Conceptualizing Islam: Current Approaches

Edited By Frank Peter, Paula Schrode, Ricarda Stegmann

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: July 20, 2026

Hardcover: 322 Pages

ISBN: 9781032194738

What does it mean to study “Islam” as an academic object? Conceptualizing Islam: Current Approaches, brings together contemporary perspectives on one of the central questions in the academic study of Islam.” What does it mean to study “Islam” as an academic object?” the volume examines how scholars conceptualize Islam and how these approaches have developed within the study of religion.
Academic debates about how to conceptualize Islam have become increasingly diverse in recent decades. At the same time, Islam has acquired greater visibility in political and social debates, making questions about how it is defined, studied, and represented particularly important. The book explores these developments while encouraging readers to examine the assumptions and categories through which Islam has traditionally been understood.
The volume brings together contributions from scholars working across different disciplines and theoretical traditions. Its chapters engage with subjects including colonialism, conceptual history, postcolonial approaches, Muslim publics, Islam in Europe, sectarianism, racialization, anthropology, discourse theory, and Islamic orthodoxy.
A major concern of the book is the relationship between concepts of Islam and the historical contexts in which they emerge. Several chapters examine how colonial knowledge, European intellectual traditions, and modern political categories have shaped the ways Islam and Muslims have been studied.
The book is not limited to theoretical discussion. Its later chapters demonstrate how different conceptual approaches can be applied to concrete research, including Muslim perspectives on inheritance law in Switzerland, patterns of Islamic orthodoxy, contemporary Sufi practices, charisma and revelation, and the study of Islam through the “discursive tradition” framework. In this way, the volume connects methodological debates with actual research practices in Islamic and religious studies.

About Editors:

Frank Peter is a Research Fellow at the FAU Centre for Islam and Law in Europe in Erlangen, Germany.
His research focuses on Islam in contemporary France, with particular attention to digital Islam and secularism.
His broader interests include the anthropology of Islam, political religion, Orientalism, and Islamophobia.
He is also the author of Secularism without Religion: Islam and the Governing of Muslims in France.

Paula Schrode is Professor of the Study of Religion at the University of Bayreuth.
She specializes in contemporary Islam and the study of religious practices and processes.
Her current research explores the transnational entanglements of Turkish Islam.
She is particularly interested in the activities of Turkish religious NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa.

Ricarda Stegmann is a Lecturer and Senior Researcher in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Her research focuses on Islam in Europe and contemporary Sufism worldwide.
Her work also draws on discourse theory, colonial history, Orientalism, and postcolonial studies.
She is particularly interested in Islamic identity constructions in Europe and North Africa.

The Muslim Trap: Negotiating Being and Belonging in Turbulent Times
Special Issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies
Volume 49, Issue 14 — 2026

The Muslim Trap: Negotiating Being and Belonging in Turbulent Times is a 2026 special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies, edited by Ajmal Hussain and Alexandra Poli. Bringing together ethnographic research from France, Norway, Spain and the UK, the issue examines how Muslims navigate identity, belonging and everyday life amid growing political polarization and anti-Muslim discourse.
The editors use the idea of the “Muslim trap” to describe the ways Muslims can become reduced to fixed representations of threat, difference or resistance. These representations can make Muslims appear as exceptional or problematic citizens, while overlooking the diversity of their experiences and aspirations. The issue therefore asks what becomes invisible when Muslim life is viewed primarily through the lens of conflict and polarization.
Rather than focusing only on Islamophobia, the contributors examine the ordinary experiences of Muslims in different European cities. Their research explores aspirations, relationships, civic participation and everyday negotiations of belonging. This approach highlights that Muslim lives are not defined solely by encounters with discrimination or state restrictions, but also by creativity, adaptation and the pursuit of ordinary futures.
The special issue looks at Muslim experiences across cities including Birmingham, Boulogne-Billancourt, Ceuta, Madrid, Nice, Oslo and Paris. Cities are treated not simply as settings, but as places where identities and relationships of belonging are actively formed. The contributors examine how Muslims engage with institutions, neighborhoods and civic life while navigating the boundaries between majority and minority identities.
A central argument of the collection is that Muslim agency should not be understood only as resistance to discrimination or state policies. The contributors examine how Muslims create new forms of civic participation, negotiate relationships with institutions and sometimes accept, challenge or reshape existing structures. In doing so, the issue presents Muslim belonging as an active and evolving process rather than a fixed identity.
Taken together, the special issue challenges simplified portrayals of Muslims in contemporary Europe. Its contributors argue for a broader understanding of Muslim agency that recognises both the pressures created by polarization and the diverse ways Muslims build lives, relationships and futures within European societies. The result is a more complex picture of being Muslim and belonging in turbulent times.
What happens when Muslims are continually viewed through the lens of threat, difference or resistance?
This 2026 special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies explores Muslim identity, belonging and everyday life across cities in France, Norway, Spain and the UK, highlighting the diversity of Muslim experiences and forms of agency.

