From Rulership to Leadership in the Arab World


Book Description

This brief memoir recounts the journey of a man and lessons he accumulated on leadership by observing and questioning the status quo, and asking the penultimate question of why, from his childhood home in the small island of Bahrain, to his formative years as a student and professional in England, to his adulthood as a business leader, philanthropist, influencer and family man. The book’s key observation is that there is an excess of rulership while leadership is almost always in deficit. The book questions how we can move from one to the other, which examples can we rely on in every sphere of our lives and how transformative more leadership would be.




Middle East Peace Prospects


Book Description




The New Cambridge History of Islam: Volume 4, Islamic Cultures and Societies to the End of the Eighteenth Century


Book Description

Robert Irwin's authoritative introduction to the fourth volume of The New Cambridge History of Islam offers a panoramic vision of Islamic culture from its origins to around 1800. The introductory chapter, which highlights key developments and introduces some of Islam's most famous protagonists, paves the way for an extraordinarily varied collection of essays. The themes treated include religion and law, conversion, Islam's relationship with the natural world, governance and politics, caliphs and kings, philosophy, science, medicine, language, art, architecture, literature, music and even cookery. What emerges from this rich collection, written by an international team of experts, is the diversity and dynamism of the societies which created this flourishing civilization. Volume four of The New Cambridge History of Islam serves as a thematic companion to the three preceding, politically oriented volumes, and in coverage extends across the pre-modern Islamic world.







The Middle East and North Africa


Book Description

This volume collects reflections on secularity from the Middle East and North Africa. To highlight proximate connections as well as resonances with debates elsewhere, it includes premodern contributions from the region as well as Jewish thought from Europe that have provided significant references for modern appropriations of secularity. The texts, for the most part previously untranslated, reflect commonalities within the region as well as its great diversity. Thus, while Islam is a common reference for most of our authors, the selections point to its varied invocations in the interest of differing political ends. Others write from a Christian or Jewish perspective, or subscribe to non-religious intellectual traditions. They range from premodern Muslim jurisprudents and philosophers to Ottoman statesmen, Arab socialist and nationalist intellectuals of the interwar period, Iranian revolutionaries, Israeli novelists, and finally, post-secular intellectuals, lay and religious, predominantly from the former Islamic heartland: modern Arab states and Iran. Several introductions weave together the swathe of topics raised in the discussions, beginning with a schematic presentation of the concerns that undergird the volume's organization.




The Middle East and North Africa


Book Description




Socio-Political Order and Security in the Arab World


Book Description

This book examines the connection between socio-politics and security in the Arab World. In an effort to understand the social and political developments that have been on-going in the Arab World since the 1990s, culminating in the Arab Spring, Krieg moves beyond liberal deterministic assumptions - most notably that the promotion of liberal values and democracy are the panacea for the structural problems of the region. Instead, this text advances the case that grievances related to individual security needs are at the heart of regional insecurity and instability. Looking towards the future, the author asserts that regimes can only be resilient if they are able to provide for individual security inclusively. When regimes fail to cater for public security, they might be replaced by alternative non-state security providers.




Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Sciences


Book Description

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Social Sciences is a collection of essays on educational issues confronting educators and researchers from three continents (Africa, Asia, and Europe). The essays are grouped into three sections. The first, “Human Resources Management”, discusses issues such as consumer innovativeness, employee expectations, enterprise competitiveness, the global economy, human resources, internet advertising, job performance, the labour market, privatisation policies, profitability, transformational leadership, and work behaviour. The second part, “International Relations”, encompasses topics such as administrative reforms, elections, EU enlargement, mass media, migration, nationalism, and totalitarian thought, while the third, “Sociology”, looks at divorce, everyday life practices, the family structure, feminism, gender issues, the legalisation of prostitution, and women’s rights. The book will appeal to educators, researchers, and students involved in social sciences.







The Age of Wars of Religion, 1000-1650


Book Description

The Age of Wars of Religion saw navies, armies, armed merchant companies, and mercenaries battle one another and local potentates in many lands and along numerous shores. Wars of religion were fought in and between all the major religions and civilizations, from Europe to China, in Africa, and in the isolated Americas, mixing motives of knightly idealism, mercenary greed, and competing claims of divine sanction. This unparalleled work traces the extraordinary upheavals of the period in military technology, competing theologies, and civilizational change that were brought about by, or impinged upon, military conflict. It offers nearly 2,000 discrete but cross-referenced entries on cultural, military, religious and political history, as well as geography, biography, and military literature. Close to 2,000 entries offer detailed information on the major events, places, battles, figures, technologies, and ideas one must know to begin to make sense of the past six centuries of global conflicts. Though especially ferocious and intense, the Wars of Reformation and Counter-Reformation fought by Europeans from the 15th through 17th centuries were hardly unique in world or military history. The Byzantine Empire, bastion of Christian Orthodoxy, staggered to the tortuous end of its long conflict with the Ottoman Empire, the Great Power of the Sunni Muslim world. The Ottomans, in turn, were still engaged in an equally ancient intra-Muslim war, between Sunnis and Shi'ites. In India, the Hindu Rajputs and Marathas, and also the Sikhs, organized armies around religious communities to throw off the Muslim Yoke (Mughul Empire), and also fought against Christian invaders from Europe. As for the isolated Americas, ideas of divine kingship sustained by powerful priesthoods and religious warfare also prevailed, as exemplified by the Inca and Aztec empires.




Recent Books