This multi-authored book explores the ways that many influential ethical traditions - secular and religious, Western and non-Western - wrestle with the moral dimensions of poverty and the needs of the poor. These traditions include Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism, among the religious perspectives; classical liberalism, feminism, liberal-egalitarianism, and Marxism, among the secular; and natural law, which might be claimed by both. The basic questions addressed by each of these traditions are linked to several overarching themes: what poverty is, the particular vulnerabilities of high-risk groups, responsibility for the occurrence of poverty, preferred remedies, how responsibility for its alleviation is distributed, and priorities in the delivery of assistance. This volume features an introduction to the types, scope, and causes of poverty in the modern world and concludes with Michael Walzer's broadly conceived commentary, which provides a direct com
Focused on battle narratives of the classical world on land and at sea, this two-volume reference covers Archaic Greece in the eighth century BC to the rise of Islam in the seventh century AD. Two-vo
Alfarabi was among the first to explore the tensions between the philosophy of classical Greece and that of Islam, as well as of religion generally. His writings, extraordinary in their breadth and de
A wide-ranging study of Arabic and Persian literature, contrasting the egalitarian ideal of early Islam with the hierarchical impulses of the classical period.
A wide-ranging study of Arabic and Persian literature, contrasting the egalitarian ideal of early Islam with the hierarchical impulses of the classical period.
Studying education and learning in the formative period of Islam is not immediately easy, since the sources for this are relatively late and frequently project backwards to the earlier period the assu
In this book, Omar Farahat presents a new way of understanding the work of classical Islamic theologians and legal theorists who maintained that divine revelation is necessary for the knowledge of the norms and values of human actions. Through a reconstruction of classical Ashʿarī-Muʿtazilī debates on the nature and implications of divine speech, Farahat argues that the Ashʿarī attachment to revelation was not a purely traditionalist position. Rather, it was a rational philosophical commitment emerging from debates in epistemology and theology. He further argues that the particularity of this model makes its distinctive features helpful for contemporary scholars who defend a form of divine command theory. Farahat's volume thus constitutes a new reading of the issue of reason and revelation in Islam and breaks new ground in Islamic theology, law and ethics.
Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views examines the element of the supernatural (or miracle stories) in the life of the Prophet Muhammad as depicted in two genres: prophetic biography (s