About Editors:

Alexandra Poli is a researcher at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and a member of the Centre d’Étude des Mouvements Sociaux (CEMS) at EHESS in Paris. Her research focuses on Muslims in France, Islam, migration, identity, belonging and the social construction of Muslimness. She has conducted research on Muslim communities and urban change, including work on Boulogne-Billancourt.

Dr Ajmal Hussain is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. His research focuses on urban and cultural sociology, particularly Muslim culture, migration, multiculturalism, racism, and belonging in contemporary Europe. He previously worked as a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Manchester and holds a PhD from the university.

Justice in Islam: New Ethical Perspectives

Edited by Ramon Harvey and Daniel Tutt

Publisher: International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT)

Publication Date: July 1, 2023

Hardcover: 153 Pages

ISBN: 9781642056563

From its roots in the Qur’an and the life of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) to its branches in contemporary political and social movements, Islam has always been concerned with the question of social justice. The promise of a just order on earth has motivated both the reflections of the community of scholars and the actions of Muslims who have striven to realize it within their societies. Despite the disappointments that history has often delivered, the hope for justice remains undimmed as does the struggle to achieve it today.

This concise volume focuses on some of the ways that the theme of justice is explored in emerging currents of Islamic thought. Chapters discuss new theological and ethical proposals in the light of contemporary philosophical developments; ideas of gender justice that provoke a reformist challenge to the received tradition; and regional contexts, such as Turkey, Iran and Japan, in which the question of Islam’s relationship to justice is sharpened by the particularities of history and locale. The contributions to this collection raise the prospect that if justice can be imagined more perfectly as an Islamic ideal, perhaps it can be brought into reality.

Table of Contents

Mapping Justice in Islamic Thought: From the Premodern to the Postmodern
Ramon Harvey and Daniel Tutt

Part 1: Theologies, Ethics and Politics

1. Taha Abderrahmane’s Ethics of Ihsān: A Lopsided Conception of Justice and Citizenship
   Monir Birouk
2. Whose Justice? When Māturīdī Meets MacIntyre
   Ramon Harvey

Part 2: Regional Discourses of Feminism and Hermeneutics

3. The Hermeneutics of Justice: Hidayet Şefkatli Tuksal and the Artistry of the Qur’an
   Philip Dorroll
4. Islamic Jurisprudence in Iran: Traditionalism, Reformism and Gender Justice
   Samaneh Oladi
5. Okawa Shumei’s and Toshihiko Izutsu’s Islamic Studies and its Implications for Understanding Justice
   Xiaofei Tu

About Editors

Ramon Harvey (Aziz Foundation Lecturer in Islamic Studies, Cambridge Muslim College) works in the fields of Qur’anic studies, theology, and ethics, both as an intellectual historian and theologian. He is the author of The Qur’an and the Just Society (2018) and Transcendent God, Rational World: A Māturīdī Theology (2021), which are published by Edinburgh University Press. He is also the editor of the monograph series Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology. He earned his doctorate from SOAS, University of London.

Daniel Tutt (Lecturer in Philosophy, George Washington University) works on continental philosophy, contemporary social and political movements, Islamic thought and psychoanalysis. His forthcoming book is entitled Psychoanalysis and the Politics of the Family: The Crisis of Initiation and will be published in the Palgrave Lacan Series in 2022. His writing has been published in Philosophy Now, The Islamic Monthly and Crisis and Critique, among other publications. He teaches philosophy at George Washington University, and Marymount University and has taught inmates through the Georgetown University Prisons and Justice Initiative.

Download the full text HERE.

Source: Amazon

The Making of Shia Ayatollahs

By Sayed Hassan Akhlaq

Publisher: Lexington Books

Publication Date: April 14, 2023

Hardcover: 298 Pages

ISBN: 9781793655158

The Making of Shia Ayatollahs offers both insider and outsider views of how a scholar becomes an Ayatollah in Shia Islam, how ayatollahs suggest diverse perspectives on faith, and how the grand ayatollahs are recognized by a balance of many factors including piety, scholarship, popularity and networking.

