. . . and the Sun Will Rise from the West

This book seeks to offer an interpretation of how terrorism has become a tool of Muslim radicals and why it is completely at odds with the teaching of Islam. It claims that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam as a religion but the evolution of Muslims, especially in the past one thousand years, has created an environment in which fanaticism, radicalism and violence can nourish. Supported by double standards by Western powers and active backing for corrupt governments and groups, Islamic terrorism came into being. It presents an overview of how Islamic thought in many parts of the Muslim world has become rigid and frozenand grounds for hoping that change in that thought may come, from a perhaps surprising place. It suggests the role that both Muslim and Western societies have played and will continue to play in contributing to reforming Islam. Our purpose is not to provide a thorough proof of our ideas, but to spark discussion and dialogue, both in Muslim and non-Muslim communities (and, ideally, between the two) as to how Islam can regain in world thought and civilization the honored place it had during the Golden Age of Islam.

Rafaat Ludin, born in Afghanistan in 1963, is the son of an Afghan diplomat. He thus spent much of his childhood in Germany and received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Applied Sciences Darmstadt in 1993 before coming to the US, where he received an MBA from the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine in 2003. He has pursued a career in international business; his company, International Home Finance and Development, LLC, is currently working to develop parcel 1 of Phase 1 of Kabul New City, the largest development project in the history of Afghanistan, which will upon completion house some 70,000 people and provide over 3.5 million square meters of commercial space. He is also past President of the Colorado Muslim Society. Rafaat has no formal religious education but has always been interested in learning about his religion through books and scholarly papers. He has developed an in-depth understanding of the historical, political and cultural circumstances evolving in Islamic and world history. Windham Loopesko is a lecturer at University of Colorado Denver in globalization and international business, as well as teaching international law and business as a visiting professor at the University of Lyon (France), Politechnika Gdanska and the University of Economics in Katowice (both in Poland), and the Universidad San Pablo in Arequipa (Peru). He has had an international consulting practice assisting American and European businesses in setting up overseas operations. He has a law degree from Harvard (1975), an MBA from the University of Chicago and a Troisime Licence en Sciences Economiques Appliques from LUniversit Catholique de Louvain (Belgium, both in 1974), and an AB in government (Phi Beta Kappa) from Dartmouth College (1970).