Two Faiths, One Banner

Two Faiths, One Banner PDF Author: Ian Almond
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
When, in our turbulent day, we hear of a clash of civilizations, it s easy to imagine an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom stretching back through time. "Two Faiths, One Banner" shows how in Europe, Muslims and Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples. This bold book reveals how the idea of a Christian Europe long opposed by a Muslim non-Europe grossly misrepresents the facts of a rich, complex, and above all shared history.

Two Faiths, One Banner

Two Faiths, One Banner PDF Author: Ian Almond
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Get Book Here

Book Description
When, in our turbulent day, we hear of a clash of civilizations, it s easy to imagine an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom stretching back through time. "Two Faiths, One Banner" shows how in Europe, Muslims and Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples. This bold book reveals how the idea of a Christian Europe long opposed by a Muslim non-Europe grossly misrepresents the facts of a rich, complex, and above all shared history.

Under the Banner of Heaven

Under the Banner of Heaven PDF Author: Jon Krakauer
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400078997
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

World Literature Decentered

World Literature Decentered PDF Author: Ian Almond
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000407136
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
What would world literature look like, if we stopped referring to the “West”? Starting with the provocative premise that the “‘West’ is ten percent of the planet”, World Literature Decentered is the first book to decenter Eurocentric discourses of global literature and global history – not just by deconstructing or historicizing them, but by actively providing an alternative. Looking at a series of themes across three literatures (Mexico, Turkey and Bengal), the book examines hotels, melancholy, orientalism, femicide and the ghost story in a series of literary traditions outside the “West”. The non-West, the book argues, is no fringe group or token minority in need of attention – on the contrary, it constitutes the overwhelming majority of this world.

The Undivided Past

The Undivided Past PDF Author: David Cannadine
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307269078
Category : Human beings
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
From an acclaimed historian, an account of human solidarity throughout the ages, provocatively arguing against the received wisdom that history is best understood as a chronicle of groups in conflict by examining six categories of human difference.

Journey into Europe

Journey into Europe PDF Author: Akbar Ahmed
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 0815727593
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 595

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Book Description
An unprecedented, richly, detailed, and clear-eyed exploration of Islam in European history and civilization Tensions over Islam were escalating in Europe even before 9/11. Since then, repeated episodes of terrorism together with the refugee crisis have dramatically increased the divide between the majority population and Muslim communities, pushing the debate well beyond concerns over language and female dress. Meanwhile, the parallel rise of right-wing, nationalist political parties throughout the continent, often espousing anti-Muslim rhetoric, has shaken the foundation of the European Union to its very core. Many Europeans see Islam as an alien, even barbaric force that threatens to overwhelm them and their societies. Muslims, by contrast, struggle to find a place in Europe in the face of increasing intolerance. In tandem, anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination cause many on the continent to feel unwelcome in their European homes. Akbar Ahmed, an internationally renowned Islamic scholar, traveled across Europe over the course of four years with his team of researchers and interviewed Muslims and non-Muslims from all walks of life to investigate questions of Islam, immigration, and identity. They spoke with some of Europe’s most prominent figures, including presidents and prime ministers, archbishops, chief rabbis, grand muftis, heads of right-wing parties, and everyday Europeans from a variety of backgrounds. Their findings reveal a story of the place of Islam in European history and civilization that is more interwoven and complex than the reader might imagine, while exposing both the misunderstandings and the opportunities for Europe and its Muslim communities to improve their relationship. Along with an analysis of what has gone wrong and why, this urgent study, the fourth in a quartet examining relations between the West and the Muslim world, features recommendations for promoting integration and pluralism in the twenty-first century.

Ecclesiastical Knights

Ecclesiastical Knights PDF Author: Sam Zeno Conedera
Publisher: Fordham Univ Press
ISBN: 082326596X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
“Warrior monks”—the misnomer for the Iberian military orders that emerged on the frontiers of Europe in the twelfth century—have long fascinated general readers and professional historians alike. Proposing “ecclesiastical knights” as a more accurate name and conceptual model—warriors animated by ideals and spiritual currents endorsed by the church hierarchy—author Sam Zeno Conedera presents a groundbreaking study of how these orders brought the seemingly incongruous combination of monastic devotion and the practice of warfare into a single way of life. Providing a detailed study of the military-religious vocation as it was lived out in the Orders of Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara in Leon-Castile during the first century, Ecclesiastical Knights provides a valuable window into medieval Iberia. Filling a gap in the historiography of the medieval military orders, Conedera defines, categorizes, and explains these orders, from their foundations until their spiritual decline in the early fourteenth century, arguing that that the best way to understand their spirituality is as a particular kind of consecrated knighthood. Because these Iberian military orders were belligerents in the Reconquest, Ecclesiastical Knights informs important discussions about the relations between Western Christianity and Islam in the Middle Ages. Conedera examines how the military orders fit into the religious landscape of medieval Europe through the prism of knighthood, and how their unique conceptual character informed the orders and spiritual self-perception. The religious observances of all three orders were remarkably alike, except that the Cistercian-affiliated orders were more demanding and their members could not marry. Santiago, Calatrava, and Alcantara shared the same essential mission and purpose: the defense and expansion of Christendom understood as an act of charity, expressed primarily through fighting and secondarily through the care of the sick and the ransoming of captives. Their prayers were simple and their penances were aimed at knightly vices and the preservation of military discipline. Above all, the orders valued obedience. They never drank from the deep wellsprings of monasticism, nor were they ever meant to. Offering an entirely fresh perspective on two difficult and closely related problems concerning the military orders—namely, definition and spirituality—author Sam Zeno Conedera illuminates the religious life of the orders, previously eclipsed by their military activities.

