Infidels

In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her intellectual awakening and activism in the Netherlands, and her current life under armed guard in the West. One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following an Islamist's murder of her colleague, Theo van Gogh, with whom she made the movie Submission. Infidel is the eagerly awaited story of the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech. With a gimlet eye and measured, often ironic, voice, Hirsi Ali recounts the evolution of her beliefs, her ironclad will, and her extraordinary resolve to fight injustice done in the name of religion. Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation, brutal beatings, adolescence as a devout believer during the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood, and life in four troubled, unstable countries largely ruled by despots. In her early twenties, she escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in the Netherlands, where she earned a college degree in political science, tried to help her tragically depressed sister adjust to the West, and fought for the rights of Muslim immigrant women and the reform of Islam as a member of Parliament. Even though she is under constant threat -- demonized by reactionary Islamists and politicians, disowned by her father, and expelled from her family and clan -- she refuses to be silenced. Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali's story tells how a bright little girl evolved out of dutiful obedience to become an outspoken, pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious pressures, no story could be timelier or more significant.

Here is the first panoptic history of the long struggle between the Christian West and Islam. In this dazzlingly written, acutely nuanced account, Andrew Wheatcroft tracks a deep fault line of animosity between civilizations. He begins with a stunning account of the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, then turns to the main zones of conflict: Spain, from which the descendants of the Moors were eventually expelled; the Middle East, where Crusaders and Muslims clashed for years; and the Balkans, where distant memories spurred atrocities even into the twentieth century. Throughout, Wheatcroft delves beneath stereotypes, looking incisively at how images, ideas, language, and technology (from the printing press to the Internet), as well as politics, religion, and conquest, have allowed each side to demonize the other, revive old grievances, and fuel across centuries a seemingly unquenchable enmity. Finally, Wheatcroft tells how this fraught history led to our present maelstrom. We cannot, he argues, come to terms with today’s perplexing animosities without confronting this dark past.

Set in Salé, Morocco—the hometown Abdellah Taïa fled but to which he returns again and again in his acclaimed fiction and films—Infidels follows the life of Jallal, the son of a prostitute witch doctor—"a woman who knew men, humanity, better than anyone. In sex. Beyond sex." As a ten-year-old sidekick to his mother, Jallal spits in the face of her enemies both real and imagined. The cast of characters that rush into their lives are unforgettable for their dreams of love and belonging that unravel in turn. Built as a series of monologues that are emotionally relentless—a mix of confession, heart's murmuring, and shouting match—the book follows Jallal out of boyhood on the path to Jihad. It's a path that surprises even him.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilisation is a precious good, whose delicate complex of order and freedom, culture and peace can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within. ~Will Durant, American historian Invaders and Infidels: From Sindh to Delhi: The 500-Year Journey of Islamic Invasions is a work of gripping history, which tells the story of the origins and trajectory of Islamic invasions into India. It begins with the first Muslim conquest and ends with Babur's invasion of Hindustan, spanning the period of the Delhi Sultanate which was in power for almost 320 years. This epochal story encompasses a vast sweep of events, which changed the history of India forever, and introduced it to an alien faith and a religious despotism such as the country had never experienced before. It comprises major and minor sagas of great heroism, untold savagery, stout resistance, brutal intrigues and epic tragedies. Embedded in this narrative are two major themes, largely overlooked in the inherited Indian historical and cultural memory. For more than three hundred years, alien Muslim invasions into India were largely fleeting, transitory and unstable. However, the lasting legacy of these Muslim invasions is the permanent destruction and disappearance of Classical India. Invaders and Infidels will fascinate anyone interested in the story of pre-Medieval India, a gateway era in the history of this ancient culture and civilisation.

