Epistles of the Brethren of Purity. The Ikhwan Al-Safa' and Their Rasa'il


Book Description

This is the introductory volume for a new critical edition of The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, an encyclopedic philosophical and scientific work of the 10th century produced by an esoteric fraternity based in Baghdad and Basra. Specially written essays explore its authorship and dating, its intellectual content and influence.




Ikhwan Al-Safa'


Book Description

"The Ikhwan al-Safa' or Brethren of Purity were a highly secretive group of tenth-century Shi'ite thinkers, their identities remaining unclear even today. Renowned for creating the legendary Rasa'il Ikhwan al-Safa', an encyclopedia of philosophical sciences, they proposed a coherent intellectual system that sought to reconcile human reasoning with prophetic revelation. With a spirit of tolerance uncommon to the era and an exceptional eclecticism of sources, their encyclopedia was popular and yet highly contentious, often characterized as heretical by Islamic theologians and leaders throughout history." "This fascinating survey provides a clear, objective and innovative introduction to the Brethren of Purity and their encyclopedic project, showing its critical place in the history of Arabic science, philosophy, and literature. Containing an illuminating guide to further reading and full of insight on the interpretation of the great work, this study will appeal to readers of all backgrounds."--BOOK JACKET.




Brotherhood of Purity


Book Description

The Brotherhood of Purity is the first thriller in a series set on the world stage of global intrigue. The compelling adventure, and its heart-pounding climax, follows the transformative journey of an American investigative journalist as he races against the clock to stop the most relentless terror machine the world has ever produced. He has only days to unravel the Brotherhood of Purity's secrets and crack the code that could save thousands of lives and, possibly, change his own fate and that of the man he is desperate to stop. As you enter the story, you embark on a journey into the mind of a terrorist, discover whether mankind can build a world at peace and how the mystical, through an extravagant gesture of love, sometimes intervenes in our human odyssey.




Quaker Brotherhood


Book Description

The Religious Society of Friends and its service organization, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) have long been known for their peace and justice activism. The abolitionist work of Friends during the antebellum era has been well documented, and their contemporary anti-war and anti-racism work is familiar to activists around the world. Quaker Brotherhood is the first extensive study of the AFSC's interracial activism in the first half of the twentieth century, filling a major gap in scholarship on the Quakers' race relations work from the AFSC's founding in 1917 to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 1950s. Allan W. Austin tracks the evolution of key AFSC projects such as the Interracial Section and the American Interracial Peace Committee, which demonstrate the tentativeness of the Friends' activism in the 1920s, as well as efforts in the 1930s to make scholarly ideas and activist work more theologically relevant for Friends. Documenting the AFSC's efforts to help European and Japanese American refugees during World War II, Austin shows that by 1950, Quakers in the AFSC had honed a distinctly Friendly approach to interracial relations that combined scholarly understandings of race with their religious views. In tracing the transformation of one of the most influential social activist groups in the United States over the first half of the twentieth century, Quaker Brotherhood presents Friends in a thoughtful, thorough, and even-handed manner. Austin portrays the history of the AFSC and race--highlighting the organization's boldness in some aspects and its timidity in others--as an ongoing struggle that provides a foundation for understanding how shared agency might function in an imperfect and often racist world. Highlighting the complicated and sometimes controversial connections between Quakers and race during this era, Austin uncovers important aspects of the history of Friends, pacifism, feminism, American religion, immigration, ethnicity, and the early roots of multiculturalism.




The Fraternity of the Stone


Book Description

Drew MacLane is a star agent in Scalpel, an organization named for its purpose: precise surgical removal. Assassination. Then MacLane decides to stop killing. He withdraws and retreats to a monastery, where for six years he lives the life of a hermit. But then someone tracks him down, leaving a trail of bodies. Someone who knows all about him - and will stop at nothing to destroy him. Less From acclaimed Thriller Master, David Morrell, comes a classic espionage tale that changed the genre, paving the way for the historical/religious thrillers of Dan Brown, Steve Berry, and James Rollins. In a remote monastery in Vermont, a mysterious man has spent six years alone in a cell, doing penance for unnamed sins that he committed for his government. His only human contact is the hand that delivers his spartan meals through a slot in his door. He allows himself only one small pleasure, the companionship of a mouse. When the mouse dies, nibbling bread, a terrible suspicion makes him finally leave his sanctuary and confront the ruthless enemies that he prayed he had left behind. Beginning with the Crusades and the origin of the word “assassin,” THE FRATERNITY OF THE STONE was the first novel to deal with Opus Dei, the Vatican’s civilian intelligence community. If you like to read about ancient conspiracies that threaten the modern world, this is where the genre began.




