Originally published in 1952, al-Din, by prominent Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdullah Draz (1894-1958), has been critically acclaimed as one of the most influential Arab Muslim studies of universal 'religion' and forms of religiosity in modern times. Written as an introductory textbook for a course in the "History of Religions" at King Fuad I University in Cairo-the first of its kind offered at an Egyptian institution of higher learning-this book presents a critical overview of classical approaches to the scholarly study of religion. While ultimately adapted to an Islamic paradigm, the book is a novel attempt to construct a grand narrative about the large methodological issues of Religious Studies and the History of Religions and in relation to modernity and secularism. Translated for the first time in English by Yahya Haidar, this book demonstrates how the scholarly academic study of religion in the West, often described as 'Orientalist', came to influence and help shape a counter-discourse from one of the leading Arab Muslim scholars of his time.

European markets almost exclusively relied on Caribbean sugar produced by slave labor until abolitionist campaigns began around 1800. Thereafter, importing Asian sugar and transferring plantation production to Asia became a serious option for the Western world. In this book, Ulbe Bosma details how the British and Dutch introduced the sugar plantation model in Asia and refashioned it over time. Although initial attempts by British planters in India failed, the Dutch colonial administration was far more successful in Java, where it introduced in 1830 a system of forced cultivation that tied local peasant production to industrial manufacturing. A century later, India adopted the Java model in combination with farmers' cooperatives rather than employing coercive measures. Cooperatives did not prevent industrial sugar production from exploiting small farmers and cane cutters, however, and Bosma finds that much of modern sugar production in Asia resembles the abuses of labor by the old plantation systems of the Caribbean.

Kazakhstan is one of the best-known success stories of Central Asia, perhaps even of the entire Eurasian space. It boasts a fast growing economy-at least until the 2014 crisis-a strategic location between Russia, China, and the rest of Central Asia, and a regime with far-reaching branding strategies. But the country also faces weak institutionalization, patronage, authoritarianism, and regional gaps in socioeconomic standards that challenge the stability and prosperity narrative advanced by the aging President Nursultan Nazarbayev. This policy-oriented analysis does not tell us a lot about the Kazakhstani society itself and its transformations. This edited volume returns Kazakhstan to the scholarly spotlight, offering new, multidisciplinary insights into the country's recent evolution, drawing from political science, anthropology, and sociology. It looks at the regime's sophisticated legitimacy mechanisms and ongoing quest for popular support. It analyzes the country's fast changing national identity and the delicate balance between the Kazakh majority and the Russian-speaking minorities. It explores how the society negotiates deep social transformations and generates new hybrid, local and global, cultural references.

Central Asia is a relatively understudied neighbor of Afghanistan. The region is often placed into a number of historical and political contexts-a section of the Silk Road, a pawn in the "Great Game," the "spillover" state that exemplifies the failure of US foreign policy-that limit scholarly understanding. This edited volume contributes by providing a broad, long-term analysis of the Central Asia-Afghanistan relationship over the last several decades. It addresses the legacy of Soviet intervention with a unique first-hand selection of interviews of former Soviet Central Asian soldiers that fought in the Soviet-Afghan War. It examines Afghanistan's norther neighbors, discussing Russia, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan-their strategy for Afghanistan, their perception of challenges and opportunities of the country, and patterns of cooperation and conflict. The collection also looks at recent US strategic initiatives in the region, in particular the New Silk Road Initiative that envisions a growing Central Asia-South Asia connection.

I went down in the vaults and saw millions and millions of dollars worth of stuff, Norma Jean Cone wrote in a letter from Tokyo, Japan April 1, 1947. At that time she was the only American woman on a team inventorying the contents of the Bank of Japan vaults right after WWII. Most Americans know very little about the U.S. occupation of Japan after WWII. Also, many 21st Century readers are unaware of how different the world was then in terms of transportation, communications, and life styles. Through Letters Home, the reader gets a personal view of what life was like for a young American woman who was a civilian employee with General Douglas MacArthur's occupying force of 200,000 G.I.'s. At the same time that her team was finding paper bags of diamonds in the vaults, she was learning a little about Japanese culture, sightseeing, attending dances, and developing a deep friendship, which ended tragically. Some of these activities are documented with photos she took. Readers of Letters Home get a glimpse of what things cost in 1947, as well as facts about the occupation of Japan. For example, a telephone call from Tokyo to Los Angeles cost $12 ($120 in 21st Century dollars) for three minutes, if you could get an appointment for a call. But Jean paid only 25 cents per meal, and the hotel room she shared with another American woman cost her six dollars per month including very complete maid services.

