This issue brought together researchers of Islam and Muslim societies in their reflections on memory and traditions of describing and interpreting history. The subjectivity of memory, which we often trust, serves as an example of how the same events in the past can be perceived and evaluated differently, not only by different people, but even by the same person in different periods of time.

Current issue of our journal is devoted to the Islam in a modern metropolis. We wanted to see what impact on Islam and Muslims make globalization, population growth in large cities and migration to the West, the rapid spread of the Internet and social media, transformation of marketing technologies, emergence of the new elites and social hierarchies. How do Muslims adapt to the new situation and engage with the new spaces? How does the Islamic tradition integrate itself into the new contexts and even transform them?

Accordingly, most of the research papers presented in this issue is of an anthropological nature. Social / cultural anthropology as a complex human science provides Islamology with a special perspective that allows the study of Islam to go beyond classical oriental studies, overcoming not only the theory, but above all the "orientalist" limitations of methodology and discourse on East in practice. At the same time, attention to the details of specific cases let anthropologist be free from the schematism that is widespread in the social sciences, claiming generalization at the macro level. Such schematism often does not find a basis in empirical material and usually formats this material within the given research framework.

 Dear reader, this is a new issue of Islamology journal devoted to the study of Islam in the Soviet Union. Articles brought together in this issue problematize the language of historical sources in the trans-regional perspective beyond the established chronological boundaries.

 Dear reader, this is the first issue of Islamology journal. It is a new academic project of Mardjani Foundation and group of scholars of Islamic Studies. We use the notion of academic “Studies of Islam”/“Islamic Studies” in a broad sense, implying by it any issue concerning Islam and Muslim societies. We want these researches to focus on Islam as a wide complex of views, values, practices, meanings of which goes far beyond the religion in its narrow sense and may influence all the society. Besides, today’s stance and role of Islam and Muslims (notorious “Islamic factor”), as well as contemporary status of humanities’ thought, particularly post-colonial critiques of “orientalizm”, brings the “deorientalization” issue to the agenda, and drawing Islamic Studies out of specific niche of Oriental Studies as a scholarship exclusively about “subtle Orient”. Today there is no country where Muslims aren’t represented in some way and characteristics of Islam as a world religion is no more just an encyclopaedic definition based on populations count — Islam now is a real global factor, belonging neither to East nor West and not restricted by regional, ethnic or even “civilisational” frameworks.
In first issue authors discuss how Islam transforms, adjusts to modernity and being reassembled, and how to study these processes.

 

The main topic of this issue is Islamic heritage and modernity in the culture of the peoples of Russia, primarily in the Caucasus and Volga regions, in the context of Soviet and pre-revolutionary reforms. The authors of зфзукы take part in the project entitled “Islam in the culture of the peoples of Russia”. The purpose of the project is to study specific features of the local Russian form of Islam, its role and place in the culture of the peoples of our country who confess this world religion. Project participants conduct complex ethnological and sociological field studies and archival textual analysis of contemporary forms of Islam, including its specific traditions and rituals. One of the main tasks to be solved in the course of the present research is an ethnographic study of specific forms of Islam, its role in the culture of the peoples of Russia, and vectors of its development. Research group consisting of sociologists, orientalists and experts in oriental manuscripts ensures a comprehensive study of the problem, as evidenced by the articles published herein. Their articles are the result of the two-year work under this project.

This issue is dedicated to the phenomenon of Muslim mysticism and heterodoxy. Time frames of the presented researches cover different periods: from the Abbasid Caliphate to modern times. Thematically, the materials mainly cover the entire Muslim Oecumene, i.e. Mesopotamia, Maghreb, Ottoman Balkans, Khorasan, and Pamir Highlands. They cover both theoretical and practical aspects of Muslim heterodoxy: history, doctrine, and folklore. They are based on both written sources and field research materials.

Selected papers of the Second International Conference “THE WORLD OF ISLAM: HISTORY, SOCIETY, CULTURE” Moscow, October, 28–30, 2010

This issue is devoted to two main topics. Sh. Shikhaliyev, A. Navruzov, P. Alibekova, and N. Tagirova tell about Dagestan’s Muslim sources, both handwritten and printed. Phenomenon of muftiates and their relations with the state is revealed in the articles of D. Arapov, V. Bobrovnikov, A. Khabutdinov, and M. Roschin, and A. Vasiliev draws an Ottoman Turkish parallel with Russian muftiates.

