Herbert Berg

Bio: Herbert Berg is an academic researcher from University of North Carolina at Wilmington. The author has contributed to research in topics: Islam & Historical Jesus. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 19 publications receiving 101 citations. Previous affiliations of Herbert Berg include University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill & Wilmington University.

Method and theory in the study of Islamic origins

Abstract: This volume deals with the methodological and theoretical issues of the study of Islamic origins. Each of the twelve articles examines a different aspect of Islamic origins: early Islamic history including the life of the Prophet, the Sunna and h?adith, tafsir and the Qur'an, and the rise of Islamic law. Both sceptical (or revisionist) scholars and sanguine (or traditionalist) scholars examine and employ the various contemporary theories on the development of Islam in the first 3 centuries A.H. In so doing, they seek to exemplify the sources and methodologies used to support these theories and to discuss their relative merits.

Mythmaking in the African American Muslim Context: The Moorish Science Temple, the Nation of Islam, and the American Society of Muslims

Abstract: Two of the earliest African American Muslim movements, the Moorish Science Temple founded by Noble Drew Ali and the Nation of Islam founded by Wali Fard Muhammad and developed by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, taught thatIslam was the original and inherent religion of African Americans. Each reenvisioned the origins of the races and of Islam. Drew Ali viewed African Americans as Black Asiatics and descendants of the kingdom of Moors. Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad saw African Americans as the descendants of the original Black humanity, who later produced the "wicked white race." More recently, Warith Deen Mohammed, leader of the American Society of Muslims, has suggested that the mythology developed by his father, Elijah Muhammad, was part of some grand scheme to bring African Americans to orthodox Islam. These reinterpretations of the history are best seen as a product of the interrelated activities of social formation and mythmaking.

The historical Muhammad and the historical Jesus: A comparison of scholarly reinventions and reinterpretations

Abstract: Scholars of the historical Jesus and scholars of the historical Muhammad are engaged in seemingly similar activities, but they rarely look to each other to compare and evaluate their methods and th...

The Isnād and the Production of Cultural Memory: Ibn Abbās as a Case Study

Abstract: The reputation of Abd Allāh b. Abbās as the greatest early exegete of the Qurān began as a product of Abbasid propaganda. Even his biography is suspect. To focus exclusively on the issue of authenticity, however, is to neglect the cultural memory he represents within Sunni Muslim tafsīr . Within the matn s of the thousands of hadīth s attributed to him, he is the mythic embodiment, the cultural memory, of the acceptable range of diversity that “re-collects” and helps unify the (Sunni) Muslim community. The Isnād s also preserve an independent cultural memory. In them, Ibn Abbās is the embodiment of an ideal: he stands as the cipher for the exegetical methodology that bases itself on the Qurān and on the Prophet and his Companions. The Ibn Abbās of the Isnād s represents the connection to and communication with these sources of knowledge that the Ibn Abbās of the matn s seems to have rarely employed.

The cultural evolution of prosocial religions.

Abstract: We develop a cultural evolutionary theory of the origins of prosocial religions and apply it to resolve two puzzles in human psychology and cultural history: (1) the rise of large-scale cooperation among strangers and, simultaneously, (2) the spread of prosocial religions in the last 10-12 millennia. We argue that these two developments were importantly linked and mutually energizing. We explain how a package of culturally evolved religious beliefs and practices characterized by increasingly potent, moralizing, supernatural agents, credible displays of faith, and other psychologically active elements conducive to social solidarity promoted high fertility rates and large-scale cooperation with co-religionists, often contributing to success in intergroup competition and conflict. In turn, prosocial religious beliefs and practices spread and aggregated as these successful groups expanded, or were copied by less successful groups. This synthesis is grounded in the idea that although religious beliefs and practices originally arose as nonadaptive by-products of innate cognitive functions, particular cultural variants were then selected for their prosocial effects in a long-term, cultural evolutionary process. This framework (1) reconciles key aspects of the adaptationist and by-product approaches to the origins of religion, (2) explains a variety of empirical observations that have not received adequate attention, and (3) generates novel predictions. Converging lines of evidence drawn from diverse disciplines provide empirical support while at the same time encouraging new research directions and opening up new questions for exploration and debate.

Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America

Abstract: One of the first studies of the organization, life and meaning of the "Nation of Islam" and, by extension, all Black Nationalist movements, this classic work dispels the still common conception that the movement functioned primarily for political purposes. By observing the daily life of its members, Essien-Udom demonstrates that the "Nation of Islam" served primarily as a means for poor urban blacks to attain a national identity, a sense of ethnic consciousness, and empowerment in a society that denied them these privileges. Black Nationalism continues to hold profound implications for our understanding of the appeal of Black Nationalism as an ideology and a political force. "An excellent standard treatment of black nationalist belief and practice in the 50's." --Michael Eric Dyson, New York Times Book Review "This is an absorbing exercise in first class reporting...In the light of his scrupulous fairness, the book is another illustration of how the press prejudges a story. And most provocatively, Essien-Udom has emphasized that even after the current campaigns for wide-scale integration are won, there will be an even wider chasm between the 'liberated' Negro middle class and the rootless Negro poor." --Nat Hentoff,Commonweal

Archaeology and the history of early Islam: The first seventy years

Abstract: The rarity of material evidence for the religion of Islam during the e rst seventy years of the hijra (622-92 CE) has been used to attack the traditional positivist account of the rise of Islam However, the earliest declarations of Islam are to be found on media produced by the early Islamic state It is therefore mistake to read too much signi e cance into the absence of such declarations prior to the formation of that state by ® Abd al-Malik (685-705 CE) There is little prospect that archaeology will uncover new evidence of Islam from the e rst seventy years Le manque de donne es mate rielles sur la religion de lO Islam pendant les sept premie res de cennies de lO he gire (622-92) a e te utilise pour re futer la the orie positiviste traditionelle de

The Nation of Islam, an American Millenarian Movement

Abstract: This absorbing clearly written study views the Nation of Islam as a millenarian movement that underwent a fateful transformation when its prophecies concerning the end failed. The result was the transformation of the Nation, after death of Elijah Muhammad, into two quite different entities. The first is the American Muslim Mission...led by Wallace D. Muhammad...The second is reconstituted Nation of Islam under the guidance of the controversial Minister Louis Farrakhan...a timely and convincing account that sheds light on an important era in the history of African-American religion.

Negotiating a Hybrid Identity : a Discursive Analysis of Higher Education Muslim ESL Learners

Abstract: The primary objective of this research study is to map out the nature of hybridity of ESL learners/speakers that results from their resistance and/or acceptance of Western cultural discourses that are embedded within English curriculum texts taught to Muslim ESL learners at higher educational institutes in Pakistan.