Selected Titles on
Islam, Past and Present
The Idea of the Muslim World: A Global Intellectual History
“Aydin captures the formation and evolution of our reference to ‘the Muslim world’ and how this phrase came to prominence in everyday discourse. In eight superb chapters, he frames the Muslim world, and by implication Islam, as a cultural and civilizational tradition within a defined historical and political framework. A tour de force.”—Ebrahim Moosa, author of What Is a Madrasa?
The Crucible of Islam
Little is known about sixth-century Arabia. Yet from this distant time and place emerged a faith and an empire that stretched from Iberia to India. G. W. Bowersock illuminates this obscure yet most dynamic period in Islam, exploring why arid Arabia proved to be fertile ground for Muhammad’s message and why it spread so quickly to the wider world.
Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam
“This has been a long anticipated book, and the wait has been worth it. It is an excellent study of a complicated theological problem in Islamic religious history that has persisted due to the nature of the sources and the role it plays in defining and redefining the character of Muhammad and the nature of revelation. Both a study on what is arguably one of the most fascinating stories about Muhammad and a primer to the field of Islamic studies and the debate on early sources, this will be an instant classic.”—Walid Saleh, University of Toronto
The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World
“Marwan Kraidy’s The Naked Blogger of Cairo: Creative Insurgency in the Arab World is a deep dive into the cultural politics of the Arab uprisings… Kraidy’s sharp insights and rich descriptions of a new Arab generation’s irrepressible creative urges will amply reward the effort. Reading Kraidy’s accounts of the politically charted cultural gambits of wired Arab youth rekindles some of the seemingly lost spirit of the early days of the Arab uprisings and offers hope for the future.”—Marc Lynch, The Washington Post
A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia
“This is an innovative, refreshing, and provocative intellectual history that makes a major intervention in debates surrounding the question of Islam’s ‘advent’ in the South Asian subcontinent. In A Book of Conquest, Manan Ahmed Asif aims at dismantling the dominant origin myth that portrays Islam’s encounter with India as a conquest.”—Ayesha Jalal, Tufts University
The Burdens of Brotherhood: Jews and Muslims from North Africa to France
2016 David H. Pinkney Prize, Society for French Historical Studies • Shortlist, 2016 American Library in Paris Book Award, The American Library in Paris and the Florence Gould Foundation • 2015 JDC–Herbert Katzki Award for Writing Based on Archival Material, National Jewish Book Awards, Jewish Book Council • Honorable Mention, 2014–2015 Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies, Department of French at New York University
“Thought-provoking… Katz has uncovered fascinating stories of interactions between Muslims and Jews in France and French colonial North Africa over the past 100 years that defy our expectations… His insights are absolutely relevant for understanding such recent trends as rising anti-Semitism among French Muslims, rising Islamophobia among French Jews and, to a lesser degree, rising rates of aliyah from France… If it’s the current crisis that is of interest, this book is more than worth your time… The Burdens of Brotherhood is an important book because it gives us new ways of thinking about Muslims and Jews in France, as well as for what it tells us about the French policies that, too often over the past century, stigmatized, excluded and triangulated in the name of secularism, democracy and social peace.”—Lisa M. Leff, Haaretz
The British Empire and the Hajj: 1865–1956
“This is an excellent book… It will be indispensable for anyone interested in the Hajj.”—William Roger Louis, The Times Literary Supplement
“[Slight] explores this important but largely neglected history of Hajj and does so by tracing British involvement with the regulation and performance of this Islamic ritual from early 1860s until the Suez Crisis of 1956… Based on a combination of archival and secondary sources, this is an unusually informative, meticulously researched and highly readable book… This book will prove to be a useful source of reference on the subject for future researchers and writers alike.”—Muhammad Khan, Muslim News
Afghan Modern: The History of a Global Nation
“[An] extremely valuable and interesting work.”—Anatol Lieven, The New York Review of Books
“A comprehensive history of the country… [Crews] dispels the clichés that have attached themselves to our language and imagery of the country… Afghan Modern [is] required reading for generals, policy-makers, NGOs and journalists.”—Heidi Kingstone, Standpoint
The Lives of Muhammad
“[Ali] examines Muhammad biographies as a genre to which both Muslim and non-Muslim authors have contributed… The modern telling of Muhammad’s biography appears in Ali’s work as a collaboration between Muslims and non-Muslims, revivalists and reformists, sympathetic outsiders and antagonistic critics who drew not only from a more or less stable outline of Muhammad’s life, but also from worldwide notions of great men and from certain controversies… For Ali, the development of Muhammad’s biography serves to undermine the famed clash-of-civilizations thesis, in which the West and the Muslim world exist as separate and self-contained wholes. In her view, the mutual influence between Muslim and non-Muslim writers presents a world of shared values and assumptions about what constitutes authoritative evidence, in which writers who aim to defend Muhammad and those who seek to discredit him together produce a body of literature that is neither East nor West… Ali’s coverage of historical shifts among Muhammad’s followers and opponents alike challenges our ideas about universal norms… The Lives of Muhammad leads its reader to rethink assumptions about history, biography and the imagined East–West divide… [It] serves to skillfully complicate modern debates over Muhammad’s life and character, and his relevance for modern Muslims.”—Michael Muhammad Knight, The Washington Post
Do Muslim Women Need Saving?
