How do Muslims fit into South Africa’s well-known narrative of colonialism, apartheid and postapartheid?

South Africa is infamous for apartheid, but the country’s foundation was laid by 176 years of slavery from 1658 to 1834, which formed a crucible of war, genocide and systemic sexual violence that continues to haunt the country today. Enslaved people from East Africa, India and South East Asia, many of whom were Muslim, would eventually constitute the majority of the population of the Cape Colony, the first of the colonial territories that would eventually form South Africa.

Drawing on an extensive popular and official archive, Regarding Muslims analyses the role of Muslims from South Africa’s founding moments to the contemporary period and points to the resonance of these discussions beyond South Africa. It argues that the 350-year archive of images documenting the presence of Muslims in South Africa is central to understanding the formation of concepts of race, sexuality and belonging.

In contrast to the themes of extremism and alienation that dominate Western portrayals of Muslims, Regarding Muslims explores an extensive repertoire of picturesque Muslim figures in South African popular culture, which oscillates with more disquieting images that occasionally burst into prominence during moments of crisis. This pattern is illustrated through analyses of etymology, popular culture, visual art, jokes, bodily practices, oral narratives and literature. The book ends with the complex vision of Islam conveyed in the postapartheid period.

Khamr: The Makings Of A Waterslams is a true story that maps the author’s experience of living with an alcoholic father and the direct conflict of having to perform a Muslim life that taught him that nearly everything he called home was forbidden.

A detailed account from his childhood to early adulthood, Jamil F. Khan lays bare the experience of living in a so-called middle-class Coloured home in a neighbourhood called Bernadino Heights in Kraaifontein, a suburb to the north of Cape Town. His memories are overwhelmed by the constant discord that was created by the chaos and dysfunction of his alcoholic home and a co-dependent relationship with his mother, while trying to manage the daily routine of his parents keeping up appearances and him maintaining scholastic excellence.

Khan’s memories are clear and detailed, which in turn is complemented by his scholarly thinking and analysis of those memories. He interrogates the intersections of Islam, Colouredness and the hypocrisy of respectability as well as the effect perceived class status has on these social realities in simple yet incisive language, giving the reader more than just a memoir of pain and suffering.

Khan says about his debut book: "This is not a story for the romanticisation of pain and perseverance, although it tells of overcoming many difficulties. It is a critique of secret violence in faith communities and families, and the hypocrisy that has damaged so many people still looking for a place and way to voice their trauma. This is a critique of the value placed on ritual and culture at the expense of human life and well-being, and the far-reaching consequences of systems of oppression dressed up as tradition."

What is the status of religious freedom in the world today? What barriers does it face? What are the realistic prospects for improvement, and why does this matter? The Future of Religious Freedom addresses these critical questions by assembling in one volume some of the best forward-thinking and empirical research on religious liberty, international legal trends, and societal dynamics. Top scholars from law, political science, diplomacy, sociology, and religion explore the status, value, and challenges of religious liberty around the world - with illustrations from a wide range of historical situations, contemporary contexts, and constitutional regimes. With a thematic focus on the nature of religious markets and statecraft, the book surveys conditions in different regions, from the Muslim arc to Asia to Eastern Europe. It probes dynamics in both established and emerging democracies. It features up-to-date treatments of such pivotal nations as China, Russia, and Turkey, as well as illuminating new threats to conscience and religious autonomy in the United States and in kin countries of the English speaking world. Finally, it demonstrates the vital contribution of religious freedom to inter-religious harmony, thriving societies, and global security, and applies these findings to the momentous issue of advancing freedom and democracy in Islamic cultures.

Routes and Realms explores the ways in which Muslims expressed attachment to land from the ninth through the eleventh centuries, the earliest period of intensive written production in Arabic. In this groundbreaking first book, Zayde Antrim develops a "discourse of place," a framework for approaching formal texts devoted to the representation of territory across genres. The discourse of place included such varied works as topographical histories, literary anthologies, religious treatises, world geographies, poetry, travel literature, and maps.
By closely reading and analyzing these works, Antrim argues that their authors imagined plots of land primarily as homes, cities, and regions and associated them with a range of claims to religious and political authority. She contends that these are evidence of the powerful ways in which the geographical imagination was tapped to declare loyalty and invoke belonging in the early Islamic world, reinforcing the importance of the earliest regional mapping tradition in the Islamic world.
Routes and Realms challenges a widespread tendency to underestimate the importance of territory and to over-emphasize the importance of religion and family to notions of community and belonging among Muslims and Arabs, both in the past and today.

