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No religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular Western imagination as an extreme faith that promotes authoritarian government, female oppression, civil war, and terrorism.

Islam: A Short History begins with the flight of Muhammad and his family from Medina in the seventh century and the subsequent founding of the first mosques. It recounts the origins of the split between Shii and Sunni Muslims, and the emergence of Sufi mysticism; the spread of Islam throughout North Africa, the Levant, and Asia; the shattering effect on the Muslim world of the Crusades; the flowering of imperial Islam in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries into the world's greatest and most sophisticated power; and the origins and impact of revolutionary Islam. It concludes with an assessment of Islam today and its challenges.

With this brilliant book, Karen Armstrong issues a forceful challenge to those who hold the view that the West and Islam are civilizations set on a collision course.

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"Karen Armstrong...takes on a useful and formidable task in presenting the history of Islam in a single short volume. As many of other such works have been written either by apologists or by those hostile to Islam, Armstrong's comprehensive and sympathetic work is welcome."

-- Los Angeles Times

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"A wonderfully well-written overview...it homes in on the aspect of Islam that most concerns those ignorant of it -- namely, its attitude toward politics."

-- Booklist

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"A small gem, bristling with insight and sensitive historical analysis of a misunderstood and much-maligned faith."

-- The Washington Post

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Islam: A Short History

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