For many non-Muslims, "the suicide bomber" quickly became the icon of "an Islamic culture of death"--a conceptual leap that struck Asad as problematic. Is there a "religiously-motivated terrorism?" If so, how does it differ from other cruelties? What makes its motivation "religious"? Where does it stand in relation to other forms of collective violence?Drawing on his extensive scholarship in the study of secular and religious traditions as well as his understanding of social, political, and anthropological theory and research, Asad questions Western assumptions regarding death and killing. He scrutinizes the idea of a "clash of civilizations," the claim that "Islamic jihadism" is the essence of modern terror, and the arguments put forward by liberals to justify war in our time. He critically engages with a range of explanations of suicide terrorism, exploring many writers' preoccupation with the motives of perpetrators. In conclusion, Asad examines our emotional response to suicide (including suicide terrorism) and the horror it invokes.On Suicide Bombing is an original and provocative analysis critiquing the work of intellectuals from both the left and the right. Though fighting evil is an old concept, it has found new and disturbing expressions in our contemporary "war on terror." For Asad, it is critical that we remain aware of the forces shaping the discourse surrounding this mode of violence, and by questioning our assumptions about morally good and morally evil ways of killing, he illuminates the fragile contradictions that are a part of our modern subjectivity.

    The oldest secret order on earth has just woken up... They want nothing less than the world... They are the Hidden Hand... The race is on to find an ancient power and stop the greatest sacrifice in history… With the same high-octane pace and thrills of the Joe Hawke series, Raiders is an archaeological and historical action-adventure featuring a great new team and a terrible new enemy. Former soldier Jed Mason is working as an asset recovery specialist – retrieving kidnapped people and stolen goods in a dog-eat-dog world of international crime, violence and ransoms. Nearly killed on a dangerous mission, he must deal with a terrible personal tragedy, but when a mysterious private consortium briefs him on a violent kidnapping he quickly discovers when one door shuts, another opens. Why was the head of the Vatican’s secret archive murdered in Rome? Why was a leading American archaeologist snatched? Mason must lead his old team on a new adventure to stop a truly terrifying enemy intent on the sacrifice of millions. Drawing on the same fast-paced action as the world of Joe Hawke, Raiders introduces a new series with an exciting and compelling band of brothers – and sisters – who must stand together in the face of adversity or die one by one.

    It also discusses 'mixed methods research', that is, the various combinations of qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

     Second edition of a popular introductory textbook, combining breadth of coverage, practical examples, and student-friendly features Includes new sections on metaphor, framing, stance and style, multimodal discourse, and Gricean pragmatics Considers a variety of approaches to the subject, including critical discourse analysis, conversation analysis, interactional and variationist sociolinguistics, ethnography, corpus linguistics, and other qualitative and quantitative methods Features detailed descriptions of the results of discourse analysts' work Retains and expands the useful student features, including discussion questions, exercises, and ideas for small research projects.

    Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that this apparent paradox is based on the anachronistic assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact to which a particular culture reacts with some degree of tolerance or intolerance. Drawing on poetry, biographical literature, medicine, dream interpretation, and Islamic texts, he shows that the culture of the period lacked the concept of homosexuality.

    In this country, the ruins of Phoenician, Greek and Roman are among the most impressive in the world. Crusader castles and Arab palaces stand together in the hills, and the people are a unique medley of races and religions.For five hundred miles the author walked through the mountains, following tracks and rivers. His journey was not only a survey of a remarkable country, but a quest for the divinities of the region — Astarte and Adonis, who held the secrets of death and rebirth in the ancient cults of Lebanon. He visited almost every place of cultural importance, and lived with the people along his way, recording strange remnants left over from the religion of Baalim and high places.The Hills of Adonis is both a travel book and a personal journal; a quest for meaning, a reflection on faith and reason and a poem on the joy and complexity of living.

    Until 1912 Morocco never suffered foreign domination, and its mountainous interior was as closed to foreigners as Tibet. Walter Harris (1866-1933), though, was the exception. He first visited in 1887 and lived in the country for more than thirty-five years, and as the Times correspondent had observed every aspect of its life. He was an intimate of at least three of the ruling Sultans (as well as King Edward VII) and a man capable even of befriending his kidnapper. It was said that only three Christians had ever visited the walled city of Chechaouen: one was poisoned, one came for an hour disguised as a rabbi, and the other was Harris. Originally published in 1921, Morocco That Was is alternately sharp, melodramatic, and extremely funny.

