To celebrate the launch week of The Bookslamist, Hurst & Co Publishers have kindly donated six of their great books for one of our readers to win.
At The Bookslamist we are great fans of Hurst & Co publications, and you can learn more about them here.
All you have to do to win these books, is to sign up to our FaceBook account or login in with your email.
Please Note: The winner of the competition must be able to provide a UK address for delivery.
You can learn more about each book here:
Lost Islamic History
Over the last 1,400 years, a succession of Muslim polities and empires expanded to control territories and peoples stretching from southern France to East Africa and South East Asia. Yet many of the contributions of Muslim thinkers, scientists and theologians, not to mention statesmen and soldiers, have been overlooked. The bestselling Lost Islamic History, now in a new updated edition, rescues from oblivion a forgotten past, charting its narrative from Muhammad to modern-day nation-states.
From Abbasids and Ottomans to Mughals and West African kings, Firas Alkhateeb sketches key personalities, inventions and historical episodes to show the monumental impact of Islam on global society and culture.
Blood & Faith
In 1609, the entire Muslim population of Spain was given three days to leave Spanish territory or else be killed. In a brutal and traumatic exodus, entire families were forced to abandon the homes and villages where they had lived for generations. In just five years, Muslim Spain had effectively ceased to exist: an estimated 300,000 Muslims had been removed from Spanish territory making it what was then the largest act of ethnic cleansing in European history.
Blood and Faith is a riveting chronicle of this virtually unknown episode, set against the vivid historical backdrop of Muslim Spain. It offers a remarkable window onto a little-known period in modern Europe—a rich and complex tale of competing faiths and beliefs, of cultural oppression and resistance against overwhelming odds.
Go Back to Where you Came From
From Europe to the United States and beyond, opportunistic politicians have exploited economic crisis, terrorist attacks and an influx of refugees to bring hateful and reactionary views from the margins of political discourse into the corridors of power. This climate has already helped propel Donald Trump to the White House, pushed Britain out of the European Union, and put Marine Le Pen within striking distance of the French presidency.
Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s on-the-ground reportage and interviews with the rising stars of the new right tell the story of how we got here, tracing the global rise of anti-immigration politics and the ruthlessly effective rebranding of Europe’s new far right as defenders of Western liberal values.
Go Back to Where You Came From is an indispensable account of why xenophobia went mainstream in countries known historically as defenders of human rights and models of tolerance.
How Long Will Israel Survive
Israel is surrounded by an array of ever-changing threats. But what if its most serious challenge comes from within?
There was once a national consensus in Israeli society: despite a left-right political split, its people were broadly secular and liberal. Over the past decade, the country has fractured into tribes with little shared understanding of what it means to be a Zionist—let alone an Israeli—and contesting the very notion of a ‘Jewish and democratic’ state.
While this shift has profound implications for Israel’s relationship with the broadly liberal Jewish diaspora, the greatest consequences will be felt at home. Israel’s tribes increasingly lead separate lives; even the army, once a great melting-pot, is now a political and cultural battleground. Tamir Pardo, former head of Mossad, has warned of the risk of civil war.
Gregg Carlstrom maps this conflict, from cosmopolitan Tel Aviv to the hilltops of the West Bank, and asks a pressing question: will the Middle East’s strongest power survive its own internal contradictions?
Inglorious Empire
In the eighteenth century, India’s share of the world economy was as large as Europe’s. By 1947, after two centuries of British rule, it had decreased six-fold. Beyond conquest and deception, the Empire blew rebels from cannon, massacred unarmed protesters, entrenched institutionalised racism, and caused millions to die from starvation.
British imperialism justified itself as enlightened despotism for the benefit of the governed, but Shashi Tharoor takes on and demolishes this position, demonstrating how every supposed imperial ‘gift’ – from the railways to the rule of law – was designed in Britain’s interests alone. He goes on to show how Britain’s Industrial Revolution was founded on India’s deindustrialisation, and the destruction of its textile industry.
In this bold and incisive reassessment of colonialism, Tharoor exposes to devastating effect the inglorious reality of Britain’s stained Indian legacy.
Victorian Muslim
After formally announcing his conversion to Islam in the late 1880s, the Liverpool lawyer William Henry Abdullah Quilliam publicly propagated his new faith and established the first community of Muslim converts in Victorian Britain. Despite decades of relative obscurity following his death, with the resurgence of interest in Muslim heritage in the West since 9/11 Quilliam has achieved iconic status in Britain and beyond as a pivotal figure in the history of Western Islam and Muslim–Christian relations.
In this timely book, leading experts of the religion, history and politics of Islam offer new perspectives and shed fresh light on Quilliam’s life and work. Through a series of original essays, the authors critically examine Quilliam’s influences, philosophy and outlook, the significance of his work for Islam, his position in the Muslim world and his legacy. Collectively, the authors ask pertinent questions about how conversion to Islam was viewed and received historically, and how a zealous convert like Quilliam negotiated his religious and national identities and sought to indigenise Islam in a non-Muslim country.
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