This is the story of Iman, a story of a woman who grew up in the countryside in the troubles of 1970s Northern Ireland. She goes to England to qualify as a dietitian in the 1980s. Twelve years later, her world is turned upside down. She leaves a world of comfort and luxury and the cold English husband, from whom she has slowly drifted away to become a Muslim, to enter another world, a world of dangers, deception, and lies. A violent marriage robs her of her two beloved sons and takes them to the cruel, selfish world of her ex-in-laws in Lahore, Pakistan. In deep grief, she continues her professional life and marries again in Saudia Arabia and returns to England. Only to see that also fall apart with the loss of her home in the beautiful Shropshire countryside. She knows that one day, she will pay the price for the suffering, grief, exhausting, gruelling trips to Pakistan and failed attempts to get her children back. When the grim reaper comes for me, she told her best friend from Dublin a few months before the diagnosis came. And when it came, it was breast cancer. How will Iman emerge from this? Does she have a future? Read this written-from-the-heart story to find out.

“A curious, often amusing travelogue of [Sardar’s] quest for understanding and the Muslims he has encountered along his journeys.”—Publishers Weekly Ziauddin Sardar, one of the foremost Muslim intellectuals in Britain, learned the Koran at his mother’s knee in Pakistan. As a young student in London he set out to grasp the meaning of his religion, and, hopefully, to find “paradise,” his quest leading him throughout the Muslim world, from Iran to China to Turkey. Along the way he accepts that he may never reach paradise—but it’s the journey that’s important. At a time when the view of Islam in the West is so often distorted and simplistic, Desperately Seeking Paradise—self-mocking, frank and passionate—is essential reading. “Intoxicating . . . upon finishing the book, I turned back and started reading it all over again.”—Kamila Shamise, New Statesman “At once and earnest and humorous, light-hearted and profound, this is a book that displays a sustained capacity for self-questioning of a kind that has few parallels in the liberal West.”—The Independent “This challenging book not only acts as a guide for Muslims but provides insight and clarification for those outside the Islamic faith.”—Financial Times “The only funny book I’ve read about Islam.”—Mail on Sunday

RELIGION & BELIEFS. In these essays, talks, and a stunning selection of his own photographs, Thomas Merton hauntingly evokes the spirituality of a uniquely American sect. Largely remembered today for a legacy of extraordinary craftsmanship, the Shakers espoused a way of life, as Merton shows, with surprising relevance for today. In their approach to work as a form of worship, in their practice of community, their simplicity and rejection of violence, and their profound witness to the Kingdom of God, Merton finds lessons for all Christians. In the Shakers' prophetic departure from the American myth of progress, efficiency, and individualism, he finds a message of enduring value for our time.

How are we to become true believers who seek God's good pleasure? How are we to become mindful of God, to be thankful or worshipful? How are we to control our anger and pride? How are we to follow the example of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him)? This inspirational book of wise advice answers these questions and guides us toward the spiritual life. Khurram Murad (1932–1996) was the director general of The Islamic Foundation, United Kingdom, and a renowned teacher who spent 40 years in the spiritual teaching and training of thousands of young Muslim people around the globe. He has published more than 20 works in English and Urdu.

They give up everything and live in foreign, often lonely, sometimes hostile places. All for the Gospel! The life of a missionary can be a little mysterious to those who have never been one or seen one in their domain. But as you read their stories, you will come to know them in their deepest place—as they are—quite like you and me. Only, like Abraham, ‘who went out not knowing,’ this huge step of obedience has left their lives with never a dull moment. Be prepared for a life-changing experience as you read about and study the lives of these men and women who themselves are changing lives.

Western Sufism is sometimes dismissed as a relatively recent "new age" phenomenon, but in this book Mark Sedgwick argues that it has deep roots, both in the Muslim world and in the West. In fact, although the first significant Western Sufi organization was not established until 1915, the first Western discussion of Sufism was printed in 1480, and Western interest in Sufi thought goes back to the thirteenth century. Sedgwick starts with the earliest origins of Western Sufism in late antique Neoplatonism and early Arab philosophy, and traces later origins in repeated intercultural transfers from the Muslim world to the West, in the thought of the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, and in the intellectual and religious ferment of the nineteenth century. He then follows the development of organized Sufism in the West from 1915 until 1968, the year in which the first Western Sufi order based on purely Islamic models was founded. Western Sufism shows the influence of these origins, of thought both familiar and less familiar: Neoplatonic emanationism, perennialism, pantheism, universalism, and esotericism. Western Sufism is the product not of the new age but of Islam, the ancient world, and centuries of Western religious and intellectual history. Using sources from antiquity to the internet, Sedgwick demonstrates that the phenomenon of Western Sufism draws on centuries of intercultural transfers and is part of a long-established relationship between Western thought and Islam.