Islamic Myths and Memories: Mediators of Globalization [Paperback]

Islamic myths and collective memory are very much alive in todays localized struggles for identity, and are deployed in the ongoing construction of worldwide cultural networks. This book brings the theoretical perspectives of myth-making and collective memory to the study of Islam and globalization and to the study of the place of the mass media in the contemporary Islamic resurgence. It explores the annulment of spatial and temporal distance by globalization and by the communications revolution underlying it, and how this has affected the cherished myths and memories of the Muslim community. It shows how contemporary Islamic thinkers and movements respond to the challenges of globalization by preserving, reviving, reshaping, or transforming myths and memories.This book brings the theoretical perspectives of myth-making and collective memory to the study of Islam and globalization and to the study of the place of the mass media in the contemporary Islamic resurgence. It explores the annulment of spatial and temporal distance by globalization and by the communications revolution underlying it, and how this has affected the cherished myths and memories of the Muslim community.

Itzchak Weismann is professor of Islamic Studies at Haifa University, Israel. He works on Islamic movements, Sufism, the preaching of Islam, modern Syria, and Islam in the Indian subcontinent. His books include The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi Tradition (2007) and Taste of Modernity: Sufism, Salafiyya, and Arabism in Late Ottoman Damascus (2001).

Mark Sedgwick is professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and previously taught for many years at the American University in Cairo, Egypt. He works primarily on Sufism, Islam and modernity, Islam in Europe, and terrorism. His books include Muhammad Abduh: A Biogl“