It began in Bosnia, where Islamic nationalism was reborn as Serb shells rained down on Europe's ancient Muslim heartland. It was the start of a three-year odyssey into the hearts and minds of Muslim Europe and America, a journey by which Adam LeBor set out to discover what it means to be a Muslim in the 90s, living in the West, but with a heart turned east. He met Muslim soldiers on the front lines of Bosnia who, abandoned by Europe, rediscovered Islam. He met with exiled Muslim dissidents in London - a city now referred to as the intellectual capital of the Arab world. He spoke to Turkish rappers in Berlin and young Algerian artists in Marseilles, both in the vanguard of a new European-Muslim culture that straddles the gulf between two disparate worlds. He witnessed Turkey's Islamic revival from the back streets of Istanbul, where Muslim women, their heads covered, work in twentieth-century offices and nervous brothel keepers wonder how long they can stay in business. And in the United States he met with Muslim lobbyists who are demanding a presence in the corridors of power as a new wave of Black Americans are turning to Islam in their rage against the white establishment.
Islam and Christianity are at a crossroads, argues LeBor, but a global media, a global economy, and a new mix of cultures mean that a symbiosis of the best of both worlds will be the result, not the violent clash of creeds that so many on both sides expect.