The Rights and Responsibilities of Marriage

[Hamza Yusuf]
In The Rights and Responsibilities of Marriage, Hamza Yusuf discusses the critical elements of a successful marriage based on the Prophetic teaching. He begins each session with an examination of a passage from the Quran, followed by the session's main topic. The various topics he covers include choosing a spouse, the legal rulings of the marital contract, life inside the home, childrearing, and the legal rulings of divorce.
People who attended the course said that it gave them a greater appreciation of their spouse, improved the quality of their marriage,and many remarked that it was a life transforming experience. This set is invaluable for couples desiring a marriage that reflects affection, compassion, and spiritual harmony.
About the Author:
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf embraced Islam in 1977. He spent several years studying in the Middle East and Africa under numerous scholars. Currently, he is the director of the Zaytuna Institute, in California, which is dedicated to the Revival of Islamic Sciences and the preservation of traditional teaching methods.
Shaykh Hamza Yusuf Hanson was born in Walla Walla, Washington and raised in Northern California.
He became Muslim in 1977 in Santa Barbara, California and subsequently moved to the Middle East and studied Arabic and Islam for four years in the United Arab Emirates and later in Madina, Algeria, Morocco, and West Africa for many years. He received teaching licenses in various Islamic subjects from several well-known scholars in various countries. After a ten-year sojourn of studies abroad, he returned to the USA and took degrees in nursing from Imperial Valley College and religious studies at San Jose State University.
He has traveled all over the world giving talks on Islam. He is the co-founder of Zaytuna Institute, which is dedicated to the revival of traditional study methods and the sciences of Islam. Shaykh Hamza has translated several classical texts from Arabic and presently teaches at Zaytuna Institute in Hayward, California. He lives in California with his wife and children.

Demystifying Islam: Your Guide to the Most Misunderstood Religion of the 21st Century

[Shehata, Ali (Author), El Khiy]
Islam has recently become one of the hottest, yet most misunderstood, news items throughout the Western world. Numerous books have been written analyzing and commenting on this religion of 1.5 billion adherents, yet few books have tackled presenting this religion's principles and beliefs to the general public.
This book is one of those few, and in fact a formidable one at that. Brimming with references and up-to-date statistics, Demystifying Islam allows the reader to quickly and intelligently become familiar with the precepts upon which Islam stands and to decide for themselves whether what is presented nightly is representative or biased. A must read for anyone who wants to better understand the growing role of Islam and Muslims not only in the global politics of this world, but also in the fabric of so many western societies.
Brimming with references and up-to-date statistics, this edition allows the reader to quickly and intelligently become familiar with the precepts upon which Islam stands, and to decide whether what is presented by the media is representative or biased. (World Religions)

The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novel

"The first novel by the most fabulous writer of all time, Mohja Kahf!"
Syrian immigrant Khadra Shamy is growing up in a devout, tightly knit Muslim family in 1970s Indiana, at the crossroads of bad polyester and Islamic dress codes. Along with her brother Eyad and her African-American friends, Hakim and Hanifa, she bikes the Indianapolis streets exploring the fault-lines between “Muslim” and “American.”
When her picture-perfect marriage goes sour, Khadra flees to Syria and learns how to pray again. On returning to America she works in an eastern state — taking care to stay away from Indiana, where the murder of her friend Tayiba’s sister by Klan violence years before still haunts her. But when her job sends her to cover a national Islamic conference in Indianapolis, she’s back on familiar ground: Attending a concert by her brother’s interfaith band The Clash of Civilizations, dodging questions from the “aunties” and “uncles,” and running into the recently divorced Hakim everywhere. Beautifully written and featuring an exuberant cast of characters, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf charts the spiritual and social landscape of Muslims in middle America, from five daily prayers to the Indy 500 car race. It is a riveting debut from an important new voice.
• ISBN: 0-7867-1519-7
• Format: Paperback, 448pp, 5 1/2 x 8 1/4
• Style: Fiction/Literature
• Distributed by: Publishers Group West August 2006

