(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best history of islam books

Shabir Ally is a scholar I tend to turn towards to when it comes to topics in relation to violence in the Quran. Through him I learnt that Islam's methodology of warfare is nigh parallel to the 'Just War Theory' which encompasses Jus ad Bellum (right to go to war) and Jus in Bello (right conduct in war). When we implement Islamic theory of warfare, we find that

> Militant Islamic groups fail to meet seven out of eight Islamic jus ad bellum requirements for just war
source


I also find him most comfortable for Christians to approach for unlike other more well known preachers of Islam, Ally has a very sympathetic view of Christianity and has love for the Bible. He tends to put in context certain verses in relation to violence and has rather liberal values regarding the veiling of women and capital punishments against homosexuality and apostasy. Though we cannot completely call him a modernist, he fits in that comfortable median where both progressives and conservatives can agree with him and non-Muslims won't feel intimidated by him.


Then there is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf whose book, Moving the Mountains, I love. He uses the Quran as a basis for pluralistic Islamic societies and provides proof from Quranic text that Muslims and other religious groups are all brethren. He further goes on to denounce the title of 'Muslim' and urges us to follow the Prophet (P.B.U.H)'s example of considering oneself a 'believer', one in the same path as his Christian and Jewish brethren as compared to one of separate identity. Johnathan A.C Brown is another great scholar of Islam one can follow. Though I do feel he has, from time to time, certain conservative leanings, he has a great understanding of the text, contexts and rationalizes more troublesome prospects quite well such as verse 4:34.


I primarily follow female scholars. Asma Lamrabet is one I adore and oft visit her website when it comes to feminist topics. She provides very convincing arguments against patriarchal readings of Islam with evidence from historical texts, hadith literature and the Quran itself. She also has this book one could read for a feminist approach to the Quran. I became a feminist not through any Western feminist texts but rather after reading the Quran and this view is echoed by Asma Barlas. You can read her book "Believing Women" in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an. She goes onto further suggest that the Quran is an 'anti-patriarchal' text which is a rather extreme statement to say in a world where Islam and patriarchy are considered nigh synonymous (even to Muslims) but she argues her points convincingly.


You can also check out Amina Wadud who focuses on strictly progressive and egalitarian interpretations of the Quran. Here is a PDF to her book Quran and Women. If you wish, you can also read Laleh Bakhtiar's translation of the Quran which, as other female scholars, approaches it with a feminist perspective. You can find it here. In her translation of verse 4:34 you will not find any mention of whipping or beatings which immediately contrasts from more patriarchal approaches to it. Kecia Ali, Leila Ahmed, Ziba Mir-Hosseini (whose website you can visit here), Fatima Mernissi are all great female scholars to read and research over for feminist views on Islam. Ziba immediately differentiates Islam and fiqh on her website which is a rather crucial distinction Islamophobes tend to be unaware of and, like her peers, approaches feminism through Islam rather than in spite of it.


Let me also recommend some neutral voices which are distanced from biases towards Islam. Though Garry Wills is not a scholar of Islam (he is, in fact, Roman Catholic), his book 'What the Quran Meant' is great for non-Muslims for it contextualizes violent verses and provides evidence that the Quran is inherently peaceful as any other faith book. Similarly, I found Lesley Hazleton's (who is agnostic) presentations on the Prophet (P.B.U.H) quite lovely as well such as this one where she goes to talk on his peaceful nature and his attempts to avoid conflict. Karen Armstrong too (a Christian woman) is a writer I respect whose biography on the Prophet (P.B.U.H) provides a peaceful perspective on him.


Now, let me go ahead and recommend some classic scholars of Islam to provide evidence that liberality is not a new found condition within the religion but has been present through its inception. We first find evidence of flexibility in Ibn Abbas' (R.A)'s tafsir of the Quran who was a companion of the Prophet (P.B.U.H). While we cannot call it a progressive or even feminist interpretation, it is known for being rather flexible. You can find evidence of it in his interpretation of 4:34 where he condemns painful or 'exaggerated' lashing of one's wife (providing evidence that 4:34 was not there to enforce abuse but to give sets of rulings to deter and eradicate the abuse culture in Pre-Islamic Arabia). You can read it here. After this I will recommend Ibn Arabi who is considered by some to be the first feminist thinker. He used to support the idea of female Imams and had said that women and men were absolutely equal. He based his propositions on the Quran and Hadith. Imam Abu Hunaifa is the founder of one of the four most prominent fiqh schools of thought, the Hanafi school and shows a rather liberal approach to homosexual relations as compared to his counterparts. He also wished to create acceptance of Christians and Jewish groups within Muslims though his readings of the Quran. Following him is Shah Wali Ullah who sought to bring progression within Islamic societies. He feared Muslims binding themselves to subjective interpretations of Islam and sought to free them from atavistic binds. He propagated ijtihad (individual rational judgement) and preached that Shariah must change with the times and with circumstances for Quran's beauty is in its infinite malleability (as Reza Aslan puts it)

