You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Draws on the Bosnian situation to argue for a reconciliation between modernity and tradition.
An indictment of the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, formalized in 1995 by the Dayton Accord. The war in Bosnia divided and shook the country to its foundations, but the author argues it could become a model for European progress. The greatest danger for Bosnia is to be declared just another ethnoreligious entity, in this case a 'Muslim State' ghettoized inside Europe. The author examines why Western liberal democracies have regarded with sympathy the struggles of Serbia and Croatia for national recognition, while viewing Bosnia's multicultural society with suspicion.
The study compares three Bosnian authors with three European titans: The poet Mak Dizdar to Homer, the novelist Meša Selimović to Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the novelist Ivo Andrić to Leo Tolstoy. The purpose is to move the appreciation of the writing of the most important Bosnian writers of the 20th century closer to the European literary community and to the wholeness of the literary phenomenon. Secondary literature on the Bosnian authors is too narrow, focusing on their ethnic heritages and the Balkan milieu in which they write and missing something essential to a critical appreciation of their works. The study creates not only affinities but, more importantly, amitiés between the authors. The discipline of comparative literature reveals what is missing in the secondary literature, namely, a vision of the literary universe, inclusive and comprehensive.
King of the Castle examines closely many of the unquestioned assumptions by which we live our lives, comparing them with the beliefs that have shaped and guided human life in the past. It begins with a consideration of how secular societies attempt to possess their citizens, body and soul and how, as a consequence, the necessity of redefining human responsibility becomes an ever more urgent imperative. The book continues with a presentation of the traditional view of man as 'God's Viceroy on Earth', with an eye to its practical implications in a world that has all but forgotten, under the pressure of mass social persuasion, that man must always be free to choose his own ultimate destiny. The author's thesis is a passionate yet incisive plea for the restoration of the sacred norms of religion, as against the debilitating and falsifying aims of a profane world-view based on no more than recent scientific and technological achievements.
In our troubled world, protective hospitality is tragically necessary and requires informed shared action and belief on behalf of the threatened other. In Safeguarding the Stranger, Jayme R. Reaves argues that protective hospitality and its faith-based foundations, as seen in the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, merit greater theological attention. Reaves shows that the practice of protective hospitality in Christianity can be enhanced by a better understanding of Jewish and Muslim practices of hospitality, as well as of their codes and etiquettes related to honour. Safeguarding the Stranger draws on a contextual and political theological approach, informed by liberation and feminist theologies as viewed through the lens of a co-operative and complementary theological view, which is influenced by inter-religious, Abrahamic, and hospitable approaches to dialogue, forecasting the positive role that religions can play in resolving conflicts.
By looking through the prism of the West's involvement in the breakup of Yugoslavia, this book presents a new examination of the end of the Cold War in Europe. Incorporating declassified documents from the CIA, the administration of George H.W. Bush, and the British Foreign Office; evidence generated by The Hague Tribunal; and more than forty personal interviews with former diplomats and policy makers, Glaurdić exposes how the realist policies of the Western powers failed to prop up Yugoslavia's continuing existence as intended, and instead encouraged the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosević to pursue violent means.The book also sheds light on the dramatic clash of opinions within the Western alliance regarding how to respond to the crisis. Glaurdić traces the origins of this clash in the Western powers' different preferences regarding the roles of Germany, Eastern Europe, and foreign and security policy in the future of European integration. With subtlety and acute insight, "The Hour of Europe" provides a fresh understanding of events that continue to influence the shape of the post-Cold War Balkans and the whole of Europe.
These essays go to the roots of the religious/science impass.
This book provides a sociological account of the events in Bosnia in the 1990s, including ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and the role of political journalists. Drawing upon a diverse group of social theorists, including Merton, Weber, and Baudrillard, Sociology After Bosnia constructs a social understanding of the experiences of people in Bosnia and the response of Western leaders to these experiences. Beyond looking at the social causes of these events, Doubt sheds light on why Bosnia and Kosovo have largely been ignored by sociologists. He shows why the personal and social tragedies of people in Bosnia and Kosovo and the world's tolerance of these tragedies challenge contemporary sociological knowledge. Doubt argues that sociologists must be willing not only to recognize this challenge, but also to respond to it in order to construct meaningfully adequate accounts of war and genocide in a postmodern era. Doing so, he contends, may yield an important and needed reconsideration of the existing body of sociologicial knowledge and a revision of how this knowledge is applied.
Mahmutcehaji'c (former vice president of the Bosnia-Herzegovina government) first prepared this text as a lecture to be given at Stanford University in 1997, but he was unexpectedly denied a visa to enter the United States. The book is an indictment of the partition of Bosnia and a plea for Bosnia's communities to reject ethnic segregation and restore mutual trust. He argues that different religious and ethnic cultures have co-existed in Bosnia for centuries, and that the partitioning was made possible by Western complicity with Serbian and Croatian nationalists. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR
This rare and important contribution to the field of Islamic studies, philosophy, and comparative religion achieves a twofold objective. First, it draws from a broad and authoritative well of sources, especially in the domain of Sufism, or Islamic mysticism. The scholarship is impeccable. Second, it is an in-depth meditation on the relationship between love and knowledge, multiplicity and unity, the example of the Prophet Muhammed viewed as Universal Man, spiritual union, heart and intellect, and other related themes--conveyed in fresh, contemporary language.The book is as much a work of Sufism as it is a book about Sufism. Many of these themes have a universal appeal for students of mystici...