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Each year, about two million pilgrims from over 100 countries converge on the Islamic holy city of Mecca for the hajj. While the hajj is first and foremost a religious festival, it is also very much a political event. No government can resist the temptation to manipulate the hajj for political and economic gain. Every large Muslim state has developed a comprehensive hajj policy and a powerful bureaucracy to enforce it. The Muslim world's leading multinational organization, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has established the first international regime explicitly devoted to pilgrimage. Yet, Robert Bianchi argues, no secular or religious authority - national or international - can really control the hajj. State-sponsored pilgrimage management consistently backfires, giving government opponents valuable ammunition and allowing them to manipulate the symbols and controversies of the hajj to their own ends. Bianchi has been researching the hajj for over ten years and draws on interviews with and data from hajj directors in five Muslim countries (Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, Indonesia, and Nigeria), statistics from Saudi Arabian hajj authorities, as well as his personal experience as a pilgrim. The result is the most complete picture of the hajj available anywhere, and a wide-ranging work on Islam, politics, and power.

Multan, one of the oldest inhabited cities in the Asian subcontinent and the sixth largest within the boundaries of Pakistan, is a city in the Punjab Province of Pakistan and capital of Multan District. A very complex place, where the process of constant stratification have left many signs on the urban texture. Here the different issues and problems involved, often with no easy solutions, face with the ethical responsibility and cure required from the historic and cultural heritage: how can we improve the urban quality and the living conditions of the inhabitants and at the same time preserve the unique identity of the places? These “Guidelines” try to face a challenge, testing new ways of project, starting from the specificities offered by the local culture and putting in place alternative practices of architecture.

Islamic Microfinance critically examines the performance of fifteen institutions and demonstrate how Islamic methods can efficiently satisfy the needs of some types of client but not all. It asks which types of products are affordable and beneficial, for which purposes and for whom.

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