Asef Bayat: Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (2010)

The popular view in the West deems the Muslim Middle East as socially and politically stagnant. The Art of Presence challenges this view. It shows how, under often authoritarian rule, the ordinary people discover or create new spaces within which they can voice their concerns and assert their presence. The major venues for social and political change are not simply mass protest or revolutions, even though these do happen; they are rather embodied in what Bayat calls ‘non-movements’, the millions of dispersed poor, women, the young, and other grassroots who act in common.

Publisher Amsterdam University Press, 2010
ISIM Series on Contemporary Muslim Societies
ISBN 978 90 5356 911 5
320 pages

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George Saliba: Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (2007)

The Islamic scientific tradition has been described many times in accounts of Islamic civilization and general histories of science, with most authors tracing its beginnings to the appropriation of ideas from other ancient civilizations—the Greeks in particular. In this thought-provoking and original book, George Saliba argues that, contrary to the generally accepted view, the foundations of Islamic scientific thought were laid well before Greek sources were formally translated into Arabic in the ninth century. Drawing on an account by the tenth-century intellectual historian Ibn al-Nadīm that is ignored by most modern scholars, Saliba suggests that early translations from mainly Persian and Greek sources outlining elementary scientific ideas for the use of government departments were the impetus for the development of the Islamic scientific tradition. He argues further that there was an organic relationship between the Islamic scientific thought that developed in later centuries and the science that came into being in Europe during the Renaissance.

Saliba outlines the conventional accounts of Islamic science, then discusses their shortcomings and proposes an alternate narrative. Using astronomy as a template for understanding the progress of science in Islamic civilization, Saliba demonstrates the originality of Islamic scientific thought. He details the innovations (including new mathematical tools) made by the Islamic astronomers from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries, and offers evidence that Copernicus could have known of and drawn on their work. Rather than viewing the rise and fall of Islamic science from the often-narrated perspectives of politics and religion, Saliba focuses on the scientific production itself and the complex social, economic, and intellectual conditions that made it possible.

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology series
ISBN 0262195577, 9780262195577
315 pages

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PDF (updated on 2013-6-2)

Gary R. Bunt: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam (2009)

Exploring the increasing impact of the Internet on Muslims around the world, this book sheds new light on the nature of contemporary Islamic discourse, identity, and community.

The Internet has profoundly shaped how both Muslims and non-Muslims perceive Islam and how Islamic societies and networks are evolving and shifting in the twenty-first century, says Gary Bunt. While Islamic society has deep historical patterns of global exchange, the Internet has transformed how many Muslims practice the duties and rituals of Islam. A place of religious instruction may exist solely in the virtual world, for example, or a community may gather only online. Drawing on more than a decade of online research, Bunt shows how social-networking sites, blogs, and other “cyber-Islamic environments” have exposed Muslims to new influences outside the traditional spheres of Islamic knowledge and authority. Furthermore, the Internet has dramatically influenced forms of Islamic activism and radicalization, including jihad-oriented campaigns by networks such as al-Qaeda.

By surveying the broad spectrum of approaches used to present dimensions of Islamic social, spiritual, and political life on the Internet, iMuslims encourages diverse understandings of online Islam and of Islam generally.

Publisher The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill
Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks series
ISBN 978-0-8078-3258-5
376 pages

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PDF (updated on 2012-11-1)