Shaykh Mahmud Shaltut (1897-1963) was a scholar and reformer who held the most senior position in Egypt open to Sunni Muslim religious scholars--that of Rector of the Azhar University in Cairo. His period of office (1958-63) was a turbulent time in Egypt and within the Azhar itself, with President Nasser's socialist government initiating a radical reorganization of that institution in accordance with its policy of exerting greater control over the forces of Islam in Egypt. By focusing on the work of an essentially traditional religious scholar, this study of Shaltut's life and thought will...

When the Western mass-media talk of conversion to Islam, we are bombarded with accounts of vulnerable people brainwashed into a culture of extremism. However, in reality, the vast majority who convert are well-educated, liberal in outlook, and doing so as the result of a long-considered and heart-felt decision. What is more, their numbers are growing. In British Muslim Converts, Kate Zebiri looks at these cases of conversion, and examines the contribution that converts are making to an indigenous Western Islamic thought and discourse. Overcoming the West/Islam divide just by virtue of who...

From the Crusades to the present day, the interrelationship between Islam and Christianity has been fraught with conflict, both theological and military. Yet events in 20th-century history, particularly the communications revolution, have meant that, after centuries of living in isolation from each other, Christians and Muslims find themselves participating in the same intellectual culture, and are having to review their assumptions about each other.