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Fadhlalla Haeri (b. 1937) is a contemporary Muslim figure best known for his spiritual commentaries on the Qur’an and his influential role as a ‘post-madhhab’ and ‘post-tariqa’ Sufi teacher. Born and brought up in the pilgrim city of Karbala by its religious elite, Haeri would go on to pursue a secular education in the West and a successful career in the booming Arab oil industry. But Haeri would inevitably withdraw from the business world and return to his roots by directing his efforts towards teaching the Qur’an, resulting in numerous publications and a worldwide network of students, with past and present communities especially established in the United States, Pakistan, England, Denmark, Sweden, Germany and South Africa. The purpose of this thesis is to observe Haeri’s life and works through the larger historical story of secularity as told by philosopher Charles Taylor. As a Sufi sage in a secular age, what Haeri offers us is a mirror, reflecting a period of time in which we are still so immersed that it eludes our ability to understand it in any comprehensive way. By looking at how his life and works both reflect and respond to our current epoch, the intention is to offer a compelling narrative of what can broadly be called Muslim modernity, together with the themes of ‘authority’ and ‘authenticity’ that can be seen to define it.

The initial premise of this article is that the lasting influence of nineteenth-century Protestant liberalism on the modern conceptualization of religion has confined our understanding of a variety of traditions to a narrow evolutionary scope in which purer religious forms in line with scientific rationalism are seen as arising out of earlier impure systems akin to magic. The article presents the instrumentality of the Qur'an as an alternative lens through which to acknowledge what has often been labelled as “magic” in Islam. Recognizing that this modern conceptualization of religion has been appropriated as an ideal by Muslim modernist reformists, the article particularly intends to show that, through the use of this alternative analytical instrument, the modernist project of emancipatory “disenchantment” can be viewed as an instance of the modernization of magic just as easily as it can be seen as religious purification, the intention of this exercise being to further problematize our current distinctio...

The aim of this study is to identify the primary reasons for the popularity of a new form of faith healing amongst young Muslims in east London. Examining the actual practice of this new healing tradition as it is found in east London and the social landscape within which it is enmeshed have been distinguished as the two central objectives of the study. In achieving the former, participant observation and semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a local healer and his clients, whilst the latter was largely achieved by employing a general format of research that involved gathering data from a number of scattered sources, like pamphlets, transcripts, forums, audio and video recordings, etc. The findings suggest that the popularity of this tradition is in large part due to a “hybridisation” of key themes drawn from “Islam” and “science” that are seen to be attractive for a younger generation of Muslims.

ملخص البحث:تهدف هذه الدراسةُ إلى إبراز دور الأدب المقارن في خدمة الآداب الإسلاميّة، وإيصالها إلى جميع أنحاء العالم؛ إذ اعترفَ الأدب المقارن منذ بداياته بعالميّة الأدب الإسلاميّ، وتأثيره في الآداب العالميّة، وبخاصّة الأدب الأوروبيّ، ومن هذا المنطلق يمكن تحديد الخطوط العريضة لهذه الدراسة على الشكل الآتي: العوامل التي ساعدت وتساعد في عالميّة الأدب الإسلاميّ، وأثر بعض الأعمال الأدبيّة العربيّة في آداب الأمم الأخرى، ومن هذه الأعمال: قصة مجنون ليلى، وقصة حيّ بن يقظان، وكتاب ألف ليلة وليلة، وكتاب كليلة ودِمنة، وأخيرا الوقوف عند التأثيرات الإسلامية في الكوميديا الإلهية، وخلصت الدراسة إلى أن الآداب العربية والكتب كان لها الأثر البليغ في الآداب الغربية.الكلمات المفتاحية: الأدب المقارن- العالمية– مجنون ليلى– حي بن يقظان– ألف ليلة وليلة.Abstract:This study aims at pointing out the positive role of comparative literature in uplifting the Islamic literature and conveying it to the rest of the world. Since the dawn of its emergence, it has been acknowledging the globalized characteristics of the Islamic literature and the influences that it bore on the world literatures and in particular the Europen literature. From this point, it is possible to determine the general overview for this study: the factors that had helped and are still helping in globalizing the Islamic Literature, the influences of some Arab literary works on the literatures of other nations such as: The story of Majnūn and Laylā, The Story of Ḥayy b. Yaqaẓān, The One thousand and One Nights, The Kalīlah wa Dimnah. Finally the study will shed the light on the Islamic influences in the Divine comedy. It concluded that traces of influences of Arabic literature are inherent in the Western literature.Keywords: Comparative Literature– Globalization– Laylā Majnūn- Ḥayy b. Yaqaẓān– One thousand and One Night.Abstrak:Kajian ini bertujuan untuk menunjukkan peranan positif sastera bandingan dalam menaikkan sastera Islam dan menyampaikan ke seluruh dunia. Sejak daripada permulaan kemunculannya, ia telahpun memperakui ciri-ciri global sastera Islam dan pengaruh-pengaruhnya yang di dapati dalam kesusasteraan dunia dan khususnya kesusasteraan Eropah. Bertitik tolak daripada pemerhatian ini, tinjauan am untuk kajian ini adalah berdasarkan kepada: faktor-faktor yang telah dan masih membantu dalam melonjakkan sastera Islam diperingkat global, pengaruh-pengaruh beberapa karya sastera Arab terhadap kesusasteraan kelompok bangsa lain seperti: Kisah Laylā dan Majnūn, kisah Ḥayy b. Yaqaẓān, kisah seribu satu malam, kisah Kalīlah wa Dimnah. Kajian akan turut memberikan perhatian kepada pengaruh-pengaruh Islam dalam komedi ketuhanan serta akan turut menyimpulkan kesan-kesan serta pengaruh-pengaruh kesusasteraan Arab yang sedia ada dalam kesusasteraan barat.Kata kunci: Sastera Bandingan– Globalisasi– Laylā Majnūn– Ḥayy b. Yaqaẓān– Seribu satu Malam.