But it is never possible to go back in time. Any “reformation,” however conservative its intention, is always a new departure, and an adaptation of the faith to the particular challenges of the reformer’s own time.

The loss of Palestine became a potent symbol of the humiliation of the Muslim world at the hands of the Western powers, who seemed to feel no qualms about the dispossession and permanent exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Nevertheless, in the very early days, some Muslims were

Major social change of the type that Muhammad was attempting in the peninsula is rarely achieved without bloodshed.

As a result, the West would eventually destroy itself, a position that was easy to understand after the First World War, which could be seen as the collective suicide of Europe. Muslims therefore had a vital mission to witness to the divine dimension of life, not by retiring from the world to engage in contemplation, but by an activism that impleme

These customs were adopted some three or four generations after the Prophet’s death. Muslims at that time were copying the Greek Christians of Byzantium, who had long veiled and segregated their women in this manner; they also appropriated some of their Christian misogyny.

Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (d. 870) was the first major Faylasuf or “Philosopher” of the Muslim world.

But it was difficult to see how this regime was in any way Islamic. The caliph and his entourage lived in splendid isolation, which could not have been in more marked contrast to the asceticism of the Prophet and the rashidun.

The unity of the community was a sacred value, since it expressed the oneness of God. This was far more important than any sectarian division. It was crucial, therefore, for the sake of peace, to recognize the present caliphs, despite their obvious shortcomings. If Muslims lived according to the Shariah, they could create a counter-culture that wou

Iqbal had been deeply influenced by Western thought and had received a Ph.D. in London. Yet he believed that the West had elevated progress at the expense of continuity; its secular individualism separated the notion of personality from God and made it idolatrous and potentially demonic.