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No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular Western imagination as an extreme faith that promotes authoritarian government, female oppression, civil war, and terrorism. The author's short history offers a vital corrective to this narrow view. The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon...

It is taken for granted, even among many Washington policymakers, that Islam is a fundamentally peaceful religion and that Islamic jihad terrorism is something relatively new, a product of the economic and political ferment of the twentieth century. But in The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, Islamic scholar Robert Spencer proves definitively that Islamic terror is as old as Islam itself, as old as Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, who said...

"America's fight against radical Islam could soon be over, and a top secret plan from the Cold War is the key to our victory. Dr. Sebastian Gorka, counterinsurgency expert and Distinguished Chair of Military Theory at Marine Corps University, explains how America can win the war on terror quickly and decisively by delegitimizing the enemy in the eyes of its followers-a strategy that won the Cold War and would end the era of Jihad forever"--

In the year 721, the Muslim Empire was vast. Across the empire Jews and Christians were minorities motivated by a desire to obtain the most favorable status. Their quest for an elevated status within the empire did not hinder cultural exchanges as can be determined with the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, nor prevent the occurrence in the 11th Century of the massacre of Jews in Granada and the persecution and forced conversion of Jews & Christians under...

In 1945, the world discovers the horror of the Nazi camps. In 1948, the birth of Israel aroused anger and bitterness among Arabs and Muslims, but triggered joy and exultation throughout the Jewish world. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled with the hope of a future return. Within just a few decades, the vast majority of Jews living in the Muslim world would leave Iraq, Egypt, Iran, Syria, Morocco and Tunisia.

Jews and Muslims are seen as the archetype of enemies in endless conflict, a perception made of misunderstandings and omissions. Yet history shows us that the conflict and tension is quite recent, a mere 150 years. By traveling back to the time of Muhammad and then forward to present day, the goal of this balanced and well-researched series is to lay out the facts and deconstruct historical misbeliefs.

A history of the Islamic world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries challenges current understandings about the Middle East and Islam, focusing on the stories of Istanbul, Cairo, and Tehran to reveal the intellectual, cultural, and political sophistication of their populations.

A boy observes the Muslim holy month of Ramadan with his family.

The second volume delves deeper into a variety of subjects that will help those who are embarking on the exploration of Islam; wisdom in the message of the Qur'an; ethics and spirituality, the virtues of service in islam, the anticipation of Mahdi and Messiah, etc. Although the questions included in this volume have been selected on the assumption that the reader is already acquanited with the contents of the first volume, an independent reading is...

To understand Islam, one must understand the people who practice this faith. Consequently, this book is a detailed ethnographic study of two contemporary Sufi communities. It explores the perplexing range of theological and ritual variation, arguing for a direct correlation between Sufi multiformity and the agency of the spiritual leader, the Shaikh. He is principally responsible for shaping the community under his leadership. This work gives fascinating...