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FiveBooks Interviews
Elizabeth Harris is a senior lecturer in Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University where she specialises in Buddhism. She says the Dalai Lama affirms that everyone likes happiness and not pain. He then stresses that this happiness must not infringe on the rights of others. And gradually he tells people what happiness really means – a happiness which is free from the craving for material things that Buddhism sees as the root of our suffering. Happiness, he says, can be about developing one’s own potential but it must have no conceit and pride about it. She chooses the best five books on Buddhism.
Margot Badran is a historian and gender studies specialist focusing on the Muslim world. She is a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Senior Fellow at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Christian-Muslim Understanding at Georgetown University.
British Lawyer Ahmad Thomson converted to Islam in 1973. He is a noted speaker on Islamic matters and an author of several books on the subject. Thomson is a member of the Murabitun movement, founded by Ian Dallas, and a member and co-founder of the Association of Muslim Lawyers. In 1994, he founded Wynne Chambers: one of the first chambers to specialise in Islamic law as well as English law. He has actively campaigned for elements of Muslim personal law to be accommodated by English civil law. He says a whole zone of knowledge about Islamic truth and its wisdom has been kept at bay, if you like, by established educational institutions in what’s called the West. He tries to redress the balance here.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1969. She sought political asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 in order to escape an arranged marriage. She became a member of the Dutch parliament and made a film with Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh that led to his assassination by a Muslim extremist in 2004. She is currently a fellow at the right –wing think tank American Enterprise Institute and head of the AHA Foundation (www.theahafoundation.org), a charity that helps protect and defend the rights of women in the West against militant Islam.
Ziauddin Sardar, writer, broadcaster and cultural critic, is considered a pioneering writer on the future of Islam. Author of over 45 books, including his widely acclaimed autobiographies, Desperately Seeking Paradise and Balti Britain. The Future of Muslim Civilisation (1979; 1985) and Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come (1985; 1991) are regarded as seminal, groundbreaking works. He is the editor of Futures, the prestigious monthly journal of policy, planning and futures studies. He talks about the importance of seeing the future as the domain of alternative possibilities, the future of Islam, and the influence of poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, ‘the first Muslim futurist’, on his thought.
Turi Munthe is CEO and founder of Demotix – www.demotix.com – the multiple-awardwinning open newswire, with over 3,000 reporters in 190 countries around the world. Turi is English-French-Swedish and was brought up in London. He has been a publisher, editor, think-tank analyst (Middle East policy), lecturer, journalist and talking head. He has written for many of the world’s leading English-language newspapers, appeared on CNN, BBC, NBC, al-Jazeera, Asahi. He edited The Saddam Hussein Reader: Selections from Leading Writers on Iraq.
Shazia Khan is a radio and TV reporter. She reports for the BBC World Service and Radio 4. Her background and training is in news but now she specialises in reporting on faith and culture. She has presented numerous documentaries on subjects such as women and beauty, sacred music and gay Muslims.
The Snowman is Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø’s fifth internationally acclaimed novel featuring Inspector Harry Hole to be translated into English. Winner of the Glass Key Award for best Nordic crime novel (an accolade shared with Henning Mankell and Stieg Larsson), Jo Nesbø’s books have been translated into 30 languages and he is regarded as one of Europe’s leading crime writers. Jo Nesbø played football for Norwegian team Molde and topped the charts in Norway with rock band Di Derre.
Social psychologist Shazia Omar is the author of Like a Diamond in the Sky, a novel about Bangladeshi addicts. Omar is a founding member of Writers Block, an organisation that aims to promote the works of Bangladeshis writing in English. Drug addiction, she says, is a growing problem here. Many people are taking a drug called yabba, which comes from Thailand and is similar to speed. ‘It’s an expensive drug so it’s the well-off young people who are doing it. A lot of those I met while researching the book didn’t realise they were going to get hooked. None of them knew how harmful it is,’ she says. Having spent a month doing research in a rehab centre in Mumbai, she concludes that love, and not a punitive approach, is the answer to overcoming addiction.
John Timoney moved to New York from Dublin in 1961. In the New York City Police Department he rose through the ranks to become the youngest four-star chief in the history of that department. Under Commissioner Bill Bratton, Timoney and the command staff implemented CompStat, leading to historic declines in crime. In 1998, Mayor Ed Rendell of Philadelphia hired Timoney as police commissioner and crime declined in every major category, especially homicide. A similar decrease marked Timoney’s tenure as police chief of Miami, from 2003 to January 2010. He is the recipient of over 67 Department medals, including the prestigious Medal of Valor, and he holds two masters degrees. He is also considered among the US’s highest authorities on terrorism.