Book: Misquoting Muhammad. The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy

Book author: Jonathan AC Brown
ISBN: 978-1-78074-420-9
Published by: Oneworld, 2014

Damian Howard SJ, lecturer in Interreligious relations at Heythrop College, University of London reviews Jonathan AC Brown's Misquoting Muhammad. The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet's Legacy on Thinking Faith today.

Fr Damian writes: 'The Islamic world is in turmoil, no-one can doubt that. But does it really need a Martin Luther-figure to move the situation forward? Not if you consider that a Reformation of sorts is well under way. Religious illiteracy among the commentariat is so endemic that calls for an Islamic Reformation have been coming thick and fast at a time when the religion has already spent the best part of a century engulfed in an agonising crisis analogous to that which beset Christendom in the early 1500s.

'It is only recently that Muslim intellectuals, acutely conscious that Reformations are usually founded on dubious hermeneutical ideals ('let's get back to how things were at the time of the founder...') and always create disturbances and often violent conflict, have started to make the case for, to push the analogy even further, an Islamic Counterreformation. With no single centralised authority to speak of, the Sunni Caliphate having been abolished in the 1920s, that is no mean feat. This excellent book represents an accessible, elegantly written and erudite statement of the case.'

Read Fr Damian's review here: www.thinkingfaith.org/node/1792utm_source=Thinking+Faith&utm_campaign=1f793ff66a-TF_201504174_17_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_620a4d7197-1f793ff66a-68834617&mc_cid=1f793ff66a&mc_eid=2de5f0eba5