Kersten - Contemporary thought in the Muslim world. Trends, themes, and issues.

Carool Kersten offers us a much-needed compass through the wide landscape of contemporary Muslim thought addressing some of the burning intellectual, ethical, legal and political issues of the Muslim world, from the Middle East, to North and South Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania. The complex, varied and nuanced picture he depicts is a valuable service to the growing field of contemporary Islamic intellectual history.

Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar

Carool Kersten captures a breathtakingly vast canvas of Islamic thought in a brilliant, effortless and digestible manner in this book. Encompassing philosophy, theology, history, politics and ethics, among other subjects, Kersten provides a lucid reading of especially the contemporary debates and intellectuals who are earnestly engaged with the construction and critique of Muslim thought. Readers, especially students, will greatly profit from both the historical details and the contours of ideas generated by an array of modern thinkers hailing from different geographical locations, which is also the strength of the book. The author dissects the critical debates and offers the reader a valuable and informative read.

Ebrahim Moosa, Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA

In this timely book, Carool Kersten treats us to the most comprehensive and accessible investigation of contemporary Islamic thought ever written. The book explores the social and political relevance of Islamically inflected, contemporary intellectual thought, its ambivalent interfacing with the discourse of secularity, its feeding into citizenship claims, and its ingraining into movements of democratization, along with its exposure to repression by state authorities. A profound familiarity with distant and diverse parts of the Muslim intellectual multiverse is matched by their contextualization in global currents of contemporary thought. Carool Kersten disentangles the often dazzling complexity of contemporary Islamic intellectual life. He guides us through the maze thanks to a critical reappraisal of the lopsided conceptual toolkit that we have inherited from two centuries of orientalist and post-orientalist taxonomies.

Armando Salvatore, Barbara and Patrick Keenan Chair in Interfaith Studies and Professor of Global Religious Studies, McGill University, Canada

This book presents an intellectual history of todays Muslim world, surveying contemporary Muslim thinking in its various manifestations, addressing a variety of themes that impact on the lives of present-day Muslims.

Focusing on the period from roughly the late 1960s to the first decade of the twenty-first century, the book is global in its approach and offers an overview of different strands of thought and trends in the development of new ideas, distinguishing between traditional, reactionary and progressive approaches. It presents a variety of themes and issues including: The continuing relevance of the legacy of transmitted traditional Islamic learning as well as the use of reason; the centrality of the Quran; the spiritual concerns of contemporary Muslims; political thought regarding secularity, statehood and governance; legal and ethical debates; related current issues like human rights, gender equality and religious plurality; as well as globalization, ecology and the environment, bioethics, and life sciences.

An alternative account of Islam and the Muslim world today, counterbalancing narratives that emphasize politics and confrontations with the West, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars of Islam.

Carool Kersten is Reader in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World at Kings College London, UK. His previous publications include Islam in Indonesia: The Contest for Society, Ideas and Values (2015) and Cosmopolitans and Heretics: New Muslim Intellectuals and the Study of Islam (2011).

Contemporary Thought in the Islamic World

Series editor: Carool Kersten, Kings College London, UK

Contemporary Thought in the Islamic World promotes new directions in scholarship in the study of Islamic thinking. Muslim scholars of today challenge deeply ingrained dichotomies and binaries. New ideas have stimulated an upcoming generation of progressive Muslim thinkers and scholars of Islam to radically rethink the ways in which immediate and emergent issues affecting the contemporary Islamic world are to be assessed. This series aims to take the field beyond the usual historical-philological and social science-driven approaches, and to insert the study of Islam and the Muslim world into far wider multi-disciplinary inquiries on religion and religiosity in an increasingly interconnected world.

The Sociology of Islam

Collected Essays of Bryan S. Turner

Edited by Bryan S. Turner and Kamaludeen Mohamed Nasir

Alternative Islamic Discourses and Religious Authority

Edited by Carool Kersten and Susanne Olsson

The Symbolic Scenarios of Islamism

A Study in Islamic Political Thought

Andrea Mura

A Muslim Response to Evil

Said Nursi on the Theodicy

Tubanur Yesilhark Ozkan

A Muslim Reformist in Communist Yugoslavia

The Life and Thought of Husein ozo

Sejad Meki

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/religion/series/ACONTISLAM

First published 2019

by Routledge

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2019 Carool Kersten

The right of Carool Kersten to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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ISBN: 978-0-415-85507-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-85508-2 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-0-203-74025-5 (ebk)

My first expression of gratitude goes to Lesley Riddle. Now retired as Editor of Religion at Routledge, she extended the initial invitation to turn my teachings on the intellectual history of the contemporary Muslim world into a book. I am also indebted to her successor Steve Wiggins for seeing the project through the proposal stage, and to the reviewers for their comments and suggestions. Thanks are also due to the many students who have taken the undergraduate and postgraduate modules that form the basis for this book. Their questions, responses, and overall engagement with the material have been vital for shaping the contents. The same goes for the countless colleagues (at Kings College London and elsewhere), whose encouragement and critical observations have been so helpful and stimulating in seeing this project through. Any shortcomings remain, of course, solely my responsibility.