|
Religion, Philosophy & Law |
| Reprinted from the Middle East Studies
Association Bulletin, Summer 2001 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards). Copyright 2001 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America |
| Intellectual Traditions in
Islam, edited by Farhad Daftary. 252 pages, bibliography, index. New York, NY: I. B. Tauris, 2000. $45.00 (Cloth) ISBN 1-86064-435-X Intellectual Traditions in Islam developed out of a conference that the Institute of Ismaili Studies held in Cambridge in 1994. Aziz Esmail introduces the spirit of the undertaking, “to challenge…the spirit of the age, to open new horizons, new possibilities of thinking and feeling,” so as “to understand the responsibility of the intellectual to society” (pp. 1-2). The organizing theme of the seminar raised a series of questions: “the life of intellect is a question, the idea of a tradition is a question, indeed the idea of Islam itself raises a question. What is meant by Islam, and what is the relationship of the past and present in Islam?” (p. 9). These questions reverberate through the whole collection. Daftary, Hugh Kennedy, and Alice Hunsberger write on pre-modern Muslim intellectual trends; John Cooper, Oliver Leaman, Muhsin Mahdi, Annemarie Schimmel, and Abdulaziz Sachedina observe traditions of thought from a philosophical and epistemological vantage point; Norman Calder and Mohammed Arkoun study Islamic intellectual speculations in a historical context: the way they face, challenge and accommodate political power. Focusing on the lively intellectual scene of the first four centuries of Islamic rule, Kennedy studies the succession crisis, as well as later debates that were related to the spread of Islam as preoccupations of Muslim intellectuals in the early period. Calder’s essay is particularly compelling. His attempt to delineate the boundaries of orthodoxy in Sunni Islam leads him to redefine Sunni Islam “as more a religion of community than of scripture” (p. 73). The interpretation of scripture and revelation constitutes the intellectual tradition of Sunni Islam. The literary corpus of Sunni Islam “are traditions of writing through which the Sunni community has given expression to its understanding of its relationship to God and his Prophet” (p. 74). The limits of orthodoxy in Sunni thought, for Calder, are expressed in this corpus: “anything that is brought in under these headings and held inside the discursive tradition of Muslim literary experience belongs within the limits of Islamic orthodoxy” (p. 76). What then falls outside the purview of this decentered and fragmented Islam? For Calder, and in Sunnism, it is the abandonment of tradition, as manifested most radically by figures such as the Bab, Sayyid Muhammad Shirazi (d. 1850), the founder of the Babi movement. In his tafsir of the Surat Yusuf, the Bab claims to have gone back to the Qur’an itself, to trace a spectrum of meanings, discarding the interpretations of preceding Muslim scholars. This approach, according to Calder, goes against the grain of the long and staunchly defended tenet that Islam “is not a religion which, from generation to generation, goes back to the original words of scripture and revelation” (p. 77). The final part of Calder’s essay explores one of the clearest boundaries of Sunni Islam, that which separates it from the Ismaili faith. There, he sees the precursor of a tendency in modern Muslim societies to shrink their heritage, to reject certain modes of religious fulfillment. The tendency—and here is the more immediate message of Calder’s own skillfully delivered khutba—originated with Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905), who advocated a return to the pristine beginnings, before Sufi, Shi’i, Mu`tazili, and other deviant traditions had polluted the essence of Islam. Calder’s essay is but one example of the lively and provocative discussions collected in this volume. Daftary’s own contribution traces Ismaili intellectual activities, and Cooper’s those of the revived Shi’ism of the Safavid period. Both demonstrate the multi-layered and labyrinthine history of Islamic intellectual life with admirable clarity and concision. This presenting of the past is also the theme of Arkoun’s reflections on the epistemological crisis of Muslim intellectuals at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Confronted by globalization and the dislodgement of Reason as portrayed by the Enlightenment, as well as by the more immediate and concrete implications of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran, modern intellectuals are forced to re-evaluate their links to their perceived traditions. Intellectual Traditions in Islam is compelling, and the Institute of Ismaili studies should be commended for promoting a vibrant debate on what is the crux of what Abdallah Laroui dubbed the “crisis of Muslim intellectuals.” Neguin Yavari Columbia University The Golden Age of Islam, by Linda S. George. (Cultures of the Past) 80 pages, bibliography, index. New York, NY: Benchmark Books, 1998. $28.50 (Paper) ISBN 0-7614-0273 The Golden Age of Islam is a pleasant and simple read in one of the most challenging areas in Islamic history and civilization. George manages to find her way through the intricacies and twisting alleys of