Islamic Ecumene: Comparing Muslim Societies

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, modernization, 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.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Urdu Ethics Literature in Colonial India: Akhlāq in theVernacular Educating Muslim Intellectuals Algerian Personal Names and the Colonial État Civil, 1850-1900 British Rule and Omani Marriage in Colonial Zanzibar Kenyan Muslims and the Political Imagination of Space on theIndian Ocean Rim Sovereignty, Slavery and Diplomacy in Late Eighteenth-Century Sulu The French Revolution Comes to the Indian Ocean The Politics of Identity and Religion Religious Routes to Racial Progress in West Africa The Lhasa Uprisings of 1959 and 2008 Muslims and Politics in the Southern Philippines Walls, Wonder, and the Edges of the Muslim World Alevi Cemevis and "Mosque Culture" in Turkey Visual Depictions of Muslim Heroines A Russian Columbus Media Coverage of Islam in Contemporary Germany andthe United States Muslim Devotional Singing in the Two Bengals Reflections on Art and Nation Building Ottoman Modernization and the Translation Bureau Reading Cultural Translation Transliminal Comparisons in the Tombstone Inscriptions ofMuslim and Christian Rulers in the Maghrib and Iberia The Tomb of al-Shadhili in Mocha, Yemen

About the Author :
Eric Tagliacozzo is John Stambaugh Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of The Longest Journey, and co-editor of The Hajj. David Powers is Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of Muhammad is Not the Father of Any of Your Men.