This region, North Africa and West Asia, is where Christianity began, nearly 2,000 years ago. Many Christian communities today trace their histories back over the entire period. At the same time, there is no region in the world where Christians are more at risk of extinction, as civil wars, persecution and economic distress have resulted in a massive exodus of the Christian population. This volume documents that exodus while it is underway.
An account of how bureaucratic procedures created the space for political conflict and slander in nineteenth-century Ottoman Bulgaria and what can we learn from studying them. Why would a district head administrator arrest mules, or someone slander a governor with…
By Ondrej Beranek and Pavel Tupek 1) Over the past years and decades, various parts of the Islamic world – from Iraq, Syria, Mali and Tunisia, to Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bangladesh – have faced virulent attacks targeting…
I was standing in a library aisle in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, my neck craning to read titles dropping vertically down the spines of books. A familiar experience for many students, even if it is being…
Can the contents of an academic book be expressed by means other than words? In centuries past, it was common for a book to have a lavishly illustrated cover which, through signs and symbols, informed the prospective reader what the…
A woman walks across a bridge. She is looking at her mobile. She seems to be in a hurry. Close to her, a person lies injured on the pavement. Several people attend to the injured person. The woman is wearing…
By Tahir Abbas Turkey is a beguiling country. It straddles one of the most important geopolitical fault lines in the world. Since the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the republican era, however, the nation has undergone…
By Stefano Bonino First published on the LSE Religion and the Public Sphere blog – read the original article Far removed from the cinematic and media depictions of Muslims as angry and threatening fundamentalists are the everyday experiences of many…
“There are Muslims in China? I didn’t know that.” Yes, indeed, there are—possibly as many as 25-30 million souls—and they constitute a fascinating segment of two vital world entities, “China” and “Islam.” Almost half of them speak Chinese as their…