Category: Book Reviews

Tayeb El-Hibri. Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History: The Rashidun Caliphs. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. xi + 471 pp. $60.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-231-15082-8; ISBN 978-0-231-52165-9. Reviewed by Zohar Hadromi-Allouche (Divinity and Religious Studies — University of Aberdeen) This study is dedicated to the historiography of the Rashidun caliphate. El-Hibri states at the […]

The Dead Sea Scrolls are the ancient manuscripts dating back to the time of Jesus that were found between 1947 and 1956 in caves by the Dead Sea. Since they were first discovered, they have been a source of fascination and debate over what they can teach — and have taught — about Judeo-Christian history. […]

  Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks. By Jenny White. Princeton University Press; 240 pages; $24.95 and £16.95. When Kemal Ataturk built the Turkish republic on the ashes of the vanquished Ottoman empire, he invented along with it a new persona: the Turk, who would be cleansed of what he regarded as Arab and Byzantine […]

  Is God Happy?: Selected Essays, by Leszek Kolakowski (Author)Basic Books (February 5, 2013). The first biography of Siddhartha, the future Buddha, reveals that for a long time he was entirely unaware of the wretchedness of the human condition. A royal son, he spent his youth in pleasure and luxury, surrounded by music and worldly […]

  HOLY IGNORANCE: When Religion and Culture Part Ways; By Olivier Roy; Translated by Ros Schwartz.259 pp. Columbia University Press. $27.50 Every winter Fox News, seeking to stir up anger through the land, uncovers evidence of a war on Christmas. Secular humanists ignorant of religion and hostile to its traditions, someone in the studio will […]

Megan Kate Nelson. Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012. 400 pp. $69.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8203-3397-7; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8203-4251-1. In an attempt to reconceptualize the destruction caused by the American Civil War “as an imagined state, an act of destruction, and a process of change,” Megan Kate […]

Four must read books: The Battle for the Arab Spring: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Making of a New Era. By Lin Noueihed and Alex Warren. Yale University Press; 350 pages; $28 and £18.99. The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life. By Roger Owen. Harvard University Press; 248 pages; $24.95 and £18.95. The Syrian […]

  Heaven on Earth: a Journey Through Sharia Law, by Sadakat Kadri; 332pp, Bodley Head, t £16.99 (PLUS £1.25 p&p) Buy now from Telegraph Books (RRP £18.99, ebook £9.99).   In February 2008 the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, delivered a lecture called “Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective”. The title sounded innocent enough, […]