...this volume celebrates and explicates in great detail the cultural history of the thousand year Islamic ummah, executing at the same time a form of travel writing that presents a welcome advance on the western genre. Instead of viewing his subject from the outside, the writer demonstrates a warm personal engagement with the terrains through which he is moving, meeting minds with the people and their cognate Islamic cultures, all the while conscious of the
evidences of a glorious stage in the history of mankind.
Professor Iftikhar H. Malik, FRHisSoc, has been teaching modern history at Bath Spa University since 1995. During the 1990s, Malik held the Quaid-i-Azam Chair at St. Antonys College, Oxford, and since 2002, has been a Member of the Common Room at Wolfson College, Oxford. With doctoral and postdoctoral training at Michigan State, Columbia, and UC, Berkeley, Malik has authored 17 books, 75 scholarly papers, and 250 review articles.
Some of Iftikhar H. Malik's recent volumes include: Pashtun Identity and Geopolitics in Southwest Asia: Pakistan and Afghanistan since 9/11 (Anthem, 2016); Pakistan: Democracy, Terror and the Building of a Nation (New Holland Publishers, 2010); The History of Pakistan (Greenwood Press, 2008); Crescent between Cross and Star: Muslims and the West after 9/11 (OUP, 2006); Jihad, Hindutva, and the Taliban: South Asia at the Crossroads (OUP, 2005) and
Islam and Modernity: Muslims in Western Europe and the United States (Pluto, 2004).