The Contemporary Islamic Revival

Abstract

This book is the twentieth volume to appear in the Bibliographies and Indexes in Religious Studies series published by Greenwood Press. It is divided into two parts: a) the introductory chapters, and b) the main body of the bibliography and the indexes. The three introductory chapters give an overview of contemporary Islamic revivalist movements from somewhat different perspectives and address many critical issues that are difficult to deal with adequately in just three chaptets. Chapter one discusses such issues as the factors behind the growth of revivalist movements, fundamental issues that provide the primary focus for revivalist writings, the bias of scholars in the West who write and conduct research on Islamic and Middle Eastem studies, and the establishment of Shari'ah schools in Muslim countries. However, this chapter contains many less-than-authentic statements or, in other words, some methodological misinformation. For example, the author refers to a1 'Arabi and a1 Muslim a1 Mu 'air as "two Kuwaiti magazines" that tried to promote an intellectual controverjy on "whether the companions of the Prophet Muhammad were leftist or rightist and whether the sources of the formative period of Islam can be subjected to modem re-interpretation to justify claims of Islamic precedent to proponents of 'Islamic left' and 'Islamic right"' (p. 5). The author does not document the reasons for this conclusion, in spite of the fact that the two magazines are different both in their natures and their contents. AZ 'Arabi is a monthly magazine that discusses current issues for a wide public in the Arab world, whereas a1 Muslim a1 Mu'iisir is a quarterly publication that contains various types of articles related to the Islamization of knowledge. The author of this chapter has attempted to cover a variety of historical, political, and socioeconomic issues. Unfortunately, the attempt is marred by its inconsistency. For instance, English literature on contemporary Islamic revivalism, the use of modem media for the dissemination of Islamic literature, and the status and role of Muslim women were discussed twice in different parts of the chapter. Many critical terms appear without satisfactory justification: "terrorists," "zealots," "militants," ...