Recognizing Islam: Religion and Society in the Modern Arab WorldThe recent crises in the Arab world have flooded the media with sensationalist portraits of Islam as a threatening and irrational presence that moves whole societies to cultural assertiveness, political intransigence, and economic frenzy. In Recognizing Islam, Michael Gilsenan, a historian and anthropologist, offers an original and much-needed understanding of the complex role of religion in the turbulent Middle East--a powerful challenge to the Western view of Islam as monolithic and all-determining, the key to the "Arab mind" and to a whole series of otherwise inexplicable events and institutions. Drawing extensively on twenty years of fieldwork in cities, villages, and tribal communities in the Middle East, Gilsenan explores a variety of social worlds that all claim Islamic affiliation: the feudal aristocracy of northern Lebanon, the working-class Sufi brotherhoods of Egypt, the new bourgeoisie of Algeria and Morocco. In each, he shows how Islam evolves in relation to shifting social, political, economic, and class structures even as it helps to shape them. Gilsenan restores to Islam and Islamic societies the variation and breadth of a living tradition that we grant, as a matter of course, to Christian relgion and Christian society. At once evocative and informative, his work provides the nuanced portrait of Islam that is now more indispensable than ever. |
Contents
Acknowledgments | 7 |
An Anthropologists Introduction | 9 |
The Men of Learning and Authority | 27 |
Copyright | |
10 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Algeria Arab authority baraka batin became become bidonvilles Boujad bourgeoisie brotherhood Cairo changes colonial cultural defined descent dominant economic and political Egypt Egyptian society elements elite European everyday fact forces forms French grace Hadhramaut Holy Law honor identity ideological Imam important Iran Islam kind labor land Learned Families Lebanese legitimate linked lords lumpenproletariat maglis means miracles modern Moroccan Morocco mosque movements Muhammed Muslim Brothers nature nineteenth north Lebanon opposed organization particular peasant petite bourgeoisie play popular Sufism position practice prayer Prophet Quran relations religion religious ritual role rural sacred saint salon Sanusi Sefrou sense sexual sheikh sheikhly Shi'ite shrines significance social order space specific status strata stratum structures Sufi Sufi order Sufism symbolic tariqa tion town tradition transformation tribal turuq ulema University urban village whole young zawiyas zikr