Islam, Real and Imagined: PW Talks with John Tolan

In Islam: A New History, the historian chronicles the religion’s 1,400–year evolution through profiles of figures who showcase its diversity.

Why is a new history of Islam particularly relevant now?

Much of the current discourse on Islam is based on a traditional narrative about its origins and rise, as if everything we know about the religion was produced by Muhammad and his companions in the seventh century. But as recent scholarship shows, Islam emerged gradually and has been in constant change over the centuries. This pushes back on what Muslim fundamentalists believe is a “pure” form of Islam—an imagined, ideal society around Muhammad where Sharia was already the law of the land. The far right does the opposite, saying that this early Islamic society persecuted minorities, women, and so forth, and that it is essentially the same today. This means, for them, that Muslims are not able to adapt to modern Western societies. I hope to show people who are not on either of those extremes Islam’s rich history and diversity.

Who are some of the people from Islamic history you introduce and how do they illustrate these themes?

One of the chapters that was most fun for me is about Ibn Battuta, a 14th-century Moroccan man who leaves home at the age of 22 and travels for 20 years, going as far as India, China, and beyond. He gets jobs as a judge and an administrator in Delhi and the Maldives. He’s appreciated wherever he goes, because he knows his Quran and Islamic law. At the same time, his testimony shows the diversity of the Muslim world and its constant engagement with others—with Christians, with Hindus, with Buddhists. His story reminds us that the real demographic center of Islam is much further east than the Middle East or North Africa, and that in all these countries Muslims have had to interact, often creatively, with people of other faiths. Still today, none of the top five countries with the largest Muslim population is Arab.

How does one make sense of such a vast and diverse religion?

I like to point readers to the cover of the book. You see this Indian-looking woman lying prostrate in prayer and receiving a paper with a text in Arabic, a verse from the Quran. This is Rabia al-Adawiyya, an eighth-century Iraqi Sufi woman, portrayed a thousand years later by an Indian artist as a well-dressed, idyllic beauty of 18th-century India. That, to me, shows Islam’s paradoxical unity in diversity, because here she is, an Iraqi Sufi who speaks across borders and centuries, holding a verse from the Quran to which all Muslims would relate.

A version of this article appeared in the 03/24/2025 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: John Tolan

“Come out from among them and be different”: An Interview with Philip Yancey

Yancey’s Where the Light Fell  (Convergent, October.) digs up his roots in the fundamentalist South in the 1950s and ’60s. Yancey not only recounts how he came to repudiate aspects of his past, but managed to rekindle his faith and share the “good news” he believes it offers the world. 

In my interview with Yancey on behalf of Publisher’s Weekly, the popular author shared why his latest book is a memoir, what he learned by digging up his past, and how it speaks to evangelical realities in the U.S. today.

“We took the Bible verse ‘Come out from them and be different’ seriously. We dressed differently, we acted differently. We stood out. We were a marginalized group. In the end, the church served as a community of support. Life is difficult, especially if you’re in a poor community and you feel like you’re on the margins already.”

— Philip Yancey

The age of "spirit tech" is here. It’s time we come to terms with it.

The electrodes are already attached to your scalp, so you settle into a seat that reminds you of the one they use at the dentist’s office. On the other end of a series of cords is a machine where a technician sits with a clipboard and a range of blinking and bleeping devices.

No, you’re not about to start a medical diagnostic exam.

You’re about to meditate.

Sound surreal? If so, welcome to the brave new world of “spirit tech,” where a range of researchers and practitioners are using brain based tech to “trigger, enhance, accelerate, modify, or measure spiritual experience.”

In their new book — Spirit Tech: The Brave New World of Consciousness Hacking and Enlightenment Engineering — Wesley J. Wildman and Kate J. Stockly take a stimulating journey into the technology that could shape our spiritual futures.

Investigating the intensifying interaction between technology and religion, they talk to innovators and early adopters who are "hacking the spiritual brain” using ultrasounds to help practitioners meditate or experimenting with “high-tech telepathy” to build a “social network of brains.”

Not only did I get the chance to read the book, I also sat down with a one-on-one interview with Stockly about how spiritual entrepreneurs and tech-savvy religious practitioners are using technology to modify spiritual experiences.

While critics may question “spirit tech’s” efficacy, elitism, and ethics, Wildman and Stockly are careful to note that religious people have always used tools — from mantras to mandalas, prayer beads to palm reading — to enhance spiritual experience. The difference now, they write, is the sheer number of “customizable and exploratory practices at the threshold between cutting-edge tech and the soul,” from synthetic psychedelic trips in lieu of Holy Communion to LED orbs that create connection between congregants.

Wildman and Stockly do not pretend to have it all figured out — spirit tech’s ability to balance innovation and enlightenment, they say, “is still being written” — but their thought-provoking introduction to the brave new world of transcendent tech gives both pious pioneers and defenders of traditional religion something to consider as they imagine the future of spirituality in the 21st-century and beyond.

Confessing America's Original Sin

Addressing multiple reports of a white police officer shooting an African American, such as in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson and Lauquan McDonald in Chicago, Jim Wallis—public theologian, political activist, and founding editor of Sojourners magazine, argues that the events are part of a legacy stretching back to slavery.

His new book, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America(Brazos, Jan.), not only tries to diagnose the underlying and systemic issues that are causing racial strife, but asks Americans to recognize what he calls their original sins — slavery and racism — before they can move forward together.

“We have to address our country’s racial injustice and the fundamental difference of opinion and perspective between white and black people about the criminal justice system, education, and economics,” Wallis told me in a recent interview and profile I did for Publisher's Weekly. 

Behind headlines, None parents are raising kids without religion

The 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study by the Pew Research Center showed that the U.S. public, as a whole, is growing less religious, resulting in headlines such as “Fewer Americans Believe in God” and “‘Nones on the Rise.”

In a new book Losing Our Religion: How Unaffiliated Parents are Raising their Children (NYU Press, Nov.), Christel Manning goes beyond the headlines to provide a qualitative counterweight to the data about “Nones”—people who have no religious affiliation. She sought to answer the question, “How do None parents deal with the question of religion in the upbringing of their children?”

An American Qur'an? Bringing the Muslim holy book to life in the U.S.

Having delved into Christianity with the Dante’s Divine Comedy series (Chronicle Books, 2006), artist Sandow Birk is now turning his attention to Islam in the book American Qur’an (Liveright, Nov.). In the book, one of PW's best books of 2015, Birk illustrates the Qur'an, using American life as the backdrop for the sacred writings—from the fields of Iowa to the beaches of Southern California. I had the opportunity to catch up with the graphic artist, who is not religious, to learn more about this nine-year project for publication with Publisher's Weekly. 

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