Transcultural Islam Research Network

JULY 27, 2012:

Duke University’s Rubenstein Library has acquired a copy of Kitab Dala’il al-Khairat wa Shawariq al-Anwar fi Dhikr al-Salah ‘ala al-Nabi al-Mukhtar [Guidebook of Benefits and Illuminations of Prayers to the Chosen Prophet]. The Dala’il al-Khairat of al-Jazuli (Al-Jazuli, Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad ibn Sulaymana, d. 1465) is one of the most popular devotional works in Islam, comprising a cycle of prayers to the prophet Muhammad. The manuscript is Arabic written in the Maghrebi script and likely was created in North Africa in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. Its calligraphy and ornamentation are beautiful witnesses to a text of surpassing importance in the Muslim faith. READ MORE

Translations from the writings of Jalal al-Din Dawani: Commentary on Suhrawardi’s “Temples of Light” (Sharḥ hayākil al-nūr, Book 5; Arabic), and Flashes of Illumination on Praiseworthy Ethics, or the Jalalian Ethics (Akhlāq-i Jalālī, Book 4; Persian), for An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia, ed. S. H. Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi, vol. 4, From the School of Illumination to Philosophical Mysticism (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 93-120, 121-135.

Carl Ernst, UNC Chapel Hill Professor of Religious Studies, is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. He is co-director with Professor of Sociology Charles Kurzman of UNC Chapel Hill’s Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations.

“‘A Little Indicates Much’: Structure and Meaning in the Prefaces of Rumi’s Mathnawi(Books I-III).” In Wondrous Words: The Poetic Mastery of Jalal al-Din Rumi, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).

“Wakened by the Dove’s Trill: Structure and Meaning in the Arabic Preface of Rumi’s Mathnawi, Book IV.” In The Philosophy of Ecstasy: Rumi and the Sufi Tradition, ed. Leonard Lewisohn (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012).

by KIMBER WILLIAMS for EMORY (UNIVERSITY) REPORT on JULY 10, 2012:

What feeds anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world?

It’s a question that has grown in volume since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, generating policy debate and cultural assumptions, but few hard answers.

However, a new study by Emory political science researcher Drew Linzer and Lisa Blaydes, of Stanford University, offers fresh insight, suggesting that American animosity in the Islamic world may have more to do with the intensity of conflicting factions within local Islamic politics than individual attitudes toward American culture, policies and diplomacy. FULL ARTICLE

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