"Shari'a is the code of conduct in Islam, but what does it really mean? British-based civil rights lawyer Kadri explains how legal ideas gradually emerged in Islam, how shari'a is practiced in different countries today, and how in the last decades it has been appropriated by extremists to the detriment of everyone."--Library Journal.

* I.M. Kadri was one of India's most prolific architects, instrumental in designing and building important landmarks in India and abroad* The Architecture of I.M. Kadri is a portfolio and a detailed analysis about building concepts and architecture in India* The book is illustrated with special photography by Rajesh Vora and includes hand-drawings by Kadri himself The Architecture of I.M. Kadri traces the body of work of Iftikhar M. Kadri, founder, partner and principal architect of IMK Architects, who began his practice in Mumbai in the 1950s. As an architect who shaped his practice largely in the early decades after India's independence, in the commercial capital of a young nation, he contributed greatly to the design of emerging typologies like the high-rise apartment, the office tower and the hospitality industry in Mumbai and India, going on to build in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Tajikistan, Malaysia, and so on. Kadri's career charts not only an important journey in India's history, but he is also someone who contributed to the discourses on Modern and Traditional architecture in India, working within the forces of real estate and commerce, and with state, private and corporate clients. His works help us open the debates on what is the role of architecture, its ideas of beauty and strength, its existence within the world of politics and economics.Contents: Foreword by Peter Scriver; Five decades of change; A convergence of architectural idioms; Building life in a metropolis; Designing the urban home; The question of beauty; Transitions in architecture; The journey of life; Portfolio of drawings; Project chronology.

For as long as accuser and accused have faced each other in public, criminal trials have been establishing far more than who did what to whom–and in this fascinating book, Sadakat Kadri surveys four thousand years of courtroom drama. A brilliantly engaging writer, Kadri journeys from the silence of ancient Egypt’s Hall of the Dead to the clamor of twenty-first-century Hollywood to show how emotion and fear have inspired Western notions of justice–and the extent to which they still riddle its trials today. He explains, for example, how the jury emerged in medieval England from trials by fire and water, in which validations of vengeance were presumed to be divinely supervised, and how delusions identical to those that once sent witches to the stake were revived as accusations of Satanic child abuse during the 1980s. Lifting the lid on a particularly bizarre niche of legal history, Kadri tells how European lawyers once prosecuted animals, objects, and corpses–and argues that the same instinctive urge to punish is still apparent when a child or mentally ill defendant is accused of sufficiently heinous crimes. But Kadri’s history is about aspiration as well as ignorance. He shows how principles such as the right to silence and the right to confront witnesses, hallmarks of due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, were derived from the Bible by twelfth-century monks. He tells of show trials from Tudor England to Stalin’s Soviet Union, but contends that “no-trials,” in Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere, are just as repugnant to Western traditions of justice and fairness. With governments everywhere eroding legal protections in the name of an indefinite war on terror, Kadri’s analysis could hardly be timelier. At once encyclopedic and entertaining, comprehensive and colorful, The Trial rewards curiosity and an appreciation of the absurd but tackles as well questions that are profound. Who has the right to judge, and why? What did past civilizations hope to achieve through scapegoats and sacrifices–and to what extent are defendants still made to bear the sins of society at large? Kadri addresses such themes through scores of meticulously researched stories, all told with the verve and wit that won him one of Britain’s most prestigious travel-writing awards–and in doing so, he has created a masterpiece of popular history.

