A journal About Cultural And Civilizational Interaction
BRIIFS is intended to provide a venue for interdisciplinary academic inquiry into all fields of the humanities and social sciences that bear upon cultural or civilizational interaction such as anthropology, archaeology, fine arts, history, literature, politics, and sociology, and to situate cultural contact in a global context.
Faces of Exchangers, Facets of Exchange in Early Shurāt (Khārijī) Poetry
Throughout the early Islamic period, people from various Shurāt subgroups identified themselves in their poetry and to others as ‘the exchangers’ (al-shurāt), an appellation derived, along with related words, from Qur’an 2:207. The faces of different categories of exchangers-the ideal,…
La Ḥalqa des ʿazzâba : un Nouveau Regard sur l’histoire d’une Institution Religieuse Ibâḍite
La ḥalqa des ʿazzâba, fondée au début Vᵉ/XIᵉ siècle, était initialement une école d’ascèse et de transmission du savoir religieux. Elle évolua pour devenir, à partir du VIᵉ/XIIᵉ siècle, un organe associé à l’élaboration des lois régissant la vie dans…
The Ibāḍī Presence in Muslim Sicily
The Ibāḍī sect of Islam originated in Iraq during the first/seventh century, but missionaries soon travelled west to the Maghrib where many Berbers, who had already converted to Islam, became followers. The Ibāḍī missionary effort culminated with the establishment of…
Ibādi Scholars and the Confrontation With Sunni Islam in Nineteenth-and Early Twentiethcentury Zanzibar
Ibāḍī Islam, practiced by the sultans who ruled Zanzibar from 1832-1964, is a moderate sect that emerged out of Khārijism. Like the Khārijīs, Ibāḍīs recognize as Muslims only those who belong to their own sect; unlike the Khārjīs, they do…
Seeking Common Ground: Salafism and Islamic Reofrm in Modern Ibādi Thought
The historiography of Salafī reform in the Arab world has confined this movement within Sunnī circles and completely overlooked the role of Ibāḍī Salafism. Like their Sunnī counterparts, Ibāḍī reformers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries called for a return…
The Role of Khāriji Thought in Modern Arab Intellectual History
This paper discusses the role of Khārijī thought in modern Arab intellectual history and attempts to answer the question: What prompted Arab scholars to suddenly become interested in the Khārijīs? After a brief introduction, the paper begins by looking at…
Probing the South African Solution for Israel / Palestine
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is analyzed With three interrelated goals: first, to improve understanding of the reasons for failed conflict resolution in the Middle East by contrasting it With successful peacemaking in South Africa; second, to critically probe analogies between the…
Religion and Politics in Contemporary World Affairs: the Global Implications of American Exceptionalism
This paper argues that we have entered a ‘Tocquevillean’ phase in world affairs that represents the culmination of a long-gestating historical process. Since 1945, there have been three phases of global politics: between 1945 and 1989, the world was Marxist-dominated…
Call for papers
The Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies is dedicating a special number of BRIIFS (Volume 20) to publish the proceedings of the Conference “Arab Non-Muslim contribution to Islamic Civilisation Heritage”, which was held in Amman, Jordan on 14th February 2024, organised by RIIFS and IFPO with the support of the French Embassy in Amman. This special issue is edited by Mehdi Berriah (Ifpo) and Renee Hattar (RIIFS).
Deadline for submission is 30 November 2024.
Read the submission guidelines.