Heterodox mystics and heretics of any kind can be sometimes dangerous and other times reliable depending upon political situations, as was the case with Bektashis in Ottoman Anatolia or in early independent Albania. The historical anthropology perspective taken in this article appears helpful in revealing that Bektashism is probably the mystical order of Islam that best exemplifies a transforma...

Mainstream economic thought and practice has resulted in widespread socioeconomic disparity and environmental devastation in all corners of the world, unmitigated by a multi-billion dollar development industry informed by these same economic models. To reverse this trend, the dominant forms of economic thought and practice must be reunited with ethics that are more caring of the human-nature ba...

The AL-MAJIRI school system is a variant of private Arabic and Islamic schools which cater for the religious and moral development of Muslims. In the past, the system produced clerics, scholars, judges, religious reformers, eminent teachers and great men who are worthy of emulation, particularly in northern Nigeria. Gradually, the system lost its glory but continued to discharge its educational...

pioneering research into the Hartlib Papers (The great instauration, 1975), and which have since remained a topic of acrimonious debate. In particular, there is no indication here of a reassessment of the importance of religious and political factors in the encouragement, or subsequent failure, of Hartlib's various schemes and ideas. Nor, despite the recent work of so many scholars on the subje...

This research analyses the political Islamic movement in East of Kurdistan between 1979-2001. In 1979, after Iranian Nations revolution's success, a number religious movements and organizations formed. A part these was working to establish local Kurdish-Islamic authority. On other hand, there were with Ayatollah Khomeini newly installed regime Tehran, others identifying themselves under umbrell...

Despite three major reform movements over the last 300 years, the mental health system has been remarkably resistant to change. Today, another period of reform is underway, only this time, new players dissatisfied ex-psychiatric patients are organising to affect the process of change. This paper discusses characteristics of previous movements and examines their similarity to and difference from...

Abstract This contribution discusses the hitherto overlooked ownership of earliest printed books (incunabula) by Netherlandish female religious communities tertiaries and canonesses regular connected to reform movement Devotio moderna . Studies book collections in these have tended focus on manuscripts. From last decades fifteenth century onwards, however, women increasingly came contact with b...