A wide-ranging collection of essays written for the William Morris Society exploring the various intersections between the life, work and achievements of William Morris (1834-1896) and that of John Ruskin (1819-1900). Subjects covered include Ruskin’s connection with the Pre-Raphaelite movement, the promotion of craft skills and meaningful work, Morris and the division of labour, Ruskin’s engagement with education and the environment, Ruskin and the art and architecture of Red House, the parallels between Ruskin’s support for Laxey Mill and Morris’s Merton Abbey Works, the illustrated manuscript and the contrasts between Ruskin’s Tory paternalism and Morris’s revolutionary socialism. The book includes articles first published in The Journal of William Morris Studies between 1977 and 2012 and new pieces written especially for this volume. Ruskin's beliefs had a profound and lasting impact on Morris who wrote, upon first reading Ruskin whilst at Oxford University, that his views offered a «new road on which the world should travel» – a road that led Morris to social and political change.
This book invites Muslims and non-Muslims to acquaint themselves with the prophet's practice and teachings, his [i]Sunnah, first hand. Relying exclusively upon the sayings and actions of the prophet, which have been selected and translated from authenticated and well-known collections of hadith literature, this book presents a close-up and composite picture of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, described in the Qur'an as the best model for humanity.[b]Ahmad Von Denffer was born in Germany in 1949. He studied Islamics and Social Anthropology at the Universty of Mainz. He works at the Islamic Centre, Munich, and has translated the Qur'an into German.
"This book is a scholarly and necessary critique of why the crime of terrorism is inconsistent with the ethical outlook of the Qur'an. Anyone who wants to understand the Qur'an and its relationship to violence must read this book."—Khaled Abou El Fadl, Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Professor of Law and chair of Islamic studies program, UCLA School of Law"In addition to illuminating the root causes of terrorism, this book is a real contribution to the interfaith dialogue."—Muhammad Abu Layla, professor of the comparative religions at al-Azhar University, Cairo"A critique that challenges contemporary perceptions of the relationship between Islam and violence. The book can be seriously commended to both specialists and non-specialists in Qur'anic Studies, theology, and political science."—Jabal M. Buaben, associate professor, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Sultan Omar 'Ali Saifuddien Centre for Islamic StudiesElSayed Amin critiques misreadings of key verses in the Qur'an that have been used to establish violence as the relational norm between Muslims and non-Muslims. He distinguishes both Islamic jihad and armed deterrence from modern terrorism through examination of the 9/11 attacks, and proposes legal proscriptions for terrorism from the Qur'an on the basis of its political, social, and psychological impacts. ElSayed Amin is a senior lecturer of Islamic studies in English at al-Azhar University in Egypt and a visiting postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD) in Brunei. He is a member of the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs in Cairo, and a former Fulbright Scholar.
By ground-breaking academic, Mohammed Hashim Kamali, explaining new thoughts and solutions in the Islamic bond marketA collection of major writings explaining and discussing an increasingly important part of the Islamic finance industryUnique topic and discourse fit for course adoption in economics, Islamic Studies, and BusinessA topic which is currently under discussion in a number of circles and of growing significance in the West, as shown by the UK Prime Minister's opening of the sukuk market in the UK in 2013 to create a halal loan market for undergraduates and new businesses (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24722440)$1.3tn market – always growingOther titles introducing this subject are priced over $100. Very competitive price, which should appeal to any interested parties
The Five Pillars of Islam is a comprehensive and practical manual on the fundamental beliefs and practices of a Muslim and provides an understanding of the true spirit of worship in Islam. Written by a noted Muslim scholar and educationist with a contemporary Muslim audience in mind, this is an invaluable reference for every home and classroom. Musharraf Hussain, PhD, is the director of the Karimia Institute in the United Kingdom. In 2009 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to community relations in Britain.
The Qur'an, we are told, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of twenty-two years, between 610 and 632. Muslims believe that Muhammad was not literate, and so he could not himself have produced the Qur'an. He memorized it, and a few of his followers memorized some parts of it or wrote them down. Now, even though 23% of the global population are Muslims, there is still a huge amount of ignorance on the nature and history of their faith. In this fascinating and useful book the acclaimed writer Perry Anderson interviews the noted scholar of Islam, Suleiman Mourad, about the history of this extraordinary text and the religion it begat, drawing out how and when the Qu'ran was composed, the nature and history of the faith, and the complexities of its situation in the modern world.
Why should we have to “Keep Calm and Carry On”? In this brilliant polemical rampage, Owen Hatherley shows how our past is being resold in order to defend the indefensible. From the marketing of a “make do and mend” aesthetic to the growing nostalgia for a utopian past that never existed, a cultural distraction scam prevents people grasping the truth of their condition. The Ministry of Nostalgia explodes the creation of a false history: a rewriting of the austerity of the 1940s and 1950s, which saw the development of a welfare state while the nation crawled out of the devastations of war. This period has been recast to explain and offer consolation for the violence of neoliberalism, an ideology dedicated to the privatisation of our common wealth. In coruscating prose—with subjects ranging from Ken Loach’s documentaries, Turner Prize–shortlisted video art, London vernacular architecture, and Jamie Oliver’s cooking—Hatherley issues a passionate challenge to the injunction to keep calm and carry on.
Capitalism’s colonization of every hour in the day. 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep explores some of the ruinous consequences of the expanding non-stop processes of twenty-first-century capitalism. The marketplace now operates through every hour of the clock, pushing us into constant activity and eroding forms of community and political expression, damaging the fabric of everyday life. Jonathan Crary examines how this interminable non-time blurs any separation between an intensified, ubiquitous consumerism and emerging strategies of control and surveillance. He describes the ongoing management of individual attentiveness and the impairment of perception within the compulsory routines of contemporary technological culture. At the same time, he shows that human sleep, as a restorative withdrawal that is intrinsically incompatible with 24/7 capitalism, points to other more formidable and collective refusals of world-destroying patterns of growth and accumulation.
Kierkegaard developed a distinctive type of sociology in the 1840s–a theological sociology. Looking at society through the lens of analysis categories such as worship, sin, and faith, Kierkegaard developed a profoundly insightful way of understanding how, for example, the modern mass media works. He gets right inside the urban world of Golden Age Denmark, and its religion, and analyses «the present age» of consumption, comfort, competition, distraction, and image-construction with astonishing depth. To Kierkegaard worship centers all individuals and all societies; hence his sociology is doxological. This book argues that we also live in the present age Kierkegaard described, and our way of life can be understood much better through Kierkegaard's lens than through the methodologically materialist categories of classical sociology. As social theory itself has moved beyond classical sociology, the social sciences are increasingly open to post-methodologically-atheist approaches to understanding what it means to be human beings living in social contexts. The time is right to recover the theological resources of Christian faith in understanding the social world we live in. The time has come to pick up where Kierkegaard left off, and to start working towards a prophetic doxological sociology for our times.
The field of anthropology provides rich insights into the world of people and cultures. But it also presents challenges for Christians in the areas of cultural relativism, evolutionary theory, race and ethnicity, forms of the family, governments and war, life in the global economy, the morality of art, and religious pluralism. Most significantly it raises questions regarding the truth and how we can know it. This book provides the opportunity to investigate such questions with both the informed understanding of anthropological theory and ethnography, and the larger framework and commitment of Christian biblical and theological studies. So equipped, readers are encouraged to investigate for themselves the depths and intricacies of topics in anthropology that are especially relevant for Christians.