Published by Times Square Press, New York. THE ULTIMATE VISIT YOU WILL EVER MAKE IN YOUR LIFETIME. Entering the Dimension of Alternative Reality. Lecture 120, Dirasaat 1969. Previously published under the title Minzaar. Read this Dirasat with an open mind, for it could change your life forever. Believing is an extraordinary mystical power, however, without experimenting, you will never know the truth. This lesson/lecture is taken from The Book of Ramadosh, which is absolutely the most important book ever published on the supernatural powers which are dormant in all of us. The lessons and techniques of the Anunnaki Ulema are easy to understand and learn. They will open new dimensions for your mind, and help you acquire magnificent information that could lead to spectacular success in your life, relationships, business and above all, a perfect harmony with everything that surrounds you.
The Arab Revolutions that began in 2011 reignited interest in the question of theory and practice, imbuing it with a burning political urgency. In Revolution and Disenchantment Fadi A. Bardawil redescribes for our present how an earlier generation of revolutionaries, the 1960s Arab New Left, addressed this question. Bardawil excavates the long-lost archive of the Marxist organization Socialist Lebanon and its main theorist, Waddah Charara, who articulated answers in their political practice to fundamental issues confronting revolutionaries worldwide: intellectuals as vectors of revolutionary theory; political organizations as mediators of theory and praxis; and nonemancipatory attachments as impediments to revolutionary practice. Drawing on historical and ethnographic methods and moving beyond familiar reception narratives of Marxist thought in the postcolony, Bardawil engages in "fieldwork in theory" that analyzes how theory seduces intellectuals, cultivates sensibilities, and authorizes political practice. Throughout, Bardawil underscores the resonances and tensions between Arab intellectual traditions and Western critical theory and postcolonial theory, deftly placing intellectuals from those traditions into a much-needed conversation.
Mernissi recounts the extraordinary stories of fifteen queen s and reflects on the implications for the ways in which politics is practiced in Islam today, a world in which women are largely excluded form the political domain.
"Examines a crucial period in Arabic literature which has received insufficient attention previously--the pre-modern writers of the 19th century . . . whose journalism and fiction not only shaped contemporary opinion but also subtly molded the contours and boundaries of discourse for the generations that followed."--Michael Beard, University of North Dakota Dynamic and original, this study of the formation of modern Arab identity discusses the work of "pioneers of the Arab Renaissance," both renowned and forgotten--a pantheon of intellectuals, reformers, and journalists whose writing until now has been mostly untranslated. Against the backdrop of European imperialism in the Arab world, these literati planted the roots of modernity though their experiments in language, rhetoric, and literature. In both fiction and nonfiction they generated a radically new sense of Arab identity. At the same time, Sheehi argues, they created the terrain that produced an Arab preoccupation with "failure" and a perception of Western "superiority"--the terms intellectuals themselves used in the 19th century in diagnosing their cultural crisis. Neglected by historians, this ambivalent and contradictory state of consciousness is at the heart of the ideology of Arab identity, Sheehi says, and it describes a variety of subjective positions that Arabs would adopt throughout the 20th century. It became the intellectual quicksand for the Arab world's confrontation with colonialism, capitalist expansion, and individual state formation. Using psychoanalytic and post-structuralist theory, Sheehi looks at texts by writers such as Butrus al-Bustani, Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, and Muhammad Abduh. His analysis deconstructs popular and academic perceptions--especially prevalent after 9/11--that Arabs have failed to internalize modernity. Indeed, he says, Christian secularists, Islamic modernists, and romantic nationalists alike have produced a body of knowledge and shared an epistemology that constitute modernity in the Arab world. Starting in Middle Eastern literature and intellectual history and ending in postcolonial studies, this groundbreaking work offers a sophisticated counter-theoretical framework for understanding and reevaluating modern Arabic literature and also the history and historiography of Arab nationalism.
