Mapping The Secular Mind (IIIT)

LET US BE MUSLIMS is a new edited English version of Sayyid Mawdudi’s Urdu Khutubat. It is no ordinary book, says Khurram Murad in his long Introduction, for it has stirred more hearts and impelled more lives to change their course than any of his more erudite works. In these Friday congregational addresses, Sayyid Mawdudi expounds such familiar themes as Iman, Islam, the Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving, Pilgrimage and Jihad. But, in an unusually beautiful, powerfully reasoned, eloquent and passionate, and yet simple and lucid style,

“Sayyid Abul A’la Al-Mawdudui (1903-1979), one of the chief architects of contemporary Islamic resurgence, was the an outstanding Islamic thinker and writer of his time. He devoted his life to expound the meaning and message of Islam and to organise a collective movement to establish the Islamic Order. In this struggle, he had to pass through all kinds of sufferings.
Between 1948-67, he spent a total of five years in different prisons of Pakistan. In 1953, he was also sentenced to death by a Martial Law court for writing a ‘seditious’ pamphlet, this sentence being later commuted to life imprisonment. In 1941, he founded Jama’at-I Islami, of which he remained Amir, until 1972 and which is one of the most prominent Islamic movements of our day. He authored more than one hundred works on Islam, both scholarly and popular, and his writings have been translated into forty languages.”

This work is a translation of Shaikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz’s book ‘Ad-Duroos Al-Muhimmah li-Ammatil-Ummah.’ It contains concise lessons that explain the fundamental teachings of Islam. This book covers a wide range of basic information such as the meaning of Tawhid (Islamic monotheism), the categories and implications of Shirk (polytheism), the regulations of prayer, and Islamic morals and manners. As the title implies, these are truly essential lessons for everyone who is concerned with the correctness of his Islamic beliefs and acts of worship.

Some thinkers has said, ‘A smattering of knowledge turns people away from God. Grater knowledge brings  them back to Him’. The author concludes in this book by examining various theories that the choice humanity have is not between the universe with God and the universe with God and the  universe without God. The real option is between the universe with God and no universe at all. Therefore humanity is compelled to opt for the proposition the universe with God. Hence it is logical to say I exist, therefore, God exists.

New Directions in Islamic Education explores the relationship between pedagogy and the formation of religious identities within Islamic education settings that are based in minority and majority Muslim contexts. Based on empirical research, the book engages critically with the philosophical, theological and cultural dynamics that inform Muslim educational thought and practice. The book offers an integrated model of Islamic education that identifies the heart of the Islamic educational imagination as tarbiyah, a transformative process of becoming. Overall, this book seeks to ground the theory and practice of Islamic education within the experience of the educator and the learner, and it synthesises the spiritual foundations of Islam with the tradition of critical reflection within the classical Muslim educational heritage. This ground breaking and wide-ranging work should be of interest not only to Muslim educators and education specialists, but also to social scientists, theologians and policy makers.