research on islam book

Islamic Books and e-Books

In the Spotlight

Yaqeen Book

Qur’an 30 for 30: Thematic Tafsir

Other e-books.

A Du’a a Day: Prophetic Prayers for Ramadan

Deeper into Dhikr: A Companion Guide

In the Voice of Jannah

The Shukr Lifestyle - A Gratitude Journal

Your Lord Has Not Forsaken You: Addressing the Impact of Trauma on Faith

The Final Prophet: Proofs for the Prophethood of Muhammad

Habits to Win

Prophetic Prayers for Relief and Protection

Additional resources.

Attaching to Allah – 10 Du’as for Dhul Hijjah

Ramadan Du’as on Repeat Printable List

Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research Journal Vol. 1 No. 1

Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research Journal Vol. 1 No. 2

Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research Journal Vol. 2 No. 1

Recommended reads.

recommended

Judgement Day: Deeds That Light the Way

For Those Left Behind: Guidance on Death and Grieving

Meeting Muhammad

The Prophet of Mercy

Prayers of the Pious

Allah Loves

Angels in Your Presence

40 on Justice

Misquoting Muhammad

Slavery & Islam

Hadith: Muhammad's Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World

Themes of the Quran

Productivity Principles of Umar II

Ranks of the Divine Seekers

Diseases of the Heart and Their Cure

When the Stars Prostrated: Meditations on Surat Yusuf

Earning Barakah

Reflecting on the Names of Allah

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Dr Farhan Ahmad Nizami

Dr Afifi Al-Akiti 

Dr Moin Ahmad Nizami

Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies

About the journal

The Journal of Islamic Studies is a multi-disciplinary publication dedicated to the scholarly study of all aspects of Islam and of the Islamic world …

Qurʾānic and Ḥadīth Studies virtual issue

Journal of Islamic Studies are proud to share their latest virtual issue on the theme of ‘Qurʾānic and Ḥadīth Studies’.

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Networks and Travel Virtual Issue

Browse this virtual issue from the Journal of Islamic Studies on the theme of ‘Networks and Travel’.

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The Journal of Islamic Studies is accepting papers on the scholarly study of all aspects of Islam and of the Islamic World. In particular, papers dealing with history, geography, political science, economics, anthropology, sociology, law, literature, religion, philosophy, international relations, environmental, and developmental issues are welcomed.

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Handbook of Empirical Research on Islam and Economic Life

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Contributors include: A.U.F. Ahmad, M.S. Akhtar, E. Aksak, M.A.M. Al JanabiIhsan Isik, N. Alam, F. Alqahtani, S.O. Alhabshi, C. Aloui, S.B. Anceaur, D. Ashraf, M. Asutay, A.F. Aysan, O. Bacha, A. Barajas, M. Bekri, C. De Anca, G. Dewandaru, M. Disli, A.O. El Aloui, M. Farooq, K. Gazdar, R. Grassa, H.B. Hamida, M.K. Hassan, R. Hayat, C.M. Henry, J. Howe, M.H. Ibrahim, M. Jahrom, K. Jouaber-Snoussi, F. Kamarudin, M. Khawaja, H. Khan, K. Khan, O. Krasicka, M.T. Majeed, N.A.K. Malim, M. Masih, A. Massara, D.G. Mayes, A.K.M. Meera, M. Mehri, C. Mertzanis, H.S. Min, M.A. Mobin, Y.A. Nainggolan, M. Naseri, A.M. Nassir, A. Ng, S. Nowak, M.S. Nurzaman, M. Omran, H. Ozturk, M. Rashid, M.E.S.M. Rashid, R.M. Shafi, A. Shah, N.S. Shirazi, F. Sufian, G.M.W. Ullah, P. Verhoeven, L. Weill, S. Zaheer, S.R.S.M. Zain, A. Zarka

• ISBN-10 1784710725
• ISBN-13 978-1784710729
• Publisher Edward Elgar Publishing
• Publication date January 31, 2017
• Language English
• Dimensions 6.5 x 1.75 x 9.5 inches
• Print length 784 pages
• See all details

Editorial Reviews

'The Handbook of Empirical Research on Islam and Economic Life presents the reader with the fruits of research in a new area in the RF (Riba Free) Islamic economics, banking and finance. This book is a great addition to the library of the field. I enjoyed reading many of the empirical findings contributed by the book. The research papers included in the book are masterfully assembled by Professor Kabir Hassan: a recognized pioneering and prolific author, teacher and researcher in economics in general and in RF (Riba Free) Islamic economics, banking and finance. Most published books in the field focus on the theory and/or application of Islamic life, economics and finance. The reader of this great new book will enjoy getting introduced to a new dimension of research dealing with empirical findings. These findings can be used by theoreticians to ponder on and practitioners to apply in their business.' --Yahia Abdul Rahman, Founder of the LARIBA System - LARIBA Finance and LARIBA Bank of Whittier

About the Author

Product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Edward Elgar Publishing (January 31, 2017)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 784 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1784710725
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1784710729
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 3.29 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.75 x 9.5 inches

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Find materials in our library

In our Catalog Advanced Search, select Subject from the drop down menu and search on terms such as 

• Muḥammad, Prophet, -632
• Islam 
• Islamic (Islamic civilization, Islamic law, Islamic ethics, Islamic philosophy, Islamic art, Islamic countries, Islamic calendar, etc)

Combine with terms representing particular concepts, places, periods, etc and refine by publication date and language. Or search on names of specific persons / figures / scholars, works, movements, communities, etc -- for example

• islam AND faith
• Qurʼan AND study teaching AND "west africa" 
• islam AND politics AND afghanistan
• islam AND identity AND bosnia
• islamic law AND ottoman
• hanafi AND influence
• islamic calendar AND mughal 
• astronomy AND islam
• al-ghazali (ghazzali) AND god 
• "sahih al-bukhari" 
• "al-tariqah al-muhammadiyah"
• suhrawardi AND sufism AND history
• anti-muslim [racism, prejiduce, bias, sentiment, politics, etc]
• islamophobia

Use ALA-LC Romanization / Transliteration for terms in non-Latin scripts keeping in mind that it is not necessary to enter full diacritics (eg "naqshabandiyah" "shiah" "ihya ulum al-din" rather than "Naqshabandīyah"  "Shīʻah" "Iḥyāʼ ʻulūm al-dīn")

You might also wish to browse the titles with call numbers BP1-BP 253, D198-199.7, DS36.85+, DS38.14+

• Catalog Advanced Search

For a broader search across book and article length literature, try Library Articles Search

• Library Articles Search

Assorted Online Bibliographic Resources

• Index Islamicus (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window Indexes materials on Islam, the Middle East, and the entire Muslim world from periodicals, monographs, and other collections in European languages. I

Other discipline-specific literature databases may also be useful --- Anthropology Plus, CINAHL, Political Science Complete, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, etc

Reference Works & Portals

• Encyclopaedia of Islam Platform for cross-searching Encyclopaedia of Islam titles, including: Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936) (EI), Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (EI2), Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Historical Atlas of Islam
• Historical Atlas of Islam
• Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān Online This link opens in a new window Encyclopaedic dictionary of qur'ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis.
• Dictionary of Qurʾanic Usage This link opens in a new window A comprehensive, fully-researched and contextualized Arabic-English dictionary of Qur'anic usage.
• Arabic-English dictionary of Qur'anic usage (Elsaid M. Badawi, Muhammad Abdel Haleem)
• A concordance of the Qurʾan (Hanna E. Kassis)
• The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies (2020)
• The Blackwell companion to the Qurʼan (2006 ed.)
• How to read the Qurʼan a new guide, with select translations (Carl Ernst)
• Quran.com (THE NOBLE QUR'AN) Verse by verse Qur'anic text with numerous translations and recitations
• Interkulturelle Koran-Bibliographie Available online. Bibliographic compendium of Qur'anic translations, studies, articles and collections in a range of European and non-European languages. Includes citations for 6542 titles.
• GloQur The Global Qur’an القرآن العالمي "GloQur looks at Qur’an translations as a central medium through which Muslims across the globe today approach their faith."
• The Qurʾan (translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem)
• The Quran Beheld (A new English translation from the Arabic by Nuh Ha Mim Keller) Introduction, search, and recordings of the tafsir readings of Nuh Ha Mim Keller with Sheikh Ali Hani (uploaded as completed). Detailed and comprehensive tafsir of each verse of the Quran to be added to the site as well.
• Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane This link opens in a new window Online version of Wensinck's Concordance, an essential reference work for hadith literature
• Encyclopedia of canonical ḥadīth (Juynboll)
• The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith (2020)
• Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements (Brill) "The Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements offers a multinational study of Islam, its variants, influences, and neighbouring movements, from a multidisciplinary range of scholars." Open access
• Oxford Handbook of Islam and Politics Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art & Architecture Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Encyclopedias of the Islamic World: Digital Collection Selection of articles on Islamic beliefs, institutions, movements, practices, and peoples previously published on the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam and Women Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Science, and Technology in Islam Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Islamic World : Past and Present (2004) Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford History of Islam (1999) Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Dictionary of Islam (2003) Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online
• Makers of Contemporary Islam (2001) Explores the lives and thought of some of contemporary Islam's most important thinkers. Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• What everyone needs to know about Islam (2011) Question-and-answer guide by John L. Esposito. Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Oxford Reference | Religion Cross-search many titles previously on the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online platform
• Bibliographies (Formation of Islam) Bibliographies on administration, taxation, and agriculture and landholding as well as lists of fiscal terminology and governors attested in papyri (from the Formation of Islam project)
• Onomasticon Arabicum (OA) Online database with more than 27000 scholars and celebrities from the first Muslim millenary. Its entries in Arabic are compiled from ancient biographical dictionaries, a veritable treasure of Islamic culture. Crossed search allows separate interrogation on any of the different elements of the Arabo-Muslim names, dates and places, reconstructing the identity of a person, trace ways of knowledge transmission and frame historical contexts.
• Islamic Philosophy Online Books and articles on Islamic philosophy, ranging from the classical texts in the canon of Islamic philosophy to modern works of Muslim philosophy
• Teaching Islam (2003) Previously part of the now retired Oxford Islamic Studies Online
• Islam and Islamic Studies Resources (Alan Godlas, UGA) Information for the study of Islam, Qur'an, hadith, the Sunnah, Shi'ism and Heterodox Movements Sufism and Sufi Poetry Islam in the modern world, militant Islam, jihad, Islamist or extremist Muslims, and terrorism, Islam in Iraq, Muslim women, Islamic art, architecture, music, as well as Islamic history, theology, philosophy, and Arabic and other Islamic languages such as Persian, and religion in general.
• Guide to Research in Islamic Art and Architecture (András Riedlmayer, Harvard) "This research guide is divided into two sections. One section presents online and printed bibliographies, indexes, and other reference works and surveys organized according to subject or artistic medium (e.g. Architecture; Arts of the Book; Ceramics; Metalwork; Museums and Collections, etc.). A separate section presents research tools organized according to geographic or cultural region (e.g. works on the art and architecture of Central Asia; South Asia; Iran; Egypt; Islamic Spain, etc.)."
• Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR) Compilation of open access bibliographic resources including online journals, archives, digital libraries, etc. Keyword search by topic or use tags to navigate.
• Islamic Liberation Theology Reading List (Asad Dandia and Sharmin Hossain)
• The Islamic Liberation Reading List (Asad Dandia) "The Islamic Liberation Reading List aims to offer both a contribution and a critique to help readers grapple with our contemporary global crises, during where movements animated by racial, economic, gender, and environmental injustice (among others) have mobilized in the pursuit of a better world."
• The Great Debate: Critical Race Theory and Muslims | Sapelo/Maydan Series on CRT
• The MAYDAN "an online publication of Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies at George Mason University, offering expert analysis on a wide variety of issues in the field of Islamic Studies for academic and public audiences alike, and serving as a resource hub and a platform for informed conversation, featuring original articles and visual media from diverse perspectives."
• Sapelo Square "...Sapelo Square intervenes in the marginalization and erasure of Black Muslims in the public square by building an online forum that places Black Muslims at the center. Our mission is to celebrate and analyze the experiences of Black Muslims in the United States to create new understandings of who they are, what they have done, and why that matters."
• Black Islam Syllabus (curated by Kayla Renée Wheeler) "The goal of this project is to provide teachers, professors, researchers, journalists, and people interested in learning more about Islam with resources on Black Muslims to promote a more inclusive approach to the study of Islam..."
• Race and Slavery in Muslim Societies Bibliography (Margari Aziza)
• #IslamophobiaIsRacism Syllabus "ISLAMOPHOBIA IS RACISM Resource for Teaching & Learning about anti-Muslim Racism in the United States. Inspired by the #FergusonSyllabus, the #StandingRockSyllabus, the #BlackIslamSyllabus and others, this reading list provides resources for teaching and learning about anti-Muslim racism in the United States."
• Halal Metropolis "Halal Metropolis is a series of exhibitions that explores the facts, fictions and the imaginaries of the Muslim population(s) in Detroit and South-east Michigan as viewed through historical and archival research, documentation of current conditions, and explorations of future desires." Stories, conversations, exhibition series, podcast, interviews, etc
• Muslims of the Midwest Digital resource documenting "some of the varied experiences of Muslims in the American Midwest through testimonies across generational, gender, geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic differences." Collects recordings of interviews conducted between 2015 and 2019 as well as links to online exhibits, films, essays, reports, and other resources.
• Muslims in Canada Archives "MiCA is an archive collection and platform that is uniquely designed to document and share the experiences of Muslims in Canada."

Text Collections / Corpora

• Corpus Coranicum Project which aims to document the text of the Qur'an in the form in which it has been transmitted in manuscripts and in oral transmission; to create a comprehensive database of Jewish, Christian, Old Arabian and other intertexts of individual passages of the Qur'an; and to provide a detailed commentary on the text
• Paleocoran Studying variant readings and spellings in Egyptian Quranic Manuscripts (7th to 10th century AD) for a better understanding of the history of the Quran
• Quranic Arabic Corpus Annotated linguistic resource which shows the Arabic grammar, syntax and morphology for each word in the Holy Quran. The corpus provides three levels of analysis: morphological annotation, a syntactic treebank and a semantic ontology
• Qur’an Tools Formerly Quran Gateway, now open access. "A powerful piece of software that enables more efficient critical study of the Qur’an. It combines a host of ground-breaking features such as a powerful Qur’an browser, fast and flexible searching, customization options, and one-click access to beautiful charting and analysis functions. Qur’an Tools also contains a wealth of tools to help you explore Qur’anic vocabulary, plus resources for easy formulaic analysis and other scholarly analysis."
• Sunnah.com Database of several hadith collections searchable in Arabic and English taken from numerous unspecified editions
• HadithCollection.com Portal for browsing and searching several hadith collections in English translation
• Hadis Veritabanı (Hadith Database) Searchable database of hadith, transmitters, etc (in Turkish)
• كشاف البخاري Database compiling manuscripts, reading notes, publications, etc related to Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī
• ALTAFSIR.COM Open access online collection of commentary, translation, recitation and other Qur’anic resources, Arabic & English
• SHARIASource (Harvard Law School) Platform to house primary sources of Islamic law, organize the people to critically analyze them, and promote research to inform academic and public discourse about Islamic law
• المكتبة الشاملة | Shamela Thousands of Arabic books (including various editions of important classical texts) available for browsing, download, search
• المكتبة الشاملة الحديثة مشروع تقني يهدف لتوفير خدمات بحث وتصفح متقدمة لمحتوى المكتبة الشاملة
• المكتبة الوقفية Vast collection of digitized Arabic books and manuscripts relevant for Islamic studies including numerous classical texts
• شبكة المشكاة الاسلامية Platform with a multitude of digitized Islamic texts (drawn from various editions) and reference works on a range of subjects including tafsīr, fiqh, ʻaqāʾid, and more
• nusus | corpus of digitized Arabic texts "Nuṣūṣ is a corpus of digitized Arabic texts designed to fill gaps in extant digital corpora. Originally a collection of early Sufi and Sufi-adjacent texts, nuṣūṣ has since expanded to include early works on kalām, falsafa, and Christian theology."
• Persian E-Books Miras Maktoob This link opens in a new window Persian and Arabic books on Islamic history and culture, published by the Written Heritage Research Institute (Miras Maktoob).
• E-Kitap (PDF) Kütüphanesi Publications of the Türkiye Yazma Eserler Kurumu Başkanlığı available for browsing and PDF download
• Muftiships Web Archive Preserves websites of Muftis and leading jurists from the Islamic world. "These websites cover the responses of leading judicial authorities to current events in their respective countries (and in some cases well beyond)."
• African Online Digital Library "AODL provides free universal access to cultural heritage materials from and about African countries and communities. It brings together tens of thousands of digitized photographs, videos, archival documents, maps, interviews and oral histories in numerous African languages, many of which are contained in curated thematic galleries and teaching resources." Including numerous resources on traditions of Islam in Africa

