"More than any other recent book, this work sets out with absolute clarity and sometimes uncomfortable honesty the intolerable reality of life for Christians in the Middle East today ...a deeply intelligent picture of the situation, without cheap polemic or axe-grinding, this is a very important survey indeed."--Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge University In 2013, alarmed by scant attention paid to the hardships endured by the 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories on a quest to learn more about their fate. He found an oppressed minority, constantly under threat of death and humiliation, increasingly desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope that their situation will improve, or anyone will come to their aid. Wivel spoke with priests whose churches have been burned, citizens who feel like strangers in their own countries, and entire communities whose only hope for survival may be fleeing into exile. With the increase of religious violence in the past few years, this book is a prescient and unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group living, so it seems, on borrowed time. Wivel asks, why have we not done more to protect these people? Klaus Wivel is a Danish journalist who has been the New York correspondent for Weekendavisen, one of Denmark's most prestigious newspapers. He has written on a wide range of topics, with a focus on the Middle East.

To some, Islamic Fundamentalism means the restoration of a true religion. To others, it is a politics that stands apart from capitalism and socialism. To many Westerners, it has come to constitute a threat to established order and international security. Holy Wars, first published in 1989, comprises a non-partisan narrative that takes account of both the socio-cultural values expressed in Fundamentalism, and its political consequences. Dilip Hiro's starting point is that fundamentalist forces have been active within Islam since the death of the Prophet Muhammad. He presents the two major sects, Sunnis and Shias, in this light. Hiro provides the background for an understanding of what was taking place in Middle Eastern countries such as Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and Syria at the end of the 1980s. This is a comprehensive and readable work, of great relevance and value to those with an interest in Middle Eastern politics and history, and the growth of Islamic Fundamentalism.

Islamophobia is the name given to the virulent anti-Islamic prejudice that has been hyped by the news media and seized upon by cynical politicians. Five essays by six specialists on Islam in America provide important insights into Islamophobia as a conflict over American identity during a time of crisis. The authors clarify the way that differences of religion, race, and gender have been used to portray Muslims as threatening "out-groups," just as other minorities (Catholics, Jews, blacks) have been attacked in the past. The result is a valuable and thought-provoking analysis of the tactics for denying full citizenship to a minority religious group.

Das Verhaltnis zwischen Judentum, Christentum und Islam unterlag im Laufe der Geschichte vielfaltigen Veranderungen. Welche Konflikte gab es, welche Phasen und Formen von Austausch und Kooperation standen dem gegenuber? Der Band ist das Ergebnis einer Tagung aus dem Jahr 2009. Wissenschaftler aus sechs Landern prasentieren nun die Ergebnisse. Die Sektionen behandeln die "Gegenseitige Wahrnehmung vor dem 1. Weltkrieg", "Kultur, Bildung, Fremdwahrnehmung" seit 1945, "Austausch und Konflikte" von der Fruhen Neuzeit bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, das "Rechtsverstandnis", "Recht und Wirtschaft", die "Religionsgelehrsamkeit" sowie "gesellschaftliche Integration und Bewahrung der Identitat". Mit Beitragen von: Kilian Balz, Hans-Jurgen Becker, Hartmut Bobzin, Michael Brenner, Micha Brumlik, Thomas E. Burman, John Efron, Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Claude Gilliot, Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, Peter Heine, Karl Homann, Yosef Kaplan, Thomas Kaufmann, Yavuz Koese, Gudrun Kramer, Michael Kreutz, Roland Loeffler, Wolfgang Loschelder, Hans Maier, Asher Meir, Tilman Nagel, Matthias Pohlig, Maurus Reinkowski, Mathias Rohe, Heinz Schilling, Reinhard Schulze, Martin Tamcke, Georges Tamer, Lucette Valensi, Dietmar Willoweit, Israel Yuval und einer Podiumsdiskussion der Sektionsleiter.

