Download or read book Religious Minorities in the Middle East written by Anh Nga Longva and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-11-11 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the situation of both Muslim and non-Muslim religious minorities in the Middle East, this volume offers an analysis of various strategies of resilience and accommodation from a historical as well a contemporary perspective.
Download or read book Yezidis in Syria written by Sebastian Maisel and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-12-24 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yezidis in Syria: Identity Building among a Double Minority traces the development of Yezidi identity on the margins of Syria’s minority context. This little known group is connected to the community’s main living area in northern Iraq, but evolved as a separate identity group in the context of Syria’s colonial, national, and revolutionary history. Always on the bottom of the socio-economic hierarchy, the two sub-groups located in the Kurdagh and the Jezira experience a period of sociological and theological renewal in their quest for a recognized and protected status in the new Syria. In this book, Sebastian Maisel transmits and analyzes the Yezidi perspective on Syria’s policies towards ethnic and religious minorities.
Download or read book Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East written by Benjamin Thomas White and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'.
Download or read book Preemptive Love written by Jeremy Courtney and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The founder of the Preemptive Love Coalition, an organization based in Iraq that provides heart surgeries to Iraqi children and trains local doctors and nurses, presents an account of lifesaving and peacemaking in this war-torn country.
Download or read book The Thirty Year Genocide written by Benny Morris and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-24 with total page 673 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Financial Times Book of the Year A Foreign Affairs Book of the Year A Spectator Book of the Year “A landmark contribution to the study of these epochal events.” —Times Literary Supplement “Brilliantly researched and written...casts a careful eye upon the ghastly events that took place in the final decades of the Ottoman empire, when its rulers decided to annihilate their Christian subjects...Hitler and the Nazis gleaned lessons from this genocide that they then applied to their own efforts to extirpate Jews.” —Jacob Heilbrun, The Spectator Between 1894 and 1924, three waves of violence swept across Anatolia, targeting the region’s Christian minorities. By 1924, the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks, once nearly a quarter of the population, had been reduced to 2 percent. Most historians have treated these waves as distinct, isolated events, and successive Turkish governments presented them as an unfortunate sequence of accidents. The Thirty-Year Genocide is the first account to show that all three were actually part of a single, continuing, and intentional effort to wipe out Anatolia’s Christian population. Despite the dramatic swing from the Islamizing autocracy of the sultan to the secularizing republicanism of the post–World War I period, the nation’s annihilationist policies were remarkably constant, with continual recourse to premeditated mass killing, homicidal deportation, forced conversion, and mass rape. And one thing more was a constant: the rallying cry of jihad. While not justified under the teachings of Islam, the killing of two million Christians was effected through the calculated exhortation of the Turks to create a pure Muslim nation. “A subtle diagnosis of why, at particular moments over a span of three decades, Ottoman rulers and their successors unleashed torrents of suffering.” —Bruce Clark, New York Times Book Review
Download or read book Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms written by Gerard Russell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges of the magnificent civilizations in ancient history: Persia, Babylon, Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. Their followers have learned how to survive foreign attacks and the perils of assimilation. But today, with the Middle East in turmoil, they face greater challenges than ever before. In Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms, former diplomat Gerard Russell ventures to the distant, nearly impassable regions where these mysterious religions still cling to survival. He lives alongside the Mandaeans and Ezidis of Iraq, the Zoroastrians of Iran, the Copts of Egypt, and others. He learns their histories, participates in their rituals, and comes to understand the threats to their communities. Historically a tolerant faith, Islam has, since the early 20th century, witnessed the rise of militant, extremist sects. This development, along with the rippling effects of Western invasion, now pose existential threats to these minority faiths. And as more and more of their youth flee to the West in search of greater freedoms and job prospects, these religions face the dire possibility of extinction. Drawing on his extensive travels and archival research, Russell provides an essential record of the past, present, and perilous future of these remarkable religions.
Download or read book Among the Ruins written by Christian C. Sahner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An accessible history of Syria's cultural and religious past documents such issues as the role of Christianity in society, the emergence of the Ba'ath party, and the arrival of Islam, and traces the origins of the current civil war.
Download or read book Religion in Politics written by Michael J. Perry and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1997 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Religion in Politics, Michael Perry addresses a fundamental question: what role may religious arguments play, if any, either in public debate about what political choices to make or as a basis of political choice?
Download or read book Middle Eastern Minorities written by Ibrahim Zabad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-27 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a comprehensive survey of minorities in the Middle East with a special focus on the post Arab Spring era. Minority communities in the Middle East are the most susceptible to the turbulence engulfing the region; the majority may suffer physical violence and socioeconomic loss, but minorities could potentially vanish. Instead of ushering in democracy and inclusive politics, the revolutionary upheavals have prompted chaos and fear and reinforced the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism throughout the region. Zabad uses historical sources as well as first-hand interviews to vividly describe the current status of minorities in the Middle East, explaining attitudes towards the revolutionary upheavals as well as the various strategies they used to avail themselves of the opportunities presented and to confront the risks posed. The question of ethnic, sectarian and religious minorities is situated in the context of the broader history of the region in order to explain the underlying institutional and ideological factors that caused their predicament and problematized their relationship with the majority. The book providesa rich trove of information and insights generated from ten case studies that covered the Shī‘a in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon and Egypt, the Druze, the Alawites, Christians and Kurds in Syria, the Copts in Egypt, and the Zaydis in Yemen.