Inside the Brotherhood


Book Description

This is the first in-depth study of the relationship between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and its own members. Drawing on years of participant observation, extensive interviews, previously inaccessible organizational documents, and dozens of memoirs and writings, the book provides an intimate portrayal of the recruitment and socialization of Brothers, the evolution of their intricate social networks, and the construction of the peculiar ideology that shapes their everyday practices. Drawing on his original research, Kandil reinterprets the Brotherhood’s slow rise and rapid downfall from power in Egypt, and compares it to the Islamist subsidiaries it created and the varieties it inspired around the world. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the politics of the Middle East and to anyone who wants to understand the dramatic events unfolding in Egypt and elsewhere in the wake of the Arab uprisings.




Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements


Book Description

The Handbook of Islamic Sects and Movements offers a multinational study of Islam, its variants, influences, and neighbouring movements, from a multidisciplinary range of scholars. These chapters highlight the diversity of Islam, especially in its contemporary manifestations, as a religion of many communities, theologies, and ideologies. Over five sections—on Sunni, Shia, Sufi, fundamentalist, and fringe Islamic movements—the authors provide historical overviews, analyses, and in-depth studies of large and small Islamic and related groups from all around the world. The contents of this volume will be of interest to both newcomers to the study of Islam and established scholars of religion who wish to engage with the dynamic label of Islam and the many impactful movements of the Islamic world.




Conference of the Books


Book Description

Abou El Fadl (Islamic law, UCLA School of Law) wrote the 62 brief essays here over the course of five years. Through a combination of musings and critical reflections on classical Muslim authors, he both traces Muslim intellectual history and also confronts questions of ethics, faith, law, politics, culture, and modern identity. He ranges over many facets of Islam in the contemporary world, exploring censorship, political oppression, terrorism, the veil and the treatment of women, marriage, parental rights, the dynamics between law and morality, the character of the prophet Muhammad, and other topics. About half the essays first appeared in The minaret magazine. c. Book News Inc.




Islamism and Islam


Book Description

A senior scholar of Islamic politics, providing a corrective to a dangerous gap in understanding, explores the true nature of contemporary Islamism and the essential ways in which it differs from the religious faith of Islam.




Temptations of Power


Book Description

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama famously announced the "end of history." The Berlin Wall had fallen; liberal democracy had won out. But what of illiberal democracy--the idea that popular majorities, working through the democratic process, might reject gender equality, religious freedoms, and other norms that Western democracies take for granted? Nowhere have such considerations become more relevant than in the Middle East, where the uprisings of 2011 swept the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups to power. In Temptations of Power, Shadi Hamid draws on hundreds of interviews with leaders and activists from across the region to advance a new understanding of how Islamist movements change over time. He puts forward the bold thesis that repression "forced" Islamists to moderate their politics, work in coalitions, de-emphasize Islamic law, and set aside the dream of an Islamic state. Meanwhile, democratic openings in the 1980s--and again during the Arab Spring--pushed Islamists back toward their original conservatism. With the uprisings of 2011, Islamists found themselves in an enviable position, but one for which they were unprepared. Groups like the Brotherhood combine the features of both political parties and religious movements, leading to an inherent tension they have struggled to resolve. However pragmatic they may be, their ultimate goal remains the Islamization of society. When the electorate they represent is conservative as well, they can push their own form of illiberal democracy while insisting they are carrying out the popular will. This can lead to overreach and significant backlash. Yet, while the Egyptian coup and the subsequent crackdown were a devastating blow for the Islamist "project," obituaries of political Islam are premature. As long as the battle over the role of religion in public life continues, Islamist parties in countries as diverse as Egypt, Tunisia, and Jordan will remain an important force whether in the ranks of opposition or the halls of power. But what are the key factors driving their evolution? A timely and provocative reassessment, Hamid's account serves as an essential compass for those trying to understand where the region's varied Islamist groups have come from and where they might be headed.