I'd love to! I don't read Farsi at all, unfortunately, and my Arabic is intermediate, so I'm generally limited to English (or French) translations as well. If you're interested in Shari'ati's more political writings and lectures, then there are four books that come to mind, ordered from most relevant or influential to least:

• What Is to Be Done - among other things, Shari'ati in this work makes a very interesting argument about ijtihad and its inherent ability to guarantee "permanent revolution"
  
  
• School of Thought and Action - This very short work is mostly an analysis of what constitutes an ideology and how ideology forms the foundation of a movement
  
  
• On the Sociology of Islam - More fundamental than the two aforementioned works, this is a series of lectures that explore an Islamic study of the composition of the human individual and man's social nature, done in a dialectic typical of Shari'ati's philosophical worldview
  
  
• Marxism and Other Western Fallacies - A critique of Marxism and specifically of what Shari'ati views to be the philosophical underpinnings of Marxist movements, and of the relation of individual to movement in a Marxist platform. Much of this critique centers on Shari'ati's issues with the apparent lack of acknowledgment in Marxism of the spiritual component of the human individual. I won't say I agree all that deeply with Shari'ati's view, but it's certainly insightful. I think his analysis of Marxism's refusal to consider man's spirituality may apply well to ostensibly communist movements, but misses the mark with Marx's own thought, particularly the early writings e.g. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. In any case, critiques of Marxism like this are extremely common in 20th-century Shi'a political thought, given as a response to the organic socialist and communist movements that arose in Shi'a communities and competed with revolutionary Shi'ism for the attention and loyalty of the Shi'a masses. Everyone agreed that Western-style capitalism and liberal "democracy" wasn't the answer for the Shi'a, given how they'd been used to exploit Shi'a workers for decades, but socialism that spoke to those Shi'a workers and had been building itself in Shi'a communities for a long time had to be answered if revolutionary Shi'ism e.g. the Wilayat al-Faqih was to take root.
  
  There are many other collections of Shari'ati's thought that have political connotations and implications (such as Jihad and Shahadat, a collection of essays and lectures by Shari'ati, Ayatullah Taleqani and Ayatullah Mutahhari which is definitely worth reading, Religion vs. Religion, a comparative and historical analysis of Islam in relation to other faith systems, and a dialogue with the thought of Muhammad Iqbal which is extremely interesting and even includes a contribution from Imam Khamene'i), but those four are where you want to look first to understand Dr. Shari'ati's political philosophy.

I love this man dearly.

He used to teach my wife and her friends (a women's class) for free every Saturday, even though he was always traveling for dawah, which, as it turns out, he was doing also for free.

I've seen him personally help so many causes, from imprisoned Muslims to education to financial advise (he used to be a Wall Street big shot). He brought Tony Blair's Muslim sister-in-law (Lauren Booth) and Glenn Greenwald to our communities. He was a uniter of Muslims & non-Muslims. He fought the bigots and defended the Prophet pbuh out of love.

Leaves behind an amazing wife, 4 daughters and 1 son (the son that always carried a camera and records his father).

p.s. Like I told u/PursuitofKnowledge, I'd never seen so many scholars make du'aa for a person at their funeral. One after the other. Day (when we buried him) and night (during Azaa). And even tho' he wasn't necessarily a scholar, he was such a phenomenal activist that when I heard he died, I actually thought "SubhanAllah, the Ummah is now weaker, what are we going to do?".

What matters now is taking care of his family and continuing the work he was doing.

I didnt even know him that well yet he was one of my favorite people. May Allah enter him into janatul ferdouse el'alaa as a shaheed & sideeq and unite him with his beloved, the Prophet pbuh. May his family get the best of this life & the next.