Heaven on Earth is a vivid, revealing, and essential narrative history of shari'a law--the widely contested and misunderstood code of Islamic justice--and how the application of its concepts has changed over time and, with it, the face of Islam. Some fourteen hundred years after the Prophet Muhammad first articulated God's law--the shari'a--its earthly interpreters are still arguing about what it means. Hard-liners reduce it to amputations, veiling, holy war, and stonings. Others say that it is humanity's only guarantee of a just society. And as colossal acts of terrorism made the word "shari'a" more controversial than ever in the early twentieth century, the legal historian and human rights lawyer Sadakat Kadri realized that many people in the West harbored ideas about Islamic law that were hazy or simply wrong. Heaven on Earth describes his journey, through ancient texts and across modern borders, in search of the facts behind the myths. Kadri brings lucid analysis and enlivening wit to the turbulent story of Islam's foundation and expansion, showing how the Prophet Muhammad's teachings evolved gradually into concepts of justice. Traveling the Muslim world to see the shari'a's principles in action, he encounters a cacophony of legal claims. At the ancient Indian grave of his Sufi ancestor, unruly jinns are exorcised in the name of the shari'a. In Pakistan's madrasas, stern scholars ridicule his talk of human rights and demand explanations for NATO drone attacks in Afghanistan. In Iran, he hears that God is forgiving enough to subsidize sex-change operations--but requires the execution of Muslims who change religion. Yet the stories of compulsion and violence are only part of a picture that also emphasizes compassion and equity. Many of Islam's first judges refused even to rule on cases for fear that a mistake would damn them, and scholars from Delhi to Cairo maintain that governments have no business enforcing faith. The shari'a continues to shape explosive political events and the daily lives of more than a billion Muslims. Heaven on Earth is a brilliantly iconoclastic tour through one of humanity's great collective intellectual achievements--and an essential guide to one of the most disputed but least understood controversies of modern times.

Sabiha Sertel was born into revolution in 1895, as an independent Turkey rose out of the dying Ottoman Empire. The nation's first professional female journalist, her unrelenting push for democracy and social reforms ultimately cost Sertel her country and freedom. Shortly before her death in 1968, Sertel completed her autobiography Roman Gibi (Like a Novel), which was written during her forced exile in the Soviet Union. Translated here into English for the first time, and complete with a new introduction and comprehensive annotations, it offers a rare perspective on Turkey's history as it moved to embrace democracy, then violently recoiled. The book reveals the voice of a passionate feminist and committed socialist who clashes with the young republic's leadership. A unique first-hand account, the text foreshadows Turkey's increasingly authoritarian state. Sertel offers her perspective on the fierce divisions over the republic's constitution and covers issues including freedom of the press, women's civil rights and the pre-WWII discussions with European leaders about Hitler's rising power. More information about the book, photographs, reviews and events can be found at a special website dedicated to the book: www.struggleformodernturkey.com

Arab Development Denied examines how over the last three decades the Arab world has undergone a process of developmental descent, or de-development. As a result of defeat in wars, the loss of security and sovereignty, and even their own class proclivity, the Arab ruling classes have been transformed into fully compradorial classes that have relinquished autonomy over policy. The neoliberal policies adopted since the early eighties are not developmental policies, but the terms of surrender by which Arab resources, human or otherwise, are stifled or usurped. In this book, Ali Kadri attributes the Arab world’s developmental failure to imperialist hegemony over oil and the rising role of financialisation, which goes hand in hand with the wars of encroachment that strip the Arab world of its sovereignty and resources.

In Reimagining Life, Raihan Kadri presents a pioneering critical history of the epistemological and theoretical origins of the Surrealist movement and its subsequent legacy. The book contains extensive examination and new interpretations of the oft-neglected theoretical writing of Surrealists such as André Breton, Louis Aragon, Antonin Artaud, and Salvador Dalí, in order to demonstrate how Surrealism is connected to a broader lineage of philiosophical pessimism-involving such figures as Fredrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Arthur Rimbaud-which Kadri argues represents a particular strain of modernism aimed at breaking human thought away from the constraints of religion and other forms of idealism in order to expand the possibilities for knowledge and human freedom. The innovative, wide-ranging study deftly traverses fields of art, politics, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Reimagining Life redefines Surrealism's place in modern intellectual history and offers a new vision of how Surrealist discourse can be connected to contemporary debates in cultural, critical, and theoretical studies.