Suchergebnisse

This book, adopting the method of Rubin's earlier work on the image of the Prophet Muhammad, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims (1995), examines hadith reports of the first three Islamic centuries that draw on Qurءanic/biblical material. He analyzes these reports as attempts on the part of Muslims to define themselves vis-à-vis the People of the Book—primarily Jews, and to a lesser extent Christians. Each of the work's three parts reflects a particular historical attitude toward the Jews and definition of the relationship between Jews and Muslims.

This volume (coming out from a Humboldt Research-Fellowship) critically engages with gender discourses on political participation in Zimbabwe, focusing on how the Bible has been used to deny women political offices in the land. The study's reference to political office needs to be understood broadly, that is, to include women participating in decision-making in their homes, religious institutions, local government, political parties to mention but a few. Dominant religio-cultural discourses on political participation have deployed biblical texts in ways that have shaped Zimbabwe's political terrain to be gendered space. The study uses gender as a category of analyzing political participation in Zimbabwe. The study argues that the challenges women face in their endeavor to participate fully in politics in Zimbabwe are not only embedded in culture, but have also been reinforced by the way biblical interpretation pertaining to women's public roles has been done. It is against this background that this volume seeks to examine the utilisation of the Bible by church leaders who find support from male politicians in a bid to safeguard the space from women perceived as 'dangerous'. In other words, the study endeavours to examine how the Bible has been deployed to control gender discourses on political participation in Zimbabwe. To a large extent, this study shows the centrality as well as the influence of the Bible in shaping gender relations, even in those areas that have to a large extent been perceived as non-religious. This volume, therefore, seeks to open up more political space for women by examining how the everyday is suffused with politics, that is, politics as affecting interactions between individuals and groups thereby facilitating women's participation in politics at all levels. It is envisioned that such a study would contribute greatly to social transformation.

In this study, Jeremy L. Williams interrogates the Book of Acts in an effort to understand how early Christian texts provide glimpses of the legal processes by which Roman officials and militarized police criminalized, prosecuted, and incarcerated people in the first and second centuries CE. Williams investigates how individuals and groups have been, and still are, prosecuted for specious reasons - because of stories and myths written against them, perceptions of alterity that render them subhuman or nonhuman, the collision of officials, and financial incentives that foster injustices, among them. Through analysis of criminalization in Acts, he demonstrates how Critical Race Theory, Black studies, and feminist rhetorical scholarship enables a reconstruction of ancient understandings of crime, judicial institutions, militarized police, punishment, and socio-political processes that criminalize. Williams' study highlights how the criminalization of Jesus followers as depicted in Acts enables connections with contemporary movements. It also presents the ancient text as a critique against the shortcomings of some contemporary understandings of justice and human rights.