Islam as Political Religion

Shabbir Akhtar is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. He has written previously on related subjects such as the philosophy of religion, Christianity and Islam, and the Qur’an and the secular mind. He is working currently on a book on Islamic Humanism.

The book under review has a detailed introduction (13 pages) and four parts. Each part is broken into a number of sub-titles. Details of the parts are as follows:

Part I: The Prophetic Consummation: Islam as Original and Final Religion. A Prophetic Religion; A Literary Religion; A Universal Religion.

Part II: The Twin Birth: Islam as Empowered Religion. A Political Religion: Muhammad as Statesman; A Secular Religion: Faith or Ideology? A Legal Religion; An Imperial Religion.

Part III: The Crucible of Reason: Islam as Contemporary Religion. A Rational Religion; An Ethical Religion; A Private Religion.

Part IV: Epilogue: The Future Scope of an Imperial Religion.

The book also includes a detailed bibliography and a comprehensive index of names, places, and selected topics.

While the title of the book itself is catchy, the sub-titles point to the author’s fertile imaginary mind. The book is supposed to be a work of serious academic research. However, to the reviewer’s disappointment, it is full of the author’s suppositions and conjectures without providing supporting arguments or reli- able references. One gets the impression that the author is in a great difficulty to prove that he is objective and not biased. A look at the various sub-titles under each part indicates phrases borrowed from hostile Western writers.