The question of tolerance and Islam is not a new one. Polemicists are certain that Islam is not a tolerant religion. As evidence they point to the rules governing the treatment of non-Muslim permanent residents in Muslim lands, namely the dhimmi rules that are at the center of this study. These rules, when read in isolation, are certainly discriminatory in nature. They legitimate discriminatory treatment on grounds of what could be said to be religious faith and religious difference. The dhimmi rules are often invoked as proof-positive of the inherent intolerance of the Islamic faith (and thereby of any believing Muslim) toward the non-Muslim. This book addresses the problem of the concept of 'tolerance' for understanding the significance of the dhimmi rules that governed and regulated non-Muslim permanent residents in Islamic lands. In doing so, it suggests that the Islamic legal treatment of non-Muslims is symptomatic of the more general challenge of governing a diverse polity. Far from being constitutive of an Islamic ethos, the dhimmi rules raise important thematic questions about Rule of Law, governance, and how the pursuit of pluralism through the institutions of law and governance is a messy business. As argued throughout this book, an inescapable, and all-too-often painful, bottom line in the pursuit of pluralism is that it requires impositions and limitations on freedoms that are considered central and fundamental to an individual's well-being, but which must be limited for some people in some circumstances for reasons extending well beyond the claims of a given individual. A comparison to recent cases from the United States, United Kingdom, and the European Court of Human Rights reveals that however different and distant premodern Islamic and modern democratic societies may be in terms of time, space, and values, legal systems face similar challenges when governing a populace in which minority and majority groups diverge on the meaning and implication of values deemed fundamental to a particular polity.

Islamophobia has been on the rise since September 11, as seen in countless cases of discrimination, racism, hate speeches, physical attacks, and anti-Muslim campaigns. The 2006 Danish cartoon crisis and the controversy surrounding Pope Benedict XVI's Regensburg speech have underscored the urgency of such issues as image-making, multiculturalism, freedom of expression, respect for religious symbols, and interfaith relations.
The 1997 Runnymede Report defines Islamophobia as "dread, hatred, and hostility towards Islam and Muslims perpetuated by a series of closed views that imply and attribute negative and derogatory stereotypes and beliefs to Muslims." Violating the basic principles of human rights civil liberties, and religious freedom, Islamophobic acts take many different forms. In some cases, mosques, Islamic centers, and Muslim properties are attacked and desecrated. In the workplace, schools, and housing, it takes the form of suspicion, staring, hazing, mockery, rejection, stigmatizing and outright discrimination. In public places, it occurs as indirect discrimination, hate speech, and denial of access to goods and services.
This collection of essays takes a multidisciplinary approach to Islamophobia, bringing together the expertise and experience of Muslim, American, and European scholars. Analysis is combined with policy recommendations. Contributors discuss and evaluate good practices already in place and offer new methods for dealing with discrimination, hatred, and racism.

The pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, has been a yearly phenomenon of great importance in Muslim lands for well over one thousand years. Each year, millions of pilgrims from throughout the Dar al-Islam, or Islamic world, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia, make the trip to Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. Records for this practice show that the majority of pilgrims in Islam's earliest centuries came from surrounding polities, such as Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth, fully half of all pilgrims making the journey in any one year could come from Southeast Asia. This is astonishing because of the distances traveled; sailing ships, and later huge steamers as described in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, plodded across the length of the Indian Ocean to disgorge pilgrims on Arabian docks. Yet the huge numbers of Southeast Asian pilgrims may be even more phenomenal if one thinks of the spiritual distances traveled. The variants of Islam practiced in Southeast Asia have traditionally been seen as syncretic, making the effort, expense, and meaning of undertaking the Hajj hugely important in local life. Millions of Southeast Asians, from Southern Thailand into Malaysia and Singapore, from Indonesia up through Brunei and the Southern Philippines, have now made this voyage. More undertake it every year. The movement of Islam in global spaces has become a topic of interest to states, scholars, and the educated reading public for many reasons. The Hajj is still the single largest transmission variant of Muslim ideologies and fraternity in the modern world. This book attempts to write an overarching history of the Hajj from Southeast Asia, encompassing very early times all the way up until the present.

