Sabine Schmidtke, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, and Gudrun Krämer have edited Speaking for Islam: Religious Authorities in Muslim Societies (Brill Academic Publishers, 2014). The present volume–grown out of an international symposium at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2002–is not so much concerned with religious authority, but with religious authorities, men and women claiming, projecting, and exerting religious authority within a given context. It addresses issues such as the relationship of knowledge, conduct, and charisma, the social functions of the schools of law and theology, and the efforts on the part of governments and rulers to organize religious scholars and to implement state-centered hierarchies.
