His story of hard-won victory offers inspiration for nonviolent solutions to today's world struggles.

    . . . In Professor Rahman's view the intellectual and therefore the social development of Islam has been impeded and distorted by two interrelated errors. The first was committed by those who, in reading the Koran, failed to recognize the differences between general principles and specific responses to 'concrete and particular historical situations.' . . . This very rigidity gave rise to the second major error, that of the secularists. By teaching and interpreting the Koran in such a way as to admit of no change or development, the dogmatists had created a situation in which Muslim societies, faced with the imperative need to educate their people for life in the modern world, were forced to make a painful and self-defeating choice—either to abandon Koranic Islam, or to turn their backs on the modern world."—Bernard Lewis, New York Review of Books"In this work, Professor Fazlur Rahman presents a positively ambitious blueprint for the transformation of the intellectual tradition of Islam: theology, ethics, philosophy and jurisprudence. Over the voices advocating a return to Islam or the reestablishment of the Sharia, the guide for action, he astutely and soberly asks: What and which Islam? More importantly, how does one get to 'normative' Islam? The author counsels, and passionately demonstrates, that for Islam to be actually what Muslims claim it to be—comprehensive in scope and efficacious for every age and place—Muslim scholars and educationists must reevaluate their methodology and hermeneutics. In spelling out the necessary and sound methodology, he is at once courageous, serious and profound."—Wadi Z. Haddad, American-Arab Affairs

    Taslima Nasrin revisits her early years — from her auspicious birth on a Muslim holy day to the threshold of womanhood at fourteen — in a small rural village during the years East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Set against the background of the fight for independence, Nasrin’s earliest memories alternate between scenes of violence and flight and images of innocent pleasures of childhood in her extended family.A precocious child, Nasrin’s acute awareness of the injustice and suffering endured by her mother and other Muslim women cause her to turn from the Koran in early adolescence, and to begin a journey to redefine her world. Her growing awareness of the class discriminations, gender disparities, and growing religious orthodoxy and intolerance in her family and her rural village parallel the broader social and cultural upheaval emerging in the new nation, and foreshadow the growth of a feminist dissident courageous enough to defy the fundamentalist Muslim clerics.“Nasrin’s voice is the voice of humanism everywhere.”-- Wole Soyinka“I am sure you have become tired of being called ‘the female Salman Rushdie’ . . . but please know that there are many people in many countries working to . . . defend you against those who would cheerfully see you dead. . . . In the West, there are too many eloquent apologists working to convince people of the fiction that women are not discriminated against in Muslim countries or that, if they are, it has nothing to do with religion.”-- Excerpt from an open letter from Salman Rrushdie to Taslima Nasrin

    That war is real; but it sits atop an older struggle, between Kabul and the countryside, between order and chaos, between a modernist impulse to join the world and the pull of an older Afghanistan: a tribal universe of village republics permeated by Islam.Now, Tamim Ansary draws on his Afghan background, Muslim roots, and Western and Afghan sources to explain history from the inside out, and to illuminate the long, internal struggle that the outside world has never fully understood. It is the story of a nation struggling to take form, a nation undermined by its own demons while, every 40 to 60 years, a great power crashes in and disrupts whatever progress has been made. Told in conversational, storytelling style, and focusing on key events and personalities, "Games without Rules" provides revelatory insight into a country at the center of political debate.

    Its author, Imam al-Zarnuji, has attracted the attention of Western men of learning for centuries, as they tried to decipher the secret behind the stunning educational success of Islamic civilization.

