Hidden Saints

Sufis created the most extensive Muslim revivalist network in Asia before the twentieth century, generating a vibrant Persianate literary, intellectual, and spiritual culture while tying together a politically fractured world. In a pathbreaking work combining social history, religious studies, and anthropology, Waleed Ziad examines the development across Asia of Muslim revivalist networks from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. At the center of the story are the Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Sufis, who inspired major reformist movements and articulated effective social responses to the fracturing of Muslim political power amid European colonialism. In a time of political upheaval, the Mujaddidis fused Persian, Arabic, Turkic, and Indic literary traditions, mystical virtuosity, popular religious practices, and urban scholasticism in a unified yet flexible expression of Islam. The Mujaddidi ÒHidden Caliphate,Ó as it was known, brought cohesion to diverse Muslim communities from Delhi through Peshawar to the steppes of Central Asia. And the legacy of Mujaddidi Sufis continues to shape the Muslim world, as their institutional structures, pedagogies, and critiques have worked their way into leading social movements from Turkey to Indonesia, and among the Muslims of China. By shifting attention away from court politics, colonial actors, and the standard narrative of the ÒGreat Game,Ó Ziad offers a new vision of Islamic sovereignty. At the same time, he demonstrates the pivotal place of the Afghan Empire in sustaining this vast inter-Asian web of scholastic and economic exchange. Based on extensive fieldwork across Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Pakistan at madrasas, Sufi monasteries, private libraries, and archives, Hidden Caliphate reveals the long-term influence of Mujaddidi reform and revival in the eastern Muslim world, bringing together seemingly disparate social, political, and intellectual currents from the Indian Ocean to Siberia.

The first of three novels based on the MGM Worldwide Television show. From the dawn of time, a secret society of warriors, philosophers, and scientists fights evil in all its supernatural forms. In this story, a member of The Legacy tries to keep the mother of a boy from avenging his death after a visitation from the boy's ghost.

As a work in comparative theology, this book presents how an Islamic concept of sainthood (walāya) informs Christian theology in answering one question that emerges from today’s multi-faith context: “Is it possible for Christians to recognize non-Christians as saints?”

Saints are a significant part of our heritage, revered figures of our Christian culture, according to Father Bill Bausch. Long before television, the cult of saints dominated the popular imagination; they were and are our Christian celebrities. He says that while modern celebrities point to and celebrate themselves, the saints point to or wrestle with "something more" beyond appearances, "some one more." They are mirrors to another reality. Whatever their history, at least once in their lives, saints heroically leap beyond their pride, self-absorption, and even the instincts of self preservation into a fullness of sacrifice, generosity, and love that takes our breath away. Bausch covers 50 of these saints here in this beautifully written anthology.