Scholarly Societies and Initiatives

• Muslim Middle East and Islamic Studies Graduate Studies Academic listserv for Muslim scholars in Islamic Studies and related disciplines.
• International Qur'anic Studies Association (IQSA) Learned society dedicated to the study of the Qur’an. Holds conferences around the world and publishes cutting-edge research and scholarship
• North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (NAAIMS) Organization whose mission is to provide a forum for the production and dissemination of academic research on Islam and the diverse lived experience of Muslims
• American Academy of Religion Learned society and professional association of teachers and research scholars in the field of religion
• Historians of Islamic Art Association (HIAA) "...dedicated to promoting the study and teaching of the art, architecture and archaeology of Islamic cultures world-wide. HIAA also connects colleagues engaged in scholarly and professional activities related to Islamic art, and provides information about current programs and resources vital to the field’s continued development"
• GloQur The Global Qur’an القرآن العالمي "GloQur looks at Qur’an translations as a central medium through which Muslims across the globe today approach their faith. We study the historical, exegetical, socio-political and linguistic dimensions of this genre throughout the modern period, which has been characterized by globalizing forces as well as the rise of print and new media. GloQur thus bridges the gap between philological, historical and anthropological approaches to modern and contemporary Muslim engagement with the Qur’an."
• Stanford Muslim Mental Health & Islamic Psychology Lab "...academic home for the study of mental health in the context of the Islamic faith and Muslim populations. The Lab aims to provide intellectual resources to clinicians, researchers, trainees, educators, community, and religious leaders working with or studying Muslims."
• Digital Lab for Islamic Visual Culture & Collections "Based at the University of Edinburgh, the Digital Lab brings researchers and students together to work on creative, interdisciplinary projects in collaboration with partners in the games and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sectors"

Digital Scholarship / Digital Humanities (DS / DH)

• Resource List (Middle East Librarians Association Digital Scholarship Interest Group = MELA DSIG) "An evolving sampling of digital scholarship related communication channels, collections, corpora, training opportunities, tools (including Arabic OCR), projects & initiatives - by no means an exhaustive list. We will continue to expand the list & invite your suggestions for additional projects & other resources"
• MESA Guidelines for Evaluating Digital Scholarship
• Text and Data Mining Support (U-M Library)

Sampling of Tools, Initiatives, & Projects

(for an even richer sampling, see MELA DSIG Resource List)

• Jedli Search Tool "Toolbox that contains several distinct search functions. It allows you to perform customized search operations looking for any number of words, or combinations thereof, in Arabic texts. Jedli has three different search options: the indexer, the highlighter, and the context search."
• Islamicate Digital Humanities Network (IDHN) "network of scholars with a research focus on Islamicate Digital Studies. This includes scholars from the Humanities, Computer Sciences, Computational Linguistics as well as librarians and archivists that work on topics that relate to Middle Eastern politics and culture, Islam as a religion, Arabic, Persian, and other Islamicate languages, et al. and that are already using or are interested in using digital methods for their research..."
• Islamicate Digital Humanities
• Digital Islamic Humanities Project (Elias Muhanna, Brown University)
• Open Islamicate Texts Initiative (OpenITI)
• Middle East Librarians Association | Digital Scholarship Interest Group "The MELA Digital Scholarship Interest Group (MELA DSIG) is focused on supporting our community of colleagues working in MENA librarianship as we engage with digital humanities / digital scholarship."

Arabic script OCR

See also the various publications and presentations from the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria, Egypt) and Qatar Computing Research Institute. Important existing tools are QATIP, Sakhr, NovoVerus, and Kraken

• Automatic Transcription of Historical Handwritten Arabic Texts (British Library)
• QATIP – An Optical Character Recognition System for Arabic Heritage Collections in Libraries (2016)
• Important New Developments in Arabographic Optical Character Recognition (OCR) (2017) Maxim Romanov, Matthew Thomas Miller, Sarah Bowen Savant, Benjamin Kiessling. (2017). "Important New Developments in Arabographic Optical Character Recognition (OCR)" arXiv:1703.09550
• The Ground Truth: Transcribing historical Arabic Scientific Manuscripts for OCR research (2018)
• The Open Islamicate Texts Initiative Arabic-script OCR Catalyst Project (OpenITI AOCP) (2019)
• MELA DSIG Virtual roundtable on Arabic script OCR / HTR (1 October 2020)
• Advances and Limitations in Open Source Arabic-Script OCR: A Case Study (2021) Kiessling, B. & Kurin, G. & Miller, M. T. & Smail, K., (2021) “Advances and Limitations in Open Source Arabic-Script OCR: A Case Study”, Digital Studies / Le champ numérique 11(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.16995/dscn.8094

Transliteration / Romanization

Transliteration (called Romanization when converting to Latin characters) is essential for searching in catalogues, databases, indexes, full text collections, etc. Systems vary considerably by publication / electronic resource / scholarly community / language of influence. Most North American library catalogues (including our local catalogue) use the Library of Congress (ALA / LC) Romanization system . For comparison of various transliteration systems, see the samples linked below along with Thomas T. Pedersen’s comparison tables . 

Sampling of Transliteration / Romanization Systems

• ALA / LC Romanization Tables
• Arabica (Arabic script)
• DIN 31635 / DMG Transliteration Standard (Arabic script)
• Encyclopædia Iranica Transliteration of Persian and Arabic (Arabic script) Also discusses preferred transliteration systems for Turkish, Avestan, Old Persian, Middle Persian, Chinese, Russian, and Tajik.
• IJMES Transliteration System for Arabic, Persian and Turkish (Arabic script)
• Hebrew Transliteration (Hebrew script) List of several schemas for Romanization of Hebrew from The Open Siddur Project, including ALA-LC, SBL Handbook of Style, Academy of Hebrew Language, etc.)

Transliteration Comparison Tables (Thomas T. Pedersen)

• Arabic (Arabic script) | transliteration comparison
• Persian (Arabic script) | transliteration comparison
• Ottoman Turkish (Arabic script) | transliteration comparison

Five books you should read to better understand Islam

Subscribe to the center for middle east policy newsletter, william mccants william mccants former brookings expert, public policy manager - google @will_mccants.

December 15, 2015

After a recent talk about my ISIS book, one of the audience members asked, “What can I read to help me not hate Islam?” I don’t think it’s a scholar’s job to persuade others to love or hate any culture. But the question was sincere, so I suggested some books that have helped me better understand Islam. I also put the question to Twitter . Below is some of what I and others came up with.

Two cautions before we dive in: First, the list is obviously not exhaustive and I’ve left out overly apologetic books—in my experience, they only increase the skeptical reader’s suspicion that she’s being suckered. Second, people on Twitter gave me great suggestions but I’ve only included those I’ve read and can vouch for:

Muhammad and the Quran: Two of the best books you’ll ever read about Muhammad and the Quran are also the shortest: The Koran: A Very Short Introduction and Muhammad , both by Michael Cook. He writes with great wit and deep scholarship.

Other scriptures: Most non-Muslims are unaware that Islamic scripture is more than the Quran. It includes a vast collection of words and deeds attributed to Muhammad by later authors. These scriptures are sort of like the Gospels, and Muslim scholars fight over their authenticity like Christian scholars debate about the accuracy of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These extra Islamic scriptures contain most of the teachings that make modern people (Muslims included) uncomfortable about Islam. One of the world’s experts on these scriptures, Jonathan Brown, has written a terrific book about them, Misquoting Muhammad .

Rumi: The medieval mystic’s poems about life and death are beautiful and moving, no matter your belief system. I loved his poems so much as an undergrad that I went on to study Middle Eastern languages just so I could read his work in the original. I’m glad I first viewed Islam through the eyes of Rumi and not a group like ISIS. Neither is solely representative of Islam but both draw heavily on its scriptures and reach such different conclusions.

The Bible: Many people recommended reading the Bible to decrease hate of Islam. The nerd in me leapt to the least obvious conclusion, “Ah, good idea! Reading some of the rough stuff in the Hebrew Bible is a good way to put a kindred ancient religion like Islam in perspective.” But they meant something a little less complicated:

@will_mccants @jenanmoussa Read the bible and learn to love and not to hate. 🙂 — Dirk Lont (@Denkkracht1) December 12, 2015

It’s a worthy perspective today no matter your faith.

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Article contents

Islam and art: an overview.

• Wendy Shaw Wendy Shaw Professor, Art History of Islamic cultures, Free University Berlin
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.783
• Published online: 25 March 2021

Modern terms like “religion” and “art” offer limited access to the ways in which nonverbal human creativity in the Islamic world engages the “way of life” indicated by the Arabic word din , often translated as religion. Islam emerged within existing paradigms of creativity and perception in the late antique world. Part of this inheritance was a Platonic and Judaic concern with the potentially misleading power to make images, often misinterpreted in the modern world as an “image prohibition.” Rather, the image function extended beyond replication of visual reality, including direct recognition of the Divine as manifest in the material and cultural world. Music, geometry, writing, poetry, painting, devotional space, gardens and intermedial practices engage people with the “way of life” imbued with awareness of the Divine. Rather than externally representing religious ideas, creativity fosters the subjective capacity to recognize the Divine. Flexible enough to transcend the conventions of time and place over the millennium and a half since the inception of Islam, these modes of engagement persist in forms that also communicate through the expressive practices of contemporary art. To consider religion and art in Islam means to think about how each of these categories perpetually embodies, resists, and recreates the others.

• contemporary art
• calligraphy
• intermediality

Introduction

The relationship between religion and art in Islam invites some basic questions: How to define Islam? What is art? How does the relationship between Islam and art inform the many ethnic and religious cultures of the regions where Islam has played a prominent role.

This article considers Islam as a way of life ( din ), distinct from the modern concept of “religion.” 1 Islam emerges as the accumulation, variety, and mutual interaction of practices, texts, and discourses accruing over time and space with reference to foundational texts. 2 These texts are the Qurʾan, understood as the sacred word of the Divine, miraculously passed to the Prophet Muhammad ( 571–632 ce ) at the inception of Islam; and the Hadith, the record of the prophet’s words and deeds, transmitted through his companions ( as-sahaba ) and compiled in the 9th century . 3 The word Islam derives from the root consonants “ s-l-m,” with associations including peace, greeting (familiar from salam in Arabic and shalom in Hebrew), and willing submission of the self to the Divine. One who engages in this practice is Muslim.

Far from natural or universal, “art” is a modern European concept distinguishing objects created with intellectual ambitions from crafts, appealing primarily to sensory pleasure over utility, preferring vision to other senses, and ultimately enabling fetishized commodification. 4 While premodern sources do not address art as such, Islamic cultures have encountered and incorporated the concept as part of global modernity. This article also recognizes that in the predominantly multilingual and multireligious regions under Islamic rule, premodern or modern practitioners nor all subjects engaged with these arts . Rather, much as European Christianity informed the modern label of the “West,” Islam informed a mode of apprehending and creating worldly forms exceeding the boundaries of faith. Acknowledging these anachronisms, this article considers how practices that modern subjects conceive as “art” function through Islamic thought rooted in premodern eras.

Seven sections frame this endeavor. The section “ Mimetic Practices ” outlines the emergence of Islam against the backdrop of existing practices of perception in the late antique world. “ Permissibility of the Image in Islam ” addresses the supposedly universal image prohibition in Islam. “ Impressions of the Divine ” explores music and geometry as representational invocations of the Divine. “ Spatial Invocations of the Sacred ” examines the fixtures of devotional spaces and gardens in Islam. “ Writing and Intermediality in Islamic Discourses ” examines the intermediality enabled by inscription. “ Representational Painting of Religious Subjects ” examines visual modes of religious representation. Finally, “Islam in Contemporary Art” looks at continuities of Islamic expression in modern-day art.

Mimetic Practices

The Qurʾan imparts a mode of engagement with the Divine informing human understanding of creation, including what modern subjects call art. This practice of perception emerged within a broader understanding of mimesis comparable with that of late antiquity, comprising both the visual representation of an absent object and the direct internalization of external stimuli.

Muslims recount that in 610 ce , God informed a humble merchant named Muhammad that he was chosen as the final prophet to renew monotheism in the lineage of Abrahamic prophets, including Moses and Jesus . He received this message during a long meditation in which a voice instructed him to recite/read. Some traditions interpret the description of him as “ummi ” in the Qurʾan as indicating his illiteracy, rendering his capacity to read as miraculous proof of the text’s Divine origin. 5 The voice conveying this extraordinary enunciation was that of an angel , identified as Gabriel in early biographies of the prophet. Over time, the Prophet Muhammad conveyed numerous revelations to a growing group of monotheists. 6 Believing writing would render them vulnerable to desecration, many memorized the verses, while his wives may have written and protected early codices. 7 The fourth political successor ( Caliph) of the prophet, ‘Uthman (r. 644–656), ordered a definitive compilation around 653 CE. This book is the Qurʾan , meaning “the recitation.”

This legacy of inspiration makes the Qurʾan more than a text to be interpreted: its recitation rearticulates the Divine word. For this reason, it is frequently considered untranslatable, although its meanings can be elucidated through any language. 8 While the Qurʾan mentions the eyes and the ears, in numerous passages the heart serves as the primary sensory organ.

The Qurʾan conveys the Divine through this human linguistic vehicle while enjoining the believer to also recognize nonlinguistic signs throughout creation, as expressed in Sura 2:164, which concludes a description of the world and cosmos with the phrase “there are signs in all these for those who use their minds.” 9 The influential Sufi ontology of the sheikh ibn al-Arabi ( 1165–1240 ) constructs no duality corresponding to the European distinction between nature and art, as all is part of the same Divine desire for self-disclosure ( tajalli ), expressed in the Hadith: “I was a hidden treasure and wished to be known.” 10 Also recognizing the Divine (Q17:44), animals enact Divine grace through creativity (such as spiders making webs in Q29:41 or bees building honeycombs in Q16), are affected by music, and often sheltered in purposely built architecture, such as eighteenth-century Ottoman bird houses . 11

Ninety-nine Divine names ( asma al-husna ) elucidate the concept of the Divine. One of these is “the creator,” al-khaliq . As the attribution of a name of Divine characteristics to humans can be understood through the sin of shirk (associating companions to the Divine), human creativity is often interpreted as bestowed through Divine grace in order to honor Divine creation. 12 This is not to say that Muslims necessarily encounter all experience spiritually, but many scholars suggest that the performance of prayer ( sal’at ) through ritual recitation and bowing ( sujud in Arabic or namaz in Turco-Persianate languages, related to the Hindi namaste ) is enhanced through the recognition of and gratitude for the Divine as encountered in the everyday. For example, Muhammad al-Ghazali ( 1058–1111 ), honored as the “renewer of the religion,” wrote that initiated Sufis gained the capacity to penetrate hidden beauties “with the eye of the heart and the light of insight,” and, through analogy, recognize the wonders of Divine creation. 13 Similarly, the Persian poet Hafez ( 1315–1390 ) wrote:

In the meadow, every petal is the book of a different state: What a pity should you remain ignorant of them all! 14

Likewise, according to the artist Dust Muhammad (d. 1564 ), human creativity was part of the “workshop of prayer,” enhancing the recognition of Divine grace as enabling the production of the beautiful. 15

Not unique to Islam, emphasis on internal recognition over outward representation characterized a broader understanding of mimesis in late antique Mediterranean cultures. The Arabian Peninsula nourished a multiethnic society embedded in multiple trading networks. The prophet belonged to the Quraish, one of the leading tribes of the region, worshipping local gods related to those of Mesopotamian and Hellenic antiquity. Many narratives of local Christians and Jews—including the stories of Adam , Abraham , Jonas, and the annunciation and virgin maternity of Mary —are in the Qurʾan, proof for Muslims that the texts of the “peoples of the book” are earlier versions of the same revelation. Such stories were often later depicted in manuscript paintings associated with non-Qurʾanic texts .

Through trade, peoples of the Arabian Peninsula encountered cultures of both the Sassanian Empire in Persia and the Roman Empire as ruled from the city renamed Constantinopolis (modern Istanbul) in 330 ce . At the time of Muhammad’s prophecy, the dominance of Christianity in the Roman Empire (mandated in 529 ce ) was barely a century old. Iconoclastic discussions circulated among eastern Mediterranean Christians , Zoroastrians, and Buddhists. 16 This environment recognized multiple types of mimesis. Outward mimesis resembles our modern understanding of representation: an image that brings forth that which is absent, taking its place through a cognitive deception. Inward mimesis recognizes an aesthetic vehicle that enters the prepared soul of the recipient directly, without intermediary. 17 While modern subjects share this experience, for example in musical affect, it is rarely considered representation. In contrast, like late antique philosophers, early Islamic scholars recognized the outward mimesis of images, but they preferred the direct imprint on the soul. The Islamic philosopher al-Farabi (c. 872–950) indicates such an understanding by saying, “Many people believe that the imitation of something in the most indirect form is preferable to direct imitation, and they hold the creator of those expressions to be the author of a more genuine form of imitation, as well as more skilled and experienced in the art.” 18 Likewise, Ottoman and Safavid texts concerning the arts root the gaze in “the enticement and wonderment of the eye, the embodiment of vision through emotional states and desire,” and articulate the subsequent movement from physical sight to insight. 19

The contrast between the dominance of outward mimesis in modern culture and that of inward mimesis in the premodern Islamic world has encouraged an emphasis on “image prohibition” in the Islamic world, limiting the recognition of the diverse modes of mimetic expression in Islamic culture, including music, space, inscription, and painting.

Permissibility of the Image in Islam

Is there a universal image prohibition in Islam? The simple answer is no. While there have been localized restrictions on the use of images, most commonly in spaces of prayer, figural representation has been part of Islamic cultural production from the earliest sites of archaeological excavation to the contemporary era. Wall painting and sculpture dominated early periods, while manuscript painting became more common later.

