Abi Talib, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, first Shi'i imam and fourth caliph, is a monumental figure within the Islamic tradition. But despite the immense importance of Imam Ali, there is a dearth of literature in Western languages about his life and thought. This book -- the first serious engagement in English with the intellectual principles underpinning his teachings -- is therefore a welcome and valuable addition to the sources available. It consists of three parts. Part one introduces the person of Ali in a general manner, and focuses particularly on the spiritual and ethical content of his teachings. Part two evaluates Ali's "sacred conception of justice" Part three addresses the theme of spiritual realization through the remembrance of God, the central mystical practice of the Sufis. Justice and Remembrance will be of great value to students and scholars of Islamic thought, as well as to those interested in the relationship between spirituality and ethics.

    His latest work for Radio 4 was Letter to Daniel, an emotional message to his newborn son.

    

    Amin examines various aspects of Islamic tradition through a Darwinian framework. Islam's allowance of polygamy and the underlying reasons for the subordination of women in many Muslim societies are among the important issues this book addresses. Amin also offers original insight into many aspects of American society and history. Through the filter of biologically based theories, he explores the reasons behind the monumental changes in sexual mores that have occurred in the United States over the past century, the underpinnings of feminism, and the differences between liberals and conservatives. An astute and entertaining work that compares and contrasts American culture with that of the Muslim world from a perspective inspired by evolutionary psychology, Conflicts of Fitness presents many thought-provoking tools to those in search of greater understanding of these two dynamic cultures and worlds.

    A comparative analysis of the concept of GOD between the major Religions of the World: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Zoroastrianism.

    In this updated and expanded edition of The Search for Beauty in Islam, Abou El Fadl offers eye-opening and enlightening insights into the contemporary realities of the current state of Islam and the West. Through a "conference of the books," an imagined conference of Muslim intellects from centuries past, Abou El Fadl examines the ugliness that has come to plague Muslim realities and attempts to reclaim what he maintains is a core moral value in Islam-the value of beauty. Does Islamic law allow, or even call for, the gruesome acts of ugliness that have become so commonly associated with Islam today? Has Islam become a religion devoid of beauty, compassion and love? Based on actual cases, this book tackles different issues and problems in each chapter through a post-9/11 lens, discussing such topics as marriage, divorce, parental rights, the position of women, the veil, sexual abuse, wife-beating, terrorism, bigotry, morality, law, and the role of tradition. Abou El Fadl argues that the rekindling of the forgotten value of beauty is essential for Muslims today to take back what has been lost to the fundamentalist forces that have denigrated their religion.

    Ideals and Realities of Islam seeks to answer criticism brought against Islam by presenting the point of view of Islam. In six chapters dealing with the universal and the particular aspects of Islam, the Qur'an, the Prophet and the Prophetic tradition, the Sharia, Sufism, and Shi'ism, Seyyed Hossein Nasr outlines the essential aspects of the Islamic beliefs, making frequent references to other religions in general and Christianity in particular.Drawing mainly on the Qur'an and the hadith, but also on the works of some contemporary Western scholars, the author presents the Islamic spiritual and intellectual tradition in the light of contemporary modern thought. This edition includes a new introduction by the author and an updated annotated bibliography.

    Continuing global violence in the name of Islam reflects the deepest fears by certain Muslim factions of Western political, cultural, and economic encroachment. The solution to the current antagonism requires finding common ground upon which to build mutual respect and understanding. Who better to offer such an analysis than an American imam, someone with a foot in each world and the tools to examine the common roots of both Western and Muslim cultures; someone to explain to the non-Islamic West not just what went wrong with Islam, but what's right with Islam.Focused on finding solutions, not on determining fault, this is ultimately a hopeful, inspiring book. What's Right with Islam systematically lays out the reasons for the current dissonance between these cultures and offers a foundation and plan for improved relations. Wide-ranging in scope, What's Right with Islam elaborates in satisfying detail a vision for a Muslim world that can eventually embrace its own distinctive forms of democracy and capitalism, aspiring to a new Cordoba - a time when Jews, Christians, Muslims, and all other faith traditions will live together in peace and prosperity.

    Theravada (or Hinayana) is found especially in Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand; Mahayana is found in Japan, China, Korea, and Indochina. Zen, a more recent form of Buddhism, is found throughout the world. Some believe Buddhism is not properly understood as a religion, though this presentation describes its religious qualities: a belief in transcendent reality, sacred scriptures, monastic life, and views on an afterlife and the goal of human existence.The Religion, Scriptures, and Spirituality series describes the beliefs, religious practices, and spiritual and moral commitments of the world's great religious traditions. It also describes a religion's way of understanding scripture, identifies its outstanding thinkers, and discusses its attitude and relationship to society.

