Although they are typically portrayed by the media as dangerous extremists in distant lands, Muslims in fact form a permanent, peaceful and growing population in nearly every Western country. While Westerners are now more commonly seeing mosques in their neighborhoods or scarved Muslim women in their streets, misperceptions and stereotypes remain. With expanding numbers and desires to protect their rights and identities, Muslims are coming into more and more into the public view. In Mu...

Although more than half of the world's Muslims live in Asia, most books on contemporary Islam focus on the Middle East, giving short shift to the dynamic and diverse presence of Asian Islam in regional and global politics. The Muslims of Asia constitute the largest Muslim communities in the world - Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Central Asia. In recent years, terrorist bombings in Bali, separatist conflicts in Thailand and the Philippines, and opposition politics in Central Asi...