In contrast to biblical passages (Leviticus 26:1 and Exodus 20:4–6) explicitly prohibiting image making, the Qurʾan forbids idolatry without mentioning images. The Hadith indicate that images existed in early Islamic society, and that the prophet found them inappropriate in prayer spaces but acceptable if debased through use as carpets or cushions. Islamic ritual uses no votive imagery, relying instead on the direction ( qibla ) of the Kaaba in Mecca , believed to mark the altar God gave to the prophets Adam and Abraham , as the focal point of prayer. Although the prophet is said to have destroyed the idols of the Kaaba (except for a probable icon of Mary and Jesus) during the conquest of Mecca, this never became precedent for the destruction of votive objects in Islamic law. 20

The Hadith most commonly cited to restrict representational images warns that on the day of judgment, makers of images will be enjoined to breathe life into their creations and will be condemned following their inevitable failure. 21 While the utterance is attributed to the prophet, its cultural emphasis articulates political tensions during the early decades of Islam. 22

Modern texts have often grouped Hadith pertaining to images together, constructing an overarching image prohibition and equating images with irreligiosity. 23 However, Hadith alone do not constitute the legal path ( sharia ), often referred to as Islamic law. Rather, noncanonical precedent emerges through jurisprudence ( usul al-fiqh ) interpreting the Qurʾan and the Hadith. While some Islamic scholars have issued nonbinding legal opinions ( fatwa ) prohibiting the use of images (variously defined), uneven implementation of such injunctions results in no normative ban on images. While the rubbing out of figural images on some manuscripts can indicate localized iconoclasm, it can also indicate wear through worship by touching and kissing the image. Another periodic popular response to images has been to sever the head from the body with a drawn line, rendering the image visibly unable to breathe. 24

Early debates about the arts in Islam focused less on visual images than on poetry and music, intertwined as in the antique tradition. The cantillation ( taghbir ) of Qu’ranic verses was not to be understood as song or entertainment, which are strongly associated with the forbidden practices of drinking wine, gambling, and fornication (Q5:90). The Qurʾan also decries the poets (Q26:221–227), but this may have referred to pretenders who claimed false verses of the Qurʾan, akin to sophists and soothsayers in the Platonic tradition. 25 Regardless of their legality, board games like chess and backgammon remained common. Similarly, poetry and music flourished both as entertainment and as part of burgeoning mystical approaches to Islamic spirituality, which often used wine as an embodied metaphor for spiritual transcendence.

Often called Sufism and traced to the inspired nature of Muhammad’s prophecy, such practices aim toward spiritual union with the Divine. 26 As soon as early groups of mystics tried to achieve transcendence of self in ecstasy through ritual music, poetry, and movement, theologians debated the permissibility of their practices, conceiving music as image. Some found all poetry unlawful as it ran the risk of shirk in competing with the Qurʾan, while others considered it as distraction from the Divine articulated in the Qurʾan. Others allowed for spiritual music but banned pleasurable music . Others favored pleasurable music as an enticement to the spiritual. Still others found spiritual music appropriate for novices but irrelevant for sages. For many thinkers, the transgressive similarity of music with alcoholic or sexual intoxication was precisely what enabled its potential as a vehicle for transcendence, a frequent theme in poetry about the beloved.

As in every society, not everybody followed theological mandates. Wine , song, and unsanctioned sexuality persisted—with both spiritual and bodily implications central to poetry in which materiality often functions through transgressions leading to transcendence. 27 Often labeling it as “heterodox,” and opposed to normative “orthodox” positions, contemporary academic and theological scholarship varies concerning the centrality of Sufi interpretations of Islam. 28 Yet Sufism is particularly salient in relation to the arts, as people involved in creative and mercantile fields often worked through guilds associated with Sufi orders. 29

In these early centuries of Islam, representational images existed with differing degrees of access according to region and social class. In the palaces of Muslim rulers, wall paintings and sculptures were common, evident in sites dating to the era of the Umayyad Caliphate ( 690–750 ce ) known as Qusayr Amra (in modern Jordan) and the Khirbat al-Mafjar (in the West Bank of Palestine). In 13th century Anatolia and Iran, branches of the Seljuk Dynasty used figural representation on luxury ceramics , and incorporated figural sculpture in public settings. Conservative scholar ibn Taymiyya ( 1263–1328 ) reviled grave visitation, the worship of relics at shrines, and the practice of displaying images of the prophet and other saints in places of worship in Damascus, indicating that images did at times function votively, probably overlapping with Christian practices. 30

Correlating with the political and cultural tensions following the Mongol invasions, the most famous injunction against images emerges in the 13th century , when Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi ( 1234–1278 ), a scholar of the Shafi’i school of law, wrote:

The authorities of our school and others hold that the making of a picture of any living thing is strictly forbidden and that it is one of the great sins because it is specifically threatened with the grievous punishment mentioned in the Hadith . . . the crafting of it is forbidden under every circumstance, because it imitates the creative activity of God. 31

Yet any fatwa lacks universal mandate. Manuscript painting flourished after the 13th century under the rule of the post-Mongol dynasties who established courtly practices of patronage of theologians and the arts, which proved inspirational for later dynasties throughout the Islamic world. As explored in section VI, this tradition of manuscript painting not only depicted worldly portraits, legends, and histories but also religious narratives, figures, and spiritual themes. Still, the intimacy between religion and creative expression was often most profound in nonfigural arts, explored in the next two sections.

Impressions of the Divine

The modern tendency to address the perceptual world of Islam through the visual and temporal paradigms of “art” and “history” has reduced the recognition of many evocations of the Divine beyond the outward, figural representation presumed normative from a European Christian tradition. Instead, inward mimesis impresses Divine manifestations on the prepared soul through a multitude of perceptual agents.

Several sources inform inward mimesis in the Islamic tradition. The most important is internalization of reception of the Divine word, articulated in the Qurʾanic recitation that constitutes prayer. The Qurʾan asserts its providential origins by repeatedly declaring its inimicability. Resembling the inward mimesis valorized in late antiquity, this miraculous quality, understood as an affective response experienced as tingling or spontaneous weeping, has been extensively theorized as i’jaz . 32

Such internalization reflects the Platonic tradition integrated into Islamic thought through the translation and extensive discussion of ancient texts in the 8th and 9th centuries , the period when Islam quickly grew into a new faith and inspired an enormous political and hegemonic power. The 6th-century consolidation of Christianity led to the rejection of philosophical schools. Philosophers found patronage under the Sassanian ruler Khosrau II (r. 590–628), who viewed the wealth of knowledge enabled through a massive project of translation as restitution of the sacred wisdom given to Zoroaster and stolen from his descendants. Institutionalized translation continued under Islamic rulers after their conquest two centuries later. Translating from intermediate languages, including Pahlavi (Old Persian) and Syriac, as well as Greek, Islamic scholars engaged with a wealth of ancient thought from Greece as well as from India (particularly famous in the wisdom fables known as Kalila and Dimna ). 33

Engagement with ancient legacies contributed to the development of complex mathematics, notably the “reunion of broken parts” ( al-jabr , or algebra) developed by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780–850). Soon after, mathematically based music and geometry , which would pervade much of Islamic culture, entered both praxis and discourse. Already in the early 9th century , al-Kindi (801–866) discussed music through Pythagorean and Platonic ideas of celestial harmonies and similitudes. In his Great Book of Music , al-Farabi (c. 872–950) developed these ideas further through analogy with geometric forms, like the square and the circle, forming an iconography of emotions evoked by notes through comparison with sculptures deified by ancient peoples captivated by outward mimesis. Similarly, the Brethren of Purity, an anonymous group of scholars based in 10th-century Basra and Baghdad, who preserved Platonism through widely disseminated epistles about living in the world Islamically, describe music through comparison with the proportions of oud strings, poetic rhythms, writing, the human body, and planetary movements. During the same period, the scribes ibn Muqla (d. 940) and ibn al-Bawwab (961–1022) developed scripts that followed a geometric model based on predictable proportions of the pen nib. Ibn al-Bawwab enabled the transmission of his method through a didactic poem describing the techniques of making pen and ink, advocating patient imitation, and assuring the joy of achievement to those who write in accordance with Divine guidance. 34

The Brethren described music and geometry alike in terms evoking aniconic representation. The musical image remains imprinted on the soul, much like memorized text, obviating the need for an outward, physical image mediating between the individual and the Divine. Similar transcendent effects were attributed to the interlocking, potentially infinite isometric geometric pattern developing in the 10th to 11th centuries . This was soon recognized as providing easy access to arithmetic and algebra, as well as informing everyday practices such as design and construction. Geometry informed the experimental proof of intromission expressed in the Optics of ibn al-Haytham (965–1040, known as Alhazan in Latin). Engaging contemporary philosophical and theological discussions of atomism and the soul, his thought reflects an atomistic model of perception where sensory organs take in bits of information that are compiled in the soul, which functions as a world-reflecting mirror through the act of contemplation. By imposing a secondary pattern over structural geometries that establish the form of objects, surface geometry has the capacity to invoke the transitory nature of the physical world. 35 The Brethren describe a similar model of perception, suggesting that engagement with the sensory world through physical expressions of mathematics, like music and geometry, cultivate the imagination with a capacity for abstraction. The transmedial metaphors dominating discourses of both music and geometry underscore the importance of this abstract realm, where the categories of the physical world have the capacity to morph from form to form and transcend temporal limits, emphasizing the reminding of the believer of the liminal world between materiality and the Divine.

When understood as agents of inward mimesis, geometry and music function to engage the subject with an awareness of the Divine without requiring subjective agency. Lacking a semiotic system of sign and signified, music and geometry do not represent so much as make the real present. This prepared the subject for internalized engagement of the Divine, whether mystically or through the study of theology. If anything can be considered analogous to outward Christian representations of God, these aural and visual geometries would come closest as they provide a worldly model for a pervasive Divine cosmology even without an intermediary theorization. 36

This system of mathematical pattern, in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms called muqarnas (stalactite vaulting), quickly became a dominant visual idiom in manuscripts , surfaces, and architecture of the Islamic world from Andalusia to Afghanistan and India, peaking in the 13th and 14th centuries . 37 It persists into the modern period, increasingly as a sign of “heritage” that provides an Islamic “look,” commonly evoked in institutions such as museums and airports . Disassociating it from culture and religion, architect Michael Hansmeyer uses it for algorhythmic architectural explorations. Nonetheless, informed by a believer’s informed subjectivity, pattern can evoke spirituality.

Spatial Invocations of the Sacred

Architectural elements and the objects surrounding prayer invoke various aspects of devotional recognition of the Divine. What is this Divine? The Qurʾan, which speaks in the first person and addresses its reader in the second, offers a few clues. While the Qurʾan suggests some anthropomorphic aspects of the Divine (mentioning a face, hands, and feet), understood by some literally and others metaphorically, the Divine is also theorized as transcending human comprehension, alluded to through metaphors of light (Q24:35) and as close as the jugular vein (Q50:16). The ninety-nine Divine names articulate attributes, including the creator, the omnipotent, the omniscient, the peace bringer, the merciful, and the noble. The passage most frequently quoted as describing the Islamic understanding of the Divine is the Light Verse ( Surat al-Nur ).

God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star, fueled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it––light upon light—God guides whoever He will to his Light; God draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything––shining out in houses of worship. (Q24: 35–36) 38

With the development of architecture specific to the Islamic realm in the late 7th century , a niche called a mihrab became the conventional form through which to indicate the direction of prayer ( qibla ) in a space set aside for the purpose of bowing ( s - j - d ) to the Divine called a masjid (corrupted as mosque in English). 39 As the niche in late antiquity generally framed the figure of a deity or ruler, the empty niche, also used at the 3rd-century ce Dura-Europos synagogue , aptly signified articulation of the Divine through recitation. Prayer spaces memorialize the prophet in the form of a staircase beside the mihrab leading to a platform for speaking, representing the stool that the prophet stood or sat on while reciting. The final steps of this minbar are left empty, and the leader ( imam ) of the congregation speaks from the middle of the stairs, below the empty place of the prophet at the top, metaphorically leading the entire Islamic community ( umma ). 40 Mihrabs are often decorated with oil lamps made of glass , ceramic , or rock crystal, which evoke the Light Verse through form, inscription, and the effects of a flickering flame filtering through water. 41 Flat mihrabs , including some on grave markers, often include the image of an oil lamp.

The Kaaba is not only the focal point of all prayer but also of the annual pilgrimage ( Hajj ) enjoined on all Muslims (Q22:27). Although composed of a simple architectural cube, and therefore often omitted from architectural histories of the Islamic world, it has a rich symbolism and is covered with brocaded textiles adorned with golden inscriptions. 42 A similarly ornate ceremonial palanquin ( mahmal ) representing the authority of the sultan over the Holy Places was carried by camel every year preceding the Hajj. Pilgrims might anticipate the spiritual journey through texts such as the Description of the Holy Cities ( Futuh al-Haramayn, 1505–1506) by the Indian scholar Muhi al-Din Lari, translated and popular as well in Ottoman Turkish and Persian. They would often receive illustrated and talismanic documents confirming their completion of the Hajj.

Aside from pointing in the direction ( qibla ) of prayer toward the Kaaba, a mosque has no fixed form. Believers are enjoined to pray three to five times a day anywhere clean, preferably facing the qibla . The need to determine the direction of the qibla and the correct times of prayer has increased the importance of astronomy and related sciences in the Islamic world. The custom of prayer carpets ( sejjadah [sing.], like masjid , also from the root s-j-d) developed so that people could establish a clean, sacral space around themselves during the act of prayer outside of a designated space. The ritual of bowing to the Divine during prayer valorized such carpets, often made with exquisite detail and materials, such as silk. Although not requiring iconography, prayer carpets are often small, like a modern yoga mat. They can mimic the pointed frame of a mihrab, often decorated with the outline of a lamp or sandals of the prophet. Often bequeathed to religious foundations, the layering of carpets in prayer spaces inadvertently served to preserve older carpets, which became a gold mine for 19th-century European collectors. Believers also often use other objects of prayer, such as prayer beads and, among Shi’ites, prayer stones , which do not fit the rubric of “art.”

Believers are enjoined to congregate on Fridays, rendering a congregational space advisable. Built to hold maximal adherents as equal devotees before the Divine, mosques developed as the largest structures in most settled areas. Early mosques often used a basilica form laterally, situating a mihrab on the long wall. Decorative elements reflected regional practices, as in the extensive use of mosaic at the earliest surviving congregational mosque, the Great Mosque of Damascus ( 715 ce ). Multiple faith groups could share sacral spaces. For example, the Great Mosque of Damascus included a shrine dedicated to Nabi Yahya (St. John the Baptist), appealing to Christians as well as Muslims. The first monumental architecture of the Islamic world, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem ( 692 ce ) was built in the form of a Christian martyrium over the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, destroyed by the Romans in 70 ce . This memorialization coincided with the invitation of Jews, banned from the city under Roman rule, to return to the city, suggesting a shared memorial function for the structure. 43

Over time, the dome, already common in Christian churches in the region, developed as an optimal way to cover a large expanse of space without interruption, allowing for undivided, theoretically egalitarian, communal congregation. Muqarnas became a common structural element supporting domes and delineating portals and niches after the 12th century . The potential evocation of Divine order thus circulated in a multitude of forms that built on the same basic elements of geometry, often also producing sonic resonance that enhanced the circulation of recitation that brings the sacred into architecture and is reinforced by frequent use of Qurʾanic quotations on the walls, often surrounding the mihrab and/or as a band around the prayer space. 44

The Qurʾan enjoins the call to prayer to be issued through the human voice before each time of prayer but indicates no architecture for this purpose. According to biographies of the prophet, the first muezzin —the one who calls to prayer—was a man of Ethiopian descent named Bilal ibn Rabah enslaved in Mecca. One of the first converts to Islam, he was tortured by his master,then rescued and manumitted under orders of the Prophet Muhammad, who, recognizing his strong voice, called upon him to lead the ritual call to prayer ( adhan ) . Often considered one of the most important signifiers of Islam in the contemporary world, minaret developed after the 8th century as mosques became central to settlements large enough that the call to prayer, initially issued from a roof, could no longer be heard by the congregation . Over time, minarets came to signify power through the number associated with each mosque, their height, and decoration and varying conventional forms associated with different dynasties.

Mosques can take many forms, often reflecting local architectural materials. Earthen mosques, such as the Larabanga Mosque in Ghana ( 1421 ), have encountered modernization under colonialism enabling monumentality, such as at the Djenne Mosque ( 1907 ) in Mali. 45 Hypostyle mosques, such as the Damascus Great Mosque, the al-Azhar Mosque-University in Cairo (972), or the Great Mosque of Cordoba , use small domes in front of the mihrab amid a sea of columns holding up a transverse prayer hall. Conversely, mosques in the northern provinces of the former Ottoman Empire, such as the Selimiye Mosque of Edirne ( 1574 ), and in Iran, such as the Shah Mosque in Isfahan ( 1629 ), use vast domes, often illuminated with delicate inlaid tile or painting, to evoke Divine grandeur in both the scale of the edifice and the delicacy of its adornment. Echoing these traditions, mosques in South Asia frequently use a wide hypostyle format adorned with multiple domes and tapering minarets, such as the Jama Masjid ( 1656 ) in Delhi or the Badshahi Mosque ( 1673 ) in Lahore.

