WHAT:  Study circle on 5 books relating to Islam
WHO:  Facilitated by Eveyln Cloud, M.A. in Near Eastern Studies, University of Washington
WHEN:  October 23 & 30 and November 6 & 12, 2006, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
WHERE:  Mandolin Café, 3923 South 12th St., Tacoma, WA

[Flyer text]

United for Peace of Pierce County Study Circle: October 23 & 30 and November 6 & 13, 2006

DIGGING DEEPER XXV: ISLAM

On the last two Monday evenings in October and the first two Monday evenings in November, Digging Deeper will examine five recent volumes discussing Islam and the role it is playing in the contemporary world. At a time when many in the West are embracing the notion of a two-generation struggle with radical Islam, the importance of the subject should be indisputable.

—Reza Aslan, No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (Random House, 2005; paperback, 2006). “In No god but God, Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed scholar of religions, explains this faith in all its beauty and complexity. Beginning with a vivid account of the social and religious milieu in which the Prophet Muhammad forged his message, Aslan paints a portrait of the first Muslim community as a radical experiment in religious pluralism and social egalitarianism. He demonstrates how, after the Prophet’s death, his successors attempted to interpret his message for future generations. . . . Finally, Aslan examines how, in the shadow of European colonialism, Muslims developed conflicting strategies to reconcile traditional Islamic values with the realities of the modern world, thus launching what Aslan terms the Islamic Revolution.”

—John L. Esposito, Islam: The Straight Path, revised third edition updated with a new epilogue (Oxford University Press, 2005; 1st ed., 1988). “This exceptionally successful survey text introduces the faith, belief, and practice of Islam from its earliest origins up to its contemporary resurgence. Esposito, an internationally renowned expert on Islam, traces the development of this dynamic faith and its impact on world history and politics, discussing the formation of Islamic belief and practice and chronicling the struggle of Muslims to define and adhere to their Islamic way of life. Lucidly written and expansive in scope . . . This updated version of Islam: The Straight Path includes a new epilogue by John Esposito in which he addresses the impact [of] 9/11 and its aftermath . . .”

—Saleemah Abdul Ghafur, Living Islam Out Loud: American Muslim Women Speak (Boston: Beacon Press, 2005). “Living Islam Out Loud presents the first generation of American Muslim women who have always identified as both American and Muslim. These pioneers have forged new identities for themselves and for future generations, and they speak out about the hijab, relationships, sex and sexuality, activism, spirituality, and much more. . . . Saleemah Abdul-Ghafur was chief executive of Azizah, a magazine for Muslim women.”

—Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (Three Leaves Press/Doubleday, 2004; paperback 2005). “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim is a necessary corrective to the hubris and willed amnesia of Cold Warriors who acted as handmaidens for radical Islamist jihadis. The harmful unintended consequence of the anti-Soviet Cold War on the Arab-Islamic world and the West have never been fully appraised until now.” —Washington Post.

—Irshad Manji, The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith (St. Martin’s Press, 2003). “In blunt, provocative, and deeply personal terms, Irshad Manji unearths the troubling cornerstones of mainstream Islam today: tribal insularity, deep-seated anti-Semitism, and an uncritical acceptance of the Koran as the final, and therefore superior, manifesto of God. .—.—. Manji offers a practical vision of how the United States and its allies can help Muslims undertake a reformation that empowers women, promotes respect for religious minorities, and fosters a competition of ideas.”

***

Since July 2004, United for Peace of Pierce County (www.ufppc.org) has been conducting “Digging Deeper,” a Monday-night book discussion group, often in the form of a study circle. Topics have included peak oil, climate change, the corporation, Iran, and the writings of Robert Baer, as well as abiding themes of war, peace, politics, and social change. Occasionally, the group has spent several weeks reading longer works, like Daniel Yergin’s The Prize or Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilisation.

DIGGING DEEPER meets every Monday from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Mandolin Café, 3923 S. 12th St., Tacoma, WA.

Participation is free. These volumes are available in most bookstores. Information: contact Mark Jensen (jensenmk@plu.edu; 253-756-7519).

Regular meetings of United for Peace of Pierce County are held at 7:00 p.m. on 1st and 3rd Thursdays at First Congregational Church, 209 South “J” St., Tacoma, WA.