This book delineates the attempt, carried out by the Congregations of the Inquisition and the Index during the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, to purge various devotional texts in the Italian vernacular of heterodox beliefs and superstitious elements, while imposing a rigid uniformity in liturgical and devotional practices. The first part of the book is focused on Rome's anxious activity toward the infiltration of Protestant ideas in vernacular treatises on prayer meant for mass consumption. It next explores how, only in the second half of the sixteenth century, once Rome's main preoccupation toward Protestant expansion had subsided, the Church could begin thinking about a move from a rejection of any consideration of the merits of interior prayer to a recovery and acceptance of mental prayer. The final section is dedicated to the primary objective of the Church's actions in purging superstitious practices which was not simply the renewal of the spiritual life of the faithful, but also the control of the religious and social life of many faithful who were uneducated. Based on a careful examination of the archival records of the two Roman dicasteri in question, many of which have only been accessible to scholars since 1998, as well as a close reading of the many of suspect devotional texts themselves, this book offers a fascinating contribution towards a fuller appreciation of the complex landscape that characterized the spiritual realities of early modern Italy.

Intended for students as well as scholars of religion and violence, Belief and Bloodshed discusses how the relationship between religion and violence is not unique to a post-9/11 world-it has existed throughout all of recorded history and culture. The book makes clear the complex interactions between religion, violence, and politics to show that religion as always innocent or always evil is misguided, and that rationalizations by religion for political power and violence are not new. Chronologically organized, the book shows religiously motivated violence across a variety of historical periods and cultures, moving from the ancient to medieval to the modern world, ending with an essay comparing the speeches of an ancient king to the speeches of the current U.S. President.

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ruled Mosul from 2014-2017 in accordance with its extremist interpretation of sharia. But beyond what is known about ISIS governance in the city from the group's own materials, very little is understood about the reality of its rule, or reasons for its failure, from those who actually lived under it. This book reveals what was going on inside ISIS institutions based on accounts from the civilians themselves. Focusing on ISIS governance of education, healthcare and policing, the interviewees include: teachers who were forced to teach the group's new curriculum; professors who organized secret classes in private; doctors who took direct orders from ISIS leaders and worked in their headquarters; bureaucratic staff who worked for ISIS. These accounts provide unique insight into the lived realities in the controlled territories and reveal how the terrorist group balanced their commitment to Islamist ideology with the practical challenges of state building. Moving beyond the simplistic dichotomy of civilians as either passive victims or ISIS supporters, Mathilde Becker Aarseth highlights here those people who actively resisted or affected the way in which ISIS ruled. The book invites readers to understand civilians' complex relationship to the extremist group in the context of fragmented state power and a city torn apart by the occupation.

'Asne Seierstad is the supreme non-fiction writer of her generation ... Two Sisters isn't only the story of how a pair of teenage girls became radicalised but an unsparing portrait of our own society - of its failings and its joys' Luke Harding On 17 October 2013, teenage sisters Ayan and Leila Juma left their family home near Oslo, seemingly as usual. Later that day they sent an email to their unsuspecting parents, confessing they were on their way to Syria. They had been planning the trip for months in secret. Asne Seierstad - working closely with the family - followed the story through its many dramatic twists and turns. This is, in part, a story about Syria. But most of all it is a story of what happens to apparently ordinary people when their lives are turned upside down by conflict and tragedy. 'A masterpiece and a masterclass in investigative journalism' Christina Lamb, Sunday Times 'Meticulously documented, full of drama ... this is a tale fluently told, and a thriller as well' Kate Adie, Literary Review 'A masterwork. Brilliantly conceived, scrupulously reported and beautifully written, this book is compulsive reading' Jon Lee Anderson

This book tells the story of how Al Qaeda grew in the West. In forensic and compelling detail, Jytte Klausen traces how Islamist revolutionaries exiled in Europe and North America in the 1990s helped create and control one of the world's most impactful terrorist movements - and how, after the near-obliteration of the organization during the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, they helped build it again. She shows how the diffusion of Islamist terrorism to Europe and North America has been driven, not by local grievances of Western Muslims, but by the strategic priorities of the international Salafi-jihadist revolutionary movement. That movement has adapted to Western repertoires of protest: agitating for armed insurrection and religious revivalism in the name of a warped version of Islam. The jihadists-Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and their many affiliates and associates- also proved to be amazingly resilient. Again and again, the movement recovered from major setbacks. Appealing to disaffected Muslims of immigrant origin and alienated converts to Islam, Jihadist groups continue to recruit new adherents in Europe and North America, street-side in neighborhoods, in jails, and online through increasingly clandestine platforms. Taking a comparative and historical approach, deploying cutting-edge analytical tools, and drawing on her unparalleled database of up to 6,500 Western jihadist extremists and their networks, Klausen has produced the most comprehensive account yet of the origins of Western jihadism and its role in the global movement.