Generally established through foundations ( waqf ), mosques were essential to the premodern economic and social system of the Islamic world. Before inflation, waqf s enabled the circulation of wealth between classes and between rural and urban regions. A person would establish a foundation by donating in perpetuity the profits from rural lands and caravanserais along with those from urban services like baths and shops (often grouped together in open and covered markets) to a complex of charitable institutions surrounding a mosque, which could include schools, universities, hospitals, and public kitchens, as well as often the tomb of the founder or sheikh of a Sufi collective. Waqf s dedicated to spiritual leaders would often also include smaller prayer spaces and spaces of lodging, libraries, rituals, and the teaching of Sufi orders, often associated with guilds. Together, the profit-making and charitable institutions surrounding a mosque would form the center of a settlement, with multiple centers emerging as cities expanded. The mosque served not only as the center of communal life religiously but also economically and politically, as communal Friday prayers would regularly reinforce the ruler’s dominion. While foundations can be conceived in secular terms, as architectural complexes or urban planning units, they functioned as important elements in socioreligious practice by fostering community, enabling instruction, harboring the sick, and feeding the poor. The dissolution of waqfs under late 19th-century modernizing bureaucratization provided an important source for objects that would be recategorized as “Islamic art.” 46

Contemporary mosque architecture tends to emphasize broad sanctuary spaces through myriad forms enabled by contemporary materials. Some, like the Cologne Central Mosque ( 2017 ), which slices a neotraditional domed design with glass panes, or the Mosque of Light ( 2018 ) by the Mumbai-based architecture firm NUDES for Dubai’s Creek Harbor Development, emphasize the play of light as an iconic Islamic form. Others, like the Vali-e-Asr Mosque ( 2017 ) by Fluid Motion Architects in Tehran, emphasize plain monumental surfaces while eschewing traditional forms such as minarets, domes, or isometric geometries—a move proving controversial to the conservative regime at the time of its completion. Similarly, the Sancaklar Mosque ( 2018 ) by EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture uses stark, partly underground modernism to oppose neo-Ottoman monumentalization characteristic of early 21st-century state patronage in Turkey, as at the Çamlıca Mosque ( 2019 ) in Istanbul.

Just as the Qu’ran is not the only mode of semiotic engagement with the Divine, architecture is not the only spatial engagement with it. Early Islamic buildings, such as the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus ( 715 ce ), included mosaic revetments designed to evoke Qurʾanic descriptions of paradisical gardens and rivers (Q6:99, 9:72). Such semiotic representations of gardens informed floriate decoration in the expansions of the Mosque of Cordoba, particularly around the mihrab. Although initially only representations of gardens seem to have been understood symbolically, by the 13th century , physical gardens in Spain and India also could evoke spiritual associations. By the 15th century , gardens flanking Ottoman mosques often housed cemeteries, evoking the gardens of paradise. 47 Similarly, Persianate poetry describing the chaharbagh , a garden divided into four parts, often ascribes paradisiac qualities to it while evoking the division of the cosmos. The garden could also serve as a metaphor for wisdom, as in poetry compilations conceived as gardens . As with geometry or music, the capacity of vegetal forms on surfaces, including on carpets , metalwork, and tile to evoke the Divine often resides less in direct symbolism than in the habitus of the subject. Thus such effects could also function in Christian spaces of worship, such as the Armenian Vank Cathedral in Isfahan.

Writing and Intermediality in Islamic Discourses

Religiosity was not experienced solely in prayer spaces but also through everyday special elements and objects inscribed with Qurʾanic and poetic texts invoking the Divine. The adaptation of the 18th-century neologism “calligraphy,” emphasizing the visual beauty ( calli -) of text ( graphy ), not only minimizes the semantic importance of writing but also the affective properties associated with the Arabic word denoting scripted writing, khatt . Discourses about khatt emphasize text as trace, left both by the Divine inscriber of the world and the manifestation of providential grace in the scribe. The quality of such writing came to be described less through visual terms as through the virtue of the scribe as expressed in the pure line that meditatively mediated between the oral and visual characteristics of text.

The root of the inscriptional tradition in the Islamic world emerges in what are generally understood as the first revealed verses of the Qurʾan.

Read [ iqra ]! In the name of your Lord who created: He created insan [humanity] from a clinging form. Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One who taught by the pen [ q-l-m ], who taught man what he did not know. 48 (Q96:1–5; see also Q68:1)

Reflections of this association between the pen and creation are manifold. Often considered the first scribe ( khattat ) among the believers, the Hundred Sayings of ’Ali ibn Abi Talib recommends the beauty/grace ( husn ) of writing as trace ( khatt ) as the keys to sustenance, referring not simply to visuality but also to the sustenance conveyed through scripture. 49 To him is also attributed the aphorism, “Whoever writes ‘In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful,’ in beautiful writing will enter Paradise without account.” 50 Both poetic manuals on the inscriptional arts and biographies of illustrious scribes ( khattat ) often emphasize the perseverance and virtuous nature of practitioners more than describing the visual properties that lend quality to the inscription. 51 Thus the formal performance of the trace understood as “calligraphy” and recognized through proportioned writing gains beauty by manifesting the virtue of the scribe. A practitioner is enjoined to learn through the physical repetition that imbues the hand with the learning of the masters, ultimately liberating the scribe to spontaneously embody praxis within his or her own nature. 52 The meditative aspect of this practice manifests in the lyrical rhythms of practice sheets turned in multiple directions, resulting in apparently abstract forms of letters and letter combinations. The word for such practices, mashq , coincides with the word for the improvisational aspect of musical performance, which likewise builds on a set of temporal and tonal constants to enable an infinity of informed innovation.

As the prophet hears rather than sees the sacred voice, the pen of the Qurʾan is not simply a physical pen. The creation of the pen from the reed invites comparison with the flute ( nay ), and its voice becomes a metaphor for the human body. Thus the epic Mathnavi of the sheikh Jalal al-Din Rumi ( 1207–1273 ), commonly called “the Qurʾan in Persian,” begins with the following lines:

Listen to the reed flute as it tells it tales Complaining of separations as it wails. “Since they cut my stalk away from the reed bed, My outcry has made men and women lament I seek a breast that is torn to shreds by loss So that I may explicate the pain of want” . . . What has struck the reed-stalk is the fire of love What has struck the wine is deep passion of love Anyone who’s lost a friend, the reed’s with him Its wails tear apart the veils that keep us in Who has seen a poison or cure like the reed? Who has seen a lover or mate like the reed? . . . Only to those without sense is such sense known Yet the ear has no customer but the tongue. 53

Referencing the separation of the reed from the reed bed, the human from the maker, and the text from the creation of which it partakes and represents, the poem frames itself as song and as succor against the separation from the Divine. As in Platonic thought, rhetoric functions as a salve, even as the transgressive property of song also potentially poisons. 54

Also comparing the reed to the lover separated from the beloved, the Mathnavi echoes the mystical association between the forms of letters and human bodies. Developed by Fadallah of Astarabad ( 1340–1394 ), the practice of hurufism interpreted the unexplained “mystical” letters that appear at the beginning of some passages of the Qurʾan. Just as the round letter nun —corresponding with the Latin N and looking like ن ‎—can correspond with a mole or a dimple in the chin of the beloved, in poetry about inscription, it could be an inkwell . Although hurufism never became a dominant practice—Fadallah was probably executed for heresy under Prince Timur (r. 1370–1405 )— its influence pervaded poetry about writing, where metaphors of the text, bodies, sexuality, and sacrality readily intertwine. Thus The Bounty of Lovers ( 1454 ), a book about the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of inscription, relates a story about the calligrapher ibn Muqla (886–940), who was inspired to redesign lettering from square to round forms so that the following verse articulated by the son of the caliph would make sense.

My lover’s teeth are in the form of the [letter] sin [ س ‎], And his mouth’s shape is like a rounded mim [ م ‎]. Together they spell poison [ samm سم ‎]; amazing, by my life! After I tasted it, there was no doubt. 55

Likewise, the theologian-poet Jami ( 1410–1492 ) describes the passion of Zuleikha (the biblical wife of Potiphar) and the prophet Joseph through architectural and calligraphic metaphors of the body that gloss the direct descriptions of sexuality in theological interpretations of the Qurʾan and simultaneously allude to the credal testimony (the shahada , which states that there is no God but God) at the heart of Islam. 56 Hurufism exemplifies a practice bridging the gap between picture and text, framing familiar Qurʾanic and spiritual passages in representational forms such as birds , lions , and the “ complete man ” ( al - insan al-kamil ), understood as the prophet Muhammad. The cartoon How Did the Ship Amentu Move? ( 1969 ) by Tonguç Yaşar ( 1932–2019 ) and Sezer Tansuğ ( 1930–1998 ) interprets this tradition through religious poetry envisioned as rowers (shaped as the letter waw ) finding salvation in the tears of ’Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Just as discourses about writing merge with discourses about music, poetry, and the human form, architecture is often articulated through poetry. Not only are Qurʾanic and poetic inscription ubiquitous in architecture, often the use of the first person enables objects to articulate themselves as though speaking to the viewer. Thus at the Alhambra Palace, built in the 14th to 15th centuries under the Nasrid Dynasty in Granada, many objects and walls are inscribed with poetry referring simultaneously to secular power and Qurʾanic meaning. One inscription describes the tower where it is located in poetic terminology:

Her beauties are evenly distributed among her four walls, her ceiling, and her floor. Marvels and wonders she holds in stucco and tile; more astonishing still is her beautiful wooden dome. . . . Just as in badi’ [poetics/metaphor], there is paranomasia [variety], classifications, caesura, and interlace. 57

Another inscription describes the stucco ceilings of a room as a “raiment of embroidered stuff [that] makes one forget the tulle of Yemen,” in a context where the building is compared so frequently to a garden that it becomes, in effect, a garden of words that constructs the world, which the theorist of poetry Ibn al-Khatib (d. 1375 ) associates with the creation of poetry. 58 The floral forms on carpets can transform a space of prayer into a metaphorical garden of paradise, particularly meaningful in interpretations of prayer as enacting a transition from the mundane world into the liminal barrier ( barzakh ) buffering the realms of the Divine. In collected albums, juxtaposed image and text evoke similitude between seemingly disparate forms , such as Sufi devotion, flowers, and poetry, to become apparent.

Poetry abounds with transformational allusions. Buildings are described as covered with tendrils, alluding to the shared structure of architecture and surface geometry, as well as to the arts of limning. Wine intoxicates, providing a metaphor for the sweetness as well as the dangers of unprepared witnessing of the Divine. Not simply references to paradise, as often described, poetic and tile gardens provide a means of understanding physical gardens through symbolic tropes of desire, longing, vanity, astonishment, deception, and testaments to the eternal. 59 Far from merely poetic, the destabilization of materiality encountered through verse resembles the destabilization of form enabled through surface geometry, reminding the believer to recognize that all forms of matter ultimately function as Divine manifestation. Likewise, objects that allude to other states of being, such as vessels that take on the forms of animals or buildings, may function not simply representationally but as a means of confusing categories. 60 Like love and the image, materiality itself could serve as a transitional object toward transcendence, as indicated in the Canon of Forms by Sadiqi Beg Afshar ( 1533–1610 ), who said:

I take the chattels of my ambition to the alleyway of the Figure; I aspire to Meaning from the face of the Figure. My heart, which had known the Art of the Figure, Brought itself, now, the high-road of Meaning . . . So far have I come in portraying the Figure That I have traversed “Figure” and arrived at “Meaning.” 61

The discursive manifestation of religious thought through all aspects of human creativity did not, however, preclude the forms of outward representation readily understood today as religious art. While the Qurʾan is never illustrated, the text is often honored with the highest skills of the book arts, including binding, fine papers, flawless writing, and detailed floral and/or geometric limning ( teshib ) that differs in form in various times and places but generally serves as an interface between the everyday world and imagination accessed through the word.

Veneration of the sacred word has led to manifold modes of adornment for folios and volumes of the Qurʾan. The famous Blue Qurʾan , probably made in 9th-century Andalusia, uses a large format, probably designed for ceremonial use, to frame golden letters in Maghrebi script that shimmer against an indigo-dyed parchment. On the opposite end of the size spectrum, Qurʾans written in small text often are cased in ornate boxes or fabrics, particularly useful among semi-nomadic peoples as well as people on military expeditions. Structured to enhance the sonic rhythm intrinsic to the text as well as to compliment the beauty of the voice with the page, ornate , often multicolor Qurʾans emerged throughout the Islamic world, with differing forms in different eras and places.

The Qurʾan can be used talismanically, with verses displayed on banners or cenotaph covers or hidden on amulets or shirts , which might be worn under armor. Such inscriptions include Qurʾanic verses as well as the Divine names , set as magic squares based in the numerology associated with letters. Objects designed to hold and cover the Qurʾan are often worked with a high degree of craftsmanship, frequently incorporating pattern, talismanic text, Qurʾanic inscriptions, and/or symbolic representation of architectural elements such as mihrabs or mosque lamps. Folding Qurʾan stands ( rahle ) are often made of ornately carved wood. Qurʾanic inscriptions on delicate materials, such as a leaf , demonstrate humble meditative devotion. In Africa, the water used to wash writing boards used to learn reading and writing can be drank as a means of imbibing the healing properties of the Qurʾan.

Sufi devotion, ritualized in accordance with the teachings of various sages, included modes of remembrance ( dhikr ), often through repeated evocation of the Divine, music, and meditative action (such as the turning of the Mevlevi dervishes in Turkey, Qawalli music of the Chisti order in India, or Gnawa music of the Maghreb). Asceticism , often mixing with adjacent Christian, Hindu , and Buddhist practices of renunciation , was also central to the Sufi transcendence of self toward Divine union. Seemingly miraculously washing up on the shores of the Red Sea from its native Seychelle Islands, the shell of the coco de mer palm became the emblematic begging bowl ( kashkul ) in which renouncing dervishes would collect whatever foods donors gave them, boiling the resulting meal at the end of the day. A dish traditionally made on the tenth day of the month of Muharram, the Turkish desert porridge ashure commemorates the meals collected from this begging by incorporating a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and grains and by being distributed among a community. Either made from such shells or in their form, devotion was often demonstrated by carving the hard shell with ornate Qurʾanic inscriptions or mother-of-pearl or precious metal inlay. Ornate kashkul probably exceeded their original function as indicators of pious poverty, owned instead by revered sheikhs.

Representational Painting of Religious Subjects

Although the Qurʾan is never figuratively illustrated, its stories have often been represented. Such images can accompany prose and poetic commentaries glossing the sacred text or nonreligious texts such as dream and prognostication manuals. For example, a mid- 16th century Book of Omens includes an image of the Sleepers of the Cave , a variant on a Syriac Christian liturgy narrated in Q18. Far less recognizable to European conventions of representation, a galleon can also represent the same narrative by including the names of the Seven Sleepers and their Dog, as represented on an 18th-century inscribed panel . Illustrations of Abrahamic prophets, such as Jonah and the Whale , as well as Islamic mystical figures, such as the “servant of God” often associated with Khidr (Q18:65–82) or Idris (Enoch/Hermes Trismegistus), were often also part of popular texts engaging Qurʾanic themes. As in the story of Joseph, described as the most beautiful of stories in the Qurʾan (Q12), poetic elaborations often correlate more with Jewish exegesis of Genesis from approximately the 3 rd -5 th century CE than with those in the European Christian Bible. Thus, the most frequent illustration of the prophet Joseph , both in manuscript paintings and independently from text on tile panels , involves a scene in which love of Joseph is revealed as inevitable because of his intrinsic reflection of Divine grace. In dual frontispieces of the Firdausi’s epic Book of Kings ( Shahnameh, 977), King Solomon and Bilqis (the Queen of Sheba) are often portrayed enthroned in recognition of her conversion (Q27). The narrative plays a central role in royal architectural symbolism, such as at the throne of Shah Jahan in Delhi and at the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra Palace, as well as underlying the central themes in Attar’s epic poem, The Conference of the Birds ( 1177 ). 62

Representations of the Prophet Muhammad include paintings, descriptive texts, relics, and ritual objects of affective veneration. Many early manuscript paintings from the 13th century depicting the Prophet Muhammad show his face as fully visible, often enthroned as a ruler. The richly illustrated Compendium of Chronicles (1305–1306) , written by the vizier Rashid al-Din ( 1247–1318 ) and patronized and disseminated under the Mongol Ilkhanate ( 1256–1353 ), outlines the history of the world from creation, through the Abrahamic prophets, the biography of the Prophet Muhammad , and the spread of Islam to naturalize the leadership of the recently converted Mongol conquerors. At times depicted with a flaming halo, over time, concerns that depictions of the prophet’s face might lead to excessive iconic veneration, later manuscript paintings took on the convention of veiling the face of the prophet, as well as, at times, other holy figures such as his mother, Aminah, or his son-in-law ’Ali ibn Abi Talib . Many illuminated texts, particularly of poetry, included images of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged riding beast Buraq , believed to have taken the prophet on a miraculous journey. Although only mentioned in the Qurʾan (Q17) as leading to the farthest place of worship ( ‘isra ) and to heaven ( mir’aj ), the extensive description of the miraculous journey in biographies and inspired visions became a hallmark of witnessing the prophecy of Muhammad and led to the widespread interpretation of Jerusalem as the site of the “farthest place of worship.” 63 Illustrated books describing these journeys ( mi’rajnama ) functioned as devotional texts.

