Like the two volumes mentioned above (How to Read Judaism and How to Read Hinduism), Roland Machatschke’s work is designed as an introduction and published in the same year (in an English translation from the original German of 1990) by the same press. But it is not part of the same series. It is the second in a series called ‘The Basics’, described by the publishers as ‘a distinctive new series, clearly setting out the basic historical facts and doctrines which lie behind the world’s major religions’. Five chapters guide us through ‘Muhammad and his Teaching’, ‘Tendencies and Schools’, ‘Dissemination’. ‘Islam Today’ and, very briefly indeed. ‘Art and Science in Islam’. Although it contains a short bibliography and chronological table which takes us from the birth of Muhammad in 570 to the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, it has no index, doubtless on account of its brevity.

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