressed mainly through works of fiction written by Arab authors during the twentieth, and, to a lesser extent, nineteenth century. It constitutes an original addition to the age-old East-West debate, and is particularly relevant to the current discussion on Islam and the West.

Alongside raising highly topical questions about stereotypical ideas concerning Arabs and Muslims in general, the book...

Original Islam investigates the primacy of Madinan Islam and the madhhab (school of law) of its main exponent, Malik ibn Anas. It contains an annotated translation of Intisar al-faqir al-salik li-tarjih madhhab al-Imam al-kabir Malik, which was written by al-Ra'i, a fifteenth-century Andalusian scholar resident in Cairo.

This book includes:

• a comprehensive section on the scholarly credentials of the great eighth-century Madinan jurist Malik ibn Anas
• a detailed examination of a number of theoretical and practical disputed legal issues
...

This book is the first of its kind to focus entirely on the Qur'anic interpretation of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058-1111), a towering figure of Sunni Islam. Martin Whittingham explores both al-Ghazali's hermeneutical methods and his interpretations of particular Quranic texts, and covers al-Ghazali's mystical, legal and theological concerns.

Divided into two parts:

• part one examines al-Ghazali's legal and Sufi theoretical discussions
• part two asks how these theories relate to his practice, analysing the only three of al-Ghazali's works which are centrally...

In the medieval period, the birth of the Prophet Muhammad (the mawlid) was celebrated in popular narratives and ceremonies that expressed the religious agendas and aspirations of ordinary Muslims, including women.

This book examines the Mawlid from its origins to the present day and provides a new insight into how an aspect of everyday Islamic piety has been transformed by modernity. The book gives a window into the religious lives of medieval Muslim women, rather than focusing on the limitations that were placed on them and shows how medieval popular Islam was coherent and...

Though known to specialists, Comte de Gobineau's vital if idiosyncratic contribution to Orientalism has only been accessible to the English reader through secondary sources. Especially important for its portrayal of an esoteric Sufi sect like the Ahl-i Haqq, and its vivid narrative of the Babi episode in Persia, Gobineau's work impacted significantly on European intelligentsia, including Ernest Renan, Matthew Arnold, Lord Curzon, and the Orientalist Edward Granville Browne.

Daniel O'Donoghue's brilliant translation now makes available sizeable extracts from Gobineau's two...

Muhammad 'Abduh (1849-1905) was one of the key thinkers and reformers of modern Islam who has influenced both liberal and fundamentalist Muslims today. 'Abdul-Baha (1844-1921) was the son of Baha'ullah (1817-1892), the founder of the Baha'i Faith; a new religion which began as a messianic movement in Shii Islam, before it departed from Islam.

Oliver Scharbrodt offers an innovative and radically new perspective on the lives of these two major religious reformers in 19^th century Middle East by placing both figures into unfamiliar terrain. While one would classify...