"A History of the Muslim World": Podcast with Michael Cook

Professor Michael Cook joined my podcast, Rocking Our Priors, to discuss his brilliant new book, “A History of the Muslim World”.

I asked:

1. Did Islamic science weaken due to religious authoritarianism?

2. Why in the Middle East and North Africa were there so few peasant rebellions?

3. Theologically, how important was Ghazali?

4. What determined the rate at which people converted to Islam?

5. Why was there so much religious diversity in the Ottoman Empire?

6. Why did the Muslim world fall behind economically?

7. Did the Ottoman Empire ban the printing press?

8. Why is South Asia the only place where Muslims ruled for hundreds of years yet remained a minority?

9. When you study the global history of Islam, what is the best indicator of how Muslim they really were? (Spoiler: he says ‘pigs’).

10. Did colonialism trigger an Islamic backlash?

11. What’s driven post-1970 Islamic revivalism?

12. Why do Muslim countries often have weak state capacity? What do you think of Timur Kuran’s emphasis on waqfs?

You can listen on Spotify and iTunes, or watch on YouTube.