This book consists of two parts. The first begins with the core value of knowledge in Islam and the Ulama’s interpretation of jurisprudence and the subjects, values, and methodology they have developed and are applying to challenges found in the faithful practices in modern life. The author reveals the mechanisms of madrasa, hawza, their curricula, and the recognition of a scholar as an ayatollah.

The second part elaborates the rich and sometimes bitter pluralism and debate within the community of ayatollahs regarding topics including denominational identity and intra-faith work, Sufism and mysticism, Philosophy (falsafa and wisdom), modernization and the West, political power and government, and women in public life.

After providing a historical background on each subject, the author takes the reader into the heart of current debates among ayatollahs in Qum, Mashhad, Najaf, and Beirut without sacrificing accuracy and originality to educate a wide range of readers.

Source: Amazon

Studies in Islamic Traditions and Literature

By Roberto Tottoli

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: December 18, 2024

Hardcover: 284 Pages

ISBN: 9780367531690

A collection of articles and studies discussing early Islamic tenets and beliefs based on Islamic traditions and literature. A number of studies appear for the first time in English. The topics dealt with relate to the Islamic prostration in ritual prayer, Islamic traditions which are discussed through the analysis of hadith literature and reports and narratives related to the literary genre of the qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ (Stories of the Prophets). The readers of this collection of essays are scholars and students of early Islam, of the development hadith literature and of the narratives on Islamic prophets; all together the studies bring to light the dynamics between the formation of early traditions and their role in the origin and developments of Islamic literature.

Table of Contents

About the Author

Roberto Tottoli is Professor of Islamic studies at the Università di Napoli L’Orientale, Italy. His fields of interest are early Islamic traditions and literature and the Qur’an in European history. He completed his bachelor’s degree in Oriental Languages and Literatures at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice and later earned a PhD from the University of Naples “L’Orientale. He studied from 1993 to 1994 at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the tutelage of M.J. Kister.

Tottoli taught at the University of Turin from 1999 to 2002 and has been a faculty member at the University of Naples “L’Orientale since 2002. He became a full professor of Islamic studies in 2011 and took on the role of Rector in November 2020. He has held visiting positions at institutions such as Princeton, Harvard, the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Study in Tokyo, and the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

In 2019, he began serving as the principal investigator for the ERC-Synergy project EUQU—the European Qur’an, and he is a member of the Italian Academy of sciences.

Source: Routledge

Muḥammad and His Followers in Context: The Religious Map of Late Antique Arabia

By Ilkka Lindstedt

Series: Islamic History and Civilization, Vol. 209

Publisher: Brill

Publication Date: November 2, 2023

Hardcover: 372 pages

ISBN: 9789004687127

This title is published in Open Access with the support of the University of Helsinki Library.

Download PDF HERE.

The book surveys and analyzes changes in religious groups and identities in late antique Arabia, ca. 300-700 CE. It engages with contemporary and material evidence: for example, inscriptions, archaeological remains, Arabic poetry, the Qurʾān, and the so-called Constitution of Medina. Also, it suggests ways to deal with the later Arabic historiographical and other literary texts. The issue of social identities and their processes are central to the study. For instance, how did Arabian ethnic and religious identities intersect on the eve of Islam? The book suggests that the changes in social groups were more piecemeal than previously thought.

Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
  – Prolegomena and Methodological Considerations
  – Ethnic, Linguistic, and Tribal Situation in Arabia before Islam
• 2. Judaism
  – Judaism in Late Antiquity
  – The Arabian Context
  – Conclusions
• 3. Christianity
  – Christianity in Late Antiquity
  – The Arabian Context
  – Conclusions
• 4. Gentiles
  – Introduction
  – Idolatry and Polytheism in Arabia
  – Gentile Monotheism in Arabia
  – The Idea of Abrahamic Descent in Arabia before Islam
  – An Excursus to Later Arabic Historiography: ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib’s Dream
  – Conclusions
• 5. The Rise of the Gentile Prophet in Mecca
  – Introduction and Methodological Considerations
  – Mecca
  – Excursus: Arabic Historiography on the Meccan Period
  – Conclusions on the Meccan Period
• 6. The Founding and Consolidating of the Community in Medina
  – The “Constitution” of Medina
  – The Believers in the Medinan Qurʾān
  – The People of the Book in the Medinan Period
  – The Jews in the Qurʾān
  – The Christians in the Qurʾān
  – Inna al-dīn ʿinda Allāh al-islām
  – Gentile Purity and Dietary Regulations
  – The Eschaton Postponed?
  – Excursus: Arabic Historiography and the Medinan Era
  – Conclusions on the Medinan Era
• 7. Near-Contemporary Non-Arabic Views on the Prophet and His Community
  – Near-Contemporary Non-Arabic Views on the Prophet’s Community
• 8. Concluding toward Early Islamic Times
  – “No Two Religions”
  – Conclusions

About the Author

Ilkka Lindstedt, Ph.D. (2014), is Lecturer in Islamic theology at the University of Helsinki. He deals with pre-Islamic Arabia, early Islam, Arabic historiography, and Arabic epigraphy. Recent publications include: Ilkka Lindstedt, Nina Nikki, and Riikka Tuori (eds.), Religious Identities in Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Walking Together & Parting Ways, Brill 2022.

