Who Speaks for Islam?

This is awesome. The National Library of Medicine has a virtual library of rare books, where you can actually turn the pages. Turning The Pages Online: Book Menu. The Kitab Aja’ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, usually known as “The Cosmography” or “The Wonders of Creation,” was compiled in the middle 1200s in what is now Iran or Iraq and is considered one of the most important natural history texts of the medieval Islamic world.  The author Abu Yahya Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud-al-Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283 C.E.), known simply as al-Qazwini,  was one of the most noted natural historians, geographers and…

From the same folks who brought you All-American. Pre-order and get 40% off now. Looks like a great anthology. White Cloud Press And Riverwood Books – Demanding Dignity: Young Voices From the Front Lines of the Arab. Demanding Dignity: Young Voices from the Arab Revolutions brings together essays written by today’s generation of Arab youth who have directly inspired and sparked a revolutionary spirit that toppled governments, unearthing the corruption of decades of dictator dominated countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Cambridge Digital Library – University of Cambridge. Cambridge University Library's collection of Islamic manuscripts dates from the origins of Arabic scholarship in Cambridge in the 1630s when the University founded a Professorship in Arabic and William Bedwell donated a Qur'an to the Library. Since that time the collection has grown in size and diversity to over 5,000 works, including the collections of Thomas Erpenius, J.L.Burckhardt, E.H.Palmer and E.G. Browne. These manuscripts shed light on many aspects of the Islamic world, its beliefs and learning. h/t Gary Bunt