Lincoln, Rumi, Shams and Rabi'a in one volume? How is that possible? While three are Sufis, even Rumi and Shams are separated by a gulf of 400 years from Rabi'a. As for Rabi'a, she was at different times in her life, an orphan, a slave and a prostitute. And Lincoln? On top of another 500 years, the great statesman belongs to an entirely different civilization and religion. Where's the connection? "To the spiritual seeker, " Kehl and Walker contend,"The connection ... is unmistakable. Christ said "I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me." Sincere aspirants on the Spiritual Path recognize Masters; it can be no other way, as they are striving after the same reality." Lincoln, Rumi and Rabi'a are "linked by their unwavering pursuit of Spiritual Truth through Self Knowledge." The proof will be in the reading: In these three remarkable drama produced and performed during the fall and summer months of 2010 and 2011 the authors encourage readers to "search out the connections-rather than notice any supposed differences." 192 pages.

Exploring the most formidable human rights challenges facing the Middle East--the rights of women, minorities, migrant workers, those of various sexual orientations, and the rights of all people to engage in civil disobedience--this volume addresses the extent to which dynamics surrounding human rights conditions in the region conform to or diverge from such dynamics in other parts of the world. Offering wide-ranging and rich analyses, the contributors to this volume argue that for human rights to be effectively enforced, they must be locally justified and achieved. The 2011 Arab revolts demonstrate that the people of the region can shape the condition of human rights in their societies.

The articles selected for this volume explore emergent issues in the contemporary relationship between Islam and science and present studies of eight major voices in the discourse. Also included is a section on the operationalization of Islamic science in the modern world and a section on studies in traditional Islamic cosmology.

The terrorist attacks of September 11 have turned the world's attention to areas of the globe about which we know very little. Ahmed Rashid, who masterfully explained Afghanistan's Taliban regime in his previous book, here turns his skills as an investigative journalist to the five Central Asian republics adjacent to Afghanistan. Central Asia is coming to play a vital strategic role in the war on terrorism, but the region also poses new threats to global security.

The five Central Asian republics -- Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan -- were part of the Soviet Union until its collapse in 1991. Under Soviet rule, Islam was brutally suppressed, and that intolerance has continued under the post-Soviet regimes. Religious repression, political corruption, and the region's extreme poverty (unemployment rates exceed 80 percent in some areas) have created a fertile climate for militant Islamic fundamentalism. Often funded and trained by such organizations as Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the Taliban, guerrilla movements like the IMU (Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan) have recruited a staggering number of members across the region and threaten to topple the governments of all five nations. Based on groundbreaking research and numerous interviews, Jihad explains the roots of militant rage in Central Asia, describes the goals and activities of these militant organizations, and suggests ways in which this threat could be neutralized by diplomatic and economic intervention.

Rich in both cultural heritage and natural resources -- including massive oil reservoirs -- Central Asia remains desperately poor and frighteningly volatile. In tracing the history of Central Asiaand explaining the current political climate, Rashid demonstrates that it is a region we ignore at our peril.

Have you ever wondered why you lived through a difficult, life threatening, and heart-wrenching situation? Why did you survive the vehicle accident, shooting, fatal disease, financial devastation, abuse, neglect, overdose, domestic violence, or suicide attempt? Do you think your survival is in vain? Your suffering, survival, and strength are not in vain God has chosen you for a unique purpose. Your circumstance does not determine your identity; your God does. You are not what happened to you or what you did in your past. You can change and you can overcome. What once "harmed" you has now "armed" you. Let those circumstances which once harmed you now equip you with the essentials for your intended God-given purpose. Our faith is challenged and perfected in our trials. Our mission is manifested as we mend. Do you know the God of a second chance? I do The intent of your trials is not to pull you away, but to build a platform for Him to work through you to touch and change others. Understand you can allow your circumstances to do one of two things: destroy you or make you stronger. The Lord is asking you not to fear, but to have faith and trust in Him. God is calling you to rise up and turn your despair into destiny. Now is your time to Release, Restore and Rejoice

This book narrates the battles, conquests and diplomatic activities of the early Muslim fighters in Syria and Iraq vis-a-vis their Byzantine and Sasansian counterparts. It is the first English translation of one of the earliest Arabic sources on the early Muslim expansion entitled Futuh al-Sham (The Conquests of Syria). The translation is based on the Arabic original composed by a Muslim author, Muhammad al-Azdi, who died in the late 8th or early 9th century C.E. A scientific introduction to al-Azdi's work is also included, covering the life of the author, the textual tradition of the work as well as a short summary of the text's train of thought. The source narrates the major historical events during the early Muslim conquests in a region that covers today's Lebanon, Israel, Palestinian Territories, Jordan, Syria, Turkey and Iraq in the 7th century C.E. Among these events are the major battles against the Byzantines, such as the Battles of Ajnadayn and al-Yarmuk, the conquests of important cities, including Damascus, Jerusalem and Caesarea, and the diplomatic initiatives between the Byzantines and the early Muslims. The narrative abounds with history and Islamic theological content. As the first translation into a European language, this volume will be of interest to a wide range of readership, including (Muslim and Christian) theologians, historians, Islamicists, Byzantinists, Syrologists and (Arabic) linguists.

