What is Islam, Shahab Ahmed
Word Count: 1846
I believe that What is Islam? is a very important study of a religion and often
a culture and a political system practiced by more than one billion people here on
Earth in the 21st Century. Shahab Ahmed, the author, was a very serious academic
who travelled extensively and studied Islamic intellectual history. He was born in
Singapore (Southeast Asia), studied in Egypt (the Middle East) and the United States
(the West), worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Southwest Asia) and taught at
Princeton and Harvard prior to his death in 2015 at age 48 from leukemia. Thus, he
has first hand experience with Islam all over the world including in the United
States, where there are fewer Muslims proportionally than perhaps anywhere in the
world except South America and Australia. He is believed to have spoken as many
as 15 languages. So I believe he may have been uniquely qualified to have
conversations around the world with Muslin practitioners and scholars as well as
being able to read their work and historical works in the original languages. These
abilities gave him the opportunity to analyze all aspects of Islam – literature,
religious practices, history, philosophy, art, music – throughout the world where
Islam is practiced. And from this, pull together a new way of looking at
Islam. Scholars from Harvard, Princeton, Duke and elsewhere all agree that what he
has developed in this study is original, unique and will foster continued debate for
years to come.
This is reinforced in the first quote of the book from Al-Shaykh al-Ra’is Abu
Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna, a 10th/11th Century physician, philosopher and
theologian in what is now Uzbekistan in Central Asia. His quote points to the
complicated nature of Islam both in it’s all encompassing nature – religion, art,
literature, politics, economics – as well as it’s success in being adopted throughout
the world by people of vastly different experiences, ethnicities, cultures, races and
religious traditions – Southeastern, Central and Southwestern Asia, the Middle East,
North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula and in more recent times the rest of Europe and
North America. “Islam” is complex and daunting in its diversity defying definition.
Shahab Ahmed seems to be the right person to take on this task and I am certain
would have continued contributing to the necessary discussion but for his untimely
