Search Results (222)

This study employs a qualitative research design to examine cultural values concerning marriage and family through Turkish proverbs and to analyze how these values intersect with theological meanings. Situated at the intersection of folklore and Islamic ethics, it explores how oral tradition articulates, transmits, and regulates the values, norms, and moral boundaries associated with marriage and family life. According to the findings, proverbs portray the family as a foundational institution imbued with sacred significance, while marriage is construed as a normative form of life that protects the individual from moral, social, and emotional fragmentation. This discourse accords with Qur’anic and Prophetic principles that encourage marriage and associate family life with a consciousness of servitude to God. The study further indicates that, in Turkish proverbs, women are imagined as central figures who sustain domestic harmony, contribute to family well-being, and shape the moral fabric of the household. One of the study’s most significant findings is that polygyny, although recognized in Islamic law as a conditional legal dispensation, is treated in Turkish proverbs through a reserved and often critical cultural discourse. Recent empirical findings indicate that traditional attitudes retain a notable degree of continuity under modern social conditions. Within this framework, the study examines cultural understandings of marriage and family reflected in Turkish proverbs in relation to religious norms and Islamic family ethics, with particular attention to the relationship between oral culture and religious and moral frameworks of meaning. Full article

One of the most fundamental and debated issues in the history of Sufism concerns not only the nature of mystical experience but also its epistemic value, its authority-generating capacity, and its normative legitimacy. Experiences expressed through kashf (unveiling), ilhām (inspiration), presence, witnessing, and annihilation have never been entirely rejected within Islamic thought, yet they have never been considered an unlimited or uncontrolled source of truth. This dual stance has shaped both internal Sufi debates and external critiques. Classical kalām and legal traditions approached mystical experience cautiously, emphasizing its subjectivity, fallibility, and non-generalizability. In contrast, the Sufi tradition defended unveiling and inspiration as integral to religious life. Modern scholarship, however, has often examined Sufism through universal theories of mystical experience or metaphysical and institutional frameworks, leaving its epistemological limits underexplored. The Naqshbandī tradition is notable for framing mystical experience within a tawḥīd-centered ontology, a cautious epistemology, and disciplined adherence to the Sharīʿa. This framework also allows reconsideration of the relationship between Sufism and ethics, presenting mystical experience as a bridge between transcendence and practical action. This article examines early modern Naqshbandī-Mujaddidī thought through Khwāja Bāqī Billāh (d. 1603). Drawing on his own writings, it analyzes the onto-epistemological structure of mystical experience, arguing that Bāqī Billāh grounds it in a tawḥīd-centered ontology, treats it as fallible and non-binding knowledge, and preserves the Sharīʿa as an indispensable normative criterion. Thus, Sufism emerges as a disciplined ethical horizon connecting transcendence and moral action. Full article

Is an Islamic modern polity attainable? How is it perceived, and how is it possible to accommodate a transcendental reference within modern political structures? Where is the line between the political and the religious to be drawn? This article examines these puzzles through the narratives of 48 members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. With reference to a growing literature on the notion of secularism and post-Islamism, the article examines two critical issues that are at the heart of the debate over the secularization of Islamists: (1) the stance towards the limits of the state’s legal intervention in the personal sphere, and (2) the notion of popular sovereignty and the transcendental reference of the state. By shifting attention from movement ideologues to grassroots actors, the article shows how “post-Islamist” adaptation can reflect an internally reasoned negotiation of sovereignty, morality, and authority rather than a retreat of religion from public life. It also examines that participants’ political reasoning functions not merely as an internalization of Islamic imperatives, but as a critical engagement with the limits of modern secular-democratic governance itself. Full article

This article undertakes a systematic comparative study of the critiques of modernity advanced by René Guénon (1886–1951) and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṭāhā (b. 1944). Both thinkers arrive at convergent diagnoses of modernity’s spiritual and ethical failures from fundamentally distinct intellectual starting points—Guénon from the universal perennialist metaphysics of primordial Tradition, Ṭāhā from Islamic philosophy of language, logic, and ethics. Drawing on Guénon’s The Crisis of the Modern World and The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times alongside Ṭāhā’s Rūḥ al-Ḥadātha (The Spirit of Modernity), Al-ʿAmal al-Dīnī wa-Tajdīd al-ʿAql (Religious Practice and the Renewal of Reason), and Rūḥ al-Dīn (The Spirit of Religion), and supported by secondary scholarship including Wael Hallaq’s Reforming Modernity (2019) and the edited volume Islamic Ethics and the Trusteeship Paradigm (2020), the article argues that the philosophical significance of their encounter lies not merely in their convergences—both condemn the reduction of human life to quantitative and instrumental horizons—but in the productive tension between Guénon’s initiatory-metaphysical model of restoration and Ṭāhā’s trusteeship-based ethic of engagement. Where Guénon describes Western civilization as a civilization of “moralism”—a shifting, interest-driven ethical veneer concealing the absence of genuine transcendent principles—Ṭāhā constructs an affirmative alternative through his concept of i’timāniyya (trusteeship), which grounds reason, speech, and knowledge in an ethics of responsibility toward God, others, and creation. The article further argues that these two thinkers together illuminate a double rupture at the heart of modernity: the loss of metaphysical orientation (the vertical rupture) and the collapse of ethical trusteeship (the horizontal rupture). Full article

