Islam

So what's so significant about the Byzantine Empire? It is now recognized as having had a considerable influence on the Renaissance and a significant impact in the shaping modern Europe. Modern historians are increasingly acknowledging the role the Byzantine Empire played in the development of both Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between the two.

A complete history of Islamic political thought from early Islam (c.622-661) to the present. This comprehensive overview describes and interprets all schools of Islamic political thought, their origins, inter-connections and meaning. It examines the Qur'an, the early Caliphate, classical Islamic philosophy, and the political culture of the Ottoman and other empires.

Abdelwahab Meddeb makes an urgent case for an Islamic reformation, located squarely in Western Europe, now home to millions of Muslims, where Christianity and Judaism have come to coexist with secular humanism and positivist law. He is not advocating "moderate" Islam, which he characterizes as thinly disguised Wahabism, but rather an Islam inspired by the great Sufi thinkers, whose practice of religion was not bound by doctrine.

Grand in its sweep, this survey of the sacred writings of the major religions of the world offers a thoughtful introduction to the ideas and beliefs upon which great faiths are built. Under the expert guidance of John Bowker, a religious scholar and author of international stature, readers explore the key texts of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, Parsi, Confucian, Daoist, and Shinto traditions. The author discusses some 400 books, among them such well-known sacred texts as the Bible and the Quran, but also spiritual writings by theologians, philosophers, poets, and others.

In Reading the Qur'an, Sardar - one of Europe's leading public intellectuals - laments that for far too many Muslims, the Qur'an he had learned in his mother's lap has become a stick used for ensuring conformity and suppressing dissenting views. Arguing passionately but reasonably against these trends, Sardar speaks out for a more open, less doctrinaire approach to reading the Qur'an.

Charles Hill analyzes the refusal of the ideologues of pan-Islam to accept the boundaries and responsibilities of the order of states. He offers a historical perspective on the war of Islamism against the nation-state system, looking at changes in world order from the Thirty Years' War of the seventeenth century to Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979 to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.