Is he dead? Medina, Saudi Arabia. A young man, Malek, has been brutally attacked for being of the 'wrong' race. Malek's lover, Leen, waits by his bedside and reflects on their relationship and her life as an unmarried, childless woman. All around her are voices of judgment and concern; in the twenty-first century it is still unforgivable, and dangerous, for a Saudi woman to enter into a relationship with a black man. In the distance US planes hover over Iraq, primed to embark on yet another senseless conflict. Malek's attacker was Leen's brother. Flinging wide a window onto the second holiest Islamic city – a city in which people observe daily prayers and preach equality and justice – Days of Ignorance is a novel about honour, hypocrisy, war and fear. And, glimmering beyond, beneath and behind it all, love.
This is the official workbook of the 1441 (2019) Winter Seminar at the Germantown Masjid in Philadelphia. This workbook can now be used to study the recorded lessons from that monumental seminar. The recordings are freely available on the Germantown Masjid''s SoundCloud page: https://soundcloud.com/germantown-masjid/sets/winter-seminar-2019 THE BOOK Masaa''il al-Jaahiliyyah is a unique and powerfully insightful work warning against the worst traits of the days of ignorance, authored by one of the most knowledgeable and authoritative scholars of the past few centuries, Shaykh al-Islam Muhammad ibn ''Abdil-Wahhaab at-Tameemee (may Allah have Mercy on him). Shaykh Saalih ibn ''Abdil-''Azeez Aal ash-Shaykh (may Allah preserve him) said, "These are tremendous points which, no doubt, we are in need of in every time, and especially in this time. Reviewing them and reminding the people about them is a necessity." THE WORKBOOK In this workbook, you will find the original Arabic text of the book, Masaa''il al-Jaahiliyyah, paired with its translation, with ample space to take notes for each point. Appendices in the back provide a chain of transmission for the text, the complete, uninterrupted text of the English translation, and the fully voweled Arabic text of the book as well. THE NEW CHALLENGE You will also find a total of 12 quizzes to challenge your understanding and memorization of this important text. Five daily quizzes with multiple choice questions have been prepared to check your understanding of the lessons of each of the five days of the seminar. A 25-question mastery test awaits you once you have studied the entire book and reviewed the five quizzes. For more advanced students who choose to memorize the Arabic text along with its study, five more daily quizzes and another comprehensive test are also included. The following are some of the topics as cited in the Table of Contents: ASPECT 1: CALLING UPON SAINTS FOR THEIR INTERCESSION ASPECT 2: SPLITTING INTO RELIGIOUS FACTIONS ASPECT 3: DISREGARDING AND OPPOSING THE AUTHORITIES ASPECT 4: TAQLEED: A SHARED PRINCIPLE OF ALL DISBELIEVERS ASPECT 5: THE MAJORITY VOTE: BEING DELUDED BY NUMBERS ASPECT 6: USING THE WAYS OF THE ANCESTORS AS PROOFS ASPECT 7: USING THE RICH AND POWERFUL AS PROOFS ASPECT 8: REJECTING THE TRUTH BECAUSE THE WEAK FOLLOW IT ASPECT 9: TAKING EVIL SCHOLARS AS ROLE MODELS ASPECT 10: CLAIMS ABOUT THE FOLLOWERS OF TRUTH ASPECT 11: USING FALSE ANALOGIES AS PROOFS ASPECT 12: REJECTING SOUND ANALOGIES ASPECT 13: FANATICISM TOWARDS THE SCHOLARS AND RIGHTEOUS ASPECT 14: MISGUIDED NEGATIONS AND AFFIRMATIONS ASPECT 15: PRETENDING NOT TO UNDERSTAND THE TRUTH ASPECT 16: TRADING IN REVELATION FOR BOOKS OF MAGIC ASPECT 17: ATTRIBUTING THEIR OWN FALSEHOOD TO THE PROPHETS ASPECT 18: FALSE AND