Modern Arab and Muslim hostility towards Jews and Israel is rooted not only in the Arab-Israeli conflict and traditional Islamic teaching but also in Christian anti-Semitic attitudes brought into the Islamic world by Western colonial powers. In this volume, Raphael Israeli examines how the worsening situation in the Middle East together with large waves of Muslim immigration to Europe, North America, and Australia has brought about a comingling of two anti-Semitic traditions.

As the author explains, the unique interaction of Muslim immigrants in the West with the host societies brought them into contact with local, traditional anti- Semites of the xenophobic fascist and racist Right along with the avowedly anti-Zionist Left, to build a formidable wall of hatred against the Jewish state and its people. To complicate this picture further, the same Muslim immigrants share with them minority status in a Christian majority society. Often finding themselves at odds with the majority host society, they find themselves subject to criticism and censure on all sides. They are engaged simultaneously in battle with both their host society into which they cannot integrate, and their Jewish compatriots who are a model of good integration. Consequently, they feel exposed and lose ground in the struggle for social acceptance.

Israeli lays out the nature and ideologies of the Muslim immigrant world and shows how in each European country they create their own ethnic sub-groups and religious communities, often in competition with each other. This remarkable and courageous book will be of interest to sociologists, Middle East specialists, and political scientists.

This book sets out to explore three conflict contexts in which religion is generally acknowledged to be at least a factor, although some minimize religion's role while others identify it as a major cause of violence. The book evaluates what role religion does play (or has played) in the Northern Ireland, Bosnian and Israel-Palestinian conflicts including the contribution of the women's movement in Ireland. It takes seriously the psychological tendency to demonise those who do not share our views and will argue that religion, although one factor among others, does all too easily lends itself in support of conflict. The author argues that stories of how religion has helped to solve conflict are rare, which is a major handicap when advocating that religion can play a peacemaking role. He argues that scriptures can be used to justify conflict and that an alternative interpretative paradigm is needed if this tendency is to be reversed. Given that, for religious people, the reduction of scriptures to totally human constructs is hugely problematical, the book will argue that the allegorical approach is more fruitful than the option of viewing all scriptures as human response to the divine. Drawing on post-modern theory, the book also argues that, though scriptures may be 'divine', interpretation is always human. However, post-modernity's maxim that there are no single or authoritative interpretations of any text, that all interpretations are equally valid, including those that justify violence, will be rejected on the basis that there is a higher moral ground on which humans should stand which values peace. Drawing on the philosophy of E. W Hocking, the book's conclusion suggests that peacewill be best guaranteed when religions transcend their particularities and human individuals commune directly with the divine, without the necessity of organised religions as mediators. Intended as a course text, discussion questions are included but it is hoped that the book will also be of interest to a general readership.

Violence remains endemic in today's society. Religious morality and social prejudice can lead to many acts of violence going unnoticed. 'Weep Not for Your Children' presents a selection of essays that examine the ways in which religion and violence interconnect. The presence of violence in the origins of cultural and religious norms is examined. The essays cover a wide range of examples of violence: from the Holocaust to domestic violence and from the violence created by economic systems to that created by the construction of gender itself. 'Weep Not for Your Children' challenges and provokes the reader to think beyond traditional associations of good and evil.

This is the first work in any language that offers both an overarching exploration of the flight and evacuation of Soviet Jews viewed at the macro level, and a personal history of one Soviet Jewish family. It is also the first study to examine Jewish life in the Northern Caucasus, a Soviet region that history scholars have rarely addressed. Drawing on a collection of family letters, Kiril Feferman provides a history of the Ginsburgs as they debate whether to evacuate their home of Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia and are eventually swept away by the Soviet-German War, the German invasion of Soviet Russia, and the Holocaust. The book makes a significant contribution to the history of the Holocaust and Second World War in the Soviet Union, presenting one Soviet region as an illustration of wartime social and media politics.

