Islam in Israel

Muhammad Al Atawneh is senior lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He has published extensively on Islamic law and society in contemporary Arab and Islamic worlds. Research interests focus on the study of Islam in modern times, mainly in three concurrent areas: 1. Islamic law and modernity; 2. state and governance in contemporary Islamic thought and practice; and 3. Islam in Israel which covered significant issues regarding Muslim daily life, attitudes, beliefs, levels of (dis)satisfaction, and attitudes towards the Israeli establishment and Israeli society. Nohad 'Ali is a senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Western Galilee College, Israel and senior researcher at the Jewish-Arab center at the University of Haifa, Israel. He is an expert on religious fundamentalism (Jewish and Islamic in Israel), political Islam, Jewish-Arab relations in Israel, Arab women and violence.

• List of figures; List of tables; Acknowledgments; Note on transliteration; Introduction; 1. Islam in Israel: background; 2. Islamic religious authority and interpretation in Israel; 3. Islam and the public: affiliation, religiosity and observance; 4. Muslim identity and Islamic practice in Israel; 5. The Muslim minority and the Israeli establishment: acceptance and/or alienation;. 6. Being Muslim in the Israeli socio-cultural space; Conclusions; Appendix A: English questionnaire; Appendix B: Arabic questionnaire; Glossary of Arabic terms; Bibliography and sources; Index.

'This book is a significant contribution to the study of three areas of theoretical interest: Muslims and Islam in general and in Israel as a Jewish state in particular; Minorities in general, and the Palestinian minority in Israel in particular; and interactions between religious groups in a religiously divided reality, such as that among Palestinians in Israel. Questions of coping with the challenges of modernity, attitudes toward others, processes of return to religion, and the development of a unique heritage that fits the political / social context are discussed at length, in a manner that has not been discussed so far. The authors systematically use a variety of quantitative, qualitative methodologies, anthropological observations and their own involvement in the field in order to provide us with a diverse and real account of the lives of the Muslims in Israel. There is no doubt that the contribution of the authors and the book is absolutely vital to any student who has an interest in the fields of interest discussed here.' As'ad Ghanem, University of Haifa, Israel