Source: Brill

Esoteric Traditions in Islamic Thought: An Anthology of Texts on Esoteric Knowledge and Gnosis in Islam

By Leonard Lewisohn

Publisher: Oneworld Academic

Publication Date: September 12, 2024

Hardcover: 448 pages

ISBN: 9780861548644

The notion of esoteric knowledge is one of the pillars of Islamic intellectual tradition. Though most visible in Sufism, it also dominated the first three and a half centuries of Shi‘ite thought.

In this rich anthology, Leonard Lewisohn explores Islamic esotericism through the works of eleven authors who flourished in Persia, Central Asia and Asia Minor from the eleventh to the nineteenth centuries. He presents excerpts from each text in translation, accompanying these with introductions to the author’s life, works and thought. In the course of his erudite and enlightening commentary, he explores the common ground of esoteric thought and terminology, revealing a unity of perspective among Muslim thinkers.

About the Author

Leonard Lewisohn was Research Associate in Esoteric Traditions in Islam in the Department of Academic Research of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London. He was the author, editor, and translator of many leading books and articles in the area of Sufism and lectured widely on the subject.

Reviews

• “A joy to read, a nourishment for the heart and mind, and for the specialist and non-specialist alike. The study of esotericism and what is called erfan in Iran desperately needed just this sourcebook … There was no better person than Lenny Lewisohn to put it together.” – Sajjad H. Rizvi, Professor of Islamic Intellectual History, University of Exeter
• “A remarkable collection of beautifully and clearly translated texts from the Islamic esoteric tradition, rendered with sensitivity and fluidity of expression from the original Arabic and Persian. In this work, published posthumously, Lewisohn demonstrates his nearly unparalleled mastery of Islamic esotericism and its literary expressions in both languages.” – Maria M. Dakake, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, George Mason University
• “Lewisohn gives us so much with this splendid collection of beautiful, perspicacious translations. There is no one of his generation who has contributed more to the study of Sufism and mysticism in Islam.” – Todd Lawson, Emeritus Associate Professor, University of Toronto

Source: Oneworld Publications

The Woman Question in Islamic Studies

By Kecia Ali

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: September 17, 2024

Hardcover: 240 pages

ISBN: 9780691261843

The interconnected ways that sexism functions in academic Islamic studies and how to shift professional norms toward parity

Despite remarkable shifts in the demographics of Islamic studies in recent decades, the field continues to be dominated by men, who often relegate other scholars and their work—particularly research on gender—to its periphery, while treating subfields in which men predominate as more rigorous and central. In The Woman Question in Islamic Studies, Kecia Ali explores the interconnected ways that sexism functions in academic Islamic studies. Examining publications, citations, curricula, and media representations, Ali finds that, despite the growth and depth of scholarship on Islam and gender, men continue to overlook women’s scholarship, even in work that purports to discuss gender issues. Moreover, media and social media dynamics make talking about Islam and Muslims for broader audiences especially fraught for scholars who are not men, particularly when the topic is gender or sexuality.

Combining broad surveys with more focused analyses of a smaller set of texts, Ali shows that textbooks and syllabi continue to exclude women as historical actors and scholars and to marginalize gender and sexuality as subject matter. Finally, she provides a “Beginner’s Guide to Eradicating Sexism in Islamic Studies,” offering practical strategies to help scholars avoid common pitfalls in their own work and contribute to broader professional transformations.

About the Author

Kecia Ali is professor of religion at Boston University. She is the author of The Lives of Muhammad, Imam Shafi‘i: Scholar and Saint, Marriage and Slavery in Early Islam, and Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur’an, Hadith, and Jurisprudence.