Enjoying widespread devotional use throughout the Islamic world, the prayer book Waymarks of Benefits and the Brilliant Burst of Lights in the Remembrance of Blessings on the Chosen People (Delail al - Khayrat) by the Moroccan sheikh Muhammad al-Jazuli ash-Shadhili (d. 1465 ) often included diagrammatic illustrations of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Both these works and hilye panels combined textual descriptions of the Prophet Muhammad with the image of roses as the distillation of the “sweat of the Prophet’s grace.” 64 Such images informed the poetic trope of the rose, the meaning of roses in gardens, and the extensive use of rose oil and rose water as a personal scent as well as in sweets.

While representational paintings of the prophet proliferated in manuscripts, nonpictorial representations of the prophet flourished in many media. In the Ottoman Empire, images of the prophet eventually fully eschewed representational form as wall panels of written descriptions of the prophet ( hilye ) became common in the 18th and 19th centuries . Prayer books and tiles often represented him through images of his relics, such as his sandals, rosary, and sword. Like images of his sandals , his footprint (related to the Buddhapada )—often miraculously embedded in materials such as stone —indicate a Divine absence revered through practices of rubbing to seek physical contact with prophetic blessings. 65

Independent written panels ( levha ), either to be hung on a wall or assembled in albums called muraqqa , enabled a public presence and the private admiration of the Word. Among the largest of such panels were six roundels that frequently surrounded the domes of Ottoman mosques with the names of Allah, Muhammad, the four rightly guided caliphs (who took leadership after the death of the prophet), and sometimes Hasan and Huseyin, martyred sons of ʾAli ibn Abi Talib. Panels often use mirrored writing ( muthanna ) to merge text with form. 66 In this example, two intertwined letters “waw,” indicating Divine unity, inhabit a vessel that can pour the wine of devotion. Blessings can also be simpler, such as basmala , “in the name of God,” marking the beginning of each Qurʾan chapter and uttered upon embarking in any activity.

Representations of other saintly figures also proliferate. The double-bladed sword of ʾAli ibn Abi Talib, the duh al-fiqar , has graced many flags in the Islamic world and often indicates Shia affinities when worn as jewelry or used decoratively. Also used apotropaically in ancient Mesopotamia and by modern Jews, the form of an open right hand called the hamsa (five) has long been reconceived through Islamic identification with the hand of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad.

Islam in Contemporary Art

Twentieth-century emphasis on secularism, nationalism, and universal modernism has often presumed divergence between Islamic meanings and contemporary artforms. Nonetheless, many artists extend the legacies of Islam into modern works. While framing all contemporary art of the Middle East as “Islamic” mistakenly contravenes many artists’ secular engagement with global practices, many artworks straddle both expressive languages. 67

Often conflated as a modernist Hurufiyya movement, art using letters as forms often bridges the gap between modern and spiritual references. 68 Synthesizing European artistic movements with traditional Islamic forms, the Khartoum School, led by Ibrahim El Salahi (Sudan, b. 1930 ), transforms forms inspired by text, the cloak ( jibba ) of the messianic Mahdi , and trees into paintings that bridge the gap between modernism and modern visualizations of mystical thought. The work of Charles Hussein Zenderoudi (Iran, b. 1937 ) ranges makes reference to several legacies: the abstraction of hurufism, echoing the Romanian-French movement of letterism; figural references to traditional forms of reverence through talismanic objects left at shrines; and to the passion play commemorating the martyrdom of Hussein , reconceived through modernist styles. Erol Akyavaş (Turkey, 1932–1999 ) engaged with his discovery of Sufism working in New York, creating paintings and prints that incorporate modern styles with traditional illustrative sequences, as in the Mirajnama ( 1987 ). Superimposing two video recordings of the Bosporus through a stencil composed of a 19th-century Ottoman calligraphic panel of the shahada , Mesopotamian Dramaturgies/Water ( 2009 ) by Kutluğ Ataman (Turkey, b. 1961 ) references both the boundary between Europe and Asia, West and East, indicated by the waters and the coming together of the two seas indicated in the Qurʾan. The stamped series Twenty-one Stones by Idris Khan (UK, b. 1978 ) evoke the ritual of stoning the devil during the Hajj. Walid Siti (Iraq, b. 1954 ) combines inscription with circumambulation of the Kaaba evoked in his drawing White Cube .

Not all interpreters of Islam hail from Islamic origins. Incorporating a basmala panel into the illusionistic Calligraphy with Box and Glasses ( 1982 ), Richard de Menocal (US, 1919–1995 ) used an upright and an empty glass, suggestive of the cone shape of a dervish hat, to evoke the processes of birth and return honored in Mevlevi turning as well as the memento-mori tradition of European still-life painting. Videos by Bill Viola (US, b. 1951 ), such as The Veiling (1995) , The Messenger ( 1996 ), and The Night Journey ( 2005 ), directly evoke Islamic paradigms within transcultural mysticism. 69 Recognizing Islam as a dynamic contemporary force and spiritual presence in the contemporary world that is disturbed by common ignorance about Islam, Sandow Birk (US, b. 1962 ) used extensive travel in the Middle East to inform his ornate rendition of the American Qurʾan ( 2015 ).

Contemporary artworks frequently use references to Islam to address issues of violence surrounding contemporary Islam. The Christian-Palestinian Mona Khatoum (Lebanon, b. 1952 ) evokes the drama of devotionalism and violence pervading the Lebanese Civil War ( 1975–1990 ) in her Prayer Mat ( 1995 ), consisting of pins and a compass. Likewise, His Lantern ( 2006 ) by Afruz Amighi (Iran, b. 1974 ) reconceives the form of a prayer carpet through symbols of the Iran–Iraq War and materials associated with refugee camps. A portable mosque out of steel and chain-link, the form of Paradise Has Many Gates , by Ajlan Gharem (Saudi Arabia, b. 1985 ) at the 2018–2020 Vancouver Biennial suggests the pencil-minaret and dome characteristic of the Ottoman Empire, while its materials recall those of the controversial US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Islamic legacies can subvert conservative religious interpretations. Mixing figural Arabic writing with representational drawing, the series O Loss of Forbidden Love by Murat Morova (b. 1954 ) draws on the Hurufi tradition as a means of reconsidering the imposition of modern sexuality over historical realities. Similarly, in works like The Book of Pleasure ( 2007 ) and Exemplary ( 2009 ), Canan Şenol (b. 1970 ) draws on manuscript painting and the shadow puppet tradition to reconsider lost histories of female gender and sexuality.

Sculptural forms often enable new calligraphic meanings. Meaning “nothing” in Persian, Parviz Tanavoli’s (b. 1937 ) sculptures of the word Heech , can be understood as punning on the contrast between form and meaning and can also be understood as a reflection on the transitory nature of materiality central to Sufi thought. Whoever Obeys Allah, He Will Make for Him a Way Out by Nasser Al Saleem (Saudi Arabia, b. 1984 ) depicts a Qurʾanic quotation (Q65:2) as an experimental maze for mice, playfully suggesting Islam as an escape from the so-called rat race of modernity. Bani Abidi’s sound installation, Mataam ( 2020 ) condenses the act of Shi’ite mourning to the rhythmic beat of the hand slapping flesh.

Sculptures bridging Islam and modernism often play on the overlap between the modernist grid and isometric pattern. Thus the cut mirror sculptures of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Iran, 1922–2019 ) adopt the traditional aina-kari technique, often used to adorn palaces and mosques since the 17th century , within modern frames of reference. Yet as the mirror panel work entitled Resist Resisting God ( 2009 ) by the collective Slavs and Tatars suggests the reuse of forms in Islamic culture have difficulty fully segregating the worldly from the spiritual.

All understanding depends on the models of knowledge informing our experience. To consider religion and art in Islam means to think about how each of these categories perpetually embodies, resists, and recreates the others.

Review of the Literature

Most interpretations of Islamic art have focused on formal political and cultural meanings. 70 Louis Massignon ( 1883–1962 ) wrote the first work to conceive of the arts in relation to Islamic precepts. 71 In contrast, many works normalized the premise of an “Islamic image prohibition” by analyzing early Islamic texts outside of systematized practices of Islamic thought. 72 The World of Islam Festival ( 1976 ) in London attempted to approach Islamic arts through religion, yet many scholars of Islamic art dismissed its exhibitions and publications as generalizing. 73

Emphasizing Neoplatonism over theology, Gülru Necipoğlu’s Topkapi Scroll ( 1995 ) innovatively interprets Islamic art through Islamic thought. 74 José Miguel Puerta Vílchez’s History of Arab Aesthetics ( 1997 / 2017 ) provides a monumental critical compendium of early Islamic thought on the arts. 75 Doris Behrens-Abouseif’s Beauty in Arab Culture ( 1998 ) emphasizes secular aspects of thought. Oliver Leaman Islamic Aesthetics ( 2004 ) provides a conversational overview of issues pertaining to the arts in Islam. 76

Recognition of intellectual history beyond secular frameworks has grown in the 2000s. Critical translations and accompanying essays complicated the spectrum of analytical materials available to engage with Islamic art through Islamic thought. These include Esra Akın-Kıvanç’s Mustafa ‘Ali’s Epic Deeds of Artists ( 2011 ) ; David Roxburgh’s Prefacing the Image ( 2001 ); and Wheeler Thackston’s Album Prefaces ( 2000 ).

Analytical volumes have also proliferated. Samer Akkach’s Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam ( 2005 ) focuses on the thought of Sheikh ibn al-Arabi. His articles offer radically divergent epistemic frameworks through which to comprehend works generally categorized as architecture. 77 Jamal J. Elias’s Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam ( 2012 ) explains how perception functions in diverse yet intertwined Islamic religious, philosophical, scientific, and mystical discourses. Stephennie Mulder’s The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria ( 2014 ) examines inter-sectarian devotions through architectural and textual evidence. The work of Christiane Gruber, particularly The Praiseworthy One ( 2018 ), critically examines the nature of figural representation in Islamic thought and practice. 78 Margaret Graves’s Arts of Allusion ( 2018 ) implicates praxis within Islamic intellectual frameworks. 79 Wendy Shaw’s What Is “Islamic” Art ( 2019 ) elucidates the interpretive framework expressed in the Islamic theological and literary corpus, critiquing conventional art historical epistemes.

Recent compilations fruitfully complicate disciplinary boundaries delimiting Islam and the arts. These include Kishwar Rizvi’s Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires ( 2017 ); Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti’s Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam ( 2018 ); Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen’s Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ( 2019 ); and Christiane Gruber’s The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology ( 2014 ) and The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World ( 2019 ). 80

Links to Digital Materials

• Historians of Islamic Art Association
• Islamic Art and Architecture
• Art of Islamic World
• Arts of the Islamic World Khan Academy
• Islamic Art and Culture (a resource for teachers)
• Islamic Art
• Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy : Qur’anic Fragments
• The David Collection of Islamic Art
• Manar Al-Athar Manar Antiquities
• The Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic world
• The Met Islamic Art
• Department of Islamic Arts Louvre

Further Reading

• Ahmed, Shahab . What Is Islam: The Importance of Being Islamic . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
• Akkach, Samer . Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas . Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
• Elias, Jamal J. Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
• Graves, Margaret . Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Gruber, Christiane . The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018.
• Necipoğlu, Gülru , and Barry Flood , eds. The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
• Shaw, Wendy . What Is “Islamic” Art: Between Religion and Perception . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
• Vílchez, José Miguel Puerta , and Consuelo Lopez-Morillas , trans. Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus . Leiden: Brill, 2017.

1. Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 187–188 ; and Daniel Debuisson, “Critical Thinking and Comparative Analysis in Religious Studies,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 28, no. 1 (2016): 26–30.

2. Ahmed, What Is Islam? , 80–82.

3. Considering itself as renewing Abrahamic monotheism, Islam conceives of a unique God worshipped alike by Muslims, Christians, and Jews, all of whom use the word Allah . Yet retaining “Allah ” in English resembles saying the French believe in Dieu, while implicitly exotifying Islam. As Christian anthropomorphic connotations of “God” fit poorly with Islamic paradigms, I use the more neutral term “the Divine.”

4. Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

5. The root letters, q-r-’a indicate both reading and reciting in Arabic. Within a rich tradition of memorized oral literature, literacy in the 7th century differed from the modern vocalization translation of visual signs. Rather, it consisted primarily of the cultivated skill of recitation and spontaneous composition. Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 16–24; and Sebastian Günther, “Muhammad, the Illiterate Prophet: An Islamic Creed in the Qurʾan and Qurʾanic Exegesis,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 4, no. 1 (2002): 1–26.

6. Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers at the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

7. Ruqayya Y. Khan, “Did a Woman Edit the Qurʾan? Hafsa and Her Famed ‘Codex,’” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 1 (2014): 174–216.

8. Fazlur Rahman, “Translating the Qurʾan,” Religion & Literature 20, no. 1 (1988): 23–30.

9. Muhammad Abdel-Haleem, The Qurʾan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 223.

10. Samer Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 113–116 ; and Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzad of Herat (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), 18.

11. Fadlou Shehadi, Philosophies of Music in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 26.

12. Jamal J. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 87 ; and Oliver Leaman, Islamic Aesthetics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 47.

13. Gülru Necipoğlu, “The Scrutinizing Gaze in the Aesthetics of Islamic Visual Cultures: Sight, Insight, and Desire,” Muquarnas 32 (2015): 23–61; and Elias, Aisha’s Cushion , 222.

14. Julie Scott Meisami, “Allegorical Gardens in the Persian Poetic Tradition: Nezami, Rumi, Hafez,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 2 (1985): 229–260.

15. David Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 191; and Wheeler Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other Documents on the History of Calligraphers and Painters (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 4.

16. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion , 63; Michael Shenkar, “Rethinking Sasanian Iconoclasm,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135, no. 3 (2015): 471–498.

17. Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

18. José Miguel Puerta Vílchez and Consuelo Lopez-Morillas, trans., Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 282 .

19. Necipoğlu, “The Scrutinizing Gaze,” 23.

20. Wendy Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art: Between Religion and Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 51–52 .

21. Elias Aisha’s Cushion , 9–13; Ahmed, What Is Islam , 48.

22. Mika Natif, “‘Painters Will Be Punished’—The Politics of Figural Representation amongst the Umayyads,” in The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World , ed. Christiane Gruber (London: Ginko, 2019), 32–45.

23. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 44–51.

24. Finbarr Barry Flood, “Between Cult and Cultures: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum,” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 3 (2002): 641–659. Christiane Gruber, “In Defense and Devotion: Affective Practices in Early Modern Turco-Persian Manuscript Paintings,” in Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New Studies in Ottoman Safavid, and Mughal Art and Culture , ed. Kishvar Rizvi (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 95–123.

25. Irfan Shahid, “The ‘Sūra’ of the Poets, Qurʾān XXVI: Final Conclusions,” Journal of Arabic Literature 34, no. 2 (2004): 175–220.

26. Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam , 18–23.

27. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 69–76, 211–222.

28. Alexander Knysh, Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 35–61; Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radke, eds., Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999); and Ahmed, What Is Islam , 94–96.

29. Gülru Necipoğlu, The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, 1995), 353. Ahmed, What Is Islam , 78, 96.

30. Christiane Gruber, The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 15–16 ; and Ondrej Beranek and Pavel Tupek, The Temptation of Graves in Salafi Islam: Iconoclasm, Destruction and Idolatry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

31. Ahmed, What Is Islam , 49–50.

32. Yusuf Rahman, “The Miraculous Nature of Muslim Scripture: A Study of ‘Abd al-Jabbar’s ijaz al-Quran ,” Islamic Studies 34, no. 4 (1996): 409–424.

33. Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

34. Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 161–162.

35. The interpretation of geometry as a spiritual form remains a point of contention in Islamic art history. See Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam , 14–16; Wendy Shaw, “ The Islam in Islamic Art History: Secularism and Public Discourse ,” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012).

36. Nader el-Bizri, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: On Arithmetic and Geometry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 144.

37. Necipoğlu, “The Scrutinizing Gaze,” 28.

38. Abdel-Haleem, The Qurʾan , 223.

39. Estelle Whelan, “The Origins of the Mihrab Mujawwaf: A Reinterpretation,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 18, no. 2 (1986): 205–223.

40. The norm of male theologians or imams is not universal. See Sa’diyya Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arabi, Gender, and Sexuality (Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); and Zainab Alwani, Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians (Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag, 2013).

41. Avinoam Shalem, “Fountains of Light: The Meaning of Medieval Islamic Rock Crystal Lamps,” Muqarnas 14 (1994): 1–11.

42. Simon O’Meara, The Ka’ba Orientations: Readings in Islam’s Ancient House (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).

43. Rabbat, Nasser, “The Dome of the Rock Revisited: Some Remarks on Al-Wasiti's Accounts,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 67–75.

44. Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam .

45. Christiane Gruber, “The Missiri of Fréjus as Healing Memorial: Mosque Metaphors and the French Colonial Army (1928–1964),” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 1, no. 1 (2012): 25–60.

46. Wendy Shaw, “Islamic Art in the Islamic World: Museums and Architectural Revivalism,” in The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture , ed. Gülru Necipoğlu and Barry Flood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 1150–1171 .

47. Fairchild Ruggles, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 89–101.

48. Abdel-Haleem, The Qurʾan , 428.

49. Shi’ite Muslims consider ʾAli ibn Abi Talib and his descendants the divinely inspired successors of the prophet.

50. David J. Roxburgh, “‘The Eye Is Favored for Seeing the Writing’s Form’: On the Sensual and the Sensuous in Islamic Calligraphy,” Muqarnas 25 (2008): 275–298.

