Bøger i Studies in Comparative Religion serien

Explores the beliefs and practices of neo-paganism and witchcraft, more generally known as Wicca. Imported to the US from the UK in the late 1960s, this study shows how it absorbed the social concerns of the time, such as feminism, environmentalism and a mistrust of authority.

Probes the Sri Lankan world of Buddhism and politics and suggests innovative directions for the global study of religion, culture, and violence. This volume illuminates the shifting configurations that animate the relations connected with postcolonial religious identity and culture.

A consideration of three of the most contentious ethical issues of our time - abortion, war and euthanasia - from the Muslim perspective. The volume both integrates Muslim thinking into the field of applied ethics and introduces readers to an aspect of the religion long overlooked in the West.

Essays examining the ways in which Hindu ritual practices are reshaped on the fringes of tradition across the globe

In this text, leading scholars from around the world take stock of two centuries of international intellectual investment in Hinduism. Offering an assessment of the current state of Hindu studies, the book identifies past achievements and charts the course for what remains to be accomplished.

This work tells the story of the Nurbakhshiya, an Islamic messianic movement that originated in 15th-century central Asia and Iran and survives in Pakistan and India. It covers the significance of messianism as an Islamic religious paradigm.

This work examines the changing relationship of this Jewish sect to rabbinic Judaism and the influence of Muslim and Christian environments.

Explores balancing of Islamic heritage with contemporary medical and health concerns. This book produces an interdisciplinary view of medical ethics in Muslim societies and of the impact of caring for Muslim patients in non-Muslim societies.

For centuries Sufism - Islamic mysticism - held a major place in Islamic spirituality, intellectual life, and popular religion. This title presents an insider's account of Sufi life in contemporary Egypt.

In the wake of the Arab Spring, the Coptic community was caught up in regional violence, and its predicament became a cause for concern around the world. Copts in Context examines the situation of the Copts as a minority faith in a volatile region and as a community confronting modernity while steeped in tradition.

Sufi Aesthetics argues that the interpretive keys to erotic Sufi poems and their medieval commentaries lie in understanding a unique perceptual experience. Using careful analysis of primary texts, Cyrus Ali Zargar explores the theoretical and poetic pronouncements of two major Muslim mystics, Muhyi al-Din ibn al-'Arabi (d. 1240) and Fakhr al-Din 'Iraqi (d. 1289), under the premise that behind any literary tradition exist organic aesthetic values. The complex assertions of these Sufis appear not as abstract theory, but as a way of seeing all things, including the sensory world. In this study Zargar responds to a long-standing debate in the study of Sufi poetics over the use of erotic language to describe the divine. He argues that such language results from an altered perception of Muslim mystics in which divine beauty and human beauty are seen as one reality. The Sufi masters, Zargar asserts, shared an aesthetic vision quite different from those who have often studied them. Sufism's foremost theoretician, Ibn 'Arabi, is presented from a neglected perspective as a poet, aesthete, and lover of the human form. Ibn 'Arabi in fact proclaimed a view of human beauty markedly similar to that of many mystics from a Persian contemplative school of thought, the "e;School of Passionate Love,"e; which would later find its epitome in 'Iraqi, one of Persian literature's most celebrated poet-saints. Many in this school advocated the controversial practice of gazing at beautiful human faces, a topic Zargar also discusses. The examination of central Sufi texts in Persian and Arabic establishes that the profundity attributed to mystical encounters with the sensory and supersensory has far-reaching extensions in evaluations of that which is seen, that which is deemed beautiful, and that which is expressed as a result. Through this aesthetic approach, this comparative study overturns assumptions made not only about Sufism and classical Arabic and Persian poetry, but also other uses of erotic imagery in Muslim approaches to sexuality, the human body, and the paradise of the afterlife described in the Qur'an.

