These days, the reality of Islam penetrates the consciousness
of contemporary Westerners from nearly every direction.
Whether it is consequences of the decades-old Middle
Eastern confl ict between Arabs and Jews, the aftershocks of
the upheavals of the Iranian Revolution, the civil war in
Yugoslavia, where Muslim Bosnians were caught between
feuding Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats, the breakup of
the Soviet Union and the sudden appearance of a number of
Muslim republics