The Bruce B. Lawrence Reader

Published by: Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina 2021, 462pp. ISBN: 9781478011293.

The Bruce B. Lawrence reader is a window into the mind of a master scholar who has spent a lifetime learning and teaching that Islam has much to offer to the world if understood properly. Starting off with Islam as his blank canvas, guided by Shaykh Nizam al-Din Awliya’ (d. 1325) at his side, with Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) and Marshall Hodgson (d. 1968) as his methodological architects and Maqbul Fida Husain (d. 2011) as his sculptor, Bruce Lawrence embarked on a mission “to stage an argument for the political purchase and analytical value of compassionate, engaged scholarship on Islam and Muslims.” Ali Altaf Mian, the editor, writes that “Lawrence’s scholarship is one that crosses territorial and disciplinary boundaries to account for Islam’s differences and multiplicity.” The editor Ali Mian is one of the last students of Lawrence. It is he who has put this Reader together, arranging the materials not chronologically but loosely thematically. He should be commended for this service to knowledge. The twenty-four essays are arranged around six themes. Each theme follows a methodological approach in the study of religion: theorising, revaluing, translating, deconstructing, networking and reflecting. The 25th essay is an interview by the editor with Lawrence from 2018 during the latter’s stay at Aligarh Muslim University.

The afterword is written by a friend and colleague Yasmin Saika who only has the highest praise for Lawrence. What stands out after reading the twentyfive essays in this book is that it feels like Lawrence oscillates between being a scholar of Islam and an Islamic scholar (chapter 12 feels like the type of stuff one would learn in a khanqah at the feet of a Sufi master); just as the afterword oscillates between being a biographical reflection and a classical Muslim hagiography (tadhkirah). Divine intervention led the author of the afterword to the door of Lawrence, “At that moment it became clear to me that the voice of the elderly man I had heard in India was the voice of Nizamuddin Awliya” (p. 434). The cover has a beautiful illustration from one of Lawrence’s friends, MF Husain’s 2008 painting (ch. 23). The editor has a general introduction in the beginning and then an introductory summary of each section highlighted by using a darker shade of paper. Below are summaries of selected chapters from the Reader sprinkled throughout with my own reflections...