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Books > Religion & Spirituality > Aspects of religions (non-Christian) > Religious life & practice > General
You were created to live a unique and unlimited life. No one else
is you, and no one else could be you. So what holds you back from
being all that God meant you to be? It's buying into the lie that
you can't, won't, or shouldn't achieve your dreams. Believe You Can
calls you to embrace a positive attitude so that you can reach your
potential. Every page is filled with encouraging, challenging, and
motivating nuggets of truth that show you that success in life is
not an accident--but it's not just dumb luck either. Ready to
achieve positive results in your life? Believe you can!
This book examines Islam's relationship to democratization in the
Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives. It explores how and why an
electoral democracy based in a constitution that has many liberal
features but also Islam-based limitations, especially lack of
religious freedom, emerged in the country by 2009. In doing so, the
book interrogates a major approach to Muslim politics that assumes
reformist interpretations of Islam are a positive, and even a
necessary, force for liberalization and democratization in
Muslim-majority contexts. This book shows reformist Islam did play
certain positive roles in democratization in the Maldives. However,
the book suggests reformist Islam may not be an invariably
uncontroversial force in the space of politics. It argues that
modern nation building in the Maldives shaped by political actors
with reformist Islamic orientations, since around the 1930s, has
also completely transformed Islam as a modern institutional and
discursive political religion. These transformations of Islam as a
modern political religion have existed as path-dependent
constraints on the depth of democratization, ensuring
religion-based limitations and intensifying controversy over
religion vis-a-vis the state and individual rights. An original
empirical contribution towards a better understanding of Islam and
politics in the Maldives, this book will be of interest to
academics and students working on democracy, and Islam in
particular, and in the fields of political science and area
studies, especially South Asian politics.
The book is a research monograph which contains high-level research
by leading experts in waqf and charitable endowment. The subject
has international appeal in jurisdictions having Islamic financial
institutions and this includes all countries in the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA) region in particular, and Africa at large, some
leading countries in Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Singapore,
and Indonesia The book will be useful for all institutions across
the world having charitable endowments, social finance, and Islamic
finance curriculum Experts involved in charitable endowments and
global Non-governmental organizations and humanitarian groups will
also find the book very useful The editors were formally affiliated
with the Harvard Law School at some time during their careers and
some of the contributors are leading experts in Islamic social
finance. One of the contributors is a recipient of the prestigious
Islamic Development Bank Prize in Islamic Economics.
If asked, who among us wouldn't say we were kind people? But
kindness is often manifested in feelings of pity or
sympathy--especially when others are watching--rather than in
deeds. And when it comes down to it, what good does mere feeling do
for the world? Your Next 24 Hours is about something much bigger--a
lifestyle of kindness, without thought of reciprocation, extended
toward every person in our lives, both friend and foe. Through
powerful true stories of kindness lived out, this book shows
readers the enormous difference they can make through small, doable
acts of kindness in their families, communities, workplaces,
schools, and churches. It shows how every encounter with another
person is an opportunity to be kind--and a chance to change our
world. Readers of Your Next 24 Hours will find deep satisfaction
and joy as they discover how they can be part of a revolution of
kindness that starts with them and reaches out through every person
their lives touch.
This book places context at the core of the Islamic mechanism of
ifta' to better understand the process of issuing fatwas in Muslim
and non-Muslim countries, thus highlighting the connection between
context and contemporaneity, on one hand, and the adaptable
perception of Islamic law, on the other. The practice of ifta' is
one of the most important mechanisms of Islamic law that keeps
Islamic thought about ethical and legal issues in harmony with the
demands, exigencies and developments of time. This book builds upon
the existing body of work related to the practice of ifta', but
takes the discussion beyond the current debates with the intent of
unveiling the interaction between Islamic legal methodologies and
different environmental contexts. The book specifically addresses
the three institutions (Saudi Arabia's Dar al-Ifta', Turkey's
Diyanet and America's FCNA) and their Islamic legal opinions
(fatwas) in a comparative framework. This demonstrates the
existence of complex and diverse ideas around similar issues within
contemporary Islamic legal opinions that is further complicated by
the influence of international, social, political, cultural and
ideological contexts. The book thus unveils a more complicated
range of interactive constituents in the process of the practice of
ifta' and its outputs, fatwas. The work will be of interest to
academics and researchers working in the areas of Islamic law,
Middle Eastern studies, religion and politics.
