Inside Islam: The Faith, the People and the Conflicts of the World's Fastest Growing Reliigion - Softcover

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9781569245682: Inside Islam: The Faith, the People and the Conflicts of the World's Fastest Growing Reliigion

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1569245681 ISBN 13: 9781569245682

Publisher: Marlowe & Company, 2002

Inside Islam offers an unprecedented and extremely timely examination of Islam, one of the world's three major monotheistic religions, in all its complexity. Editors John Miller and Aaron Kenedi, who in God's Breath collected the essential sacred texts of seven major wisdom traditions, bring together pieces by such notable writers and thinkers as Karen Armstrong, Huston Smith, V. S. Naipaul, Thomas Cleary, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Robert D. Kaplan, Geraldine Brooks and others. Organized into three sections—on Muslims, their beliefs, and their ancient and modern conflicts—Inside Islam is for everyone seeking new levels of understanding about the religion whose influence is being felt around the world now more than ever.

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About the Author:

JOHN MILLER AND AARON KENEDI are the editors of God’s Breath: Sacred Scriptures of the World—praised by Publishers Weekly as "an essential companion for students of world religions"—and have edited and designed more than fifty other books over a period of fifteen years.

AKBAR S. AHMED is the author of numerous best-selling books, including Islam Today: A Short Introduction to the Muslim World. He is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies and Professor of International Relations at the American University in Washington, D.C.

From Booklist:

This collection, meant to introduce contemporary Islamic faithto a wide audience, begins with a not-so-contemporary essay by HustonSmith. Taken from the classic The World's Religions, firstpublished in 1958, Smith's masterful essay on Islam sets the tone forthis remarkable collection. Some of our finest writers, fromhistorians Karen Armstrong and Bernard Lewis to literary giantsWilliam T. Vollman and V. S. Naipaul, explore the faith of Islam, itsadherents, and its conflicts. Vollman's brilliant and disturbing essayon life under the Taliban in Afghanistan is particularly compelling,as is Akbar Ahmed's exploration of the prophet Muhammad'ssignificance. The editors have also collected, unfortunately, a coupleof lesser pieces, most notably Ryszard Kapuscinski's awkwardly writtenand out-of-date history of Sh'ism in Iran, which refers to the shah inthe present tense. But on the whole, splendid writing carries theday. Only the final essay, Fareed Zakaria's response to September 11,entitled "Why They Hate Us," directly addresses September 11, butthroughout the book, the tension between Islamic fundamentalism andmodernity is palpable. Many opinions on contemporary Islam areincluded, from Bernard Lewis' controversial essay that coined thephrase "Clash of Civilizations" to Michael Wolfe's powerful experienceof Islam's peacefulness in "Mecca." Deeper introductions to Islamexist, but none has the quality of writing collected here. (For moregreat books about the Islamic world, see the Read-alikes column on theopposite page.) John Green
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