Download or read book Jihad What Everyone Needs to Know written by Asma Afsaruddin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word "jihad" is everywhere in the global media. It generally appears in the context of violence waged against the West by militants in or from Muslim-majority societies. This usage overwhelmingly colors popular discourse about Islam and Muslims and it has resulted in highly simplistic, distorted, and ahistorical understandings of the concept of jihad. For most Muslims, jihad refers to the continuous human struggle to promote and implement what is morally good and noble in all walks of life, as well as to resist and prevent what is morally wrong and unjust. This book addresses the great need for a discussion of jihad that explores its various dimensions without fear-mongering or sensationalism. Here it is examined from multiple perspectives: scriptural, theological, moral and ethical, legal and socio-political. Asma Afsaruddin looks at the key questions about jihad and provides concise yet thorough answers. Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know® provides a historically-grounded, scholarly yet accessible treatment of the meanings of jihad from the formative period of Islam until the contemporary period.
Download or read book Jihad written by Asma Afsaruddin and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word ""jihad"" is ubiquitous in the global media. It generally appears in the context of violence waged against the West by militants in or from Muslim-majority societies. This usage overwhelmingly colors popular discourse about Islam and Muslims and it has resulted in a highly reductive, distorted, and ahistorical understanding of the concept of jihad. Asma Afsaruddin looks at the key questions about jihad and provides concise yet thorough answers. Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know ® provides a historically-grounded, scholarly yet accessible treatment of jihad that explores its various d.
Download or read book Striving in the Path of God written by Asma Afsaruddin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In popular and academic literature, jihad is predominantly assumed to refer exclusively to armed combat, and martyrdom in the Islamic context is understood to be invariably of the military kind. This perspective, derived mainly from legal texts, has led to discussions of jihad and martyrdom as concepts with fixed, universal meanings divorced from the socio-political circumstances in which they have been deployed through the centuries. Asma Afsaruddin studies in a more holistic manner the range of significations that can be ascribed to the term jihad from the earliest period to the present and historically contextualizes the competing discourses that developed over time. Many assumptions about the military jihad and martyrdom in Islam are thereby challenged and deconstructed. A comprehensive interrogation of varied sources reveals early and multiple competing definitions of a word that in combination with the phrase fi sabil Allah translates literally to "striving in the path of God." Contemporary radical Islamists have appropriated this language to exhort their cadres to armed political opposition, which they legitimize under the rubric of jihad. Afsaruddin shows that the multivalent connotations of jihad and shahid recovered from the formative period lead us to question the assertions of those who maintain that belligerent and militant interpretations preserve the earliest and only authentic understanding of these two key terms. Retrieval of these multiple perspectives has important implications for our world today in which the concepts of jihad and martyrdom are still being fiercely debated.
Download or read book The Mind of Jihad written by Laurent Murawiec and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-11 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines contemporary jihad as a cult of violence and power. All jihadi groups, whether Shiite or Sunni, Arab or not, are characterized by a similar bloodlust. Murawiec characterizes this belief structure as identical to that of Europe's medieval millenarians and apocalyptics, arguing that both jihadis and their European cousins shared in a Gnostic ideology: a God-given mission endowed the Elect with supernatural powers and placed them above the common law of mankind. Although the ideology of jihad is essentially Islamic, Murawiec traces the political technologies used by modern jihad to the Bolsheviks. Their doctrines of terror as a system of rule were appropriated by radical Islam through multiple lines of communication. This book brings history, anthropology, and theology to bear to understand the mind of jihad that has declared war on the West and the world.
Download or read book Al Qaeda the Islamic State and the Global Jihadist Movement written by Daniel Byman and published by What Everyone Needs to Know(r). This book was released on 2015 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Founded as the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Al Qaeda achieved a degree of international notoriety with a series of spectacular attacks in the 1990s; however, it was the dramatic assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 9/11 that truly launched Al Qaeda onto the global stage. The attacks endowed the organization with world-historical importance and provoked an overwhelming counterattack by the United States and other western countries. Within a year of 9/11, the core of Al Qaeda had been chased out of Afghanistan and into a variety of refuges across the Muslim world. Splinter groups and franchised offshoots were active in the 2000s in countries like Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen, but by early 2011, after more than a decade of relentless counterterrorism efforts by the United States and other Western military and intelligence services, most felt that Al Qaeda's moment had passed.
