Posts Tagged ‘Muslim’

Understanding Islam: An Introduction to the Muslim World, Third Edition

• ISBN13: 9780452011601
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
Lippman’s study of the Muslim world–from its earliest roots to today’s global power politics–includes crucial new material on the Islamic community today. There are also updated descriptions of internal politics in Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and other Islamic nations. Essential reading for both students and all who seek greater understanding of the world in which we live.

Understanding Islam: An Introduction to the Muslim World, Third Edition

Breaking the Islam Code: Understanding the Soul Questions of Every Muslim

• ISBN13: 9780736926386
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

World events won’t let North Americans ignore Muslims anymore. Whether those Muslims are villagers in Iraq or neighbors down the street, Breaking the Islam Code offers everyday Christians profound insight into the way Muslims think and feel.

J.D. Greear’s ability to communicate challenging heart truth, plus his expertise in Christian and Islamic theology and two years’ experience in a Muslim-dominated area, make him the perfect author for this empowering, insightful, reader-friendly book. It transcends traditional apologetics, focusing on helping Christians

• understand what is deep in Muslims’ hearts, behind their theology—which will lead to friendship and effective communication of the gospel
• respectfully turn many of the primary objections into opportunities to share the faith
• avoid unnecessarily offending Muslims they’re interacting with

Readers will be excited that sharing Christ with Muslims is something they can do—as everyday Christians in their own cities, campuses, and workplaces.

Breaking the Islam Code: Understanding the Soul Questions of Every Muslim

Sword of Islam : Muslim Extremism from the Arab Conquests to the Attack on America

Product Description
“This book is not an indictment of Islam, one of the three beautiful religions which bloomed in this desert land. It is an indictment of those who took from Islam its most uncompromising tenets, forgetting the message of love that accompanies them. . . . I have chosen to write about Islamic extremism because it represents the most clear and present danger today. Islamic extremists like the Hizbollah and the organization of Osama bin Laden have the financial resources and the ability to obtain the most sophisticated of weaponry, a generation ago reserved for only the great powers of the world. Atomic, chemical, and biological warfare are three of the lightning bolts they can hurl at their enemies like modern incarnations of the Greek gods on Mount Olympus. It is for this reason that these groups must be studied and explored. . . .

“September 11 reminded us that Islamic terrorists, like Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group, in their desire to recreate a harsh Muslim world that never really existed have declared war on every American. In fact, they have declared war on everybody, Christian, Muslim, or Jew, who does not agree with their view of a fascistic, theologic utopia. In doing so, they have hijacked Islam, one of our great desert faiths, as surely as the bin Laden terrorists hijacked the four jetliners on that desperate Tuesday.” — from the Introduction

Sword of Islam : Muslim Extremism from the Arab Conquests to the Attack on America

Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11

• ISBN13: 9780871540485
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description
In the aftermath of 9/11, many Arab and Muslim Americans came under intense scrutiny by federal and local authorities, as well as their own neighbors, on the chance that they might know, support, or actually be terrorists. As Louise Cainkar observes, even U.S.-born Arabs and Muslims were portrayed as outsiders, an image that was amplified in the months after the attacks. She argues that 9/11 did not create anti-Arab and anti-Muslim suspicion; rather, their socially constructed images and social and political exclusion long before these attacks created an environment in which misunderstanding and hostility could thrive and the government could defend its use of profiling. Combining analysis and ethnography, Homeland Insecurity provides an intimate view of what it means to be an Arab or a Muslim in a country set on edge by the worst terrorist attack in its history.

Focusing on the metropolitan Chicago area, Cainkar conducted more than a hundred research interviews and five in-depth oral histories. In this, the most comprehensive ethnographic study of the post-9/11 period for American Arabs and Muslims, native-born and immigrant Palestinians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Iraqis, Yemenis, Sudanese, Jordanians, and others speak candidly about their lives as well as their experiences with government, public mistrust, discrimination, and harassment after 9/11. The book reveals that Arab Muslims were more likely to be attacked in certain spatial contexts than others and that Muslim women wearing the hijab were more vulnerable to assault than men, as their head scarves were interpreted by some as a rejection of American culture. Even as the 9/11 Commission never found any evidence that members of Arab- or Muslim-American communities were involved in the attacks, respondents discuss their feelings of insecurity–a heightened sense of physical vulnerability and exclusion from the guarantees of citizenship afforded other Americans.

