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The Algerian Islamist Abdullah Anas, 'perhaps the greatest warrior of the Afghan Arabs', fought the Soviet Union for a decade. As one of the earliest Arabs to join the Afghan jihad, he counted as brothers-in-arms the future icons of Al-Qaeda's global war, from Abdullah Azzam to Osama bin Laden to Omar Abdel-Rahman, and befriended key Afghan jihadi figures such as Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjshir. To the Mountains is an intimate portrait of this brutal war, tracing Anas's involvement in the conflict, as well as his experiences of the Algerian civil war (1992-8) and his sojourn in 'Londonistan'. Brushing shoulders with everyone from Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi to Jala...
In 1969, several young men met on a rainy night in Kabul to form an Islamist student group. Their aim was laid out in a simple typewritten statement: to halt the spread of Soviet and American influence in Afghanistan. They went on to change the world. Night Letters tells the extraordinary story of the group's most notorious member, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, and the guerrilla organzation he came to lead, Hizb-e Islami. By the late 1980s, tens of thousands were drawn to Hekmatyar's vision of a radical Islamic state that would sow unrest from Kashmir to Jerusalem. His doctrine of violent global jihad culminated in 9/11 and the birth of ISIS, yet he never achieved his dream of ruling Afghanistan. The...
Traces Abdallah Azzam's path from a West Bank village to the battlefields of Afghanistan and explains why jihadism went global.
A former senior mujahidin fighter teams up with an ex-counter terrorism analyst in this remarkable account from the frontlines of the jihad
With the impressive emergence of Islamic finance as a branch of Islamic economics, the need for a solid knowledge base that encompasses theories, thoughts and applications related to the subject increased in importance. However, writing about Islamic economics is a great challenge due to the differences in opinion on many of its issues. This includes methodologies for determining the Islamic perspective on economic concepts and issues as well as applicable solutions for today’s economic and social problems. It is further argued that Islamic economics topics are not as clear as those in conventional economics as they have their own religious, spiritual and social dimensions. The points of c...
Full text of the translated book written by Sheikh Abdullah Azzam about Jihad. It was the inspiration for many Muslims around the world to go and fight in Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Afghanistan.
In 1105, six years after the first crusaders from Europe conquered Jerusalem, a Damascene Muslim jurisprudent named ’Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) publicly dictated an extended call to the military jihad (holy war) against the European invaders. Entitled Kitab al-Jihad (The Book of the Jihad), al-Sulami’s work both summoned his Muslim brethren to the jihad and instructed them in the manner in which it ought to be conducted, covering topics as diverse as who should fight and be fought, treatment of prisoners and plunder, and the need for participants to fight their own inner sinfulness before turning their efforts against the enemy. Al-Sulami’s text is vital for a complete understan...
An intimate, deeply reported account of the women who made a shocking decision: to leave their comfortable lives behind and join the Islamic State. In early 2014, the Islamic State clinched its control of Raqqa in Syria. Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, urged Muslims around the world to come join the caliphate. Having witnessed the brutal oppression of the Assad regime in Syria, and being moved to fight for justice, thousands of men and women heeded his call. At the heart of this story is a cast of unforgettable young women who responded. They include Emma, from Germany; Sharmeena, from Bethnal Green, London; and Nour, from Tunis. These were women — some still in school — from urban familie...
Islamic Thought is a fresh and contemporary introduction to the philosophies and doctrines of Islam. Abdullah Saeed, a distinguished Muslim scholar, traces the development of religious knowledge in Islam, from the pre-modern to the modern period. The book focuses on Muslim thought, as well as the development, production and transmission of religious knowledge, and the trends, schools and movements that have contributed to the production of this knowledge. Key topics in Islamic culture are explored, including the development of the Islamic intellectual tradition, the two foundation texts, the Qur’an and Hadith, legal thought, theological thought, mystical thought, Islamic Art, philosophical thought, political thought, and renewal, reform and rethinking today. Through this rich and varied discussion, Saeed presents a fascinating depiction of how Islam was lived in the past and how its adherents practise it in the present. Islamic Thought is essential reading for students beginning the study of Islam but will also interest anyone seeking to learn more about one of the world’s great religions.
This book studies the legal reasoning of Mālik ibn Anas (d. 179 H./795 C.E.) in the Muwaṭṭa’ and Mudawwana. Although focusing on Mālik, the book presents a broad comparative study of legal reasoning in the first three centuries of Islam. It reexamines the role of considered opinion (ra’y), dissent, and legal ḥadīths and challenges the paradigm that Muslim jurists ultimately concurred on a “four-source” (Qurʾān, sunna, consensus, and analogy) theory of law. Instead, Mālik and Medina emphasizes that the four Sunnī schools of law (madhāhib) emerged during the formative period as distinctive, consistent, yet largely unspoken legal methodologies and persistently maintained their independence and continuity over the next millennium.