'A brilliant and captivating work ... There is simply no better book on Islam in history'
Eugene Rogan From its birth in seventh-century Arabia Islam has been a faith on the move. In
Worlds of Islam James McDougall explores its origins and transformations from Late Antiquity
to the digital age. Over the span of a thousand years armies missionaries and merchants
carried it to the edges of Europe the coasts of Southeast Asia and the remote interior of
China. By the nineteenth century Islam encompassed a world of great diversity from
Muslim-ruled empires to nations where Muslims lived out their faith among many others. In the
twentieth century while monarchs in the Gulf asserted dynastic privilege and fundamentalists
in Egypt and Pakistan preached social morality revolutionaries from Algeria to Indonesia
fought for national self-determination and activists in North America and Europe campaigned
for civil liberties and social justice. As empires fell and new superpowers rose Muslims
proved to be as adaptable and dynamic as modernity itself. Sweeping and authoritative Worlds
of Islam narrates the epic story of how Muslims emerged as a community built empires
traversed the globe came to number in the billions and became modern.
