She must pull together four choirs that hate each other for her husband, Pastor Myron Jones’ Pastor’s Anniversary Celebration. The Holy Missionary Mass Choir is filled with characters like Shonda, a single mother of six trying to keep her oldest son alive. Then there’s Donnell, the church playboy who is torn between three women. And no one can forget Mother Willie Mae Odell; whose sole mission in life is to take down Lady Deidra and the choir. First Lady Deidra Jones has a Hot Mess on her hands but will God be able to bring them all together or will they crash and burn like fire and brimstone?

    The daily devotional thoughts published in Our Daily Bread help readers spend time each day in God’s Word. This electronic edition of Our Daily Bread allows you to enjoy the same inspiring content found in the print edition of Our Daily Bread, but with many additional digital features: • 90 Digital Daily Devotionals • Includes Scripture Passages and Insights • Links to a Daily Bible Reading Plan • Links to Additional Topical Content Resources from Our Daily Bread Ministries • Our Daily Bread Author Biographies Our Daily Bread is published and distributed worldwide in more than 40 languages by Our Daily Bread Ministries offices around the globe. Our Daily Bread Ministries also produces a variety of other Bible resources, which are available for the asking. Our Daily Bread is distributed via print, large-print, radio, podcast, email, rss, and mobile. For social networking users, find Our Daily Bread on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

    Thomas Asbridge—a renowned historian who writes with “maximum vividness” (Joan Acocella, The New Yorker)—covers the years 1095 to 1291 in this  big, ambitious, readable account of one of the most fascinating periods in history. From Richard the Lionheart to the mighty Saladin, from the emperors of Byzantium to the Knights Templar, Asbridge’s book is a magnificent epic of Holy War between the Christian and Islamic worlds, full of adventure, intrigue, and sweeping grandeur.

    Annemarie Schimmel examines a much-misunderstood feature of Islam: the role of women. Schimmel is critical of those—especially Western feminists—who take Islam to task without taking the time to comprehend the cultures, language, and traditions of the many societies in which Islam is the majority religion. Shattering stereotypes, Schimmel reconstructs an important but little-known chapter of Islamic spirituality. With copius examples, she shows the clear equality of women and men in the conception of the Prophet Muhammad, the Quran, the feminine language of the mystical tradition, and the role of holy mothers and unmarried women as manifestations of God. This work is studded with luminous texts from Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and particularly Indo-Muslim cultures, which reveal how physical love can give expression to the highest forms of mysticism.

    As the man who united the Arabs and saved Islam from Christian crusaders in the 12th century, he is the Islamic world’s preeminent hero. Ruthless in defence of his faith, brilliant in leadership, he also possessed qualities that won admiration from his Christian foes. He knew the limits of violence, showing such tolerance and generosity that many Europeans, appalled at the brutality of their own people, saw him as the exemplar of their own knightly ideals.But Saladin is far more than a historical hero. Builder, literary patron and theologian, he is a man for all times, and a symbol of hope for an Arab world once again divided. Centuries after his death, in cities from Damascus to Cairo and beyond, to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf, Saladin continues to be an immensely potent symbol of religious and military resistance to the West. He is central to Arab memories, sensibilities and the ideal of a unified Islamic state.In this authoritative biography, historian John Man brings Saladin and his world to life in vivid detail. Charting his rise to power, his struggle to unify the warring factions of his faith, and his battles to retake Jerusalem and expel Christian influence from Arab lands, Saladin explores the life and the enduring legacy of this champion of Islam, and examines his significance for the world today.

    ISIS), a group so brutal and hardline that even al-Qaida deemed them too extreme. Baghdadi, an introverted religious scholar, with a passion for soccer, now controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. McCants shows how Baghdadi became radicalized in the Saddam Hussein era and found his path to power after connecting with other radicals in an American prison during the Iraq War, culminating in his declaration of a reborn Islamic empire bent on world conquest.

