Description: This dynamic and imaginative volume continues to provide a rich resource for understanding contemporary Muslim culture in the Middle East.
Review Quotes:
"Praise for previous editions: "[A] timely, well-researched and written analysis of popular and private life that is too often underestimated or overlooked yet which constitutes the majority of human existence in a region too often viewed from the narrow constraints of the state and its unrepresentative elites." --John Entelis "The broadening of Islamic studies (or regional studies on Islam) to include study of ordinary people, their daily lives, and popular cultures has been long overdue. [An] extremely interesting and innovative study which, in its own way, successfully challenges the pervasive misperception of the Middle East simply as a conflict-prone region." --Journal of Islamic Studies ". . . provides useful background reading for introductory courses to everyday history of the Middle East." --Journal of Palestine Studies "presents a grassroots look at what it is like to actually live in the Muslim Middle East . . . from Aghanistan and Iran to Morocco. [It] shows how religion is an important part, but not the sole part, of these people's lives." --Middle East Insight "This book is a welcome addition to the literature. . . ." --The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences"--
"What makes this book special is that so many of its contributors really are able to get inside what is going on in the Muslim Middle East, the so-called Arab 'street'. Most of them have actually lived close to those they write about and speak the local language. . . . For those serving in one of our 'fortress' embassies in the Middle East, where getting to know those beyond the elite is difficult, this book should be a must-read."--The Foreign Service Journal