As Senegal prepares to celebrate fifty years of independence from French colonial rule, academic and policy circles are engaged in a vigorous debate about its experience in nation building. An important aspect of this debate is the impact of globalization on Senegal, particularly the massive labor migration that began directly after independence. From Tokyo to Melbourne, from Turin to Buenos Aires, from to Paris to New York, 300,000 Senegalese immigrants are simultaneously negotiating their integration into their host society and seriously impacting the development of their homeland.
This book addresses the modes of organization of transnational societies in the globalized context, and specifically the role of religion in the experience of migrant communities in Western societies. Abundant literature is available on immigrants from Latin America and Asia, but very little on Africans, especially those from French speaking countries in the United States. Ousmane Kane offers a case study of the growing Senegalese community in New York City. By pulling together numerous aspects (religious, ethnic, occupational, gender, generational, socio-economic, and political) of the experience of the Senegalese migrant community into an integrated analysis, linking discussion of both the homeland and host community, this book breaks new ground in the debate about postcolonial Senegal, Muslim globalization and diaspora studies in the United States. A leading scholar of African Islam, Ousmane Kane has also conducted extensive research in North America, Europe and Africa, which allows him to provide an insightful historical ethnography of the Senegalese transnational experience.

Islam's relationship to liberal-democratic politics has emerged as one of the most pressing and contentious issues in international affairs. This book analyzes the relationship between religion, secularism, and liberal democracy, both theoretically and in the context of the contemporary Muslim world. This book challenges a widely held belief among social scientists that religious politics and liberal-democratic development are structurally incompatible. While there are certainly tensions between Islam and democracy -- Hashemi draws on Iran as an example -- the two are not irreconcilable. He affirms the need for political secularism in order for liberal democracy to flourish, and examines how Muslim societies can develop the political secularism required for liberal democracy when the main political, cultural and intellectual resources that are available are religious. Hashemi argues that democratization and liberalization do not necessarily require a rejection or privatization of religion but do require a reinterpretation of religious ideas about the moral basis of legitimate political authority and individual rights. In fact, he shows, liberal democracy in the West often developed not in strict opposition to religious politics but in concert with it. Hashemi argues that an indigenous theory of Muslim secularism -- similar to what developed in the Christian West -- is possible and a necessary requirement for the advancement of liberal democracy in Muslim societies.

In the critical period when Islamic law first developed, a new breed of jurists developed a genre of legal theory treatises to explore how the fundamental moral teachings of Islam might operate as a legal system. Seemingly rhetorical and formulaic, these manuals have long been overlooked for the insight they offer into the early formation of Islamic conceptions of law and its role in social life. In this book, Rumee Ahmed shatters the prevailing misconceptions of the purpose and form of the Islamic legal treatise. Ahmed describes how Muslim jurists used the genre of legal theory to argue for individualized, highly creative narratives about the application of Islamic law while demonstrating loyalty to inherited principles and general prohibitions. These narratives are revealed through careful attention to the nuanced way in which legal theorists defined terms and concepts particular to the legal theory genre, and developed pictures of multiple worlds in which Islamic law should ideally function. Ahmed takes the reader into the logic of Islamic legal theory to uncover diverse conceptions of law and legal application in the Islamic tradition, clarifying and making accessible the sometimes obscure legal theories of central figures in the history of Islamic law. The book offers important insights about the ways in which legal philosophy and theology mutually influenced premodern jurists as they formulated their respective visions of law, ethics, and theology. The volume is the first in the Oxford Islamic Legal Studies series. Satisfying the growing interest in Islam and Islamic law, the series speaks to both specialists and those interested in the study of a legal tradition that shapes lives and societies across the globe. The series features innovative and interdisciplinary studies that explore Islamic law as it operates in shaping private decision making, binding communities, and as domestic positive law. The series also sheds new light on the history and jurisprudence of Islamic law and provides for a richer understanding of the state of Islamic law in the contemporary Muslim world, including parts of the world where Muslims are minorities.

This is a comprehensive and original study of madness in the medieval Islamic world. Using a wide variety of sources from history, literature, and art, the late Michael Dols explores beliefs about madness in Islamic society and examines attitudes towards individuals afflicted by mental illness or disability. The book demonstrates the links between Christian and Muslim medical beliefs and practices, and traces the influence of certain Christian beliefs, such as miracle-working, on Islamic practices. It breaks new ground in analysing the notions of the romantic fool, the wise fool, and the holy fool in medieval Islam within the framework of perceptions of mental illness, and shows that the madman was not regarded as a pariah, an outcast, or a scapegoat. This is a comprehensive and original work, whose insights into magic, medicine, and religion combine to open up our understanding of medieval Islamic society.

