Contemporary Issues in Islam

Discusses key issues in Islam today, including Shari'a, jihad, politics, gender and interfaith relations

• Listen to an interview with Asma Afsaruddin on the New Books Network
• Received an honorable mention at the 2016 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize

Key ‘hot-button’ contemporary issues in Islam, often at the centre of public scrutiny, are the focus of this book. By placing the discussion of topics such as the Shari'a, jihad, the caliphate, women’s status and interfaith relations within a longer historical framework, Contemporary Issues in Islam reveals their multiple interpretations and contested applications over time.

Most public – and occasionally academic – discourses in the West present the Islamic tradition as unchanging and therefore unable to respond to the modern world. Such an ahistorical approach can foster the belief that Muslim-majority and Western societies are destined to clash. This book reveals instead the diversity and transformations within Islamic thought over time. Focusing on this internal diversity permits us to appreciate the scriptural and intellectual resources available within the Islamic tradition for responding to the challenges of modernity, even as this tradition interrogates and shapes modernity itself.

Key Features

• Identifies seven key “controversial” issues that frequently emerge concerning Islam in public discussions, academic and non-academic
• Historically contextualized discussion of these key issues and concepts in the context of modernity and relations with the West
• Challenges the “clash of civilizations” thesis by identifying shared, universal values that are retrievable from a deeper, historicised investigation of the Islamic past and its connection with the present
• Interrogates the premise that secularisation must precede a successful transition to modernity and that Western-style modernity is the only paradigm available