MSI Press Blog

  Today's book back story is about The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society  by Dr. Omar Imady. From the publisher: In 2005, MSI Press was a very young specialty press, established to publish materials for promoting higher levels of language learning, associated with the Coalition of Distinguished Language Center. Dr. Omar Imady, originally from Damascus, was a professor at the New York Institute of Technology in Amman, Jordan, where Dr. Betty Lou Leaver, co-founder of MSI Press LLC, was dean. He approached her with the suggestion of a modest expansion of publishing lines -- adding books on culture to those on language. The first two to be published was his book on metaphors of Islamic humanism and the book, The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society.  The latter was based on his dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania and served an important, and broader, function: to shed light on the institutional roots of organizations that sanction the use of indiscriminate v...

    Today's book excerpt comes from  When You're Shoved from the Right, Look to the Left   by Omar Imady . HONEY AND HUMILITY After all the animals had been created, many decisions had to be made. One of these decisions involved who would be entrusted with carrying an amazing substance called honey. The animals started to argue with each other, each trying to prove why it should be selected for this special task. The angels arranged for a competition to resolve the dispute.   First, the elephant stepped forward. “I am clearly the most qualified. Not only do I have an enormous belly where all the honey can be kept, but I also have a trunk that is perfectly designed for the task of inserting the honey into containers.”   Next came the lion. He roared a few times and then said: “Honey needs to be protected, and who is more qualified to protect it than the king of the jungle?”  Then the horse stepped forward. “Honey,” the horse proclai...

  Today's book excerpt comes from When You're Shoved from the Right, Look to the Left   by Omar Imady . THE SHEEP THAT NEVER LOST HOPE There once was a sheep who dreamed of walking in the very front row of her flock, but each time she tried to move towards the front, she was pushed back by her strong and mighty sisters and brothers. “Know your place, sheep,” they would whisper. “Even the very last row is too much for you.” Day after day the sheep would try to move towards the front row, and day after day she was pushed back with sarcasm. A dawn arrived when the shepherd, after having directed his flock towards the usual northern pasture field, suddenly stopped and decided he would try out a pasture field to the south which he had heard about from one of his friends. With his rod, he gestured to his flock to turn towards the opposite direction and suddenly the sheep, who had never lost hope, found herself in the very front row. For more posts by and about Omar and ...

Veteran and award-winning author, Omar Imady, has done it again with a new book, Erasures . Literary Titan Gold Award Winner. 'An exceptional novel on par with previous dystopian classics written by Orwell and Huxley.' - Los Angeles Book Review The Year is 2049. Following a brutal seven-year war, Earth teeters on the brink of destruction. The World Congress is convened to identify the enemy: unpredictability. Deep in the subterranean corridors of Zone 4 Literature Hub, Head Archivist Ray Blankenship is tasked with digitizing humanity’s remaining books. In this new world, meticulously organized, monitored, and managed, Ray is restless. In the absence of chance, of mystery and miracles, meaning is missing. Amid the order, Ray’s shocking discovery of disappearing digital texts quickly plunges his department, his superiors, and the entire principle of predictability into uncertainty. Soon, whole books begin to vanish. But not just any books. Only religious ones. As the race to pres...

  Excerpt from The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society by Dr. Omar Imady --  Planting the seeds of Muslim Civil Society: (1871-1879)  The Activist: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani  Although Iranian and Shici 33 by birth, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) was known to most of his contemporaries as a Sunni Afghan. He described himself as such out of purely practical considerations, namely, to avoid being dismissed by religious scholars and political leaders of Sunni Muslim countries. In actuality, however, al-Afghani was neither a Shici nor a Sunni. His worldview, rather, was a synthesis of tasawwuf (an approach to Islam that emphasizes the spiritual experience, henceforth: sufism) and philosophy, combined with an intense inclination towards political activism. Al-Afghani was trained as a traditional scholar in Iraq and was, seemingly, self-taught in Western philosophy and political institutions during his subsequent stay in India. After living in Afghanistan ...

  Today's fortune cookie is associated with The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society by Omar Imady. Read more about this book and its author  HERE .  Get a paperback copy at  MSI Press webstore . If not on sale at the time, use code FF25 to get 25% discount. (Note: the code does not work on books that are already on sale att discounted prices.) Sign up for the MSI Press LLC newsletter Follow MSI Press on  Twitter ,  Face Book , and  Instagram .   Interested in publishing with MSI Press LLC? Check out information on  how to submit a proposal . Interested in receiving a free copy of this or any MSI Press LLC book  in exchange for  reviewing  a current or forthcoming MSI Press LLC book? Contact editor@msipress.com. Want an  author-signed copy  of this book? Purchase the book at 25% discount (use coupon code FF25) and concurrently send a written request to orders@msipress.com.  Want to communicate with one of our a...

                    One of the fun things that a publisher (or at least, an acquisitions editor) gets to experience is meeting more than one member of a family -- as authors whose work we publish, In this series of presenting family authors, we take note of the Imady writers, who have written several exciting and award-winning books. Above pictured, left to right, is Elaine Imady, the mother of Muna (daughter) and Omar (son). Elaine's book, Road to Damascus , a memoir of her physical and emotional journey from New York to Syria with her husband, Mohammed, was the first runner-up in the Eric Hoffer Legacy Award competition. Muna, who published two books with MSI Press -- the popular Syrian Folktales and the gut-wrenching Damascus amid the War , passed away suddenly and unexpectedly just as she finished the latter book; may she rest in peace. Omar's MSI Press books are quite different one from another: The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civ...

  Excerpt from When You're Shoved from the Right Look to Your Left: Metaphors of Islamic Humanism (Omar Imady) FOR A FEW SILVER COINS Once a man heard about a place where people worshipped a tree. “These people are under a delusion. They have  replaced the glory of the transcendent God, the secret of all that is alive, with a mere tree? I must save them from this path. I must cut down this tree.” And so, the man climbed on his horse and headed toward the tree. When he got there, he picked up his ax and began to strike at it. People ran to him, yelling, “Stop! This is our most sacred tree.” But everyone who tried to push him away from the tree failed. He was simply too strong and too determined. When everyone was about to give up, an old man approached him and said, “Listen, my friend. The truth is that you have severely surprised these people. They are all very devoted to this tree, and they will be very hurt if they see it cut down today. However, if you were to wait just un...

  The Severe Trial During the ninth century, the Abbasid khalifah1 al-Mamun (r. 813-833) set out to convert ahl al-sunnah, or the traditionalists who emphasized the authority of the Qur’an and Prophetic traditions, to a theological doctrine held by the Muc tazilah, or the rationalists who emphasized the authority of reason and philosophical principles. Traditionalist scholars were forced to recant their belief in the non-created nature of the Qur’an in favor of the rationalist doctrine which held that the Qur’an was a creation of God. Those who refused were tortured and, at times, executed. In 848, fifteen years after the beginning of the government sponsored inquisition, termed al-Mihnah, or the Severe Trial, by Muslim historians, al-Mutawakkil (r. 847-861) ordered the end of all government sponsored attempts to enforce the rationalist doctrine. Al-Mutawakkil’s decision reflected his awareness that the inquisition had simply not succeeded and that its continuation might ...