Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

List of Contributors

Introduction

Part 1 Takfīr through Islamic History

Section 1 The Early Period (First/Seventh–Fourth/Tenth Centuries)

Chapter 1 Self-defining through Faith: The walāya and barāʾa Dynamics among the Early Ibāḍis

Chapter 2 Were the Umayyad-Era Qadarites Kāfirs?

Chapter 3 Denouncing the Damned Zindīq! Struggle and Interaction between Monotheism and Dualism

Chapter 4 Kufr et takfīr dans l’ismaélisme fatimide: Le Kitāb Tanbīh al-hādī de Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī

Section 2 The Classical and Post-Classical Period (Fifth/Eleventh–Eleventh/Eighteenth Centuries)

Chapter 5 The Vocabulary of “Unbelief” in Three Biographical Dictionaries and Two Historical Chronicles of the 7th/13th and 8th/14th Centuries

Chapter 6 Takfīr in Egypt and Syria during the Mamlūk Period

Chapter 7 Takfīr and Messianism: The Ḥurūfī Case

Chapter 8 The Qāḍīzādeli Movement and the Revival of takfīr in the Ottoman Age

Chapter 9 The takfīr of the Philosophers (and Sufis) in Safavid Iran

Section 3 The Modern Period

Chapter 10 The Cost of Condemnation: Heresy and takfīr in a South Indian Community

Chapter 11 The Sum of its Parts: The State as Apostate in Contemporary Saudi Militant Islamism

Chapter 12 “The Kāfir Religion of the West”: Takfīr of Democracy and Democrats by Radical Islamists

Chapter 13 On the takfīr of Arab Women’s Rights Advocates in Recent Times

Chapter 14 Apostasy in the West: A Swedish Case Study

Part 2 Discussing Takfīr: Different Perspectives

Chapter 15 Essential Islam: The Minimum that a Muslim is Required to Acknowledge

Chapter 16 Abandoning Prayer and the Declaration of Unbelief in Imāmī Jurisprudence

Chapter 17 Society and Propriety: The Cultural Construction of Defamation and Blasphemy as Crimes in Islamic Law

Chapter 18 Literary Works as Evidence of Unbelief

Chapter 19 “Religions, Opinions and Beliefs are Nothing but Roads and Paths . . . While the Goal is One”: Between Unity and Diversity in Islamic Mysticism

Index