For centuries, Muslim countries and Europe have engaged one another through theological dialogues, diplomatic missions, political rivalries, and power struggles. In the last thirty years, due in large part to globalization and migration from Islamic countries to the West, what was previously an engagement across national and cultural boundaries has increasingly become an internalized encounter within Europe itself. Questions of the Hijab in schools, freedom of expression in the wake of the Danish Cartoon crisis, and the role of Shari'a have come to the forefront of contemporary European discourse. The Oxford Handbook of European Islam is the first collection to present a comprehensive approach to the multiple and changing ways Islam has been studied across European countries. Parts one to three address the state of knowledge of Islam and Muslims within a selection of European countries, while presenting a critical view of the most up-to-date data specific to each country. These chapters analyze the immigration cycles and policies related to the presence of Muslims, tackling issues such as discrimination, post-colonial identity, adaptation, and assimilation. The thematic chapters, in parts four and five, examine secularism, radicalization, Shari'a, Hijab, and Islamophobia with the goal of synthesizing different national discussion into a more comparative theoretical framework. The Handbook attempts to balance cutting edge assessment with the knowledge that the content itself will eventually be superseded by events. Featuring eighteen newly-commissioned essays by noted scholars in the field, this volume will provide an excellent resource for students and scholars interested in European Studies, immigration, Islamic studies, and the sociology of religion.

This authoritative collection offers a detailed overview of religious ideas, structures, and institutions in the making of Europe. Written by leading scholars in the field, it demonstrates the enduring presence of lived and institutionalised religion in the social networks of identity, policy, and power over two millennia of European history.

Is it possible to lead life as a practicing Muslim while living together in multi-faith, pluralistic European nation states?

This volume provides a comprehensive survey of the contemporary study of Islamic law and a critical analysis of its deficiencies. Written by outstanding senior and emerging scholars in their fields, it offers an innovative historiographical examination of the field of Islamic law and an ideal introduction to key personalities and concepts. While capturing the state of contemporary Islamic legal studies by chronicling how far the field has come, the Handbook also explains why certain debates recur and indicates fundamental gaps in our knowledge. Each chapter presents bold new avenues for research and will help readers appreciate the contested nature of key concepts and topics in Islamic law. This Handbook will be a major reference work for scholars and students of Islam and Islamic law for years to come.

Suspicions about the integration of Islam into European cultures have been steadily on the rise, and dramatically so since 9/11. One reason lies in the visibility of anti-Western Islamic discourses of salafi origin, which have monopolized the debate on the "true" Islam, not only among Muslims but also in the eyes of the general population across Europe; these discourses combined with Islamophobic discourses reinforce the so-called incompatibility between the West and Islam. This book breaks away from this clash between Islam and the West, by arguing that European Islam is possible. It analyzes the contribution that European Islam has made to the formation of an innovative Islamic theology that is deeply ethicist and modern, and it clarifies how this constructed European Islamic theology is able to contribute to the various debates that are related to secular-liberal democracies of Western Europe. Part I introduces four major projects that defend the idea of European Islam from different disciplines and perspectives: politics, political theology, jurisprudence and philosophy. Part II uses the frameworks from three major philosophers and scholars to approach the idea of European Islam in the context of secular-liberal societies: British scholar George Hourani, Moroccan philosopher Taha Abderrahmane and the American philosopher John Rawls. The book shows that the ongoing efforts of European Muslim thinkers to revisit the concept of citizenship and political community can be seen as a new kind of political theology, in opposition to radical forms of Islamic thinking in some Muslim-majority countries. Opening a new path for examining Islamic thought "in and of" Europe, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Islam in the West and Political Theology.

Since the crash of communism in Central and Southeastern Europe in 1989, almost everything in the region has changed – from politics to economics to popular culture to religion. There have been new challenges to confront and new dilemmas. This volume examines the political engagement of religious associations in the post-socialist countries of Central and Southeastern Europe, with a focus on disputes about property restitution, revelations about the collaboration of clergy with the communist-era secret police, intolerance, and controversies about the inclusion of religious instruction in the schools. Each of the countries in the region is analyzed with research grounded in on-site interviews, as well as extensive use of literature in local and Western languages.

This book is part of the wider study of Islam and the West: a history of European, mainly French and English, intellectual responses to Islam from the seventeenth century onwards. It focuses on the nineteenth century. Studies on Islam and the West have so far tended to be dominated by non-Muslim writers. This study, therefore, attempts to put forward a scholarly, Muslim, point of view, on a subject which has acquired increasing importance in our time. Relying on primary European and Islamic source materials, it remains firmly committed to the notion of fidelity to European thought. It paves the way to a constructive dialogue between equals, Islam and the West

From the moment Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, exile has been a part of the human experience. The circumstances in which individuals or entire peoples are compelled to leave their homeland are as various as they are numerous, and in this book John Simpson has brought together examples of exile from all over the world, and from all periods of history. The emphasis is on personal experience, with writers from Ovid to Solzhenitsyn describing their exile, their emotions, their struggle and their despair. For those who have chosen a life in exile, the response is more mixed: ambivalence about the country they have left and the country they have chosen suffuses the writing of intellectuals seeking freedom of speech, as of ex-pats living in India or Australia. Those persecuted for their faith or their politics rub shoulders with those fleeing from war, or from debt, or even from the weather. Castaways and spies, premiers and princes describe their departure, their reception and sometimes their return, in an anthology that is by turns inspiring, moving, and deeply thought-provoking. With sources ranging from police records, newspaper articles, interviews, letters and memoirs, as well as verse and fiction, and settings as remote as Iran and Russia, China and Palestine, The Oxford Book of Exile provides a fascinating insight into an experience that touches so many, and captures the imagination of us all.