Through reconstruction of oral testimony, folk stories and poetry, the true history of Hausa women and their reception of Islam's vision of Muslim in Western Africa have been uncovered. Mary Wren Bivins is the first author to locate and examine the oral texts of the 19th century Hausa women and challenge the written documentation of the Sokoto Caliphate. The personal narratives and folk stories reveal the importance of illiterate, non-elite women to the history of jihad and the assimilation of normative Islam in rural Hausaland. The captivating lives of the Hausa are captured, shedding light on their ordinary existence as wives, mothers, and providers for their family on the eve of European colonial conquest. From European observations to stories of marriage, each entry provides a personal account of the Hausa women's encounters with Islamic reform to the center of an emerging Muslim Hausa identity. Each entry focuses on: BLFemale historiography BLThe importance of oral history BLNew methodoligical approaches to the oral culture of popular Islam BLThe raw voice of Hausa women. The comprehensive history is easy to read and touches on an era that no other scholar has dissected.

Islam and feminism are often thought of as incompatible. Through a vivid ethnography of Muslim and secular women activists in Jakarta, Indonesia, Rachel Rinaldo shows that this is not always the case. Examining a feminist NGO, Muslim women's organizations, and a Muslim political party, Rinaldo reveals that democratization and the Islamic revival in Indonesia are shaping new forms of personal and political agency for women. These unexpected kinds of agency draw on different approaches to interpreting religious texts and facilitate different repertoires of collective action - one oriented toward rights and equality, the other toward more public moral regulation. As Islam becomes a primary source of meaning and identity in Indonesia, some women activists draw on Islam to argue for women's empowerment and equality, while others use Islam to advocate for a more Islamic nation. Mobilizing Piety demonstrates that religious and feminist agency can coexist and even overlap, often in creative ways. "Rachel Rinaldo gives us a richly documented and path-breaking study of how Muslim women in Indonesia draw on both Islam and feminism to argue and imagine political and social changes. Her findings go against a pervasive view of the incompatibility of Islam and feminism: she finds that these very diverse global discourses can in fact work together towards desirable political outcomes."-Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, and author of A Sociology of Globalization "This original study conducted in the world's largest Muslim-majority country strikes me as one of the most interesting and important works on Islam and women in recent years. Rather than pit secularists against religious-minded activists in debates over women's rights, Rachel Rinaldo shows that the major divide in contemporary Indonesia - as in much of the Muslim world - is more complex, and centers on struggles over what it means to be a Muslim, a woman, and an Indonesian."-Robert Hefner, Professor of Anthropology, Boston University

Islamic Social Finance provides an introduction to the Waqf system, which has played a significant socio-economic role throughout the history of Islamic civilization. In a contemporary framework, Waqf creates new networks between micro-entrepreneurs, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs), and entrepreneurship through voluntary donations made by individuals in a society. In other contexts, Waqf supports the financial system and contributes to the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). The authors explore the relationship between the roles Waqf plays in realizing the SDGs, its contributions in many sectors of the economy, and the Waqf practices among the Southeast Asia countries, particularly Malaysia. They highlight the existing Waqf models and framework that have been used by many countries for entrepreneurship that can be used or adapted for the benefits of SMEs. This book is a comprehensive overview for academics, postgraduate students, entrepreneurs, and policy makers who wish to understand how Waqf can contribute to the economic progress of individuals and society at large.

Islamic Finance in Africa discusses the progress, issues and innovations in African Islamic financial markets. It provides a comprehensive overview of Islamic finance in Africa by exploring legal, regulatory and governance challenges while balancing the issues and innovations found in both Islamic commercial and social finance. The chapters in the book can be broadly classified into three parts. The first part covers legal, regulatory and governance developments and issues of Islamic finance in Africa, the second part deals with issues and innovations in Islamic commercial finance, and the third explores issues and innovations in Islamic social finance. The editors use a case study format to present the topic in discussion effectively and provide insight into actual or potential areas of growth. Scholars and Islamic finance stakeholders, including research and education institutes, will find this book invaluable in understanding this important topic and region. In depth case studies allow the reader to zoom into selected markets to understand issues/innovation in detail. This book also will be useful to policymakers and regional standard setting bodies, including multilateral and humanitarian agencies, in understanding the potential of Islamic finance in financial inclusion and resolving humanitarian crises.