Over the past decade, the political ground beneath the Middle East has shifted. Arab nationalism the political orthodoxy for most of this century has lost its grip on the imagination and allegiance of a new generation. At the same time, Islam as an ideology has spread across the region, and "Islamists" bid to capture the center of politics. Most Western scholars and experts once hailed the redemptive power of Arabism. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival is a critical assessment of the contradictions of Arab nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism, and the misrepresentation of both in the West. The first part of the book argues that Arab nationalism--the so-called Arab awakening--bore within it the seeds of its own failure. Arabism as an idea drew upon foreign sources and resources. Even as it claimed to liberate the Arabs from imperialism it deepened intellectual dependence upon the West's own romanticism and radicalism. Ultimately, Arab nationalism became a force of oppression rather than liberation, and a mirror image of the imperialism it defied. Kramer's essays together form the only chronological telling and the at fully documented postmortem of Arabism. The second part of the book examines the similar failings of Islamism, whose ideas are Islamic reworkings of Western ideological radicalism. Its effect has been to give new life to old rationales for oppression, authoritarianism, and sectarian division. Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival provides an alternative view of a century of Middle Eastern history. As the region moves fitfully past ideology, Kramer's perspective is more compelling than at any time in the past-in Western academe no less than among many in the Middle. This book will be of interest to sociologists, political scientists, economists, and Middle East specialists.
With the increasing Muslim diaspora in post-modern Western societies, Sufism – intellectually as well as sociologically – may eventually become Islam itself due to its versatile potential. Although Sufism has always provoked considerable interest in the West, no volume has so far been written which discusses this aspect of Islam in terms of how it is practised in Western societies. Bringing together leading international authorities to survey the history of Islamic mysticism in North America and Europe, this book elaborates the ideas and institutions which organize Sufism and folk-religious practices. The chapters cover: the orders and movements their social base organization and institutionalization recruitment-patterns in new environments channels of disseminating ideas, such as ritual, charisma, and organization reasons for their popularity among certain social groups the nature of their affiliation with the countries of their origin. Providing a fascinating insight into how Sufism operates within different spheres of society, Sufism in the West is essential reading for students and academics with research interests in Islam, Islamic history and social anthropology.
This book traces the roots of Arabic science fiction through classical and medieval Arabic literature, undertaking close readings of formative texts of Arabic science fiction via a critical framework developed from the work of Western critics of Western science fiction, Arab critics of Arabic science fiction and postcolonial theorists of literature. Ian Campbell investigates the ways in which Arabic science fiction engages with a theoretical concept he terms “double estrangement” wherein these texts provide social or political criticism through estrangement and simultaneously critique their own societies’ inability or refusal to engage in the sort of modernization that would lead the Arab world back to leadership in science and technology.
Islamic ideas about women and their role in society spark considerable debate both in the Western world and in the Islamic world itself. Despite the popular attention surrounding Middle Eastern attitudes toward women, there has been little systematic study of the statements regarding women in the Qur'an. Stowasser fills the void with this study on the women of Islamic sacred history. By telling their stories in Qur'an and interpretation, she introduces Islamic doctrine and its past and present socio-economic and political applications. Stowasser establishes the link between the female figure as cultural symbol, and Islamic self-perceptions from the beginning to the present time.
This volume deals with the last two and a half years of the Prophet's life. In addition to the three major expeditions to Ḥunanyn, Tā'if, and Tabūk, it describes in detail the circumstances surrounding the illness from which he died and the subsequent crisis of leadership faced by the nascent Muslim community. The author depicts with admirable fairness all the various opinions and divisions that existed within the community. He also presents a vivid picture of the Prophet's physical appearance, his personal life, and his marriages. Among other topics discussed in this volume are all the deputations that came to Medina; a summary of all the expeditions and raiding parties; and his scribes, freedmen, horses, camels, goats, swords, coats of mail, and so on. It also covers the apostasy of Musaylimah, Aswad, and Ṭulhahah and the Prophet's attempts to deal with them. The translation not only preserves the original lively flavor of al-Ṭabarī but also, in its annotations, draws extensively on both parallel Arabic sources and the intensive research of recent years. Readers who seek a deeper understanding of the Prophet's personality and of the reasons for antagonisms engendered among various factions will find this volume most informative.