51. Esra Akın-Kıvanç, Mustafa ‘Ali’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Critical Edition of the Earliest Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill; 2011); V. Minorsky, trans., Calligraphers and Painters: A Treatise by Qādī Ahmad, Son of Mīr Munshī (circa AH 1015/ad 1606) (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery, 1959); and Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other Documents .

52. Carl W. Ernst, “The Spirit of Islamic Calligraphy: Bābā Shāh Iṣfahānī's Ādāb Al-Mashq,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 112, no. 2 (1992): 279–286.

53. Kenan Rifai and Victoria Holbrook, trans., Listen: Commentary on the Spiritual Couplets of Mevlana Rumi (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 11.

54. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 80–81.

55. Carl W. Ernst, “Sufism and the Aesthetics of Penmanship in Sirāj Al-Shīrāzī's ‘Tuḥfat Al-Muḥibbīn’ (1454),” Journal of the American Oriental Society 129, no. 3 (2009): 431–442.

56. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 242–243.

57. Cynthia Robinson, “Marginal Ornament: Poetics, Mimesis, and Devotion in the Palace of the Lions,” Muqarnas 25 (2008): 185–214, 192; and Olga Bush, Reframing the Alhambra (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

58. Robinson, “Marginal Ornament,” 196.

59. Meisami, “Allegorical Gardens.”

60. Margaret Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) .

61. Ahmed, What Is Islam , 53.

62. Ebba Koch, “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun, and Orpheus, or the Album as a Think Tank for Allegory,” Muqarnas 27 (2010): 277–311; and Olga Bush, “‘When My Beholder Ponders:’ Poetic Epigraphy in the Alhambra,” Artibus Asiae 66 (2006): 22.

63. Gruber, The Praiseworthy One .

64. Meisami, “Allegorical Gardens,” 243; Gruber, The Praiseworthy One , 297; Finbarr Barry Flood, “Lost Histories of a Licit Figural Art,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 3 (2013): 566–569.

65. Hasan Perween, “The Footprint of the Prophet,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 335–343.

66. Esra Akin-Kivanc, Muthanna/Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020).

67. Sussan Babaie, “Voices of Authority: Locating the ‘Modern’ in ‘Islamic’ Arts,” Getty Research Journal 3 (2011): 133–149.

68. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy , 589–627.

69. Ziad Elmarsafy, “Adapting Sufism to Video Art: Bill Viola and the Sacred,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 28 (2008): 127–149.

70. Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, “The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field,” The Art Bulletin 85, no. 1 (2003): 15–184; and Shaw, “ The Islam in Islamic Art History .”

71. Louis Massignon, “Les Méthodes de réalisation artistique des peuples de l’Islam,” Syria 2, no. 2 (1921): 50.

72. Thomas Arnold, Painting in Islam: A Study of the Place of Pictorial Art in Muslim Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Creswell, K. A. C., 1928). Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell, “The Lawfulness of Painting in Early Islam,” Ars Islamica 11/12 (1946): 159–166; Silvia Naef, Y a-t-il une ‘question de l’image’ en Islam? (Paris: Téraèdre, 2003); and Silvia Naef, Islamisches Bilderverbot vom Mittel- bis ins Digital Zeitalter (Vienna: LIT Verlag GmbH, 2006).

73. Anneka Lenssen, “‘Muslims Take Over Institute for Contemporary Art’: The 1976 World of Islam Festival,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 42, nos. 1/2 (2008): 40–47.

74. Gülru, The Topkapi Scroll .

75. Jose Maria Puerta Vilchez, trans. Consuelo López-morillas, Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic Arabia through to al-Andalus (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

76. Leaman, Islamic Aesthetics ; Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Beauty in Arab Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

77. Samer Akkach, “The World of Imagination in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Ontology,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 2, no. 1 (1993): 97–113; and Samer Akkach, “The Poetics of Concealment: Al-Nabulusi’s Encounter with the Dome of the Rock,” Muqarnas 22 (2005): 110–127.

78. Christiane Gruber, The Praiseworthy One . “Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of Muhammad in Islamic Painting,” Muqarnas 26 (2017): 229–262.

79. Graves, The Arts of Allusion .

80. Kishwar Rizvi, ed., Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New Studies in Ottoman Safavid, and Mughal Art and Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti, eds., Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018); Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen, eds., Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019); Christiane Gruber and Avinoam Shalem, eds., The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology: A Scholarly Investigation (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014); and Christiane Gruber, The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World (London: Ginko Library Art Series, 2019).

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Research on Islamic Business Concepts

Proceedings of the 13th Global Islamic Marketing Conference, October 2022

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• Veland Ramadani   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8495-9141 0 ,
• Baker Alserhan   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3850-9633 1 ,
• Léo-Paul Dana   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0806-1911 2 ,
• Jusuf Zeqiri   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3701-816X 3 ,
• Hasan Terzi   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3731-6482 4 ,
• Mehmet Bayirli   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7775-0251 5

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• Offers a comprehensive understanding of Islamic business practices and marketing strategies
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• Covers a wide range of topics offering a holistic understanding of the complexities and nuances of the Islamic market

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Table of contents (23 papers)

Front matter, halal healthcare tourism in india: the road ahead.

• Asad Rehman

Impulsivity and Entrepreneurial Fear of Failure in a Muslim Society: Some Insights from Startups During Crises in an Emerging Market Economy

• Donard Games, Dessy Kurnia Sari

Self-regulating Behavior in Social Media Use Among Malaysian Muslim Consumers

• Siti Haslina Md Harizan

Bridging Maqasid Al-Shariah, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory to Flexible Working Arrangements (FWAs), Quality of Life

• Sharifah Rahama Amirul, Sharija Che Shaari

Determining Factors Affecting Muslim Customer Purchase Intention to Shop Skincare Online: A Study in Indonesia

• Vanesa Hana Budiarani, Sahid Susilo Nugroho

Perceptions of Halal: Students Reflections from a Field Trip to a Trade Show

• Ghazala Khan

Integrated Effects of Marketing Stimuli on Customer Loyalty in Palestine Grocery Supply-Chain: Does Satisfaction Perform Mediating Role?

• Ahasanul Haque, Arun Kumar Tarofder, Mohammad Shamsuddoha, Md. Nuruzzaman, Mohammad Moshiur Rahman, Majed M. M. Abusharar et al.

Is Customer Perceived Value Impact on Bank Products Loyalty in Bangladesh? Investigate the Intervening Role of Satisfaction

• Zohurul Anis, Ahasanul Haque, Nur Fariza Bt Mustofa, Md. Asadul Islam

Impact of Internal Marketing on Organizational Performance: The Moderating Role of Employee Commitment

• Mohammad M. Taamneh, Bilal Eneizan, Abdallah Taamneh, Odai Enaizan, Fathi Alshare

Corporate Entrepreneurship and Organizational Success: Strategic Flexibility as a Mediator in the Jordanian Pharmaceutical Industry

• Belal Said, Alaeddin Ahmad

Organizational Justice, Employee Empowerment, and Innovative Behavior in the Post-COVID Era: Evidence from SMEs in a Majority-Muslim Country

• Youssef Chetioui, Yassine Errachid, Hind Lebdaoui

Mapping and Visualization of Bitcoin Future Trends

• Khawla Kassed Abdo

Understanding Attitude Towards Entrepreneurial Intention Among Asnaf Gen Z in Sabah

• Siti Nor Bayaah Ahmad, Ikmal Malik

Marketing Strategy and Customer Lifetime Value in Our Current Time of Uncertainty and Distress—A Dynamic Industry Equilibrium Approach

• Gerasimos Lianos, Igor Sloev, Roudaina Houjeir

Educational and Working Status of Unorganized Sector Laborers with Special Reference to Women

• M. Thenkovan, Kolachina Srinivas, Laura Nivin-Vargas, Rosario Huerta-Soto, Juan Vilchez-Carcamo, Juan Villanueva-Calderón

Towards Healthy and Immunity World: Awareness and Consumption of Millets and Millet-Based Products

• Deepthi Shirahatti, C. Nagadeepa, Sumit Kumar Singh, Bala Koteswari

Ta’awun and Human Resource Practices as SMEs’ Marketing Agility Enablers

• Sulhaini, Baiq Handayani Rinuastuti, Siti Nurmayanti

Hedonistic Personality Factors in Cosmetics Advertising: An Empirical Research Study on Youth in Bengaluru City

• Syed Kazim, Ajai Abraham Thomas, M. H. Sharieff, Kotigari Reddi Swaroop, Ravi Shankar Bhakat

A Study to Assess the Impact of Demographic Factors on Narcissist, Hedonistic, and Sadistic Personality Disorder on Youth Watching Cosmetics Advertisements

• Syed Kazim, K. P. Jaheer Mukthar, Antonio Huaman-Osorio, Cilenny Cayotopa-Ylatoma, Sandra Mory-Guarnizo

Other volumes

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• Islamic Marketing Strategies
• Muslim Consumer Behavior
• Halal Tourism
• Islamic Entrepreneurship
• Women Empowerment in Muslim socities
• Technology and Future Trends
• Islamic Ethics and Values

About this book

This proceedings volume presents selected chapters from the 13th Global Islamic Marketing Conference, featuring contributions from renowned experts from around the world. The chapters offer an up-to-date overview of research and insights into Islamic business practices, with a specific focus on Islamic marketing and entrepreneurship strategies. Authored by experts hailing from diverse countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Morocco, the chapters collectively provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

Editors and Affiliations

Veland Ramadani, Jusuf Zeqiri

Baker Alserhan

Léo-Paul Dana

Hasan Terzi

Mehmet Bayirli

About the editors

Veland Ramadani is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business at the Faculty of Business and Economics, South-East European University, North Macedonia. His research interests include entrepreneurship, small business management and family businesses. He authored or co-authored more than hundred twenty research articles, eighty book chapters, twelve textbooks and twenty-five edited books. He has published in Journal of Business Research, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Review of Managerial Science, Technology in Society, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, among others. He has received the Award for Excellence 2016 - Outstanding Paper by Emerald Group Publishing. In 2017, he was appointed as a member of the Supervisory Board of Development Bank of North Macedonia, where for ten months served as an acting Chief Operating Officer (COO) as well. He was ranked, three times in a row, among World's Top 2% of the most influentialresearchers prepared by Elsevier & Stanford University, USA.

Baker Ahmad Alserhan  is Professor in Business Administration at Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Amman, Jordan. Dr. Alserhan is the founder of the discipline of Islamic Marketing and authored the seminal book in this discipline: ‘The Principles of Islamic Marketing’. He is also President of the International Islamic Marketing Association (IIMA) and Chair of the Annual Global Islamic Marketing Conference (GIMAC) and the Annual Halal Pharma Forum. He is founder of two academic journals --  Journal of Islamic Marketing  and  Journal of Islamic Marketing and Branding  -- and three in Arabic on the same topic. Dr. Alserhan is a prolific, published researcher of peer-reviewed scientific papers, public speaker, and consultant with research interests in Islamic marketing and branding, Islamic hospitality, Islamic lifestyles, and Islamic business studies.

Léo-Paul Dana  is Professor at Dalhousie University, and also at  ICD Business School  Paris.     A graduate of McGill University and HEC-Montreal, he has served as Marie Curie Fellow at Princeton University and Visiting Professor at INSEAD.  He has published extensively in a variety of journals including  Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice ,  International Business Review ,  International Small Business Journal ,  Journal of Business Research ,  Journal of Small Business Management ,  Journal of World Business ,  Small Business Economics , and  Technological Forecasting & Social Change . 

Jusuf Zeqiri  is Associate Professor of Marketing and International Business at the Southeast European University, North Macedonia. He has more than 20 years of teaching experience at various institutions. He has been teaching for 18 years at undergraduate and graduate levels at South-East European University and has held lectures as a visiting professor at many domestic and international educational institutions in Southeast Europe. He has supervised several master's and doctoral theses. His research interest includes marketing and international business. He has published many research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and is a reviewer for many international journals. Dr. Zeqiri is on the editorial board of the Business System Research Journal  and is an associate editor for the  International Journal of Islamic Marketing and Branding .

Hasan Terzi  is Assistant Professor in Marketing at Karabuk University in Turkey. He has been at Qatar University in 2015-2016 for one year as a researcher under a fellowship program granted by TÜBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey). His studies address postmodernism, consumer culture, and socio-cultural dimensions of consumption, especially the role of religion on consumer behaviour. 

Bayirli Mehmet  is Assistant Professor in International Trade and Business Department at Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University in Turkey. He received his master's degree in international trade and business at Göteborg University, and he obtained his PhD in Tourism Management at Akdeniz University. His research areas are international marketing, export marketing, brand valuation, and Islamic marketing.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title : Research on Islamic Business Concepts

Book Subtitle : Proceedings of the 13th Global Islamic Marketing Conference, October 2022

Editors : Veland Ramadani, Baker Alserhan, Léo-Paul Dana, Jusuf Zeqiri, Hasan Terzi, Mehmet Bayirli

Series Title : Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-5118-5

Publisher : Springer Singapore

eBook Packages : Business and Management , Business and Management (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023

Hardcover ISBN : 978-981-99-5117-8 Published: 16 October 2023

Softcover ISBN : 978-981-99-5120-8 Due: 16 November 2023

eBook ISBN : 978-981-99-5118-5 Published: 15 October 2023

Series ISSN : 2198-7246

Series E-ISSN : 2198-7254

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XII, 378

Number of Illustrations : 15 b/w illustrations, 58 illustrations in colour

Topics : Marketing , Comparative Religion , Islam , Business Strategy/Leadership , Business Ethics

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Recommended Reading List for Islamically Integrated Psychology

Books on Traditional Islamic Psychology from Islamic tradition

Al-Razi, A. (2007).  Razi’s Traditional Psychology  (A.J. Arberry Trans.). Kazi Publications Inc.

Al-Balkhi, A. (2013).  Abu Zayd Al-Balkhi’s Sustenance of the Soul: The Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of a Ninth Century Physician  (M. Badri Trans.). Malaysia: International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Mishkawayh, A. (2003).  Refinement of Character  (C.K. Zurayk Trans.). Kazi Publications Inc.

Ghazali, A. (2014).  Mukhtasar Ihya Ulum Ad-Din . (M. Khalaf Trans.). Lypia/Nikosia, Cyprus: Spohr Publishers.

Birgivi, I. (2005).  The Path of Muhammad: A Book on Islamic Morals and Ethics.  (S.T. Bayrak Trans.). Bloomington, Indiana: World Wisdom.

Khan, I.M. (2005).  The Path to Perfection . Santa Barbara, California: White Thread Press.

Al-Qayyim, I. (2013).  Trials and Tribulations . Birmingham, United Kingdom: Daar us-Sunnah Publishers.

Al-Qayyim, I. (1990). The Soul’s Journey After Death. (L. Mabrouk Trans.) London, United Kingdom: Dar Al-Taqwa Publishers

Waliullah, S. (2005).  Hujjat Allah Al-Baligha . (M.K Hermansen Trans.). Delhi, India: Kitab Bhavan Publishers

Abdus-Salam, I. (2004).  Trials and Tribulations: Wisdom and Benefits . Birmingham, United Kingdom: Daar us-Sunnah Publishers

Books on Islamic Psychology from an Academic Perspective

Utz, A. (2011).  Psychology from the Islamic perspective.  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: International Islamic Publishing House.

Haque, A., & Mohamed, Y. (Eds.). (2009).  Psychology of personality: Islamic perspectives.  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Cengage Learning Asia.

Badri, M. (1979).  The dilemma of Muslim psychologists.  London: MWH London Pub- lishers.

Badri, M. (2000).  Contemplation . Richmond, VA: Institute of Islamic Thought

Badri, M. (2013).  Translation and annotation of Abu Zayd al-Balkhi’s Sustenance of the Soul.  Richmond, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Rajab, A. (2015).  The Medieval Islamic Hospital: Medicine, Religion and Charity.  Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press

Koenig, H.G., & Al-Shohaib, S., (2014)  Health and Well-being in Islamic Societies: Background, Research and Applications .New York City, NY: Springer Publishing Company

Pargament, K. I. (2007).  Spiritually integrated psychotherapy: Understanding and addressing the sacred . New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Pargament, K. I. (1997).  The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice . New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Frager, R. (1999).  Heart, self, & soul . Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing.

Chishti, H.G.M. (1985).  The Book of Sufi Healing . Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions and Bear Company

Chaleby, K. (2001).   Forensic Psychiatry in Islamic Jurisprudence . Herndon, VA: The International Institute of Islamic Thought.

Rasool, G. (2015).  Islamic Counselling: An Introduction to Theory and Practice . New York, NY: Routledge

Richards, P. S., & Bergin, A. E. (2004).  Casebook for a spiritual strategy in counseling and psychotherapy . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Richards, P. S., & Bergin, A. E. (2005).  A spiritual strategy for counseling and psychotherapy (2nd ed.).  Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Kobeisy, A. N. (2004).  Counseling American Muslims: Understanding the Faith and Helping the People.  Westport, CT: Praeger Publisher

Usmani, M. T. (2001).  Spiritual discourses . Karachi, Pakistan: Darul Ishat.

Pargament, K. I. (1997).  The psychology of religion and coping . New York, NY: Guilford.

Al-Issa (Ed.),  Al-Junun: Mental illness in the Islamic world  (pp. 277–293). Madison, CT: International Universities Press.

