When You’re Shoved from the Right, Look to Your Left: Metaphors of Islamic Humanism

This book contains 29 stories originally articulated in Arabic by Bashir Al-Bani, Orator of the Grand Mosque of Damascus and one of the masters of the Sufi Naqishbandi Order. They have been compiled, rendered in English, and introduced by Dr. Omar Imady, professor of humanities and political science. The stories are often comic but deep in implication. One story may address the motives underlying human interaction; another may address how hidden principles guide the way in which our lives unfold. A delicate concern for the value, indeed the sacredness, of human value permeates all the stories. This concern is explicated through metaphors, the purest vocabulary of Islamic humanism.