Muslim Heritage Month: Journals and Articles

Focuses on issues, perspectives and concerns of American Muslims.

Explores, from Islamic perspectives, philosophical & religious implications of data that originate in the physical, biological, & social sciences; includes articles that enhance understanding of the Islamic intellectual tradition.

Articles on Islamic theology, literature, philosophy and history, Christian-Muslim relationship in past and present; book reviews, current notes, survey of periodicals.

Devoted to the investigation of politics, economics, education, history, literature, and sociology of Muslim minorities throughout the world.

This paper addresses the ways in which Muslim women seek to employ online media, particularly social media, to reclaim narratives around space, embodiment, and power. I argue that digital space is, like any other form of media, structured essentially by racism and patriarchy, but I also note the crucial potential for resistance exhibited by Muslim activists such as political leaders Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Instagram influencer Ayesha Malik, and the largely anonymous women who participated in #MosqueMeToo, encouraged by the journalist and activist Mona Eltahawy. I draw upon a post/anti-colonial feminist framework and the tools of critical discourse analysis in examining specific instances where such women perform acts of resistance that, in turn, trigger a gendered and raced reaction. I note the ways in which some Muslim women, such as Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed, are constructed as media heroes, given that their stories can be co-opted to validate notions of the white colonial savior, while others directly challenge narratives of colonialism and oppression and are thus subjected to backlash. I point to the ways in which some of this vitriol continues to refer back to the notion that Muslim women should be silent, and to the fetishized Muslim woman's body: how it should look, where it can/should go, and what can be done to it.

Framed in a critical Muslim studies approach, this article offers a new understanding of the Ḥanafī position on alcohol, following major public debates on the question of alcohol sparked by prominent members of Al-Azhar University (Egypt) in 2012. Close textual analysis of a range of primary sources in Arabic and Urdu are foundational to the article, as are the categorisation and contextualisation of Ḥanafī discourse. This is all but a starting point, however, for an argument that constitutes a radical break from conventional Islamic studies, seen as “normal science,” in its critique of hegemonic discourses which have essentialised Islam on the basis of specific ontic manifestations, such as the prohibition of alcohol.

The article explores the place, role and status of technology in Muslim moral philosophy. Invoking early Muslim encounters with technology the author makes the case why technology is already deeply embedded in contemporary Muslim bioethical thinking. Due to an absence of the philosophical grounding there remains some ambivalence as to why technology is essential to Muslim ethical thinking. Countering the techno-pessimists, the author makes a case in favor of compositional thinking, namely that our thinking itself is altered by our tools and our environment. Compositional thinking opposes the representational mode of thinking that creates a dichotomy between nature versus culture, and technology versus nature. One should, however, anticipate an environment in which technology would be beneficial and not be viewed as potentially harmful.