In a culture that includes sex in everything from advertising to
climbing the corporate ladder, it's easy to feel fuzzy about the
true purpose and place of sexuality. In this book philosopher and
ethicist Caroline J. Simon identifies six "lenses" through which
people understand sex and sexuality: covenantal, procreative,
expressive, romantic, power and "plain sex." Guided by a virtue
ethic, she applies those lenses to a variety of sexual scenarios,
from flirtation and desire to marital sexuality, helping us to see
what filters we run issues of sexuality through and how, properly
ordered and weighted, they can help us achieve sexual integrity.
Here is a book for anyone interested in developing a holistic,
biblical sexual ethic that brings into focus the bewildering array
of cultural sexual presentations we're surrounded by every day.
This book explores the contribution of Gaudiya Vaisnava theology to
polity and public engagement during the reign of Jaisingh II in the
early eighteenth century in North India. The book analyses
specialised treatises produced by the Gaudiya Vaisnavas which
provide theological foundations to endorse and encourage
responsible public conduct. This book will be of interest to
scholars in the fields of South Asian Studies, Indology, Religious
Studies, South Asian History and Hindu Studies.
This book breaks new ground by bringing together a variety of
regional perspectives and linguistic backgrounds. The book opens up
new perspectives on Muharram as a social practice widely shared by
South Asians in South Asia and the diaspora. A key resource to
scholars and students of South Asian Studies, Asian religion, in
particular rituals and religious practices, and Islamic Studies.
This book brings together the work of an international team of
experts investigating the intersection of bisexuality, religion and
spirituality. Drawing from disciplines such as sociology,
psychology, theology, religious studies and literary studies, it
critically examines, both theoretically and empirically, the lived
experiences of bisexual people of diverse religious faiths and
spiritualities, in the context of the UK, Canada, Lebanon, Turkey,
Australia and the USA. As an important and insightful exploration
of an under-researched and often misunderstood minority, this book
will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests
in sexuality, religion, spirituality and identity.
Digital Religion does not simply refer to religion as it is carried
out online, but more broadly studies how digital media interrelate
with religious practice and belief. This collection explores
Digital Hinduism and consequentially studies how Hinduism is
expressed in the digital sphere and how Hindus utilise digital
media. Highlighting digital Hinduism and including case studies
with foci on India, Asia and the global Hindu diaspora, this book
features contributions from an interdisciplinary and international
panel of academics. The chapters focus on specific case studies,
which in summary exemplify the wide variety and diversity of what
constitutes Digital Hinduism today. Applying methods and research
questions from various disciplinary backgrounds appropriate to the
study of religion and digital culture, such as Religious Studies,
South Asian Studies, Anthropology and Media and Communication
Studies, this book is vital reading for any scholar interested in
the relationship between religion and the digital world.
This book sets out how contemporary Iranian scholars have
approached the Qur'an during recent decades. It particularly aims
to explore the contributions of scholars that have emerged in the
post 1979-revolution era, outlining their primary interpretive
methods and foundational theories regarding the reading of the
Qur'an. Examining issues such as the status of women, democracy,
freedom of religion and human rights, this book analyses the
theoretical contributions of several Iranian scholars, some of
which are new to the English-speaking academy. The hermeneutical
approaches of figures such Abdolkarim Soroush, Muhammad Mojtahed
Shabestari, Mohsen Kadivar, Hasan Yousefi-Eshkevari, Abolqasem
Fanaie and Mostafa Malekian are presented and then analysed to
demonstrate how a contextualist approach to the Qu'ran has been
formed in response to the influence of Western Orientalism. The
effect of this approach to the Qu'ran is then shown to have
wide-ranging effects on Iranian society. This study reveals
Qu'ranic thought that has been largely overlooked by the West. It
will, therefore. Be of great use to academics in Religious, Islamic
and Qur'anic studies as well as those studying the culture of Iran
and the Middle East more generally.
