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Scholars, journalists, and politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—“al-Andalus”—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden features of this medieval culture by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate’s conquest of Spain. Far from a land of tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life, and by the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its “multiculturalism” and “diversity,” Fernández-Morera sets the record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.

The only common aspect among all definitions of Islamophobia is that all of them have something negative to say about Muslims or Islam or both. This book traces Islamophobia as a phenomenon from history and attempts to break some of the myths that are dominant in contemporary literature. It explains how the fear of Islam travelled through ages, adding more ills into its ambit and escalating to a level of generalized fear of Muslims today. Islamophobia: History, Context and Deconstruction challenges many established theories including that of the influential post-colonial writer and critic. Edward Said’s view that Islamophobia is European hostility and prejudice towards Arabo-Muslim people. The author envisages Islamophobia as a multidimensional construct and provides tools for measuring its manifold dimensions. The book focuses on providing a diagnosis of the problem and prognostic solutions to avoid further degradation of the relations between Islam, the West and the rest. It is a response from the East to the Western discourses on Islamophobia.

Dr. Youssef, a Coptic Christian who was born in Egypt and now leads a megachurch in America, knows from firsthand experience that radical Islamists have goals that many American Christians believe are "unthinkable." In this book, he warns Western Christians that it doesn't help to ignore what's going on.

Is Islam a peaceful and tolerant religion? For all the debate over Islam and its growing presence in the world, one thing is often overlooked: Islam is not a religion in the sanitized Western sense. It is, in contrast, an all-encompassing sociopolitical legal matrix that has bred a worldview antagonistic to anything but itself. While there may be millions of peaceful and tolerant Muslims, many of them our neighbors, Islam itself is hardly peaceful and tolerant. Islam is the only significant religious system in the history of the human race with a sociopolitical structure of laws that mandate violence against the infidel. The current narrative is that to tell the truth in this regard is tantamount to radicalizing Muslims and exacerbating hostilities that may otherwise lie dormant. A common refrain has reverberated throughout the West: “Islam is not our enemy.” As well-intentioned as this mantra may be, it is a potentially dangerous stance once someone understands Islam in full. Despite its incoherence, Islam—one billion six hundred million strong and growing—is poised to fill the vacuum left by a Western culture slouching inexorably towards Gomorrah. Demographics alone are alarming. While polygamist Muslims boast a robust birth rate, native Westerners are moving rapidly toward self-extinction. Filling the void are multiplied millions of Muslims who have no intention of assimilating into Western culture. Equally grave is the specter of global Islamic jihadism now exacting mass genocide on Christians in the East and ever-multiplying terrorist attacks throughout the West. We are also witnessing the co-belligerency of fantastically wealthy Saudis spending multiplied billions of dollars exporting virulent Wahhabism to the West. Worse still, Western governments, academic institutions, and media outlets seem bent on exporting a false narrative respecting the religious animus animating global Islamic jihadism. In MUSLIM: What You Need to Know about the World’s Fastest Growing Religion, Hanegraaff not only outlines the problems in accessible and memorable fashion, but moves toward potential solutions in the clash of civilizations.

To Muslims the Iberian Peninsula was al-Andalus, to Jews it was Sefarad. Iberian Moorings traces how al-Andalus and Sefarad were invested with political, cultural, and historical significance across the Middle Ages and analyzes the tropes of Andalusi and Sefardi exceptionalism that linger in today's scholarship, literature, and film.

A collection of essays on Islamic culture seeks to explode the vision of tolerant Muslim societies by revealing a history of injustice and oppression against non-Muslim populations and examines the impact this cultural bias has in the modern world.

For millennia the collection, distribution, and symbolism of water have played pivotal roles in the lands where Islam has flourished. This book is the first to address this important subject. A diverse spectrum of scholars covers a wide range of topics: from the revelation of Islam in the 7th century to today’s conservation and development issues, from watering oases in the Moroccan desert to the flooded plains of Bengal. Copiously illustrated with beautiful color photographs and newly drawn plans and maps, this book will provoke readers to appreciate and acknowledge the essential, if often invisible and transitory, roles that water played in the arts of the Islamic lands and beyond.

With literature, music constituted the most important activity of poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca's life. The two arts were closely related to each other throughout his career. As a child, Lorca imbibed traditional Andalusian songs from the lips of the family maids, whom he would remember with affection years later. At a very early age he began to study piano, and during his adolescence, music and poetry competed for primacy among his interests. His first book was dedicated to his music teacher, who instilled in him a love for the world of art and creation. In part I of this study, Edward F. Stanton examines Lorca's theoretical and practical approach to cante jondo, the traditional music of Andalusia, as seen in his lectures on the subject and in the 1922 concurso. In part II, he searches for direct and -- far more important -- indirect echoes of this music in his work. Part III explores the mythic quality of Lorca's art in relation to cante jondo. Throughout, Stanton illuminates a new dimension of the poet's work.