This collection of seven essays offers wide-ranging and in-depth studies of locations sacred to Muslims, of the histories of these sites (real or imagined), and of the ways in which Muslims and members of other religions have interacted peaceably in sacred times and spaces. The volume begins with a discussion by David Damrel of the official, hostile, Muslim attitude toward practices at shrines in South Asia. Lance Laird then presents a case study of a shrine holy to Palestinian Christians, who identify its patron as St. George, as well as to Palestinian Muslims, who believe that its patron is al Khadr. Ethel Sara Wolper illustrates how al Khadr's patronage was used also to show Muslim connections to Christian sites in Anatolia, and JoAnn Gross's essay explores oral and written traditions linking shrines in Tajikistan to traditional Muslim locations and figures. A chapter by the late Thomas Sizgorich examines how Christian and Muslim authors used monastic settings to reimagine the relationship between the two religions, and Alexandra Cuffel offers a study of attitudes towards the mixing of religious groups in religious festivals in eleventh- to sixteenth-century Egypt. Finally, Eric Ross shows how the Layenne Sufi order incorporates a singular combination of Christian and Muslim figures and festivals in its history and practices. Muslims and Others in Sacred Space will be an invaluable resource to anyone interested in the complex meanings of sacred sites in Muslim history.

Thinking through anti, post, and decolonial theories, this book examines, analyses, and conceptualises 'visibly Muslim' Lebanese women's lived experiences of discrimination, assault, wounding, and erasure. Based on in-depth research alongside over 100 Sunni and Shia participant between 2017 and 2019 it situates these experiences at the intersection of the local and the global and argues for their conceptualisation as a form of structural and lived anti-Muslim racism. In doing this, it discusses the convergences and divergences of anti-Muslim racism in Lebanon with anti-Muslim racism in other parts of both the global north and the global south. It examines the production of this racialisation as well as its workings across spheres of public, private, work, and state - including an analysis of internalised self-hate. It further explores various forms of resistance and negotiation and the contemporary possibilities and impossibilities of working beyond the epistemic framework of Eurocentric modernity. As the first in-depth and extensive study of anti-Muslim racism within Muslim-majority and Arab-majority spaces, it offers an urgent and timely redress to multiple gaps and biases in the study of the Muslim-majority and Arab-majority worlds as well as racialisation broadly and Islamophobia specifically.

This timely book investigates the ideas and concepts that drive and shape Islamic finance. Hans Visser covers recent developments and explores tensions between belief systems and market demands, to consider the future of Islamic finance in the modern marketplace. In this updated third edition, Visser reviews the numerous products, institutions and markets offered by Islamic finance, situating them in the competitive contemporary environment. This incisive book questions the conceptual differences that have been established between Islamic finance and conventional finance, drawing attention instead to how the former imitates the latter. Offering a critical assessment of the claims of the ethical superiority of Islamic finance frequently made by its advocates, Visser further discusses the ways in which fiscal and monetary policy can be adapted to Islamic financial institutions. Concise, yet comprehensive in scope, this book offers new directions for economics and finance students interested in alternatives to conventional finance, as well as students of Islamic finance and Islam studies more broadly. International bankers, financial journalists and politicians will find Visser's succinct exploration of Islamic finance and financial institutions invaluable.

The Research Handbook on Islamic Law and Society provides an examination of the role of Islamic law as it applies in Muslim and non-Muslim societies through legislation, fatwa, court cases, sermons, media, or scholarly debate. It illuminates and analyses the intersection of social, political, economic and cultural contexts in which state actors have turned to Islamic law for legal solutions. Taking a thematic approach, the Research Handbook assesses the application of Islamic law across six key areas: family law and courts; property and business; criminal law and justice; ethics, health and sciences; arts and education; and community and public spheres. Through examination of these themes in over 20 jurisdictions, the Research Handbook serves to demonstrate that Islamic law is adaptable depending on the values of Muslim societies across different times and places. In addition, the Research Handbook highlights how Islamic law has engaged with contemporary issues, looking beyond what is set out in the Qur'an and the Hadith, to examine how Islamic law is applied in societies today. Researchers and scholars with an interest in Islamic law, or the relationship between law and society more generally will find this Research Handbook to be an engaging text. The in-depth analysis, spanning sectors and jurisdictions, will offer new insights and inspire future research. Contributors include: M. Ali, M.F.A. Alsubaie, A. Begum, A. Black, R. Burgess, M. Corbett, K.M. Eadie, H. Esmaeili, N. Hammado, N. Hosen, N. Hussin, A.A. Jamal, M.A.H. Khutani, F. Kutty, N.Y.K. Lahpan, A.O.A. Mesrat, R. Mohr, S.M. Solaiman, H.H.A. Tajuddin, M. Zawawi

