This timely book explores Islam today – a world living through that crucial, creative movement in which the heritage of its past is being transformed into the herald of its future. Professor Wilfred Cantwell Smith traces the development of Islam from the medieval period until recent times. He shows how closely religion is related to contemporary problems and he tells how each of the Muslim states has tried to build a place for itself in the mid-twentieth century, lured by the Communist world on the one hand and the West on the other.