Worlds of Islam

[A] masterful new account of Islam reminds us that the faith’s history – at its core a cosmopolitan one – is quite simply a history of the whole world. McDougall’s intercontinental account is eclectic and unpredictable, guaranteed to open the eyes and minds of the general reader no less than scholars of the world’s second-largest faith. The breadth and promiscuity of McDougall’s wide-ranging examples advance a number of original, if deliberately understated, claims … [he] rejects dogmatic assertions [and] suggests that Islam could also be understood as a political language of power that relied on the force of arms as much as it did on the force of argument. In re-examining the story of Islam’s beginnings, he quietly demolishes the post-9/11 consensus that concepts such as jihad were totems of Islam’s otherness … as Worlds of Islam so convincingly shows, the history of Islam requires the upending of many of the things we think we know about the world

Hussein Omar, New Statesman

[A] stunningly ambitious and authoritative global history [that] paints a compelling picture of change, adaptation, and growth in Islam from its origins over a thousand years ago to its myriad expressions in today’s digital age. McDougall ... wears his erudition lightly, deftly linking debates across time and space. [He] covers immense ground [and offer[s] novel perspectives ... he has made the case for a profoundly nuanced picture of Islam, its faithful, and their communities

Lisa Anderson, Foreign Affairs

A truly global work of history ... [Worlds of Islam] makes a case for a historicist approach to Islam as a religion [and] manages to show the scale of Islamic interactions with non-Muslims over the course of fourteen centuries without losing sight of what Islam meant to Muslims. Rather than denial or avoidance, [McDougall] reaches for the historian’s tools of contextualization and comparison ... his approach is constantly analytical, questioning what facts signify

Nile Green, Times Literary Supplement

An elegant, erudite guide ... eclectic and unpredictable ... never los[ing] sight of the bigger picture, it shows us how Islam took root, well beyond its heartlands in the Middle East in sub-Saharan Africa, central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Philippines, China and Afro-Americans in the United States .... It is impossible to sum up the skilful manner in which the author navigates his way around 1,500 years of history across such a wide geographical expanse – the historical vignettes are extremely diverse, giving greater evidence from parts of the Islamic world the West talks less about than the Middle East

Francis Ghilès, Arab Weekly

Brilliant, indispensable ... a rare book of balanced scholarship

Simon Sebag Montefiore

epic, authoritative and multilayered ... McDougall firmly rejects the "Clash of Civilisations" theory adopted more than 30 years ago by US post-Cold War warriors to depict Islam as an alien, backwards monolith. Instead, he stresses the plural in Worlds of Islam’s title ... a powerful education

Andrew Lynch, Irish Times

Riveting … McDougall never loses sight of the big picture even as he brings us close enough to see Islam taking root in sub-Saharan Africa, central Asia, the Indian sub-continent, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, even China, even among African-Americans in the United States ... a remarkable feat

Tamim Ansary

A brilliant and captivating work. Written with verve and balance, and profound scholarship, Worlds of Islam allows Western readers to appreciate Islamic history from the perspective of Muslim communities from the rise of Islam to the present day. There is simply no better book on Islam in history

Eugene Rogan, author of <i>The Arabs: A History</i>

A sweeping reimagining of how we think about Muslim history. With clarity and elegance, James McDougall dismantles the tired myth of a single, monolithic ‘Muslim world’ and reveals a dazzlingly diverse mosaic of Muslim lives, cultures, and societies. Anyone who wants to understand not just the past of Islam but its present and future should read this book

Reza Aslan