A Light at the End of the Tunnel (P/B)

The extraordinary character and career of Saladin are the keys to understanding the Battle of Hattin, the fall of Jerusalem and the failure of the Third Crusade. He united warring Muslim lands, reconquered the bulk of Crusader states and faced Richard the Lion Heart, king of England, in one of the most famous confrontations in medieval. Geoffrey Hindley’s sympathetic and highly readable study of the life and times of this remarkable, many-sided man, who dominated the Middle East in his day, gives a fascinating insight into his achievements and into the Muslim world of his contemporaries.

The story of how Saladin rose swiftly to the heights of power in Egypt, Syria and Palestine through conquest, intrigue and opportunism makes compelling reading. As Geoffrey Hindley shows, Saladin’s exceptional gifts as a battlefields commander and a military organizer were allied to an intense singleness of purpose and a rare political skill. United under his leadership, the Muslims formed a force that the Crusaders couldn’t hope to resist. But the quality that makes Saladin stand out from the other leaders of his time is his reputation for chivalry and honourable dealing.

Greoffrey Hindley is a distinguished medieval historian who has written widely on many aspects of the period. He has made a special study of medieval warfare and of England in the Age of Caxton, Under Siege, Tourists, Travellers nd Pilgrims, The Book of Magna Carta and The Crusades. His most recent publication is A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons.

In this book, the stories of the prophets have been compiled from ‘Al-Bidayah wan-Nihayah’ (The Beginning and the End) which is a great work of the famous Muslim exegete and historian Ibn Kathir and has a prominent place in the Islamic literature. The stories of the prophets and all the events in their lives have been supported by the Qur’anic Verses and the Sunnah (traditions) of the Prophet (S). Wherever it was necessary, other sources have also been reported for the sake of historical accounts, but on such places a comparative study has been made to prove the authenticity of the sources. Ibn Kathir has reproduced the views and interpretations of all the great exegetes of the Qur’an of his time. The systemic narratives of the Stories of the Prophets have been written in chronological order which renders a historical style to the book.

Much is known about Henry Ford (1863-1947), one of the greatest industrialists of our times, and his ‘Model T’.

What is not so well known is that Ford devoted years of his life and a substantial part of his fortune to awakening the American people to the enemies of the nation. Ford had become convinced that there was an organized, dangerous, largely secret, and incredibly powerful menace to America, almost completely Jewish at its highest levels, and he was determined to do something about it. Thus, 1920 marked the beginning of the publication of Ford’s research series in The Dearborn Independent, the Ford Motor Company’s weekly magazine. These articles were eventually collected in book form under the title The International Jew. When first published, more than 10 million copies were sold in the United States  alone. It was translated into sixteen LANGUAGEs and distributed by the millions in Europe, South America and the Middle East, making it one of the greatest bestsellers of all time.

Yet today this book is almost impossible to find. You will not be able to buy it in your local bookstore, nor check it out at your local library. The truth is that in the so called “democratic, pluralist” America this book has been nakedly suppressed.

The International Jew is relevant to all of us, even if Henry Ford addressed this question to the Americans. Its insights into the roots of today’s political situation is astounding and prophetic. The International Jew and the Zionist movement have assumed gigantic proportions affecting the peace of the world.

This book is an account of the author’s adventurous journey in the Arab world, and about his ‘home-coming’ to Islam. This book is more than an autobiography, which the Times Literary Supplement calls a “narrative of great power and beauty”.