CONTRADICTORY CLAIMS ASPECT 19: REVILING THE RIGHTEOUS BECAUSE OF THEIR FOLLOWERS ASPECT 20: CONSIDERING MAGIC TRICKS A SIGN OF PIETY ASPECTS 21-22: WHISTLING, CLAPPING, AND FRIVOLITY AS WORSHIP ASPECT 23: BEING DELUDED BY THEIR WORLDLY PROSPERITY ASPECT 24: REJECTING TRUTH BECAUSE THE WEAK EMBRACED IT FIRST ASPECT 25: TAKING THE PREVIOUS ASPECT A STEP FURTHER ASPECT 26: CHANGING THE BOOK OF ALLAH INTENTIONALLY ASPECT 27: INVENTING FALSE SCRIPTURE AND ATTRIBUTING IT TO ALLAH ASPECT 28: NOT ACCEPTING THE TRUTH FROM OUTSIDE THEIR GROUP ASPECT 29: NOT EVEN TRULY PRACTICING THEIR OWN RELIGION ASPECT 30: EACH GROUP REJOICING WITH WHAT THEY HAVE ASPECT 31: HYPOCRITICAL HATRED FOR WHAT THEY ASCRIBE TO ASPECT 32: DESPISING PEOPLE, REJECTING THE TRUTH THEY HAVE ASPECT 33: REJECTING PARTS OF THEIR OWN RELIGION ASPECT 34: EVERY SECT CLAIMED IT WAS THE SAVED ONE... There are a total of 128 aspects to study in the book!
Olivier Roy, world-renowned authority on Islam and politics, finds in the modern disconnection between faith communities and socio-cultural identities a fertile space for fundamentalism to grow. Instead of freeing the world from religion, secularization has encouraged a kind of holy ignorance to take root, an anti-intellectualism that promises immediate, emotional access to the sacred and positions itself in direct opposition to contemporary pagan culture. The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to fundamentalist faiths, such as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism. These religions either reconnect adherents to their culture through casual referents, like halal fast food, or maintain their momentum through purification rituals, such as speaking in tongues, a practice that allows believers to utter a language that is entirely their own. Instead of a return to traditional religious worship, we are now witnessing the individualisation of faith and the disassociation of faith communities from ethnic and national identities. Roy explores the options now available to powers that hope to integrate or control these groups; and whether marginalisation or homogenisation will further divide believers from their culture.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Misconceptions, misunderstandings, and flawed facts finally get the heave-ho in this humorous, downright humiliating book of reeducation based on the phenomenal British bestseller. Challenging what most of us assume to be verifiable truths in areas like history, literature, science, nature, and more,The Book of General Ignorance is a witty “gotcha” compendium of how little we actually know about anything. It’ll have you scratching your head wondering why we even bother to go to school. Think Magellan was the first man to circumnavigate the globe, baseball was invented in America, Henry VIII had six wives, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again. You’ll be surprised at how much you don’t know! Check out The Book of General Ignorance for more fun entries and complete answers to the following: How long can a chicken live without its head? About two years. What do chameleons do? They don’t change color to match the background. Never have; never will. Complete myth. Utter fabrication. Total Lie. They change color as a result of different emotional states. How many legs does a centipede have? Not a hundred. How many toes has a two-toed sloth? It’s either six or eight. Who was the first American president? Peyton Randolph. What were George Washington’s false teeth made from? Mostly hippopotamus. What was James Bond’s favorite drink? Not the vodka martini.
