Ali Dashti liked to claim, in a somewhat self-deprecating manner, that he was “really only a politician who just happen[ed] to have filled some pages with myths and fantasies on the side.” He was being too modest since over the years he produced more than twenty unique books and hundreds of articles, op-ed pieces, and essays. Also, as a journalist, he established the newspaper Red Dawn in which he voiced his opinions in a very candid and fearless manner. Ali Dashti’s political views carried enormous weight in Iran during the 1940s. His prestige was such that he enjoyed the trust of both the government and the elite of Iran. As an elected member of Parliament, and later a senator, he became involved in the sensitive political affairs of the Pahlavi era. Dashti’s works are considered unique for their wide-ranging insights, their perceptiveness, their expressions of his passion for social justice, and their classical clarity, qualities that mark Dashti as a pioneer in modern Iranian literature of such a style of writing. Jaadoo
Khayyam has been the subject of speculation on the part of literary critics ever since Edward Fitzgerald published his own version of the Rubaiyat in 1859. This edition represented the first opportunity to study in English the work of Khayyam by a Persian scholar. There is no conclusive evidence to prove which of the many quatrains attributed to Khayyam are authentic. Ali Dashti therefore constructs a likeness of the poet from references found in the works of writers of his day or immediately after, and from Khayyam’s own works on philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, of which the authenticity is not questioned. Khayyam emerges as a widely read and broad-minded scholar, immersed in his own studies, cautious and moderate, averse to committing himself on controversial questions. Using this portrait Dashti draws up a list of some hundred quatrains which are in keeping with Khayyam’s character. Selling point: An elegant and accurate translation which throws light on the nature of Khayyam’s religious and philosophical beliefs.
Days after Ali Dashti's graduation from Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Kuwait was invaded by Saddam Hussain's Army. Urged to volunteer as a civilian translator for US troops in Operation Desert Shield by the Kuwait Embassy, Ali soon found himself not only fighting on the frontlines, but also promoted to the rank of sergeant in the US Army. Written in a style that is open and honest, Sergeant Over One Week gives readers an up-close and true account of Desert Storm from the perspective of a Kuwaiti citizen and international student who volunteered to serve in the US Army.
Reza Shah Pahlavi introduced policies that altered the lives of Iranian women radically. For the first time, women entered into modern sectors of the economy, family laws were modified, the unveiling was enforced, and the government established public coeducational primary schools. The rapid development of women’s schools, in spite of bitter clerical objection, was one of the primary means for women’s awakening in this period. The mid-1930s also saw the opening of higher education to women and enrollment of over seventy female students in 1936–37 at the University of Tehran. Reflecting on this radical change in the infrastructure of Iran’s social scene, Ali Dashti wrote his collections of short stories and essays—Fetneh, Jadoo, Hindu, and Sayeh—in which he analyzed the attitudes of upper-class women caught between the traditional and modern Europeanized societies of Tehran. These books are testaments to the courage of Ali Dashti to document the situation in Iranian society so accurately. With his assertive voice, he underlined the short stories with the actual political and social changes in Iran. Dashti’s humanistic ideas and his regard and high expectations for the human race, especially for women, are beyond time and place. The quality debates on the subject of human rights and gender equality presented in his short stories, written about a century ago in Iran, are only recently surfacing in the Western world.
Truly original, The Day I Found Myself Living in My Book by young Kuwaiti author Yasmina Ali Dashti is an exciting brightly illustrated children's picture book for beginning and intermediate readers. For this nine-year-old writer, waking up in her absolute favorite, if lovingly tattered, book of classic fairytales means running as fast as she can, erasing a few doodles, and mending a torn page or two. The pajama-clad narrator knows she's in trouble when she finds herself alongside Goldilocks, Cinderella, two kids nibbling on a gingerbread house, a man scaling plaited tresses, and a cat with a plumed cap, but it isn't until someone recognizes her that she'll be obliged to restore what it is she's loved to make-believe.
Khayyam has been the subject of speculation on the part of literary critics ever since Edward Fitzgerald published his own version of the Rubaiyat in 1859. This edition represented the first opportunity to study in English the work of Khayyam by a Persian scholar. There is no conclusive evidence to prove which of the many quatrains attributed to Khayyam are authentic. Ali Dashti therefore constructs a likeness of the poet from references found in the works of writers of his day or immediately after, and from Khayyam’s own works on philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, of which the authenticity is not questioned. Khayyam emerges as a widely read and broad-minded scholar, immersed in his own studies, cautious and moderate, averse to committing himself on controversial questions. Using this portrait Dashti draws up a list of some hundred quatrains which are in keeping with Khayyam’s character. Selling point: An elegant and accurate translation which throws light on the nature of Khayyam’s religious and philosophical beliefs.