Keith Maurice Ellison

Keith Maurice Ellison 1963-, African-American politician, the first Muslim to win a seat in the U.S. Congress. A convert to Islam from Roman Catholicism while at Wayne State Univ. (B.A. 1986), he attended law school (Univ. of Minnesota, J.D. 1990), was active in civil-issues in Minnesota in the late 1980s and early 90s, and then worked as a criminal defense lawyer. Twice elected (2002, 2004) to the Minnesota house of representatives as a liberal Democrat, he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2006.
Born in Detroit in 1963, Ellison was one of five children in a Roman Catholic family. He converted to Islam at 19 while attending Wayne State University. In 1987, he moved to Minnesota to attend University of Minnesota Law School, where he earned his Juris Doctor in 1990. He then practiced law privately in Minneapolis. In 2002, he was elected to the Minnesota State Legislature. He and his wife Kim have four children.
In 1990, Ellison wrote an article for a University of Minnesota newspaper (he was then a law student there) defending Louis Farrakhan against accusations of Antisemitism. He later retreated completely from this defense, stating that he was in err, and that he should have examined more closely the accusations leveled against the Nation of Islam founder at that time.
Ellison's adversaries found further fodder for linking him to the Nation of Islam when it was revealed that he worked with the group for 18 months to organize the Minnesota contingent of the Million Man March. Ellison stated that while he collaborated closely with the group on the project, he was never a member of it.
In early 2006, the Minnesota State Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board reprimanded Ellison for unreported contributions, discrepancies in cash balances, and misclassified disbursements. These transgressions occurred in the years 2002-2004. In 2005 when the board tried to get more information about the problems in Ellison's reports, they got no response from Ellison or his treasurer (his wife Kim). When the board heard nothing, they opened the investigation. Ellison was subpoenaed and fined. The board has also fined Ellison numerous times for late filings.
After his election to Congress, Ellison opted to take his oath of office on the Koran. This announcement prompted criticism from Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Vir.), who called Ellison's intention to use the Koran a threat to American values.
On January 2, 2007, Ellison announced that he would swear-in on a copy of the Koran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Specifically, he said that he would take the official oath of office along with the other incoming members in the House chamber, then use the Koran in his individual, ceremonial oath with new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). His spokesperson, Rick Jauert stated, "Keith is paying respect not only to the founding fathers' belief in religious freedom but the Constitution itself.”
The American Israel Education Foundation, an organization affiliated with AIPAC, funds trips to Israel for freshman members of Congress. In July 2007, Ellison went on his second trip to Israel courtesy of AIEF. About this trip he stated:
"Whenever you're talking about dialogue with Hamas, it's something that's extremely controversial...I'm not trying to step into some controversy, but I am trying to be a voice for dialogue. I'm trying to go there to be a helpful figure, not a person who's going to stir up controversies."
Jeffrey Blankfort, a California-based justice activist, commented on Ellison's comments and trip: "What a pathetic confession by a member of the US Congress, and an African-American, in particular, in openly acknowledging that Jewish Zionists call the tune to which he dances in Washington. Is it any wonder that there is a great deal of justified anti-Jewish animosity within the Black community, mistakenly described as "anti-semitism"? This kind of thing has been going on for decades while the Zionized White Left looks in the other direction In any case, the accusation of "anti-semitism" has become the first refuge of scoundrels."

The Ruins Review of Stephen King

When I heard that Scott Smith was publishing a new novel this summer, I felt the way I did when my kids came in an hour or two late from their weekend dates: a combination of welcoming relief (thank God you're back) mingled with exasperation and anger (where the hell have you been?). Well, it's only a book, you say, and maybe that's true, but Scott Smith is a singularly gifted writer, and it seems to me that the twelve years between his debut--the cult smash A Simple Plan--and his return this summer with The Ruins is cause for exasperation, if not outright anger. Certainly Smith, who has been invisible save for his Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the film version of A Simple Plan, will have some 'splainin to do about how he spent his summer vacation. Make that his last twelve summer vacations.
But enough. The new book is here, and the question devotees of A Simple Plan will want answered is whether or not this book generates anything like Plan's harrowing suspense. The answer is yes. The Ruins is going to be America's literary shock-show this summer, doing for vacations in Mexico what Jaws did for beach weekends on Long Island. Is it as successful and fulfilling as a novel? The answer is not quite, but I can live with that, because it's riskier. There will be reviews of this book by critics who have little liking or understanding for popular fiction who'll dismiss it as nothing but a short story that has been bloated to novel length (I'm thinking of Michiko Kakutani, for instance, who microwaved Smith's first book). These critics, who steadfastly grant pop fiction no virtue but raw plot, will miss the dazzle of Smith's technique; The Ruins is the equivalent of a triple axel that just misses perfection because something's wrong with the final spin.

