Islam

Preface
Islam; A Short History
by Karen Armstrong
No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular imagination as an extreme faith that promotes terrorism, authoritarian government, female oppression, and civil war.

The Secret Islamic Terror Network in the United States
Holy War on the Home Front
by Harvey Kushner, Bart Davis
Near the end of the Spanish Civil War, General Emilio Mola's army was advancing on Madrid when someone asked him which of his four columns would capture the city. 'The Fifth Column,' he replied, meaning the rebel's militant supporters inside the capital

Two Versions of Culture Talk
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror
by Mahmood Mamdani, Ph.D.
Contemporary Culture Talk dates from the end of the Cold War and comes in two versions. It claims to interpret politics from culture, in the present and throughout history, but neither version of Culture Talk is substantially the work of a historian.

Making Room for Miracles
The Book of Miracles
by Kenneth L. Woodward
A miracle is an unusual or extraordinary event that is in principle perceivable by others, that finds no reasonable explanation in ordinary human abilities or in other known forces that operate in the world of time and space

In a small village near Kandahar

An eye-opening personal account of an epic human drama, Embracing the Infidel takes us on an astounding journey along a modern-day underground railroad that stretches from Istanbul to Paris. In this groundbreaking book, Iranian-American Behzad Yaghmaian

I Was Not in the Mood
Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries
by Suad Amiry
Based on diaries and e-mail correspondence that Amiry kept to maintain her sanity from 1981 to 2004, the book evokes, through a series of vignettes, the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah

Lolita
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books
by Azar Nafisi, Ph.D.
We all have dreams-things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi's dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women

Beginnings
The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain
by María Rosa Menocal
This rich and complex culture shared by the three faiths thrived, sometimes in the face of enmity and bigotry, for nearly seven hundred years. Ironically, it was on the eve of the Renaissance that puritanical forces finally triumphed over Spain's

Culture Talk; or, How Not to Talk About Islam and Politics
Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror
by Mahmood Mamdani, Ph.D.
This moment in history after the Cold War is referred to as the era of globalization and is marked by the ascendancy and rapid politicizing of a single term: culture. During the Cold War, we discussed socioeconomic or political developments

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
by Reza Aslan
"In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful," the IranAir pilot intones as our plane glides to a stop at Tehran's Mehrabad Airport. There is a nervous shifting in the seats around me. The women sit upright, adjusting their headscarves

The Sanctuary in the Desert: Pre-Islamic Arabia
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam
by Reza Aslan
Arabia. The Sixth Century C.E. IN THE ARID, desolate basin of Mecca, surrounded on all sides by the bare mountains of the Arabian desert, stands a small, nondescript sanctuary that the ancient Arabs refer to as the Kaaba: the Cube.