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Audiobooks by Jonathan A.C. Brown
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The most comprehensive examination to date of the claim that Islam, as a system of scripture, law and spirituality, is antiblack
It is commonly claimed that Islam is antiblack, even inherently bent on enslaving Black Africans. Western and African critics alike have contended that antiblack racism is in the faith's very scriptural foundations and its traditions of law, spirituality, and theology. But what is the basis for this accusation?
Bestselling scholar Jonathan A. C. Brown examines Islamic scripture, law, Sufism, and history to comprehensively interrogate this claim and determine how and why it emerged. Locating its origins in conservative politics, modern Afrocentrism, and the old trope of Barbary enslavement, he explains how antiblackness arose in the Islamic world and became entangled with normative tradition. From the imagery of 'blackened faces' in the Quran to Shariah assessments of Black women as 'undesirable' and the assertion that Islam and Muslims are foreign to Africa, this work provides an in-depth study of the controversial knot that is Islam and Blackness and identifies authoritative voices in Islam's past that are crucial for combatting antiblack racism today.
What happens when authorities you venerate condone something you know is wrong? Are you right or are they, and what does this mean about what you’ve been venerating? No issue brings this question into starker contrast than slavery. Every major religion and philosophy condoned or approved of it, but in modern times there is nothing seen as more evil. Americans confront this crisis of authority when they erect statues of Founding Fathers who slept with their slaves. And Muslims faced it when ISIS revived sex-slavery, justifying it with verses from the Quran and the practice of Muhammad.
This book explores the moral and ultimately theological problem of slavery, tracing how the Christian, Jewish and Islamic traditions have tried to reconcile modern moral certainties with the infallibility of God’s message, in particular on the issue of sex-slavery. It investigates the challenge of defining what slavery is in the first place, showing that this remains more than ever a highly politicized question. This book lays out how Islam viewed slavery in theory, and also how slavery was practiced across the reality of Islamic civilization. Finally, it explains how Muslims have argued for the abolition of slavery in Islam, asking whether their arguments are sincere and convincing.
Sometimes rumor, sometimes based on fact and often misunderstood, the tenets of Islamic law and dogma were not set in the religion's founding moments. They were developed, like in other world religions, over centuries by the clerical class of Muslim scholars. Misquoting Muhammad takes listeners back in time through Islamic civilization and traces how and why such controversies developed, offering an inside view into how key and controversial aspects of Islam took shape. Misquoting Muhammad lays out how Muslim intellectuals have sought to balance reason and revelation, weigh science and religion, and negotiate the eternal truths of scripture amid shifting values.