In our age of globalisation and pandemic, how should we react to the new Islamophobic movements now spreading in the West? Everywhere the far right is on the march, with nationalist and populist parties thriving on the back of popular anxieties about Islam and the Muslim presence. Hijab and minaret bans, mosque shootings, hostility to migrants and increasingly scornful media stereotypes seem to endanger the prospects for friendly coexistence and the calm uplifting of Muslim populations. In this series of essays Abdal Hakim Murad dissects the rise of Islamophobia on the basis of Muslim theological tradition. Although the proper response to the current impasse is clearly indicated in Qur'an and Hadith, some have lost the principle of trust in divine wisdom and are responding with hatred, fearfulness or despair. Murad shows that a compassion-based approach, rooted in an authentic theology of divine power, could transform the current quagmire into a bright landscape of great promise for Muslims and their neighbours.

Reporting Islam examines the coverage of Muslim women in the New York Times from 1979-2011. The analysis addresses the nature of the coverage; whether there are parallels in the depiction of Muslim women from the Middle East and South Asia and with the US government policies toward these countries; and the relationship between feminism in the US and the representation of Muslim women in the US. At a time when women often become the iconic representatives of their nations, their cultures and their religions, this book offers unique insight into how a dramatic period of contemporary history for the Middle East and South Asia was depicted by the leading print newspaper in the world. The coverage captures the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the rise of Islamist movements across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, the first Gulf War, the 9/11 events, the second Gulf War, the War on Terror, and the Arab uprisings. The book asks critical questions about the wider implications of the misrepresentation of Muslim women in the media, and the links between print news, US foreign policy and women.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic - at the interlocking levels of politics, economy, and society - have been different across regions, states, and societies. In the case of the Middle East and North Africa, which was already in the throes of intense tumult following the onset of the 2011 Arab Spring, COVID's blows have on the one hand followed the trajectory of some global patterns, while at the same time playing out in regionally specific ways. Based on empirical country-level analysis, this volume brings together an international team of contributors seeking to untangle how COVID-19 unfolds across the MENA. The analyses are framed through a contextual adaptation of Ulrich Beck's famous concept of "risk society" that pinpointed the negative consequences of modernity and its unbridled capitalism. The book traces how this has come home in full force in the COVID-19 pandemic. The editors, Larbi Sadiki and Layla Saleh, use the term "Arab risk society". They highlight short-term and long-term repercussions across the MENA. These include socio-economic inequality, a revitalized state of authoritarianism challenged by relentless democratic struggles. But the analyses are attuned to problem-solving research. The "ethnographies of the pandemic" included in this book investigate transformations and coping mechanisms within each country case study. They provide an ethically-informed research praxis that can respond to the manifold crises crashing down upon MENA polities and societies

Much has been written about the role and presence of the Arabs in the world at the beginning of this millennium, and their ability to meet the challenges overwhelming our planet, bristling as it is with science, technology and latest lethal weapons. Now this new book by Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber penetrates to the heart of the Arab situation by a new route, hitherto uncharted. The author gives us a practical and precise summary of his own contemporary Arab experience from an intercontinental perspective, notable for its success, variety and modernity. Sheikh Mohamed has been able to scale the peaks of international corporate and institutional life, and impose his presence and voice upon them. Here, in a distillation of wisdom drawn from a unique career, he presents us with a practical account of the lessons of his success, so that they can be applied to economic and social institutions and thence to society at large. This book is a translation of the Arabic original, first published in 2009. It therefore pre-dates the events of the`Arab Spring' and other recent upheavals in the Arab world. Its insights are none-theless valid, and are just as applicable to the Arab world today as they were four years ago. Indeed, they have taken on extra urgency in the light of the author's prescient diagnosis of the Arab peoples' thirst for democracy, human rights and proper citizenship in their own countries. SHEIKH MOHAMED BIN ISSA AL JABER was born in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1959, and is today a prominent international businessman and philanthropist. He is founder and chairman of the MBI Group, a worldwide investment institution operating in the hospitality, real estate, finance, oil and gas, and food industries, as well as the founder and sole patron of the MBI Al Jaber Foundation, a UK-registered charity focused on building bridges between the Middle East and the wider world. Among many other roles he is Special Envoy of the Director General of UNESCO for tolerance, democracy and peace, official UN spokesman for good governance, founder of the London Middle East Institute at SOAS, and a fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. With a Foreword by Professor Michael Worton.