Islamic history during the Abbasid period (750-1258 CE). In eighty pages, rich with colorful and carefully selected illustrations, charts, and insets, the author presents a wealth of information covering almost all aspects of Islam as a religion and way of life. There are five chapters dealing respectively with history, culture, belief system, society, and the legacy of Islam’s golden age. Clearly, this book is not intended for scholars or for students of Islamic studies, but for the young and uninitiated reader. Nonetheless, it contains useful tools for further research, such as a chronological table, a glossary, selected titles for additional reading, a bibliography, and an index. Since this book, as well as the other titles of the “Cultures of the Past” series, is intended for young readers, more careful observation of certain terms and vocabulary should have been exercised. For example, using a modern term like “Middle East” (p. 7) is inaccurate historically. In this particular sentence it would be more appropriate to juxtapose “Asia” with “Africa” rather than “the Middle East” with “Africa.” Furthermore, a statement such as “The Bedouin were suited to take up the sword of Islam” (p. 14) contributes to the negative stereotyping of Muslims. In addition, the inclusion of the miniature showing the Prophet Muhammad’s face in his miraculous journey to heaven (p. 48) might lead some to refuse allowing young Muslims to read this work. Including Zoroastrians under the rubric of “people of the book” (p. 55) is somewhat misleading as this is a question that has not been settled by specialist scholars. Finally, using the plural form “Korans” (p. 60) may leave the reader with the mistaken impression that there are multiple versions of the Qur’an. Instead, the author probably intended multiple copies of the “koran.” The Golden Age of Islam is an important addition to the library of English works on Islam and Muslims. Its attractive presentation and fluid style make it accessible to a generation deprived of serious and attractive works on a rarely treated subject. I recommend this book for junior and high school students in public and private schools, especially Islamic ones. It is a welcome contribution to the well-respected series on “Cultures of the Past” of which thirteen other titles, to date, have been published. Muhammad S. Eissa University of Michigan The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History, by G. R. Hawting. (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization) 168 pages, bibliography, index. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1999. $54.95 (Cloth) ISBN 0-521-65165-4 We have information from archaeology, inscriptions, and other sources on the religious life of pre-Islamic South Arabia and of the Arabian borders of the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. For central Arabia, however, we rely mainly on the Arabic literary sources regarding the rise of Islam. On this basis, our textbooks present a somewhat bland paganism, including idol worship, as the prevailing mode of religious life in early seventh-century Mecca. In The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam, Hawting sets out to revise this picture, through detailed analysis of the Arabic sources. Hawting describes a gap between the Qur’an and the ‘early Muslim tradition’ (a composite of works of exegesis, hadith, prophetical biography and other genres). If we read the Qur’an apart from the tradition, we find polemics against adversaries who are called mushrikun or ‘associators.’ Hawting finds that these do not seem to be actual idolaters in the Qur’an, but rather monotheists whose beliefs and practices are found wanting. On the one hand, the Qur’anic polemics themselves follow common monotheist themes. The Muslim literary tradition, on the other hand, portrays the earliest history of the Muslim community as taking place in a mainly pagan environment, involving polemics with idol worshippers. According to Hawting, the authors of the tradition in effect misinterpreted the original Qur’anic arguments by inventing a historical context for them. Only at the conclusion does Hawting ask precisely why they may have done this, beyond a desire to place events in a pagan Mecca and to emphasize connections between Islam and its monotheist (Abrahamic) prehistory. There is not enough space here to set out the entire argument, but the discontinuity between scripture and tradition remains at its base. The project may be seen as a fleshing out of John Wansbroughs ‘sectarian milieu,’ except that Hawting’s view of the Quran (in its dating and its relation to the ‘tradition’) differs from Wansbrough’s. Hawting mentions modern scholars who would transpose the drama of earliest Islam from central to northern Arabia, but he shies away from the more radical conclusions of this kind. There are indications that the mushrikun of the Qur’an may really be Christians, at least in many cases, but Hawting again does not insist. Hawting expresses pessimism over the value of the Arabic sources for determining “names, tribes and places” (chapter 5). How far should this pessimism extend? Is it really impossible to map out sanctuaries, markets, or the tribal matrix itself? Finally, this book concentrates more on the Arabic sources than on what Arabian religious life may actually have been. Of course there was more to that life than the idols (whether or not these existed), as we see, again, in the sanctuaries and market-fairs. Nevertheless, Hawting has accomplished his task with deep learning and with sharp, detailed arguments. All students of Arabia and early Islam will do well to read this book. Michael Bonner The University of Michigan Max Weber and Islam, edited by Toby E. Huff and Wolfgang Schluchter. 