Stella is a Saluki, a purebred Arabian Desert princess and somewhat of a diva. Much to her chagrin, she has fallen into the hands of a family of infidels and is forced to reside with them and their revolting common dog. She, on the other hand, dreams of a life amongst her fellow Bedouin canines, roaming the deserts and hunting for game. Stella spends her time plotting a regime change, passing her days in "captivity" by tormenting both the infidels who think they own her and their dog. This is the diary of a sleek canine princess, who documents her days with her "owners" and the methods she employs to torment them. The story takes place over a two-year period in the home of British ex-patriots living in Saudi Arabia. This clever novel will take you where you have never gone before. Living With Infidels: The Diary of a Saluki - A Hound's Tail is a story you will not soon forget. First-time author Karen Ibbotson was inspired to write this tale by the crazy antics of her dogs. Born in North Yorkshire, she currently lives in Saudi Arabia. Publisher's website: http: //www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/LivingWithInfidels-TheDiaryOfASaluki-AHoundsTail.html

Historian Eric R. Schlereth places religious conflict at the center of early American political culture. He shows ordinary Americans—both faithful believers and Christianity's staunchest critics—struggling with questions about the meaning of tolerance and the limits of religious freedom. In doing so, he casts new light on the ways Americans reconciled their varied religious beliefs with political change at a formative moment in the nation's cultural life. After the American Revolution, citizens of the new nation felt no guarantee that they would avoid the mire of religious and political conflict that had gripped much of Europe for three centuries. Debates thus erupted in the new United States about how or even if long-standing religious beliefs, institutions, and traditions could be accommodated within a new republican political order that encouraged suspicion of inherited traditions. Public life in the period included contentious arguments over the best way to ensure a compatible relationship between diverse religious beliefs and the nation's recent political developments. In the process, religion and politics in the early United States were remade to fit each other. From the 1770s onward, Americans created a political rather than legal boundary between acceptable and unacceptable religious expression, one defined in reference to infidelity. Conflicts occurred most commonly between deists and their opponents who perceived deists' anti-Christian opinions as increasingly influential in American culture and politics. Exploring these controversies, Schlereth explains how Americans navigated questions of religious truth and difference in an age of emerging religious liberty.

Criticism of the way in which Europeans have treated the inhabitants of the non-European world in the course of European expansion has a long history, Three centuries before Christopher Columbus encountered the American Indians, European intellectuals and clergymen had criticized the treatment of the peoples whom the crusaders and other Europeans met as they moved outward from the heartland of European civilization. The connection between the sixteenth-century Spanish writers who criticized the Spanish conquest of the Americas and medieval writers who criticized the behavior of Europeans toward the non-Europeans they encountered on their borders, is more familiar. Yet, their criticism referred back to medieval legal traditions and arguments about the rights of infidels in the face of European expansion. However, it is the increased recognition of the importance of this connection that has inspired much new research in the field of medieval canon law. The most important theorist of what we now call "race relations", in the Middle Ages, was Sinibaldo Fieschi, a distinguished canon-lawyer, who became Pope Innocent IV (1243-54), whose pontificate is the starting point of this study. As a working canon-lawyer and pope, Innocent's work provides an unusual insight into the whole development of Christian-infidel relations, for his work covers those who lived within Christian Europe, those who were recent converts to Christianity, and those who lived beyond the bounds of Christendom. As pope he initiated the Mongol mission, the first attempt to deal with the Mongol threat to Eastern Europe on a diplomatic level, and to convert the Mongols to Christianity. As a lawyer he was also the author of a commentary on the nature of a just war that became the basis for all future discussion of the rights of infidels who lived in the path of European expansion. A wide knowledge of both legal theory and papal practice blended in a single career and it was this union of these two traditions that formed the intellectual background of Vitoria and Las Casas, and the eminent critics who followed them. This is the first complete study of this subject, based upon a careful analysis of papal and legal sources. Papal sources included letters found in papal registers, including the unpublished Vatican Register 62 which contains only letters dealing with the problems raised by infidel societies. The legal sources include commentaries on the basic texts of canon law that bear on the status of infidels, as well as legal opinions written to deal with specific problems involving Christian-infidel relations. Although directed to specialists and students of this period, this work, original in concept and exceptionally well-written, is sure to find a far wider audience. The whole subject is important, and topical too, in view of the current interest in racism and race relations, itself the subject of the author's Appendix.