"We write this account of the Taliban with probably a unique experience and perspective on them. We have a story that intertwines our lives with theirs long before the twin towers were destroyed and the appalling attacks on America had wreaked their havoc. For much of the Western press, the Taliban were just another fundamentalist regime, renowned for their treatment of women, and their ultra-orthodoxy. They are a group now ingrained upon the visual imagination of the western world."Frog and Amy Orr-Ewing

Undoubtedly timely and full of fascinating detail, Sword of Islam is a thorough, well-researched, and revealing account of global Islamic terrorism. A military historian, John F. Murphy Jr. traces the intricate interconnections among various terrorist cells, including Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda and its relationship with the Taliban of Afghanistan, the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, Islamic Moro extremists in the Philippines, obscure Algerian terrorist groups, and other sympathetic underworld organizations in Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, and even South America. He also puts recent terrorist attacks in historical context by discussing such key events as the rise of Arab nationalism following Israel's victory in the 1948 war, the Black September killings of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, the 1976 rescue at Entebbe by Israeli commandos of hostages abducted by German terrorists, the terrorist plots of the infamous "Carlos the Jackal," the bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and the impact of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Mujahideen resistance of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the same year.
This book supplies the answer to the question that has been on the minds of all Americans since September 11: Why do they hate us? Murphy makes it clear that as the chief backer of Israel the United States is seen by extremists as the evil power behind the hated oZionist enemy.o But he also emphasizes that in the final analysis we are the only country with the power to bring these attacks to a halt.

In this warm and personal book the author looks at what Muslims believe and how this affects--and often doesn't affect--their behavior. Phil Parshall compares and contrasts Muslim and Christian views on the nature of God, sacred scriptures, worship, sin, and holiness.

The early years of the twenty-first century have been characterized by a sense of widespread anxiety and fear because of the violent activities of groups of terrorists who claim they act in the name of Islam. Their acts of terrorism, viewed by a majority in the Muslim world as crimes which must be subject to the law, are in tragic contrast to the efforts of many Muslim intellectuals who have been working for the past several decades to find common ground between people of all faiths based on the universality of humankind. This book aims to bring to the attention of non-Muslims, in particular, the range of views which Muslims in the Middle East and in South and Southeast Asia hold on six topics of importance to life in the twenty-first century. The topics have been addressed from the internal Muslim point of view to provide readers with a sense of the main debates within Islam on each of the issues. The topics addressed are: the new world order; globalization and modernity; banking and finance; the nation-state; the position of women; and law and knowledge. The chapters have been written by Muslims and non-Muslims, each of whom is an expert on the area about which they write. The chapters are presented in pairs which offer Middle Eastern (and in one case South Asian) points of view which are matched by Southeast Asian perspectives on each of the six topics. While the media is quick to report on the more violent expressions of Islam, including terrorism, the vigorous debates, which now characterize the intellectual discourse in Muslim communities, are rarely if ever reported. This book not only describes and analyses those debates but also reflects the views of many Muslims across the world, emphasizing the connections and contrasts between the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

In "Peaceful Islamist Mobilization in the Muslim World: What Went Right, "Julie Chernov Hwang presents a compelling and innovative new theory and framework for examining for the variation in Islamist mobilization strategies in Muslim Asia and the Middle East. Based on extensive field research in Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey, Hwang argues that states, through their policies, institutions, and capacities, can influence the mobilization strategies that Islamist groups choose, encouraging peaceful strategies, or sometimes, creating permissive conditions for violence. This book highlights the positive ways that states can influence Islamist group decision-making and answers the question--what went right?

The book uses an ethnographic approach to explore why the Tablighi Jamaat movement remains so successful in contemporary times. It shows that this success results from the positive image that it cultivates, and the systematic preaching activities of Tablighi Jamaat followers, and that the organisation's apolitical image, the public profile of the ijtema, the humbleness of Tablighi followers, and the attraction of belonging to the global Tablighi community all help to create a positive image of the Tablighi Jamaat among ordinary Muslims. The book also argues that the Tablighi Jamaat remains successful because of its ability to hold its followers within a Tablighi-guided life, which is perceived as protection against the Western lifestyle. Many elements of contemporary Western lifestyle are considered non-Islamic, and so by clearly defining what is Islamic and non-Islamic in modern society, the Tablighi Jamaat provides a way in which Muslims can live in the contemporary world, but remain good Muslims.

