Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies

David S. Powers and Eric Tagliacozzo (editors)
Paperback, 330 pages
9781501772399

The essays in Islamic Ecumene address the ways in which Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia and from sub-Saharan Africa to the steppes of Uzbekistan are members of a broad cultural unit. Although the Muslim inhabitants of these lands speak dozens of languages, represent numerous ethnic groups, and practice diverse forms of Islam, they are united by shared practices and worldviews shaped by religious identity. To highlight these commonalities, the co-editors invited a team of scholars from a wide range of disciplines to examine Muslim societies in comparative and interconnected ways. The result is a book that showcases ethics, education, architecture, the arts, modernisation, political resistance, marriage, divorce, and death rituals.

Using the insights and methods of historians, anthropologists, literary critics, art historians, political scientists, and sociologists, Islamic Ecumene seeks to understand Islamic identity as a dynamic phenomenon that is reflected in the multivalent practices of the more than one billion people across the planet who identify as Muslims.

Part 1: Ethics, Moral Rectitude and Education
Part 2: Colonial Encounters and Postcolonial Aftermaths
Part 3: Colonialism and Slavery
Part 4: Religion, Politics, Race and Identity
Part 5: Walls, Architecture and the Other
Part 6: Representing Muslims
Part 7: Music, Art and the Nation
Part 8: Translation, Modernisation and Culture
Part 9: Remembering - And Forgetting - the Dead