The continuing war in Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, the political sniping engendered by the Supreme Court nominations, Terry Schiavo - contemporary American society is characterized by divisive anger, profound loss, and danger. Wendell Berry, one of the country's foremost cultural critics, addresses the menace, responding with hope and intelligence in a series of essays that tackle the major questions of the day. Whose freedom are we considering when we speak of the ''free market'' or ''free enterprise?'' What is really involved in our National Security? What is the price of ownership without affection? Berry answers in prose that shuns abstraction for clarity, coherence, and passion, giving us essays that may be the finest of his long career.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER *WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER * Andy Borowitz, “one of the funniest people in America” (CBS Sunday Morning), brilliantly “chronicles our embrace of anti-intellectualism” (Walter Isaacson) in American politics, from Ronald Reagan to Dan Quayle, from George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, to its apotheosis in Donald J. Trump. Andy Borowitz has been called a “Swiftian satirist” (The Wall Street Journal) and “one of the country’s finest satirists” (The New York Times). Millions of fans and New Yorker readers enjoy his satirical news column “The Borowitz Report.” Now, in Profiles in Ignorance, he delivers “a wittily alarming polemic that tracks the evolution of American politics from grounds for gravitas to festival of idiocy” (The New York Times). Borowitz argues that over the past fifty years, American politicians have grown increasingly allergic to knowledge, and mass media have encouraged the election of ignoramuses by elevating candidates who are better at performing than thinking. Starting with Ronald Reagan’s first campaign for governor of California in 1966 and culminating with the election of Donald J. Trump to the White House, Borowitz shows how, during the age of twenty-four-hour news and social media, the US has elected politicians to positions of great power whose lack of the most basic information is terrifying. In addition to Reagan, Quayle, Bush, Palin, and Trump, Borowitz covers a host of congresspersons, senators, and governors who have helped lower the bar over the past five decades. Profiles in Ignorance aims to make us both laugh and cry: laugh at the idiotic antics of these public figures, and cry at the cataclysms these icons of ignorance have caused. But most importantly, the book delivers a call to action and a cause for optimism: History doesn’t move in a straight line, and we can change course if we act now.
Join certified Ig-master Vaguen on the road to bliss. You might think that ignorance comes naturally, but on the contrary, the world conspires to cram our heads full of useless and dangerous know-ledge every day. Fall off this know-ledge into the safe and comforting world of oblivio(n/ousness) by discovering The Power of Ignorance. In his seminars, Vaguen has helped successful people, wealthy people, good-looking people, and people just like you to attain the heights/depths of ignorance. For the first time, his secrets are revealed between the covers of a book. Purchase this reasonably-priced volume and join the ranks of those who understand that a lack of understanding is unimportant. Based on original material and characters by Jeff Sumerel and Sam Reynolds.
Throughout history, humans have always indulged in certain irrationalities and held some fairly wrong-headed beliefs. But in his newest book, philosopher Lee McIntyre shows how we've now reached a watershed moment for ignorance in the modern era, due to the volume of misinformation, the speed with which it can be digitally disseminated, and the savvy exploitation of our cognitive weaknesses by those who wish to advance their ideological agendas. In Respecting Truth: Willful Ignorance in the Internet Age, McIntyre issues a call to fight back against this slide into the witless abyss. In the tradition of Galileo, the author champions the importance of using tested scientific methods for arriving at true beliefs, and shows how our future survival is dependent on a more widespread, reasonable world.
“Kundera once more delivers a seductive, intelligent entertainment … [with] elegance and grace.” — Washington Post Book World “Nothing short of masterful.” — Newsweek A brilliant novel set in contemporary Prague, by one of the most distinguished writers of our time. A man and a woman meet by chance while returning to their homeland, which they had abandoned 20 years earlier when they chose to become exiles. Will they manage to pick up the thread of their strange love story, interrupted almost as soon as it began and then lost in the tides of history? The truth is that after such a long absence “their memories no longer match.” We always believe that our memories coincide with those of the person we loved, that we experienced the same thing. But this is just an illusion. Only those who return after 20 years, like Ulysses returning to his native Ithaca, can be dazzled and astounded by observing the goddess of ignorance first-hand. Kundera is the only author today who can take dizzying concepts such as absence, memory, forgetting, and ignorance, and transform them into material for a novel, masterfully orchestrating them into a polyphonic and moving work.
