In a world torn by religious antagonism, lessons can be learned from medieval Spanish villages where Muslims, Christians, and Jews rubbed shoulders on a daily basis--sharing irrigation canals, bathhouses, municipal ovens, and marketplaces. Medieval Spaniards introduced Europeans to paper manufacture, Hindu-Arabic numerals, philosophical classics, algebra, citrus fruits, cotton, and new medical techniques. Her mystics penned classics of Kabbalah and Sufism. More astonishing than Spain's wide-ranging accomplishments, however, was the simple fact that until the destruction of the last Muslim Kingdom by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1492, Spain's Muslims, Christians, and Jews often managed to bestow tolerance and freedom of worship on the minorities in their midst. A Vanished World chronicles this panoramic sweep of human history and achievement, encompassing both the agony of Jihad, Crusades, and Inquisition, and the glory of a multi-religious, multi-cultural civilization that forever changed the West. Lowney shows how these three controversial religious groups once lived and worked together in Spain, creating commerce, culture, art, and architecture. He reveals how these three faith groups eventually veered into a thicket of resentment and violence, and shows how our current policies and approaches might lead us down the same path. Rising above politics, propaganda, and name-calling, A Vanished World provides a hopeful meditation on how relations among these three faith groups have gone wrong and some ideas on how to make their interactions right.

Conflict and dispute pervade political and policy discussions. Moreover, unequal power relations tend to heighten levels of conflict. In this context of contention, figuring out ways to accommodate others and reach solutions that are agreeable to all is a perennial challenge for activists, politicians, planners, and policymakers. John Forester is one of America's eminent scholars of progressive planning and dispute resolution in the policy arena, and in Dealing with Differences he focuses on a series of 'hard cases'--conflicts that appeared to be insoluble yet which were resolved in the end. Forester ranges across the country--from Hawaii to Maryland to Washington State--and across issues--the environment, ethnic conflict, and HIV. Throughout, he focuses on how innovative mediators settled seemingly intractable disputes. Between pessimism masquerading as 'realism' and the unrealistic idealism that 'we can all get along, ' Forester identifies the middle terrain where disputes do actually get resolved in ways that offer something for all sides. Dealing with Differences serves as an authoritative and fundamentally pragmatic pathway for anyone who has to engage in the highly contentious worlds of planning and policymaking.

Discrimination against Muslim Americans has soared over the last two decades with hostility growing especially acute since 2016 - in no small part due to targeted attacks by policymakers and media. Outsiders at Home offers the first systematic, empirically driven examination of status of Muslim Americans in US democracy, evaluating the topic from a variety of perspectives. To what extent do Muslim Americans face discrimination by legislators, the media, and the general public? What trends do we see over time, and how have conditions shifted? What, if anything, can be done to reverse course? How do Muslim Americans view their position, and what are the psychic and sociopolitical tolls? Answering each of these questions, Nazita Lajevardi shows that the rampant, mostly negative discussion of Muslims in media and national discourse has yielded devastating political and social consequences.

The lands surrounding the Black Sea share a colorful past. Though in recent decades they have experienced ethnic conflict, economic collapse, and interstate rivalry, their common heritage and common interests run deep. Now, as a region at the meeting point of the Balkans, Central Asia, and the Middle East, the Black Sea is more important than ever. In this lively and entertaining book, which is based on extensive research in multiple languages, Charles King investigates the myriad connections that have made the Black Sea more of a bridge than a boundary, linking religious communities, linguistic groups, empires, and later, nations and states.

This polemic against Islamic extremism highlights the striking parallels between contemporary Islamism and the 20th-century fascism embodied by Hitler and Mussolini. Like those infamous ideologies, Islamism today touts imperialist dreams of world domination, belief in its inherent superiority, contempt for the rest of humanity, and often a murderous agenda. The author, born and raised in Egypt and now living in Germany, not only explains the historical connections between early 20th-century fascist movements in Europe and extremist factions in Islam, but he also traces the fascist tendencies in mainstream Islam that have existed throughout its history. Examining key individuals and episodes from centuries past, the book shows the influence of Islam's earliest exploits on current politics in the Islamic world. The author's incisive analysis exposes the fascist underpinnings of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Shia regime in Iran, ISIS, Salafi and Jihadist ideologies, and more. Forcefully argued and well-researched, this book grew out of a lecture on Islamic fascism that the author gave in Cairo, resulting in a call for his death by three prominent Egyptian clerics.

In 1590 three hundred Scottish 'witches' were tried for plotting the murder of their King, James VI of Scotland (soon to be James I of England). James is known to have suffered from a morbid fear of violent death, and the trial heightened his anxiety over this apparently treasonous 'un-Christian' sect, and stimulated him to study the whole subject of witchcraft. 'Daemonologie' is the result of this royal research, detailing his opinions on the topic in the form of a Socratic dialogue between the sceptic Philomathes and witch-averse Epistemon, who reveals many aspects of witch-craft. The book consists of three sections, on magic, on sorcery and witchcraft, and on spirits and ghosts, and ends with a lurid account of the North Berwick witch trials, based on the evidence of Dr John Fian, the alleged head of the coven, whose 'confession' was obtained with the aid of thumbscrews, the Boot, and by the ripping out of his fingernails.

Professor Roberts examines the relationship between antisemitism and the practices of citizenship in a colonial context. She focuses on the experience of Algerian Jews and their evolving identity as citizens as they competed with the other populations in the colony, including newly naturalised non-French settlers and Algerian Muslims, for control over the scarce resources of the colonial state. The author argues that this resulted in antisemitic violence and hotly contested debates over the nature of French identity and rights of citizenship. Tracing the ambiguities and tensions that Algerian Jews faced, the book shows that antisemitism was not coherent or stable but changed in response to influences within Algeria, and from metropolitan France, Europe and the Middle East. Written for a wide audience, this title contributes to several fields including Jewish history, colonial and empire studies, antisemitism within municipal politics, and citizenship, and adds to current debates on transnationalism and globalization.