Europe and the East

Europe and the East PDF Author: Mark Hewitson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000878783
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
This volume investigates competing ideas, images, and stereotypes of a European ‘East’, exploring its role in defining European and national conceptions of self and other since the eighteenth century. Through a set of original case studies, this collection explores the intersection between discourses about a more distant, exotic, or colonial ‘Orient’ with a more immediate ‘East’. The book considers this shifting, imaginary border from different points of view and demonstrates that the location, definition, and character of the ‘East’, often associated with socio-economic backwardness and other unfavourable attributes, depended on historical circumstances, political preferences, cultural assumptions, and geography. Spanning two centuries, this study analyses the ways that changing ideals and persistent clichéd attitudes have shaped the conversation about and interpretations of Eastern Europe. Europe and the East will be essential reading for anyone interested in images and ideas of Europe, European identity, and conceptions of the ‘East’ in intellectual and cultural history.

Literature, Migration and the 'War on Terror'

Literature, Migration and the 'War on Terror' PDF Author: Fiona Tolan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131798501X
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
This is a major new collection of essays on literary and cultural representations of migration and terrorism, the cultural impact of 9/11, and the subsequent ‘war on terror’. The collection commences with analyses of the relationship between migration and terrorism, which has been the focus of much mainstream political and media debate since the attacks on America in 2001 and the London bombings in 2005, not least because liberal democratic governments in Europe and North America have invoked such attacks to justify the regulation of migration and the criminalisation of ‘minority’ groups. Responding to the consequent erosion of the liberal democratic rights of the individual, leading scholars assess the various ways in which literary texts support and/or interrogate the conflation of narratives of transnational migration and perceived terrorist threats to national security. This crucial debate is furthered by contrasting analyses of the manner in which novelists from the UK, North Africa, the US and Palestine have represented 9/11, exploring the event’s contexts and ramifications. This path-breaking study complicates the simplistic narratives of revenge and wronged innocence commonly used to make sense of the attacks and to justify the US response. Each novel discussed seeks to interrogate and analyse a discourse typically dominated by consent, belligerence and paranoia. Together, the collected essays suggest the value of literature as an effective critical intervention in the very fraught political aftermath of the ‘war on terror’. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing.

Global Politics in the 21st Century

Global Politics in the 21st Century PDF Author: Robert J. Jackson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107469589
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 859

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Book Description
Objective, critical, optimistic, and with a global focus, this textbook combines international relations theory, history, up-to-date research, and current affairs to give students a comprehensive, unbiased understanding of international politics. It integrates theory and traditional approaches with globalization and research on such topics as terrorism, new economic superpowers, and global communications and social networking to offer unusual breadth and depth for an undergraduate course. The text is enhanced by box features and 'Close Up' sections with context and further information; 'Critical Case Studies' highlighting controversial and complex current affairs that show how the world works in practice; and questions to stimulate discussion, review key concepts, and encourage further study. Unlike any other textbook, Global Politics in the 21st Century demonstrates the significance and interconnectivity of globalization and new security challenges in the twenty-first century and illuminates the role of leadership in transnational crises.

Crimea in War and Transformation

Crimea in War and Transformation PDF Author: Mara Kozelsky
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190644729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
Crimea in War and Transformation is the first book to examine the terrible toll of violence on Crimean civilians and landscapes from mobilization through reconstruction. When war landed on Crimea's coast in September 1854, multiple armies instantly doubled the peninsula's population. Engineering brigades mowed down forests to build barracks. Ravenous men fell upon orchards like locusts and slaughtered Crimean livestock. Within a month, war had plunged the peninsula into a subsistence crisis. Soldiers and civilians starved as they waited for food to travel from the mainland by oxcart at a rate of ½ mile per hour. Every army conscripted Tatars as laborers, and fired upon civilian homes. Several cities and villages-Sevastopol, Kerch, Balaklava, Genichesk among them-burned to the ground. At the height of violence, hysterical officers accused Tatars of betrayal and deported large segments of the local population. Peace did not bring relief to Crimea's homeless and hungry. Removal of dead bodies and human waste took months. Epidemics swept away young children and the elderly. Russian officials estimated the devastation wrought by Crimean War exceeded that of Napoleon's invasion. Recovery packages failed human need, and by 1859, the trickle of Tatar out-migration that had begun during the war turned into a flood. Nearly 200,000 Tatars left Crimea by 1864, adding a demographic crisis to the tally of war's destruction. Drawing from a wide body of published and unpublished material, including untapped archives, testimonies, and secret police files from Russia, Ukraine and Crimea, Mara Kozelsky details in readable and vivid prose the toll of war on the Crimean people, and the Russian Empire as a whole, from mobilization through failed efforts at reconstruction.