Institute of Ismaili Studies

About: Institute of Ismaili Studies is a education organization based out in London, United Kingdom. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Islam & Hierarchy. The organization has 37 authors who have published 65 publications receiving 319 citations.

The sacred music of Islam: Samā’ in the Persian Sufi tradition

Abstract: The creation of a specific liturgy, composed of prayer, litanies, singing, music and sometimes dance, known as Samā’, integrating music into the practice of meditation, is an important aspect of the contemplative life in Islamic Sufism. The essay explores the basic theological and mystical concepts of Samā’. Part 1 discusses audition in Islamic theology, where three schools of scholars existed: advocates, adversaries and moderates. The views of the advocates—the Sufis—are discussed, and in particular, key works on Samā’ by the Persians Ahmad b. Muhammad al‐Tūsi and Abū Hāmid al‐Ghazāli . Part 2 explores the idea of the Sacred and the preconditions which the mystic must observe while listening to music, analysing Tūsi and Ghazāli's understanding of the three conditions (“right time, place and company”) of Samā’. Part 3 examines the relation of music to poetry in Islamic mysticism. Part 4 explores the relation of Koranic cantillation to singing, poetry and Samā’. Part 5 discusses the contemplative fruits of...

The Dilemma of Islam as School Knowledge in Muslim Education

Abstract: In the contemporary period, the persistence of the dual system of state and madrasa education in many Muslim countries has raised for policymakers the dilemma of what form Islam ought to assume as a pedagogic category in these contexts. At one extreme, in the syllabi of traditionalist madrasas, we find Islam being deployed as an overarching epistemological framework within which all other forms of knowledge are subsumed. At the other end, predominantly in state and private schools, Islam is presented as one discipline among a range of others. Between these two extremes lie other modes that approach Islam from interdisciplinary or ancillary perspectives. This paper proposes to examine, using constructs from the sociology of the curriculum, the political and epistemological implications of the integrative and disciplinary modes of pedagogic Islam pertaining to contrasting Muslim contexts where tensions between these two forms of education have given rise to polarised discourses on the curriculum in the post...

Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism

Abstract: Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2010, x+333 pp. This collection of essays is the product of a symposium held at Duke University in 2006 entitled ‘...

Gender Hierarchy in the Qur'ān: Medieval Interpretations, Modern Responses

Abstract: This book explores how medieval and modern Muslim religious scholars ('ulamā') interpret gender roles in Qur'ānic verses on legal testimony, marriage, and human creation. Citing these verses, medieval scholars developed increasingly complex laws and interpretations upholding a male-dominated gender hierarchy; aspects of their interpretations influence religious norms and state laws in Muslim-majority countries today, yet other aspects have been discarded entirely. Karen Bauer traces the evolution of their interpretations, showing how they have been adopted, adapted, rejected, or replaced over time, by comparing the Qur'ān with a wide range of Qur'ānic commentaries and interviews with prominent religious scholars from Iran and Syria. At times, tradition is modified in unexpected ways: learned women argue against gender equality, or Grand Ayatollahs reject sayings of the Prophet, citing science instead. This innovative and engaging study highlights the effects of social and intellectual contexts on the formation of tradition, and on modern responses to it.