Download or read book American Jihad written by Steven Emerson and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-02-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading the second wave of post 9/11 terrorist books, American Jihad reveals that America is rampant with Islamic terrorist networks and sleeper cells and Emerson, the expert on them, explains just how close they are to each of us.
Download or read book I Was Told to Come Alone written by Souad Mekhennet and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2017-06-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “I was told to come alone. I was not to carry any identification, and would have to leave my cell phone, audio recorder, watch, and purse at my hotel. . . .” For her whole life, Souad Mekhennet, a reporter for The Washington Post who was born and educated in Germany, has had to balance the two sides of her upbringing – Muslim and Western. She has also sought to provide a mediating voice between these cultures, which too often misunderstand each other. In this compelling and evocative memoir, we accompany Mekhennet as she journeys behind the lines of jihad, starting in the German neighborhoods where the 9/11 plotters were radicalized and the Iraqi neighborhoods where Sunnis and Shia turned against one another, and culminating on the Turkish/Syrian border region where ISIS is a daily presence. In her travels across the Middle East and North Africa, she documents her chilling run-ins with various intelligence services and shows why the Arab Spring never lived up to its promise. She then returns to Europe, first in London, where she uncovers the identity of the notorious ISIS executioner “Jihadi John,” and then in France, Belgium, and her native Germany, where terror has come to the heart of Western civilization. Mekhennet’s background has given her unique access to some of the world’s most wanted men, who generally refuse to speak to Western journalists. She is not afraid to face personal danger to reach out to individuals in the inner circles of Al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, and their affiliates; when she is told to come alone to an interview, she never knows what awaits at her destination. Souad Mekhennet is an ideal guide to introduce us to the human beings behind the ominous headlines, as she shares her transformative journey with us. Hers is a story you will not soon forget.
Download or read book Why We Want to Kill You written by Walid Shoebat and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A self-confessed former Islamic terrorist reveals why he and his former colleagues commit acts of violence and genocide, and are eager for the next opportunity, in a book that also discusses how to defeat terrorism.
Download or read book What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uses a question and answer format to present information on topics including faith and practice, Islam and other religions, customs and culture, and Muslims in the West.
Download or read book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad written by William Kilpatrick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book to challenge the status quo, spark a debate, and get people talking about the issues and questions we face as a country!
Download or read book The Shade of Swords written by M.J Akbar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-05-03 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Shade of Swords is the first cohesive history of Jihad, written by one of India's leading journalists and writers. In this paperback edition, updated to show how and why Saddam Hussein repositioned himself as a Jihadi against America, M.J. Akbar explains the struggle between Islam and Christianity. Placing recent events in a historical context, he tackles the tricky question of what now for Jihad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime. With British and American troops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and once again in Iraq, the potential for Jihadi recruitment is ever increasing. Explaining how Jihad thrives on complex and shifting notions of persecution, victory and sacrifice, and illustrating how Muslims themselves have historically tried both to direct and control the phenomenon of Jihad, Akbar shows how Jihad pervades the mind and soul of Islam, revealing its strength and significance. To know the future, one needs to understand the past. M.J. Akbar's The Shade of Swords holds the key.
