It was the astronomers and mathematicians of the Islamic world who provided the theories and concepts that paved the way from the geocentric theories of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD to the heliocentric breakthroughs of Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Algebra, the Arabic numeral system, and trigonometry: all these and more originated in the Muslim East and undergirded an increasingly accurate and sophisticated understanding of the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets. This nontechnical overview of the Islamic advances in the...

It was the astronomers and mathematicians of the Islamic world who provided the theories and concepts that paved the way from the geocentric theories of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD to the heliocentric breakthroughs of Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Algebra, the Arabic numeral system, and trigonometry: all these and more originated in the Muslim East and undergirded an increasingly accurate and sophisticated understanding of the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets. This nontechnical overview of the Islamic advances in the...

Received an honorable mention at the 2016 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize

Key 'hot-button' contemporary issues in Islam, often at the centre of public scrutiny, are the focus of this book. By placing the discussion of topics such as the Sharia, jihad, the caliphate, women's status and interfaith relations within a longer historical framework, Contemporary Issues in Islam reveals their multiple interpretations and contested applications over time.

Most public - and occasionally academic - discourses in the West present the Islamic tradition as...

This introduction to the story of Muslims in Western Europe describes their early history and outlines the causes and courses of modern Muslim immigration. It explains how Muslim communities have developed in individual countries, their origins, present-day ethnic composition, distribution and organisational patterns, and the political, legal and cultural contexts in which they exist are explored. There is also a comparative consideration of issues common to Muslims in all Western European countries including the role of the family, and the questions of worship, education and religious...