    This Grand Lie turns the entire understanding of Islam upside down. The Muslims who kill for Islam know that our ruling elite are lying to us about Islam.At the very start of the book two things are asked of the reader:if the reader is a Muslim, then he is asked to put the book down so that understanding his own religion better does not turn him into a killer;any other reader is asked to just turn to the first pages of the Koran presented in the second half of the book; if within 5 minutes s/he is not convinced that Islam is a religion of war obsessed with the subjugation of non-Muslims, then that reader is asked to to return to the first half of the book and read that until they are convinced that what is presented in this book was mainstream scholarly opinion in the West before 9/11. One of the ways in which Islam protects itself from non-Muslims is that the normal Koran is encrypted. McLoughlin & Robinson decrypt the Koran. But they know that most people do not want to spend months or years learning the ins and outs of Islam. Most people just want to be left alone to get on with their lives. Yet when terrorism in the name of Islam abounds and the state is systematically deceiving your children, then we all owe a duty to our relatives, our society and our civilisation to know, without any doubt at all, that our ruling elite are systematically lying to us about Islam, the religion of war and terrorism.McLoughlin & Robinson explain the concept of "abrogation" and prove how fundamental this concept is to Islam. They show that any of the verses which our lying leaders pluck out to claim that Islam is a religion of peace has either been garbled or is a verse that has been cancelled.The ordinary man or woman cannot rely on Muslims to tell us the truth (because to Muslims Islam is the only truth and Islam authorizes Muslims to employ deception, for example as Taqiyya or Kitman). We cannot rely on writers, clergy, journalists or academics - because they are either in hock to Muslim donors, or because they are Leftists who are allied to Islam, or because such people are simply too scared of Muslims killing them if they speak the truth. You don't have to believe McLoughlin and Robinson's claims. The book has over 600 references, which link to the work of other acknowledged authorities on Islam (Western scholars, mainstream translators of the Koran, Muslim and ex-Muslim experts). The book shows you what those who went before us in our own society were saying about Islam. For centuries they were warning the West about Islam. And all their warnings have been concealed by the Quisling elite who have sold your descendants into slavery or civil war. It really is that serious.Those shallow ideologues who dismiss Mohammed's Koran because it is not written by Muslims are missing a vital principle: our society doesn't demand that only Nazis explain Mein Kampf, or that only Communists can criticise Marx, Stalin, etc. If there were Christian terrorists whom the Pope would not denounce, then it is the explanations of non-Christians who would be favoured. Our society regards those who are not proponents of an ideology as more credible and more objective critics of an ideology than those who are already indoctrinated by that ideology. As McLoughlin & Robinson show in the first 100 pages, it is precisely this demand that only Muslims can have an opinion on Islam (as idiotic as saying "only Nazis can speak about Nazism") which has allowed Muslims to fool the electorate in countries across the West. If the people of the West had not been deceived by the Quisling ruling elite, every country would have already elected parties who would have kept Islam outside the borders of our nations.

    The original Arabic text of the litanies and English translation are presented in accessible format. In addition, a transliteration of the supplications is provided for easy use. A commentary rounds off the volume. "The Prophetic Invocations" is a solid glimpse at the practice of meditative Remembrance of God that has been the staple of spiritual growth throughout the history of Islam.Author Biography: Imam Abdullah ibn Alawi al-Haddad was a late 17th- and early-18th-century Islamic scholar and spiritual master who lived in Yemen. To this day, he has a large following of admirers and is widely known for the breadth of his knowledge and the profundity of insight. Imam al-Haddad died in 1720.

    He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife Jan and their two teenage children Charity and John. At the age of sixteen as a junior in high school, he first heard the message of the Christian gospel and yielded his life to Christ. Dr. Craig pursued his undergraduate studies at Wheaton College (B.A. 1971) and graduate studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.A. 1974; M.A. 1975), the University of Birmingham (England) (Ph.D. 1977), and the University of Munich (Germany) (D.Theol. 1984). From 1980-86 he taught Philosophy of Religion at Trinity, during which time he and Jan started their family. In 1987 they moved to Brussels, Belgium, where Dr. Craig pursued research at the University of Louvain until 1994.

    Spurred by the hope of ending their poverty and isolation, some prospered, while others lost their land and struggled to sustain their families. Yet the winners and losers in this transition were not strangers—they were kin and neighbors. Li's richly peopled account takes the reader into the highlanders' world, exploring the dilemmas they faced as sharp inequalities emerged among them.The book challenges complacent, modernization narratives promoted by development agencies that assume inefficient farmers who lose out in the shift to high-value export crops can find jobs elsewhere. Decades of uneven and often jobless growth in Indonesia meant that for newly landless highlanders, land's end was a dead end. The book also has implications for social movement activists, who seldom attend to instances where enclosure is initiated by farmers rather than coerced by the state or agribusiness corporations. Li's attention to the historical, cultural, and ecological dimensions of this conjuncture demonstrates the power of the ethnographic method and its relevance to theory and practice today.

    Study of Islamic canonical decisions (Fatwas) issued in India during the last hundred years.

    Strange shifts in perspective can take place when Berlin is viewed from Jakarta, or when complex histories of colonial domination strand what counts as the founding work of a national culture in a language its people no longer read. The “spectre of comparisons” arises as nations stir into self awareness, matching themselves against others, and becoming whole through the exercise of the imagination.In this series of profound and eloquent essays, Benedict Anderson, best known for his classic book on nationalism, Imagined Communities, explores these effects as they work their way through politics and culture. Spanning broad accounts of the development of nationalism and identity, and detailed studies of Southeast Asia, the book includes pieces on East Timor, where every Indonesian attempt to suppress national feeling has had the opposite effect; on the Philippines, where it is said that some horses eat better than stable-hands; on Thailand, where so much money can be made in elected posts that candidates regularly kill to get them; on the Filipino nationalist and novelist José Rizal for whom “we mortals are like turtles—we have value and are classified according to our shells;” and a remarkable essay on Mario Vargas Llosa, detailing the fate of indigenous minorities at the hands of the modern state.While The Spectre of Comparisons is an indispensable resource for those interested in Southeast Asia, Anderson also takes up the large issues of the universal grammars of nationalism and ethnicity, the peculiarity of nationalist imagery as replicas without originals, and the mutations of nationalism in an age of mass global migrations and instant electronic communications.