Download or read book From the Holy Mountain written by William Dalrymple and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of A.D. 587, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist embarked on a remarkable expedition across the entire Byzantine world, traveling from the shores of Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. Using Moschos’s writings as his guide and inspiration, the acclaimed travel writer William Dalrymple retraces the footsteps of these two monks, providing along the way a moving elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the people who are struggling to keep its flame alive. The result is Dalrymple’s unsurpassed masterpiece: a beautifully written travelogue, at once rich and scholarly, moving and courageous, overflowing with vivid characters and hugely topical insights into the history, spirituality and the fractured politics of the Middle East.
Download or read book Minority Rights in the Middle East written by Joshua Castellino and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within the Middle East there are a wide range of minority groups outside the mainstream religious and ethnic culture. This book provides a detailed examination of their rights as minorities within this region, and their changing status throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The rights of minorities in the Middle East are subject to a range of legal frameworks, having developed in part from Islamic law, and in recent years subject to international human rights law and institutional frameworks. The book examines the context in which minority rights operate within this conflicted region, investigating how minorities engage with (or are excluded from) various sites of power and how state practice in dealing with minorities (often ostensibly based on Islamic authority) intersects with and informs modern constitutionalism and international law. The book identifies who exactly can be classed as a minority group, analysing in detail the different religious and ethnic minorities across the region. The book also pays special attention to the plight of minorities who are spread between various states, often as the result of conflict. It assesses the applicable domestic legislative instruments within the three countries investigated as case studies: Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and highlights key domestic remedies that could serve as models for ensuring greater social cohesion and greater inclusion of minorities in the political life of these countries.
Download or read book Christian Martyrs Under Islam written by Christian C. Sahner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.
Download or read book The Issue of Minorities in Syria From Proscription to Tyrannical Presence written by King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and published by King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies (KFCRIS). This book was released on 2016-12-01 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates minority issues in Syria through the observation of their numbers and geographic locations as well as their economic, political, and social status before and after the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in March 2013, in light of the Syrian authorities’ unwritten proscription of minorities imposed since the country’s independence, and their reluctance to make relevant data accessible to researchers. The research focuses on the impact of the Syrian crisis on minorities both in terms of population presence and political status, as minorities become key players in the country’s political scene following the revolution, and various attitudes including minorities’ stances regarding the crisis and the opposition movement, and the perspectives of the regime, the opposition, and non-Syrian religious authorities towards minorities. The study will also evince the targeting of minorities in the Syrian conflict, and the reactions of these minorities towards the international rhetoric surrounding this issue. Finally, the study will cast a searching glance at the future of minorities in Syria.
Download or read book God Behaving Badly written by David T. Lamb and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God has a bad reputation. Many think of God as wrathful and angry, smiting people for no apparent reason. But the story is more complicated than that. Without minimizing the sometimes harsh realities of the biblical record, David Lamb unpacks the complexity of the Old Testament and assembles an overall picture that gives coherence to our understanding of God in both Old and New Testaments.
Download or read book Reopening Muslim Minds written by Mustafa Akyol and published by St. Martin's Essentials. This book was released on 2021-04-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating journey into Islam's diverse history of ideas, making an argument for an "Islamic Enlightenment" today In Reopening Muslim Minds, Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and opinion writer for The New York Times, both diagnoses “the crisis of Islam” in the modern world, and offers a way forward. Diving deeply into Islamic theology, and also sharing lessons from his own life story, he reveals how Muslims lost the universalism that made them a great civilization in their earlier centuries. He especially demonstrates how values often associated with Western Enlightenment — freedom, reason, tolerance, and an appreciation of science — had Islamic counterparts, which sadly were cast aside in favor of more dogmatic views, often for political ends. Elucidating complex ideas with engaging prose and storytelling, Reopening Muslim Minds borrows lost visions from medieval Muslim thinkers such as Ibn Rushd (aka Averroes), to offer a new Muslim worldview on a range of sensitive issues: human rights, equality for women, freedom of religion, or freedom from religion. While frankly acknowledging the problems in the world of Islam today, Akyol offers a clear and hopeful vision for its future.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Islam written by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume 30 of the field's top scholars examine historical and contemporary aspects of American Islam, and explore the meaning of religious identity in the context of race, ethnicity, gender, and politics.
Download or read book Arab Awakening and Islamic Revival written by Martin Seth Kramer and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