In addition, P.V. Basharin writes about the status of “Mahdist” movements in the Middle East of X century and their connection to the political struggle in the caliphate. M.A. Musayev and Sh.Sh. Shikhaliev write about the miracles of the saints described in the Dagestan Arabic-language Sufi biographical work by Shu'ayb al-Bagini, “Tabaqat al-Khwajakan al-Naqshbandiyya wa sadat masha’ikh al-Khalidiyya al-Mahmudiyya.”

In this issue, a number of researchers speak about peculiarities of Soviet Islam. In his study of the history of the Muslim community in Soviet Moscow, M. Safarov focuses on the use of oral narrative. A. Starostin writes about the phenomenon of “Soviet Islam” in the Middle Urals. K.A. Morgunov tells about imams of Orenburg mosques and their role in preserving Muslim religious traditions in 1940s-1980s.

G. Sayfullina in her article discusses permissibility of music in Islam from the point of view of Tatar theologians and Nadya Tom addresses Muslim hip-hop.

I. Alekseev analyzes the models of Arab revolutions revealing the views of Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn Khaldun. A.R. Ayupova writes about Muslim religious movements in modern Britain.

This issue is devoted to the phenomenon of power in Muslim communities.

Various concepts of power have been developed and implemented in the Muslim states for fourteen centuries. Communities of the faithful who found themselves in territories controlled by non-Muslim regimes are a special case. Some possible examples are the territories of Dar al-Islam states integrated in predominantly Christian states and Muslim migrant communities emerging in the territories that are new for them. In each specific case, they often developed their own model of power and built the concepts of separation of powers between the Muslim community and secular authorities at the national and regional levels.

Over the fourteen centuries of its existence, the Muslim world has seen many changes caused by various factors – external and internal, objective and subjective. The central topic of this issue is the processes of transformation in the Muslim world in the spheres of statehood and legal, political, religious, and educational institutions.

Transition from the predominantly agrarian to the modern industrial, and sometimes postindustrial, society is considered as the most important transformation process of the present time. This process has caused major changes in the entire Muslim world, affecting almost all social spheres, state and legal institutions, and economy. Given that this transformation was often not of a classical Western nature, but was accompanied by a very selective adoption of state and legal institutions, its results are very peculiar and fall outside the classical Western theories.

This issue of the “Pax Islamica” journal is dedicated to the memory of M.S. Kiktev, the greatest Russian Arabist and philologist. Apart from the classical Arabic literature and philology, his sphere of interest included various fields of Islamic studies, namely the history, theology, folklore, Sufism, and study of Russian manuscript collections and archives. Therefore, all the listed areas are presented in this issue. In addition, it contains materials on the educational work of M.S. Kiktev, whose experience was really tremendous and deserves to be an example for many generations of teachers.

Study of the Muslim community primarily in the Russian imperial and Soviet space makes up the content of the second issue of the “Pax Islamica” journal. Evolution of the Russian and Soviet ummah in the early modern period and its response to the challenges of modernization in an effort to preserve and consolidate its religious identity are explored here. The first scientifically verified translation of excerpts from two classical works of Tatar historiography of the XIX century, Mustafad al-Ahbar fi Ahval Qazan ve Bulgar (“A mine of information about the affairs of Kazan and Bulgar”) by Shihabetdin Marjani and Tawarikh-i Bulghariyah (“History of Bulgaria”) by Khusain Amirkhan, is published in the section “Heritage of Muslim Culture”.

Despite the fact that journals of Oriental studies in Russia have their own traditions, and a number of them are known not only here but also abroad, there have been no special journals of Islamic studies in our domestic tradition. The only exception was the “World of Islam” established in 1912 by V.V. Bartold, academician and “father” of the Russian scientific Islamic studies. After coming out for over a year, the journal was transferred to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and completely changed its character. Later in 1917, V.V. Bartold resumed publishing his journal entitled “The Muslim World” but its history, for obvious reasons, was short-lived. In the West, on the contrary, the number of periodicals is very large. Among them there are both specialized magazines with great history (Der Islam, Islamic Quarterly, The Muslim World, Revue des Etudes Islamiques, Revue du Monde Musulman) and editions which place the significant value on Islamic studies. At the present stage, establishment of a high-quality scientific journal of Islamic studies in Russian is already a historical necessity.