The untold story of how the Arabic Qur'an became the English KoranFor millions of Muslims, the Qur'an is sacred only in Arabic, the original Arabic in which it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century; to many Arab and non-Arab believers alike, the book literally defies translation. Yet English translations exist and are growing, in both number and importance. Bruce Lawrence tells the remarkable story of the ongoing str...

Over the course of his career, Bruce B. Lawrence has explored the central elements of Islamicate civilization and Muslim networks. This reader assembles more than two dozen of Lawrence's key writings, among them analyses of premodern and modern Islamic discourses, practices, and institutions and methodological reflections on the contextual study of religion. Six methodologies serve as the organizing rubric: theorizing Islam, revaluing Muslim comparativists, translating Sufism, deconstructi...

Discover the essence of the Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit and what it has contributed to societies across the agesIn Islamicate Cosmopolitan Spirit, author and expert, Bruce B. Lawrence, delivers a spiritual elan filtered through cultural practices and artefacts. Neither juridical nor creedal, the book expresses a desire for the just and the beautiful. The author sets out an original and fascinating theory, that Islamicate cosmopolitanism marks a new turn...

This vivid introduction to the heart of Islam offers a unique approach to understanding Allah, the central focus of Muslim religious expression. Drawing on history, culture, theology, politics, and the media, Bruce B. Lawrence identifies key religious practices by which Allah is revered and remembered, illuminating how the very name of Allah is interwoven into the everyday experience of millions of Muslims.For Muslims, as for adherents of other religions, intentions as well as prac...

A groundbreaking response to the challenges of interpreting Islamic religion in the post-9/11 and post-Orientalist eraRethinking Islamic Studies upends scholarly roadblocks in post-Orientalist discourse within contemporary Islamic studies and carves fresh inroads toward a robust new understanding of the discipline, one that includes religious studies and other politically infused fields of inquiry.Editors Carl W. Ernst and Richard C. Martin, along ...

Islam’s founding text, rendered for the first time in flowing English verse."This must be the most beautiful translation of the Qur'an ever, being the first attempt to produce a verse rendition of the final divine revelation to humankind. It is both impressively poetic and accurate. It also includes an elaborate introduction, furnishing insightful background to the Islamic Holy Book."― Dr. Ahmad Elezabi, Director General, Al-Azhar Center for Transla...

Islam’s founding text, rendered for the first time in flowing English verse.This monumental feat of translation, the product of a ten-year-long collaboration between one of our most respected scholars of Islam (Bruce B. Lawrence) and a poet and scholar of literature (M. A. R. Habib), The Qur'an: A Verse Translation offers readers the first rendering in English to echo, in accessible and fluent verse, the sonorous beauty of the Arabic original as well as th...

The author of the bestselling biographies The Lives of John Lennon and Elvis explores the tumultuous life of one of the most controversial comics who ever lived. Lenny Bruce's life is reconstructed in dazzling sequences that capture his genius in the same lingo and rhythm, shtick comedy and junkie surrealism that characterized his imagination.

More than one hundred books have been written about T.E. Lawrence which explore the man and his deeds. Just about every aspect and the many incarnations of his life, his campaigns, the geo-politics of the Arab world, and the influence of the West in it, as Lawrence experienced them, have been examined.However, nobody has gone in search of the mind of the man himself – of his formation and his deep beliefs. Nobody has asked the question, What, really, is the source of the extraordin...

People’s Peace lays a solid foundation for the argument that global peace is possible because ordinary people are its architects. Saikia and Haines offer a unique and imaginative perspective on people’s daily lives across the world as they struggle to create peace despite escalating political violence. The volume’s focus on local and ordinary efforts highlights peace as a lived experience that goes beyond national and international peace efforts. In addition, the contributors’ emp...

A "timely and provocative" biography of Islam's foundational text: "The history of the book is a map of the world we live in today" ( Tribune-Review).Few books in history have been as poorly understood as the Qur'an. Sent down in a series of revelations to the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur'an is the unmediated word of Allah: a ritual, political, and legal authority; an ethical and spiritual guide; and a literary masterpiece that inspires devo...