"From Casablanca and Algiers to Tehran and Karachi, Islam is reasserting itself as a counterpoint to Western influence," began a lengthy query cabled earlier this year from TIME'S editorial offices in New York to 16 bureaus throughout the world. "We want to examine Islam's resurgence, not simply as another faith but as a political force and potent third ideology competing with Marxism and Western culture in the world today."

Back came reports from more than two dozen correspondents, who visited medinas and mosques, and interviewed sultans and emirs, desert tribesmen and professors of Islamic culture. The result is this week's Special Report on Islam, a sweeping exploration of one of the world's great faiths, with side trips through the life of Muhammad, the words of the Koran, and the ancient justice of the Shari'a (Islam's code of law).

This story is the latest chapter in TIME'S half-century tradition of reducing to comprehensible dimensions subjects that readers might find dauntingly broad and perplexing. That practice began with a 1928 look at The American People, and has in recent years included Judaism (1972), Capitalism (1975) and Socialism (1978). Islam merited such treatment, says Associate Editor Marguerite Johnson, who wrote the main cover story, because "the Iranian revolution has made it especially important for Westerners to understand the driving energy and devotion Islam commands from so many." Correspondent Dean Brelis was given a vivid example of that devotion when he visited a Bedouin village in the Sahara for this week's story. Reports Brelis: "An elderly Bedouin invited me to his home and showed me a bright turquoise-blue wall that was covered with primitive but happy paintings that depicted a ship loaded with people, and then a dark cube surrounded by birds and flowers. The entire frieze conveyed a kind of ecstatic vision. The old man explained, his wrinkled face breaking into a happy smile: 'I made the hajj [the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim is encouraged to make at least once in his lifetime]. And I wanted all my Bedouin brothers to share and value it with me. So I drew this, and when I am gone it will be here as part of the village.' "

Senior Editor John Elson, who was in charge of the Special Report, first began to appreciate the pervasiveness of the faith while serving as TIME'S religion writer from 1962 to 1966. "Islam has been so frequently misunderstood," contends Elson, "partly because so many people have tried to apply terms from Christianity and Judaism to it. What we have attempted to do is give a succinct but complete picture of a phenomenon that is not merely a faith, but a way of ordering society."

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