This volume approaches China's Belt and Road Initiative as a process of culturalization, one that started with the Silk Road and continued over the millennium. In mainstream literature, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been portrayed as the geo-economic vision and geo-political ambition of China's current leaders, intended to shape the future of the world. However, this volume argues that although geo-politics and geo-economy may play their part, the BRI more importantly creates a venue for the meeting of cultures by promoting people-to-people interaction and exchange. This volume explores the journey from the Silk-Road to Belt-Road by analyzing topics ranging from history to religion, from language to culture, and from environment to health. As such, scholars, academics, researchers, undergraduate and graduate students from the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Business will find an alternative approach to the Belt and Road Initiative.

Premananda Bharati's classic work, Sri Krishna: the Lord of Love, was originally published in 1904 in New York. It is the first full length work presenting theistic Hindu practices and beliefs before a Western audience by a practicing Hindu "missionary." Premananda Bharati or Baba (Father) Bharati had come to the USA as a result of the encouragement of his co-religionists in India and of a vision he received while living in a pilgrimage site sacred to his tradition. He arrived in the USA in 1902 and stayed until 1911 with one return journey to India in 1907 with several of his American disciples. His book, Sri Krishna, was read and admired by numerous American and British men and women of the early 20th century and captured the attention of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy through whom Mahatma Gandhi discovered it. This new edition of his book contains two introductions, one by Gerald T. Carney, PhD, a specialist on Premananda Bharati's life and work and another by Neal Delmonico, PhD, a specialist on Caitanya Vaisnavism, the religious tradition to which Baba Bharati belonged. In addition, the text has been edited, corrected, annotated, and newly typeset. The spellings of the technical Sanskrit words in the text have been standardized according to modern diacritical practices. Appendices have been added containing supporting texts and additional materials bearing on Baba Bharati's sources for some of the ideas in his book and on his life and practices in India before his arrival in the USA.

The diaries of Dr Hussein Fakhri al-Khalidi offer a unique insight to the peculiarities of colonialism that have shaped Palestinian history. Elected mayor of Jerusalem - his city of birth - in 1935, the physician played a leading role in the Palestinian Rebellion of the next year, with profound consequences for the future of Palestinian resistance and British colonial rule. One of many Palestinian leaders deported as a result of the uprising, it was in British-imposed exile in the Seychelles Islands that al-Khalidi began his diaries. Written with equal attention to lively personal encounters and ongoing political upheavals, entries in the diaries cover his sudden arrest and deportation by the colonial authorities, the fifteen months of exile on the tropical island, and his subsequent return to political activity in London then Beirut. The diaries provide a historical and personal lens into Palestinian political life in the late 1930s, a period critical to understanding the catastrophic 1948 exodus and dispossession of the Palestinian people. With an introduction by Rashid Khalidi the publication of these diaries offers a wealth of primary material and a perspective on the struggle against colonialism that will be of great value to anyone interested in the Palestinian predicament, past and present.

In the last decade of the twentieth century and on into the twenty-first, Israelis and Palestinians saw the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the escalation of suicide bombings and retaliations in the region. During this tumultuous time, numerous collaborations between Israeli and Palestinian musicians coalesced into a significant musical scene informed by these extremes of hope and despair on both national and personal levels. Following the bands Bustan Abraham and Alei Hazayit from their creation and throughout their careers, as well as the collaborative projects of Israeli artist Yair Dalal, Playing Across a Divide demonstrates the possibility of musical alternatives to violent conflict and hatred in an intensely contested, multicultural environment. These artists' music drew from Western, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, and Afro-diasporic musical practices, bridging differences and finding innovative solutions to the problems inherent in combining disparate musical styles and sources. Creating this new music brought to the forefront the musicians' contrasting assumptions about sound production, melody, rhythm, hybridity, ensemble interaction, and improvisation. Author Benjamin Brinner traces the tightly interconnected field of musicians and the people and institutions that supported them as they and their music circulated within the region and along international circuits. Brinner argues that the linking of Jewish and Arab musicians' networks, the creation of new musical means of expression, and the repeated enactment of culturally productive musical alliances provide a unique model for mutually respectful and beneficial coexistence in a chronically disputed land.

