While all mosques stem from a common tradition of reverence, differing sects, regions and practices have led to many innovations and novel architectural forms. Mosques is the latest addition to the “Ultimate collection,” and is a journey though centuries and continents that brings readers to the threshold of 100 of the world’s most historically significant buildings that are home to worshippers of the fastest growing, and second largest, religion in the world.

In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naïve CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West’s first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today

Don’t miss out on this beautiful celebration of Islam and mosques as spaces for spiritual gathering! Step in and discover all the rituals and wonder of the mosque in this lyrical debut picture book from M. O Yuksel, with gorgeous artwork from New York Times bestselling illustrator Hatem Aly. A great conversation starter in the home or classroom, this book is perfect for fans of All Are Welcome and The Proudest Blue. No matter who you are or where you’re from, everyone is welcome here. From grandmothers reading lines of the Qur’an and the imam telling stories of living as one, to meeting new friends and learning to help others, mosques are centers for friendship, community, and love. M. O. Yuksel’s beautiful text celebrates the joys and traditions found in every mosque around the world and is brought to life with stunning artwork by New York Times bestselling illustrator Hatem Aly (Yasmin series, The Proudest Blue, The Inquisitor’s Tale). The book also includes backmatter with an author’s note, a glossary, and more information about many historical and significant mosques around the world. "This personable, sensory love letter to a range of children’s mosque experiences will engage new learners and resonate with those already familiar." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This marvelous, welcoming book on mosques, Muslims, and Islam is a must, offering foundational knowledge on the world’s second largest religion." —School Library Journal (starred review) "Young readers are welcomed to a mosque brimming with faithful family, friends, and community. Both text and art convey some tenets of Islam and emphasize the mosque's role as a place for faith and celebration." —Horn Book "Joyful characters describe what happens in simple, poetic language. Both a celebration of and an introduction to the mosque." —Kirkus "Joyful celebration of mosques around the world. Themes of family and friendship prevail, along with references to spirituality." —Providence Journal A School Library Journal Best Book of 2021 · A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2021 · An ALA 2022 Notable Children’s Book · A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection · Society of Illustrators Original Art Show Selection · A New York Public Library 2021 Summer Recommendation Reading List Pick · A 2021 Nerdy Book Club Award Winner for Best Nonfiction Picture Book · A 2022 Texas Topaz Nonfiction Reading List title · An Ontario Library Association Best Bets Top Ten List · A Wisconsin State Reading Association 2022 Picture This Recommendation · A CCBC 2022 Best Choice of the Year · Winner of the 2021 Undies Award for Fanciest Case Cover · A 2022 Notable Book for a Global Society · Also Featured on: USA Today, PBS.org, Bookriot, Chicago Parents, The Horn Book!

A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the Year An exquisite and inspiring memoir about one mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life. No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society. Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.

This edited volume explores the dynamic relationship between the Friday mosque and the Islamic city, addressing the traditional topics through a fresh new lens and offering a critical examination of each case study in its own spatial, urban, and socio-cultural context. While these two well-known themes--concepts that once defined the field--have been widely studied by historians of Islamic architecture and urbanism, this compilation specifically addresses the functional and spatial ambiguity or liminality between these spaces. Instead of addressing the Friday mosque as the central signifier of the Islamic city, this collection provides evidence that there was (and continues to be) variety in the way architectural borders became fluid in and around Friday mosques across the Islamic world, from Cordoba to Jerusalem and from London to Lahore. By historicizing different cases and exploring the way human agency, through ritual and politics, shaped the physical and social fabric of the city, this volume challenges the generalizing and reductionist tendencies in earlier scholarship.

Juxtaposing Muslim scholars' debates over women's attendance in mosques with historical descriptions of women's activities within Middle Eastern and North African mosques, Marion Holmes Katz shows how over the centuries legal scholars' arguments have often reacted to rather than dictated Muslim women's behavior. Tracing Sunni legal positions on women in mosques from the second century of the Islamic calendar to the modern period, Katz connects shifts in scholarly terminology and argumentation to changing constructions of gender. Over time, assumptions about women's changing behavior through the lifecycle gave way to a global preoccupation with sexual temptation, which then became the central rationale for limits on women's mosque access. At the same time, travel narratives, biographical dictionaries, and religious polemics suggest that women's usage of mosque space often diverged in both timing and content from the ritual models constructed by scholars. Katz demonstrates both the concrete social and political implications of Islamic legal discourse and the autonomy of women's mosque-based activities. She also examines women's mosque access as a trope in Western travelers' narratives and the evolving significance of women's mosque attendance among different Islamic currents in the twentieth century.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE LEACOCK MEDAL FOR HUMOUR, THE KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE AND TWO SASKATCHEWAN BOOK AWARDS Zarqa Nawaz has always straddled two cultures. She’s just as likely to be agonizing over which sparkly earrings will “pimp out” her hijab as to be flirting with the Walmart meat manager in a futile attempt to secure halal chicken the day before Eid. “Little Mosque on the Prairie” brought Zarqa’s own laugh-out-loud take on her everyday culture clash to viewers around the world. And now, in Laughing All the Way to the Mosque, she tells the sometimes absurd, sometimes challenging, always funny stories of being Zarqa in a western society. From explaining to the plumber why the toilet must be within sitting arm’s reach of the water tap (hint: it involves a watering can and a Muslim obsession with cleanliness “down there”) to urging the electrician to place an eye-height electrical socket for her father-in-law’s epilepsy-inducing light-up picture of the Kaaba, Zarqa paints a hilarious portrait of growing up in a household where, according to her father, the Quran says it’s okay to eat at McDonald’s—but only if you order the McFish.

Amid so much twenty-first-century talk of a "Christian-Muslim divide"--and the attendant controversy in some Western countries over policies toward minority Muslim communities--a historical fact has gone unnoticed: for more than four hundred years beginning in the mid-seventh century, some 50 percent of the world's Christians lived and worshipped under Muslim rule. Just who were the Christians in the Arabic-speaking milieu of Mohammed and the Qur'an? The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque is the first book-length discussion in English of the cultural and intellectual life of such Christians indigenous to the Islamic world. Sidney Griffith offers an engaging overview of their initial reactions to the religious challenges they faced, the development of a new mode of presenting Christian doctrine as liturgical texts in their own languages gave way to Arabic, the Christian role in the philosophical life of early Baghdad, and the maturing of distinctive Oriental Christian denominations in this context. Offering a fuller understanding of the rise of Islam in its early years from the perspective of contemporary non-Muslims, this book reminds us that there is much to learn from the works of people who seriously engaged Muslims in their own world so long ago. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.