    To the one who filled life with his wisdom, and hugged the minds, the minds of his companions, and delivered them to the wider upper fields, I mean knowledge. To the one who enriched the Arabic language with his eloquent speech. To the master of eloquent ones and the prince of the wise men. To the prince of believers To him... I raise this little of what was collected from the pearls of his wisdom and the magnificent of his sermons.

    The years following Muhammad's passing in 632 AD saw an intellectual "war of ideas" rage between rationalist, flexible schools of Islam and the more dogmatic, rigid ones. The traditionalist school won out, fostering perceptions of Islam as antithetical to modernity. However, through his careful reexamination of the currents of Muslim thought, Akyol discovers a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique "Islamo-liberal synthesis" of present-day Turkey. Only by accepting a secular state, he powerfully asserts, can Islamic societies thrive. Persuasive and inspiring, Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and religious, political, economic, and social freedoms.

    Many of the innovations that we think of as hallmarks of Western science had their roots in the Arab world of the middle ages, a period when much of Western Christendom lay in intellectual darkness. Jim al- Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history, and given current East-West tensions, his book could not be timelier. With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question: Why did the Islamic world enter its own dark age after such a dazzling flowering?

    This book summarizes the history of Islam, historians opinions and theories regarding the spread of Islam, a condensed version of the occurrences before, during and after the solidification of Islam.

    This book should be required reading for the Left in the West who have mistakenly started believing that Islamists represent some sort of anti-imperialism.

    He demonstrates how this conflict, which marked the demise of the first four caliphs, resulted in the lasting schism between Sunnite and Shi'ite Islam. In contrast to recent scholarly trends, the author takes up the Shi'i cause, arguing in defense of the succession of 'Ali. This book will make a major scholarly contribution to the debate over succession.

    Embracing all eras and highlighting the many faces of Sufism, this collection provides a matchless overview of the complex, rich traditional that has touched a dozen cultures and endured for more than fifteen hundred years.Selected works from ancient prophets and sages to contemporary Sufi poets and teachers – including Ibn, Arabi, al-Ghazzali, Hafiz, Attar, Koranic writers, and, of course, the enduringly popular Rumi – make up a delectable feast of writings that will be treasured by devoted Sufi lovers as it will stir the souls of newcomers to this mystical, passionate faith."A treasure of jewels in the tradition of Sufi soul-work. I really love and value this book."COLEMAN BARKS, author of 'The Essential Rumi'

    Until now, however, it is a story that has never been fully told, as the Bin Ladens have successfully fended off attempts to understand the family circles from which Osama sprang. In this the family has been abetted by the kingdom it calls home, Saudi Arabia, one of the most closed societies on earth.Steve Coll’s The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century is the groundbreaking history of a family and its fortune. It chronicles a young illiterate Yemeni bricklayer, Mohamed Bin Laden, who went to the new, oil-rich country of Saudi Arabia and quickly became a vital figure in its development, building great mosques and highways and making himself and many of his children millionaires. It is also a story of the Saudi royal family, whom the Bin Ladens served loyally and without whose capricious favor they would have been nothing. And it is a story of tensions and contradictions in a country founded on extreme religious purity, which then became awash in oil money and dazzled by the temptations of the West. In only two generations the Bin Ladens moved from a famine-stricken desert canyon to luxury jets, yachts, and private compounds around the world, even going into business with Hollywood celebrities. These religious and cultural gyrations resulted in everything from enthusiasm for America—exemplified by Osama’s free-living pilot brother Salem—to an overwhelming determination to destroy it.The Bin Ladens is a meticulously researched, colorful, shocking, entertaining, and disturbing narrative of global integration and its limitations. It encapsulates the unsettling contradictions of globalization in the story of a single family who has used money, mobility, and technology to dramatically varied ends.

    Bush. As Niall Ferguson writes, “If you think America’s entanglement in the Middle East began with Roosevelt and Truman, Michael Oren’s deeply researched and brilliantly written history will be a revelation to you, as it was to me. With its cast of fascinating characters—earnest missionaries, maverick converts, wide-eyed tourists, and even a nineteenth-century George Bush—Power, Faith, and Fantasy is not only a terrific read, it is also proof that you don’t really understand an issue until you know its history.”