Yet the vast majority of those interviewed for Homeland Insecurity report feeling optimistic about the future of Arab and Muslim life in the United States. Most of the respondents talked about their increased interest in the teachings of Islam, whether to counter anti-Muslim slurs or to better educate themselves. Governmental and popular hostility proved to be a springboard for heightened social and civic engagement. Immigrant organizations, religious leaders, civil rights advocates, community organizers, and others defended Arabs and Muslims and built networks with their organizations. Local roundtables between Arab and Muslim leaders, law enforcement, and homeland security agencies developed better understanding of Arab and Muslim communities. These post-9/11 changes have given way to stronger ties and greater inclusion in American social and political life.

Will the United States extend its values of freedom and inclusion beyond the politics of “us” and “them” stirred up after 9/11? The answer is still not clear. Homeland Insecurity is keenly observed and adds Arab and Muslim American voices to this still-unfolding period in American history.

Homeland Insecurity: The Arab American and Muslim American Experience After 9/11

Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think

• ISBN13: 9781595620170
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Product Description

Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think

The Future of Islam

• ISBN13: 9780195165210
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Amazon.com Review
John L. Esposito is one of America’s leading authorities on Islam. Now, in this brilliant portrait of Islam today– and tomorrow– he draws on a lifetime of thought and research to provide an accurate, richly nuanced, and revelatory account of the fastest growing religion in the world.

Here Esposito explores the major questions and issues that face Islam in the 21st century and that will deeply affect global politics: Is Islam compatible with modern notions of democracy, rule of law, gender equality, and human rights? How representative and widespread is Islamic fundamentalism and the threat of global terrorism? Can Muslim minority communities be loyal citizens in America and Europe? The book also turns the mirror on the US and Europe, revealing how we appear to Muslims.

Recent decades have brought extraordinary changes in the Muslim world, and in addressing these issues, Esposito paints a complex picture of Islam in all its diversity-a picture of urgent importance as we face the challenges of the coming century.

John L. Esposito and Karen Armstrong: Author One-to-One
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous works on comparative religion, including the critically-acclaimed The Case for God. She spoke with John L. Esposito about Western perceptions of Muslims and the issues facing the world’s fastest growing religion.

Armstrong: How did you view Islam before you began to study it seriously? How did study affect your understanding of Muslim faith and culture?

Esposito: Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, surrounded by Italian Catholic neighbors, I knew little about the one Irish girl in my class, and much less about Arabs or Islam who were invisible in the American landscape. And what I did know (much of it, I discovered later, was the product of bias and stereotypes) did not attract me to “these strangers”. In addition, since most theology and religion departments did not teach Islam, the prospect of getting a teaching position in this area were indeed bleak. When the department chair of religion at Temple encouraged me to take a course in Islam with a newly hired Muslim professor, I declined. However, he was “gently adamant” and I, reflecting on my precarious position as a grad student, finally agreed to “take just one course.”

When I first encountered Islam in graduate school, I was astonished to discover that Islam was another Abrahamic faith. While the Judeo-Christian connection was well known, no one ever mentioned a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Why? If Muslims recognize and revere many of the major patriarchs and prophets of Judaism and Christianity (including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus) and God’s revealed books, the Torah and the Message (Gospels) of Jesus, why had I not been aware of these similarities after all my years of liberal arts and theological training?

Armstrong: Western feelings about Islam have certainly intensified since 9/11. But do you think that the Western perception of Islam has fundamentally changed? If so, how has it changed? If not, why not?

Esposito: There certainly has been more coverage of Islam and Muslims are more visible in the public square. However, during the past decade continued terrorist attacks, the sharp politicization among experts and political commentators, the influence of neocons and the hardline Christian Right have fed a significant increase in anti-Islam and anti-Muslim (Islamophobia) attitudes and policies. The Gallup World Poll and other major polls have demonstrated the impact on public opinion. When Americans were asked in 2007 what they admire about Islam, 57% (that figure dropped to 53% in 2009) said “nothing” or “I don’t know.” The critical missing link in our information and the key question in understanding Muslims ought to be “What do Muslims globally, the mainstream majority, really think?” To chart a new way forward, we in the West need to know not only what experts and pseudo-experts say about Muslim attitudes, beliefs, grievances, hopes, fears, and desires but also and most importantly what the often silenced Muslim majority have to say. I believe we’d discover many commonalities in their values, hopes and dreams.

