Islam: A Short History

Karen Armstrong

Dec 2007 · Modern Library chronicles Book 2 · Sold by Modern Library

About this ebook

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. Karen Armstrong's short history offers a vital corrective to this narrow view. The distillation of years of thinking and writing about Islam, it demonstrates that the world's fastest-growing faith is a much richer and more complex phenomenon than its modern fundamentalist strain might suggest.

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. It is also a model of authority, elegance, and economy.

Ratings and reviews

This woman knows nothing. Firstly, she ascribes motivations to central figures in Islam without providing any proof and twists and tweaks certain facts throughout the book to suit her needs of telling a compelling story with a few dirty turns. She obviously has a very limited scope of knowledge about the religion, and is clearly an impassioned feminist, among other things, and does not present an objective telling of Islamic history. To read an accound of what actually happened during the rise of Islam, get a scholarly work that is not written by a biased idiot.

You have to give this book free because some kids need to study for classes such as my little sister

About the author

Karen Armstrong is one of the world's foremost scholars on religious affairs. She is the author of several bestselling books, including The Battle for God, Jerusalem, The History of God, and Through the Narrow Gate, a memoir of her seven years as a nun. She lives in London.