A Mosque in Munich

A Mosque in Munich PDF Author: Ian Johnson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547488688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today

A Mosque in Munich

A Mosque in Munich PDF Author: Ian Johnson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547488688
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 335

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today

Tzu Chi

Tzu Chi PDF Author: Mark O'Neill
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470825677
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
This book captures well the history and spirit of Tzu Chi and its volunteers. It explains the passion and devotion that have made it the largest non-governmental organization in the Chinese-speaking world. Stan Shih Group Chairman Soft Capital Mark O'Neill's dispatches from Greater China over the span of many years have earned him a distinguished reputation as a gifted, insightful writer, versatile on a wide range of topics. A fluent Chinese speaker, he possesses that rare combination for a writer—of a keen nose for news as well as a heart for social responsibility. In Tzu Chi, he has chronicled the extraordinary story of a Chinese Buddhist nun whose selfless vision has built a global organization committed to doing good. O'Neill's book is the definitive story of her life and—more importantly—the organization she has built from humble roots in Taiwan. Thomas D. Gorman Chairman and Editor-in-Chief FORTUNE China Tzu Chi is a brilliant introduction to one of the most important—but to Westerners probably least-known—international charities and religious movements in the world. Tzu Chi is part of a renaissance of belief in the Chinese world and Mark O'Neill has captured it beautifully. Ian Johnson Pulitzer Prize-winner Author of Wild Grass and A Mosque in Munich Tzu Chi has inspired the generosity of millions of Asians and mobilized them for service to the poor and sick. But its good deeds are not sufficiently known in the West. Mark O'Neill's book will change that. He has written a comprehensive, sympathetic, and eminently readable chronicle of this inspiring movement. Richard Madsen Distinguished Profess or of Sociology University of California, San Diego Mark O'Neill has produced a most impressive and timely book to enlighten the many people who are not yet familiar with Tzu Chi, a remarkable organization of universal compassion. While many Buddhist societies focus on meditation and personal enlightenment, Tzu Chi concentrates on community services and global outreach with the scale, vision and management skills of a large business corporation. In a world full of injustice, poverty and disasters, Tzu Chi has been a guiding light toward peace, harmony and happiness. O'Neill's book eloquently describes the story of the many individuals behind this remarkable movement. Professor Dominic Man-Kit Lam Chairman Word Eye Organization This story of the largest worldwide organization you've never heard of will knock your socks off. First with aid to Katrina victims, first outside organization to aid the tsunami-devastated people of Indonesia, first NGO with aid after the Sichuan earthquakes in China, it's called Tzu Chi. This organization was founded by a penniless nun in an obscure town in Taiwan. Mark O'Neill has given us a page-turner in his account of how she transformed pennies in a bamboo tube into three hospitals, an international bone marrow bank, and a quick-response global rescue organization that moves faster than you can imagine. If you are overdosing on bad news, this book is a must-read. Don Gibbs Founding Chair University of California–Davis, Department of Asian Languages

The Souls of China

The Souls of China PDF Author: Ian Johnson
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1101870052
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
From the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist: a revelatory portrait of religion in China today, its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China's future. Following a century of violent antireligious campaigns, China is now awash with new temples, churches, and mosques as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese, and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is still searching for new guideposts. Ian Johnson lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world s newest superpower. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout).

Wild Grass

Wild Grass PDF Author: Ian Johnson
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307430251
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Ian Johnson tells the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens moved to extraordinary acts of courage: a peasant legal clerk who filed a class-action suit on behalf of overtaxed farmers, a young architect who defended the rights of dispossessed homeowners, and a bereaved woman who tried to find out why her elderly mother had been beaten to death in police custody. Representing the first cracks in the otherwise seamless façade of Communist Party control, these small acts of resistance demonstrate the unconquerable power of the human conscience and prophesy an increasingly open political future for China.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China

The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China PDF Author: Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191506710
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This lavishly illustrated volume explores the history of China during a period of dramatic shifts and surprising transformations, from the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) through to the present day. The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern China promises to be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising superpower on the verge of what promises to be the 'Chinese century', introducing readers to important but often overlooked events in China's past, such as the bloody Taiping Civil War (1850-1864), which had a death toll far higher than the roughly contemporaneous American Civil War. It also helps readers see more familiar landmarks in Chinese history in new ways, such as the Opium War (1839-1842), the Boxer Uprising of 1900, the rise to power of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, and the Tiananmen protests and Beijing Massacre of 1989. This is one of the first major efforts -- and in many ways the most ambitious to date -- to come to terms with the broad sweep of modern Chinese history, taking readers from the origins of modern China right up through the dramatic events of the last few years (the Beijing Games, the financial crisis, and China's rise to global economic pre-eminence) which have so fundamentally altered Western views of China and China's place in the world.

America's Great Game

America's Great Game PDF Author: Hugh Wilford
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 046501965X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
From the 9/11 attacks to waterboarding to drone strikes, relations between the United States and the Middle East seem caught in a downward spiral. And all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency has made the situation worse. But this crisis was not a historical inevitability—far from it. Indeed, the earliest generation of CIA operatives was actually the region’s staunchest western ally. In America’s Great Game, celebrated intelligence historian Hugh Wilford reveals the surprising history of the CIA’s pro-Arab operations in the 1940s and 50s by tracing the work of the agency’s three most influential—and colorful—officers in the Middle East. Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt was the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the first head of CIA covert action in the region; his cousin, Archie Roosevelt, was a Middle East scholar and chief of the Beirut station. The two Roosevelts joined combined forces with Miles Copeland, a maverick covert operations specialist who had joined the American intelligence establishment during World War II. With their deep knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, the three men were heirs to an American missionary tradition that engaged Arabs and Muslims with respect and empathy. Yet they were also fascinated by imperial intrigue, and were eager to play a modern rematch of the “Great Game,” the nineteenth-century struggle between Britain and Russia for control over central Asia. Despite their good intentions, these “Arabists” propped up authoritarian regimes, attempted secretly to sway public opinion in America against support for the new state of Israel, and staged coups that irrevocably destabilized the nations with which they empathized. Their efforts, and ultimate failure, would shape the course of U.S.–Middle Eastern relations for decades to come. Based on a vast array of declassified government records, private papers, and personal interviews, America’s Great Game tells the riveting story of the merry band of CIA officers whose spy games forever changed U.S. foreign policy.

Islamic Architecture in Cairo

Islamic Architecture in Cairo PDF Author: Doris Behrens-Abouseif
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004096264
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
For architecture or history students or interested travellers, presents descriptions, histories, photographs, plans, and drawings of detail for buildings erected in the Egyptian capital from the earliest Islamic through the Ottoman periods. References to the Survey Map of the Islamic Monuments of Cairo aid readers in finding the buildings. A reprint of the 1989 publication. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Muhammad in Europe

Muhammad in Europe PDF Author: Minou Reeves
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814775640
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
"Reveals rivalry and confrontation, but also fascination for the exotic as she points out clichTs and distortions that have shaped western views of Islam and its founder."--Book News, Inc.Generations of Western writers --from the Crusades to the present.

Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia

Islam, Literature and Society in Mongol Anatolia PDF Author: A. C. S. Peacock
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108499368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
A new understanding of the transformation of Anatolia to a Muslim society in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries based on previously unpublished sources.

Philosophy in the Islamic World

Philosophy in the Islamic World PDF Author: Ulrich Rudolph
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004492542
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 864

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Book Description
A comprehensive reference work covering all figures of the earliest period of philosophy in the Islamic world. Both major and minor thinkers are covered, with details of biography and doctrine as well as detailed lists and summaries of each author’s works.