Preface
More than three hundred years ago, in 1689, the great English philosopher John Locke published A Letter Concerning Toleration, in which he argued that "neither Pagan, nor Mahometan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth because of religion." In this, he gave a classical formulation of an idea which helped to inspire both the French and American revolutions, and has become an essential guiding principle of the free world. This idea, sometimes called secularism, means that religion is a private and personal matter, outside the realm of government; that membership of the political community, and the rights that go with it, belong to all citizens, of any religion or of none.
Religion remains, however, an immensely powerful factor in human aff airs, with profound influence on almost every aspect of public and private, social and economic, cultural and even artistic life. No study of society, whether directed by historians at the past, by social scientists at the present, or by either at the future, can afford to disregard the religious factor. To neglect or even to underrate that factor can lead to serious misunderstandings and open the way to dangerous consequences. A French statesman once said that war is too important to be left to the generals. One might also argue that religion is too important to leave to the theologians.
There are many ways of studying religion, besides that of the theologians. Some study it as an art-historian studies paintings; others, as a bacteriologist studies bacteria. We are committed to no specific ideology or method, beyond that of dispassionate scholarship, which sees religion as a strand, or group of strands, among others, in the intricate pattern of human life. Such a study, in context, of the religious factor in human affairs is indispensable to understanding. In the Christian, or as some nowadays call it, the post-Christian world, religion has become, to a large extent, a personal and private matter. In the world of Islam, now in the early fifteenth century of its era, religion retains its centrality and remains a major force in public life, a basic theme of identity and therefore of loyalty.
For any sort of dealings with the Muslim world, some understanding, and therefore some knowledge, of Islam is essential. Unfortunately, this is rarely available and the more common perception is based on ignorance, sometimes varied by prejudice. This is particularly dangerous at a time when the Islamic world itself is undergoing major internal struggles, the outcome of which is still far from clear. It is our hope that the following pages may provide some knowledge, and thus some understanding, of one of the world's great religionsof its glorious past, its tumultuous present, and its bitterly contested future.
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