Understanding Islam

Bryan Turner is Professor of Sociology, Australian Catholic University; Emeritus Professor the Graduate Center, CUNY; Honorary Professor, Potsdam University; and Fellow Edward Cadbury Center, University of Birmingham. He is one of the world's leading sociologists of religion and has also devoted significant attention to sociological theory, the study of human rights and the sociology of the body. Turner has written, co-authored or edited more than 70 books and more than 200 articles and chapters, including most recently The Religious and the Political: A Comparative Sociology of Religion (2013) and Religion and Modern Society: Citizenship, Secularisation and the State (2011), both published by Cambridge University Press. He is a founding editor of the journals Body & Society, Citizenship Studies and Journal of Classical Sociology.