“A curious, often amusing travelogue of [Sardar’s] quest for understanding and the Muslims he has encountered along his journeys.”—Publishers Weekly Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals in Britain, learned the Koran at his mother’s knee in Pakistan. As a young student in London he set out to grasp the meaning of his religion, and, hopefully, to find “paradise,” his quest leading him throughout the Muslim world, from Iran to China to Turkey. Along the way he accepts that he may never reach paradise—but it’s the journey that’s important. At a time when the view of Islam in the West is so often distorted and simplistic, Desperately Seeking Paradise—self-mocking, frank and passionate—is essential reading. “Intoxicating . . . upon finishing the book, I turned back and started reading it all over again.”—Kamila Shamise, New Statesman “At once and earnest and humorous, light-hearted and profound, this is a book that displays a sustained capacity for self-questioning of a kind that has few parallels in the liberal West.”—The Independent “This challenging book not only acts as a guide for Muslims but provides insight and clarification for those outside the Islamic faith.”—Financial Times “The only funny book I’ve read about Islam.”—Mail on Sunday

In this book, Mark Sedgwick shows that Western Sufism is not a recent phenomenon of the "new age" but rather is rooted in a series of intercultural transfers between the Muslim world and the West starting in the Middle Ages, and in centuries of later Western intellectual history.

Eric Walberg's new book From Postmodernism to Postsecularism: Re-emerging Islamic Civilization provides an overview of imperialism and colonialism in the Muslim world. It elaborates on the third of the Great Games addressed in his earlier work, Postmodern Imperialism, which traced the movement of history from the colonialism of the British and other empires, through the neocolonialism of the US empire, to the current Great Game marked by the revival of Islam. Walberg reviews the Islamic reform traditions from the 19th century on (deriving from Al-Afghani, Qutb) incorporating the Islamic critique of the West as well as the Sunni/ Shia, mainstream/ Sufi/ Salafi divisions. Then he addresses the twentieth century experience of Islamic states (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran), as well as the current dynamics of the Muslim world (Saudi, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and now Egypt/ Tunisia/ Libya). Key actors and milestones in the struggle to free the Muslim world from the imperial yoke are discussed. While the Christian/Judaic surrender to capitalism led to Marxist secularism and the communist utopia, Walberg views the Islamic project as containing an alternative socio-economic orientation. This prevented the rise of capitalism/ imperialism in lands populated by Muslims, making them the losers in the technology race of the 19th-20th centuries, but the repository of a corrected vision of the rich lost values of the earlier monotheistic traditions. Here modernity and postmodernism are critiqued from both left and right, and Islam is discussed as both an alternative worldview and world order. However the contradictions of the Arab Spring may be resolved as the West continues its decline, Walberg projects how the understandings entrenched in Islamic civilization point toward a new-old civilizational alternative, one not derivative from the West, but indigenous to the developing world still under its heel.

'Islam in Europe' and 'Islamophobia' are subjects of vital global importance which currently preoccupy policy-makers and academics alike. Through the examination of various European Muslim groups and institutions that have branched off from Islamic movements - including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb ut-Tahrir and Jama'at-i Islami - this book outlines the configuration of social, political and religious processes that have given rise to new kinds of European Muslim organisations. The authors offer a new perspective on these Muslim groups and seek to reclaim them from the often highly-charged public debates by placing them within the context of their origins as politicised religious movements on the one hand and their ongoing incorporation into European societal structures on the other. They also consider the relationship of these organisations to their 'parent' movements and examine the presence of Islam in European education and higher education institutions. Taking into account the connection between Islamic movements and the perceived surge of 'Islamophobia' in Europe, this book does not debate the question of whether these groups fit into normative or cultural structures of European nation-states, but rather examines how these structures have changed through their interaction with these groups and the growing Muslim population within Europe. It does not consider political Islam as the antithesis to a refined notion of secularism, but as a form of public religion which contributes to the ever-changing structure of Europe's secular regimes. Featuring the work of more than 40 scholars from around the world, this is the comprehensive guide to Islamic movements in Europe, offering original, definitive perspectives on Muslims and Islam in Europe today. It will be essential reading for policy-makers, political commentators and scholars alike.

In secular Europe the veracity of modern science is almost always taken for granted. Whether they think of the evolutionary proofs of Darwin or of spectacular investigation into the boundaries of physics conducted by CERN's Large Hadron Collider, most people assume that scientific enquiry goes to the heart of fundamental truths about the universe. Yet elsewhere, science is under siege. In the USA, Christian fundamentalists contest whether evolution should be taught in schools at all. And in Muslim countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Pakistan and Malaysia, a mere 15 per cent of those recently surveyed believed Darwin's theory to be 'true' or 'probably true'. This thoughtful and passionately argued book contends absolutely to the contrary: not only that evolutionary theory does not contradict core Muslim beliefs, but that many scholars, from Islam's golden age to the present, adopted a worldview that accepted evolution as a given. Guessoum suggests that the Islamic world, just like the Christian, needs to take scientific questions - 'quantum questions' - with the utmost seriousness if it is to recover its true heritage and integrity. In its application of a specifically Muslim perspective to important topics like cosmology, divine action and evolution, the book makes a vital contribution to debate in the disputed field of 'science and religion'.

Sardar travels to Asian communities throughout the UK to tell the history of Asians in Britain - from the arrival of the first Indian in 1614, to the young extremists in Walthamstow mosque in 2006. He interweaves throughout an illuminating account of his own life, describing his carefree childhood in Pakistan, his family's emigration to racist 1950s Britain, and his adulthood straddling two cultures. Along the way he asks: are arranged marriages a good thing? Does the term 'Asian' obscure more than it conveys? Do vindaloo and balti actually exist? And is multiculturalism an impossible dream?

Trouble In Paradise by Lisa Harris released on Apr 22, 1994 is available now for purchase.