The World Importance Of Imam Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi

This book examines the life and thought of Ahmad Riza Khan (1856 - 1921), the legendary leader of the 20th-century Ahl-e Sunnat movement, who represented a strong tendency in South Asian Islam which is sufi, ritualistic, intercessionary, and hierarchical in its social construction. Khan's vision of what it meant to be a good Muslim in his time and day was centered around devotion to the Prophet Muhammad and to following the prophetic sunna as he interpreted it. His movement continues to attract a large following in South Asia and wherever South Asian Muslims have migrated.

The book examines the dynamics from the formation of Islamist politics for the struggle for hegemony to failure to become a hegemonic force in Bangladesh. The contradiction between Islamic universalism/Islamist populism, on one hand, and a politics of Muslim particularism in India, on the other, is revealed in this study.

Why and how did Islam become such a political force in so many Muslim-majority countries? In this book, Jocelyne Cesari investigates the relationship between modernization, politics, and Islam in Muslim-majority countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Tunisia, and Turkey - countries that were founded by secular rulers and have since undergone secularized politics. Cesari argues that nation-building processes in these states have not created liberal democracies in the Western mold, but have instead spurred the politicization of Islam by turning it into a modern national ideology. Looking closely at examples of Islamic dominance in political modernization, this study provides a unique overview of the historical and political developments from the end of World War II to the Arab Spring that have made Islam the dominant force in the construction of the modern states, and discusses Islam's impact on emerging democracies in the contemporary Middle East.

Exposes the links between the bombings and the Iraq war.