****

This is the dedication he left his father in one of his books The Prophecies of Muhammad:

> This book is dedicated to my late father, Mahmoud Zayed Moustafa, whose passing has wounded my heart and soul in a way only God's mercy can heal.

> He had never missed a prayer to his Creator.

> He had never been but a healer and a helper to every soul around him.

> May Allah accept me in his scale of good deeds.

> Moustafa Zayed

Resources

Websites

Islam Wikipedia entry

Qur'an Wikipedia entry

WhyIslam? - A Islam info site. It is run by Muslims, so it it is biased towards Islam, but it is still very informative.

Answering Islam - A Christian apologetic website regarding Islam. Very helpful. My #1 resource on answering Muslim objections to Christianity.

Books

These are only books that I own/know to be a great source of information. There are multitude of other books out there that are probably just as good.

"Reasoning from the Scriptures with Muslims" by Ron Rhodes

"Comparing the Qur'an and the Bible" by Rick Richter

"Islamic History: A Very Short Introduction" by Adam J. Silverstein

"What Every Christian Needs to Know about the Qur'an" by James R. White

That should get you started, and through your own endeavors you will undoubtedly come across other great resources! Happy reading!

I am not a Muslim, but I have degrees in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern language and culture. I respect your take, but I cannot agree with you that Islam was "meant" to be practiced like that.

I suggest a great book from one of my old professors, it's called The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Hands of Extremists. In it there is a great explanation of how we got to where we are today.

> 1. in the financial sector, to create a bank in Somalia right now the legal requirement is $5 million. Someone can make a very strong financial institution quickly and provide services to the public to break the vampire isgarsiis conglomerates

What are you talking about we gave away our economic sovereignty to get some IMF loans we are not allowed to dictate our own monetary policy how do you expect them to then service the people?


> 3. In economical sector land in the countryside is cheap. The price of hal neef is like $50 and hal geel last I heard was $650. There is no factories or major fishing. With little bit of investment capital, a lot can be done.

The greatest illusion African leaders inculcated to their citizens is the phantom of foreign investment a spirit we must attract by offering our lands and blood to it
We don't need investment we need freedom!
Our Fishers need to fish from the Somalis seas without competition from foreign fishing companies (which our government sold it to)
Our farmers need protection from foreign imports and subsidies to buy fertilizers
Our pastoralist need grazing land which our great tribes are hoarding
Our students need education that doesn't indoctrinate them but one that inspires them to think for themselves


> 5. In Deen, because of the extremists violence, the traditional authority of the conservative wadaado caste has been undermined. That has created space for different ideas on Islam. Ironically, there is probably more diversity in the religious believes of the society today than ever before.

The opposite is true there has been gradual homogenization of Religious doctrine from various Sufism and shafism to full blown Wahhabi/Salafism
Do you remember in 2014 when well known Nairobi based Somali scholar wrote book titled Xadka riddada maxaa ka run ah about apostasy laws in Islam he merely suggested with support of hadith and sunnah that we shouldn't kill those who leave Islam the whole Religious establishment went crazy they ostracized him he eventually fled for fear of his life to Australia


> 6. In social field, many tribes, because of the older nobility are passing away, the new generation is very young (Ugaas in their 20s and 30s), they are open minded and educated, good people can get to them much easier.

So we shouldn't abolish the caste system we call Qabiil?
That's shortsighted and regressive can't you imagine a future Somali society without Qabiil?

> I agree with your analysis, but I think the best way forward is to take over the existing institutions and build them into positive way. It is not practical to try to build from scratch. Why create a new system when we can take over the existing system?

State Failure that has been tarred to the Somali reputation can be found all over the African Continent - I can argue that every African state has failed it's people
Because we naively assumed our glorious leaders would lift us from poverty and underdevelopedment instead our liberators since the 60's have sold out their people failed them and we need to ask ourselves what happened why did the African States with immense potential fail so miserable

If you come to same conclusions that I came to which is that the state and capitalism are inefficient and illegitimate modes of social organization then it would only make sense to create better more democratic more just institution which would be beholden to it's people not the elites of the country and foreign investors.


> Which brings me to another point. The evil people also know that the Somali society is in flux and they are trying to take over the institutions.

Evil people we call our dear presidents and prime ministers there are no nefarious foreign conspiracy to bring Somalia down but it's our own government and the elites trying to make a profit of of our misery.

