masooda bano

Since the 1970s, movements aimed at giving Muslim women access to the serious study of Islamic texts have emerged across the world. In this book, Masooda Bano argues that the creative spirit that marked the rise and consolidation of Islam, whereby Islam inspired serious intellectual engagement to create optimal societal institutions, can be found within these education movements. Drawing on rich ethnographic material from Pakistan, northern Nigeria and Syria, Bano questions the restricted notion of agency associated with these movements, exploring the educational networks which have attracted educated, professional and culturally progressive Muslim women to textual study, thus helping to reverse the most damaging legacy of colonial rule in Muslim societies: the isolation of modern and Islamic knowledge. With its comparative approach, this will appeal to those studying and researching the role of women across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, as well as the wider Muslim world.

Thirty percent of foreign development aid is channeled through NGOs or community-based organizations to improve service delivery to the poor, build social capital, and establish democracy in developin

Bano (international development, U. of Oxford, UK) takes on perplexing issues at the heart of human activity and conflict and of primary interest to an understanding of Islamic militancy. She offers a

In this book, Masooda Bano presents an in-depth analysis of a new movement that is transforming the way that young Muslims engage with their religion. Led by a network of Islamic scholars in the West, this movement seeks to revive the tradition of Islamic rationalism. Bano explains how, during the period of colonial rule, the exit of Muslim elites from madrasas, the Islamic scholarly establishments, resulted in a stagnation of Islamic scholarship. This trend is now being reversed. Exploring the threefold focus on logic, metaphysics, and deep mysticism, Bano shows how Islamic rationalism is consistent with Sunni orthodoxy and why it is so popular among young, elite, educated Muslims, who are now engaging with classical Islamic texts. One of the most tangible results of this revival is that Islamic rationalism - rather than jihadism - is emerging as one of the most influential movements in the contemporary Muslim world.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, scholarship and policy debate on Islam and Muslim societies has come to focus primarily on Islam's ability to make young Muslims gravitate towards anti-moderni

At the turn of the twenty-first century, scholarship and policy debate on Islam and Muslim societies has come to focus primarily on Islam's ability to make young Muslims gravitate towards anti-moderni

Claims abound that Saudi oil money is fuelling Salafi Islam in cultural and geographical terrains as disparate as the remote hamlets of the Swat valley in Pakistan and sprawling megacities such as Jak

The 20 papers in this collection are from an October 2009 conference in Oxford that focused narrowly on changes in the formal sphere of religious authority--the mosque and madrasah--while bringing tog

Claims abound that Saudi oil money is fuelling Salafi Islam in cultural and geographical terrains as disparate as the remote hamlets of the Swat valley in Pakistan and sprawling megacities such as Jak

This volume is the first to bring together analysis of contemporary female religious leadership in ideologically-diverse Muslim communities in the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America,