Books by Karen Armstrong
“Whenever people who don’t really read ask me how to get a snapshot of Islam, I point them to Karen Armstrong’s book, because it’s a wonderful entry point and you could knock it out in a couple of weeks by dipping in and out. This is dense history, but she makes it very accessible. And yet it’s comprehensive in so many ways. At the front of the book there is a wonderful timeline, if you don’t read anything else, at least read that to get a sense of what happened and when!” Read more...
The best books on The Meaning of Ramadan
Tharik Hussain, Travel Writer
The Case for God
by Karen Armstrong
She says God is not an intellectual experience. But it is a human experience, to do with consciousness, an experience of being, not of having. She talks about the attempts of all the various religions to claim God for their own culture and often for their own gender: God is often phallocentric, and very elitist, and often rather elderly. And that is a grabbing hold of and a claiming of something that is only knowable through complete humility and not through acquiring, but rather letting go.
Interviews where books by Karen Armstrong were recommended
The best books on How To Be Happy, recommended by Anthony Seldon
The contemporary historian and educationalist Antony Seldon discusses his selection of books on how to be happy.
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1
Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources
by Martin Lings -
2
Mumbai To Mecca: A Pilgrimage to the Holy Sites of Islam
by Ilija Trojanow, translated by Rebecca Morrison -
3
Mecca: The Sacred City
by Ziauddin Sardar -
4
Islam: A Short History
by Karen Armstrong -
5
Islamic Mystical Poetry
ed. Mahmood Jamal
The best books on The Meaning of Ramadan, recommended by Tharik Hussain
The best books on The Meaning of Ramadan, recommended by Tharik Hussain
During Ramadan, the ninth month in the Islamic calendar, Muslims fast during daylight hours and refrain from sinful behaviours. We asked Tharik Hussain, author of acclaimed travelogue Minarets in the Mountains and the new companion guide Ramadan Mubarak, to choose five texts that offer readers insight into the true meaning of Ramadan.
The best books on The Middle East, recommended by Fawaz A. Gerges
The Middle East has been and still is much misunderstood. Here Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor and Middle Eastern specialist at London School of Economics, recommends five pioneering works of history and social science that will help you to understand the evolution of the region’s society and politics.