Since 1989, religious fundamentalism and exclusionary nationalism in Jammu and Kashmir have generated political and social turmoil and eroded the ethos and culture of Kashmir. These forces are responsible for the silencing of dissenters, economic deprivation, lack of infrastructure, mass displacements, political anarchy, and the repression of women. Women in Kashmir constantly grapple with both the devastating effects of Indian occupation and Pakistani infiltration and their own complicated histories. Nyla Ali Khan, the granddaughter of the first Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, gives an insider's analysis of the effects of nationalist, militant, and religious discourses and praxes on a gender-based hierarchy. This cross-disciplinary project shows the attempted relegation of Kashmiri women to the archives of memory and reveals the women's powerful and persistent endeavors to rise from the ashes of immolated identities.

This book is a theory-informed, comparative and historical exploration of the notion of the public sphere within Western and Islamic traditions. It situates the emergence of the modern public sphere in a wider historical and theoretical context than usually done in conventional analyses. The work traces cross-cutting genealogies spanning conventional borders between tradition and modernity, and in particular between the Western and the Islamic world. This approach unsettles received, evolutionary views of the public sphere as an exclusive legacy of Western political cultures. The public sphere is finally reconceived as a complex platform for the modern cultivation of culturally diverse, competing, yet intersecting discourses.

Winner of the 2008 National Women's Studies Association Gloria Anzaldua prize!

"Imagining Arab Womanhood" examines orientalist images of Arab womanhood in the United States since the turn of the twentieth century, exploring, in particular, representations of belly dancers, harem girls, and veiled women. Through semiotic analysis, Jarmakani demonstrates that these images have functioned as nostalgic placeholders for pressing, yet unarticulated concerns about shifting spatial and temporal realities within the contexts of expansionism/modernization and imperialism/late capitalism. Calling these representations cultural mythologies, Jarmakani maps them onto dominant American narratives of power and progress, insisting on an analysis that understands them to be artifacts shaped by the interests of the American contexts in which they circulate. "Imagining Arab Womanhood" is a vital addition to conversations about representation, race, and gender.

'Discourses' brings together four books into one volume: the Book of Tawhid, the Book of Hubb, the Book of 'Amal and the Book of Safar. Each of these represents a series of dicourses on its respective subject, delivered by the shaykh in Cape Town, South Africa, between 2004 and 2008. The Book of Tawhid: A series of nine discourses on the Divine Unity and the rst of four books that use ayats from the Qur'an and commentary on them to illustrate the themes with which they deal. Its preface states: "It was only tting that we should begin the matter by extracting from the Qur'an itself the clear explications of Allah, glory be to Him, about Himself, that is, the knowledge of Tawhid." The Book of Hubb: The second in the series of four, The Book of Hubb, taking as its the starting-point of Allah's Words in the Qur'an, also draws on the works of Su s, such as Shaykh Nasirud-Din, the Chiraghi of Delhi, to delineate the Ten Stages of Love of the Divine. The Book of 'Amal: The Book of 'Amal activates the teachings of the rst and second books, Tawhid and Hubb. The topic is mu'amala, or behaviour. Shaykh Abdalqadir describes it as the foundation of the Deen, and, again drawing from the Qur'an, describes the essential nature of Nobility and Character over and above structuralism as the pivotal elements in the establishment of Islam. The Book of Safar: The last of the four books, The Book of Safar, examines the essential subject of travel, as it applies to the Path of Islam, in both its inward and outward meanings.

Writing has come face-to-face with a most crucial juncture: to negotiate with the inescapable presence of violence. From the domains of contemporary Middle Eastern literature, this book stages a powerful conversation on questions of cruelty, evil, rage, vengeance, madness, and deception. Beyond the narrow judgment of violence as a purely tragic reality, these writers (in states of exile, prison, martyrdom, and war) come to wager with the more elusive, inspiring, and even ecstatic dimensions that rest at the heart of a visceral universe of imagination. Covering complex and controversial thematic discussions, Jason Bahbak Mohaghegh forms an extreme record of voices, movements, and thought-experiments drawn from the inner circles of the Middle Eastern region. By exploring the most abrasive writings of this vast cultural front, the book reveals how such captivating outsider texts could potentially redefine our understanding of violence and its now-unstoppable relationship to a dangerous age.