    Beset by assassinations, coups, ethnic strife, and the breakaway of Bangladesh in 1971, the country has found itself too often contending with religious extremism and military authoritarianism. Now, in a probing biography of her native land amid the throes of global change, Ayesha Jalal provides an insider's assessment of how this nuclear-armed Muslim nation evolved as it did and explains why its dilemmas weigh so heavily on prospects for peace in the region.Attentive to Pakistan's external relations as well as its internal dynamics, Jalal shows how the vexed relationship with the United States, border disputes with Afghanistan in the west, and the conflict with India over Kashmir in the east have played into the hands of the generals who purchased security at the cost of strong democratic institutions. Combined with domestic ethnic and regional rivalries, such pressures have created a siege mentality that encourages military domination and militant extremism.Since 9/11, the country has been widely portrayed as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorism. Assessing the threats posed by Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as American troops withdraw from Afghanistan, Jalal contends that the battle for Pakistan's soul is far from over. Her definitive biography reveals how pluralism and democracy continue to struggle for a place in this Muslim homeland, where they are so essential to its future.

    Bitter Fruit presents the best collection of Manto's writings, from his short stories, plays and sketches, to portraits of cinema artists, a few pieces on himself, and his letters to Uncle Sam which have references to communism, Russia, politics after the Partition and his own financial condition. The concluding section of the book has acknowledgements and reminiscences from Saadat's friends and relatives. Bitter Fruit includes stories like A Wet Afternoon, The Return, A Believer's Version, Toba Tek Singh, Colder Than Ice, The Assignment, Odour, By The Roadside, Bribing the Almighty, The Kingdom's End, The Woman in the Red Raincoat, The Room with the Bright Light, The Great Divide, The Angel, Siraj, An Old Fashioned Man, The Price of Freedom, It Happened in 1919, The Girl from Delhi, A Man of God, Free for All, and A Tale of 1947. There is a collection of sketches too. Manto used to write radio plays and this book has one of the dramas he penned, called In This Vortex. His short stories bring out the most delicate nuances of human nature.

     I saw a universal traumatic experience that most people could never be brave enough to put on paper for the world to read... It’s a story of realization & growth... Parts will make you uncomfortable because it’s raw and the truth can hurt." - Kaitlin, The American Muslim Mama "This is a wonderful story! The strength Kaighla has maintained throughout her journey is amazing. Her understanding that "The Sheikh's" actions are incorrect and abusive, and do not reflect God's judgement of her, are the elements which I believe have helped her stay firm in Islam. I hope the strength with which she has come out of her ordeal inspires other women in these unfortunate situations."- Danish Qasim, founder of In Shaykh's Clothing In 2009, Kaighla—a young, single mother from the Midwest, and a fresh convert to Islam—married an Egyptian immigrant, the sheikh of a mosque in Brooklyn. Unbeknownst to her, he hadn't divorced his wife back home, and was about to be deported. Two years later, she moved with him, her son, and their baby girl to his hometown in rural Egypt, where she was abused and neglected—along with his first wife—for the next four years. A much-beloved speaker and imam in Brooklyn and in Dearborn, Michigan, the sheikh lectured and taught at mosques and Islamic centers around the country in the early 2000's. But across their seven-year marriage, Um Dayo’s identity and cultural heritage were systematically shattered by him, all in the name of making her the ideal "wife of the Sheikh"—and she wasn't the first or last convert to be abused by him.A story about what happens when Muslim women are broken by Muslim men, and find the courage to heal themselves through the real Islam, Things That Shatter aims to shed light on abuse and healing within the Muslim community, and to help female converts protect themselves from men like him. More than anything, this story is a convert's re-declaration of faith that there is no God but God, and it serves as a reminder that women have intrinsic worth in God’s eyes, beyond and outside of their relationships to the men in their lives.

    So if you, Observant of Allaah, wish to cure your hear then it is upon you to be truthful with regards to seeking refuge with Allaah and putting your trust in Him, to pray a great deal of supererogatory prayers, to perform the actions of obedience to Allaah frequently, to pray the night prayer while the people are sleeping, and to treat your heart by making it continuously stick to the remembrances and by befriending only the righteous? and to frequently recite the Quraan. And Allaah will indeed allow all of this to be preserved by him.

