How does Islam engage with the idea of the modern and with the contemporary world? How is Muslim tradition to be reconciled with a world in continuous flux and change? These questions lie at the heart of current discussions of the Islamic faith and of its doctrines, beliefs and practices. Engaging directly with such questions, this important volume discusses such key themes as identity and citizenship, piety and protest and music and modes of dress. Muslim as well as non-Muslim scholars explore how religiosity and tradition may both have an active role to play in the unfolding of what we...

What exactly is the Qur'an? How does this extraordinary document -- literally ""recitation"" -- relate to the life and times of the Prophet Muhammad? And why did the religion of the Prophet, which came to be called ""Islam"" (or submission to God's will), at the center of which lies the Qur'an, give birth to a legacy so richly diverse in faith, law and civilization? This immaculately researched, but at the same time thoroughly accessible, book offers a journey into the full range of experience -- past and present, secular and sacred -- of the peoples and cultures that share in Islamic...