Daniel Lavelle

The US government has been investigating unidentified aerial phenomena in a secret division of the Department of Defence. A former intelligence official urged the US to disclose evidence of UFOs after saying the government possesses 'intact and partially intact' alien vehicles. And what about those sightings of Tic Tac, Gimbal, Go Fast and the infamous Oumuamua? Danny Lavelle, our charming, borderline-bewildered investigator, sets out on a road trip through America's UFO heartlands to get some answers (thankfully 41% of Americans believe aliens have made contact so he has plenty of sources to choose from). Talking to those in the know in government and the UFO scene - often the same thing - Danny follows Lue Elizondo, Jeremy Corbell, attends sky watches (sometimes falling asleep in the desert), listens to alien abductees and has coffee with Starseeds (human beings who claim to be actual aliens). Whether he's smoking weed whilst holding dumortierite crystals to access his interdimensional past, or discussing 'space beads' with the Harvard astrophysicist who's convinced he's found evidence of alien life, Danny's journey becomes a deeper story about our unshakeable fascination with little green men - and our deepest wishes not to be alone in the universe.

Salafism is a theological movement whose radical wing is today affiliated with al-Q? da and the Islamic State, but which draws on precedents stretching back to the medieval theology of Ibn Taymiyya. This innovative study focuses on the concept of theonomy in salafi thought: the tenet that rule by God's law is an essential component of faith, and the corresponding notion that other forms of rule based on human legislation are inherently polytheistic and thereby illegitimate. It is this tenet which furnishes radical militants with their principal casus belli against ruling regimes in the Muslim world. In this book, Daniel Lav details the intellectual grounding for modern salafi theonomy in Ibn Taymiyya's doctrine of tawhid and the writings of the early Wahhabi movement, in addition to the twentieth-century thought of Abu al-? a Mawdudi and Sayyid Q? , while drawing on insights from comparative political theology to analyze this key school of thought.