Approaching the Sunnah: Comprehension & Controversy (P/B)

Written by a number of Islamic religious authorities and Muslim scholars, this work presents the views and teachings of mainstream Sunni and Shi’i Islam on the subject of jihad. It authoritatively presents jihad as it is understood by the majority of the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims in the world today, and supports this understanding with extensive detail and scholarship. No word in English evokes more fear and misunderstanding than “jihad.” To date the books that have appeared on the subject in English by Western scholars have been either openly partisan and polemical or subtly traumatized by so many acts and images of terrorism in the name of jihad and by the historical memory of nearly 1,400 years of confrontation between Islam and Christianity. Though jihad is the central concern of War and Peace in Islam: The Uses and Abuses of Jihad, the range of the essays is not confined exclusively to the study of jihad. The work is divided into three parts: War and Its Practice, Peace and Its Practice, and Beyond Peace: The Practice of Forbearance, Mercy, Compassion and Love. The book aims to reveal the real meaning of jihad and to rectify many of the misunderstandings that surround both it and Islam’s relation with the “Other.”

Reviews:

“A dynamic myth-busting clarification of the real position of mainstream orthodox Islam on the whole question of violence and jihad.” —T. J. Winter, University of Cambridge

“This is the best book on the subject in English. It will be of inestimable value.” —Shaykh Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti Emeritus of Bosnia

This work studies the position of the Sunnah in Islam and its fundamental relationship to the Qur’an. The author carefully examines the sensitive issue of the development of the oral and written traditions, the problems scholars faced despite painstaking work verifying the authenticity of reports, the character of narrators, etc. and the ever growing complexity of a body of narratives that were making the simplicity and clarity of the Prophet’s life, words, and actions, a burgeoning maze of information. Taking the praiseworthy intention and effort to emulate the Prophet into account, the author nevertheless makes the case that once the Sunnah had been collected, the Muslim community began to neglect the Qur’an in favor of narrations of what the Prophet had done and said on the pretext that such narratives “contained” the Qur’an. Eventually they then abandoned the Sunnah narratives in favor of Islamic jurisprudence on the pretext that Islamic juristic texts tacitly included both the Qur’an and the Sunnah. It is with the aim of restoring the relationship between the two that this work has been written, that is, the Prophetic Sunnah must be tied inextricably to the Qur’an in a way that allows for no contradiction or conflict between the two, to avoid misapplication and abuse of hadith, and to meet the requirements and challenges of a new age.