10/9/06

***

--"Digging Deeper" has considered the following 94 books bearing on matters related to UFPPC’s mission statement: "We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy": Kevin Phillips, American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (Viking, 2004); Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties (Scribner, 2004); Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (Simon and Schuster, 2004); Evan Wright, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War (Putnam, 2004); Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies (Free Press, 2004); David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Interlink, 2004); James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (Viking, 2004); Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America's Military (Norton, 2003); Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (Metropolitan Books, 2004); Joel Bakan, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (Free Press, 2004); Catherine Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American Twentieth Century (Beacon, 2001); Robert McChesney, The Problem of the Media: US Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2004); Peter Dale Scott, Drugs, Oil, and War: The United States in Afghanistan, Columbia, and Indochina (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); Rahul Mahajan, Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond (Seven Stories Press, 2003); Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Brassey's, 2004); Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (Simon & Schuster, 1991); Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Metropolitan Books, 2004); Ross Gelbspan, Boiling Point: How Politicians, Big Oil and Coal, Journalists and Activists Are Fueling the Climate Crisis — and What We Can Do to Avert Disaster (Basic Books, 2004); Thom Hartmann, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Waking Up to Personal and Global Transformation (Three Rivers Press, 1999); Richard Heinberg, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, 2003); Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (Princeton UP, 2001); Amory Lovins et al., Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profit, Jobs, and Security (Rocky Mountain Institute, 2005); Mark Lynas, High Tide: The Truth about Our Climate Crisis (Picador, 2004); Brian M. Fagan, The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization (Basic Books, 2004); Patrick J. Michaels, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media (Cato Institute, 2004); Richard B. Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine: Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future (Princeton University Press, 2002); T.E. Graedel and Paul J. Crutzen, Atmospheric Change: An Earth System Perspective (W.H. Freeman, 1992); Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Harvard University Press, 2003); Douglas V. Hoyt & Kenneth H. Schatten, The Role of the Sun in Climate Change (Oxford University Press, 1997); Jim Wallis, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005); Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Viking, 2004); Ted Nace, Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Berret-Koehler, 2001); P.W. Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003); Roland Marchand, Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business (University of California Press, 1998); Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (Back Bay Books, 2000); Elizabeth A. Fones-Wolf, The Selling of Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960 (University of Illinois Press, 1994); David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd ed., (Berret-Koehler, 2001); Elliott D. Sclar and Richard C. Leone, You Don’t Always Get What You Pay For: The Economics of Privatization (Cornell University Press, 2001); Ezra N. Suleiman, Dismantling Democratic States (Princeton University Press, 2003); Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador, 2002; orig. ed. 1999); John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Berrett-Koehler, 2004); Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (Broadway Books, 2002); Paul Roberts, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World (Houghton Mifflin, 2004); Arundhati Roy, An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (South End Press, 2004); Lester R. Brown, Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (W.W. Norton, 2005); Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2005); Ron Hira & Anil Hira, Outsourcing America: What's Behind Our National Crisis And How We Can Reclaim American Jobs (AMOCOM, 2005); Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (University of Chicago Press, 2003); Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America in the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002; paperback edition by Perennial, 2005); Geraldine Brooks, Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women (Anchor, 1995); Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: How to Reverse America’s Suicidal Consumer Binge — And Why We Must (Perennial, 2000); Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe (Chelsea Green, 2004; orig. ed. 2002); Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma (Penguin, 2005); Robert Pape, Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005); Matthew R. Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Wiley, 2005); Andrew Gumbel, Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America (Nation Books, 2005); George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate—The Essential Guide for Progressives (Chelsea Green, 2004; orig. ed. 2002); V.S. Ramachandran, A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness: From Impostor Poodles to Purple Numbers (Pi Press, 2004); William Engdahl, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, revised ed. (Pluto Press, 2004); Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (Anchor, 2002); Chris Hedges, Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America (Free Press, 2005); Richard Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (Columbia University Press, 2004); Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong: The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (Harper Perennial, orig. ed. 2001); George Packer, The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005); Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 1979); Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East (Knopf, 2005), Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis (Simon & Schuster, 2006), Anatol Lieven, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (Oxford University Press paperback, 2005; orig. ed. 2004), Cornel West, Democracy Matters (Penguin, 2004), Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books 2004), Kevin Phillips, American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (Viking, 2006); Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2003); Afshin Molavi, The Soul of Iran: A Nation’s Journey to Freedom (W.W. Norton, 2005); Stephen Kinzer, All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (John Wiley, 2003); David Harris, The Crisis: The President, the Prophet, and the Shah—1979 and the Coming of Radical Islam (Little Brown, 2004); Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Harvard University Press, 2004); Christopher de Ballaigue, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs: A Memoir of Iran (HarperCollins, 2004); Nasrin Alavi, We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs (Soft Skull Press, 2005); Sandra Mackey, The Iranians: Persia, Islam, and the Soul of a Nation (Dutton, 1996); Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (Simon and Schuster, 1985); Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Random House, 2003); Kenneth M. Pollack, The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict between Iran and America (Little Brown, 2004); Kenneth R. Timmerman, Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran (Crown Forum, 2005); Michael Byers, War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict (Grove Press, 2006); Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (Metropolitan Books, 2006); Robert Jay Lifton, Richard Falk, and Irene Gendzier, eds., Crimes of War: Iraq (Nation Books, 2006 paperback); Robert Baer, See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA’s War on Terrorism (Three Rivers Press, 2002; paperback 2003); Robert Baer, Sleeping with the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude (Three Rivers Press, 2003; paperback 2004); Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Simon and Schuster, 1996; paperback 2002); Michael R. Gordon and General Bernard E. Trainor, Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (Pantheon, 2006); Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (Penguin Press, 2006); Peter W. Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without End (Simon and Schuster, 2006); Scott Ritter, Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Nation Books, 2005); Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2006); Noam Chomsky, Hegemony and Survial: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Metropolitan/Owl, 2004 [paperback]; orig. ed. 2003); Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006).