My bad: the actual title of the Armstrong is Islam: A Short History. I also neglected to mention John Esposito's Islam: The Straight Path which is a good historical, cultural, and theological overview of the faith, and which I've used in prepping my own lectures on Muslim religion and literature.
Finally, I'm fond of Annemarie Schimmel's Mystical Dimensions of Islam, which focuses on Sufism and does a nice job of exploring some of its more transgressive practitioners, including Rabia and al-Hallaj. Sufi poetry and theology uses some interesting sexual metaphors, many queer (Rumi, the greatest Sufi poet, was passionately in love with Shams al-Tabriz, another male Sufi, most of his life), and you might enjoy reading a bit about that tradition.
(I'm really not an Islamicist. Just picked up some odds and ends along the way.)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2003-07-27 12:18 (UTC)Finally, I'm fond of Annemarie Schimmel's Mystical Dimensions of Islam, which focuses on Sufism and does a nice job of exploring some of its more transgressive practitioners, including Rabia and al-Hallaj. Sufi poetry and theology uses some interesting sexual metaphors, many queer (Rumi, the greatest Sufi poet, was passionately in love with Shams al-Tabriz, another male Sufi, most of his life), and you might enjoy reading a bit about that tradition.
(I'm really not an Islamicist. Just picked up some odds and ends along the way.)