Shaping Global Islamic Discourses: The Role of al-Azhar, al-Medina and al-Mustafa

Description

Claims abound that Saudi oil money is fuelling Salafi Islam in cultural and geographical terrains as disparate as the remote hamlets of the Swat valley in Pakistan and sprawling megacities such as Jakarta. In a similar manner, it is often regarded as a fact that Iran and the Sunni Arab states are fighting proxy wars in foreign lands. This empirically grounded study challenges the assumptions prevalent within academic as well as policy circles about hegemonic power of such Islamic discourses and movements to penetrate all Muslim communities and societies. Through case studies of academic institutions the volume illustrates how transmission of ideas is an extremely complex process, and the outcome of such efforts depends not just on the strategies adopted by backers of those ideologies but equally on the characteristics of the receipt communities. In order to understand this complex interaction between the global and local Islam and the plurality in outcomes, the volume focuses on the workings of three universities with global outreach, and whose graduating students carry the ideas acquired during their education back to their own countries, along with, in some cases, a zeal to reform their home society. Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Part One: Making of the Global: Inside the Three Universities 1. The Islamic University of Medina since 1961: The Politics of Religious Mission and th eMaking of a Modern Salafi Pedagogy 2. Making Qom a Centre of Shiʿi Scholarship: Al-Mustafa International University 3. Protector of the “al-Wasatiyya” Islam: Cairo’s al-Azhar University Part Two: Returning Graduates in Negotiation with the Local 4. Ahlussunnah: A Preaching Network from Kano to Medina and Back 5. Qom Alumni in Indonesia: Their Role in the Shiʿi Community 6. Islamic Modernism, Political Reform and the Arabisation of Education: The Relationship between Moroccan Nationalists and al-Azhar University Part Three: Returning Graduates and Transformation of the Local 7. From Mecca to Cairo: Changing Influences on Fatwas in Southeast Asia 8. “Azharisation” of ʿUlama Training in Malaysia About the Contributors Index