Reform and Modernity in Islam

This is a wonderful book and its author an interesting fellow. In both Sydney’s University and National Art School, he combines the teaching of Islamic and Arabic Studies with the teaching of Art. No wonder, therefore, that he engages with major contemporary Muslim thinkers like Muhammad [Abduh, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Fouad Ajami, Muhammad Arkoun, Qasim Amin, Talal Asad, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Muhammad Iqbal, Margaret Marcus aka Maryam Jamilah, Sayyid Mawdudi, Fatima Mernissi, Fathi Osman, Sayyid Qutb, Fazlur Rahman, Abdulkarim Soroush, Bassam Tibi, Amina Wadud, and Muhammad ibn [Abd al-Wahhab. Equally prominent are his non-Muslim sources including Isaiah Berlin, Alexis Carrel, Jacques Derrida, Helene Deutsch, S.N. Eisenstadt, John Esposito, Franz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Gustave von Grunebaum, Ignaz Goldziher, Jürgen Habermas, Marin Heidegger, Daniel Lerner, Bernard Lewis (The Roots of Muslim Rage), Max Müller, Karl Marx, David Reisman, Ernst Renan, Edward Said (Orientalism), Annemarie Schimmel (Mystical Dimensions of Islam), Oswald Spengler, Tzvetan Todorov, and Max Weber (Capitalism and the Protestant Ethic), most of these claiming that modernity entailed a scientific de-mystification of religious beliefs. (p. 12) No wonder, too, that the author’s Notes cover 67 pages, i.e. 20% of the volume.