Written in an accessible, journalistic style, 'Jihad in Paradise' focuses on Southeast Asia's struggle to deal with Islamic extremists and terrorism at the hands of Jemah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Southeast Asian arm.

In 1099, when the first crusaders arrived triumphant and bloody before the walls of Jerusalem, they carved out a Christian European presence in the Islamic world that remained for centuries, bolstered by subsequent waves of new crusades and pilgrimages. But how did medieval Muslims understand these events? What does an Islamic history of the Crusades look like? The answers may surprise you. In The Race for Paradise, we see medieval Muslims managing this new and long-lived Crusader threat not simply as victims or as victors, but as everything in-between, on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from Spain to Syria. This is not just a straightforward tale of warriors and kings clashing in the Holy Land - of military confrontations and enigmatic heroes such as the great sultan Saladin. What emerges is a more complicated story of border-crossers and turncoats; of embassies and merchants; of scholars and spies, all of them seeking to manage this new threat from the barbarian fringes of their ordered world. When seen from the perspective of medieval Muslims, the Crusades emerge as something altogether different from the high-flying rhetoric of the European chronicles: as a diplomatic chess-game to be mastered, a commercial opportunity to be seized, a cultural encounter shaping Muslim experiences of Europeans until the close of the Middle Ages - and, as so often happened, a political challenge to be exploited by ambitious rulers making canny use of the language of jihad.

Written in an accessible, journalistic style, Jihad in Paradise focuses on Southeast Asia's struggle to deal with Islamic extremists and terrorism at the hands of Jemah Islamiyah, al Qaeda's Southeast Asian arm. Although the book gives particular attention to Singapore's attempts to deal with these issues, the story extends into Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. All of these countries have significant Muslim populations, and recent violent events have affected the business environment, tourism, and the region's tradition of religious tolerance. The author draws on personal interviews with experts in the field as well as key political and religious figures in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, including Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Minister for Muslim Affairs Jaacoub Ibrahim, and expelled Muslim dissident Zulfikar Mohamad Sharif. Millard examines the Bali bombing, Malaysia's conservative Islamic party PAS, the Malaysian province of Kelantan which is a Muslim political hotbed, Abu Saayaf of the Philippines, and Fateha.com and the use of the Internet. He also provides a glimpse of how Singapore, the region's most developed nation, has engineered its society in order to impose a degree of racial and religious tolerance.

An autobiographical account of a journey into extremism

A finalist for World Magazine's Book of the Year! Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—"al-Andalus"—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden history by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate's conquest of Spain. Far from a land of religious tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise provides a desperately needed reassessment of medieval Spain. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its "multiculturalism" and "diversity," Fernández-Morera sets the historical record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.

Of the intellectual underpinnings of the more radical elements of contemporary Islam.

A breathtaking work of political reportage steeped in a deep understanding of the roots of Islamist terrorism. Western tourists are not always aware that the Maldives, a tiny island nation in the Indian Ocean, is a Muslim country, or that the Republic of Maldives is the non-Arab country with the world's highest number of foreign fighters per capita. Despite being considered a luxury tourist destination, the Maldives is in fact one of the most over-populated countries, devastated by poverty, social segregation, heroin, and criminality. Tourists living in one tiny bright enclave, the people in the vast darkness. All the wealth coming from tourism is concentrated in the hands of a few businessmen who collude with the despotic government. The Maldives is a fertile breeding ground for ISIS, which enlists more of its foreign fighters per capita from there than anywhere else. Francesca Borri spent time with them, and with their families and friends, all of whom are drivers, waiters, cleaners in tourist resorts. And she let them speak. As she writes, "While the rest of the world watched the Olympics, everyone here was watching the battle of Aleppo. And rooting for al-Qaeda."