Pemberangkatan-pemulangan jamaah haji telah menjadi persoalan jauh sebelum Indonesia merdeka. Hasrat melaksanakan rukun Islam ke lima ini oleh penduduk tidak terhenti manakala Nusantara dikuasai oleh pemerintah kolonial Belanda yang mempunyai agama berbeda dengan penduduk yang dikuasainya. Hilir mudik pelayaran emngangkut jemaah ke Arab terutama pada musim haji membuka mata pemerintah Hindia Be…
The Buddha: A Very Short Introduction examines the complex and sometimes conflicting information that Buddhist texts give about the life and teaching of the Buddha. What can we learn about the social and political background of India in the Buddha's time? How did his thought develop into what constitutes Buddhist thought today? How has Buddhism survived so well through the centuries? What is th…
The debate between science and religion is never out of the news: emotions run high, fuelled by polemical bestsellers like The God Delusion and, at the other end of the spectrum, high-profile campaigns to teach Intelligent Design in schools. Yet there is much more to the debate than the clash of these extremes. As Thomas Dixon shows in this balanced and thought-provoking introduction, a whole r…
Religious thinkers, political leaders, law-makers, writers and philosophers have shaped the 1400-year-long development of the world's second-largest religion. But who were these people? What do we know of their lives, and the ways in which they influenced their societies? Chase F. Robinson draws on the long tradition in Muslim scholarship of commemorating in writing the biographies of notabl…
Mengapa orang-orang baik terpecah belah karena politik dan agama? mengapa masyarakat makin terpolarisasi dan saling curiga, bukannya berusaha bekerja sama? Mengapa ada pandangan moral yang berbeda-beda? Ahli psikologi JOnathan Haidt meneliti asal-usul keragaman pandangan moral di antara manusia. Peran emosi dan nalar dalam memandu moral, serta alasan moral yang mendasari berbagai kubu dalam …