Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies

The present volume - grown out of an international symposium at the Free University, Berlin in 2002 - is concerned with religious authorities, men and women claiming, projecting and exerting religious authority within a given context. The volume focuses on Middle Eastern Muslim majority societies in the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and the papers collected therein highlight the scope and variety of religious authorities in present and past Muslim societies.