Blair Hall in Princeton University
Source: Princeton University Press
Author: Shahab Ahmed (1966-2015) was postdoctoral associate in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University.
What is Islam? How do we grasp a human and historical phenomenon characterized by such variety and contradiction? What is “Islamic” about Islamic philosophy or Islamic art? Should we speak of Islam or of islams? Should we distinguish the Islamic (the religious) from the Islamicate (the cultural)? Or should we abandon “Islamic” altogether as an analytical term?
In What Is Islam?, Shahab Ahmed presents a bold new conceptualization of Islam that challenges dominant understandings grounded in the categories of “religion” and “culture” or those that privilege law and scripture. He argues that these modes of thinking obstruct us from understanding Islam, distorting it, diminishing it, and rendering it incoherent.
What Is Islam? formulates a new conceptual language for analyzing Islam. It presents a new paradigm of how Muslims have historically understood divine revelation—one that enables us to understand how and why Muslims through history have embraced values such as exploration, ambiguity, aestheticization, polyvalence, and relativism, as well as practices such as figural art, music, and even wine drinking as Islamic. It also puts forward a new understanding of the historical constitution of Islamic law and its relationship to philosophical ethics and political theory.
A book that is certain to provoke debate and significantly alter our understanding of Islam, What Is Islam? reveals how Muslims have historically conceived of and lived with Islam as norms and truths that are at once contradictory yet coherent.
Reviews:
“This is an enduring and timely work well worth the effort for those interested in discerning the essence of Islam beyond the seeming paradoxes of its own representations.”—Publisher’s Weekly
“A bold new conceptualisation of Islam that reflects its contradictions and rich diversity.”—Bookseller Buyer’s Guide
Endorsements:
“Not merely field changing, but the boldest and best thing I have read in any field in years.”–Noah Feldman, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
“This book seeks to offer nothing short of a new way of looking at Islam, and it succeeds admirably at so doing. It is rare to find a scholar who can combine the deep textual scholarship that is a hallmark of this work with an ability to engage with issues of theory and method not just in the study of Islam but, more broadly, in religion and culture. The result is a study that is illuminating from beginning to end. I know of no book on the question of how to approach Islam that comes close to this study in its learning, breadth, and sophistication. It should be read not only by students and scholars of Islam, but by all those interested in the broad questions about conceptualizing religion, culture, and history that it raises.”–Muhammad Qasim Zaman, Robert H. Niehaus ’77 Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Religion, Princeton University
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Categories: Book Review