A Foreign Affairs Best Book on the Middle East, 2014
“Every page contains a fresh riposte to easy cultural or religious explanations for women’s oppression… Do Muslim Women Need Saving? is the result of many years’ rumination over contemporary feminist debates in the developing world… In this volatile debate Lila Abu-Lughod frequently reminds her readers that she writes ‘as an anthropologist.’ In keeping with this role, she offers no simple remedy for female suffering abroad; nor does she condone the shrug that dismisses distant injustices as ‘just their culture.’ Instead, she offers an injunction to look and listen carefully for suffering at home as well as overseas, and to examine ‘our own responsibilities for the situations in which others in distant places find themselves.’”—Nabeelah Jaffer, The Times Literary Supplement
Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam
“A learned and brilliantly original, yet concise and accessible study of Islam’s formative first century… Donner’s explanation of the process by which Muslims came to define themselves is both fascinating and enlightening.”—Max Rodenbeck, The New York Times
“Provocative and accessible… Donner’s vision of an ‘ecumenical Islam’ is thought-provoking… Donner’s overarching thesis in Muhammad and the Believers is convincing. It sheds light on a world far more fluid and confused than the one we have come to expect from the usual storyline.”—Christian C. Sahner, The Times Literary Supplement
What Is a Palestinian State Worth?
“Sari Nusseibeh repeatedly expresses his belief that change is possible if people have the self-confidence and faith in themselves to act. He sees his task as an educator to be one of inculcating such faith. And he also describes, in several chapters of his often moving book, a moral basis for political action that can speak to all of us. Like Gandhi, and like Abdallah Abu Rahmah and Ali Abu Awwad…Nusseibeh seeks not to coerce his opponents—in this case the Israeli people along with their political and military institutions—into changing their self-destructive course but to change their will, or their feelings. He wants them to step back from prejudice and an obsession with brute force and to open their eyes. He wants them to find in themselves the generosity of spirit needed in order to take a chance on peace, whether in the form of two states or a single binational entity or, perhaps, some kind of confederation.”—David Shulman, The New York Review of Books
Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art and Arab Science
An Observer Book of the Year, 2012 • A Times Literary Supplement Best Book of 2011 • A Big Think Best Art Book of 2011
“Florence and Baghdad is…in large part a meditation on the nature of symbolic forms and consequently an interrogation of the neo-Kantian ideas of Ernst Cassirer and Ernst Panofsky… Belting…convincingly shows how the Arab geometrical approach was taken up in the West and transformed into a way of portraying spatial depth. Moreover, unlike Panofsky, his contrasting of Western and Islamic art leads to an exploration of the different ways in which the two cultures conceive the ‘gaze.’… Florence and Baghdad is beautifully illustrated… This frankly difficult book provides challenging exercises for the mind.”—Robert Irwin, The Art Newspaper
Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2013
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2012 • A New York Times Holiday Gift Guide Selection
Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia
Bronze Prize, 2011 Washington Institute Book Prize, Washington Institute for Near East Policy • A Foreign Policy Best Book on the Middle East, 2011
The Quest for Democracy in Iran: A Century of Struggle against Authoritarian Rule
2010 Mossadegh Prize, Mossadegh Foundation • 2008–2009 Saidi-Sirjani Award, International Society for Iranian Studies • Finalist, 2009 Connecticut Book Award, Non-Fiction Category, Connecticut Center for the Book
Beyond Terror and Martyrdom: The Future of the Middle East
A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2009
For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia
Honorable Mention, 2007 Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies
Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam
2002 Translation Prize, Non-Fiction Category, French–American Foundation and Florence Gould Foundation
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
I Tatti Renaissance Library
Loeb Classical Library
Murty Classical Library of India