The introduction highlights the multiplicity of topics that are analyzed in the essays collected in the volume: the transformations of the Islamic religious institutions in the process of globalization, the Islamic feminism, the legacy of colonialism, the problem of democracy and its relationship with Islam, the different conceptions of development in the West and in the Muslim world, the problem of cultural and economic relations in the Mediterranean area. Through this in-depth research path, the introduction points out that the essays collected in the book investigate the complexity of the relationships between Islam and the West and give a glimpse of the possibility and conditions of an encounter between these two great civilizations.