The nation that will insist upon drawing a broad line of distinction between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.
-- Sir William Francis Butler
Recent crises in the Middle East have flooded the media with sensationalist and inaccurate portraits of Islam. This revised edition of Gilsenan's classic work shows that Islam covers a multitude of forms and practices which are woven into daily existence in complex and sometimes almost invisible ways. Gilsenan explores a variety of social worlds all claiming Islamic affiliation: the feudal aristocracy of northern Lebanon, the working class Sufi brotherhoods of Egypt, and the new bourgeoisies of Algeria and Morocco.