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Over the last several decades the Islamic religious movement has steadily gained importance in the Muslim world, manifesting the desire to modify existing institutions so that they conform to the values of traditional Islamic culture. This new book examines the application of such values to modern finance: Islamic banking. It also attempts to address the surprising lack of familiarity with Islamic banking among Western bankers and lawyers. The Author provides a thorough overview of Islamic banking, its devlopmenty, participants, structure, and aims, goes on to study the Islamic legal contracts undelying it, and finally, by way of a cae study of the Faisal Islamic Bank of Egypt, assesses the financial viability of Islamic banks. He asserts that Arab Islamic banking is a financial system fundamentally different from the system currently dominant throughout the world, and further, is a viable financial phenomenon. The establishment of Islamic banking, which can be seen as a bold new development model for the Muslim world, has necessitated immense intellectual and financial commitments, as well as an empirical approach emphasizing teh adaptation of both modern finance and medieval Islamic law. The text is supplemeted by translations of selected fatwas, and also includes financial information on a large number of Islamic banks.

What are the mechanisms of change and adaptation in Islam, regarded as a living organism, and how do they work? How did these mechanisms preserve the integrity of Muslim civilization through the innumerable hazards, divisions and devastations of time? From the perspective of history and intellectual history, this book focuses on a significant, though still largely under studied, aspect of this immense issue, namely, the role of mystical and messianic ferment in the construction and re-construction of religious authority in Islam. Sixteen scholars address this topic with a variety of approaches, providing a fresh outlook on the trends underlying the evolution of Muslim societies and, in particular, the emergence and consolidation of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires.

Contributors include: Abbas Amanat, Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Paul Ballanfat, Shahzad Bashir, Ilker Evrim Binbaş, Daniel De Smet, Devin DeWeese, Armin Eschraghi, Omid Ghaemmaghami, Ahmet T. Karamustafa, Todd Lawson, Pierre Lory, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Orkhan Mir-Kasimov, A. Azfar Moin, William F. Tucker.

Living Knowledge in West African Islam examines the actualization of religious identity in the community of Ibrāhīm Niasse (d.1975, Senegal). With millions of followers throughout Africa and the world, the community arguably represents one of the twentieth century’s most successful Islamic revivals. Niasse’s followers, members of the Tijāniyya Sufi order, gave particular attention to the widespread transmission of the experiential knowledge (maʿrifa) of God. They also worked to articulate a global Islamic identity in the crucible of African decolonization.

The central argument of this book is that West African Sufism is legible only with an appreciation of centuries of Islamic knowledge specialization in the region. Sufi masters and disciples reenacted and deepened preexisting teacher-student relationships surrounding the learning of core Islamic disciplines, such as the Qurʾān and jurisprudence. Learning Islam meant the transformative inscription of sacred knowledge in the student’s very being, a disposition acquired in the master’s exemplary physical presence. Sufism did not undermine traditional Islamic orthodoxy: the continued transmission of Sufi knowledge has in fact preserved and revived traditional Islamic learning in West Africa.