San Antonio College Library

Simon Murden investigates how Muslim societies in the Middle East are being affected by globalized politics and economics and how they are adapting to it. Murden describes how a Western-designed set of economic and political norms, institutions and regimes has come to be a hegemonic system. His focus is on the encounter between the Islamic vision of society, with its emphasis on community and social control, and the Western liberal vision of economic...

The Middle East has changed clearly, substantially, and dramatically during the last decade. Yet scholarly and public understanding lags far behind these events. This book explains why the previous era came to end, giving an historical and political summation of the region. Three interlinked themes are crucial to the book. First, a reinterpretation of the era of upheaval the Middle East has just passed through. During that period, many Arabs believed...

Anti-Semitism, or hostility to Jews, has pervaded many parts of the world to varying degrees for centuries. When attacks on Jews turned violent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some Jews formed a movement, known as Zionism, to create a separate homeland for the Jewish people. After the Holocaust resulted in the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II (1939-45), Zionists founded the state of Israel in the Middle East in 1948. Many nations,...

"R. Stephen Humphreys's new book presents a much-needed and thoughtful analysis of Islam's place in today's Middle East. In clear, accessible language, he examines both the medieval and modern history of the region to show the interweaving of the sacred and secular in its political and intellectual life." "Between Memory and Desire reminds us how Middle Easterners remember the past: the colonial era as a time of shame, the post-independence period...

"Jubin M. Goodarzi provides us with the first in-depth study on the Syrian-Iranian nexus which traces the origins and development of the strategic partnership between Damascus and Tehran from 1979 until the present. He argues that contrary to prevailing views (due in large part to the authoritarian and unpopular nature of the Syrian and Iranian regimes), the alliance between them was conceived as essentially defensive in nature. He puts forth an empirical...

The Middle East is frequently portrayed as a collection of stubbornly authoritarian states, whose behaviour can only be changed by the table-thumping or even the military intervention of the US government. But as Jeremy Jones uncovers in this fascinating book, the region is in fact engaged in a profound and tumultuous process of political change. The movements seeking democracy and reform that have emerged are rooted in local cultures and political...

This revised edition of the American Friends Service Committee's (AFSC) 1982 visionary work on the nature of the conflict and the requirements for a just and lasting peace through- out the Middle East is welcome indeed. It is a work of extraordinary integrity and clarity, of accurate and well-balanced research and incisive analysis, and it is solidly grounded in the needs, aspirations, and interests of the human beings of the region (rather than in...