Christa Salamandra

Leif Stenberg

As Syria’s anti-authoritarian uprising and subsequent civil war have left the country in ruins, the need for understanding the nation’s complex political and cultural realities remains urgent. The second of a two-volume series, Syria from Reform to Revolt: Culture, Society, and Religion draws together closely observed, critical and historicized analyses, giving vital insights into Syrian society today. With a broad range of disciplinary perspectives, contributors reveal how Bashar al-Asad’s pivotal first decade of rule engendered changes in power relations and public discourse—dynamics that would feed the 2011 protest movement and civil war. Essays focus on key arenas of Syrian social life, including television drama, political fiction, Islamic foundations, and Christian choirs and charities, demonstrating the ways in which Syrians worked with and through the state in attempts to reform, undermine, or sidestep the regime. The contributors explore the paradoxical cultural politics of hope, anticipation, and betrayal that have animated life in Syria under Asad, revealing the fractures that obstruct peaceful transformation. Syria from Reform to Revolt provides a powerful assessment of the conditions that turned Syria’s hopeful Arab spring revolution into a catastrophic civil war that has cost over 200,000 lives and generated the worst humanitarian crisis of the twenty-first century.

Volume 2: Culture, Society, and Religion

Syria from Reform to Revolt

Catharina Raudvere

This book offers the first sustained treatment of Sufism in the context of modern Muslim communities. It is also innovative, in that it broadens the purview of the study of Sufism to look at the subject right across international boundaries, from Canada to Brazil, and from Denmark to the UK and USA. Subjects discussed include: the politics of Sufism, the remaking of Turkish Sufism, tradition and cultural creativity among Syrian Sufi communities, the globalization of Sufi networks, and their transplantation in America, Iranian Sufism in London, and Naqshbandi Sufism in Sweden. In its thorough examination of how Sufi rituals, traditions and theologies have been adapted by late-modern religiosity, this volume will make indispensable reading for all scholars and students of modern Islam.

Heritage and Tradition in the Global Community

Sufism Today

Birgit Schaebler

Written by scholars from a range of disciplines concerned with the Middle East and Islam (history, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, political science) and covering the Muslim world extensively (from Malaysia, Turkey, Sudan, Egypt, and Israel/Palestine to Muslim communities in Europe and the United States), this important contribution to the debate on globalization sets a standard in dealing with this pervasive force in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.

Leif Stenberg

Books

Your next favorite book is out there