Summary
Contents
Subject index
Islam is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the West. Myths and stereotypes surround it. This clear and penetrating volume helps readers to make sense of Islam. It offers a penetrating guide to the diversity and richness of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. Throughout, the emphasis is upon the value of pluralistic approaches to Islam, rather than condensing complexity with unifying concepts such as `Orientalism'. Interdisciplinary in scope and organization, the book cuts through the bewildering and seemingly anarchic diversity of contemporary knowledge about Islam and Muslim society. The methodological difficulties and advantages of Western researchers focusing on Islam are fully documented. The book demonstrates how gender, age, status and `insider' / `outsider' status impacts upon research and inflects research findings.
Islam and the Sea: The Causes of a Failure
Islam and the Sea: The Causes of a Failure
In the conflict that pitted Christianity against Islam on the seas of the Mediterranean for more than a millennium, Islam was twice defeated. Following four centuries of bitter struggle, which was marked from the seventh century by large-scale Arab naval assaults on Constantinople, and then by Arab sojourns in Crete, Malta, Sicily and the Balearics, as well as on the Mediterranean's northern shores in continental Italy and Provence, Islam's spread into Europe was gradually repulsed. From the end of the tenth century, it had been forced to abandon all of its European outposts (Eickhoff 1954; Lewis 1951). Christian maritime supremacy did not emerge for another fifty years ...
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