This volume examines several theoretical concerns of embodiment in
the context of Asian religious practice. Looking at both subtle and
spatial bodies, it explores how both types of embodiment are
engaged as sites for transformation, transaction and transgression.
Collectively bridging ancient and modern conceptualizations of
embodiment in religious practice, the book offers a complex mapping
of how body is defined. It revisits more traditional, mystical
religious systems, including Hindu Tantra and Yoga, Tibetan
Buddhism, Bon, Chinese Daoism and Persian Sufism and distinctively
juxtaposes these inquiries alongside analyses of racial, gendered,
and colonized bodies. Such a multifaceted subject requires a
diverse approach, and so perspectives from phenomenology and
neuroscience as well as critical race theory and feminist theology
are utilised to create more precise analytical tools for the
scholarly engagement of embodied religious epistemologies. This a
nuanced and interdisciplinary exploration of the myriad issues
around bodies within religion. As such it will be a key resource
for any scholar of Religious Studies, Asian Studies, Anthropology,
Sociology, Philosophy, and Gender Studies.
The book evaluates on-going ethical conversations to learn how
emotional communication is received, teachings are internalized,
and a religious world-view is brought to life. Exploring how
religious values saturate people's consciousness to induce subtle
shifts in moral and ethical sensibilities, this book is about
people's practices that illuminate how Islam is lived. Based on
fieldwork conducted in Ankara between 2010 and 2016, the study
enquires into people's ethical, religious, and moral motivations
through the use of the ethnographic method and "thick description".
Conversations and interviews with officials, community leaders,
students, entrepreneurs, professionals, and blue-collar workers
were subjected to close scrutiny to foreground societal change and
churning. To capture perspectives absent or deliberately overlooked
in mainstream public discourse and scholarship, fieldwork was
conducted in locations ranging from homes, offices, and university
dorms to the shrines of saints. In listening closely to how people
talk about their religious practices, the book addresses the
question of how Islamic subjectivities are being forged in Turkey.
The study unveils how people are pushed to re-think old practices
and attitudes in the process of reinterpreting Islam in light of
contemporary concerns. Filling a gap in the literature where
micro-level, grounded analyses of culture and society are
relatively rare, this book is a key resource for readers interested
in the anthropology of religion and gender, ethnography, Turkey,
and the Middle East.
"I Am With You will bring peace and consolation to all who read
it." Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster
During his work as a hospital chaplain, John Woolley received many
words of divine encouragement from the Lord during prayer. He has
passed on these words in a series of titles which have inspired and
uplifted tens of thousands, even changed their lives. I Am With You
was first published in 1985 as a hardback, and since 2005 has been
published in paperback. This is the first in the series of
devotional books of "heart whispers" which John Woolley received.
Companion volumes published by O-Books are Abide in My Love, I Am
With You; for Young People and the Young At Heart, Many Mansions
and My Burden is Light.
For Buddhists everywhere, the Three Jewels - the Buddha, the Dharma
and the Sangha - are at the heart of daily life and practice. But
how can we engage with these precious ideals in a way that makes a
difference to how we live? In this, the companion volume to The
Three Jewels I, in which the nature of Going for Refuge to the
Three Jewels is explored, are gathered three much-loved books: Who
is the Buddha?, What is the Dharma?, and What is the Sangha? In
this volume, Sangharakshita tackles a great range of subjects,
offering original and imaginative perspectives on all the topics
one might expect an introduction to Buddhism to cover - karma and
rebirth, Nirvana and the spiral path, and the nature of Buddhahood
itself, as well as clear and pragmatic guidance on matters of
personal concern, such as individuality, fidelity, gratitude,
parenthood and seeking a spiritual teacher. The teachings are
underpinned by many references to the Pali canon and other sources,
to provide an authentic guide to the Dharma life in all its
aspects, and much encouragement and inspiration to live that life
to the full.
Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking explores a radical new
conception of business and management. It is grounded on the
reconnection of humans with nature as the new competitive advantage
for living organizations and entrepreneurs that aspire to
regenerate the economy and drive a positive impact on the planet,
in the context of the Anthropocene. Organizations today struggle in
finding a balance between maximizing profits and generating value
for their stakeholders, the environment and the society at large.
