The product of a ten-year-long collaboration between one of our most respected scholars of Islam (Bruce B. Lawrence) and a poet and scholar of literature (M.A.R. Habib), The Qur’an: A Verse Translation offers readers the first edition in English to echo, in accessible and resonant verse, the sonorous beauty of the Arabic original as well as the complex nuances of its meaning. Those familiar with the Arabic—and especially the faithful who hear the text recited aloud—know that the Qur’an is a perfect blend of sound and sense. While no translation can perfectly capture these complementary virtues of the original, Habib and Lawrence have come closest to an accessible, clear, and fluid English Qur’an that all readers, no matter their faith or familiarity with the text, can read with pleasure and with a deeper appreciation for the book and the religious tradition founded upon it.

This touchingly honest memoir, A Mother's Story: Memories from the Turtle Creek Valley, follows the life of author Maryann B. Lawrence from early childhood through the Great Depression, into the uncertain years of World War II, followed by the fabulous 1950s and beyond. Her story offers a slice of small town life from bygone days on the hill known as Electric Plan, in the small town of Turtle Creek in beautiful, southwestern Pennsylvania.

This captivating story also provides a historic glimpse into the lives of her parents and immigrant grandparents as they assimilated into American culture and society. We witness their challenges and their joys. By providing a detailed and fascinating look at her entire family, we gain a greater understanding and appreciation of the contribution that was made by each family member.

This delightful, true-to-life account follows Maryann into marriage, motherhood, and maturity, in a conversational style that warms your heart!

FIGURE 18.13e. Detector Output. ..................................................................... 618 FIGURE 18.14a. WDM Energy Distrubution into the Fiber ........................... 619 FIGURE 18.14b. Fiber Loss for the WDM Band .............................................. 619 FIGURE 18.14c. Fiber Group Delay Distribution ............................................ 619 FIGURE 18.14d. Receive Energy Distribution ................................................. 619 FIGURE 18.15a. Channell Eye Diagram at PIN Diode ................................. 621 FIGURE 18.15b. Channel 2 Eye Diagram at PIN Diode ................................. 621 FIGURE 18.15c. Channell System Output at Detector ................................. 621 FIGURE 18.15d. Channel 2 System Output at Detector ................................. 621 PREFACE The emerging networks in our society will touch upon the life of everyone. These networks have started to bring about an immense information revolution. The revolution within our intellectual life will be similar to the materialistic revolution that followed the invention of the steam and the internal combustion engines. From the perspective of the 1980s, the information networks are indeed evolving and their influence can only be gradual. However, the strides of progress are accelerating in the 1990s. Networks in our society offer the most candid area of convergence for the computer and the communication technologies. The two technologies are mature in their own right. However, there are a few major factors that prevent network engineers from constructing modern communication systems from components borrowed from each of these two technologies: * Major innovations are happening. * Specialized components evolve in synergistic patterns. * New technologies emerge. * Inquisitive minds cross disciplinary barriers.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems - both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

Intelligent Broadband Multimedia Networks is a non-mathematical, but highly systems oriented, coverage of modern intelligent information networks. This volume focuses on the convergence of computers and communications technologies. Most of the concepts that are generic to all intelligent networks, and their microscopic and macroscopic functions, are presented. This book includes specific architectures that can be used by network designers and planners, telecommunications managers, computer scientists, and telecommunications professionals. The breadth of this coverage and the systems orientation of this work make the text suitable for use in advanced level courses on intelligent communications networks. The material in this volume ranges from defining intelligent networks to more specific coverage of educational, medical, and knowledge-based networks. Each of the 20 chapters address issues that can help make the transition from computer design, to the underlying concepts of modern telecommunications systems, to considerations necessary for the implementation of intelligent network services. Special and timely coverage of emerging technologies, such as HDSL, ADSL, BISDN, wireless, broadband access, ATM, and other topics, are given expanded treatment. The authors have included design methodologies for installing intelligence into almost any communications systems, and procedures for using such intelligence according to the type of function expected from these networks. Unique features of the book are: a 64-page glossary of key terms (with expanded explanations) used in the field, a 23-page index that makes it easy to search for important information, running headers on each page to help the busy professional use the book as a reference/design tool, complete references including additional reading for more detailed information, and accurate and concise information to help telecommunications professionals understand the intricacies of the field.

