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.

This is an analytical and reflective look at the contribution that Christian-Muslim partnerships can make to community cohesion.In "Religious Cohesion in Times of Conflict" Andrew Holden presents the results and analysis of the key findings of a sociological investigation which seeks to establish the contribution that Christian-Muslim partnerships can make to community cohesion.Beginning with a historical and sociological overview of faith relations, a description of the empirical methodology and a discussion of the evolution of Christian-Muslim partnerships, Andrew Holden goes on to highlight how the fieldwork data demonstrates the challenges of uniting young people in segregated towns and cities. He considers the implications of the findings for education policy, examining some of the ways in which schools and colleges can promote faith cohesion, and further addresses the issue of faith leadership, considering how the changing faith landscape affects the work of Christian and Muslim clerics.He concludes by considering possible ways forward for Christian-Muslim relations both in Britain and in the international context and for the development of new partnerships between faith and secular organizations.

"Trust is debating the Israel-Palestine conflict with a conservative Sunni barber holding a straight-razor to your throat." - Kamal al-Kanady An immigrant white Christian businessman from Canada writes about his experiences in a majority Islamic country in the Middle East. He is a family man, a management consultant, and one of those scholarly types that reads history books for entertainment. He has been learning, not just Arabic and business, but learning from Islam about how he would like to live as a Christian. This book is a call to humility and inclusion in Christian-Muslim dialogue. There are more than a billion of each faith on the planet now, and the relationship between the world's two largest faiths is too important to be left to the minority of priests and imams to sort out. Regular everyday Muslims and Christians need to be building bridges, investing in understanding, and approaching each other with a humble orthodoxy. Perhaps we could start by simply inviting each other over for tea.

Who or what is a religiously ideal Believer and Woman in Islam? This book identifies, compares, and contrasts how two contemporary Muslim groups here termed Neo-Traditional Salafis and progressive Muslims interpret the Qur'an and Sunna in order to construct what each considers to be a religiously ideal concept of a 'Believer' and 'Woman' in Islam. This is the first work which systematically focuses on identifying and explaining which interpretational mechanisms are responsible for the often very different interpretations of these two concepts.

Beneath the battle cries of the jihad and an Islamic politics that draws attention to a religion of rigid rules and obsessive devotion, lies the mystical Islam, known as Sufism. What attracts so many Westerners to the faith, says former convert Ibn al-Rawandi, is its "heart made of poetry and art, vision and devotion, that can only be known fully from within." Enchanted by the metaphysics of Sufism, Rawandi studied and worshiped in Cyprus, convinced he had found the answers to life's questions. When doubts emerged for which the traditionalist authors had no answers and the Salman Rushdie affair divided Islam, Rawandi sought to critically evaluate Sufism by reviewing its origins and the best arguments for its views.
In Islamic Mysticism, Rawandi contends that unreliable sources seriously undermine the classical account of Islam and Sufism. His detailed study of the philosophy of religion -especially the work of traditionalists such as RenT Guenon and Frithjof Schuon - helps to develop a critical analysis of Islam from the inside out. Particular attention is given to great Islamic mystic Ibn Arabi, who is taken as representative of Sufism in its highest development. Rawandi offers a critical, secular perspective on Sufism and concludes that mystical experience is not a trustworthy validation of religion.

Ismaili Studies represents one of the most recent fields of Islamic Studies. Much new research has taken place in this field as a result of the recovery of a large number of Ismaili texts. Ismaili Literature contains a complete listing of the sources and secondary studies, including theses, written by Ismailis or about them in all major Islamic and European languages. It also contains chapters surveying Ismaili history and developments in modern Ismaili Studies.

International Society and the Middle East brings together a distinguished cast of theorists and Middle East experts to provide a comprehensive overview of the region's history and how its own traditions have mixed, often uncomfortably, with the political structures imposed by the expansion of Western international society.

Against the backdrop of the turbulent social and political landscape of today's Pakistan, Robert Rozehnal traces the ritual practices and identity politics of a contemporary Sufi order: the Chishti Sabiris. He does so from multiple perspectives: from the rich Urdu writings of twentieth century Sufi masters, to the complex spiritual life of contemporary disciples and the order's growing transnational networks. Drawing on new textual and ethnographic research, this multi-dimensional and interdisciplinary study of the Sufi tradition challenges the prevailing models of academic scholarship.

Islamic law is the epitome of Islamic thought, the most typical manifestation of the Islamic way of life, the core and kernel of Islam itself, asserts Joseph Schacht the internationally renowed Islamic law scholar. Indeed, the primary place of law in Islam as well as the preponderance of the legal over the theological in Muslim thinking has long been recognized by both Muslim jurisprudents and by Western legal scholars. At a time when Islamic fundamentalism is flourishing, the relation of religion in and to law-related behavior needs to be scrutinized. In its eight chapters, contributed by various experts in the field and with a cogent introduction by editor Daisy Hilse Dwyer that focuses on the sources of law, the reasons for its centrality in the Middle East, and personal status law, this volume considers Middle Eastern law as practiced by Muslims in a diversity of Middle Eastern nations. The dynamics of dispute settlement, the interaction of court personnel with litigants, the content of legislation, and the promulgation of public policies about law are detailed here as well as the power dynamics of laW's interpersonal, intergroup, and international sides. Focusing on the specifics of contemporary politics and social life, the volume provides a baseline for understanding how, and the degree to which, the legal principles and the legal ethos elaborated in Islam centuries ago continue to provide a vital dynamic in legal behavior and thinking today.