The advances made in women’s issues in the Gulf State of Kuwait during the last sixty years have been widely commented upon, but limited academic research has been published on their material effects. In 2005, Kuwaiti women received the right to both vote and to run in elections to Parliament—the first women in the conservative Arab Gulf bloc to do so. This book presents five remarkable women leaders in Kuwait, including one of the first elected Kuwaiti female Members of Parliament, an art advocate and museum founder, a national hero and oil industry leader, a university founder, and a current, controversial MP. In intimate conversations with the author, they share their thoughts on topics such as gender relations and equality, the current women’s rights movement, the role of religion in politics and education, and female leaders’ visibility and impact. Their different backgrounds, interpretations of Islam, and outlooks on the future of their country combine to embody the changes involving women’s issues in Kuwait that have occurred since the mid-twentieth century. Even as Muslim feminists’ critique creates new arenas in Islamic theology and stridently conservative forms of Islamism become increasingly visible in the public space, the material effects of the advances in women’s issues in Kuwait have received little academic attention until now. A book that both complicates and contributes to understandings of women, Islam, and social change, this important work will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies, women’s and gender studies, and Middle Eastern studies, as well as reformers throughout the region who continue to find inspiration in Kuwait’s “Blue Revolution.”
A number of innovative hermeneutical approaches emerged in Muslim exegetical discourse in the second half of the 20th century. Among these developments is a trend of systematic reform theology that emphasises a humanistic approach, whereby revelation is understood to be dependent not only upon its initiator, God, but also upon its recipient, Prophet Muhammad, who takes an active role in the process.Ali Akbar examines the works of four noted scholars of Islam: Fazlur Rahman (Pakistan), Abdolkarim Soroush (Iran), Muhammad Mujtahed Shabestari (Iran) and Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (Egypt). His study shows that the consequences of taking a humanistic approach to understanding revelation are not confined to the realm of speculation about God-human relations, but also to interpreting Qur'A nic socio-political precepts. And the four scholars emerge as a distinctive group of Muslim thinkers who open up a new horizon in contemporary Islamic discourse.
Reza Shah Pahlavi introduced policies that altered the lives of Iranian women radically. For the first time, women entered into modern sectors of the economy, family laws were modified, the unveiling was enforced, and the government established public coeducational primary schools. The rapid development of women’s schools, in spite of bitter clerical objection, was one of the primary means for women’s awakening in this period. The mid-1930s also saw the opening of higher education to women and enrollment of over seventy female students in 1936–37 at the University of Tehran. Reflecting on this radical change in the infrastructure of Iran’s social scene, Ali Dashti wrote his collections of short stories and essays—Fetneh, Jadoo, Hindu, and Sayeh—in which he analyzed the attitudes of upper-class women caught between the traditional and modern Europeanized societies of Tehran. These books are testaments to the courage of Ali Dashti to document the situation in Iranian society so accurately. With his assertive voice, he underlined the short stories with the actual political and social changes in Iran. Dashti’s humanistic ideas and his regard and high expectations for the human race, especially for women, are beyond time and place. The quality debates on the subject of human rights and gender equality presented in his short stories, written about a century ago in Iran, are only recently surfacing in the Western world.
This monumental study examines issues of anthropomorphism in the three Abrahamic Faiths, as viewed through the texts of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an. Throughout history Christianity and Judaism have tried to make sense of God. While juxtaposing the Islamic position against this, the author addresses the Judeo-Christian worldview and how each has chosen to framework its encounter with God, to what extent this has been the result of actual scripture and to what extent the product of theological debate, or church decrees of later centuries and absorption of Hellenistic philosophy. Shah also examines Islam’s heavily anti-anthropomorphic stance and Islamic theological discourse on Tawhid as well as the Ninety-Nine Names of God and what these have meant in relation to Muslim understanding of God and His attributes. Describing how these became the touchstone of Muslim discourse with Judaism and Christianity he critiques theological statements and perspectives that came to dilute if not counter strict monotheism. As secularism debates whether God is dead, the issue of anthropomorphism has become of immense importance. The quest for God, especially in this day and age, is partly one of intellectual longing. To Shah, anthropomorphic concepts and corporeal depictions of the Divine are perhaps among the leading factors of modern atheism. As such he ultimately draws the conclusion that the postmodern longing for God will not be quenched by pre-modern anthropomorphic and corporeal concepts of the Divine which have simply brought God down to this cosmos, with a precise historical function and a specified location, reducing the intellectual and spiritual force of what God is and represents, causing the soul to detract from a sense of the sacred and thereby belief in Him.
