Two different types of chattel slavery, those permitted by the Christian and Islamic religions, were introduced into Africa but only the Christian slave trade to the Americas has been studied by archaeologists. The much longer duration (over 1000 years) of the Islamic slave trade to Asia and of the Dar el Islam in North and East Africa is at present known only from literary and eyewitness accou...

University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher, except for reading and browsing via the World Wide Web. Users are not permitted to mount this file on any network servers.

This article offers an anthropological outline of immanent critique in Islamic traditions. In addressing the question – what is immanent critique? – it dwells on the interrelationships amongst the Enlightenment’s notion of reason, critique, and Islam. My main contention is that to construe the Western notion of critique derived from Enlightenment’s specific conceptualization of reason as critiq...

Since twelve years when the Traditional and Islamic Medicine Group was founded by The Academy of Medical Sciences of Islamic Republic of Iran., there has always been the interest to organize the research on traditional medicine, to lead it toward an objective, and to introduce its various aspects to the public. On the other hand, the medical science has a long history in Iran. In addition to an...

This article explores the life and importance of Mary in Islam and Christianity, aiming at clarifying the criteria for which Mary has been revered in each tradition. It will be shown that Mary in Christianity is almost merely important because she was the mother of Jesus, while the Muslim reverence for her is based on her own noble characteristics. From the Muslim perspective, even if Mary had ...

  Children are a precious gift from God, and the blessing of a child is a special time in a person's life. All cultures and religious traditions have certain ways of welcoming a newborn child into the community; also, each culture and religion has its own customs and traditions for the birth of a child. During and after the birth of a Muslim child, there are certain rituals the mother and fathe...

Muslims in America are an ethnically diverse group, coming from more than sixty nations and representing very different racial, linguistic, tribal, educational, and cultural backgrounds. Yvonne Haddad groups them into three categories: immigrants, converts, and sojourners (Conser, 218-219). This article will focus on those who have converted to Islam in America, with particular attention to the...