Usman Butt

Book Club: Dr Saqib Iqbal Qureshi challenges rigid interpretations of Islam and advocates for a more open and flexible understanding of the faith

Book Club: The 'Visualizing Palestine' book uses striking infographics to reveal the history, as well as the ongoing struggle and displacement of Palestinians

Book Club: Sherman Jackson's book 'The Islamic Secular' redefines Islam's secular sphere, challenging Western misconceptions and sparking a fresh dialogue.

Book Club: Eugene Rogan's The Damascus Events charts a gruesome moment in the city's history as interfaith tensions fell from knife edge to massacre.

Book Club: In his new book, Maged Mandour delves into what makes President Sisi's regime so different and dangerous, compared to those who came before him.

Book Club: Estella Carpi discussed her book 'The Politics of Crisis-Making' with The New Arab, using Lebanon as a case study to expose how official crisis management reshuffles societies and engenders unequal nationalist-based economies.

Book Club: Seldom researched, the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon (1915-1918) was one of WWI's greatest atrocities. Drawing on first-hand testimonies, Taylor Brand's 'Famine Worlds' offers an important analysis of what it's like to live through trauma.

Book Club: Estella Carpi's latest book looks at how humanitarian aid in Lebanon is entangled with diverse forms of development, and how the murky and often opportunistic politics of defining crises affect the displaced.

Book Club: Jaber Baker and Ugur Umit Ungor's 'Syrian Gulag' presents a compelling case for accountability in Syria looking into the different prisons and charting the regime’s repression from 1970 until the 2020s through years of detailed research.

Book Club: Drawing on the works of prominent scholars of the time, Elaheh Kheirandish documents the scientific pedigree of two "cities of the stars": Baghdad and Isfahan. Her book helps reintegrate the Eastern tradition into the scientific narrative.