Duke UniversityReligion Department

Recent Publications

• • Bruce B. Lawrence & Aisha Karim.
  • 2007.
  • Chain of Violence- an Anthology.

  Publication Description

  classic perspectives on violence, putting into productive conversation the thought of well-known theorists and activists, in order to demonstarte the violence is always historically contingent, and must be contextualized to be understood. The goal is to examine how we speak or represent violence without replicating or perpetuating it.

  Co-edited with Aisha Karim (Xavier College, Chicago, The Chain of Violence: An Anthology. will appear from Duke University Press, in Fall 2007. A critical appraisal of current, mostly European theorists of violence, it pays special attention to the crises in global politics that remain unresolved in the post-Cold War era. ca. 400 pages in length. Private Comments: This book required no less than 34 permissions, and as the principal author, I had to collect them. It was a tedious affair at best, a nightmare at worst. Hannah Arendt alone required 5 exchanges and negotiations with the holder of rights for ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM. I eventually had to pay a mere $1,100 for a selection of less than 9,000 words. George Orwell, 1984, was so expensive that I had to drop that selection from the book plan. Still, the resulting volume will mark a distinctive intervention in the debate about what constitutes violence, and how one might redirect, if not reduce, its impact on the contemporary world.

• • B.B. Lawrence.
  • 2007.
  • The Qur'an - A Biography.
  • Grove/Atlantic.

  Publication Description

  The Qur'an as told through successive, often competing interpreters of its central messages. Includes both non-Muslim and Muslim, Shi'i, Sunni and also Sufi perspectives on the lodestone of Islamic belief, ritual and worldview.

  This book took 5 years to write, at the invitation of the editor for a series BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. It has already been translated into 11 languages, and the American edition also includes a audio tape version.

• • 2002.
  • New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims & Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life.
  • New York: Columbia University Press.
• • Carl Ernst.
  • 2002.
  • Sufi Martyrs to Love: The Chishti Brotherhood in South Asia & Beyond.
  • New York: Palgrave Press.
• • 2000.
  • Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia.
  • Gainesville, University Press of Florida.