Even before the events of September 11, 2001, the global discourse on civil society - in its varied interpretations and manifestations - had caught the attention of citizens and communities right across the Muslim world from Iran, Tajikistan and Indonesia to the Maghreb. Issues of human rights, pluralism and gender equity were at the forefront of the wider quest for participatory politics. A new urgency now attends those issues: patterns of political violence and some of the responses to them, threaten to undermine the ethical legacy of Muslim civilizations and its role in the emergence of civic culture and the rule of law. This landmark survey of social and intellectual trends in diverse Muslim contexts includes contributions by Mohammed Arkoun, Shirin Akiner, Olivier Roy, Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Abdou Filali-Ansari, Ersin Kalaycioglu, Aziz Esmail, Iftikhar Malik and Tair Faradov. It will appeal not only to scholars of contemporary politics and culture, but to all those interested in the high-stakes unfolding of modernity in the Muslim world.