Islam is more than a set of laws, rites and beliefs presented as a religious and social totality. As a word it covers a multitude of everyday forms and practices that are interwoven in complex, sometimes almost invisible ways in daily existence. Drawing exclusively on his own fieldwork in Egypt, South Arabia and the Lebanon, the author explores the nature of Islam and its impact on the daily lives of its followers; he shows that all the Western stereotypes of Islam and its practitioners need to be treated with considerable scepticism.