The Impossible State

Author : Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231530862
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Impossible State written by Wael B. Hallaq and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wael B. Hallaq boldly argues that the "Islamic state," judged by any standard definition of what the modern state represents, is both impossible and inherently self-contradictory. Comparing the legal, political, moral, and constitutional histories of premodern Islam and Euro-America, he finds the adoption and practice of the modern state to be highly problematic for modern Muslims. He also critiques more expansively modernity's moral predicament, which renders impossible any project resting solely on ethical foundations. The modern state not only suffers from serious legal, political, and constitutional issues, Hallaq argues, but also, by its very nature, fashions a subject inconsistent with what it means to be, or to live as, a Muslim. By Islamic standards, the state's technologies of the self are severely lacking in moral substance, and today's Islamic state, as Hallaq shows, has done little to advance an acceptable form of genuine Shari'a governance. The Islamists' constitutional battles in Egypt and Pakistan, the Islamic legal and political failures of the Iranian Revolution, and similar disappointments underscore this fact. Nevertheless, the state remains the favored template of the Islamists and the ulama (Muslim clergymen). Providing Muslims with a path toward realizing the good life, Hallaq turns to the rich moral resources of Islamic history. Along the way, he proves political and other "crises of Islam" are not unique to the Islamic world nor to the Muslim religion. These crises are integral to the modern condition of both East and West, and by acknowledging these parallels, Muslims can engage more productively with their Western counterparts.

Author : Victor Cha
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062906445
Total Pages : 479 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Impossible State written by Victor Cha and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Impossible State, seasoned international-policy expert and lauded scholar Victor Cha pulls back the curtain on provocative, isolationist North Korea, providing our best look yet at its history and the rise of the Kim family dynasty and the obsessive personality cult that empowers them. Cha illuminates the repressive regime’s complex economy and culture, its appalling record of human rights abuses, and its belligerent relationship with the United States, and analyzes the regime’s major security issues—from the seemingly endless war with its southern neighbor to its frightening nuclear ambitions—all in light of the destabilizing effects of Kim Jong-il’s death and the transition of power to his unpredictable heir. Ultimately, this engagingly written, authoritative, and highly accessible history warns of a regime that might be closer to its end than many might think—a political collapse for which America and its allies may be woefully unprepared.

Author : Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231547382
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Restating Orientalism written by Wael B. Hallaq and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Edward Said’s foundational work, Orientalism has been singled out for critique as the quintessential example of Western intellectuals’ collaboration with oppression. Controversies over the imbrications of knowledge and power and the complicity of Orientalism in the larger project of colonialism have been waged among generations of scholars. But has Orientalism come to stand in for all of the sins of European modernity, at the cost of neglecting the complicity of the rest of the academic disciplines? In this landmark theoretical investigation, Wael B. Hallaq reevaluates and deepens the critique of Orientalism in order to deploy it for rethinking the foundations of the modern project. Refusing to isolate or scapegoat Orientalism, Restating Orientalism extends the critique to other fields, from law, philosophy, and scientific inquiry to core ideas of academic thought such as sovereignty and the self. Hallaq traces their involvement in colonialism, mass annihilation, and systematic destruction of the natural world, interrogating and historicizing the set of causes that permitted modernity to wed knowledge to power. Restating Orientalism offers a bold rethinking of the theory of the author, the concept of sovereignty, and the place of the secular Western self in the modern project, reopening the problem of power and knowledge to an ethical critique and ultimately theorizing an exit from modernity’s predicaments. A remarkably ambitious attempt to overturn the foundations of a wide range of academic disciplines while also drawing on the best they have to offer, Restating Orientalism exposes the depth of academia’s lethal complicity in modern forms of capitalism, colonialism, and hegemonic power.