> Good people should be joining the military now before it is totally taken over.

Taken over by whom? As far I see the SNA is clan militias dressed up to serve the interest of the clan leadership
Instead of ordering the US to stop bombing our people into oblivion the government could bring about real conciliation and peace if they wanted to but since if peace was ever to happen the biggest excuse for mismanagement and expropriation of state funds would disappear and the masses would turn against them - so terror is useful tool for our state

It is a known fact that our states uses the terrorism menace for its own ends, to give you an example few months back Farmaajo govt engineered the Baidabo elections so their candidate would win when more popular candidate robow was poised to win they even went as far as to order the AMISOM to fire at Somali protesters (11 died) but who cares about them we have to fight against terrorism only when those guys do it right? not when our guys do it - there is a word for it its called hypocrisy.


I am sure they talked nicely to the cameras but what have they done - often the opposite what they claimed to do.


Edit: spelling

I agree with you. Went right to Song of the Reed and basically stopped there, I just can't get through them. I'll have to go back and really read the intro though, it does have very good background.

What decent English translation of the entire work is readily available though--just R.A. Nicholson?

I just started this book as an intro and I believe it incorporates Nicholson's book 1 in it as well, which is a lot more readable:

Rumi's Mystical Design: Reading the Mathnawi, Book One https://www.amazon.com/dp/1438427964/

I'm spoiled on the few selected translations I've read from Kabir Helminski, who apparantly used Nicholson as a source, but I dont think he's done whole book translations. His are superb.

Edit: Helminski's book that contains a few Mathnawi translations: Love Is a Stranger: Selected Lyric Poetry of Jelaluddin Rumi https://www.amazon.com/dp/1570625271/

> Where could I read more about putting together the Qur'an? I can believe you that its compilers did it for political gain but I'd love to see more details about it

Great introduction book, but quite dense.

For an excellent primer on the origin of Muslim extremism as a political tool, check out the book The Great Theft by Khaled Abou El Fadl.

"Here, he successfully argues that the extremist sects of Islam, mainly Wahhabism, blatantly defy the true values of Islam. He clarifies that Wahhabism was once an unpopular, fringe, cultlike movement, which only grew through a chance partnership with the Saudi Arabian ruling family. The discovery of oil created an unprecedented infusion of petro-dollars into the fledgling, conservative belief system. The point of the book, El Fadl writes, is to define "the reality of Muslim thought as it currently exists." He focuses on the extremists' "puritan" view, exposing the hypocrisies and inconsistencies inherent in their "imagined Islam." He doesn't offer specific solutions, but he raises the issues carefully and well. Though the writing can be dry and portions read like a law school lecture, overall El Fadl's book is a fulfilling read for moderate Muslims concerned about conservative leadership and any non-Muslims who want to inform themselves about the extremists' misuse of Islam."

> ... When a Westerner discusses, say, Hinduism or Buddhism, he is always conscious of the fundamental differences between these ideologies and his own. He may admire this or that of their ideas, but would naturally never consider the possibility of substituting them for his own. Because he a priori admits this impossibility, he is able to contemplate such really alien cultures with equanimity and often with sympathetic appreciation. But when it comes to Islam - which is by no means as alien to Western values as Hindu or Buddhist philosophy - this Western equanimity is almost invariably disturbed by an emotional bias. Is it perhaps, I sometimes wonder, because the values of Islam are close enough to those of the West to constitute a potential challenge to many Western concepts of spiritual and social life?

> ... One has to look far backward into history and try to comprehend the psychological background of the earliest relations between the Western and the Muslim worlds. What Occidentals think and feel about Islam today is rooted in impressions that were born during the Crusades.

> ... For, if the call for a crusade was to maintain its validity, the Prophet of the Muslims had, of necessity, to be stamped as the Anti-Christ and his religion depicted in the most lurid terms as a fount of immorality and perversion.

The Road to Mecca By Muhammad Asad

Knysh, Alexander - Islam in Historical Perspective

Super interesting book, it was wonderful to have an scholarly source to draw on when learning about the Islamic world. It's less of a theological overview and more of a historical/social one. If you're a history buff you'll enjoy it, it covers everything from the arrival of Muhammad in Medina, to the conquests that followed his death, to the reconquest in Spain and the Crusades that followed.

