Reading List for American Muslims > IslamAmerica

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Category: Culture
Posted: Monday, January 21, 2008

Prepared by Hamza Yusuf and Anas Coburn
These are books we've found had an impact on our thinking about the dominant society in which we live. This list is a work in progress, one from which books will come and go, and is always to be viewed as provisional. Prices, where indicated, are all from Amazon.com.

Culture
The Book of Virtues: A Treasury of Great Moral Stories by William J. Bennet (Editor). Touchstone Books, 1996. ISBN: 0684835770 $12.80

Philosophy
The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View by Richard Tarnas. Ballantine Books, 1993. ISBN: 0345368096 $11.20

Politics
The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Penguin USA, 1979. ISBN: 0140441077 $4.76
Ill fares the Land: jEssays on Food, Hunger, and Power Susan George. (out of print) Penguin USA, 1990. ISBN: 0140127909

A fate worse than Debt Susan George. Grove Press, 1990. ISBN: 0802131212 $8.76

The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay. Bantam Books (Classic & Loveswept), 1989. ISBN: 0553213407 $4.76

On Liberty; And, Utilitarnism (A Bantam Classic) John Stuart Mill. Bantam Classics, 1993. ISBN: 0553214144. $3.96

The Communist Manifesto Karl Marx.

Mirror of Production Jean Baudrilliard. Telos Press, 1975. ISBN:0914386069 $14.00

Year 501, The Conquest Continues Noam Chomsky. South End Press, 1993. ISBN:0896084442 $12.80

Deterring Democracy, Noam Chomsky. Noonday Press, 1992. ISBN: 0374523495 $12.80

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman, Noam Chomsky . Pantheon Books, 1988 ISBN: 06797203040 $13.60

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington. Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN:0684822642 $18.20

Psychology
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fullfillment by George Leonard. Plume, 1992. ISBN: 0452267560 $9.56
I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional by Wendy Kaminer. Vintage Books, 1993. ISBN: 0679745858 $9.60

The Roots of the Self: Unraveling the Mystery of Who We Are by Robert Ornstein. HarperCollins, 1995. ISBN: 0062507893

Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception by Daniel Goleman. Touchstone Books, 1996 ISBN: 0684831074 $9.60

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. HarperCollins (paper) 1991. ISBN: 0060920432 $11.20

Science/Technology
Under Technology's Thumb by William Leiss. McGill Queens University Press, 1990. ISBN: 0773507485 $19.95
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul. Random House, 1967. ISBN: 0394703901 $9.60

Social Critique
In the Absence of the Sacred: The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations by Jerry Mander. Sierra Club Books, 1992. ISBN: 0871565099
Time Wars, by Jeremy Rifkin (currently out of print)

The Pentagon of Power: The Myth of Machine by Lewis Mumford. Harcourt Brace, 1974. ISBN: 0156716100 $15.96

The Sibling Society by Robert Bly. Vintage Books, 1997. ISBN: 0679781285

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business by Neil Postman. Viking Press, 1986. ISBN: 0140094385 $10.36

Close Move

1. According to the Sunan of Abu Dawud, the Prophet said, “I prohibit killing four creatures in this earth: ants, bees, hoopoes and sparrow-hawks.”

Close Move

2. See Nora Belfedal, “Honey: the Antibiotic of the Future, part 3: Healing ‘Bee Venom.’” Islamonline, November 15, 2001.

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3. See Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: the Veneration of the Prophet is Islamic Piety (UNC Press, 1985), p. 285.

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4. Ibid., p. 102-104. The latter idea is attributed to the twentieth-century Indian poet Nabibakhsh Baloch.

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5. See, for example, the section on medicine in Sahih Bukhari. Among other things, the Prophet Muhammad prescribed honey for abdominal trouble.

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6. See Belfedal, “Healing Bee Venom.”

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1. Found in Imam Malik’s Muwatta'
and Imam Ahmad’s Musnad

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1. Both these ahadith, and the quote from Imam Nawawi, are taken from Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misr’s Reliance of the Traveller; in Arabic with facing English text, commentary and appendices edited and translated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller,
Revised edition, 1994. Beltville, Md: Amana Publications in the section on Commanding the Right and Forbidding the Wrong and the section on Holding One’s Tongue.

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1. Qur’an 3:103.

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2. Moustafa Styer’s translation, except I have replaced his translation the technical term fuqara as poor, with the word ‘devout’, for the sake of clarity in the context of this article.

The term ‘poor’ does not denote actual financial destitution, rather, it means one who has abandoned attachments to worldly things and become rich in their attachment to Allah.

This state cannot be achieved except through sincere devotion.

See Moustafa Styer “Reflections of the Beloved”.

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3. The legal rulings of Islamic law are generally
that a thing is considered obligatory,
recommended, neutral, disliked, or prohibited.

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1. Consumers Union Education Series. (1995).
Captive Kids: Commercial Pressures on Kids at School.
Yonkers: Author.

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1. Quoted in Keller, Nuh Ha Mim; translator and editor.
     The Reliance of the Traveller:
     The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law cUmdat al-Salik
    by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri. 1994.
     Beltsville, MD. Amana Publications. Page 41.