Ahmed, S., & Amer, M. M. (2012).  Counseling Muslims: Handbook of Mental Health Issues and Interventions . New York, NY: Routledge.

Ansari, S. T. (2007).  Alternative healing: The Sufi way . New York: Ansari.

Ciarrocchi, J.W., Koenig, H.G., Pearce, M.J., Schechter, D., & Vasegh, S. (2014).  Religious Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (Muslim Version): 10 Session Treatment Manual for Depression in Clients with Chronic Physical Illness . Tehran, Iran: Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Contemporary Arabic Books focused on Islamic Psychology

al-Mahazaa, K.A.R. (2013)  Ahkam Mareed al-nafs fi fiqh al-Islamiyyah.   Dar al-Samiya

Ibn Awf, A., Ibn Awf, A. (2016).  Al-ahkam al-fiqhiyyah l-il-amrad al-nafsiyyah wa turuqu elajiha .  Wizarat al-awqaafi wa al-shu’uni al-Islamiyyah: Dawlat al-Qatar.

Saeed, R., al-Thuhuri, A.  (2017).  Al-Wiqayatu min al-Dughuti wa al-amradi al-nafsiyyah fi Sunnah al-nabawiyyah.   Dar al-Samiya.

Academic Articles on Islamic Psychology

Abu-Raiya, H. (2015). Working with religious Muslim clients: A dynamic, Quranic- based model of psychotherapy.  Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2 (2), 120-133. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/scp0000068

Abu-Raiya, H., & Pargament, K. I. (2010). Religiously integrated psychotherapy with Muslim clients: From research to practice.  Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 41 (2), 181-188. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0017988

Abu-Raiya, H., Pargament, K. I., Mahoney, A., & Stein, C. (2008). A psychological measure of Islamic religiousness: Development and evidence for reliability and validity.  International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 18 (4), 291-315. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508610802229270

Ali, B. & Keshavarzi, H. (2016). Forensic Psychology in Islamic Jurisprudence. Oxford Encyclopedia of Islamic Bioethics.Al-Radi, O., & Mahdy, M. A. (1994). Group therapy: An Islamic approach. Integrative Psychiatry, 10, 106–109.

Awaad, R., & Ali, S. (2015). Obsessional disorders in al-Balkhi’s 9th century treatise: Sustenance of the body and soul.  Journal of Affective Disorders, 180 , 185-189.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2015.03.003

Campbell, D. T. (1975). On the conflicts between biological and social evolution and between psychology and moral tradition. American Psychologist, 30, 1103-1126.

Ghorbani, N., Watson, P. J., Geranmayepour, S., & Chen, Z. (2014). Measuring Muslim spirituality: Relationships of Muslim experiential religiousness with religious and psychological adjustment in Iran.  Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 8 (1), 77-94. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/jmmh.10381607.0008.105

Hamdan, A. (2008). Cognitive restructuring: An Islamic perspective.  Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 3 (1), 99-116. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15564900802035268

Haque, A. (1997). National seminar on islamization of psychology: Seminar report.  Intellectual Discourse ,  5 (1), 88-92.

Haque, A. (2004). Psychology from Islamic perspective: Contributions of early Muslim scholars and challenges to contemporary Muslim psychologists . Journal of Religion & Health, 43 (4), 357-377. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-004-4302-z

Haque, A. Khan, F., Keshavarzi, H. & Rothman, A. (2016). Integrating Islamic Traditions in Modern Psychology: Research Trends in Last Ten Years. Journal of Muslim Mental Health, 10 (1), 75-100.

Haque, A., & Keshavarzi, H. (2012). Integrating indigenous healing methods in therapy: Muslim beliefs and practices.  International Journal of Culture and Mental Health, 7 (3), 297-314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17542863.2013.794249

Hermansen, M. K. (1982). Shah Wali Allah’s arrangement of the subtle spiritual centers.  Studies in Islam,  137-150.

Hodge, D. R. (2005). Social work and the house of Islam: Orienting practitioners to the beliefs and values of Muslims in the United States. Social Work, 50, 162–173.

Hodge, D. R., & Nadir, A. (2008). Moving toward culturally competent practice with Muslims: Modifying cognitive therapy with Islamic tenets. Social Work, 53, 31–41.

Hook, J. N., Worthington, E. L., Jr., Davis, D. E., Jennings, D. J., Gartner, A. L., & Hook, J. P. (2010). Empirically supported religious and spiritual therapies. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 66, 46–72.

Keshavarzi, H & Ali, B (2018). Islamic Perspectives on Psychological and Spiritual Well-being and Treatment, in H. S. Moffic,, J. Peteet, A. Hankir, R. Awaad,  Islamophobia & Psychiatry: Recognition, Prevention, and Treatment  (in press).

Keshavarzi, H. & Ali, B. (2018). Exploring the role of mental status & expert testimony in the Islamic Judicial process In A. Padela,  Doctors & Jurists in Dialogue: Constructing the Field of Islamic Bioethics.  In press.
Keshavarzi, H. & Khan, F. (2018). Outlining a case illustration of Islamically Integrated Psychotherapy In C. York al-Karam,  Islamically Integrated 

Keshavarzi, H., & Haque, A. (2013). Outlining a psychotherapy model for enhancing Muslim mental health within an Islamic context.  International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 23 (3), 230-249.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2012 . 712000

Khalily, M. T. (2012). Schema perpetuation and schema healing: A case vignette for schema focused therapy in Islamic perspective.  Islamic Studies ,  51 (3), 327-336.

Kiymaz, S. (2002). Sufi treatment methods and philosophy behind it. Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine, 1(2), 10􏰀16.

McCullough, M. E. (1999). Research on religion-accommodative counseling: Review and meta- analysis.  Journal of Counseling Psychology, 46,  92-98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.1.92

McMinn, M. R., Chaddock, T. P., Edwards, L. C., Lim, B. R. K. B., & Campbell, C. D. (1998). Psychologists collaborating with clergy. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 29, 564-570.

Oppenheimer, J. E., Flannelly, K. J., & Weaver, A. J. (2004). A comparative analysis of the psychological literature on collaboration between clergy and mental-health professionals—perspectives from secular and religious journals: 1970-1999. Pastoral Psychology, 53, 153-162.

Pargament, K. I. (1999). The psychology of religion and spirituality? Yes and no. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 9, 3-16.

Richards, P. S., & Worthington, E. L., Jr. (2010). The need for evidence-based, spiritually oriented psychotherapies. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 41, 363- 370

Richards, P. S, Sanders, P. W., Lea, T., McBride, J. A., & Allen, G. E. K. (2015). Bringing spiritually oriented psychotherapies into the health care mainstream: A call for worldwide collaboration. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2(3), 169-179. DOI: 10.1037/scp0000082

Sanders, P. W., Richards, P. S., McBride, J. A., Lea, T., Hardman, R. K., & Barnes, D. V. (2015). Processes and outcomes of theistic spiritually oriented psychotherapy: A practice-based evidence investigation. Spirituality in Clinical Practice, 2(3), 180-190. DOI: 10.1037/scp0000083

Worthington, E. L., Jr., Kurusu, T. A., McCullough, M. E., & Sandage, S. J. (1996). Empirical research on religion and psychotherapeutic processes and outcomes: A 10- year review and research prospectus.  Psychological Bulletin, 119,  448-487. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.119.3.44

Worthington, E. L., Jr., & Sandage, S. J. (2001). Religion and spirituality.  Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, 38,  473-478. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033- 3204.38.4.47

Yucel, S. (2009). Concept of shifa, healing, in the Qur’an and sunnah. Akademik Arastirmalar dergisi, 40, 225–235.

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Islamic Studies Databases & Reference Sources: Home

• Islam in Southeast Asia
• Middle East & Islamic Studies: a Research Guide

Major Online Reference Sources -- Accessible

Islamic studies databases & reference sources.

(Access may require CU log-in and is restricted to the CU community )

• Series in Islam - Oxford University Press:
• The Oxford Encyclopedias of the Islamic World: Digital Collection
• Liberal Islam
• Makers of Contemporary Islam
• The Islamic World: Past and Present   
• The Oxford History of Islam
• Islam in Transition
• Modernist Islam
• Teaching Islam
• Encyclopaedia of Islam [Online] Current— 

(EI Online) sets out the present state of knowledge of the Islamic World and is a unique reference tool, an essential key to understanding the world of Islam. It includes biographical articles on distinguished Muslims of every age and land, on tribes and dynasties, on the crafts and sciences, on political and religious institutions, on the geography, ethnography, flora and fauna of the various countries and on the history, topography and monuments of the major towns and cities. In its geographical and historical scope it encompasses the old Arabo-Islamic empire, the Islamic countries of Iran, Central Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Indonesia, the Ottoman Empire and all other Islamic countries.

• Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World  [Online] & [print: Olin Library Reference (Non-Circ.) Oversize BP40 .E525x 2004 +]

Looks at Islam's role in the modern world, doing so in context of the religion's history and development over the last 13 centuries. Contains thematic articles, biographies of key figures, definitions, illustrations, maps and more.

• Encyclopaedia Islamica [Online]

Based on the abridged and edited translation of the Persian Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif-i Buzurg-i Islāmī, one of the most comprehensive sources on Islam and the Muslim world. A unique feature of the Encyclopaedia lies in the attention given to Shiʿi Islam and its rich and diverse heritage; offers the Western reader an opportunity to appreciate the various dimensions of Shiʿi Islam, the Persian contribution to Islamic civilization, and the spiritual dimensions of the Islamic tradition. (Projected 16-volume. New content will be added every year in alphabetical order, with an expected completion in 2023.)

• Encyclopædia Iranica Online     The most renowned reference work in the field of Iran studies. Founded by the late Professor Ehsan Yarshater and edited at the Ehsan Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, this monumental international project brings together the scholarship about Iran of thousands of authors around the world.
• eShia Library   A large digital library of religious, historical and legal texts focused primarily on Shia Islam. It contains over six thousand titles with  information and extracts from quite recent or contemporary scholars and theologians which may not be seen elsewhere.  Individual titles have have been transcribed not digitized but a random check on few titles seem to indicate that the publication and edition information is retained.  Download is limited to 30 pages only.
• Index Islamicus 1906- present-  [Online]

An international bibliography of publications in European languages covering all aspects of Islam and the Muslim world, including history, beliefs, societies, cultures, languages, and literature. The database includes material published by Western orientalists, social scientists and Muslims.

• Oxford Bibliographies Online: Islamic Studies

Offers peer-reviewed annotated bibliographies on the range of lived experiences and textual traditions of Muslims as they are articulated in various countries and regions throughout the world. Bibliographies are browseable by subject area and keyword searchable. Contains a "My OBO" function that allows users to create personalized bibliographies of individual citations from different bibliographies. [In Persian, Arabic, Urdu, English, Turkish English, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu.]

Subject Reference Guides & Handbooks

• The Bloomsbury Companion to Islamic Studies [Online] 2014. Ed. Bennett, Clinton. London : Bloomsbury Publishing,

A reference guide covering important aspects of study of Islam. An accessible source of information to the wide range of methodologies and theoretical principles involved. Presenting Islam as a variegated tradition, key essays demonstrate how it is subject to different interpretations, with no single version privileged. Islam is treated as a lived experience, not only as theoretical ideal or textual tradition. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including a substantial A-Z of key terms and concepts, chronology and a detailed list of resources.

• Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought [Online] [Print: Olin Library Oversize BP161.3 .B56 2006 +]

Reflects the variety of trends, voices, and opinions in the contemporary Muslim intellectual scene. It challenges Western misconceptions about the modern Muslim world, demonstrating that it is far from being a monolithic religious, cultural and intellectual phenomenon. The companion consists of 36 essays written by contemporary Muslim writers and scholars. These essays revolve around such issues as Islamic tradition, modernity, globalization, feminism, the West, the USA, reform, and secularism. They explore the history, range, and future of these issues in contemporary Muslim societies. Furthermore, they help readers to situate Islamic intellectual history in the context of Western intellectual trends and issues.

• Blackwell Companion to the Qur'an [Online] [Print: Olin Library Oversize BP130.4 .B57 2006 +]

A reader’s guide to read and understand the Qur’an as a text and as a vital piece of Muslim life. Comprises over 30 original essays by leading scholars. Provides exceptionally broad coverage - considering the structure, content and rhetoric of the Qur’an; how Muslims have interpreted the text and how they interact with it; and the Qur’an’s place in Islam. Features notes, an extensive bibliography, indexes of names, Qur’an citations, topics, and technical terms.

• Dictionary of Qurʾanic Usage is the first comprehensive, fully-researched and contextualised Arabic-English dictionary of Qur'anic usage. The work is based on Classical Arabic dictionaries and Qur'an commentaries with cross-references. This online version full-text searchable in Arabic and English.

Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān is an encyclopaedic dictionary of Qur’ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis extended with essays on the most important themes and subjects within qur’ānic studies.

Qurʾān Concordance is a unique finding aid which allows users to identify and localize text fragments, or even snippets, of the Qurʾān. The use of the Qurʾān Concordance (QC) requires some understanding of its underlying concepts, as described in the “How To.”

• Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures [Online] [Print: Olin Library Reference (Non-Circ.) HQ1170 .E53 2003+]

An interdisciplinary, trans-historical, and global project embracing women and Islamic cultures in every region where there have been significant Muslim populations. It aims to cover every topic for which there is significant research, examining these regions from the period just before the rise of Islam to the present. The Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures Online crosses history, geographic borders and disciplines to create a groundbreaking reference work reflecting the very latest research on gender studies and the Islamic world. v. 1. Methodologies, paradigms and sources for studying women and Islamic cultures. v. 2. Family, law, and politics. v. 3. Family, body, sexuality, and health. v. 4. Economics, education, mobility, and space.

• Conflict and conquest in the Islamic world : a historical encyclopedia [Online]

Documents the extensive military history of the Islamic world between the 7th century and the present (wars, revolutions, sieges, institutions, leaders, armies, weapons, and other aspects of wars and military life). Includes over 600 A–Z entries, many with accompanying images. Provides a convenient glossary of commonly used Islamic military terms. This reference work covers relevant historical information regarding Islam in Middle Eastern regions and countries, North Africa, Central Asia, Southeastern Asia, and Oceania.

• Twentieth century religious thought : Volume II, Islam [Online] [2015]- (English)

Multivolume, cross-searchable online collection that brings together the seminal works and archival materials related to worldwide religious thinkers from the early 1900s until the first decade of the 21st century. Focuses on modern Islamic theology and tradition and details Islam's evolution from the late 19th century by examining printed works and rare documents by Muslim writers, both non-Western and Western voices.

• World almanac of Islamism 2014 [Online] / American Foreign Policy Council.

The first comprehensive reference work to detail the current activities of radical Islamist movements worldwide. The contributions, written by subject experts, provide annual updates on the contemporary Islamist threat in all countries and regions where it exists.

• Historical Atlas of Islam - Brill Reference [Online] & [Olin Reference (Non-Circulating) Oversize G1786.S1 R9 2004+]

A cartographic overview of the Islamic world. From linguistic regions of the Islamic world to Iran under the Caliphate and the Greater Delhi Sultanate, a broad variety of topics is covered. Maps include: Yemen and the Hadramaut, Central Arabia and the Wahhabi expansion, Iran in the era of the Il-Khans and Timurids, environmental regions of the Muslim world, the fertile crescent in early Ottoman times, the Caucasus in early Islamic times, the Maghrib in the age of Almoravids and Almohads and many other regional groups. A wide variety of new city maps including Sanaa, Damascus, Aleppo, Mosul, Baghdad, Cairo, Isfahan, Shiraz, Bukhara, Samarkand, Cordoba, Granada and Delhi.

• Theology and Society Online [Middle East and Islamic Studies]

The most comprehensive study of Islamic intellectual and religious history, focusing on Muslim theology. With its emphasis on the eighth and ninth centuries CE, it remains the most detailed study of scholarly networks in the early phase of the formation of Islam. Originally published in German between 1991 and 1995, Theology and Society is a monument of scholarship and a unique scholarly enterprise which has stood the test of the time as an unparalleled reference work.

Online Collections & Aggregated Sources

• Islamic Library "Worlds Largest Free Online Islamic Books Library."
•   المكتبة الشاملة – Maktabah Shamilah – Islamic Library A library on the various Islamic sciences [only Arabic]
• Islamic Library | Shia Islamic PDFs * Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books * مكتبة الشيعة * Shia Library (A Great Collection Of Books From Shia Sect)
• BRILL Collections:  Middle East and Islamic Studies E-Books Online, Collection

I slamic News Sites, Journals and Magazines - World-Newspapers.com

General Introductions and Terminology -- Accessible

What is Islam?  Check the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary  for a definition and the Encyclopedia Britannica for information on the history, principles and practices of Islam.

Sunnis and Shia: Islam's ancient schism - BBC, UK.

Islam vs Muslim: When and why do we use the different terms?   

Muslim vs Moslem: Why do people say Muslim now instead of Moslem?

'Muslim' vs 'Islamic' -   DAWN.COM

Muslims vs. Islamists Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Critical Concepts in Islamic Studies - Taylor & Francis Concepts in Islamic Studies series spans a number of subject areas that are closely linked to the religion.

More Concepts @ Cornell University Library

Intro to Islam Research Paper                 /  Lynette White,                   ....

Islam (religion) -- Encyclopedia Britannica

American Religion Data Archive  The ARDA collection includes data on USA religious groups (individuals, congregations and denominations). The collection consists of individual surveys covering various groups and topics.

