Author: Ernst Bloch File Type: pdf

Author: Ed Husain File Type: epub A fascinating and revelatory exploration of the intricacies of Islam and the inner psyche of the Muslim world from the bestselling author of *The Islamist* hr***Islam began as a stranger, said the Prophet Mohammed, and one day, it will again return to being a stranger. The gulf between Islam and the West is widening. A faith rich with strong values and traditions, observed by nearly two billion people across the world, is seen by the West as something to be feared rather than understood. Sensational headlines and hard-line policies spark enmity, while ignoring the feelings, narratives and perceptions that preoccupy Muslims today. Wise and authoritative, The House of Islam seeks to provide entry to the minds and hearts of Muslims the world over. It introduces us to the fairness, kindness and mercy of Mohammed the aims of sharia law, through commentary on scripture, to provide an ethical basis to life the beauty of Islamic art and the permeation of the divine in public spaces and the tension between mysticism and literalism that still threatens the House of Islam. The decline of the Muslim world and the current crises of leadership mean that a glorious past, full of intellectual nobility and purpose, is now exploited by extremists and channelled into acts of terror. How can Muslims confront the issues that are destroying Islam from within, and what can the West do to help work towards that end? Ed Husain expertly and compassionately guides us through the nuances of Islam and its people, contending that the Muslim world need not be a stranger to the West, nor its enemy, but a peaceable ally.**ReviewHusains account is not sensationalist, tending more to understatement than to hyperbole ... A complete eye-opener -- Praise for The Islamist * The Times * Captivating, and terrifyingly honest ... a wake-up call to monocultural Britain, it takes you into the mind of young fundamentalists, exposing places in which the old notion of being British is defunct -- Praise for The Islamist * Observer * Persuasive and stimulating -- Praise for The Islamist, Martin Amis All who glibly generalise about the no-mans-land between terrorism and multiculturalism should read this articulate and impassioned book -- Simon Jenkins * Sunday Times * About the Author Ed Husain is the author of The Islamist, a memoir of his time inside radical Islamism. Having rejected extremism, he now advises governments and political leaders on Islam. He is a senior fellow at Civitas, Institute for the Study of Civil Society in London and a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre in Washington DC. He was a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York for five years and co-founded Quilliam, the worlds first counter-extremism think-tank in Britain. He has written for the New York Times, the Telegraph, the Financial Times and appeared on CNN, BBC, and others. He lives in London. @Ed_Husain

Author: Bernard Suits File Type: pdf In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable there are no common threads that link them all. Nonsense, says the sensible Bernard Suits playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined he also suggests that playing games is a central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics.

Author: Stefan Jonsson File Type: pdf In recent years European states have turned toward more austere political regimes, entailing budget cuts, deregulation of labour markets, restrictions of welfare systems, securitization of borders and new regimes of migration and citizenship. In the wake of such changes, new forms of social inclusion and exclusion appear that are justified through a reactivation of differences of race, class and gender. Against this backdrop, this collection investigates contemporary understandings of history and cultural memory. In doing so, the reader will join the leading European contributors of this title in examining how crisis and decline in contemporary Europe trigger a selective forgetting and remodelling of the past. Indeed, Austere Histories in European Societies breaks new paths in scholarship by synthesising and connecting current European debates on migration, racism and multiculturalism. In addition to this, the authors present debates on cultural memory and the place of the colonial legacy within an extensive comparative framework and across the boundaries of the humanities and social sciences. This book will appeal to scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities, particularly in European studies, memory studies, sociology, postcolonial studies, migration studies, European history, cultural policy, cultural heritage, economics and political theory.