332 pages, bibliography, index. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999. $39.95 (Cloth) ISBN 1-56000-400-2 Schluchter is a well-known name in Max Weber studies. He has organized a series of conferences on Weber’s approach to world religions beginning in 1979 at the University of Heidelberg. The volume on Islam, which originally appeared in German in 1987, is now available in a newly revised English translation. The volume’s introduction by Huff gives a general overview of the history of Islam and Islamic schools of law which is useful for those familiar with Weber but not with Islamic history and institutions. Schluchter, in chapter one, investigates the precise chronology of Weber’s interest in Islamic topics. According to him, Weber’s interest in non-Christian religions and the civilizations (Kulturkreise) influenced by them appears to have intensified around 1910 (p. 54). Further on, he analyzes Weber’s approach to the subjects he studied and makes the important comment: “Weber’s comparative studies are subject to a heuristic Eurocentrism and they are not comprehensive cultural analyses. What interested him were Western cultural phenomena” (p. 64). Nehemia Levtzion, in chapter three, looks at Weber’s views on Islam in a critical way. He presents the inaccuracies of Weber’s ideas and provides better explanations, which again is useful for readers from non-Islamic disciplines. Peters, in chapter six, compares Islamic fundamentalist movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with Protestant Calvinism. He concludes that the characteristics of Calvinism that Weber considered important in the development of capitalism could be detected in slightly different forms in fundamentalist Islam. Crone, in chapter nine, elaborates on Weber’s concept of ‘rationality’ and its relation to Islamic law. She further discusses the relationship between law and economic factors and the influence of legal rationalization on the rise of capitalism, and questions Weber’s theories on these matters. The length of the articles is too variable. There are repetitious sections, for instance those describing certain historical facts about Islam (for example, pp. 17 and 208); these may not pose a problem for those who read the articles independently, but they are irritating for those who read the book as a whole. There are two articles on the Mughal Empire (chapters four and five), which could have been balanced with articles on other Islamic dynasties. That the German of some technical terms is given in parenthesis is useful, although this technique could have been used throughout. An article on Weber’s views on traditional authority and sultanism and a brief examination of these theories in light of the history of different Islamic dynasties is missing in the volume, although Eaton briefly mentions the patrimonial character of the Mughal state in late medieval Bengal. This aspect, unfortunately, has been neglected generally in Weberian studies with regard to Islamic dynasties. There is still no systematic analysis of the legitimacy of the Ottoman dynasty that ruled for over six hundred years. There is a need for a study that would examine Ottoman power relations and authority issues, in particular since the Ottomans could not claim descent from the Prophet as a legitimating factor for their rule (compare p. 285).[1] Hakan Karateke Free University of Berlin [1] H. Dabashi’s book on early Islam, Authority in Islam: From the Rise of Muhammad to the Establishment of the Umayyads (New Brunswick and London, 1989), may serve as a guide for such a study; unfortunately it is not mentioned in the bibliography of this volume. The History of Islamic Theology: From Muhammad to the Present, by Tilman Nagel. Translated by Thomas Thornton. 329 pages, index. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000. $28.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-55876-203-5 The History of Islamic Theology attempts to study some of the major intellectual religious trends in Islamic theology but instead it is essentially a survey of some of the important debates within the kalâmî, philosophical, and early rational schools of thought. The title misleads the reader to think that Islamic theology will be analyzed in a systematic and chronological way; nevertheless, the book does not even begin to explain the basic understanding of theology in Islam and how Islamic theology is understood in its own tradition. Nagel first published this book in German in 1993, and this publication is an inadequate translation of his work. Page after page, the reader is confused with unsubstantiated details, a barrage of names and dates, and useless data that is not connected to the larger content of the book. The book also follows the classic Orientalistic approach of studying the