Islam in the World Today

This book is the most comprehensive work on contemporary Islam available worldwide, replacing almost an entire Islamic library. Being the translation into English of a German handbook, its original had already seen five editions by 2005 – remarkable because German Orientalists had usually focused on historical and philological aspects of Islam. The volume takes account not only of religious/theological developments in the Islamic world but even more strongly of social, economic, and political events there.

In addition to subjects like Islamic history, organizations, law, mysticism, art and architecture, the volume offers 30 chapters on Muslim life worldwide. The whole is based on a scientific apparatus (Notes; Bibliography; Biographies; Name; Subject; and Geographical Indexes) covering 255 pages.

Here is a list of German authors – a Who’s Who of current German oriental- ists –: Lode Frank Bradel, Johann Christian Bürgel, Heribert Busse, Andreas Christmann, Renate Dietrich, Hans-Georg Ebert, Alexander Flores, Henner Fürtig, Iris Glose-meyer, Jan-Peter Hartung, Axel Havemann, Hans Harder, Thomas Heberer, Peter Heine, Otto Jastrow, Franz Kogelmann, Roman Loi- meier, Hans-Peter Matthes, Hans Müller, Volker Nienhaus, Katja Niethammer, Bernd Ratke, Johann Reissner, Rudolph Peters, Werner Schmucker, Reinhard Schulze, Olaf Schumann, Johanna Pink, Riem Spielhaus, Udo Steinbach, Guido Steinberg, Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr.

Seven contributors are not German (Jamil Abun-Nasr, Munir Ahmed, Khalid Duran, Frederic de Jong, Nico Landman, Mohamed Scharabi, and Abbas Poya).