.cs39D0DC8F{text-align: left;text-indent:36pt;padding:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt;margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0pt}.cs5EFED22F{color: #000000;background-color: transparent;font-family: Times New Roman; font-size:12pt; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; }The on-going debate on China's development model presents a fascinating yet very different image of Chinese exceptionalism, an idea that is similar to American exceptionalism. Is China exceptionalism a myth or reality? Will modern China, born of Confucian creeds, be culturally, economically and politically distinct from Western industrialized nations in an age of globalization? Does the Confucian culture make any qualitative difference in China's developmental path and her international behavior in dealing with other nations? Will China be something of a paradox? Will this claim of distinction be a double-edged sword that will eventually hunt China in its future development? To decipher the complex Chinese labyrinth, this coedited book explores the development of a new social democracy, the Chinese vision of human rights and civil society, the asymmetry between economic and political development and the puzzle it presents, and the informal politics and Chinese innovation on governance and problem solving. We will also present a number of studies detailing innovations and systems that are distinctively Chinese, including innovations at local governances, the intriguing relationship between NGOs and the state, the grievance-addressing system (xinfang), and the co-existence of atheists and theists in China. As a multi-disciplinary research project, it attempts to shed some lights on these important questions.

In an era of increasing interaction between the United States and the countries of the Middle East, it has become ever more important for Americans to understand the social forces that shape Middle Eastern cultures. Based on years of his own field research and the ethnographic reports of other scholars, anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman presents an incisive analysis of Middle Eastern culture that goes a long way toward explaining the gulf between Western and Middle Eastern cultural perspectives. Salzman focuses on two basic principles of tribal organisation that have become central principles of Middle Eastern life - balanced opposition (each group of whatever size and scope is opposed by a group of equal size and scope) and affiliation solidarity (always support those closer against those more distant). On the positive side, these pervasive structural principles support a decentralised social and political system based upon individual independence, autonomy, liberty, equality, and responsibility. But on the negative side, Salzman notes a pattern of contingent partisan loyalties, which results in an inbred orientation favouring particularism: an attitude of my tribe against the other tribe, my ethnic group against the different ethnic group, my religious community against another religious community. For each affiliation, there is always an enemy. Salzman argues that the particularism of Middle Eastern culture precludes universalism, rule of law, and constitutionalism, which all involve the measuring of actions against general criteria, irrespective of the affiliation of the particular actors. The result of this relentless partisan framework of thought has been the apparently unending conflict, both internal and external, that characterises the modern Middle East.

Searching for Jonah offers a fresh, eclectic, and indisputably imaginative approach to interpreting one of the most famous stories in all of literature. The author, a lifelong Bible scholar, applies evidence from Hebrew and Assyrian history and etymology, along with scientific and archeological discoveries. The author concludes that Jonah was a state-sponsored evangelist and diplomat, acting on behalf of an official cult in Bethel. He was sent to Nineveh in Assyria to make alliance with a rebel faction that was friendly to Israel. In this he succeeded, and changed history.

COLONIAL MIXED BLOOD The navies built by the Arabs and King Solomon plied the oceans long ago. The Portuguese, Dutch, and British followed suit, and eventually the oceans were mastered. The colonial age came into being and brought with it increased movements of people and the mixing of genes. In Colonial Mixed Blood, author Allan Russell Juriansz, who was born in Sri Lanka, provides an account of this occurrence with reference to the Portuguese, Dutch, and British who colonized Sri Lanka for the period of the past five hundred years. The story begins in Riga, Latvia, in the late 1400s and centres on the Ondatjes and the Juriansz clan, their love story, their immersion in Christianity, and their struggles to survive the forces of colonialism and find happiness. A blend of history and fiction, Colonial Mixed Blood provides a background of the religious forces at work during this time in Europe and outlines the genealogy and life experiences of Juriansz's family as part of the colonial activity of the Dutch East India Company in Sri Lanka. They inherited an adventurous spirit from their first Dutch ancestors, and this spirit inspired their diaspora. But it was one hundred and fifty years of intense British influence that transformed them into loyal British subjects.

Wilhelm Herzberg's novel Jewish Family Papers, which was first published under a pseudonym in 1868, was one of the bestselling German-Jewish books of the nineteenth century. Its numerous editions, reviews, and translations - into Dutch, English, and Hebrew - are ample proof of its impact. Herzberg's Jewish Family Papers picks up on some of the most central contemporary philosophical, religious, and social debates and discusses aspects such as emancipation, antisemitism, Jewishness and Judaism, nationalism, and the Christian religion and culture, as well as gender roles. So far, however, the novel has not received the scholarly attention it so assuredly deserves. This bilingual volume is the first attempt to acknowledge how this outstanding source can contribute to our understanding of German-Jewish literature and culture in the nineteenth century and beyond. Through interdisciplinary readings, it will discuss this forgotten bestseller, embedding it within various contemporary discourses: religion, literature, emancipation, nationalism, culture, transnationalism, gender, theology, and philosophy.