At the same time, there has been an exponential growth in information and knowledge regarding Islam and Muslims, in books and media. It’s not clear that this has led to greater understanding. Toward that end I have seen an increase in inter-civilizational and inter-religious dialogue initiatives and media and popular culture projects that reach a broad audience, especially youth who are the future of Islam.

Armstrong: What are the particular challenges that Islam faces in the modern world?

Esposito: The first challenge is time. In contrast to Christian reforms that grew out of and were influenced primarily by conditions in the West over several centuries, Islam and Muslims have decades, not centuries, to make significant progress in a globalizing world characterized by Western political, military, and economic hegemony. Secondly, many Muslims today pursue reform not from a position of power and strength but from one of relative weakness, struggling for change in the face of authoritarianism and repression, limited freedom of speech and the press, and in some cases war and terror.

Armstrong: What do you find most hopeful in current Muslim thinking?

Esposito: Post 9/11, the call to reform Islam, to strengthen its relevance in a rapidly changing twenty-first-century world, has intensified. If some say that Islam is a perfect religion that doesn’t need to change or adapt, many others stress that Islam is inherently dynamic and that reinterpretation and reform are critical in the struggle to respond to the demands of our times, to marginalize extremists, and to promote gender equality, religious pluralism, and human rights. This debate has been intensified by a modern technology and mass communications and by the growth of religious extremism and terrorism in the name of Islam.

An influential group of vibrant Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders, from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America, have addressed the role of Islam in contemporary society: How do religion and Islamic law contribute to the modern nation-state? Where do Islamic values apply to key issues of today, like democracy, secularism, gender equality, human rights, free market economies, modern banking? What is the role of the clergy (ulama); are they the preeminent authoritative voices who speak for Islam?

Reformists are clergy, as well as intellectuals and activists; rulers and citizens, both traditionalist and modernist. They can be found at Islamic institutes and universities, at academic and religious conferences, and in parliamentary debates. Reformist ideas proliferate in hundreds of books and articles, audios, videos and DVDs, in newspaper editorials, in muftis’ fatwas, and on the Internet. As in the history of Christianity and the Reformation, change in Islam is not limited to debates in theology and law but also involves struggles in politics and society, and at times violence and terror.

Read Karen Armstrong’s foreword from The Future of Islam [PDF]

(Photo by J.D. Sloan)

The Future of Islam

The Future of Islam

• ISBN13: 9780195165210
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.

Amazon.com Review
John L. Esposito is one of America’s leading authorities on Islam. Now, in this brilliant portrait of Islam today– and tomorrow– he draws on a lifetime of thought and research to provide an accurate, richly nuanced, and revelatory account of the fastest growing religion in the world.

Here Esposito explores the major questions and issues that face Islam in the 21st century and that will deeply affect global politics: Is Islam compatible with modern notions of democracy, rule of law, gender equality, and human rights? How representative and widespread is Islamic fundamentalism and the threat of global terrorism? Can Muslim minority communities be loyal citizens in America and Europe? The book also turns the mirror on the US and Europe, revealing how we appear to Muslims.

Recent decades have brought extraordinary changes in the Muslim world, and in addressing these issues, Esposito paints a complex picture of Islam in all its diversity-a picture of urgent importance as we face the challenges of the coming century.

John L. Esposito and Karen Armstrong: Author One-to-One
Karen Armstrong is the author of numerous works on comparative religion, including the critically-acclaimed The Case for God. She spoke with John L. Esposito about Western perceptions of Muslims and the issues facing the world’s fastest growing religion.

Armstrong: How did you view Islam before you began to study it seriously? How did study affect your understanding of Muslim faith and culture?