This is a book about the evaluation and choice of information sources by individuals and the design and management of information systems by organizations. The book studies the determinants of the value and cost of information, both to the individual and to the organization, provides technqiues for the assessment of the value of information and the comparison of informativeness among alternative sources, and presents principles for the optimal design and management of information systems. These topics are unified by the thesis that both information sources and information systems are valuable to the extent they contribute to better decision making. By providing students, researchers, and practitioners with a coherent notation and framework throughout, the book integrates the decision-theoretic approach to the evaluation of information with knowledge from information science and management information systems on the design, management, and cost of cooperative information systems, thereby demonstrating the multidisciplinary applicability of a unifying approach based on decision theory. Researchers and graduate students in economics, operations research, management information systems, and information science will find this book useful.

The 'institutional' approach to organizational research has shown how enduring features of social life - such as marriage and bureaucracy - act as mechanisms of social control. Such approaches have traditionally focused attention on the relationships between organizations and the fields in which they operate, providing strong accounts of the processes through which institutions govern action. In contrast, the study of institutional work reorients these traditional concerns, shifting the focus to understanding how action affects institutions. This book sets a research agenda within the field of institutional work by analyzing the ways in which individuals, groups, and organizations work to create, maintain, and disrupt the institutions that structure their lives. Through a series of essays and case studies, it explores the conceptual core of institutional work, identifies institutional work strategies, provides exemplars for future empirical research, and embeds the concept within broader sociological debates and ideas.

The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), this monumental work established the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including the philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in the United States and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation first appeared in 1969. This Princeton Classics edition of the abridged version includes Rosenthal's original introduction as well as a contemporary introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence. This volume makes available a seminal work of Islam and medieval and ancient history to twenty-first century audiences.

Intelligent Broadband Multimedia Networks is a non-mathematical, but highly systems oriented, coverage of modern intelligent information networks. This volume focuses on the convergence of computers and communications technologies. Most of the concepts that are generic to all intelligent networks, and their microscopic and macroscopic functions, are presented. This book includes specific architectures that can be used by network designers and planners, telecommunications managers, computer scientists, and telecommunications professionals. The breadth of this coverage and the systems orientation of this work make the text suitable for use in advanced level courses on intelligent communications networks. The material in this volume ranges from defining intelligent networks to more specific coverage of educational, medical, and knowledge-based networks. Each of the 20 chapters address issues that can help make the transition from computer design, to the underlying concepts of modern telecommunications systems, to considerations necessary for the implementation of intelligent network services. Special and timely coverage of emerging technologies, such as HDSL, ADSL, BISDN, wireless, broadband access, ATM, and other topics, are given expanded treatment. The authors have included design methodologies for installing intelligence into almost any communications systems, and procedures for using such intelligence according to the type of function expected from these networks. Unique features of the book are: a 64-page glossary of key terms (with expanded explanations) used in the field, a 23-page index that makes it easy to search for important information, running headers on each page to help the busy professional use the book as a reference/design tool, complete references including additional reading for more detailed information, and accurate and concise information to help telecommunications professionals understand the intricacies of the field.

FIGURE 18.13e. Detector Output. ..................................................................... 618 FIGURE 18.14a. WDM Energy Distrubution into the Fiber ........................... 619 FIGURE 18.14b. Fiber Loss for the WDM Band .............................................. 619 FIGURE 18.14c. Fiber Group Delay Distribution ............................................ 619 FIGURE 18.14d. Receive Energy Distribution ................................................. 619 FIGURE 18.15a. Channell Eye Diagram at PIN Diode ................................. 621 FIGURE 18.15b. Channel 2 Eye Diagram at PIN Diode ................................. 621 FIGURE 18.15c. Channell System Output at Detector ................................. 621 FIGURE 18.15d. Channel 2 System Output at Detector ................................. 621 PREFACE The emerging networks in our society will touch upon the life of everyone. These networks have started to bring about an immense information revolution. The revolution within our intellectual life will be similar to the materialistic revolution that followed the invention of the steam and the internal combustion engines. From the perspective of the 1980s, the information networks are indeed evolving and their influence can only be gradual. However, the strides of progress are accelerating in the 1990s. Networks in our society offer the most candid area of convergence for the computer and the communication technologies. The two technologies are mature in their own right. However, there are a few major factors that prevent network engineers from constructing modern communication systems from components borrowed from each of these two technologies: * Major innovations are happening. * Specialized components evolve in synergistic patterns. * New technologies emerge. * Inquisitive minds cross disciplinary barriers.

