Author: Christopher de Bellaigue
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448139678
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 615
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Book Description
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE 2017 'An eye-opening, well-written and very timely book' Yuval Noah Harari 'The best sort of book for our disordered days: timely, urgent and illuminating' Pankaj Mishra 'It strikes a blow...for common humanity' Sunday Times The Muslim world has often been accused of a failure to modernise and adapt. Yet in this sweeping narrative and provocative retelling of modern history, Christopher de Bellaigue charts the forgotten story of the Islamic Enlightenment – the social movements, reforms and revolutions that transfigured the Middle East from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Modern ideals and practices were embraced across the region, including the adoption of modern medicine, the emergence of women from purdah and the development of democracy. The Islamic Enlightenment looks behind the sensationalist headlines in order to foster a genuine understanding of Islam and its relationship to the West. It is essential reading for anyone engaged in the state of the world today.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN: 1847922414
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 53
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Book Description
Author: Humberto Garcia
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421403536
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 367
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Book Description
A corrective addendum to Edward Said’s Orientalism, this book examines how sympathetic representations of Islam contributed significantly to Protestant Britain’s national and imperial identity in the eighteenth century. Taking a historical view, Humberto Garcia combines a rereading of eighteenth-century and Romantic-era British literature with original research on Anglo-Islamic relations. He finds that far from being considered foreign by the era’s thinkers, Islamic republicanism played a defining role in Radical Enlightenment debates, most significantly during the Glorious Revolution, French Revolution, and other moments of acute constitutional crisis, as well as in national and political debates about England and its overseas empire. Garcia shows that writers such as Edmund Burke, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, and Percy and Mary Shelley not only were influenced by international events in the Muslim world but also saw in that world and its history a viable path to interrogate, contest, and redefine British concepts of liberty. This deft exploration of the forgotten moment in early modern history when intercultural exchange between the Muslim world and Christian West was common resituates English literary and intellectual history in the wider context of the global eighteenth century. The direct challenge it poses to the idea of an exclusionary Judeo-Christian Enlightenment serves as an important revision to post-9/11 narratives about a historical clash between Western democratic values and Islam.
Author: Christopher de Bellaigue
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060935367
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
The history of Iran in the late twentieth century is a chronicle of religious fervor and violent change -- from the Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah in favor of a rigid fundamentalist government to the bloody eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But what happened to the hostage-takers, the suicidal holy warriors, the martyrs, and the mullahs responsible for the now moribund revolution? Is modern Iran a society at peace with itself and the world, or truly a dangerous spoke in the "Axis of Evil"? Christopher de Bellaigue, a Western journalist married to an Iranian woman and a longtime resident of a prosperous suburb of Tehran, offers a stunning insider's view of a culture hitherto hidden from American eyes, and reveals the true hearts and minds of an extraordinary people.
Author: Christopher de Bellaigue
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408810891
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 413
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Book Description
An engaging and impassioned look at Turkey's identity crisis 'A brilliant literary thriller, an incursion into forbidden territory that is all the more gripping for being true' The Times 'Sifting through propaganda, partisan accounts and evasive oral histories, de Bellaigue delivers a comprehensive primer in Turkish political history' Guardian _______________________________ What is the meaning of love and death in a remote, forgotten, impossibly conflicted part of the world? In Rebel Land the acclaimed author and journalist Christopher de Bellaigue journeys to Turkey's inhospitable eastern provinces to find out. Immersing himself in the achingly beautiful district of Varto, a place left behind in Turkey's march to modernity, medieval in its attachment to race and religious sect, he explores the violent history of conflict between Turks, Kurds and Armenians, and the maelstrom, of emotion and memories, that defines its inhabitants even today. The result is a compellingly personal account of one man's search into the past, as de Bellaigue, mistrusted by all he meets, and particularly by the secret agents of the State, applies his investigative flair and fluent Turkish to unlock jealously-guarded taboos and hold humanity's excesses up to the light of a very modern sensibility.
Author: Shiraz Maher
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190694726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314
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Book Description
No topic has captured the public imagination of late quite so dramatically as the specter of global jihadism. While much has been said about the way jihadists behave, their ideology remains poorly understood. As the Levant has imploded and millenarian radicals claim to have revived a Caliphate based on the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, the need for a nuanced and accurate understanding of jihadist beliefs has never been greater. Shiraz Maher charts the intellectual underpinnings of salafi-jihadism from its origins in the mountains of the Hindu Kush to the jihadist insurgencies of the 1990s and the 9/11 wars. What emerges is the story of a pragmatic but resilient warrior doctrine that often struggles - as so many utopian ideologies do - to consolidate the idealism of theory with the reality of practice. His ground-breaking introduction to salafi-jihadism recalibrates our understanding of the ideas underpinning one of the most destructive political philosophies of our time by assessing classical works from Islamic antiquity alongside those of contemporary ideologues. Packed with refreshing and provocative insights, Maher explains how war and insecurity engendered one of the most significant socio-religious movements of the modern era.
Author: C. P. W. Gammell
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1805263854
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
The city of Herat in western Afghanistan long sat at the edge of empires and served as a hub for trade and a conduit for armies. Yet it has been much more than simply a staging post or plaything of political ambition. It has been an imperial capital, a city of extraordinary wealth, and has played host to a cultural renaissance to rival that of Florence. The Pearl of Khorasan tells the history of this storied oasis city, from the invasions of Chingiz Khan in 1221 to the present day. An epilogue assesses the challenges Herat faces in the wake of Afghanistan’s recent turmoil. Throughout Herat’s cycles of conquest and habitation, several patterns emerge: the primacy of geography; the city’s strong identification with the fertility of the banks of the Hari River; and its reputation as a place of theological excellence, tolerance and cultural refinement. From the luminescent genius of the Timurid century to the destruction and cultural vandalism associated with the Taliban’s rule of Afghanistan and the post-9/11 conflict, Herat has hosted empires and experienced the cupidity and lust for power of foreign agents. Using Persian, Pashto and British sources, the author paints a vivid picture of a city in which he has lived, presenting a personal vision of its tumultuous history.
Author: Ahmet T. Kuru
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419097
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 323
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Book Description
Analyzes Muslim countries' contemporary problems, particularly violence, authoritarianism, and underdevelopment, comparing their historical levels of development with Western Europe.
Author: Abdullah Saeed
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134225644
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Islamic Thought is a fresh and contemporary introduction to the philosophies and doctrines of Islam. Abdullah Saeed, a distinguished Muslim scholar, traces the development of religious knowledge in Islam, from the pre-modern to the modern period. The book focuses on Muslim thought, as well as the development, production and transmission of religious knowledge, and the trends, schools and movements that have contributed to the production of this knowledge. Key topics in Islamic culture are explored, including the development of the Islamic intellectual tradition, the two foundation texts, the Qur’an and Hadith, legal thought, theological thought, mystical thought, Islamic Art, philosophical thought, political thought, and renewal, reform and rethinking today. Through this rich and varied discussion, Saeed presents a fascinating depiction of how Islam was lived in the past and how its adherents practise it in the present. Islamic Thought is essential reading for students beginning the study of Islam but will also interest anyone seeking to learn more about one of the world’s great religions.
Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307420957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482
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Book Description
An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.
