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Books > Religion & Spirituality > General > Religious intolerance, persecution & conflict > General
State sponsorship of terrorism is a complex and important topic in
today's international affairs - and especially pertinent in the
regional politics of the Middle East and South Asia, where Pakistan
has long been a flashpoint of Islamist politics and terrorism. In
Islamism and Intelligence in South Asia, Prem Mahadevan
demonstrates how over several decades, radical Islamists, sometimes
with the tacit support of parts of the military establishment, have
weakened democratic governance in Pakistan and acquired
progressively larger influence over policy-making. Mahadevan traces
this history back to the anti-colonial Deobandi movement, which was
born out of the post-partition political atmosphere and a
rediscovery of the thinking of Ibn Taymiyyah, and partially
ennobled the idea of `jihad' in South Asia as a righteous war
against foreign oppression. Using Pakistani media and academic
sources for the bulk of its raw data, and reinforcing this with
scholarly analysis from Western commentators, the book tracks
Pakistan's trajectory towards a `soft' Islamic revolution.
Envisioned by the country's intelligence community as a solution to
chronic governance failures, these narratives called for a
re-orientation away from South Asia and towards the Middle East. In
the process, Pakistan has become a sanctuary for Arab jihadist
groups, such as Al-Qaeda, who had no previous ethnic or linguistic
connection with South Asia. Most alarmingly, official discourse on
terrorism has been partly silenced by the military-intelligence
complex. The result is a slow drift towards extremism and possible
legitimation of internationally proscribed terrorist organizations
in Pakistan's electoral politics.
In 2017, Myanmar's military launched a campaign of violence against
the Rohingya minority that UN experts later said amounted to a
genocide. More than seven hundred thousand civilians fled to
Bangladesh in what became the most concentrated flight of refugees
since the Rwanda genocide of 1994. The warning signs of impending
catastrophe that had built over years were downplayed by Western
backers of the political transition, and only when the exodus began
did the world finally come to acknowledge a catastrophe that had
been long in the making. In this updated edition of the book that
foreshadowed a genocide, Francis Wade explores how the manipulation
of identities by an anxious ruling elite laid the foundations for
mass violence. It asks: who gets to define a nation? How can
democratic rights be weaponised against a minority? And why, at a
time when the majority of citizens in Myanmar had begun to
experience freedoms unseen for half a century, did much-lauded
civilian leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi become complicit in the most
heinous of crimes?
Donna M. Lanclos writes about children on the school playgrounds of
working-class Belfast, Northern Ireland, using their own words to
show how they shape their social identities. The notion that
children's voices and perspectives must be included in a work about
childhood is central to the book. Lanclos explores children's
folklore, including skipping rhymes, clapping games, and "dirty"
jokes, from five Belfast primary schools (two Protestant, two
Catholic, and one mixed). She listens for what she can learn about
gender, family, adult-child interactions, and Protestant/Catholic
tensions. Lanclos frequently notes violent themes in the folklore
and conversations that indicate children are aware of the reality
in which they live. But at the same time, children resist being
marginalized by adults who try to shield them from this reality.
For Lanclos, children's experiences stimulate discussions about
culture and society. In her words, "Children's everyday lives are
more than just preparation for their futures, but are life itself."
A volume in the Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies edited by Myra
Bluebond-Langner
This book considers the history of the Prester John legend and its
impact on the Crusades, investigating its entangled mythical
history between East and West during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. The present study thus responds to the still pressing
need for a comprehensive historical investigation of the twelfth
and thirteenth crusading history of the legend and its impact on
the Muslim-Crusader encounters, examining various Latin, Arabic,
Syriac, and Coptic accounts. It further reflects on new eastern
aspects of the legend, presenting a new Arab scholarly view. This
book first charts a pre-history of the legend in the late ancient
Christian prophecy of the Last Emperor down to the emergence of the
legend in the mid-twelfth century. Second, the work presents a
historical discussion of the legend and its association with actual
occurrences in the Far East and the Levant, analysing the legend
history under the crusading crisis and the imperial papal schism in
Europe. Meanwhile, the work considers the vague Prester John Letter
addressed to Manuel I Komnenus, Byzantine Emperor, and its
elaborate conception of a mythical eastern kingdom, revealing
imaginative parallels on the wondrous East and legendary Eastern
Christian kings in Arabic Muslim and Christian accounts of the
Muslim geographer and cartographer al-Idr?s?, the Coptic ?b?
al-Mak?rim and the Syriac Ibn al-?Ibr? (Bar Hebraeus), among
others. Moreover, the book examines how the legend impacted war and
peace processes between the Ayyubids and the Crusaders during the
Fifth Crusade against Egypt (1217-1221), revealing how it was
mingled with Arabic and Eastern Christian prophecies at the time.
The study concludes by investigating the perception of Prester John
by the papal and European envoys to the Mongols in the thirteenth
century, revealing how the legend was instrumentalised (and even
weaponised) to establish a Latin-Mongol crusade through a parallel
exploration of relevant Latin, Arabic and Syriac sources.
Freedom of religion did not come easily to Cuba or Puerto Rico.
Only after the arrival of American troops during the
Spanish-American War were non-Catholics permitted to practice their
religions openly and to proselytize. When government efforts to
ensure freedom of worship began, reformers on both islands
rejoiced, believing that an era of regeneration and modernization
was upon them. But as new laws went into effect, critics voiced
their dismay at the rise of popular religions. Reinaldo L. Roman
explores the changing relationship between regulators and
practitioners in neocolonial Cuba and Puerto Rico. Spiritism,
Santeria, and other African-derived traditions were typically
characterized in sensational fashion by the popular press as ""a
plague of superstition."" Examining seven episodes between 1898 and
the Cuban Revolution when the public demanded official actions
against ""misbelief,"" Roman finds that when outbreaks of
superstition were debated, matters of citizenship were usually at
stake. He links the circulation of spectacular charges of
witchcraft and miracle-making to anxieties surrounding newly
expanded citizenries that included people of color. ""Governing
Spirits"" also contributes to the understanding of vernacular
religions by moving beyond questions of national or traditional
origins to illuminate how boundaries among hybrid practices evolved
in a process of historical contingencies.
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