Worlds of Islam

A sweeping global history of Islam, tracing the 1,400-year evolution of a diverse community of faith and its place in the modern world

“Anyone who wants to understand not just the past of Islam but its present and future should read Worlds of Islam.”—Reza Aslan, author of No god but God

From its birth in seventh-century Arabia, Islam has been a faith on the move. 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 new nations where Muslims lived out their faith among many others. As empires fell and new superpowers rose, Muslims proved to be as adaptable and dynamic as modernity itself.

In Worlds of Islam, historian James McDougall explores Islam’s origins and transformations as Muslims adapted to changing times and conditions, from Late Antiquity to the digital age. 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.

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.