ABSTRACT
The present volume offers a selection from the papers presented at the First International Conference on Islam and the 21st Century, organized in the framework of the Indonesian-Netherlands Cooperation in Islamic Studies (INIS). This conference offered scholars and experts from various disciplines and institutions the opportunity to meet and combine theoretical approaches with practical experiences relating to fundamental tendencies in contemporary Islam. Islam, in the conference title as well as in the present introduction, is used as a general term denoting not only Islam as a religion, but also the community of its adherents, their society, thought, and culture, characterized by a combination of unity and diversity that is one of the main sources of its interest as an object of study.