The Arabic–Persian quatrain (Pers. robāʿī; Ar. rubāʿī/dūbayt) has long been approached primarily through a prosodic lens, often discussed within debates on the autonomy or dependence of Persian and Arabic metrical systems. This article argues that this perspective obscures a more consequential development: the gradual transformation of the quatrain from a metrically codified structure in Persian into a conceptually and rhetorically flexible poetic form within Arabic literary discourse. Through philological, prosodic, and rhetorical analysis, the study examines the persistent terminological ambiguity between rubāʿī and dūbayt, the instability of its assimilation into the Khalīlian metrical system, and its broader conceptual reconfiguration across linguistic and literary contexts. Rather than a simple instance of formal borrowing, the quatrain emerges as a mobile poetic structure circulating across a multilingual Islamic literary sphere in which poetic authority and form were continually renegotiated. By foregrounding these dynamics, the article proposes a reassessment of the quatrain as a literary form shaped by interliterary exchange and, more broadly, invites a reconsideration of premodern literary entanglements beyond modern system-based models of world literature. Full article

This article explores, within the historical context of two-way exchanges between Chinese and Arab-Islamic civilizations, the profound relationship between the communal ethos embedded in these traditions and the construction of a “community with a shared future for mankind.” By examining and comparing the “Tianxia worldview” and the wisdom of “harmony and integration” in Chinese civilization with the concept of “Ummah” and the peace-oriented ideal of “Salam” in Islamic civilization, this study reveals deep commonalities. Both civilizations share a focus on humanity’s collective well-being, the establishment of a moral order, the assumption of ethical responsibilities, and the management of the relationship between diversity and unity. The research demonstrates that the concept of a “community with a shared future for mankind” is deeply rooted in the philosophical traditions of both civilizations; it represents a modern transformation and integrated innovation of their core spirits. As such, it provides essential intellectual resources and practical pathways for transcending Western-centric governance paradigms, promoting substantive civilizational dialogue, and building a more just and inclusive global order. Full article

Background: This study examines how four canonical behavioral biases (overconfidence, herding, anchoring, and loss aversion) influence investor decision-making in the Saudi stock market (Tadawul), and whether overconfidence and loss aversion operate as moderating forces on herding and anchoring, respectively. Methods: Employing a quantitative, cross-sectional design with a stratified sample of 384 retail investors, the study applies Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to test six hypotheses derived from Modern Portfolio Theory and Behavioral Finance frameworks. The measurement model satisfies established thresholds for reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. Results: Results confirm that loss aversion is the dominant predictor of behaviorally influenced decision-making (β = 0.402, p < 0.001, f² = 0.188), followed by herding (β = 0.234, p < 0.001) and overconfidence (β = 0.164, p = 0.001), while anchoring does not exert a statistically significant independent effect (β = 0.102, p = 0.084 one-tailed, p = 0.168 two-tailed). Neither the overconfidence × herding (β = 0.005, p = 0.920, two-tailed) nor the loss aversion × anchoring (β = −0.039, p = 0.330, two-tailed) interaction terms reach significance, indicating that these bias pairs operate as independent additive forces rather than compounding systems. The model explains 55.7% of the variance in investor decision-making (R² = 0.557). Conclusion: The findings advance behavioral finance theory in GCC and Islamic equity markets by (1) demonstrating non-equivalence of anchoring effects relative to Western-market benchmarks, (2) resolving competing theoretical predictions about bias interaction effects, and (3) providing context-specific evidence that loss aversion subsumes anchoring cognition in the Saudi market. Practical implications for the Capital Market Authority, financial educators, and individual investors are discussed and contextualized within the Saudi market setting. Full article

This article reassesses the legal thought of Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī (d. 805) and his contribution to Islamic international legal doctrine. A leading disciple of Abū Ḥanīfa, al-Shaybānī played a pivotal role in systematizing siyar, the branch of Islamic jurisprudence governing relations between Muslim and non-Muslim political communities. Drawing primarily on al-Siyar al-Kabīr, the study analyzes key juridical concepts including dār al-Islām, dār al-ḥarb, diplomatic agreements (ṣulḥ, hudna, amān), and the legal status of ahl al-dhimma. It argues that al-Shaybānī articulated one of the earliest coherent legal frameworks regulating warfare, diplomacy, and inter-polity coexistence. Situating his doctrine within the broader intellectual history of international law, the article challenges Eurocentric narratives that locate its origins solely in early modern Europe, particularly in the works of Francisco de Vitoria (d. 1546) and Hugo Grotius (d. 1645). Instead, it demonstrates that classical Islamic jurisprudence developed sophisticated normative principles centuries earlier. Reexamining al-Shaybānī’s theory contributes to a more inclusive global history of international law and underscores the enduring relevance of Islamic legal thought. Full article

