A timely survey of radical spirituality and political activism in Islam and the West over the last century and a half, The Crescent and the Compass uncovers numerous previously unknown and unexplored connections between European, American, and Muslim movements, organizations, secret societies, and thinkers. Subjects covered include Ayatollah Khomeini and Islamic mysticism; Sufism and Shi"ism; the influence of the ideas of Rene Guenon, a former Catholic and Freemason, and convert to Sufism; and Charles, the Prince of Wales, Traditionalism and Islamic spirituality. At the heart of the book, however, are the many connections, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, between various Muslim revolutionaries and Freemasonry, a fraternal movement that was influential in the spiritual and occult avant-garde of Western Europe and America. The Crescent and the Compass not only explores how revolutionaries and anti-colonialists, such as Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, attempted to mold Masonic...