This chapter was published as a guest editorial in Anthropology Today, 29: 4, August 2013, under the title "Foregrounding the Muslim tribal periphery". This book is arguably the finest of Professor Akbar Ahmed’s many publications, blending a literary and religious sensibility with political and historical analysis – a model for engaged anthropology. It can be read on two levels. It is a political indictment of the disproportionate victimization of Muslim tribespeople by remotely controlled military weapons – a policy which risks leading to a cycle of revenge. But the drone is also a metaphor for the current age of globalization, "something which comes from nowhere, destroys your life and goes away", while the prickly, tenacious "thistle" is an image that captures the essence of tribal societies (an image borrowed from Tolstoy’s posthumous novel Hadji Murad).

This chapter presents an introduction to the life and works of Jeanette Winterson. Winterson was born in Manchester on 27 August 1959 and brought up in the nearby mill-town of Accrington, Lancashire, by her adoptive parents, Constance and John William Winterson, in a strict Pentecostal Evangelist faith. Her novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit was published in 1985 and earned the Whitbread First Novel Award. In 1990, Oranges was made into a TV drama, winning two BAFTA awards (for Best TV Drama Series and for Best Actress) and the Prix d'argent for Best Script in 1991. Winterson's work has been placed in one or other of the boxes labelled ‘lesbian fiction’ or ‘postmodernist fiction’. However, the writer rejects both qualifications, particularly that of ‘lesbian writer’, and insists that she expects to be called simply ‘a writer’, as male authors usually are.

The Introduction summarizes the book’s content under the following headings. Since all the chapters have been previously published elsewhere, it also adds some complementary material to bring the book up to date on some important topics: Part One: Chapters 1 to 9: Islamic charities, Summary of the Chapters, Some recurrent themes, Faith Based Organizations and "cultural sensitivity", Islamic Relief Worldwide, The West Bank zakat committees, Banking problems, Towards a more complete description, Pakistan, Turkey, Domestic Islamic charity in the United Kingdom, A zakat movement?, Towards a more comparative approach, Part Two: Chapters 10 to 17: Islamic humanism

This is a personal account of a mediation or conflict resolution project (2005–2013), funded by the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (Political Division IV) in which the author took part as an adviser. The aim of this exercise in "track two diplomacy" was to help remove unjustified obstacles from Islamic charities. It did not succeed in surmounting all the challenges it faced, partly as a result of political turbulence in the post 9/11 years. In particular, not enough trust was generated between the US Treasury and the charities of the Gulf states to facilitate mediation. The chapter concludes, however, by forecasting that future efforts of a similar kind will be made to bring Islamic charities fully into the international aid system. Materially well-off Muslims have the resources to alleviate poverty and suffering, while the overseas aid budgets of the major Western nations are under pressure. Moreover, a "humanitarian vacuum" is created in complex zones of conflict such as Syria, when bona fide Islamic charities are absent for political reasons and the field is left open for extremist groups. The growth of research on Islamic charities will help give substance and credibility to future interventions.

This chapter, originally published in a law journal (the UCLA Journal of Near Eastern and Islamic Law), follows up the issue of the Palestinian zakat committees which was discussed in Chapter 5. It describes a civil action launched in the US courts by the family of David Boim, a boy of seventeen, who was killed by Palestinians in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank in 1996. The family, being unable to sue either two alleged murderers or Hamas (as the presumed instigator of the attacks) sued the Holy Land Foundation on the grounds that it had remitted funds to zakat committees, held to be façades for Hamas. The Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit found in favour of the Boims, by a majority. The majority decision was written by Judge Richard Posner. The controversial principles in US law of "material support for terrorism" and "fungibility" (i.e. transferability) of assets are discussed here. It is argued that the Court did not give enough attention to making clear its commitment to fairness, while the minority opinion was unimpeachable.

This part of the book contains texts on the topic of political ideas and ideologies, translated from the original Hungarian by Adam Fabry: The crisis of our ideologides (Nézeteink válsága), The test of socialism (A szocializmus próbája), Law and violence (Jog és erőszak), Civil war (Polgárháború), Believing and unbelieving politics (Hivö és hitetlen politika), The constitution of socialist Britain (szocialista Nagybritánnia alkotmánya), H. G. Wells, the socialist (H. G. Wells, a szocialista), Karl Kautsky and democracy (Karl Kautsky és a demokrácia), Guild socialism, (A gildszocializmus), Guild and state (Gild és állam), and The historical background of the social revolutionaries (A szociálforradalmárok pörének történelmi háttere).

In this chapter we borrow concepts developed by economists, time-based ideas during the initial phases of a protracted struggle as a means of making ‘agitation’ ‘propaganda’; or armed groups may employ terrorism concurrently with other tactics throughout the course of the war. Thirdly, challengers may treat terrorism as a ‘trailing indicator’, useful following some tactical defeat.

The documents in this chapter describe the relations between Normandy and England and the Norman Conquest of 1066.

This chapter outlines the tradition of the epigram in the Classical, Medieval and Renaissance periods, with particular focus on the influence of Martial, Catullus, and the Greek Anthology. Despite the genre’s reputation for licentiousness and cynicism, it came to be used for a wide variety of subjects. However, a commitment to brevity and sharpness of wit distinguished the genre regardless of subject and was often noted by Renaissance theorists. The chapter also explores some more limited influences, such as the medieval proverbial epigram, on the Renaissance use of the genre.