This book examines and contextualizes Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad Ghazzālī’s (d. 505/1111) fierce response to antinomian and freethinking currents in twelfth-century Persia. Seyed-Gohrab offers a translation of Ghazzālī’s treatise on antinomians, and one of his religious rulings (fatwa) on the topic. Both were written after Ghazzālī’s intellectual crisis in 488/1095, when he voluntarily withdrew from his position as a Professor at the prestigious Niẓāmiyya College in Baghdad. He determined to live an ascetic life, devoting all his attention to God. In this period, Ghazzālī wrote his masterpieces in Arabic and Persian. Seyed-Gohrab shows that these two less-known works shed new light on the motivation for Ghazzālī's major works. The book depicts Ghazzālī’s Persian intellectual context, and the tumultuous political period in which a strong literary and Sufi antinomian trend emerged from the social periphery to become central to literary activities at the Saljuq court. The book also treats Ghazzālī’s Persian poetry, offering original insights into Ghazzālī’s contemporary, the celebrated polymath ʿUmar Khayyām (d. about 525/1131), whose transgressive quatrains are interpreted as a response to a suffocating religious context.
Drawing on debates from a multi-disciplinary perspective, this book examines what it means to offer a genuine sociological critique of religious faith, illiberalism and anti-secularism from a macro perspective. Arguing that as a discipline concerned with real issues in the social world, sociology should be at the forefront of any analysis of religious power and legitimacy, the author contends that much religious faith is fundamentally incompatible with any twenty-first-century society that seeks inclusive, utilitarian and humanistic principles as its goals. With an emphasis on sociology, the effects of organised religion’s overall decline in modern Western contexts are explored, while the troubling re-emergence or persistence of faith-based and other non-evidentiary perspectives is also discussed via debates around identity politics, postmodernism and multiculturalism. Through an analysis of the rise of irrational thinking in our politics and our entire social and cultural fabric, the book moves to conclude that religious beliefs and other forms of dogmatism are underpinned by powerful, influential and potentially dangerous ideological structures at various levels of society and that viable, secular alternatives to faith teachings ought to be nurtured in their place. A critique of religion that advances modern, secular humanistic thought, Truth Claims in a Post-Truth World will appeal to scholars of sociology, social theory and philosophy with interests in religion, political thought, ethics and civil society.
Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, acclaimed as the father of modern Persian short story, wrote this work. Sar o Tah-e Yak Karbas. to provide his fellow Iranians a memoir in story form of traditional Islamic life in Iran before westernization. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
This book provides comprehensive information on the geography, history, governmental structure, economy, cultural diversity, peoples, religion, and culture of Afghanistan. All books of the critically-acclaimed Cultures of the World� series ensure an immersive experience by offering vibrant photographs with descriptive nonfiction narratives, and interactive activities such as creating an authentic traditional dish from an easy-to-follow recipe. Copious maps and detailed timelines present the past and present of the country, while exploration of the art and architecture help your readers to understand why diversity is the spice of Life.
Kecia Ali delves into the many ways the Prophet’s life story has been told from the earliest days of Islam to the present, by both Muslims and non-Muslims. Emphasizing the major transformations since the nineteenth century, she shows that far from being mutually opposed, these various perspectives have become increasingly interdependent.
From the rise of constitutionalism during the rule of despotic Qajars, foreign invasions, the Pahlavi regimes' destructive politics, economic, cultural and social modernization efforts and the oil nationalization movement, to the Iranian Revolution, its high hopes, broken promises, repression and intolerance causing national discontent and another socio-political upheaval today, the history of modern Iran has been eventful, unstable and turbulent. In this textbook, Ali Rahnema draws on his experience teaching and researching on modern Iran to render one hundred years of modern Iranian politics and history into easy-to-follow episodic chapters. Step by step, and taking a chronological approach, students are given the core information, analysis, and critical assessment to understand the flow of contemporary Iranian history. This is a comprehensive and exhaustive guide for undergraduate and graduate level courses on modern Iranian history and politics. The textbook is complete with the following pedagogical features: * An initial chapter on how to study Iranian history and how to approach historiography * Images of key individuals discussed in each chapter * Text boxes throughout to highlight key episodes, concepts, and ideas *Three types of exam questions; factual and analytical, seminar, and discussion at the end of each chapter * Glossaries at the end of each chapter *A comprehensive timeline Topics covered include: party formations; the flourishing of the press; the expansion or reduction of political and civil rights; repression and human right abuses; foreign intervention and influence; obsessions over conspiracies; the influence of Western ideologies, the role of nationalism, cultural and historical Persian chauvinism; and Shi'i Islam and competing Shiisms.
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