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A Fundamental Fear

A Fundamental Fear

Author: Bobby S. Sayyid

Publisher: Zed Books

ISBN: 1842771973

Category: Political Science

Page: 216

View: 959

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Breaking with the Arab-centrism of Islamic studies, Sayyid shows how the rise of Islamism, or Islamic fundamentalism, can only be understood in the context of Eurocentrism. The book will be stimulating reading for courses in cultural studies, Islamic studies and international relations.

A Fundamental Fear

A Fundamental Fear

Author: S. Sayyid

Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.

ISBN: 9781783601936

Category: Political Science

Page: 175

View: 578

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The fear and anxiety aroused by Islamism is not a myth, nor is it simply a consequence of terrorism or fundamentalism. Writing in 1997, before 9/11 and before the austerity that has bred a new generation of far right groups across Europe and the US, S. Sayyid warned of a spectre haunting Western civilization. This groundbreaking book, banned by the Malaysian government, is both an analysis of the conditions that have made ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ possible and a provocative account of the ways in which Muslim identities have come to play an increasingly political role throughout the world. This is a pioneering, provocative and intricately crafted study, which shows the challenge of Islamism is not only geopolitical or even cultural but also epistemological.

Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality

Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality

Author: Sunera Thobani

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

ISBN: 9781350148116

Category: Philosophy

Page: 272

View: 211

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The current political standoffs of the 'War on Terror' illustrate that the interaction within and between the so-called Western and Middle Eastern civilizations is constantly in flux. A recurring theme however is how Islam and Muslims signify the 'Enemy' in the Western socio-cultural imagination and have become the 'Other' against which the West identifies itself. In a unique and insightful blend of critical race, feminist and post-colonial theory, Sunera Thobani examines how Islam is foundational to the formation of Western identity at critical points in its history, including the Crusades, the Reconquista and the colonial period. More specifically, she explores how masculinity and femininity are formed at such pivotal junctures and what role feminism has played in the wars against 'radical' Islam. Exposing these symbiotic relationships, Thobani explores how the return of 'religion' is reworking the racial, gender and sexual politics by which Western society defines itself, and more specifically, defines itself against Islam. Contesting Islam, Constructing Race and Sexuality unpacks conventional as well as unconventional orthodoxies to open up new spaces in how we think about sexual and racial identity in the West and the crucial role that Islam has had and continues to have in its development.

Clash of Modernities

Clash of Modernities

Author: Khaldoun Samman

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317262350

Category: Political Science

Page: 272

View: 560

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To understand the Middle East we must also understand how the West produced a temporal narrative of world history in which westemers placed themselves on top and all others below them. In a landmark reinterpretation of Middle Eastern history, this book shows how Arabs, Muslims, Turks, and Jews absorbed, revised, yet remained loyal to this Western vision. Turkish Kemalism and Israeli Zionism, in their efforts to push their people forward, accepted the narrative almost wholeheartedly, eradicating what they perceived as 'archaic' characteristics of their Jewish and Turkish cultures. Arab nationalists negotiated a more culturally schizophrenic approach to appeasing the colonizer's gaze. But so too, Samman argues, did the Islamists who likewise wanted to improve their societies. But in order to modernize, Islamists prescribed the eradication of Western contamination and reintroduced the prophetic stage that they believe - if the colonizer and their local Arab coconspirators hadn't intervened - would have produced true civilization. Samman's account explains why Islamists broke more radically with the colonizer's insult. For all these nationalists gender would be used as the measuring device of how well they did in relation to the colonizer's gaze.

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Author: Sogyal Rinpoche

Publisher: Harper Collins

ISBN: 9780061800344

Category: Self-Help

Page: 464

View: 905

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“A magnificent achievement. In its power to touch the heart, to awaken consciousness, [The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying] is an inestimable gift.” —San Francisco Chronicle A newly revised and updated edition of the internationally bestselling spiritual classic, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, written by Sogyal Rinpoche, is the ultimate introduction to Tibetan Buddhist wisdom. An enlightening, inspiring, and comforting manual for life and death that the New York Times calls, “The Tibetan equivalent of [Dante’s] The Divine Comedy,” this is the essential work that moved Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions, to proclaim, “I have encountered no book on the interplay of life and death that is more comprehensive, practical, and wise.”