Islamic religious tradition, while ignoring foundational theological ideas laid out in the Qur’ân, sunnâ, and hadiths. It is more concerned with brief historical accounts of the different ways in which Muslim scholars debated religious issues amongst themselves. If his objective was to discuss historical religious debates and the differences in schools of thought, then Nagel should have made it clear from the beginning. Using Montgomery Watt and Joseph Schacht as sources and models to interpret the tradition, Nagel begins his first two chapters with the Prophet Muhammad as a social reformer in the Arab Bedouin society. By emphasizing historical ideas like salvation, the hereafter, and the eternal presence of the divine, Nagel predictably portrays the Prophet Muhammad’s ability to enlighten the lost Arab tribes in order to form a new community of believers. Even if Nagel were interested in a precursory theological study of the Qur’ân or the sunnâ, he absolutely fails in the early part of the book. The majority of the book discusses the various religious debates of famous kalâmî scholars like al-Hasan ibn Muhammad and al-Jahiz, and then proceeds to review the major differences between the Mu‘tazilites and Ash‘arites schools of thought. If one is interested in reading the basic arguments of the different philosophical schools from the ninth and eleventh centuries, then chapters five and six could be considered useful. Nevertheless, outlining the various patterns of Islamic philosophical thought does not allow the reader to fully appreciate the complexities of the arguments, and, furthermore, this style only brings more incoherence to the subject. In chapter seven, “Gnosis and Islâm”, Nagel, like Goldziher, Daftary, Cahen, and others, tries to demonstrate the influence of gnostic thought on Islamic philosophy. It is another example of the author’s weakness that he views the Shi’i Ismâ‘íî philosophical tradition as the main representative body of Islamic kalâm and theology. The last chapter, “Islâm and Ideology,” essentially covers Muhammad ‘Abduh’s thought and the Wahhabi’s political influence in the nineteenth century. This chapter is incomplete and does not even attempt to study essential and pertinent modern theological concerns in Islam. In addition, Nagel does not successfully supply any real theological analysis to the subject. While there are some interesting sections on kalâm, one cannot overlook the poor translation and weak theological analysis that makes this book confusing for both undergraduate students and scholars of Islam. Qamar-ul Huda Boston College Identity and Civilization: Essays on Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Mordechai Nisan. 217 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999. $32.00 (Paper) ISBN 0-7618-1355-X Identity and Civilization is structured somewhat differently from the usual approach found in books on the history of the region, which oftentimes follows a chronological path and utilizes basic narrative sources. The rationale of the book, as the author defines it, lies with an architectonic principle and hierarchical structure that posits fours layers of human reality: religion at the foundation, then philosophy and culture, and at the apex, war, which the author, Nisan, sees as the locus of politics. Each layer is discussed separately in four chapters, which are clearly self-contained essays. This approach to the politics of the region and to Muslim-Jewish and Arab-Israeli relations in particular is refreshing, and Nisan shows quite clearly how politics is not an independent category but a sub-set of the religious, philosophical, and cultural attributes of peoples. The ‘political,’ as he says, is “interwoven with these categories of life, and thus makes the substance of the four essays of this book both a conception for understanding and a methodology of explanation” (p. 2). In this way, Nisan hopes to do more than just formulate historical questions and narrate the record of the past, but to propose a method and order for pursuing the study of the region, its religious civilizations and political mechanics. The first and basic layer of human reality, religion, is explicated through a range of issues that are designed to delineate “the dialectical relationship of Judaism with Islam and its political significance” (p. 7). Some tough, though valid, issues are discussed with reference to the history of Islam’s Jewish (and Christian) origins, Judaism in the Qur'an and Sunna, joint claims on Abraham and his seed as well as on the sanctity of Jerusalem, and exclusivity and universalism in Islam and Judaism. Yet, some of the views Nisan surveys seem far-fetched, even if one regards them as purely hypothetical, like Muhammad’s Jewish lineage (based on the fact that his cousin Ibn Nawfal was well known to have converted to Islam from Judaism), or the first Caliphs’ Jewish origin (`Uthman was buried in Yathrib’s Jewish cemetery). In addition, the language of the analysis is such that in many instances it betrays distrust and disregard for Islam. Several times one gets the feeling that Nisan is trying to debase Islam as a religion, implied particularly in the rather negative emphasis on Islam’s “mimicking, adopting… foreign religious materials” (p. 26). He does the same with respect