It's hard to say much about the book without giving away everything, because the thing is as simple and deadly as a leg-hold trap concealed in a drift of leaves…or, in this case, a mass of vines. You've got four young American tourists--Eric, Jeff, Amy, and Stacy--in Cancun. They make friends with a German named Mathias whose brother has gone off into the jungle with some archeologists. These five, plus a cheerful Greek with no English (but a plentiful supply of tequila), head up a jungle trail to find Mathias's brother…the archaeologists…and the ruins.

Well, two out of three ain't bad, according to the old saying, and in this case; what's waiting in the jungle isn't just bad, it's horrible. Most of The Ruins's 300-plus pages is one long, screaming close-up of that horror. There's no let-up, not so much as a chapter-break where you can catch your breath. I felt that The Ruins did draw on a trifle, but I found Scott Smith's refusal to look away heroic, just as I did in A Simple Plan. It's the trappings of horror and suspense that will make the book a best seller, but its claim to literature lies in its unflinching naturalism. It's no Heart of Darkness, but at its suffocating, terrifying, claustrophobic best, it made me think of Frank Norris. Not a bad comparison, at that.
One only hopes Mr. Smith won't stay away so long next time.--Stephen King

AL-MAQRIZI

Ibnu Khaldun telah membangun hubungan sebab akibat antara pemerintahan yang buruk dengan harga-harga pangan yang melonjak seraya menjelaskan bahwa pada tahapan dinasti selanjutnya, ketika administrasi publik menjadi korup dan tidak efisien, serta mulai dipergunakannya pemaksaan dan perpajakan yang menindas, maka para petani tidak memiliki insentif dan akan berhenti menanam.

Produksi bahan makanan dan cadangan tidak akan mampu berpacu dengan jumlah penduduk yang bertambah karena kemakmuran yang sebelumnya terjadi. Ketiadaan cadangan akan menyebabkan kelangkaan pasokan makanan yang menimbulkan kelaparan masssal dan menyebabkan eskalasi harga. Al-Maqrizi, seorang Muhtasib (pengawas pasar; semacam kepala lembaga omboudman, pent.) yang memiliki pengetahuan tentang kondisi ekonomi pada masanya, adalah seorang pengkritik keras pemerintahan Burji Mamluk (784-922/1382-1517). Ia menerapkan analisis Ibnu Khaldun dalam bukunya yang berjudul Ighatsatul Ummah Bi kasyfil Ghummah (Menolong Rakyat dengan Mengeluarkan Sebab-sebab Penyakitnya) untuk menentukan sebab-sebab yang menimbulkan krisis ekonomi di Mesir pada masa periode 806-8/1403-6.

Ia mengidentifikasikan bahwa administrasi politik telah menjadi sangat lemah dan korup pada masa periode Circassian (Burji Mamluk). Para pegawai pemerintah diangkat berdasarkan uang suap dan bukan karena kemampuannya. Untuk menutup uang suap, para pegawai pemerintah itu memberlakukan pajak opresif. Karena itu insentif bekerja dan berproduksi sangat dirugikan dan hasil-hasil pertanian merosot. Krisis ini diperparah lagi dengan penurunan nilai mata uang lewat penggunaan fulus (uang logam dari tembaga) yang berlebihan, atau uang fiat, dengan tujuan menutup defisit anggaran negara. Semua faktor ini berpadu dengan kelangkaan bahan makanan yang menimbulkan inflasi tingkat tinggi, kesulitan hidup si miskin, dan pemiskinan negara.

Karena itu al-Maqrizi membentangkan determinan-determinan sosio-politik dari krisis yang tengah menerjang sistem dengan menunjuk senjumlah variabel seperti korupsi, kebijakan pemerintah yang buruk, dan administrasi yang lemah. Semua faktor ini berperan dalam memperburuk dampak kelangkaan bahan makanan yang sebenarnya dapat diatasi secara efektif tanpa menimbulkan dampak buruk pada penduduk. Ini jelas merupakan pelopor dari teori Sen - Prof. Dr. Amartya Sen, peraih hadiah Nobel dalam ekonomi tahun 1998 - yang berpendapat salah urus ekonomi oleh pemerintah yang tidak legitimate sebagai penyebab kesulitan hidup rakyat miskin pada masa kelangkaan bahan makanan dan bencana-bencana alam lain. Apa yang ditulis oleh al-Maqrizi tentang Circassian Mamluk juga benar bagi periode Usmani belakangan.