The first five chapters deal with the on-the-ground intricacies of personal status law. They detail the complex blend of options and constraints that Middle Easterners experience in confronting personal status issues and examine the different approaches to these issues by contrasting regional evironments and differentially empowered social groups. The last three chapters assess law in the public domain-an area in which the most striking recent applications of Islamic law have occurred. Law and Islam in the Middle East will be of particular value to international law experts, students of Islam, comparative law, and the Middle East, as well as practicing social scientists and others who seek a practical and philosophical understanding of how the spirit and letter of Islamic law constitute and reconstitute themselves with a fine-tuned responsiveness to a continuously changing nation and world.

On 21 February 1994, a gesticulating and screaming woman entered a crowded public square in Tehran, removed her government-mandated veil and full coat, poured gasoline on her body and lit herself on fire. The crowd watched in horror as this woman, who had shouted, 'Death to tyranny! Long live freedom!', committed a slow, painful suicide in a last, desperate attempt to make the world aware of the slave-like conditions of women living in Iran. A shockwave was felt in the American medical and feminist communities as well as in the Iranian political regime when the media reported that the self-appointed martyr was well-respected Dr Homa Darabi, a lifelong advocate of civil rights and the first Iranian ever to be accepted into the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Darabi had risen from a student activist to a civil rights leader and moved on to a brilliant career in medicine as a premier psychiatrist, teaching at the University of Tehran, and establishing the first clinic in Iran to treat children's mental disorders. Darabi's sister Parvin, an activist and writer since her immigration to California in 1964, was left with only questions the day her sister took her own life. And those questions led to a careful examination of Homa's life in the shadow of an oppressive Muslim regime, where the intelligent and outspoken Dr Darabi courageously tried to make a difference. Masterful storytellers, Parvin, and her son, Romin P Thomson, vividly recreate Homa's childhood in Iran in the politically tempestuous '50s and '60s - a time of limited resources, tensions, and religiously sanctioned child abuse. They remember Homa's early yearnings for justice; the battle for democracy during the Shah's regime; and her marriage, which began as a loving partnership and ended under Khomeini in disaster. They unflinchingly recount the stonings, beatings, rapes, and executions of women, all performed in the name of God - outrageous abuses that Dr. Homa Darabi tried to expose to the world through her own final act of desperation.

The expert essays in this volume deal with critically important topics concerning Islam and politics in both the pre-modern and modern periods, such as the nature of government, the relationship between politics and theology, Shi'i conceptions of statecraft, notions of public duty, and the compatibility of Islam and democratic governance.

The Dawn of Islamic Literalism: Rise of the Crescent Moon is a book written specifically for the People of the Occident. It places the subject matter, which is unfamiliar to most westerners, in chronological sequence and historical context. It exposes readers to the Qur'an, and to the traditions of Muhammad, as they occurred in the 6th and 7th century. However, unlike most other related works, it provides commentary and analysis from both an Islamic literalist and a Western perspective. It aims to give the reader an awareness into the ideology and behavior of 7th century Muslims and to help provide insight into contemporary Islamic literalism and its implications for the Western world.

"The book traces the rise of Islamism in Lebanon and its attempt to Islamize society and state by the reverse integration of society and state into the project of Islamism. Against a background of weak and contested national identity and capricious interaction between religious affiliation and confessional politics, this book attempts to illustrate in detailed analysis this "comprehensive" project of Islamism according to its ideological and practical evolutionary change. The book demonstrates that, despite ideological, political and confessional incongruities and concerns, Islamism, in both its Sunni and Shi'a variants, has maintained a unity of purpose in pursuing its project: Jihad against Israel and abolishment of political sectarianism"--

Religion in Europe is currently undergoing changes that are reconfiguring physical and virtual spaces of practice and belief, and these changes need to be understood with regards to the proliferation of digital media discourses. This book explores religious change in Europe through a comparative approach that analyzes Atheist, Catholic, and Muslim blogs as spaces for articulating narratives about religion that symbolically challenge the power of religious institutions. The book adds theoretical complexity to the study of religion and digital media with the concept of hypermediated religious spaces. The theory of hypermediation helps to critically discuss the theory of secularization and to contextualize religious change as the result of multiple entangled phenomena. It considers religion as being connected with secular and post-secular spaces, and media as embedding material forms, institutions, and technologies. A spatial perspective contextualizes hypermediated religious spaces as existing at the interstice of alternative and mainstream, private and public, imaginary and real venues. By offering the innovative perspective of hypermediated religious spaces, this book will be of significant interest to scholars of religious studies, the sociology of religion, and digital media.

Drawing from a variety of sources, this anthology encourages readers to explore the multiple dimensions of Islamic terrorism and seeks to promote a better understanding of one of the most complicated and urgent problems facing the world today. Divided into six parts, the book deals with the theological and ideological background of the concept of jihad, the policies and organization of Al Qaeda, various policy recommendations for combating terrorism, the motivations of suicide bombers, the dilemma jihadists pose in Western countries, and the adoption of classical European and anti-Semitic myths for political and religious gain in segments of the Muslim world. With excerpts ranging from works by Sayyid Qutb to Osama bin Laden to Nonie Darwish, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in or studying Islamic terrorism.