The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Islam

by Jack Miles (Editor), Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Editor)

This groundbreaking new Norton Anthology enables the six major, living, international world religions to speak to students in their own words. Edited by world-renowned scholars under the direction of Pulitzer Prize–winner Jack Miles, The Norton Anthology of World Religions provides a flexible library of more than 1,000 primary texts from the world’s major religions―Hinduism, Buddhism, Daoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam―in six portable paperbacks. This anthology unites foundational works―the Bhagavad Gita , the Daode jing , the Bible, the Qur’an―with the writings of scholars, seekers, believers, and skeptics whose voices have kept these religions vital for centuries, allowing instructors to shape a variety of courses. The selections are supported by the meticulously prepared apparatus―introductions, explanatory annotations, bibliographies, maps, and glossaries―for which Norton Anthologies have set the standard for fifty years.

Unprecedented in scope and approach, The Norton Anthology of World Islam brings together over 100 texts from the Qur’an in the seventh century to feminist and pluralist readings of the Qur’an in the twenty-first century. The volume features Jack Miles’s illuminating General Introduction―“How the West Learned to Compare Religions”―as well as Jane Dammen McAuliffe’s “Submission to God as the Wellspring of a Civilization,” a lively primer on the history and core tenets of Islam.

Genres: Religion, Islam, Nonfiction

659 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2015

About the author

Jack Miles is an American author and scholar known for influential works on religion, literature, and culture. His essays and commentary have appeared in major publications including The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his book God: A Biography, which presents the biblical God as a literary character and has been translated into numerous languages. Miles later expanded this approach with Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God and God in the Qur'an, part of a broader exploration of religious texts as narrative traditions. He has also served as general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Religions and held editorial and academic positions across publishing and higher education.