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"Once celebrated in the Western media as a shining example of a 'liberal' and 'tolerant' Islam, Indonesia since the end of the Soeharto regime (May 1998) has witnessed a variety of developments that bespeak a conservative turn in the country's Muslim politics. In this timely collection of original essays, Martin van Bruinessen, our most distinguished senior Western scholar of Indonesian Islam, and four leading Indonesian Muslim scholars explore and explain these developments. Each chapter examines recent trends from a strategic institutional perch: the Council of Indonesian Muslim scholars, the reformist Muhammadiyah, South Sulawesi's Committee for the Implementation of Islamic Shari'a, and ...
An in-depth study of the militant Islamic Laskar Jihad movement and its links to international Muslim networks and ideological debates. This analysis is grounded in extensive research and interviews with Salafi leaders and activists who supported jihad throughout the Moluccas.
The definition and understanding of "terrorism" is in a state of unprecedented evolution. No longer are acts of terrorism rare and far-flung. Following the horrendous attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. citizens have had their eyes opened to a new world where this nightmare stalks the daily news and is never far from consciousness. Attacking Terrorism brings together some of the world's finest experts, people who have made the study of this rising menace their life's work, to provide a comprehensive picture of the challenges and opportunities of the campaign against international terrorism. Part one, "The Nature of Terrorism," provides an overview and foundation for the ...
Combating Terrorism describes the efforts made by the government of Saudi Arabia to combat terrorism with specific reference to the innovative three-pronged Saudi strategy that has been successfully implemented in the Saudi Arabia Kingdom. Asseri traces the problems around defining terrorism, highlighting the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter, and goes on to a functional definition. He also discusses terrorism in practice and highlights its purposes and goals, defines it in its historical perspective, and concludes with terrorism practiced in the name of religion. The Islamic perspective on terrorism is examined, and Combating Terrorism outlines the abhorrence that Islam h...
Narrative Intelligence (NI) — the confluence of narrative, Artificial Intelligence, and media studies — studies, models, and supports the human use of narrative to understand the world. This volume brings together established work and founding documents in Narrative Intelligence to form a common reference point for NI researchers, providing perspectives from computational linguistics, agent research, psychology, ethology, art, and media theory. It describes artificial agents with narratively structured behavior, agents that take part in stories and tours, systems that automatically generate stories, dramas, and documentaries, and systems that support people telling their own stories. It looks at how people use stories, the features of narrative that play a role in how people understand the world, and how human narrative ability may have evolved. It addresses meta-issues in NI: the history of the field, the stories AI researchers tell about their research, and the effects those stories have on the things they discover. (Series B)
This comprehensive reader seeks to equip the aspiring student, based anywhere in the world, with a comprehensive introduction to the study of terrorism.
Terrorism is a persistent form of political violence, but it appears intermittently, afflicting certain places in certain eras while others remain unscathed. Since the late nineteenth century, it has risen and fallen in recurrent generation-long spasms in which hundreds of short-lived groups wreak havoc. Why have past outbreaks of terror tended to come in waves, and how does this pattern shed light on future threats? David C. Rapoport, a preeminent scholar of political violence, identifies and analyzes four distinct waves of global terrorism. He examines the dynamics of each wave, contrasting their tactics, targets, and goals and placing them in the context of the much longer history of terr...
Exegesis of Chapters 70 to 77 of the Holy Qur'an by Allamah Tabataba'i The English volumes 39 and 40 are translations of the Arabic volume 20 of al-Mīzān, which covers the last 45 sūrahs of the Qur'an (70-114). These are the shortest chapters of the Qur'an, which were predominantly revealed in the early years of the Prophet's mission in Mecca. The chapters have been used, from the time of the Prophet up to our age, to introduce the beginners to the Book of God. The brevity and rhyme of the verses make them easy to remember, which is an excellent way of developing a personal relationship with the Qur'an. Here we shall present a few tips and guidelines on how a lay reader can engage with al-Mīzān specifically, and with the Qur'an more generally.