Insights into Sufism

Insights into Sufism
Author: Ruth J. Nicholls
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2020-07-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1527557480

Sufism has long constituted one of the most powerful drawcards to people embracing Islam. This book considers a broad range of questions relating to Sufism, including its history, manifestations in various countries and communities, its expression in poetry, women and Sufism, and expressions among popular spirituality. In addition, the volume challenges the long-held view of Sufism as being necessarily peaceful, through a consideration in one paper of Sufis engaging in violent Jihad. The book works at the interface between the scholarly and the practical, using rigorous methodology to ensure that its findings are reliable, while also giving attention to how Sufi thinking impacts the daily lives of Sufis. This represents an original and important dimension of this study, given the significant role played by Sufis throughout Islamic history in enriching discussion of intellectual and charismatic questions, as well as informing popular practice among “Folk” Muslims.

Lahore

Lahore
Author: Yasmeen Lari
Publisher:
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2003
Genre: Lahore (Pakistan)
ISBN:

Shah Hussain Aka Madhu Lal Hussain

Shah Hussain Aka Madhu Lal Hussain
Author: Parvez Iqbal Anjum
Publisher:
Total Pages: 232
Release: 2019-11-12
Genre:
ISBN:

Shah Hussain also known as Madhu Lal Hussain is a gem of Punjabi literature He first time used classical genre of kafi- stanza having four lines in each poem . Born in 1539 A.D. in the Walled City of Lahore he was special in his love for Madhu a Brahmin lad .His intense and intimate love drew strong criticism from his contemporary intellectuals and historians of the undivided India- the likes of Lajwanti Ramkrishna. Male-to-male relation though viewed negatively yet it was usual and customary with Iranian mystics and Sufis. A renowned writer quote Shah Hussain as saying, " I am neither a Muslim nor a pagan". In fact he was a Muslim as he memorized Qur'an in his early age.He turned Mureed (follower )of Behlol Shah Daryal -a remowned Pir (spiritual leader)- for 26 years.His poetry and personality carries diversity and acceptance for Hindus, Sikhs and Dalits as his fervent love for Madhu lal showed.He possessed some miraculous powers as stories goes. He was spotted sleeping in the same bed with Madhu and his relative came to murder the both but fate turned them blind and they couldn't carry out the killing.His kafis are touching and moving like that of Baba Bulleh Shah, Baba Fareed Ganj Shakar and Dr Allama Iqbal .His poems are short in metre and ryhthmetic in pronouncing and strong in message and appeal.He touches upon important topics of Ishq e haqiqi (love for Allah), life, charkh, life anddeath, purpose of life etc.His standing and stature may be gauged from the fact that millions of people in Pakistan, India and other parts of the world love him and visit his tomb near Mughal garden Shalamar Bagh.His annual Urs (festival gattering) attract huge rush and crowed .There lies burried both the friends -Shah Hussain and Madhu Lal now infused in one collective name of Madhu Lal Hussain.

Self Portrait in Green

Self Portrait in Green
Author: Marie NDiaye
Publisher: Influx Press
Total Pages: 81
Release: 2021-02-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1910312908

'NDiaye is a hypnotic storyteller with an unflinching understanding of the rock-bottom reality of most people's life.' New York Times ' One of France's most exciting prose stylists.' The Guardian. Obsessed by her encounters with the mysterious green women, and haunted by the Garonne River, a nameless narrator seeks them out in La Roele, Paris, Marseille, and Ouagadougou. Each encounter reveals different aspects of the women; real or imagined, dead or alive, seductive or suicidal, driving the narrator deeper into her obsession, in this unsettling exploration of identity, memory and paranoia. Self Portrait in Green is the multi-prize winning, Marie NDiaye's brilliant subversion of the memoir. Written in diary entries, with lyrical prose and dreamlike imagery, we start with and return to the river, which mirrors the narrative by posing more questions than it answers.

Verses of a Lowly Fakir

Verses of a Lowly Fakir
Author: Madho Lal Hussein
Publisher: Penguin UK
Total Pages: 193
Release: 2016-01-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9385890573

Poet, weaver, mystic, saint, Shah Hussein created a stir in sixteenth-century Punjab through his unconventional lifestyle and the subversive power of his poetry. Popularly known as Madho Lal Hussein, after he adopted the name of his young lover and disciple, he remains a beguiling, enigmatic figure: a firebrand whose growing fame was a cause of anxiety for the political elite, a Muslim who fell in love with a Hindu boy and won his heart and devotion, a rebel philosopher who found solace in ignominy. Deceptively simple and astonishingly relevant, the poems in this magnificent collection are charged with longing, and offer insight into the true nature of love and death, desire and sublimation. Naveed Alam’s lilting translation brings out the verve and allure of Hussein’s verses which continue to be sung and recited over 400 years after his death.

Partition and the Making of the Mohajir Mindset

Partition and the Making of the Mohajir Mindset
Author: ʻAbdurraḥmān Ṣiddīqī
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2008
Genre: History
ISBN:

This is an insightful social analysis of the 'mohajirs', migrants from the Urdu-speaking belt of Northern India who mostly settled in Sindh fron 1947 onwards, and who were confronted by issues of identity and ethnicity as they clung to their culture.

Killing the Water

Killing the Water
Author: Mahmud Rahman
Publisher: Penguin Books India
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2010
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0143065033

Baba Bulleh Shah: the Pearl of Punjab

Baba Bulleh Shah: the Pearl of Punjab
Author: Parvez Iqbal Anjum
Publisher: CreateSpace
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2015-01-17
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9781507610565

Selective 50odd kafis of the greatest sufi poet of Punjab -Eastern and Western- have been translated with care and compassion into English for dissemination of his message of Sufism and spiritualism.

High As the Waters Rise

High As the Waters Rise
Author: Anja Kampmann
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 164622082X

This "gorgeously written" National Book Award finalist is a dazzling, heart-rending story of an oil rig worker whose closest friend goes missing, plunging him into isolation and forcing him to confront his past (NPR, One of the Best Books of the Year). One night aboard an oil drilling platform in the Atlantic, Waclaw returns to his cabin to find that his bunkmate and companion, Mátyás, has gone missing. A search of the rig confirms his fear that Mátyás has fallen into the sea. Grief-stricken, he embarks on an epic emotional and physical journey that takes him to Morocco, to Budapest and Mátyás's hometown in Hungary, to Malta, Italy, and finally to the mining town of his childhood in Germany. Waclaw's encounters along the way with other lost and yearning souls—Mátyás's angry, grieving half-sister; lonely rig workers on shore leave; a truck driver who watches the world change from his driver's seat—bring us closer to his origins while also revealing the problems of a globalized economy dependent on waning natural resources. High as the Waters Rise is a stirring exploration of male intimacy, the nature of memory and grief, and the cost of freedom—the story of a man who stands at the margins of a society from which he has profited little, though its functioning depends on his labor.