Reviews

• “An indispensable guide to how scholars, researchers, students, and other interested parties can analyze scholarship on Islam past and present. The Woman Question in Islamic Studies is a text to be returned to repeatedly for what it portends for Islamic studies scholarship in the future.”– Aminah Al-Deen, DePaul University
• “For anyone interested in the teaching of Islam and Muslims, Kecia Ali’s book is eye-opening and riveting. This book is essential reading for anyone invested in making their classroom the setting for transformative engagement.”– Zayn Kassam, Pomona College
• “This is a beautifully written book that combines analytic rigor with an accessible style and the occasional devastating quip. It reflects astonishingly broad and deep reading, giving depth and texture to everything from its accounts of the professional travails of women scholars of previous generations to its analysis of citational politics.”– Marion Katz, New York University
• “Ali has generated a remarkable amount of concrete data about the representation of women scholars’ work in Islamic studies. That is impressive enough—it is the backbone of the book—but Ali also draws on her considerable experience as a scholar in the field. To me, that is equally compelling evidence.”– Ellen Muehlberger, University of Michigan

Source: Princeton University Press

Modern Debates on Prophecy and Prophethood in Islam: Muhammad Iqbal and Said Nursi

By Mahsheed Ansari

Publisher: Routledge

Publication Date: November 28, 2024

Hardcover: 288 pages

ISBN: 9781032231242

While prophethood is the backbone of the Islamic tradition and an uncompromised tenet of faith, the impact of modernity with its ambivalent status afforded to the prophet and institution of prophethood shook many Muslim scholars. Through analysis of these modern debates on prophethood in Islam, this book situates Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938) and Said Nursi’s (1877–1960) discourses within it and assesses their implications on the modern period. This book introduces the “what, who and how” of the prophets in the Islamic tradition. It unveils the rich Islamic literature of both the classical and modern periods and analyses the construction of their philosophies and theologies. Concise in both historical and textual analyses, this book makes an important contribution to our understanding of contemporary debates on prophecy and prophethood in Islam and will be of great interest to postgraduate students and researchers of Islam, religious studies, medieval studies and contemporary studies of Islam and religion.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• 1. Demystifying the Prophetic Vocation in Islam
• 2. Theologising Resurgence of Prophetology in the Modern Muslim World
• 3. Iqbal’s and Nursi’s Methodology in Context of Their Global and Local Histories.
• 4. Rational Challenges and New Understandings of Prophethood
• 5. Traditional and Metaphysical Tensions of Prophethood
• 6. Conclusion: Towards a New Philosophy of Prophethood in Islam

About the Author

Mahsheed Ansari is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilization and a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Religion and Ethics and Society (CRES), Charles Sturt University. She is a community activist working in the areas of interfaith dialogue, education, social harmony and leadership-mentoring programes with Muslim youth and women. Her research interests include the history of Islamic thought, spirituality and culture. She has been working on the Australian Muslim Heritage Project, that captures the contributions of Muslim Pioneers Post World War II, and she is currently writing a book on the Institutional integration of the Muslim community in Australia and Dr. Ashfaq Ahmad’s contributions to it.

Reviews

• “Mahsheed Ansari offers a rigorous study of prophethood in Islam, focusing on the twentieth century responses of two major thinkers, Said Nursi and Muhammad Iqbal. The potential for the continued development of constructive contemporary Islamic approaches to this topic is enriched through Ansari’s detailed exposition of classical doctrines on prophecy as well as the South Asian and Turkish contexts during this period of challenges from modernity. Through its presentation of the creative responses of Nursi and Iqbal, who employed both critical intellectual analysis and mystical sensitivities in understanding both the historical human and the cosmic significance of the Prophet for their age, this work provides an important contribution in the field of Islamic religious thought and a resource for interfaith dialogue and understanding.” – Marcia Hermansen, Loyola University Chicago

Source: Routledge

Author: Bayram Sevinç

Published in: Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture, Vol. 13, Issue 3 (November 2024), pp. 410–431

Publication Date: November 21, 2024

Publisher: Brill

Abstract:

Over the past two decades, Islamic movements and activism in the USA have progressed. The weak part of the explanation models for Islamic activism is an inclusive description of obstacles in the discursive field. These obstacles are essentially sources of symbolic violence in discourse. There is also a debate regarding the discursive representation of Muslims. Native and immigrant Muslims in the USA have struggled against the dominance of external discourses. Therefore, this study examines the essential boundaries and obstacles of the discursive field that activist Muslims (digital activists particularly) encounter when constructing discourses in the USA. In this study, I used the current activism findings to investigate the discursive field’s fundamental boundaries and obstacles. The research proves that barriers such as stigmatization, racialization, nativism, security paradigm, gender, marginalization, and discrimination form the main basis of symbolic violence.

Source: Brill Publishers