"e;Mysticism"e; in Iran is an in-depth analysis of significant transformations in the religious landscape of Safavid Iran that led to the marginalization of Sufism and the eventual emergence of 'irfan as an alternative Shi'i model of spirituality. Ata Anzali draws on a treasure-trove of manuscripts from Iranian archives to offer an original study of the transformation of Safavid Persia from a majority Sunni country to a Twelver Shi'i realm. The work straddles social and intellectual history, beginning with an examination of late Safavid social and religious contexts in which Twelver religious scholars launched a successful campaign against Sufism with the tacit approval of the court. This led to the social, political, and economic marginalization of Sufism, which was stigmatized as an illegitimate mode of piety rooted in a Sunni past. Anzali directs the reader's attention to creative and successful attempts by other members of the ulama to incorporate the Sufi tradition into the new Twelver milieu. He argues that the category of 'irfan, or "e;mysticism,"e; was invented at the end of the Safavid period by mystically minded scholars such as Shah Muhammad Darabi and Qutb al-Din Nayrizi in reference to this domesticated form of Sufism. Key aspects of Sufi thought and practice were revisited in the new environment, which Anzali demonstrates by examining the evolving role of the spiritual master. This traditional Sufi function was reimagined by Shi'i intellectuals to incorporate the guidance of the infallible imams and their deputies, the ulama. Anzali goes on to address the institutionalization of 'irfan in Shi'i madrasas and the role played by prominent religious scholars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in this regard. The book closes with a chapter devoted to fascinating changes in the thought and practice of 'irfan in the twentieth century during the transformative processes of modernity. Focusing on the little-studied figure of Kayvan Qazvini and his writings, Anzali explains how 'irfan was embraced as a rational, science-friendly, nonsectarian, and anticlerical concept by secular Iranian intellectuals.

Voices from the Pagan Census provides unprecedented insight into the expanding but largely unstudied religious movement of Neo-Paganism in the United States. Helen A. Berger, Evan A. Leach, and Leigh S. Shaffer present the findings of "e;The Pagan Census,"e; which was created and distributed by Berger and Andras Corban Arthen of the Earthspirit Community. Analyzing the most comprehensive and largest-scale survey of Neo-Pagans to date, the authors offer a portrait of this emerging religious community, including an examination of Neo-Pagan political activism, educational achievements, family life, worship methods, experiences with the paranormal, and beliefs about such issues as life after death.A collection of religious groups whose practices evolved from Great Britain's Wicca movement of the 1940s, Neo-Paganism spread to the United States in the 1960s. While the number of people who identify themselves with the religion has continued to rise, quantitative study of Neo-Paganism has been difficult given the movement's lack of centralized leadership and doctrine and its development as scattered, independent groups and individuals. Endorsed by all major Neo-Pagan leaders, "e;The Pagan Census"e; generated a demographically diverse response. In contrast to most previous surveys, which were limited to Neo-Pagan festivals, this survey incorporates input from the large population of practitioners who do not participate in such events.Keenly anticipated by the academic and Neo-Pagan communities, the results of the census provide the most in-depth information about the group yet assembled. Comparing Neo-Pagans with American society at large, Berger, Leach, and Shaffer show that although the two groups share certain statistical characteristics, there are differences as well. The scholars also identify variations within the Neo-Pagan population, including those related to geography and to the movement's multiple spiritual paths.

The Hindu world is permeated by sound: drums, bells, gongs, cymbals, conches, flutes, and an array of vocalizations play a central role in worship. Guy L. Beck contends that the traditional Western focus on Hinduism's visual component has often been at the expense of the religion's most important feature-its emphasis on sound. In Sonic Theology Beck addresses this longstanding imbalance, contending that Hinduism is essentially a sonic theology.Beck argues that sound participates at every level of the Hindu cosmos. Comparing the centrality of sound in Hindu theology to its place in other religions, Beck raises issues about sound and language that not only reshape our understanding of Hindu worship but also invite a fresh approach to comparative theology.

An examination of the sources and evolution of personal authority in one Islamic societySufi Heirs of the Prophet explores the multifaceted development of personal authority in Islamic societies by tracing the transformation of one mystical sufi lineage in colonial India, the Naqshbandiyya. Arthur F. Buehler isolates four sources of personal authority evident in the practices of the Naqshbandiyya-lineage, spiritual traveling, status as a Prophetic exemplar, and the transmission of religious knowledge-to demonstrate how Muslim religious leaders have exercised charismatic leadership through their association with the most compelling of personal Islamic symbols, the Prophet Muhammad. Buehler clarifies the institutional structure of sufism, analyzes overlapping configurations of personal sufi authority, and details how and why revivalist Indian Naqshbandis abandoned spiritual practices that had sustained their predecessors for more than five centuries. He looks specifically at the role of Jama'at 'Ali Shah (d. 1951) to explain current Naqshbandi practices.

The Jewish communities of Arabia had a great influence on the attitudes that Muslims hold toward Jews, and yet relatively little has been written about their history. The sources are sparse, and Arabic literary texts from the early period of Islam remain the greatest source of our understanding of Arabian Judaism. Through techniques borrowed from anthropology, literary criticism, sociology, and comparative religion, Gordon Darnell Newby reconstructs the understanding of Jewish life in Arabia before and during the time of Muhammad. In addition this material is used to develop a perspective on the inter-confessional relations between Judaism and Islam during an era when the latter was at one of its most dynamic stages of growth.