We may think we know what defines religious fanaticism: violent action undertaken with dogmatic certainty. But the term fanatic, from the European Reformation to today, has never been a stable one. Then and now it has been reductively defined to justify state violence and to delegitimize alternative sources of authority. Unknowing Fanaticism rejects the simplified binary of fanatical religion and rational politics, turning to Renaissance literature to demonstrate that fanaticism was integral to how both modern politics and poetics developed, from the German Peasants' Revolt to the English Civil War. The book traces two entangled approaches to fanaticism in this long Reformation moment: the targeting of it as an extreme political threat and the engagement with it as a deep epistemological and poetic problem. In the first, thinkers of modernity from Martin Luther to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke positioned themselves against fanaticism to pathologize rebellion and abet theological and political control. In the second, which arose alongside and often in response to the first, the poets of fanaticism investigated the link between fanatical self-annihilation-the process by which one could become a vessel for divine violence-and the practices of writing poetry. Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Milton recognized in the fanatic's claim to be a passive instrument of God their own incapacity to know and depict the origins of fanaticism. Yet this crisis of unknowing was a productive one. It led these writers to experiment with poetic techniques that would allow them to address fanaticism's tendency to unsettle the boundaries between human and divine agency and between individual and collective bodies. These poets demand a new critical method, which this book attempts to model: a historically-minded and politicized formalism that can attend to the complexity of the poetic encounter with fanaticism.

6th September, 1942: a middle-aged Jewish refugee stands on the Swiss side of the Franco-Swiss border above Geneva. He has been living in Switzerland since he fled Vienna in November 1938, as the Nazi persecution of the city's Jewish population intensified. He is now waiting for the arrival of the wife he has not seen for nearly four years. Against all odds he has managed to get an entry permit for her to join him in Switzerland. She appears on the French side. They see each other. Call out. She begins to cross the few yards of no-mans-land that separate them. An official calls her back. She hesitates, turns, goes back - and is lost forever. This book tells the story of the wartime journey of Toni Schiff, as she ventured across Europe to the this fateful near-meeting at the Franco-Swiss border - and what happened next. Based on the extensive research of her daughter, Kindertransportee Hilda Schiff, and told by Sheila Rosenberg, who shared much of the later research and many of the research journeys, this book sheds light on the lives of one family - caught up in, and ultimately separated by, the tragic and tumultuous events of World War II.

It seems that people often have trouble getting along together. Families argue, neighbors come to blows, countries lob weapons at each other. Is this the way it has to be? Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and others say it is. Having observed a long history of man's quarrelsome behavior, they claim that man has animal instincts, or that he is antisocial and violent by his very nature. In truth, man is rather peaceful. But he can be driven, individually and collectively, to hatred and violence. In researching the causes of violence, L. Ron Hubbard unearthed a fundamental and natural law of human relations which explains why conflicts between people are so often difficult to remedy. And he provided an immensely valuable tool that enables one to resolve any conflict, be it between neighbors, co-workers or even countries. In this chapter, you will discover how to help others resolve their differences and restore peaceable relations. Peace and harmony between men can be more than just a dream. Widespread application of this law will make it a reality.

Crusading fervour gripped Europe for over 200 years, creating one of the most extraordinary, vivid episodes in world history. Whether the Crusades are regarded as the most romantic of Christian expeditions, or the last of the barbarian invasions, they have fascinated generations ever since, and their legacy of ideas and imagery has resonated through the centuries, inspiring Hollywood movies and great works of literature. Even today, to invoke the Crusades is to stir deep cultural myths, assumptions and prejudices. Yet despite their powerful hold on our imaginations, our knowledge of them remains obscured an distorted by time. Were the Crusaders motivated by spiritual rewards, or by greed? Were the Crusades an experiment in European colonialism, or a manifestation of religious love? How were they organized and founded? With customary flair and originality, Christopher Tyerman picks his way through the many debates to present a clear and lively discussion of the Crusades; bringing together issues of colonialism, cultural exchange, economic exploitation, and the relationship between past and present. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

On two hundred and one days between May 1, 1245, and August 1, 1246, more than five thousand people from the Lauragais were questioned in Toulouse about the heresy of the good men and the good women (more commonly known as Catharism). Nobles and diviners, butchers and monks, concubines and physicians, blacksmiths and pregnant girls--in short, all men over fourteen and women over twelve--were summoned by Dominican inquisitors Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. In the cloister of the Saint-Sernin abbey, before scribes and witnesses, they confessed whether they, or anyone else, had ever seen, heard, helped, or sought salvation through the heretics. This inquisition into heretical depravity was the single largest investigation, in the shortest time, in the entire European Middle Ages.

Mark Gregory Pegg examines the sole surviving manuscript of this great inquisition with unprecedented care--often in unexpected ways--to build a richly textured understanding of social life in southern France in the early thirteenth century. He explores what the interrogations reveal about the individual and communal lives of those interrogated and how the interrogations themselves shaped villagers' perceptions of those lives. "The Corruption of Angels," similar in breadth and scope to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's "Montaillou," is a major contribution to the field. It shows how heretical and orthodox beliefs flourished side by side and, more broadly, what life was like in one particular time and place. Pegg's passionate and beautifully written evocation of a medieval world will fascinate a diverse readership within and beyond the academy.

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.