Amazon.com description: Product Description: An indepth scholarly book about Islam. From the Preface: This book presents an interpretation of Islam as religion. Much that is incontrovertible about Islam--names, dates, places, articulated beliefs, and practices--is to be found in these pages. But the living religious tradition of the more than 700 million Muslims is not just a set of facts to be enumerated and learned, as though Islam could be presented in the style of an almanac. Therefore, (the author) has also attempted to explain and interpret the information Islam presents about itself. Explanation and interpretation are necessary because we need to understand much that is not merely factual--symbols, myths, rituals, unarticulated beliefs, and values--in short, human cognitive and behavioral patterns that are quite different from those that underpin life in the West.