Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems


Fatema Mernissi - 2001
    Now, in Scheherazade Goes West, Mernissi reveals her unique experiences as a liberated, independent Moroccan woman faced with the peculiarities and unexpected encroachments of Western culture. Her often surprising discoveries about the conditions of and attitudes toward women around the world -- and the exquisitely embroidered amalgam of clear-eyed autobiography and dazzling meta-fiction by which she relates those assorted discoveries -- add up to a deliciously wry, engagingly cosmopolitan, and deeply penetrating narrative.

History of Makkah


Safiur Rahman Mubarakpuri - 2002
    This book mentions the different aspects of Makkah, and recorded the most important historical events that have direct effect on the establishment and sacredness of Makkah as well as its religious weight.This Book also highlights the sites that are highly important whenever Makhah is mentioned like the Black Stone, Zamzam Well, and others.A great part of the book has been dedicated to in speaking about the Holy Ka’bah and the Holy Mosque updating the extensions and the improvements, that have taken place from the time of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) to the Saudi era.At the end of the book there is a complete guide about Hajj and its rites.

Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages


Richard E. Rubenstein - 2003
    His ideas spread like wildfire across Europe, offering the scientific view that the natural world, including the soul of man, was a proper subject of study. The rediscovery of these ancient ideas sparked riots and heresy trials, caused major upheavals in the Catholic Church, and also set the stage for today's rift between reason and religion. In Aristotle's Children, Richard Rubenstein transports us back in history, rendering the controversies of the Middle Ages lively and accessible-and allowing us to understand the philosophical ideas that are fundamental to modern thought.

God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215


David Levering Lewis - 2008
    David Levering Lewis's narrative, filled with accounts of some of the greatest battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance—while proto-Europe floundered in opposition.At the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs brought a momentous revolution in power, religion, and culture to Dark Ages Europe. David Levering Lewis's masterful history begins with the fall of the Persian and Roman empires, followed by the rise of the prophet Muhammad and the creation of Muslim Spain. Five centuries of engagement between the Muslim imperium and an emerging Europe followed, from the Muslim conquest of Visigoth Hispania in 711 to Latin Christendom's declaration of unconditional warfare on the Caliphate in 1215. Lewis's narrative, filled with accounts of some of the greatest battles in world history, reveals how cosmopolitan, Muslim al-Andalus flourished—a beacon of cooperation and tolerance between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—while proto-Europe, defining itself in opposition to Islam, made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, religious intolerance, perpetual war, and slavery. A cautionary tale, God's Crucible provides a new interpretation of world-altering events whose influence remains as current as today's headlines.

As The Days of Noah Were: The Sons of God and The Coming Apocalypse


Dante Fortson - 2010
    During our journey we will explore stories from Babylon, Greece, Ireland, Ethiopia, and various other cultures to fill in the missing pieces to one of the biggest mysteries on our planet. This 2nd Edition includes 40+ hours of additional audio and video content for your enjoyment. Make sure you download a free QR code scanner for your smart phone or tablet so you can take full advantage of the features in this book.

Islam's Quantum Question: Reconciling Muslim Tradition and Modern Science


Nidhal Guessoum - 2009
    Whether they think of the evolutionary proofs of Darwin or of spectacular investigation into the boundaries of physics conducted by CERN's Large Hadron Collider, most people assume that scientific enquiry goes to the heart of fundamental truths about the universe. Yet elsewhere, science is under siege. In the USA, Christian fundamentalists contest whether evolution should be taught in schools at all. And in Muslim countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia, a mere 15% of those recently surveyed believed Darwin's theory to be "true" or "probably true." This thoughtful and passionately argued book contends absolutely to the contrary: not only that evolutionary theory does not contradict core Muslim beliefs, but that many scholars, from Islam's golden age to the present, adopted a worldview that accepted evolution as a given. Guessoum suggests that the Islamic world, just like the Christian, needs to take scientific questions -- quantum questions -- with the utmost seriousness if it is to recover its true heritage and integrity. In its application of a specifically Muslim perspective to important topics like cosmology, divine action and evolution, the book makes a vital contribution to debate in the disputed field of "science and religion."

The Caliphate (Pelican Books)


Hugh Kennedy - 2016
    At its height, the caliphate stretched from Spain to China and was the most powerful political entity in western Eurasia. In an era when Paris and London boasted a few thousand inhabitants, Baghdad and Cairo were sophisticated centres of trade and culture, and the Ummayad and Abbasid caliphates were distinguished by extraordinary advances in science, medicine and architecture. By ending with the recent re-emergence of caliphal ideology within fundamentalist Islam, The Caliphate underscores why it is crucial that we understand this form of Islamic government before groups such as ISIS distort its practice completely.

Jesus in India


Mirza Ghulam Ahmad - 1899
    Christian and Muslim scriptures provide evidence about this journey.

Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim Between Worlds


Natalie Zemon Davis - 2006
    He had been captured by Christian pirates in the Mediterranean and imprisoned by the pope, then released, baptized, and allowed a European life of scholarship as the Christian writer Giovanni Leone. In this fascinating new book, the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis offers a virtuoso study of the fragmentary, partial, and often contradictory traces that al-Hasan al-Wazzan left behind him, and a superb interpretation of his extraordinary life and work. Davis describes all the sectors of her hero's life in rich detail, scrutinizing the evidence of al-Hasan's movement between cultural worlds; the Islamic and Arab traditions, genres, and ideas available to him; and his adventures with Christians and Jews in a European community of learned men and powerful church leaders. In depicting the life of this adventurous border-crosser, Davis suggests the many ways cultural barriers are negotiated and diverging traditions are fused.

