While this is an important area of investigation, is it entirely a new one? Is it, as it is assumed, an entirely late-twentieth-century/ early-twenty-first-century Western phenomenon? Let us take the life of another North African scholar—that of Ibn Khaldun. Born in North Africa in the fourteenth century, he lived and worked in Europe (Spain) and eventually settled and died in Cairo. In between, he wrote his classic account of history. And he was not alone—Al-Beruni and Ibn Battuta are just two of a long list of peripatetic scholars. Theirs was a time of globalization centuries before the word was used in the late twentieth century. The difference was that it was a time of Muslim globalization. What these scholars found was that they could travel across three continents and still be within a familiar culture, speak the same language, and identify similar and central ideas of the world.

What is new in Mandaville's argument is the speed, power, and ubiquity of technology and its dramatic effect on the transformation taking place in contemporary Muslim society. Images of book burning in Bradford in England flash across the world and can cause riots and deaths in Bombay and Islamabad (as in the case of The Satanic Verses). Ideas of community, politics, and identity are challenged in these instantly available images.

Mandaville comes to his work as a result of a personal journey. He spent his childhood among Muslims in the Arab Gulf. When he moved back to the West, he was able to see the discrepancy between what he knew of Islam and what he read in the media. But he does not wish “to offer yet another rant against Western distortions and misrepresentations of Islam” (p. xi). Rather, he has a different purpose: “to focus instead on Islam as a lived experience. What does Islam mean today to those Muslims living under globalising conditions, particularly as minority communities in Western Europe? Furthermore, can a better understanding of Muslim politics accrue not from something called ‘Islamic studies,’ but by reading contemporary Islam through the lens of various global and transnational transformations?” And finally, he asks, “How … can we usefully make a link between changing configurations of political space and Muslim political discourse? To this end, I consciously avoid offering an exegesis of Islam's canonical texts” (pp. xi–xii).

As an anthropologist, I agree that we need to look at Muslim society in the here and now. However, as a Muslim, I know the importance of text in society. It is something that Mandaville does not ignore. Indeed, he explores the important questions that he has raised by looking at Muslims living in the West and through the lives of individuals like Arkoun. But he does not leave it there. He also looks at the activist scholars of Islam, such as Maulana Mawdudi and Sayyid Qutb. He points out the interconnection between thought and action. So while Arkoun may talk of dialogue and understanding in Paris, it is Qutb's ideas that inspire al-Jihad al-Islami who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Most importantly, Mandaville points out the use of communication, media, and information technologies, which influence contemporary Muslim discourse. The Internet and CDROM –based communications allow Muslims globally to read and interpret Islamic knowledge for themselves. This has allowed the emergence of a new breed of Islamic intellectual who is not necessarily a traditional alim or religious scholar. It explains why chemists and engineers as well as traditional scholars compete to speak on behalf of Islam.

Mandaville's research is focused on Britain where he spent most of his time examining Muslims. He points to several distinct Muslim groups as representing diasporic Islam. He identifies the Hizb ut-Tahrir/al-Muhajirun a movement that originally emerged in the Middle East in the early 1950s. The group became well known on British university campuses in the early 1990s for allegedly encouraging anti-Semitic sentiment. They advocated the reestablishment of the political system of early Islam around the office of the caliph. In contrast, Mandaville describes the Tablighi Jama’at also active in Britain. It was founded in the 1920s in India and is popular in Pakistan. This movement believes in quiet, low-key missionary work, which emphasizes harmony.

This book in a sense sets the stage for September 11, 2001. All the arguments lead up to questions that need to be resolved within Muslim society in its relations with the world: Who speaks for Muslim society? Will there be conflict or clash between Islam and the West? How far will the technological developments affect traditional interpretations within Islam?

Minor quibbles: Sometimes Mandaville cannot resist the temptation of using jargon and thereby losing the reader from a generally well argued and clear account. With the confidence of a painter using the broad brush, he tends to use sweeping generalizations. For example, he cannot simply dismiss the sociologist Anthony Giddens in the way he does (“The high levels of abstraction, particularly in the case of Giddens, unfortunately leave us with the impression that globalisation is something that is taking place ‘out there”’; p. 37).

Too often books on Islam fall into the category of attacking Islam and/or then being apologetic for it. In this innovative, scholarly, and yet sympathetic account we are able to understand the processes that are transforming a traditional society in times of rapid change and thereby causing unrest and anxiety.