It's a wonderful book, worth the price I paid for it.

Muhammad's Wives a super short read but very enjoyable. Also A Quiet Revolution... some recent history centered around the politics of the hijab that I found totally fascinating.

Is anyone here familiar with Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi and his works? I'm reading his The spirituality in Shi'i Islam, which has been published by an Ismaili institution in London, it's a scholarly work really, and it has me questioning so many things.

He makes a very convincing argument that Tashayu3 in its original form was a gnostic faith with a central emphasis on Imams miracles that was "corrupted" or at least heavily changed by scholars who were under the influence of Mutazilites.

On top of examining more neglected Shi'i books like الدرجات الرفيعة في طبقات الشيعة he also presents a lot of useful information. I for example had no idea that a lot of hadiths from the 7th and 9th volumes of Bahar al Anwar was scrapped from the newer versions because it contained a lot of Hadiths from our Imams peace be upon them in condemnation of the three usurpers. He also cites many hadiths in which what he claims is the "divinity" of Imams peace be upon them, especially Imam Ali peace be upon him. He claims that Sheikh Mufid and others came in with an esoteric outlook and pushed out the "batini" segments of Shi'i tradition by branding them "Ghulat".

His admiration of Ghulat and his book being translated from French by an Ismaili institution are a bit suspicious, but overall it's a very, very interesting book.

This is his "Iqtisaad fil' i'tiqaad"... only recently been translated in full, thankfully it was done really well:

http://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Moderation-Belief-Al-Ghazali-ebook/dp/B00EYZQWTK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414029620&sr=8-1&keywords=moderation+in+belief

Bit pricey. Send me a PM if you want a copy in pdf (with certain conditions)

Best intro to kalaam in english currently IMO.

I had a professor of Islam who used to always say: "There are as many versions of Islam as there are Muslims." It all boils down to what you believe about Islam. There are those who believe that Islam is almost monolithic in its beliefs, that there is only one way to be Muslim. This belief is most commonly perpetuated by fundamentalists that export their brand of Islam out of Saudi Arabia. (For a good book about this, read here.)

The truth is that over the centuries Islamic understanding and practice has been very diverse. I can't say that a man interacting with you breaks the rules of Islam because I have no idea what he believes is the Islamic stance on the issue. For all I know he could subscribe to a version of Islam that is perfectly OK with it, so I would never pass judgement on him.

Islam: A Short History - Karen Armstrong

Islam: The Straight Path - John Esposito

The Autobiography of Malcolm X - Alex Haley

More advanced (should have some understanding of Islam before reading):

The Great Theft - Khaled Abou El Fadl

The Story of the Qur'an - Ingrid Mattson

1. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism
   
   
2. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society
   
   
3. Quran and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective
   
   
4. Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space, Gender, and Aesthetics
   
   
5. The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
   
   
6. How to Read the Quran
   
   

I don't know about online material, but one of the best things you can start with is George Makdisi's The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West.

Interesting. You might also find it interesting to look into shaykh Suhrawardi al-Matluq. For this shaykh, who was also called the shaykh al-Nur or the Master of Illumination, his spiritual masters were Hermes and Plato.

He might be interesting for your YA novel because he died when he was only 32 years old.

https://www.amazon.com/Leaven-Ancients-Suhrawardi-Heritage-Greeks/dp/0791443604
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahab_al-Din_Yahya_ibn_Habash_Suhrawardi

What you're asking is pretty much what "A World Without Islam" by Graham Fuller tries to answer.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Islam-Graham-Fuller/dp/B009WJBDG0

I wrote a long response, but decided not to post it. Looking at your other comments, I am not expecting a fruitful discussion here.

Instead, here's a thought provoking book you (or others) might be interested in: A World Without Islam. The book posits that if there never had been a religion called Islam, we'd have had the same problems in our world today. Mainly because it's not about religion; it's about geo-politics. People in all ages have used religion to inspire themselves for achieving their secular goals. Give it a read, if you haven't already.

Peace!

Relevant Knowledges:
Leila Ahmed - A Quiet Revolution: The Veil's Resurgence, from the Middle East to America
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XDTODO/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

Read this and have your book report on our desks this time next week.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Without-Islam-Graham-Fuller/dp/B009WJBDG0

http://www.amazon.com/The-Great-Theft-Wrestling-Extremists/dp/0061189030