The Scope of This Book Popular culture often refers to current times as the Information Age, classifying many of the technological, economic, and social changes of the past four deca:les under the rubric of the Information Revolution. But similar to the Iron Age be fore it, the description "Information Age" suggests the idea that information is a commodity in the marketplace, one that can be bought and sold as an item of value. When people seek to acquire information yet complain about information overload, and when organizations invest millions in information systems yet are unable to pinpoint the benefits, perhaps this reflects a difficulty with the as sessment of the value of this commodity relative to its cost, an inability to dis cern the useless from the useful from the wasteful. The Information Age requires us to assess the value, cost, and gain from information, and to do it from several different viewpoints. At the most elementary level is the individual who perceives a need for in formation-her current state of knowledge is insufficient and something needs to be understood, or clarified, or updated, or forecast. There is a universe of al ternative information sources from which to choose, some more informative than others, some more costly than others. The individual's problem is to evalu ate the alternatives and choose which sources to access. An organization comprising many information-seeking employees and agents must take a somewhat broader viewpoint.

For many in the West, the ecstatic dancing ritual of whirling dervishes is
the most recognizable aspect of Sufism. Sufism is the mystical branch of
Islam, with which Muslims throughout the world identify. It emphasizes
direct knowledge of the divine within each person. Its adepts see
meditation, music, song, and dance as integral to the spiritual quest.
The Chishti Sufi order is among the oldest and most popular of all Sufi
traditions. Though most often identified with South Asia, today its devotees
can be found from California to Kuala Lumpur. What are the distinctive
practices of the Chishtis, and how do they differ from other orders? Who
were the founding figures, and what were the seminal texts that provided the
basis for this tradition? And how has this legacy continually been
reinterpreted until the present day?
Sufi Martyrs of Love provides access to the voices of Sufi authorities
through the translation of texts being offered in English for the first
time. It also offers a critical perspective on Western attitudes toward
Islam and Sufism, confronts the prejudices of the academy and the media, and
offers a clarification of the contemporary importance of Sufism from Asia to
America.

The untold story of how the Arabic Qur'an became the English Koran For millions of Muslims, the Qur'an is sacred only in Arabic, the original Arabic in which it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. To many Arab and non-Arab believers alike, the book literally defies translation, yet English translations are growing in both number and importance. Bruce Lawrence tells the remarkable story of the centuries-long quest to translate the Qur'an's lyrical verses-and to make English itself an Islamic language. A translation saga like no other, this panoramic book looks at cyber Korans, versions by feminist translators, and even a graphic Qur'an by the acclaimed visual artist Sandow Birk.

Over the course of his career, Bruce B. Lawrence has explored the central elements of Islamicate civilization and Muslim networks. This reader assembles more than two dozen of Lawrence's key writings, among them analyses of premodern and modern Islamic discourses, practices, and institutions and methodological reflections on the contextual study of religion. Six methodologies serve as the organizing rubric: theorizing Islam, revaluing Muslim comparativists, translating Sufism, deconstructing religious modernity, networking Muslims, and reflecting on the Divine. Throughout, Lawrence attributes the resilience of Islam to its cosmopolitan character and Muslims' engagement in cross-cultural dialogue. Several essays also address the central role of institutional Sufism in various phases and domains of Islamic history. The volume concludes with Lawrence's reflections on Islam's spiritual and aesthetic resources in the context of global comity. Modeling what it means to study Islam beyond political and disciplinary borders as well as a commitment to linking empathetic imagination with critical reflection, this reader presents the broad arc of Lawrence's prescient contributions to the study of Islam.

The untold story of how the Arabic Qur'an became the English Koran For millions of Muslims, the Qur'an is sacred only in Arabic, the original Arabic in which it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century; to many Arab and non-Arab believers alike, the book literally defies translation. Yet English translations exist and are growing, in both number and importance. Bruce Lawrence tells the remarkable story of the ongoing struggle to render the Qur'an's lyrical verses into English--and to make English itself an Islamic language. The "Koran" in English revisits the life of Muhammad and the origins of the Qur'an before recounting the first translation of the book into Latin by a non-Muslim: Robert of Ketton's twelfth-century version paved the way for later ones in German and French, but it was not until the eighteenth century that George Sale's influential English version appeared. Lawrence explains how many of these early translations, while part of a Christian agenda to "know the enemy," often revealed grudging respect for their Abrahamic rival. British expansion in the modern era produced an anomaly: fresh English translations--from the original Arabic--not by Arabs or non-Muslims but by South Asian Muslim scholars. The first book to explore the complexities of this translation saga, The "Koran" in English also looks at cyber Korans, versions by feminist translators, and now a graphic Koran, the American Qur'an created by the acclaimed visual artist Sandow Birk.