This article examines how social science has recurrently positioned Islam as a problem-case for European narratives of modernity, simultaneously comparable as ‘a religion’ yet cast as the religion that ‘doesn’t fit’ secularisation, differentiation, and liberal public-reason expectations. Moving beyond the view that social science merely misdescribed Islam, this article argues that Islam has often been made to carry an explanatory burden internal to Europe’s self-narration, a limit-case through which stalled secularisation, anxious liberalism, and contested universals are rendered intelligible and governable. The article returns to canonical texts that helped establish such comparative imagination, including Hegel’s philosophy of history, Weber’s typologies of religious ‘bearers,’ and Gellner’s account of Islam as a comprehensive ‘blueprint’ of social order, to show how durable contrast effects were installed and later reactivated in contemporary debates on secularism, gender, security, and belonging. Drawing on Asad’s critique of the category ‘religion’, the article theorises ‘disruption’ as a recurring genre through which Islam is made exceptional, disruptive to secularisation theory, to accounts of modern differentiation, and to liberal self-understanding. It concludes by appealing to a reflexive sociology of religion that historicises its own categories, compares entanglements rather than civilisations, and treats Muslim intellectual traditions as theory-producing interlocutors rather than merely empirical ‘data’. Full article

This study offers a critical re-examination of contemporary euthanasia debates through an Islamic legal lens, with particular focus on requests for euthanasia arising from psychological suffering within the context of mental disorders. Within bioethical discourse, advocates of euthanasia predominantly justify their position on the grounds of individual autonomy and the alleviation of unbearable suffering, framing it as consistent with modern medicine’s aspiration to optimize quality of life. Yet, by elevating autonomy and self-determination as supreme moral values, it risks reducing the human condition to its cognitive and volitional dimensions, thereby overlooking the existential, spiritual, and affective aspects of suffering. In contrast, Islamic law regards life as a divine trust bestowed by God. Human beings are understood as stewards—rather than absolute proprietors—of their lives and are thus accountable before God for their preservation. From this perspective, psychological pain—akin to physical pain—may serve as a means of moral refinement, spiritual purification, and divine testing. Methodologically, the study conducts a textual and analytical examination of Islamic legal sources, complemented by practical examples that illustrate how psychological suffering transforms into requests for euthanasia, thereby examining how these sources ought to be understood through concrete cases. Furthermore, the study aims to examine whether appeals to a “right to die,” grounded in experiences of psychological suffering, can find any juridical legitimacy within the framework of Islamic law. Full article

This paper argues that the central thesis of Wael Hallaq’s The Impossible State is that traditional Islamic cultures as shaped by Sharīʿa did not abide by a fact-value distinction. Hallaq’s incisive account of traditional Islamic socio-political culture has relevant repercussions beyond the Islamic context from which he draws his conclusions. The importance of Hallaq’s project stems from how it reconstructs a specific tradition—Islam—to contest logics presented as modern and universal. His central argument, that the modern (Western) state is ultimately organized around a fact-value distinction, bears crucially on analyses of the historical Chinese state and its “modernization.” As this paper shows, the Chinese were the first to invent the modern bureaucratic state that Hallaq problematizes in his account of post-feudal European “modernity.” The critique that Hallaq makes of this modern bureaucratic state finds resonance throughout the millennia of Chinese history. Historically, the Confucians argued against the proponents of a similar fact-value distinction in political life—the “legalist” (fajia, 法家). Philosophically, the Confucians had conclusively won the debate against the legalists in dynastic China and the historic Chinese state and its political culture disavowed of the kind of fact-value distinction championed by the legalists. However, in contemporary times, due to the attempt by Western knowledge production to globalize the “modern” state, there has been a revival of legalism by Western scholars. This paper situates the revival within the context of Hallaq’s powerful critique, which frames the West’s attempt to globalize its political models as a form of epistemic colonization. Full article

