The reader who comes fresh to the subject of Islam, with or without a prior interest in any of the great contemporary religious traditions, will find the literature on Islam bewildering in its sheer quantity and varied in its quality and apparent aim. Any casual reader of the dailypress, or television viewer for that matter, will realize that Islam plays an important role in many parts of the globe, whether in the trouble-torn former republic of Yugoslavia, in the Muslim states of Pakistan, Iran, Egypt, and Algeria, or even in the (post-Christian?) secular society of modern-day Britain in the aftermath of the so-called Rushdie Affair and the decree of the late Ayatullah Khumayni against the author and the publishers of The Satanic Verses. Over the past fifteen years or so, books on Islamic history and thought and on the current phenomenon of Islam in politics have become a growth sector in the publishing world. Only a tiny portion of this output can be cited in the notes and list of further reading below. In this excursus discussion is restricted to a selection of works in English dealing with the question of Islamic origins, since much important, original – and controversial – work has been done in recent years on this subject.