    In a shrinking world where sharp dichotomies, such as East/West and developing/developed, blur and shift, Walter Mignolo points to the inadequacy of current practice in the social sciences and area studies. He introduces the crucial notion of colonial difference into study of the modern colonial world. He also traces the emergence of new forms of knowledge, which he calls border thinking.Further, he expands the horizons of those debates already under way in postcolonial studies of Asia and Africa by dwelling in the genealogy of thoughts of South/Central America, the Caribbean, and Latino/as in the United States. His concept of border gnosis, or what is known from the perspective of an empire's borderlands, counters the tendency of occidentalist perspectives to dominate, and thus limit, understanding.The book is divided into three parts: the first chapter deals with epistemology and postcoloniality; the next three chapters deal with the geopolitics of knowledge; the last three deal with the languages and cultures of scholarship. Here the author reintroduces the analysis of civilization from the perspective of globalization and argues that, rather than one civilizing process dominated by the West, the continually emerging subaltern voices break down the dichotomies characteristic of any cultural imperialism. By underscoring the fractures between globalization and mundializacion, Mignolo shows the locations of emerging border epistemologies, and of post-occidental reason.In a new preface that discusses Local Histories/Global Designs as a dialogue with Hegel's Philosophy of History, Mignolo connects his argument with the unfolding of history in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

    The author provides a succinct but lucid outline of the ways in which language has been defined, described, and explored, and guides readers towards further exploration of their own.

    After abandoning his beloved Mariam when she falls pregnant, and escaping her brothers' bullets, Ibrahim abandons his own ideals and dreams of becoming a novelist, opting instead to follow his father's wishes and seek wealth and commercial success abroad. Thirty years later, lonely and disillusioned, Ibrahim returns to Ramallah to retrace the past he tried to leave behind. He sets out on a long and frustrating quest to track down Mariam, which takes him from the West Bank to Israel. Along the way he encounters his son, Michael, a young man with spiritual powers that enable him to see what is unknown and find what has gone missing. Moving and lyrical, Khalifeh's novel weaves religious and political symbolism into a story of love and loss. At its core is Ibrahim's--the Palestinian's--agonizing but unrelenting search for a home.

    Christianity, Judaism and Islam all had their genesis in the region but with them came not just civilisation and religion but also some of the great struggles of history. A Short History of the Middle East makes sense of the shifting sands of Middle Eastern History, beginning with the early cultures of the area and moving on to the Roman and Persian Empires; the growth of Christianity; the rise of Islam; the invasions from the east; Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes; the Ottoman Turks and the rise of radicalism in the modern world symbolised by Islamic State.

    It introduces an unusually wide range of theoretical approaches and highlights how useful they are in tackling key issues - from trade, production and finance to social divisions, development and the environment. The second edition has been revised and updated throughout with the addition of additional chapters on gender, on ideas, and on key current issues and debates.

    Using a historical and comparative perspective, it demonstrates that there is more than one business model of human trafficking and that there are enormous variations in human trafficking in different regions of the world. Drawing on a wide body of academic research - actual prosecuted cases, diverse reports, and field work and interviews conducted by the author over the last sixteen years in Asia, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the former socialist countries - Louise Shelley concludes that human trafficking will grow in the twenty-first century as a result of economic and demographic inequalities in the world, the rise of conflicts, and possibly global climate change. Coordinated efforts of government, civil society, the business community, multilateral organizations, and the media are needed to stem its growth.

    This book provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the field of information systems control and audit written, to serve the needs of both students and professionals.

    He has been a prominent advocate of gay rights and feminism, which joins men and women in resistance. A gay man born into an Italian American family in New Jersey, he relates in this book his own experience on how the initiation of boys into patriarchy inflicts trauma, leading them to mindlessly accept patriarchal codes of masculinity, and how (through art, philosophy, and experience—including mutual love) he and others (straight and gay men) come to join women in resisting patriarchy through the discovery of how deeply it harms men as well as women.