” Allah O Akbar” begins the call to prayer that resonates from minarets in towns & villages from Sinkiang to Morocco, from Paris to Timbuktu. Wherever in the world you are, the message is the same: ” God is Great”. It is also, however, the cry of fundamentalists throughout the lands of the faithful. Abbas, a member of the prestigious agency Magnum, spent seven years travelling through the Islamic world taking the photographs for this book. As a photojournalist he has covered major political events in the Third World, including wars & revolutions, & is driven by a desire to understand & expose the internal strains pulling within Muslim societies, Abbas takes a ”telling” picture, & the immediacy & subtlety of the photographic images create a constant visual stimulus.