M. Kemper

Rechtspluralismus in der Islamischen Welt : Gewohnheitsrecht zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft

The authors of this volume examine the relations between state law (colonial and post-colonial), Islamic law and common law in the Islamic world. The geographical scope of the twenty papers extends from Muslim Andalusia and North Africa across Osman South-Eastern Europe, the Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, the Northern Caucasus and Central Europe to Uighuria (China) and Indonesia. Particular emphasis is placed on the Muslim societies of the Russian Empire and the former Soviet Union, the rich regional legal traditions of which have hitherto been largely ignored in the general discussion about legal pluralism. The comparative approach reveals numerous parallel developments in the different regions. Furthermore, the articles give insight into the differing methods and approaches employed by legal anthropologists, Islamists, historians and lawyers in East and West.

The Piety of Learning : Islamic Studies in Honor of Stefan Reichmuth

This volume analyzes Islamic teaching philosophies, as well as Sufi networks and practices, since the 18th century in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe. One section presents very personal European encounters with Islam.

Ijtihad into philosophy: Islam as cultural heritage in post-Stalinist Daghestan

Starting in 1960, authors of various Daghestani nationalities initiated a re-evaluation of the role of Islam in the history of Daghestan. An important historical personality to draw upon was Muhammad al-Quduqi, a Daghestani Islamic legal scholar of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Quduqi was known for his sympathies towards ijtihad (Islamic legal reasoning by analogy) and for his call to replace customary law by Islamic law. This article studies how Quduqi was brought back into Soviet discourse in 1960, and how his advocacy for ijtihad was subsequently interpreted in Marxist terms as a quest for philosophy, rationalism and progress, with secularizing terms drawn from the discourse of Daghestani Jadids of the 1920s and 1930s. A comparison is then made with Soviet Tatarstan, where Marxist historians constructed a similar autochthonous trajectory of Tatar-Islamic progress and enlightenment. In both cases, Islamic concepts were taken out of context and used for the construction of a secularized national Muslim cultural heritage (miras) that would prepare the ground for socialism – with the difference that in Daghestan, this Muslim Mirasism was multi-ethnic in character.

Uyghur Nation: Reform and Revolution on the Russia-China Frontier

In the letter collections, they are ‘scarcely mentioned’ (240–241). The same is true for the medieval chronicles. A theme that does emerge and predominate is pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the city’s retention by Christians (255, 264–265). In this light, the impact of the First Crusade for crusaders was not heavily related to Muslims and Islam. Where Islam did have an impact, however, was in the fantasies of chansons. Thus, whilst the crusaders ‘did not generate a new pallet of polemical anti-Muslim language’ (267), Muslims did become important ‘in the realms of fantasy’ (268). In the conclusion, Morton summarizes what is a mountain of evidence. The conflict inherent in the First Crusade was not primarily one that pitted Christians against Muslims. Rather, it was primarily a battle between God and the Devil (272). The notion of a clash of civilizations – however common this may have become, or however frequently it might be applied to historical events like the First Crusade and its aftermath – is a myth. In turn, ‘multiple societies have assumed that’ such a clash has actually taken place and have ‘built their history and identities around that “fact”’ (280). A rehearsal of the sources, such as Morton expertly provides, might go some way to helping readers reappraise their conclusions. Encountering Islam on the First Crusade is well written and frequently even eloquent. The book’s conclusions are the result of an almost dogged approach to the sources whereby Morton skilfully navigates an otherwise ‘well trampled’ area of study. As a result, readers, whether they are students and lay readers eager to learn about the First Crusade or medievalists specializing in crusade studies or interreligious encounters, are rewarded with new and fascinating insights.

Index of Place Names

This volume analyzes Islamic teaching philosophies, as well as Sufi networks and practices, since the 18th century in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe. One section presents very personal European encounters with Islam.

Bibliography of Printed Works

This volume analyzes Islamic teaching philosophies, as well as Sufi networks and practices, since the 18th century in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Europe. One section presents very personal European encounters with Islam.

Russia’s Islam and Orthodoxy beyond the Institutions: Languages of Conversion, Competition and Convergence

Islam and the Orthodox Church in contemporary Russia are usually studied in isolation from each other, and each in relation to the Kremlin; the latter demands the development of a home-grown and patriotic ‘religious traditionalism, as a bulwark against subversive ‘non-traditional’ imports. This volume breaks new ground by focusing on charismatic missionaries from both religions who bypass the hierarchies of their respective faith organizations and challenge the ‘traditionalism’ paradigm from within Russias many religious traditions, and who give new meanings to the well-known catchwords of Russias identity discourse. The Moscow priest Daniil Sysoev confronted the Russian Orthodox Church with ‘Uranopolitism’, a spiritual vision that defies patriotism and nationalism; the media-savvy Geidar Dzhemal projected an ‘Islamic Eurasianism’ and a world revolution for which Russias Muslims would provide the vanguard; and the Islamic terrorist Said Buriatskii found respect among left- and right-wing Russians through his Islamic adaptation of Lev Gumilevs ‘passionarity’ paradigm. On the other side, Russian experts and journalists who propagate the official paradigm of Russias ‘traditional Islam’ argue from either Orthodox or secularist perspectives, and fail to give content to the concept. This allows even moderate Salafis to argue that their creed is Russias real ‘traditionalist’ Islam. This book was originally published as a special issue of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