This paper examines transformations of Islam in Europe through the lens of the feminisation of religion, drawing on evidence from an Italian context. It asks whether this category—traditionally applied to Christian contexts—can also illuminate gender dynamics within Muslim institutions. Focusing on those Italian mosques where generational change is underway, sustained by the active involvement of second-generation Muslims, it shows that generational change has been accompanied by both a quantitative and a qualitative feminisation: women now outnumber men in several of the associations studied and increasingly occupy public and leadership roles, while also contesting double standards and reinterpreting their participation through religious knowledge and piety. These developments express greater female autonomy and authority, challenging stereotypes of Muslim women’s subordination and echoing aims traditionally associated with secular feminist discourse. Yet, as in the historical Christian case, such transformations unfold within a religious framework, advancing women’s roles through faith-based reinterpretations rather than secular claims to emancipation. These developments point to a form of “feminisation without feminism,” a formulation that signals a theoretical stance: these transformations cannot be fully grasped through secular paradigms of emancipation alone but require attention to the ongoing interplay between religious and secular logics in shaping female agency. The article thus contributes to understanding the plurality of modernities and the post-secular reconfigurations of gender and religion in contemporary Europe. Full article

This study examines the human–nature relationship in the thoughts of Yunus Emre (d. ca. 1320) and addresses the Qur’anic positioning of humanity as laden with responsibility through the idea of amanah (entrustment), while focusing on Yunus Emre’s reflections on this concept as both a mystical stance and a moral state. His poems place humanity not as an absolute claim of ownership over the world and other beings, but rather within a relationship based on testimony, decency, and equality. He presents nature not as an object requiring protection or an area needing transformation but as a framework for contemplation and reflection in which the divine order is visible. In this context, humans’ established relationship with the world reflects a stance determined not by domination or interference but by a consciousness of limitation and a sense of moderation. By revealing the aspects of his understanding of humanity and nature that overlap with the concept of amanah in Islamic thought, this study argues that this overlap should be evaluated not as conceptual equivalence but rather in terms of mystical and moral affinity. This approach aims to demonstrate how Yunus Emre’s ideas, while not offering direct solutions to modern environmental debates, provide a historical mystical perspective that allows for a rethinking of the human–nature relationship. Full article

Across modern Asia and many other regions, artificial intelligence is transforming religious life in diverse and profound ways. Robot priests chant sutras at Japanese Buddhist temples, AI-powered apps offer personalised coaching in Quranic recitation to millions of Muslims, and bereaved families consult algorithm-generated avatars of the deceased in China. They are neither merely tools for instrumental use nor channels for transmitting pre-existing religious authority. Instead, they create new forms of religious content, new types of spiritual encounters for religious users, and new structures of authority. This paper argues that understanding these phenomena requires theoretical innovation beyond simply applying existing concepts to new domains. Drawing on Actor–Network Theory, algorithmic culture studies, and scholarship on Asian religious traditions, the paper proposes the theoretical framework of generative charisma, theorising how AI systems gain religious authority through three interconnected mechanisms: captivation by generation, intimacy trust through personalisation, and oscillating enchantment. It also highlights accountability as a structural issue that needs critical discussion regarding governance. The paper demonstrates the framework’s usefulness by examining AI recitation coaching in Islamic practice and AI grief avatars in Chinese Buddhist mourning, showing its relevance across different religious traditions and technological forms. Full article

This paper argues that English translations of the Qur’ān play a pivotal role in shaping interfaith dialogue, either fostering mutual understanding or reinforcing religious division, depending on the translator’s ideological stance. While interreligious relations have historically been marred by conflict, the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions marked a turning point toward more inclusive and dialogical engagement. In this context, translating the Qur’ān emerged as a crucial medium through which Islamic teachings could be made accessible to non-Muslim audiences. Several scholars, including Kidwai and Elmarsafy, have explored the Orientalist framing of Qur’ān translation; however, few researchers have examined how modern renderings consciously reposition the text as a site of interfaith ethics. This study critically examines whether George Sale’s influential translation of the Qur’ān—reprinted nearly 200 times—contributes to or hinders interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians. It compares Sale’s Qur’ān rendition into English with five contemporary translations. The paper analyzes the translations of five Qur’ānic verses promoting coexistence, with particular attention to key terms such as إِكْرَاهَ ikrah (compulsion), الدِّينِ ad-dīn (religion), تَّقْوَىٰ taqwā (piety), and مُسْلِمُونَ muslimūn (submitters). Guided by Munday’s theory of ideology in translation, the analysis demonstrates that Sale’s rendering adopts a distinctly polemical tone intended to assert Christian superiority. The findings indicate a clear shift from polemical to dialogical translation strategies. Sale’s Orientalist approach—evident in his footnote on Q.4:157, where he characterizes Muslim exegesis as intellectually deficient—ultimately constrains meaningful interfaith engagement. In contrast, Khattab employs an inclusive and ethically grounded approach that actively fosters interreligious dialogue. By positioning Qur’ān translation at the intersection of theology, linguistics, and interfaith relations, this paper demonstrates that translation choices hold significant power: they can either bridge divides or exacerbate tensions between religious communities. Full article