to the Palestinian nationalist movement in a section called “Contemporary Parallels of Muslim Mimicking” (p. 31). It is the fact that Nisan sees this mimicking as a negative character and seems to have the purpose of altogether discrediting Islamic or Palestinian claims that is regrettable. Even if the points he raises are completely valid, as some of them are, the motive should not be to discredit the other party’s belief system and religious myths, for then, as the author himself posits, “together these sets of inferences and images cannot be easily translated into an agenda of mutual respect to foster an ecumenical dialogue of constructive religious fellowship” (p. 24). Dr. Rebecca B. Molloy Independent Scholar Social Justice in Islam, by Sayyid Qutb. Translated by John B. Hardie. Revised translation and introduction by Hamid Algar. 339 pages, notes, bibliography, index. Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2000. $19.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-889999-11-3 Much has been written about Sayyid Qutb and his radical views on political Islam. His treatise Social Justice in Islam is perhaps the best primary source in which Qutb illustrates the philosophical foundations upon which he formulated his ideological discourse. First published in 1949 in Arabic, al-‘Adala al-Ijtima`iyyah fi l-Islam was originally translated by John B. Hardie in 1953. Upon discovering several errors and inconsistencies in Hardie’s translation, Hamid Algar, an internationally renowned author of several works on Islamic studies, embarked on the re-translation of Qutb’s treatise. In Algar’s opinion, these errors and inconsistencies could either be the result of Hardie’s inadequate knowledge of the Arabic language or Sayyid Qutb’s weak grasp of English, who supposedly supervised the translation himself. In any case, he was rather surprised that (with the exception of William Shepherd’s article on this book) the mistakes in Hardie’s translation have generally remained unnoticed. Algar annotates that his undertaking to bring Hardie’s work in conformity with the Arabic original entailed a lot of meticulous effort, which involved corroborating seven different reprints and/or editions, which are not identical to each other. Algar provides a succinct introduction to his revised translation. This prologue mostly consists of a biographical account of the life and times of Sayyid Qutb. Besides the introduction, Algar’s version of Social Justice in Islam consists of nine chapters, appended endnotes, and a select bibliography of works on Sayyid Qutb. In chapter one, Qutb advances a comparative analysis of Islam and Christianity from the perspective of social order. In the next three chapters, he discusses in great detail the Islamic concept of social justice. Chapter five is a brief description of Islamic political theory, which in Qutb’s view is based on the three components of just government, law-abiding citizenry, and consultation between the two. In chapter six, Qutb expounds in detail on Islam’s economic theory. Chapter seven contains an analysis of the Islamic concept of social justice as a function of its political and economic theory in the Islamic historical context. In the last two chapters, Qutb, while exhibiting an optimistic attitude regarding the revival of Islam as a socio-politico-economic paradigm, describes the inevitable struggle that is to take place between the Islamic camp and the combined forces of capitalist and communist blocs. Qutb’s celebrated thesis of ‘Neo-jahiliyyah’ is said to have inadvertently provided the ideological impetus to the jihadi groups (Islamic Liberation Organization, Tandheem Al-Jihad, and Takfeer wal Hijrah) that emerged in Egypt in the 1970s. But with this re-translated edition of Social Justice in Islam, Hamid Algar has been instrumental in excavating Qutb from the depths of his own writing. Thanks to Algar, those who have always seen him as nothing more than just another fundamentalist leader, now have the opportunity to re-discover Sayyid Qutb for the intellectual that he really was. Though challenging and initially written for the consumption of Muslims, Social Justice in Islam nevertheless is for both the Muslim and non-Muslim reader. Kamran A. Bokhari Southwest Missouri State University Windows on the House of Islam: Muslim Sources on Spirituality and Religious Life, edited by John Renard. 439 pages, maps, notes, appendices, index. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998. $22.00 (Paper) ISBN 0-520-21086-7 Those of us who teach introductory survey courses on Islam are frequently flailing about, collecting articles and book chapters to be photocopied and bound into a course packet at the beginning of the semester. The problem common to us is that until recently, there was no single book or even two books together that could adequately deal with the major topics that need to be covered in a course of this type. Renard’s edited Windows on the House of Islam offers considerable alleviation of this chronic problem. If your course were to focus primarily on the spiritual and religious life of Muslims globally, this volume would come in handy. Chapters contributed by some of the foremost scholars of Islam deal with the Qur’an and its interpretation, ritual and personal