Between Salafism and Eurasianism: Geidar Dzhemal and the Global Islamic Revolution in Russia

ABSTRACT Geidar Dzhemal was arguably the best-known mouthpiece of radical Islam in the contemporary Russia media world: with his broad erudition in Western philosophy, Abrahamic theology and world history, he easily upstaged most official representatives of Islam in the country. While his Islamic project borrowed heavily from Marxist thinking, Dzhemal’s non-conformist teaching and his personal charisma also made him famous among right-wing thinkers, who see him as the ‘Godfather’ of Russian converts to Islam. However, Dzhemal defied common classifications, both political and religious; his discourse adapted to the changes in Russian politics from Yeltsin to Putin, which allowed him to appeal to a broad range of audiences. This article argues that his popularity can be explained by the fact that, with his promotion of a global anti-Western revolution under the Islamic banner, Dzhemal was still embedded in mainstream discourses on Russia’s national interests.

Dmitriy Yur'evich Arapov (1943–2015)

Many things sprang to mind when we heard that Dmitriy Yur’evich Arapov passed away on 14 December 2015 in Moscow: a disappearing archetype in Russian academic culture; an individual embodying principles of sober and neutral scholarship; a walking encyclopaedia; and simultaneously an extraordinarily helpful colleague, humorous, modest to a fault and unpretentious, despite his characteristic role as a senior authority for younger generations of scholars. Born in Yerevan on 16 May 1943 into a mixed Russian-Armenian family of intellectuals in the field of geology, Dmitriy Yur’evich spent his childhood in Leningrad, home to Russia’s major centres of Oriental studies. Yet it was in Moscow that Arapov would study and pursue his academic career, becoming a leading light of Moscow State University’s History Faculty. In 1966 he graduated with a thesis on sixteenth-century relations between Central Asia and Iran, and in 1978 he defended his dissertation on the Russian Orientalist historiography of the Bukhara Khanate, under the supervision of Georgiy Andreevich Novitskiy (1896– 1981). In conversation he would also acknowledge the mentorship of Petr Ivanovich Petrov (1884–1971), a historian of Safavid Iran who taught at Moscow State University between 1943 and 1971. Just like the famous Bartol’d (under whom Petrov had studied), Arapov always considered himself a historian of Central Asia, although much of his work also concerned the Caucasus. In the 1970s and 1980s he directed annual expeditions of Moscow State University history students to the Soviet republics of Central Asia, mostly to Uzbekistan. Dmitriy Yur’evich Arapov was a rapacious investigator of imperial and Soviet archives, and an outstanding publisher of documentary sources collated from numerous archives. In 2001 and 2006 he published annotated collections of imperial laws and decrees, analytical reports and statistics concerning Islam in tsarist Russia (Arapov 2001a, 2006). His habilitation (doktorskaya) of 2005 was a comprehensive analysis of the official role of Islam in the Russian Empire as a whole, covering not only Central Asia but also the Volga–Urals and the Caucasus (Arapov 2004). One impressive achievement of this work was Arapov’s inquiry into the numerous state projects (both realized and abandoned) to establish regional Muslim Spiritual Administrations, including in the South Caucasus. In the mid-2000s Arapov turned to the study of state–Islam relations in the Soviet period, with financial support from the Marjani Foundation. His archival findings, collected in three volumes (Arapov 2010, 2011; Arapov and Kosach 2010), provided the groundwork for a critical revision of the interpretation of Soviet state–Muslim “clergy” relations spanning the entire Soviet period. Arapov published original source materials as diverse as Soviet state police reports about Muslim personalities and Islamic feasts, Communist Party documents on Islam-related policies, and the teaching programmes in the Soviet madrasa in Bukhara, the Mir-i Arab. These three volumes – and especially Arapov’s diligent commentaries on them –have become a standard reference work for anybody studying Islam in the USSR. One particular aspect of Arapov’s source publications is that they preserve the imperial style of speaking about Islam, offering insights into the formation of the “Russian Islamic lexicon” that not only public officials and academic Orientalists, but also Muslim activists still use

Qadimism and Jadidism in Twentieth-Century Daghestan

Abstract This article analyzes the interplay of Jadidism and “Qadimism” in the North Caucasus region of Daghestan, through the twentieth century, with a focus on educational methods for teaching Arabic and Islam. In the multi-ethnic context of Daghestan the issue of pedagogy was important not only for teaching the vernaculars but also for the transmission of Arabic, which retained its importance as a lingua franca of Daghestani scholars and intellectuals well into the Soviet period. We argue that all through the Soviet era, “Qadimism” (as the traditional teaching system) continued to be practiced in Daghestan alongside Jadid approaches, and both are still employed in the new Islamic schools that emerged in the early 1990s. Innovative aspects of this paper are: (1) it brings Daghestan into the debate about Jadidism, which has so far centered on the Volga-Urals and Central Asia; (2) it examines Jadidism in constant interaction with its competitor “Qadimism”, not as its antipode; and (3) it uses a longitudinal approach that covers the whole of the twentieth century, all historical breaks notwithstanding. Finally, this paper explores new methodologies by using the personal educational experience of one of its co-authors, who went through the mixed “Qadim”/Jadid/Soviet system in the 1980s and early 1990s. Our observations challenge the widespread assumption that Jadidism was overall an undoubted success story, and that “Qadimism” as a method was, after the establishment of Soviet power and even more so after its dissolution, bound to disappear.