    An American Family is an intensely personal story about the nature of true patriotism and what it's like to risk everything you know for the promise of a 226-year-old piece of parchment. As Khizr Khan traces his remarkable journey--from humble beginnings on a poultry farm in Pakistan to obtaining a degree from Harvard Law School and raising a family in America--he shows what it means to leave the limitations of one's country behind for the best values and promises of another. He also tells the story of the Khans' middle child, U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, who was killed while protecting his base camp in Iraq, and the ways in which their undying pride in him and his sacrifice have helped them endure the deepest despair a parent can know.The book is a stark depiction of what an American looks like, what being a nation of immigrants really means, and what it is to live-rather than simply to pay lip service to-our ideals.11 hours 18 minutes

    As an Ahmadi Muslim growing up in Pakistan, she faced regular threats from Islamic extremists who believed the small, dynamic sect to be blasphemous. From her parents, she internalized the lesson that revealing her identity could put her in grave danger.When her family came to Canada as refugees, Samra encountered a whole new host of challenges: bullies, racism, the threat of poverty, and an arranged marriage. Backed into a corner, her need for a safe space--in which to grow and nurture her creative, feminist spirit--became dire. The men in her life wanted to police her, the women in her life had only shown her the example of pious obedience, and her body was a problem to be solved.So begins an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes her to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within her all along. A triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, We Have Always Been Here is a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one's truest self.

    Sadia Shepard, the daughter of a white Protestant from Colorado and a Muslim from Pakistan, was shocked to discover that her grandmother was a descendant of the Bene Israel, a tiny Jewish community shipwrecked in India two thousand years ago. After traveling to India to put the pieces of her family's past together, her quest for identity unlocks a myriad of profound religious and cultural revelations that Shepard gracefully weaves into this touching, eye-opening memoir.

    Raised by his Sikh mother in Delhi, his father, a Pakistani Muslim, remained a distant figure. Stranger to History is the story of the journey he made to try to understand what it means to be Muslim in the twenty-firstcentury. Starting from Istanbul, Islam’s once greatest city, he travels to Mecca, its most holy, and then home through Iran and Pakistan. Ending in Lahore, at his estranged father’s home, on the night Benazir Bhutto was killed, it is also the story of Taseer’s divided family over the past fifty years. Recent events have added a coda to Stranger to History, as his father was murdered by a political assassin. A new introduction by the author reflects on how this event changes the impact of the book, and why its message is more relevant than ever.

    According to the secular International Society for Human Rights, 80 percent of violations of religious freedom in the world today are directed against Christians. In effect, our era is witnessing the rise of a new generation of martyrs. Underlying the global war on Christians is the demographic reality that more than two-thirds of the world's 2.3 billion Christians now live outside the West, often as a beleaguered minority up against a hostile majority-- whether it's Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, Hindu radicalism in India, or state-imposed atheism in China and North Korea. In Europe and North America, Christians face political and legal challenges to religious freedom. Allen exposes the deadly threats and offers investigative insight into what is and can be done to stop these atrocities. “This book is about the most dramatic religion story of the early 21st century, yet one that most people in the West have little idea is even happening: The global war on Christians,” writes John Allen. “We’re not talking about a metaphorical ‘war on religion’ in Europe and the United States, fought on symbolic terrain such as whether it’s okay to erect a nativity set on the courthouse steps, but a rising tide of legal oppression, social harassment and direct physical violence, with Christians as its leading victims. However counter-intuitive it may seem in light of popular stereotypes of Christianity as a powerful and sometimes oppressive social force, Christians today indisputably form the most persecuted religious body on the planet, and too often its new martyrs suffer in silence.” This book looks to shatter that silence.

    Here the trials and triumphs of the early Muslims as individuals are well-portrayed. Their various paths to Islam - sometimes direct, sometimes long and tortuous, their devotion to the noble Prophet, their endeavours in peace time and their exploits in war - all serve to cast them in a heroic mould. This is the first of two (formerly published as a series of three) books based on original Arabic sources and written in a style that is lively and often gripping. The lives of the Sahabah or Companions of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, is a rich storehouse of knowledge, guidance and inspiration. The men and women whose stories are told here helped to lay the foundations of a new world order, and it is only fitting that they should be more widely known.