For John L. Esposito, writing on Islam and Muslim politics has been both a“profession and a vocation” for over three decades. Thus this book is a “culmination”of his work and experience, wherein one finds a sea change injust few decades, as “Islam and Muslim politics have moved from offstageto center stage” (p. 4). Thus one...Read More

Nasir-i Khusraw (d. 469/1077), who was appointed by the Fatimid imam al-Mustansir bi’llah (d. 487/1094) as the ḥujjat and chief dā‘ī for the region ofKhurasan, lived the later period of his life exiled in Badakhshan due to religiouspersecution. This treatise, a virtual summa of eleventh-century Ismailiphilosophical theology put forth in a question-and-answer format, deals withalmost...Read More

Edited by Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach, Women, Leadership, andMosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority is a compilation ofpapers presented at a 2009 conference of the same name. The book’s twentychapters represent a diverse range of geographic, thematic, and methodologicalapproaches to questions of female leadership within mosques, religiousscholarship, education, Muslim organizations, and other Islamic spaces....Read More

There has rarely been a dull period in Lebanon’s post-Ottoman political history.Its central geographic, if not political, position within the Arab region,along with its penetrable political system, has made the country vulnerable toregional and international pressures. These pressures have manifested themselvesin both spectacular (e.g., the civil war and Israeli occupation) and moresubtle ways (e.g., the...Read More