This book sets out to explore three conflict contexts in which religion is generally acknowledged to be at least a factor, although some minimize religion's role while others identify it as a major cause of violence. The book evaluates what role religion does play (or has played) in the Northern Ireland, Bosnian and Israel-Palestinian conflicts including the contribution of the women's movement in Ireland. It takes seriously the psychological tendency to demonise those who do not share our views and will argue that religion, although one factor among others, does all too easily lends itself in support of conflict. The author argues that stories of how religion has helped to solve conflict are rare, which is a major handicap when advocating that religion can play a peacemaking role. He argues that scriptures can be used to justify conflict and that an alternative interpretative paradigm is needed if this tendency is to be reversed. Given that, for religious people, the reduction of scriptures to totally human constructs is hugely problematical, the book will argue that the allegorical approach is more fruitful than the option of viewing all scriptures as human response to the divine. Drawing on post-modern theory, the book also argues that, though scriptures may be 'divine', interpretation is always human. However, post-modernity's maxim that there are no single or authoritative interpretations of any text, that all interpretations are equally valid, including those that justify violence, will be rejected on the basis that there is a higher moral ground on which humans should stand which values peace. Drawing on the philosophy of E. W Hocking, the book's conclusion suggests that peace will be best guaranteed when religions transcend their particularities and human individuals commune directly with the divine, without the necessity of organised religions as mediators. Intended as a course text, discussion questions are included but it is hoped that the book will also be of interest to a general readership.

Violence remains endemic in today's society. Religious morality and social prejudice can lead to many acts of violence going unnoticed. 'Weep Not for Your Children' presents a selection of essays that examine the ways in which religion and violence interconnect. The presence of violence in the origins of cultural and religious norms is examined. The essays cover a wide range of examples of violence: from the Holocaust to domestic violence and from the violence created by economic systems to that created by the construction of gender itself. 'Weep Not for Your Children' challenges and provokes the reader to think beyond traditional associations of good and evil.

In the Spring of 2015, a post-modern version of the Salem witchcraft trials took place at Connecticut College on the Thames River. Only this time instead of sorcery it was Zionism; instead of punishing in the name of God's law it was in the name of anti-hate speech and inclusive excellence; instead of young teenage girls leading the hysteria it was college-aged social warriors stampeding 200 professors into sacrificing one of their colleagues, and thereby contributing to a wave of administration-promoted hate-speech at their college. The Pessin affair offers us a case study in a tendency towards "public shaming" that not only deeply compromises the integrity of academia, but increasingly spreads to many aspects of our society, so susceptible to media-driven feeding frenzies.

Crusades covers seven hundred years from the First Crusade (1095-1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Ashgate publishes this journal for The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Because the greatest need appears to be for more historical sources - narrative, homiletic and documentary - to be made available in trustworthy editions, editorial preference is given here to the publication of texts in both European and oriental languages, although interpretative material is welcomed too. Crusades also incorporates the Society's Bulletin. Crusades 5 includes articles by John France, Emily Savage-Smith, Charles Burnett and Edward Peters.

Steven Runciman characterized intellectual life in the Frankish Levant as 'disappointing'; Joshua Prawer claimed that the Franks refused to open up to the East's intellectual achievements. The present collection, the second by Benjamin Kedar in the Variorum series, presents facts that require a modification of these still largely prevailing views. The earliest laws of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were influenced by Byzantine legislation; medical routine in the Jerusalem Hospital, unparalleled in Europe, had counterparts in Oriental hospitals; worshippers of different creeds repeatedly converged; multi-directional conversion recurred time after time. Several articles deal with groups that did abstain from intercultural contacts: Muslim villagers, Frankish clerics and hermits. One article dwells on the asymmetry of Frankish and Muslim mutual perceptions. The volume concludes with studies of specific locations: one argues that Acre was considerably larger than hitherto assumed, another compares its Venetian and Genoese quarters and attempts to locate the remains of a main street, a third reconstructs the history of Caymont.

Crusades covers seven hundred years from the First Crusade (1095-1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Routledge publishes this journal for The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Particular attention is given to the publication of historical sources in all relevant languages - narrative, homiletic and documentary - in trustworthy editions, but studies and interpretative essays are welcomed too. Crusades appears in both print and online editions. Issue 4 of Crusades kicks off with Graham Loud's reflections on the failure of the Second Crusade and also features Susan Edgington's administrative regulations for the Hospital of St John in Jerusalem dating from the 1180s.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. This book provides the first overview of the history and development of Islam in Afghanistan. Written by leading international experts, chapters cover every era from the conversion of Afghanistan through the medieval period to the present day. Based on primary sources in Arabic, Persian, Pashto, Uzbek, and Urdu, its depth of coverage is unrivalled in providing a developmental picture of Afghanistan's Islam, including such issues as the rise of Sufism, women's religiosity, state religious policies, and transnational Islamism. Looking beyond the unifying rhetoric of theology, the book reveals the disparate and contested forms of Afghanistan's Islam.