Religions of the book - faculty.fairfield.edu Three world religious traditions have their origins in the Middle East-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-but there are also a number of more highly localized traditions. These include Zoroastrianism (primarily in Iran); the Druze of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel; and the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi-s of northern Iraq, each with their own traditions of religious identity and practice. [ WORLD RELIGIONS -The Middle East and Central Asia: an anthropological approach ].

Essential Readings on Political Islam (by Peter Mandaville)

As befits a topic that is global in scope, increasingly controversial in nature, and the focus of academic inquiry for more than half a century, the literature on political Islam is voluminous. The readings presented here represent some of the most important efforts to study contemporary Islamism using the tools, methodologies, and academic rigor associated with the humanities and social sciences. Though hardly exhaustive, this list will provide the reader with a sense of how the study of political Islam—in major publications either written or available in English—as an object of academic inquiry has evolved over the years.

Research Assistance

Middle east & islamic studies: a research guide.

[http://guides.library.cornell.edu/MideastIslamStudies]

• Encyclopedias Online: Use Subject Encyclopedias to Understand Your Topic
• Distinguishing Scholarly from Non-Scholarly Periodicals: A Checklist of Criteria
• Citation Styles: Handbooks, Resources, and Guides
• Critically Analyzing Information Sources
• Dissertations and Theses: A Finding Guide
• Library Research at Cornell
• Articles & Full Text
• E-Journal Titles

Need to find a book, journal articles or more (either a particular title or on a topic) at Cornell and beyond? Search the online catalog. From the library's website , search most Cornell resources at once using the main search box (or search or browse specific resources more directly using the links under the box).

Subject & Keyword Searching

Sample Subject Headings Start by searching the catalog by keyword. Use whatever terms you think best describe your topic. When you find a record that matches what you are looking for, view the record and see what subject headings were used. Then search again using that term as a subject search.

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If we do not have a BOOK, or if the book is already checked out: Borrow Direct Borrow books from our partner Ivy League universities. We will have it shipped to Cornell. Borrowing period is one month. Books arrive in 4 business days. (BOOKS only).

If we don't own an item (any item -- journal article, DVD, dissertation, etc.): Interlibrary Loan Services

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Four-in-ten countries and territories worldwide had blasphemy laws in 2019

Apostasy and blasphemy may seem to many like artifacts of history. But in scores of countries around the world, laws against apostasy and blasphemy remain on the books – and many are enforced to various degrees.

A new Pew Research Center analysis finds that 79 countries and territories out of the 198 studied around the world (40%) had laws or policies in 2019 banning blasphemy, which is defined as speech or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or of people or objects considered sacred. Twenty-two countries (11%) had laws against apostasy, the act of abandoning one’s faith. The analysis draws on the Center’s wider body of research on global restrictions related to religion.

These laws were most common in the Middle East and North Africa, where 18 of the 20 countries (90%) in the region have laws criminalizing blasphemy and 13 of them (65%) outlaw apostasy. In Saudi Arabia, an Indian national was charged with blasphemy in 2019, fined, and sentenced to 10 years in prison for tweeting criticism of Muhammad and Allah, as well as of the Saudi government.

Pew Research Center measures government regulations on speech or actions deemed to be blasphemy or apostasy as part of our research on global restrictions on religion. The study captures whether laws or policies criminalizing blasphemy and apostasy exist (even if they were not enforced during the year). In some cases, if laws were characterized as “blasphemy” laws in the sources used for the study, they were counted in this analysis even if they didn’t align with the study’s specific criteria for measuring blasphemy. Apostasy laws were counted when there were restrictions placed on religious conversions or if there were penalties for leaving one’s faith. 

In addition to measuring blasphemy and apostasy, Pew Research Center measures other laws and policies that penalize hate speech related to religion, as well as speech that is critical of religion. As such, laws and policies regarding defamation of religion, religious people or groups are captured under these measures but generally are not considered anti-blasphemy laws for the purposes of this study, although in some cases there may be overlap. While measures of blasphemy and apostasy laws have been included in the study since 2010, these measures do not factor into the scores countries are given in the Center’s Government Restriction Index (GRI) and Social Hostilities Index (SHI) and therefore do not affect their scores.

The annual series on global restrictions relating to religion analyzes the extent to which governments and societies around the world impinge on religious beliefs and practices. The most recent report in this series, the Center’s 12th annual, is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world.

To measure global restrictions on religion in 2019 – the most recent year for which data is available – the study rates 198 countries and territories by their levels of government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion. The new study is based on the same 10-point indexes used in the previous studies.

• The Government Restrictions Index measures government laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices. The GRI comprises 20 measures of restrictions, including efforts by government to ban particular faiths, prohibit conversion, limit preaching or give preferential treatment to one or more religious groups.
• The Social Hostilities Index measures acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society. This includes religion-related armed conflict or terrorism, mob or sectarian violence, harassment over attire for religious reasons, or other religion-related intimidation or abuse. The SHI includes 13 measures of social hostilities.

To track these indicators of government restrictions and social hostilities, researchers combed through more than a dozen publicly available, widely cited sources of information, including the U.S. State Department’s annual reports on international religious freedom and annual reports from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, as well as reports from a variety of European and UN bodies and several independent, nongovernmental organizations. (Read the Methodology for more details on sources used in the study.)

Blasphemy laws were on the books in 2019 in all five global regions covered by the analysis, including 18 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 17 in the Asia-Pacific region, 14 in Europe and 12 in the Americas. In one instance in Indonesia, a Roman Catholic woman was detained on blasphemy charges for bringing a dog into a mosque. And in Sri Lanka, a playwright was questioned by authorities after a Buddhist monk alleged his work was blasphemous.

Among the 79 countries that criminalized blasphemy, penalties varied widely, from fines to prison sentences and in some cases lashings and execution . In some countries – such as Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia – violations of blasphemy laws can carry the possibility of the death penalty, according to sources used for this analysis. In Pakistan, at least  17 individuals  were sentenced to death on blasphemy charges in 2019, including a  university lecturer  accused of having insulted the Prophet Muhammad verbally and on Facebook, although the Pakistani government has never actually executed anyone for blasphemy.

Some blasphemy laws came off the books in 2019. In New Zealand, a long-standing blasphemy law was repealed in 2019 after media in the country reported that it had not been enforced since 1922. Greece also repealed its blasphemy law in 2019, following campaigns against it by human rights activists.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the Supreme Court in 2019 upheld the acquittal of Asia Bibi, a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for blasphemy, sparking violent protests and calls to execute her. And in Indonesia, the government had considered a bill to expand the criminalization of blasphemy but ultimately delayed it following protests by civil society groups.

In some countries, including Pakistan , Trinidad and Tobago , and Barbados , blasphemy laws date to their periods of British rule. While citizens in Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago did not face criminal penalties for blasphemy charges in 2019, the number of blasphemy charges increased from 2018 to 2019 in Pakistan.

Apostasy laws were less common around the world than blasphemy laws in 2019, existing in just 22 countries and in only three of the five regions studied. Most of the countries with apostasy laws were in the Middle East-North Africa region (13). Seven were in the Asia-Pacific region, and two in sub-Saharan Africa. As of 2019, there were no apostasy laws in existence in Europe or the Americas.

Penalties for abandoning one’s faith also tend to vary depending on the country. In Algeria , people who convert from Islam to another religion are unable to receive inheritances. In 2019, Brunei implemented a law that allows death sentences for apostasy from Islam.

Refer to the “How we did this” box to view the full list of countries with blasphemy and apostasy laws as of 2019 .

Note: This is an update of a post originally published July 29, 2016.

Virginia Villa is a former research analyst focusing on religion research at Pew Research Center

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The FTC’s Tech Summit on AI 1 convened three panels that highlighted different layers of the AI tech stack: hardware and infrastructure, data and models, and consumer-facing applications. This third Quote Book is focused on consumer-facing applications. This post outlines the purpose of the quote book, a summary of the panel, and relevant topics and actions raised by the FTC.

Purpose of the quote book

A key component of the FTC’s work is to listen to the people on the ground who experience or have knowledge of the effects of innovation in real time—the engineers building next-generation cloud-computing platforms, the data scientists training AI models, the investigative journalists reporting on the marketplace, or the startups building applications to improve consumers’ lives. As policymakers debate the benefits or risks of new technologies, these voices can sometimes be lost in otherwise dense technical, policy, or legal discussions. The FTC’s tech summit is one component of our effort to listen and engage with a variety of perspectives. 

The Quote Book aims to reflect and compile quotes from the participants, aggregated into common themes. The Quote Book is a resource to distill various perspectives on topics, from ways to enable competition and innovation, to potential consumer concerns like deceptive marketing and privacy risks.  

Overview of the panel on consumer facing applications

In the session, panelists discussed factors to build a model along with the risks and benefits of AI-enabled products and services. Some discussed more nuanced topics including norms of tech product design and deployment, including how products are being deployed to hundreds of millions of users with known harms, and without incentives for companies to mitigate risks upfront. In addition, panelists mentioned that end-user AI applications can create harmful outcomes that stem from data collection, sharing, use, and monetization tactics, discriminatory algorithms, and security practices. 

The panelists shared that companies may be employing marketing tactics such as ill-defined “AI Safety” or “Privacy Enhancing” labels to falsely build trust with consumers – and that these terms should not be taken as a blanket shield to break the law.

The topics discussed in the panel are not new for the FTC. The agency has a track record of addressing consumer-facing harms due to AI-generated technologies. Below are some highlights of the FTC’s work making clear that there is no AI exemption from the laws on the books. 2

Quietly changing terms of service agreements could be unfair or deceptive. 3 Companies developing AI products possess a continuous appetite for more and newer data. They face a potential conflict of interest to turn the abundant flow of user data into more fuel for AI products while maintaining their commitments to protect users’ privacy. Companies might be tempted to resolve this conflict by simply changing the terms of their privacy policy so that they are no longer restricted in the ways they can use their customers’ data. And to avoid backlash from users who are concerned about their privacy, companies may try to make these changes surreptitiously. But market participants should be on notice that any firm that reneges on its user privacy commitments risks running afoul of the law. It may be unfair or deceptive for a company to adopt more permissive data practices—for example, to start sharing consumers’ data with third parties or using that data for AI training—and to only inform consumers of this change through a surreptitious, retroactive amendment to its terms of service or privacy policy. 

Model-as-a-service companies that deceive users about how their data is collected may be violating the law. 4 This includes promises made by companies that they won’t use customer data for secret purposes, such as to train or update their models—be it directly or through workarounds. In prior enforcement actions, the FTC has required businesses that unlawfully obtained consumer data to delete any products—including models and algorithms 5 developed in whole or in part using that unlawfully obtained data. The FTC will continue to ensure that firms are not reaping business benefits from violating the law. 

Claims of privacy and security do not shield anticompetitive conduct. 6  

The FTC will closely scrutinize any claims that competition must be impeded to advance privacy or security. In the face of concerns about anticompetitive conduct, companies may claim privacy and security reasons as justifications for refusing to have their products and services interoperate with other companies’ products and services. As an agency that enforces both competition and consumer protection laws, the Commission is uniquely situated to evaluate claims of privacy and data security that implicate competition.

To that end, the FTC aims to ensure that agency staff’s skillsets and knowledge are keeping pace with evolving markets. We plan to continue to hear and learn from players across the AI ecosystem through various forums like the recent FTC Tech Summit on AI and will continue to use our existing legal authorities to address harms.  

“We similarly recognize the ways that consumer protection and competition enforcement are deeply connected—with firms engaging in privacy violations to build market power and the aggregation of market power, in turn, enabling firms to violate consumer protection laws. And our remedies will continue requiring that firms delete models trained on unlawfully acquired data in addition to the data itself,” FTC Chair Khan recently said in her remarks. 7  

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events/2024/01/ftc-tech-summit   

[2] https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2024/01/tick-tick-tick-office-technologys-summit-ai   

[3] https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2024/02/ai-other-companies-quietly-changing-your-terms-service-could-be-unfair-or-deceptive

[4] https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2024/01/ai-companies-uphold-your-privacy-confidentiality-commitments  

[5] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/05/ftc-doj-charge-amazon-violating-childrens-privacy-law-keeping-kids-alexa-voice-recordings-forever

[6] https://www.ftc.gov/policy/advocacy-research/tech-at-ftc/2023/12/interoperability-privacy-security  

[7] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2024.01.25-chair-khan-remarks-at-ot-tech-summit.pdf   

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Terry Anderson, Reporter Held Hostage for Six Years, Dies at 76

The Beirut bureau chief for The Associated Press, he was kidnapped in 1985 by Islamic militants.

By Sam Roberts

Terry Anderson, the American journalist who had been the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon when he was finally released in 1991 by Islamic militants after more than six years in captivity, died on Saturday at his home in Greenwood Lake, N.Y., in the Hudson Valley. He was 76.

The cause was apparently complications of recent heart surgery, his daughter Sulome Anderson said.

Mr. Anderson, the Beirut bureau chief for The Associated Press, had just dropped his tennis partner, an A.P. photographer, at his home after an early morning tennis match on March 16, 1985, when men armed with pistols yanked open his car door and shoved him into a Mercedes-Benz. The same car had tried to cut him off the day before as he returned to work from lunch at his seaside apartment.

The kidnappers, identified as Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon, beat him, blindfolded him and kept him chained in some 20 hideaways for 2,454 days in Beirut, South Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley.

The militants, supported by Iran, indicated that they were retaliating against Israel’s use of American weapons in earlier strikes against Muslim and Druze targets in Lebanon. They had also been seeking to pressure the Reagan administration to secretly facilitate the illegal sales of weapons to Iran — an embarrassing scheme that became known as the Iran-contra affair because the administration had planned to use proceeds from the arms sales to secretly subsidize the right-wing contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Mr. Anderson was the last of 18 Western hostages released by the kidnappers. After he was freed, he married his fiancé, Madeleine Bassil, who had been pregnant when he was kidnapped, and, for the first time, met his 6-year-old daughter.

While he had not been tortured during his captivity, he said, he was beaten and chained. He spent a year or so, on and off, in solitary confinement, he said.

“There is nothing to hold on to, no way to anchor my mind,” he said after the ordeal. “I try praying, every day, sometimes for hours. But there’s nothing there, just a blankness. I’m talking to myself, not God.”

He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defense was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Terry Alan Anderson was born on Oct. 27, 1947, in Lorain, Ohio, where his father, Glen, was the village police officer. When he was still young, the family moved to Batavia in western New York, where his father drove a truck and his mother, Lily (Lunn) Anderson, was a waitress.

After graduating from high school, he was accepted by the University of Michigan and offered a scholarship but decided to join the Marines instead. He served for five years in Japan, including in Okinawa, and in Vietnam, where he was a combat journalist. He spent a final year in Iowa as a recruiter.

After he was discharged, Mr. Anderson earned degrees in journalism and political science from Iowa State University while working for a local television station.

He worked for The A.P. in Japan and South Africa before beginning a two-and-a-half-year stint in Lebanon in 1983.

After his release, he owned a blues bar in Athens, Ohio, and ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for the Ohio State Senate in 2004. He sued Iran for $100 million in damages in a federal court and eventually collected about $26 million from Iranian assets in the United States that had been frozen by the government. His windfall lasted about seven years; he filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Mr. Anderson established a foundation, the Vietnam Children’s Fund, with a friend, Marcia Landau, which built more than 50 schools in Vietnam. He also contributed $100,000 to endow the Father Lawrence Jenco Foundation, named for a fellow hostage who was the director of the Catholic Relief Services in Beirut. The foundation supports community service projects in Appalachia.

“Though my father’s life was marked by extreme suffering during his time as a hostage in captivity, he found a quiet, comfortable peace in recent years,” his daughter Sulome said. “I know he would choose to be remembered not by his very worst experience, but through his humanitarian work with the Vietnam Children’s Fund, the Committee to Protect Journalists, homeless veterans and many other incredible causes.”

Mr. Anderson taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, the University of Kentucky, the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and the University of Florida.

In addition to his daughter Sulome, he is survived by Ms. Bassil, his second of three wives, whom he married in 1993; another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, by his first wife, Mihoko Anderson; a sister, Judy Anderson; and a brother, Jack.

Another sister, Peggy Say, figuratively wrapped America in a yellow ribbon of remembrance and rallied humanitarian groups and world figures to keep her younger brother from being forgotten after he was abducted. She died in 2015.

In 1993, Mr. Anderson published a memoir, “Den of Lions: Memoirs of Seven Years.” In The New York Times Book Review , Prof. Eugene Kennedy of Loyola University in Chicago called it “an improbable and moving love story” of a world-weary correspondent guilty over a failed marriage who falls in love with a beautiful Lebanese Maronite Catholic, a relationship that restores his religious conviction and provides a spiritual foundation “for his surviving his arbitrarily brutal years as a captive.”

As much as captivity was an ordeal, Mr. Anderson recalled, so was re-acclimating to what he called “the real world.”

“I had problems, and it took me a long time to begin to cope with them,” he said. “People ask me, ‘Did you get over them?’ I don’t know! Ask my ex-wife — ask my third ex-wife. I don’t know; I am who I am.”

“I was damaged a great deal more than I was aware of — than anyone was aware of,” he said, adding, “It takes as long to recover as the time you spent in prison.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting.

Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people. More about Sam Roberts