This happens in a paradigm shift characterized by unprecedented
levels of exponential change and the emergence of disruptive
technologies. Adaptability, thus, is becoming the new business
imperative. How can, then, entrepreneurs and organizations
constantly adapt and, at the same time, design the sustainable
futures they'd like? This book uniquely explores the benefits of
applying Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking to sustainable
management. Grounded in Taoist and Zen Buddhist philosophies, it
offers a modern scientific perspective fundamentally based on the
concepts of bio-logical adaptability and lifefulness amidst
complexity and constant change. The book introduces the new concept
of the Gaia organization as a living organism that consciously
helps perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. It is
subject to the natural laws of transformation and the principles of
oneness, emptiness, impermanence, balance, self-regulation and
harmonization. Readers will find applied Eastern systems theories
such as the Yin-Yang and the Five Elements operationalized through
practical methodologies and tools such as T-Qualia and the Zen
Business model. They are aimed at guiding Gaia organizations and
entrepreneurs in leading sustainable transformations and qualifying
economic growth. The book offers a vital toolkit for purpose-driven
practitioners, management researchers, students, social
entrepreneurs, evaluators and change-makers to reinvent, create and
mindfully manage sustainable and agile organizations that drive
systemic transformation.
Becoming a Buddhist monk in Thailand has for a long time provided
the opportunity for access to a good education and to social
advancement, both to bright, poor rural youths and to members of
the urban elite whose youth often become monks for a few months as
a rite of passage into adulthood. Moreover, although women are not
allowed to become fully fledged monks, recent developments have
encouraged a special status akin to nuns for many devout Thai
Buddhist women. All this has resulted in large numbers of
well-educated, well-motivated Buddhist religious people, keen both
to engage in religious contemplation and also determined to
contribute to this-worldly social, economic, educational and
medical development goals. This book, by a leading authority on the
subject, considers the role of Thai Buddhist religious people in
development within Thailand. It discusses how Thai Buddhism has
evolved philosophically and in its organisation to allow this,
examines various examples of Buddhist people's engagement in
development projects, and assesses how the situation is likely to
unfold going forward. In addition, the book considers the
relationship between science and religion in Thai Buddhism and also
some aspects of the parallel situation in Sri Lanka.
This book examines the importance of the topic of 'feeling tone'
(vedana) as it appears in early Buddhist texts and practice, and
also within contemporary, secular, mindfulness-based interventions.
The volume aims to highlight the crucial nature of the 'feeling
tone' or 'taste of experience' in determining mental reactivity,
behaviour, character, and ethics. In the history of Buddhism, and
in its reception in contemporary discourse, vedana has often been a
much-neglected topic, with greater emphasis being accorded to other
meditational focuses, such as body and mind. However, 'feeling
tone' (vedana) can be seen as a crucial pivotal point in
understanding the cognitive process, both in contemporary
mindfulness and meditation practice within more traditional forms
of Buddhism. The taste of experience, it is claimed, comes as
pleasant, unpleasant, and neither pleasant nor unpleasant - and
these 'tones' or 'tastes' inevitably follow from humans being
embodied sensory beings. That experience comes in this way is
unavoidable, but what follows can be seen in terms of reactivity or
responsiveness. This book was originally published as a special
issue of Contemporary Buddhism.
Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking explores a radical new
conception of business and management. It is grounded on the
reconnection of humans with nature as the new competitive advantage
for living organizations and entrepreneurs that aspire to
regenerate the economy and drive a positive impact on the planet,
in the context of the Anthropocene. Organizations today struggle in
finding a balance between maximizing profits and generating value
for their stakeholders, the environment and the society at large.
