British Scientists of the Twentieth Century

The growing importance of Islam in the world coincides with the growing interest by scholars in understanding Islam as a religion and its political and social influences. The geographic scope of Islam goes far beyond the Middle East, and there is a vast diversity of Islamic movements. But of the main categories of Islamic groups, only the Islamist political groups, such as al-Qaida and Hizballah have been documented; these are only a small portion of the variety and stance of groups. Indeed, the ?Arab Spring? has brought a resurgence of Islamic, as well as Islamist, civil society organizations.

This new four-volume set provides a comprehensive study of the other main categories of movements: the Muslim non-political, non-Islamist groups, including charitable and educational organizations as well as the association of imams, courts, and so on; the Muslim non-Islamist political groups, that is the efforts to create communal representational or communal interest groups, commonly called ?moderate Muslim? groupings; and the non-political aspects of Islamist groups, that is the social welfare, educational, theologically oriented, and special interest organizations created by Islamist groups to spread their influence and enlarge their base of support.

This truly ground-breaking and timely work collects for the first time in one reference work the latest scholarship on a previously-neglected aspect of the Muslim political and social experience, and will be invaluable to researchers and students across a wide range of disciplines.