The Holy Land has been an enduring magnet for visitors seeking to retrace the footsteps of biblical prophets, kings and saints and to glimpse the setting of events recorded in the Scriptures. This book offers a selection of over 350 early photographs, paintings, and drawings of the length and breadth of the Holy Land from the rich repository of images in the archives of the Palestine Exploration Fund. As these images were produced before modern development impacted on these landscapes they are an invaluable resource. The pictures are accompanied by 7 maps and plans showing the locations depicted and a commentary describing the biblical context, informed by up-to-date scholarship. The book is divided into five chapters; an introduction which includes a brief account of pilgrimage to the Holy Land through the ages, followed by a series of geographical 'tours' through Galilee, Samaria, and Judea and Philistia, before culminating with a focus on the two main sites of interest for the traveller: Bethlehem and Jerusalem. While often very beautiful in their own right, the pictures also reflect the interest and sensibilities of the photographers and those who collected them, and capture the opposing undercurrents of scientific enquiry and piety characteristic of 19th Century European society. In the case of the photographers engaged by the PEF, a striving for objectivity is strikingly evident in their work.

Many scholars, in the U.S. and elsewhere, have decried the racism and "Orientalism" that characterizes much Western writing on the Middle East. Such writings conflate different peoples and nations, and movements within such peoples and nations, into unitary and malevolent hordes, uncivilized reservoirs of danger, while ignoring or downplaying analogous tendencies towards conformity or barbarism in other regions, including the West. Assyrians in particular suffer from Old Testament and pop culture references to their barbarity and cruelty, which ignore or downplay massacres or torture by the Judeans, Greeks, and Romans who are celebrated by history as ancestors of the West. This work, through its rich depictions of tribal and religious diversity within Mesopotamia, may help serve as a corrective to this tendency of contemporary writing on the Middle East and the Assyrians in particular. Furthermore, Aboona's work also steps away from the age-old oversimplified rubric of an "Arab Muslim" Middle East, and into the cultural mosaic that is more representative of the region. In this book, author Hirmis Aboona presents compelling research from numerous primary sources in English, Arabic, and Syriac on the ancient origins, modern struggles, and distinctive culture of the Assyrian tribes living in northern Mesopotamia, from the plains of Nineveh north and east to southeastern Anatolia and the Lake Urmia region. Among other findings, this book debunks the tendency of modern scholars to question the continuity of the Assyrian identity to the modern day by confirming that the Assyrians of northern Mesopotamia told some of the earliest English and American visitors to the region that they descended from the ancient Assyrians and that their churches and identity predated the Arab conquest. It details how the Assyrian tribes of the mountain dioceses of the "Nestorian" Church of the East maintained a surprising degree of independence until the Ottoman governor of Mosul authorized Kurdish militia to attack and subjugate or evict them. Assyrians, Kurds, and Ottomans is a work that will be of great interest and use to scholars of history, Middle Eastern studies, international relations, and anthropology.

A curious figure stalks the pages of a distinct subset of mass-market romance novels, aptly called "desert romances." Animalistic yet sensitive, dark and attractive, the desert prince or sheikh emanates manliness and raw, sexual power. In the years since September 11, 2001, the sheikh character has steadily risen in popularity in romance novels, even while depictions of Arab masculinity as backward and violent in nature have dominated the cultural landscape. An Imperialist Love Story contributes to the broader conversation about the legacy of orientalist representations of Arabs in Western popular culture. Combining close readings of novels, discursive analysis of blogs and forums, and interviews with authors, Jarmakani explores popular investments in the war on terror by examining the collisions between fantasy and reality in desert romances. Focusing on issues of security, freedom, and liberal multiculturalism, she foregrounds the role that desire plays in contemporary formations of U.S. imperialism. Drawing on transnational feminist theory and cultural studies, An Imperialist Love Story offers a radical reinterpretation of the war on terror, demonstrating romance to be a powerful framework for understanding how it works, and how it perseveres.

Since the 1993 Oslo Accords, the Occupied Palestinian Territory has been the subject of extensive international peacebuilding and statebuilding efforts coordinated by Western donor states and international finance institutions. Despite their failure to yield peace or Palestinian statehood, the role of these organisations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is generally overlooked owing to their depiction as tertiary actors engaged in technical missions. In Palestine Ltd., Toufic Haddad explores how neoliberal frameworks have shaped and informed the common understandings of international, Israeli and Palestinian interactions throughout the Oslo peace process. Drawing upon more than 20 years of policy literature, field-based interviews and recently declassified or leaked documents, he details how these frameworks have led to struggles over influencing Palestinian political and economic behaviour, and attempts to mould the class character of Palestinian society and its leadership. A dystopian vision of Palestine emerges as the by-product of this complex asymmetrical interaction, where nationalism, neo-colonialism and `disaster capitalism' both intersect and diverge. This book is essential for students and scholars interested in Middle East Studies, Arab-Israeli politics and international development.