Author : Jeremi Suri
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465093906
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Impossible Presidency written by Jeremi Suri and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold new history of the American presidency, arguing that the successful presidents of the past created unrealistic expectations for every president since JFK, with enormously problematic implications for American politics In The Impossible Presidency, celebrated historian Jeremi Suri charts the rise and fall of the American presidency, from the limited role envisaged by the Founding Fathers to its current status as the most powerful job in the world. He argues that the presidency is a victim of its own success-the vastness of the job makes it almost impossible to fulfill the expectations placed upon it. As managers of the world's largest economy and military, contemporary presidents must react to a truly globalized world in a twenty-four-hour news cycle. There is little room left for bold vision. Suri traces America's disenchantment with our recent presidents to the inevitable mismatch between presidential promises and the structural limitations of the office. A masterful reassessment of presidential history, this book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand America's fraught political climate.

Author : al-Haj Saleh
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 1787380513
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Impossible Revolution written by al-Haj Saleh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-27 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yassin al-Haj Saleh is a leftist dissident who spent sixteen years as a political prisoner and now lives in exile. He describes with precision and fervour the events that led to Syria’s 2011 uprising, the metamorphosis of the popular revolution into a regional war, and the ‘three monsters’ Saleh sees ‘treading on Syria’s corpse’: the Assad regime and its allies, ISIS and other jihadists, and Russia and the US. Where conventional wisdom has it that Assad’s army is now battling religious fanatics for control of the country, Saleh argues that the emancipatory, democratic mass movement that ignited the revolution still exists, though it is beset on all sides. The Impossible Revolution is a powerful, compelling critique of Syria’s catastrophic war, which has profoundly reshaped the lives of millions of Syrians.

Author : Cas Mudde
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 150953685X
Total Pages : 129 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Far Right Today written by Cas Mudde and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

Author : Faisal Devji
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674068106
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Impossible Indian written by Faisal Devji and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a rare view of Gandhi as a hard-hitting political thinker willing to countenance the greatest violence in pursuit of a global vision that went beyond a nationalist agenda. Guided by his idea of ethical duty as the source of the self’s sovereignty, he understood how life’s quotidian reality could be revolutionized to extraordinary effect.

Author : Wael B. Hallaq
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231550553
Total Pages : 402 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reforming Modernity written by Wael B. Hallaq and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reforming Modernity is a sweeping intellectual history and philosophical reflection built around the work of the Morocco-based philosopher Abdurrahman Taha, one of the most significant philosophers in the Islamic world since the colonial era. Wael B. Hallaq contends that Taha is at the forefront of forging a new, non-Western-centric philosophical tradition. He explores how Taha’s philosophical project sheds light on recent intellectual currents in the Islamic world and puts forth a formidable critique of Western and Islamic modernities. Hallaq argues that Taha’s project departs from—but leaves behind—the epistemological grounds in which most modern Muslim intellectuals have anchored their programs. Taha systematically rejects the modes of thought that have dominated the Muslim intellectual scene since the beginning of the twentieth century—nationalism, Marxism, secularism, political Islamism, and liberalism. Instead, he provides alternative ways of thinking, forcefully and virtuosically developing an ethical system with a view toward reforming existing modernities. Hallaq analyzes the ethical thread that runs throughout Taha’s oeuvre, illuminating how Taha weaves it into a discursive engagement with the central questions that plague modernity in both the West and the Muslim world. The first introduction to Taha’s ethical philosophy for Western audiences, Reforming Modernity presents his complex thought in an accessible way while engaging with it critically. Hallaq’s conversation with Taha’s work both proffers a cogent critique of modernity and points toward answers for its endemic and seemingly insoluble problems.

Author : Kim S. Cameron
Publisher : Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1576753905
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Making the Impossible Possible written by Kim S. Cameron and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2006-08-13 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lessons from the cleanup of America's most dangerous nuclear weapons plant

Author : Anthony Seldon
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1009429779
Total Pages : 569 pages
Book Rating : 4.71/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Impossible Office? written by Anthony Seldon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-14 with total page 569 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 300 years, fifty-seven individuals have held the office of British Prime Minister - who have been the best and worst?