The Postcolonial Crescent

Contents: John C. Hawley: Introduction: Contemporary Islamic Encounters with the Printed Word - Akeel Bilgrami: What is a Muslim? Fundamental Commitment and Cultural Identity - Mohammed Arkoun, trans. Susan Petit: Artistic Creativity in Islamic Contexts - Rasheed El-Enany: The Dichotomy of Islam and Modernity in the Fiction of Naguib Mahfouz - Anouar Majid: Islam and the Literature of Controversy - Cynthia Nelson: Feminist Expression as Self-Identity and Cultural Critique: The Discourse of Doria Shafik - Miriam Cooke: Ayyam min hayati : The Prison Memoirs of a Muslim Sister - Renate Wise: Subverting Holy Scriptures: The Short Stories of Yûsuf Idrîs - Sabah Ghandour: Gender, Postcolonial Subject, and the Lebanese Civil War in Sitt Marie Rose - Ali A. Mazrui: Islam and Afrocentricity: The Triple Heritage School - Debra Boyd-Buggs: Marabout-Masters: Maraboutism and the Problem of Education in the Senegalese Novel - Syed Ali Ashraf: The Impact of Islam on Modern Bengali Poetry - Habibeh Rahim: The Mirage of Faith and Justice: Some Sociopolitical and Cultural Themes in Post-Colonial Urdu Short Stories - Kamran Talattof: The Changing Mode of Relationship Between Modern Persian Literature and Islam: Karbala in Fiction - Georg Stoll: Immigrant Muslim Writers in Germany.

The Editor: John C. Hawley is Associate Professor of English at Santa Clara University. Former chair of the Modern Language Association's executive committee on religious approaches to literature, he is the editor of five books, including Cross-Addressing: Resistance Literature and Cultural Borders and Historicizing Christian Encounters with the Other. He has written about Driss Chraibi, Nuruddin Farah, and others.

"This is a thought-provoking collection that takes the reader into the Islamic mind and the consciousness of the Umma. Who is a Muslim? Who can speak in the name of Islam? How are women viewed by Islam, and in what ways does this view differ from that of Muslims themselves? How do Muslim women writers examine themselves? These questions provide a common ground for the three different sections (authority, gender, and plurality) of this insightful and intriguing volume." (Professor Adel S. Gamal, Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona)
"Who speaks for Islam, in all of its diverse faces? Seeking answers to this question, 'The Postcolonial Crescent' makes an important contribution to the impact of Islam on contemporary literature. In the last decades, America and Europe have become increasingly aware of the relevance of Islam for religious and political developments in a global perspective. This volume brings significant aspects of literary creativity in the Islamic world to our field of vision." (Professor Gerhard Bowering, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University)