Religion : Comparative Religion

This collected volume publishes the contributions of numerous scholars to the International Symposium Humor in Arabic Culture, by the editor in July 2007 at the Free University of Berlin. First of all, a critical view is taken of early Muslim religious writings – and against the background of relevant Jewish and Christian pronouncements – to determine more closely the Islamic discourse on the value and non-value of humor; here too the question is examined of the extent to which normative forces were thus released which were able to set boundaries for Arabic humor. Then the wide spectrum of the humorous in classical Arabic literature is reviewed and the common elements connecting the multifarious forms of its expression are revealed as a traditional Arabic understanding of humor. Finally, the papers discuss the way Arabic humor has changed with the onset of the modern age and globalization and examine the role of humor as a vehicle of social and political criticism in Arabic societies. more...

Price: $109.00

Hawting challenges the traditional view that Islam developed in opposition to idolatry in pre-Islamic Arabia arguing that Islam arose in opposition to other forms of monotheism. The author is adept at unravelling the complexities of his material, and readers will find the argument engaging and persuasive. more...

Price: $60.00

Imag(in)ing Otherness explores relationships between film and religion, aesthetics and ethics. The volume examines these relationships by viewing how otherness is imaged in film and how otherness alternately might be imagined. Drawing from a variety of films from differing religious perspectives--including Chan Buddhism, Hinduism, Native American religions, Christianity, and Judaism--the essays gathered in this volume examine the particular problems of "living together" when faced with the tensions brought out through the otherness of differing sexualities, ethnicities, genders, religions, cultures, and families. more...

Price: $47.25

After years as a Hollywood writer and filmmaker, Kristin Hahn felt a crisis of faith: she had no spiritual group she could call her own. Setting out on a three-year journey, she began an investigation of America's religious traditions, practices, and beliefs. Crisscrossing the nation, Hahn spent a week cloistered in prayer with convent nuns and a month of Ramadan fasting with Muslims. She went door-to-door with young Mormon missionaries and head-to-head with turbaned Sikh yogis. She sat through marathon meditations with Buddhist masters and spent days in conversation and ceremony with an 0jibwe medicine man. Her explorations exposed her to the rich, ancient culture of the Jews and brought her into the enclaves of Christian Scientists and Amish farmers, as well as the less traditional realms of Scientology, neopagan witchcraft, and the congregations of new-age gurus. And this was only the beginning. Openhearted, humorous, and always thoughtful, In Search of Grace offers nourishment for our spiritual hunger -- and a myriad of ways to find a religious home. more...

Price: $10.99

Analyzes the affinities and interactions between Indic and Judaic civilizations from ancient through contemporary times. This book proposes a global understanding of patterns of commerce and culture, to reconfigure how we understand the way great cultures interact, and to present a constellation of diplomacy, literature, and geopolitics. more...

Price: $69.95