prayer, general devotion, inspirational and ethical literature, religious poetry, social and communal institutions and the texts produced by them, the arts and its patronage, pedagogical literature, and experiential religion and its literature. The texts span the world from China to Muslim Spain. Women’s experiences and their literature form a welcome part of the included texts. Sometimes huge leaps in chronology and place are a bit disconcerting; for example, in the section on Wisdom literature, we jump from the aphorisms of Ali b.AbiTalib to Mu`in al-Din al-Chisti, that is, from (presumably) seventh-century Arabia to thirteenth-century India. But otherwise the book provides a wide-ranging cross-section of perspectives on lived Islam in representative areas of the Islamic world. One hopes that if this work is updated and re-edited for reprinting, a particular statement (p. 1) will be emended. Here, Renard says that “they [Muslims] consider both Qur’an and Hadith to be divinely revealed; the major theological distinction is that although the content of the Hadith is ultimately from God, the precise words are those of Muhammad.” This statement needs to be considerably nuanced; only the Qur’an as scripture is considered to be the result of wahy, that is of direct divine revelation to Muhammad. Although Islamic theology in general came to consider sound, reliable hadiths (certainly not the entire hadith corpus as Renard’s statement implies) to be as normative as Qur’anic injunctions, these hadiths are not strictly considered to be a part of wahy; the exception would be the hadith qudsiya which constitute a small portion of the hadith corpus, in which God is the speaker. This is a work suitable for all levels of undergraduate courses and beginning graduate classes on Islam. It is an attractively produced volume with appropriate illustrations and a useful bibliography of suggested further readings for each chapter. Asma Afsaruddin University of Notre Dame Islam: A Concise Introduction, by Neal Robinson. 176 pages, appendices, bibliography, index. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999. $18.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-87840-224-1 In the preface to Islam, Robinson says his book is aimed specifically at college students preparing for tests: “In many colleges and universities, course tutors are required to recommend preparatory reading to be undertaken during the vacation. Despite the ever-increasing number of introductory texts on Islam, there is none which really meets their needs” (p. xiii). Robinson has written thirteen chapters covering the following topics: 1) representations of Islam; 2) definitions of Islam; 3) Islam in history; 4) Islam in the modern world; 5) the Qur’an; 6) Islamic theology; 7) Muhammad; 8) salat; 9) zakat; 10) Ramadan; 11) the hajj; 12) the sharia; and 13) Shiism. The book also includes two appendices, one on Arabic and one on the Islamic calendar. Given that there are a host of introductory texts on the market,[1] the question that strikes this reviewer is: does the author fill a niche that needs to be filled? This book was first published in Britain and may serve the purposes of British university students as they prepare for their exams. Robinson’s chapter on Islamic history provides the beginning student with a handy means of memorizing the key phases of Islamic history. Nevertheless, the American college instructor, at least, is just as interested in an engaging introductory text that can be used in class. Some, but not all, of Robinson’s chapters serve this purpose. The chapter on defining Islam clarifies the use of key words such as ‘Muslim,’ ‘muslim,’ and ‘Islamic’ and the substantive issues related to these semantic distinctions. In this short chapter, Robinson demonstrates his command of the original Islamic sources—the Quran and the hadith—and the degree to which he relies on these to explain Islam. His chapter on the Quran reveals both the advantages and pitfalls of this kind of expertise in writing an introductory text. Robinson successfully uses Quranic passages to explain the collection, meaning, interpretation, and coherence of the Quran. However, he lets his expertise get the better of him in adding a section on English translations of the Quran that is not necessary in an introductory text. The chapters on Islamic worship will be the most useful for beginning students because they provide concrete specificity without being overly academic. For example, the book provides a description of performance of salat as well as a map of the hajj itinerary. In sum, Islam is not consistently concise or sufficiently introductory to set it above other similar books. Finally, many typographical errors mar the text. Here are just a few: “Russian” should be “Russia” (p. 49); “hale from” should be “hail from” (p. 29); “Arab lands east of Iraq” should be “Arab lands west of Iraq” (p. 80); and some places (such as Carlowitz and Diyarbakir) are spelled more than one way (pp. 40, 41, 28, 30). Steve Tamari Southern Illinois University [1] Frederick Denny, Islam and the Muslim Community (Waveland Press, 1998); and John Sabini,
Islam: A Primer (Middle East Editorial Association, 1990) are just two that come to mind. |
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