Although radical Islam dominates the headlines, it represents only a tiny fraction of the world’s estimated 1.6 billion Muslims. That deep global diversity figures into several forthcoming titles.

In April, Harper will publish Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Heretic: Why Islam Needs a Reformation Now, in which the women’s-rights activist identifies “five key amendments to Islamic doctrine” that she says will make the religion fully compatible with democratic societies around the world. Adam Bellow, editorial director of Broadside Books and v-p, executive editor at HarperCollins, who acquired the title, says that unlike Ali’s Infidel (2007) and Nomad (2010), both published by Free Press, “Heretic is not a memoir, but it does represent a continuation of her political and intellectual journey.” Bellow adds that Ali, who as an adult renounced the Islamic faith she was raised in, has “decided to re-engage with her religion in what she hopes is a constructive manner.”

Cornell University Press is publishing David Commins’s Islam in Saudi Arabia (Apr.), which director of marketing Mahinder Kingra says offers a concise, accessible introduction to Wahhabism, the puritanical strain of Islam that is practiced in that country. Because the book is written for a general audience, Cornell plans to invest in major national advertising, and Kingra expects strong undergraduate course adoption in universities’ rapidly proliferating academic programs in Islamic studies.

At University of North Carolina Press, senior executive editor Elaine Maisner has two Islam-focused books for spring: What Is a Madrasa? and Who Is Allah?, both publishing in April. These follow on the heels of the fall 2014 title What Is Veiling? Maisner reports “strong interest in foreign language deals” for these books, part of the Islamic Culture and Muslim Networks series, “which includes studies of Islam anywhere in the world, including important areas not so frequently explored, such as South Asia and Africa.”

Other publishers continue to find an audience for general-interest books on the world’s second-largest religion. Jane Dammen McAuliffe has edited The Norton Anthology of World Religions: Islam (Feb.), a fresh installment in a series that has also included Christianity, Judaism, and Hinduism, among others. Oxford University Press, which has built up a robust publishing program in Islamic studies, explores depictions of Muslim men in Muslims in the Western Imagination, by Sophia Rose Arjana (Feb.). The book traces the symbolic demonization of the Muslim male in cultural products as diverse as medieval literature and 21st-century zombie movies.

Cambridge University Press is repackaging several titles in its Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization series, including the paperback editions of Animals in the Qur’an, by Sarra Tlili, and Asma Sayeed’s Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (both May).

A Christian Perspective on ISIS

Although ISIS has been percolating for over a decade, it did not become front-page news in the United States until mid-2014, when it carried out terrorist attacks in the crumbling infrastructures of Iraq and Syria. During this tumultuous period, Howard Books, the Christian division of Simon & Schuster, hired attorney Jay Sekulow to write a book on ISIS and radical Islam. “We discussed it on the Thursday before Labor Day, and two to three weeks later we had a book that debuted at #3 on the e-only bestseller list of the New York Times,” says Jonathan Merkh, v-p and publisher. A print version followed in October, and the publisher estimates that Rise of ISIS: A Threat We Can’t Ignore has sold a total of 190,000 copies in all editions to date.

Sekulow’s book is written from a Christian worldview, but, Merkh says, “it is not a prophecy book.” That’s in contrast to a number of other Christian explorations of radical Islam. At Moody Publishers, The ISIS Crisis: What You Really Need to Know, by Charles Dyer and Mark Tobey, will be released in February with an initial print run of 15,000 copies. “Biblical prophecy speaks plainly about end-times conflicts and nations rising against nations,” says Paul Santhouse, v-p of publishing. “The book unpacks that, using prophecy as a backdrop to understanding current conflicts.” Prophecy is also a trending category at Worthy Publishing, which is publishing Michael Youssef’s Jesus, Jihad, and Peace: What Bible Prophecy Says About World Events Today (Feb.). President and publisher Byron Williamson reports that though prophecy books always sell “reasonably well,” there’s been an uptick in the last two to three years. “From time to time when events kick up interest, people are reminded that this is all addressed in the Bible,” he says. Worthy plans a 25,000-copy first print run, but the success of other recent books in the prophecy category—most recently John Hagee’s October 2013 title Four Blood Moons, which Williamson says has sold 750,000 copies in all editions for Worthy—suggests an even wider audience.

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