Esposito: Growing up in Brooklyn, NY, surrounded by Italian Catholic neighbors, I knew little about the one Irish girl in my class, and much less about Arabs or Islam who were invisible in the American landscape. And what I did know (much of it, I discovered later, was the product of bias and stereotypes) did not attract me to “these strangers”. In addition, since most theology and religion departments did not teach Islam, the prospect of getting a teaching position in this area were indeed bleak. When the department chair of religion at Temple encouraged me to take a course in Islam with a newly hired Muslim professor, I declined. However, he was “gently adamant” and I, reflecting on my precarious position as a grad student, finally agreed to “take just one course.”

When I first encountered Islam in graduate school, I was astonished to discover that Islam was another Abrahamic faith. While the Judeo-Christian connection was well known, no one ever mentioned a Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Why? If Muslims recognize and revere many of the major patriarchs and prophets of Judaism and Christianity (including Abraham, Moses, and Jesus) and God’s revealed books, the Torah and the Message (Gospels) of Jesus, why had I not been aware of these similarities after all my years of liberal arts and theological training?

Armstrong: Western feelings about Islam have certainly intensified since 9/11. But do you think that the Western perception of Islam has fundamentally changed? If so, how has it changed? If not, why not?

Esposito: There certainly has been more coverage of Islam and Muslims are more visible in the public square. However, during the past decade continued terrorist attacks, the sharp politicization among experts and political commentators, the influence of neocons and the hardline Christian Right have fed a significant increase in anti-Islam and anti-Muslim (Islamophobia) attitudes and policies. The Gallup World Poll and other major polls have demonstrated the impact on public opinion. When Americans were asked in 2007 what they admire about Islam, 57% (that figure dropped to 53% in 2009) said “nothing” or “I don’t know.” The critical missing link in our information and the key question in understanding Muslims ought to be “What do Muslims globally, the mainstream majority, really think?” To chart a new way forward, we in the West need to know not only what experts and pseudo-experts say about Muslim attitudes, beliefs, grievances, hopes, fears, and desires but also and most importantly what the often silenced Muslim majority have to say. I believe we’d discover many commonalities in their values, hopes and dreams.

At the same time, there has been an exponential growth in information and knowledge regarding Islam and Muslims, in books and media. It’s not clear that this has led to greater understanding. Toward that end I have seen an increase in inter-civilizational and inter-religious dialogue initiatives and media and popular culture projects that reach a broad audience, especially youth who are the future of Islam.

Armstrong: What are the particular challenges that Islam faces in the modern world?

Esposito: The first challenge is time. In contrast to Christian reforms that grew out of and were influenced primarily by conditions in the West over several centuries, Islam and Muslims have decades, not centuries, to make significant progress in a globalizing world characterized by Western political, military, and economic hegemony. Secondly, many Muslims today pursue reform not from a position of power and strength but from one of relative weakness, struggling for change in the face of authoritarianism and repression, limited freedom of speech and the press, and in some cases war and terror.

Armstrong: What do you find most hopeful in current Muslim thinking?

Esposito: Post 9/11, the call to reform Islam, to strengthen its relevance in a rapidly changing twenty-first-century world, has intensified. If some say that Islam is a perfect religion that doesn’t need to change or adapt, many others stress that Islam is inherently dynamic and that reinterpretation and reform are critical in the struggle to respond to the demands of our times, to marginalize extremists, and to promote gender equality, religious pluralism, and human rights. This debate has been intensified by a modern technology and mass communications and by the growth of religious extremism and terrorism in the name of Islam.

An influential group of vibrant Muslim intellectuals and religious leaders, from Africa to Asia, from Europe to America, have addressed the role of Islam in contemporary society: How do religion and Islamic law contribute to the modern nation-state? Where do Islamic values apply to key issues of today, like democracy, secularism, gender equality, human rights, free market economies, modern banking? What is the role of the clergy (ulama); are they the preeminent authoritative voices who speak for Islam?

Reformists are clergy, as well as intellectuals and activists; rulers and citizens, both traditionalist and modernist. They can be found at Islamic institutes and universities, at academic and religious conferences, and in parliamentary debates. Reformist ideas proliferate in hundreds of books and articles, audios, videos and DVDs, in newspaper editorials, in muftis’ fatwas, and on the Internet. As in the history of Christianity and the Reformation, change in Islam is not limited to debates in theology and law but also involves struggles in politics and society, and at times violence and terror.

Read Karen Armstrong’s foreword from The Future of Islam [PDF]

(Photo by J.D. Sloan)

The Future of Islam