Revelation: The Story of Muhammad


Meraj Mohiuddin - 2015
    SIRAH TEXTBOOKDiscover how complex forces shaped the Prophet's life. Each segment of the Sirah is presented in a refreshingly succinct and high yield approach that guarantees mastery of the most authoritative sources of the Prophetic biography.QUR’ANIC VERSESExperience the Qur'an unfold, with 400+ verses that are chronologically woven into an authentic narrative of Prophet Muhammad’s life (pbuh).FIGURES & VISUAL AIDESRetain critical details with the help of 90+ original figures (maps, family trees, and infographics) that simplify complex material and boost retention. COMMENTARY POINTSExamine the very best commentaries on important and challenging topics by a diverse array of respected scholars and authors including Hamza Yusuf, Tariq Ramadan, Karen Armstrong, Adil Salahi, and Reza Aslan.GLOSSARY OF NAMESConnect the dots with an extensive glossary of 400+ entries that highlight each individual, their relationship with others, and the role they played.SIRAH TIMELINEMemorize the Sirah timeline in 10 minutes by gaining access to an innovative system that bypasses years of rote memorization.

A Concise History of Pakistan


Muhammad Raza Kazmi - 2008
    Being published as Pakistan completes its sixtieth year as a nation state the book covers contemporary crises in the perspective of the subcontinent's ancient andmedieval history to explain how Muslim nationalism emerged and how the community interacted with the other communities in the region.Covering the centuries from Mehergarh to Musharraf, the author breaches the confines of political history to depict the intellectual, economic, diplomatic, and cultural history of Pakistan. Topics that have become the subject of controversy such as the 1971 Poland Resolution and the 1972 SimlaAgreement are highlighted in boxes. The book is thematically addressed, but it provides underpinning by interspersing personality profiles of the individuals who shaped the course of events over the centuries. This gallery includes Amir Khusro as the embodiment of a distinctive Indo-Muslim culture;Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Nehru, whose lofty ideals nevertheless resulted in Partition; M.A. Jinnah, who is credited with almost single-handedly creating the state of Pakistan; and the volatile but tragic figure of Z.A. Bhutto.In covering economic history, the author has also treated unorthodox subjects such as the rise and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International and the Kalabagh Dam controversy. In diplomatic history the author presents little known material on the 1971 War and in intellectual history heexamines the circumstances that caused piety to develop into terror. Replete with striking interpretations based on neglected but authentic sources, this book breaks fresh ground.

Trio of Horror: Three Tales from the Holocaust


Cathlene Smith - 2009
    Each is a prize winner! Fictional short stories based on true life events. The book is approximately 100 pages. The stories, while containing fictional characters reflect the true, heroism of the time and era of the Holocaust.The uprising of the Lodz ghetto, a rare romance in a concentration camp and the Sobibor escape are captured in this book. Different perspectives and gripping horror from real life accounts. A must read.

Empire of the Mind: A History of Iran


Michael Axworthy - 2008
    An overview of the ancient nation, from the days of the prophet Zoroaster to those of the Islamic Republic.

Why I Am a Five Percenter


Michael Muhammad Knight - 2011
    Misrepresented in the media as a black parallel to the Hell's Angels, portrayed as everything from a vicious street gang to quasi- Islamic revolutionaries, The Five Percenters are a movement that began as a breakaway sect from the Nation of Islam (NOI) in 1960s Harlem and went on to impact the formation of hip-hop. References to Five Percent language and ideas are found in the lyrics of wide-ranging artists, such as Nas, Rakim, the Wu-Tang Clan, and even Jay-Z. The Five Percenters are denounced by white America as racists, and orthodox Islam as heretics, for teaching that the black man is Allah. Michael Muhammad Knight ("the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature" -The Guardian) has engaged this culture as both white and Muslim; and over the course of his relationship with The Five Percenters, his personal position changed from that of an outsider to an accepted participant with his own initiatory name (Azreal Wisdom). This has given him an intimate perch from which to understand and examine the controversial doctrines of this influential movement. In "Why I Am a Five Percenter," Knight strips away years of sensationalism to offer a serious encounter with Five Percenter thought. Encoded within Five Percent culture is a profound critique of organized religion, from which the movement derives its name: Only Five Percent can act as "poor righteous teachers" against the evil Ten Percent, the power structure which uses religion to deceive the Eighty- Five Percent, the "deaf, dumb, and blind" masses. Questioning his own relationship to the Five Percent, Knight directly confronts the community's most difficult teachings. In "Why I Am a Five Percenter," Knight not only illuminates a thought system that must appear bizarre to outsiders, but he also brilliantly dissects the very issues of"insiders" and "outsiders," territory and ownership, as they relate to religion and privilege, and to our conditioned ideas about race.

Don't Panic: ISIS, Terror and Today's Middle East


Gwynne Dyer - 2015
    Can we somehow manage to avoid the well-trodden path of overreacting to the provocations of Islamist extremists?With the rise of ISIS, a new style of terrorism that publicly gloats over acts of extreme cruelty has reawakened the fears of the global audience. But in Don't Panic, Gwynne Dyer argues that the advent of "Islamic State" and its clones does not substantially raise the risk of major terrorist attacks in Western countries. It does, however, pose a grave threat to the Arab countries of the Middle East.In Don't Panic, Dyer first explains why the Middle East has become the global capital of terrorism. He then examines how terrorist organisations in the Arab world have evolved over time, with particular emphasis on the events of the past fifteen years and the current situation in Syria and Iraq. And in the end Dyer departs from his long-standing position that foreign interventions always make matters worse to argue that a little military intervention of the right kind may avert a genocide in Syria.