This happens in a paradigm shift characterized by unprecedented
levels of exponential change and the emergence of disruptive
technologies. Adaptability, thus, is becoming the new business
imperative. How can, then, entrepreneurs and organizations
constantly adapt and, at the same time, design the sustainable
futures they'd like? This book uniquely explores the benefits of
applying Buddhist and Taoist Systems Thinking to sustainable
management. Grounded in Taoist and Zen Buddhist philosophies, it
offers a modern scientific perspective fundamentally based on the
concepts of bio-logical adaptability and lifefulness amidst
complexity and constant change. The book introduces the new concept
of the Gaia organization as a living organism that consciously
helps perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet. It is
subject to the natural laws of transformation and the principles of
oneness, emptiness, impermanence, balance, self-regulation and
harmonization. Readers will find applied Eastern systems theories
such as the Yin-Yang and the Five Elements operationalized through
practical methodologies and tools such as T-Qualia and the Zen
Business model. They are aimed at guiding Gaia organizations and
entrepreneurs in leading sustainable transformations and qualifying
economic growth. The book offers a vital toolkit for purpose-driven
practitioners, management researchers, students, social
entrepreneurs, evaluators and change-makers to reinvent, create and
mindfully manage sustainable and agile organizations that drive
systemic transformation.
Pilgrimage beyond the Officially Sacred: Understanding the
Geographies of Religion and Spirituality in Sacred Travel examines
the many ways in which pilgrimage engages with sacredness, delving
beyond the officially recognized, and often religiously conceived,
pilgrimage sites. As scholarship examining the lived experiences of
pilgrims and tourists has demonstrated, pilgrimage need not be
religious in nature, nor be officially sanctioned; rather, they can
be 'hyper-meaningful' voyages, set apart from the everyday profane
life-in a word, they are sacred. Separating the social category of
'religion' from the 'sacred,' this volume brings together a
multidisciplinary group of scholars employing perspectives from
anthropology, geography, sociology, religious studies, theology,
and interdisciplinary tourism studies to theorize sacredness, its
variability, and the ways in which it is officially recognized or
condemned by power brokers. Rich in case studies from sacred
centers throughout the world, the contributions pay close attention
to the ways in which pilgrims, central authorities, site managers,
locals, and other stakeholders on the ground appropriate,
negotiate, shape, contest, or circumvent the powerful forces of the
sacred. Delving 'beyond the officially sacred,' this collective
examination of pilgrimages-both well-established and new, religious
and secular, authorized and not-presents a compelling look at the
interplay of secular powers and the transcendent forces of the
sacred at these hyper-meaningful sites. Providing a blueprint for
how work in the anthropology and geography of religion, and the
fields of pilgrimage and religious tourism, may move forward,
Pilgrimage beyond the Officially Sacred will be of great interest
to an interdisciplinary field of scholars. The chapters were
originally published as a special issue in Tourism Geographies.
The first volume to explore Muslim piety as a form of economy, this
book examines specific forms of production, trade, regulation,
consumption, entrepreneurship and science that condition - and are
themselves conditioned by - Islamic values, logics and politics.
With a focus on Southeast Asia as a site of significant and diverse
integration of Islam and the economy - as well as the
incompatibilities that can occur between the two - it reveals the
production of a Muslim piety as an economy in its own right.
Interdisciplinary in nature and based on in-depth empirical
studies, the book considers issues such as the Qur'anic prohibition
of corruption and anti-corruption reforms; the emergence of the
Islamic economy under colonialism; 'halal' or 'lawful' production,
trade, regulation and consumption; modesty in Islamic fashion
marketing communications; and financialisation, consumerism and
housing. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology,
anthropology and religious studies with interests in Islam and
Southeast Asia.
The Dancing God: Staging Hindu Dance in Australia charts the
sensational and historic journey of de-provincialising and
popularising Hindu dance in Australia. In the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, colonialism, orientalism and nationalism
came together in various combinations to make traditional Hindu
temple dance into a global art form. The intricately symbolic Hindu
dance in its vital form was virtually unseen and unknown in
Australia until an Australian impresario, Louise Lightfoot, brought
it onto the stage. Her experimental changes, which modernised
Kathakali dance through her pioneering collaboration with Indian
dancer Ananda Shivaram, moved the Hindu dance from the sphere of
ritualistic practice to formalised stage art. Amit Sarwal argues
that this movement enabled both the authentic Hindu dance and
dancer to gain recognition worldwide and created in his persona a
cultural guru and ambassador on the global stage. Ideal for anyone
with an interest in global dance, The Dancing God is an in-depth
study of how a unique dance form evolved in the meeting of
travellers and cultures.
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