Maluku in eastern Indonesia is the home to Muslims, Protestants, and Catholics who had for the most part been living peaceably since the sixteenth century. In 1999, brutal conflicts broke out between local Christians and Muslims, and escalated into large-scale communal violence once the Laskar Jihad, a Java-based armed jihadist Islamic paramilitary group, sent several thousand fighters to Maluku. As a result of this escalated violence, the previously stable Maluku became the site of devastating interreligious wars. This book focuses on the interreligious violence and conciliation in this region. It examines factors underlying the interreligious violence as well as those shaping post-conflict peace and citizenship in Maluku. The author shows that religion-both Islam and Christianity-was indeed central and played an ambiguous role in the conflict settings of Maluku, whether in preserving and aggravating the Christian-Muslim conflict or supporting or improving peace and reconciliation. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews as well as historical and comparative research on religious identities, this book is of interest to Indonesia specialists, as well as academics with an interest in anthropology, religious conflict, peace and conflict studies.

This is the first English translation of Robert the Monk's Historia Iherosolimitana, a Latin prose chronicle describing the First Crusade. In addition to providing new and unique information on the Crusade (Robert claims to have been an eyewitness of the Council of Clermont in 1095), its particular interest lies in the great popularity it enjoyed in the Middle Ages. The text has close links with the vernacular literary tradition and is written in a racy style which would not disgrace a modern tabloid journalist. Its reflection of contemporary legends and anecdotes gives us insights into perceptions of the Crusade at that time and opens up interesting perspectives onto the relationship of history and fiction in the twelfth century. The introduction discusses what we know about Robert, his importance as a historical source and his place in the literary tradition of the First Crusade.

The subject of the crusades is enormous, covering 700 years from the First Crusade (1095-1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and comprising scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Although in almost every one of the many topics into which the subject is divided there is lively debate and development, there has not been a journal dedicated to the history of the crusades since the Revue de l'Orient latin, which flourished a century ago. the Latin East, which, together with Ashgate, has launched this journal. Because the greatest need appears to be for more historical sources - narrative, homiletic and documentary - to be made available in trustworthy editions, editorial preference will be given to the publication of texts in both European and oriental languages, although interpretative material will also be welcomed. Crusades also incorporates the Society's bulletin.

Crusades covers seven hundred years from the First Crusade (1095-1102) to the fall of Malta (1798) and draws together scholars working on theatres of war, their home fronts and settlements from the Baltic to Africa and from Spain to the Near East and on theology, law, literature, art, numismatics and economic, social, political and military history. Routledge publishes this journal for The Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East. Particular attention is given to the publication of historical sources in all relevant languages - narrative, homiletic and documentary - in trustworthy editions, but studies and interpretative essays are welcomed too. Crusades appears in both print and online editions. This first edition of the journal includes contributions from Jonathan Riley-Smith refecting on the number of knights who participated in the First Crusade and the number of casualties and Peter W. Edbury on Fiefs and Vassals in the Kingdom of Jerusalem: from the Twelfth Century to the Thirteenth.

In the immediate years and months before the outbreak of religious war in 1562 the growth of Protestantism in France had gone unchecked, and an overriding sense of Protestant triumphalism emerged in cities across the land. However, the wars unleashed a vigorous Catholic reaction that extinguished Protestant hopes of ultimate success. This offensive triggered violence across the provinces, paralysing Huguenot communities and sending many Protestant churches in northern France into terminal decline. But French Protestantism was never a uniform phenomenon and events in southern France took a rather different course from those in the north. This study explores the fate of the Huguenot community in the area of its greatest strength in southern France. The book examines the Protestant ascendancy in the Huguenot stronghold of Montauban through the period of the religious wars, laying open the impact that the new religion had upon the town and its surrounding locality, and the way in which the town related to the wider political and religious concerns of the Protestant south. In particular, it probes the way in which the town related to the nobility, the political assemblies, Henry of Navarre and the wider world of international Calvinism, reflecting upon the distinctive cultural elements that characterised Calvinism in southern France.