Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions

One of the quirks of recent British history has been the steady though unobtrusive chain of quintessential Englishmen who have found their spiritual home in Islam. Marmaduke Pickthall, Abdullah Quilliam, Hasan Gai Eaton and Martin Lings represent some of the better known names and the author of this book, Abdal Hakim Murad (aka Dr Timothy Winter), continues this trend. Winter holds a double-first in Arabic and lectures in Islamic Studies at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity where he has held this post for many years. In addition, he is founder and dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, an innovative enterprise seeking to augment the pastoral and intellectual skills of British-born imams to more effectively apply their theological training in a modern context. Murad’s Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions is a rare and profound book. It consists of 100 pithy aphorisms – termed “contentions” – on a diverse array of topics ranging through ethics, cosmology, metaphysics, theology, law and history. Each contention is a terse distillation of Murad’s often exquisitely crafted ruminations on a given matter followed by his own compressed elucidation (the commentary). Though sometimes abstruse and esoteric, the book weaves itself into a dense, multi-faceted tapestry of insights into a range of contemporary issues that concern the religious mind.