A posthumous work by the most rigorous comparativist in her generation of Islamic studies scholars, Prophecy and Power proposes a major innovative approach to both the Prophet Muhammad and the Noble Qur'an. By the end of the ninth century, the Prophet Muhammad had emerged as an intercommunal norm beyond compare, and yet the very constructedness of this model of Muhammad allows historians of religion to see how the process itself requires us to undercut the terms used. We undercut them by qualifying them with multiple meanings, both overlapping and corrective, but we also decapitalize them in order to suggest how much broader they were in earlier contexts, and how much broader they may become, or were intended to become, in later contexts.

The 'institutional' approach to organizational research has shown how enduring features of social life - such as marriage and bureaucracy - act as mechanisms of social control. Such approaches have traditionally focused attention on the relationships between organizations and the fields in which they operate, providing strong accounts of the processes through which institutions govern action. In contrast, the study of institutional work reorients these traditional concerns, shifting the focus to understanding how action affects institutions. This 2009 book sets a research agenda within the field of institutional work by analyzing the ways in which individuals, groups, and organizations work to create, maintain, and disrupt the institutions that structure their lives. Through a series of essays and case studies, it explores the conceptual core of institutional work, identifies institutional work strategies, provides exemplars for future empirical research, and embeds the concept within broader sociological debates and ideas.

Islam is often portrayed, especially in Western media, as an alien, violent, hostile, and monolithic religion, whose adherents are intent upon battling nonbelievers throughout the world. "Shattering the Myth" demonstrates that these conceptions more accurately reflect the bias of Western reporters than they do the realities of contemporary Islam. Westerners are barraged by images of violence that usually originate from armed confrontations in one small corner of the world. Islam, Bruce Lawrence argues, is a complex, international religious system that cannot be reduced to stereotypes. As Lawrence demonstrates, Islam is a religion shaped as much by its own postulates and ethical demands as by the specific circumstances of Muslim people in the modern world.

The last two hundred years have brought many challenges for Muslims, from colonial subjugation through sporadic revivalism to elitist reform movements and, most recently, pervasive struggles with fundamentalism. During each period, Muslims have had to address internal tensions, as well as external threats. Today Muslims in the post-colonial era, only some of whom are Arab and living in the Middle East, are playing ever greater roles in economic changes, both regional and international. As the impact of these changes has become evident in societies around the globe, new leaders have come into public view. The most remarkable emerging presence is that of Muslim women. Lawrence argues that it is the experience of Muslim women in particular that calls for a more nuanced understanding of Islam today.

It is time, Lawrence believes, to replace inaccurate images of Islam with a recognition of the multifaceted character of this global religion and of its widely diverse adherents. Here he describes changes that are taking place throughout the world, particularly in Southeast Asia, enacted by governments and nongovernmental organizations alike. In a time of rapid international change, Lawrence suggests that it is time for our images of Islam to reflect more clearly the realities of Islam as it is lived. "Shattering the Myth" provides significant insights into the history of Islam and a greater understanding of the varied experiences of Muslims today.

"An informed interpretation of the contemporary Muslim experience . . . Lawrence's explanations for the particular states of affairs in Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia, among other cases, are compelling . . . A] distinguished contribution."--From the foreword by James Piscatori and Dale F. Eickelman

People's Peace lays a solid foundation for the argument that global peace is possible because ordinary people are its architects. Saikia and Haines offer a unique and imaginative perspective on people's daily lives across the world as they struggle to create peace despite escalating political violence. The volume's focus on local and ordinary efforts highlights peace as a lived experience that goes beyond national and international peace efforts. In addition, the contributors' emphasis on the role of religion as a catalyst for peace moves away from the usual depiction of religion as a source of divisiveness and conflict. Spanning a range of humanities disciplines, the essays in this volume provide case studies of individuals defying authority or overcoming cultural stigmas to create peaceful relations in their communities. From investigating how ancient Jews established communal justice to exploring how black and white citizens in Ferguson, Missouri, are working to achieve racial harmony, the contributors find that people are acting independently of governments and institutions to identify everyday methods of coexisting with others. In putting these various approaches in dialogue with each other, this volume produces a theoretical intervention that shifts the study of peace away from national and international organizations and institutions toward locating successful peaceful efforts in the everyday lives of individuals.