Download or read book Road Warriors written by Daniel Byman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, fighters from abroad have journeyed in ever-greater numbers to conflict zones in the Muslim world to defend Islam from-in their view-infidels and apostates. The phenomenon recently reached its apogee in Syria, where the foreign fighter population quickly became larger and more diverse than in any previous conflict. In Road Warriors, Daniel Byman provides a sweeping history of the jihadist foreign fighter movement. He begins by chronicling the movement's birth in Afghanistan, its growing pains in Bosnia and Chechnya, and its emergence as a major source of terrorism in the West in the 1990s, culminating in the 9/11 attacks. Since that bloody day, the foreign fighter movement has seen major ups and downs. It rode high after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when the ultra-violent Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) attracted thousands of foreign fighters. AQI overreached, however, and suffered a crushing defeat. Demonstrating the resilience of the movement, however, AQI reemerged anew during the Syrian civil war as the Islamic State, attracting tens of thousands of fighters from around the world and spawning the bloody 2015 attacks in Paris among hundreds of other strikes. Although casualty rates are usually high, the survivors of Afghanistan, Syria, and other fields of jihad often became skilled professional warriors, going from one war to the next. Still others returned to their home countries, some to peaceful retirement but a deadly few to conduct terrorist attacks. Over time, both the United States and Europe have learned to adapt. Before 9/11, volunteers went to and fro to Afghanistan and other hotspots with little interference. Today, the United States and its allies have developed a global program to identify, arrest, and kill foreign fighters. Much remains to be done, however-jihadist ideas and networks are by now deeply embedded, even as groups such as Al Qaeda and the Islamic State rise and fall. And as Byman makes abundantly clear, the problem is not likely to go away any time soon.
Download or read book Shariah written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sharia is by now a term that most Americans and Europeans recognize, though few really understand what it means. Often portrayed as a medieval system used by religious zealots to oppress women and deny human rights, conservative politicians, media commentators, and hardline televangelistsstoke fear by promoting the idea that Muslims want to impose a repressive Sharia rule in America and Europe. Despite the breadth of this propaganda, a majority of Muslims - men and women - support Sharia as a source of law. In fact, for many centuries Sharia has functioned for Muslims as a positivesource of guidance, providing a moral compass for individuals and society. This critical new book by John L. Esposito and Natana Delong-Bas aims to serve as a guide for what everybody needs to know in the conversation about Sharia, responding to misunderstandings and distortions, and offeringanswers to questions about the origin, nature, and content of Sharia.
Download or read book Unholy War written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the intellectual underpinnings of the more radical elements of contemporary Islam.
Download or read book Defying Jihad written by Esther Ahmad and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you truly love Allah, you will die for him. Your death will mean much reward for you and your family in heaven. Only death will prove your love. It was the final test. A chance to win not only the love of Allah, but the love of her father—something she had never been able to earn. Esther took a deep breath and raised her hand in the air. At the age of eighteen, she had just volunteered to become a suicide bomber. Defying Jihad is the true story of a girl growing up under radical Islamic rule, trained to believe her ultimate purpose was to serve Allah by dying as a jihadist. But two nights before she was to leave forever, she had a dream . . . one that would change the course of her destiny. Against all odds, Esther became a follower of Jesus—even though leaving Islam meant her death sentence. But rather than kill her immediately, Esther’s furious father challenged her to a series of public debates with Muslim scholars: the Bible versus the Quran. If Esther won, she might yet survive. But if the Muslim clerics won, Esther must renounce her Christian faith. For an entire month—if she lived that long—Esther would be brought before the mob daily to defend her newfound faith. Would God give her the words to argue against Muslim leaders, former friends, and even her own family? Defying Jihad is an amazing story of a woman prepared to surrender all for Jesus—and whose life transformed from terror to overwhelming love.
Download or read book My Accidental Jihad written by Krista Bremer and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the author's experiences as the journalist wife of a Libyan-born Muslim with whom she lives in the American South, a relationship that has endured prejudices and different views about family and parenting.
Download or read book What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam written by John L. Esposito and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, there has been an overwhelming demand for information about Islam, and recent events - the war in Iraq, terrorist attacks both failed and successful, debates throughout Europe over Islamic dress, and many others - have raised new questions in the minds of policymakers and the general public. This newly updated edition of What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam is the best single source for clearly presented, objective information about these new developments, and for answers to questions about the origin and traditions of Islam. Editor of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Modern Islam and The Oxford History of Islam, and author of The Future of Islam and many other acclaimed works, John L. Esposito is one of America's leading authorities on Islam. This brief and readable book remains the first place to look for up-to-date information on the faith, customs, and political beliefs of the more than one billion people who call themselves Muslims.
