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Basic Questions and Introductory Works on
Islam
Ten
Things Everyone Needs to Know about Islam
by Professor John Esposito of the Center for
Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University in
Washington, D.C.
Islam: Fundamental
Questions and
Answers compiled by the Council on
Islamic
Education (link fixed, December 2004; March 17, 2006).
The original document was a collaborative effort
primarily by university professors of
Islamic Studies.
This set of basic questions and answers was designed specifically for K-12 use.
Understanding
Islam and
Muslims" is the title of a document that originally resided at
the Islamic Affairs Dept.
of the embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington. The link consists of
succinct answers
to a number of elementary questions about Islam. (Link fixed,
December, 2004).
Introduction to
Islam, an online book by M. Cherif Bassiouni, a professor of
Law at DePaul University in Chicago.
Islamic
Terms
A Glossary
of Islamic Terms, developed by the Islamic scholars at ISL software.
Resource Bibliographies
Essential
Resources for Islamic Studies (link fixed Nov. 12, 2001) This list of resources for
Islamic
Studies specialists is a modified
version of the document originally compiled by Knut Vikor of the Centre
for Middle East Studies at Bergen, Norway. (link fixed 18 August 2005)
Bibliography
for
Medieval Islam compiled by Rizwi S. Faizer, Ph.D. Organized into the
categories of journals on Islam, introduction, Islamic history, thought,
and institutions (the last three categories being further subdivided),
this partially annotated bibliography includes many of the most important
Islamic Studies resources for readers
of English. (Link fixed 9 January, 2002.)
The Moral Economy of Islam:
A Bibliography This extensive list of non-web-based resources,
although largely
unannotated, is still an important scholarly tool; compiled in 1998 by the Institute of
International Studies; University of California, Berkeley.
Filmographies of Islam
The
Ellen-Fairbanks D. Bodman Collection of Middle Eastern and Islamic
World Films for specifically Islamic films, search either
"Islam" in the title or in the description.
Encyclopedias for Islam
Other general resources useful to students of Islam are
Mircea Eliade, Ed. Encyclopedia of Religion.
John Esposito, Ed. Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic
World. New York: Oxford, 1995, 4 volumes.
Encyclopaedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill), now on CD-ROM.
Ehsan Yarshater, Ed. Encyclopedia Iranica, Many
articles
from the letter 'A' to 'D' are now on-line (link fixed 18 August 2005) in PDF format, so readers will need to
have Adobe Acrobat in order to read them. A small number of articles for the letter 'E'
are also online, but these articles can only be properly read by downloading a special
font. (Link fixed, November 7, 2001.)
Major Muslim Organizations in the North America
Muslims are free to practice Islam in the West, and hence there
are a number of important
Islamic organizations active in the West. Among them are the following:
ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America) has large a
website that is a particularly rich resource for current news articles dealing with the North
American Muslim community and the crisis that has ensued following the World Trade Center
disaster.
ISNA (Islamic
Society of North America) is the largest Muslim organization in North America.
ISRA (Islamic Studies and Research
Association) is a relatively new organization that differs sharply from the above two
organizations primarily because it does not exclude the Sufi dimension from Islam.
Comprehensive Links for Islam
Huma Ahmad's "Mamalist of Islam
Links is one of the largest alphabetized and categorized list of
websites dealing with Islam. There is also a search engine on the
site. The big
drawback to this site is that there are no annotations. Nevertheless,
it is a rich resource.
(Link fixed, February 14, 2002.)
Also useful for students of Islam are the following "metapages":
IslamiCity in Cyberspace
is a well designed page consisting of diverse sections including Qur'an,
Sunnah, a Cultural Center that has excellent links for art and
architecture, a page of Islamic educational institutions, and much more.
The Islam
Category of the Open
Directory Project is a huge but well-organized collection of briefly described
links to all varieties of sites dealing with Islam.
Islam,
a nice well-organized selection of essential links.
MSA-USC Islam
Server, is one of the most essential reference tools for the
study of Islam on the web. Most importantly, it contains complete
searchable English
language databases for both Qur'an and Hadith. All of the material on
this site is in harmony with a Salafi understanding of Islam.
As-Sunnah Foundation of America is
a large Sunni site that includes Sufism as a dimension of Islam. Among its
contents are original writings on Islamic topics, materials from
classical Islamic texts, a chat room, and links to other Islamic sites.
Islam
SuperDirectory is a large collection of topically organized Islamic
links compiled by Ali, a Sunni (Ahl as-Sunnah w'al-Jama'ah) Muslim.
The
Islam Page
of Ibrahim Shafi, a Sunni Muslim site with many excellent Salafi/Wahhabi
links and documents. (Back on-line, 6/7/98)
Islam Web
Directory at About.com created and maintained by Christine Huda
Dodge, an American Muslim
woman who has converted (or reverted, as some Muslims prefer to say) to
Islam. Her well-organized site indexes Islamic sites that are acceptable
to the Salafi Islamic worldview dominant in the U.S. today. It excludes
Shi'ism as well as Sufi dimensions of Islam.
BBC
Islam Site has a variety of useful audio files from their broadcasts
on Islamic topics such
as Muslim beliefs, the Prophet Muhammad, the Rightly-Guided Caliphs, and
contemporary topics such Muslim women (link fixed 17 March, 2006).
Metalist of Lists of
Resources Related to Islamic Organizations in North America
Compiled by the National Muslim Students Association (MSA), some of
the contents of this site are lists of mosques, North American Islamic
organizations, Islamic schools, financial institutions, Muslim relief
organizations, bookstores, sources of free books and
literature.
Free Muslim
Resources This page contains a number of links to free Islamic
materials.
Islamic
Texts and Resources Metapage, Muslim Thought is now offline,
but I
have linked here an archived copy of it for historical
reasons (even though most of its links do not work, since this was
one of the first comprehensive
Islamic websites for Islamic thought.
Bookstores for Islamic Studies
Updated
Extensive Worldwide List of Islamic Booksellers Originally maintained
by John E. Hinton, this list is categorized by country. It includes
dealers and developers of Islamic software. Wherever available, email and
website addresses are provided.
Arshad Khan--The Bestsellers
US Distributors of TaHa Books.
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