Speaking in God's Name

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Summary: The Most Important Muslim Thinker
Review: Abou El Fadl is clearly the most important thinker on Islamic law today. This book is amazing. It opened my eyes as if I am learning Islam for the very first time. The book is mostly about women and Islamic law and its insights are nothing short of incredible. Every Muslim MUST read this book, especially the sisters out there.

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Summary: Abou El Fadl's Authoritarianism
Review: Despite competently hitting the bull's eye in several locations, Dr. Abou El Fadl commits the same crime he is trying to expose and fight. Whenever it is in his interest, he fails to discharge the 5 obligations which he proposes for establishing persuasive authority, namely: honesty, self-restraint, comprehensiveness, diligence, and reasonableness. His mentioning, for example, of the inquisition of the createdness of the Quran is disingenuous. No one can claim that the createdness of the Quran implies its circumstantiality, and thus the right to supercede it. After reading the book, I wondered about the plight of the Muslims trapped between the authoritarianism of Abou El Fadl and the authoritarianism of the Wahabbis....

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Summary: Excellent
Review: Detailed and scholarly. El Fadl has a great love for Islam and shows it by digging its darkest closets, and showing that light can still reach there.

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Summary: AtheistWorld.Com Book Review
Review: This book leaves out much to be desired.
You are better off reading "Islam Exposed" by Solomon Tulbure ISBN: 1932303456

Rating:
Summary: AtheistWorld.Com Book Review
Review: This book leaves out much to be desired.
You are better off reading "Islam Exposed" by Solomon Tulbure ISBN: 1932303456

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Summary: Arm yourself with true knowledge. Read this book.
Review: This brilliant book is the antidote to the stupefying, mind-numbing, Wahhabi rhetoric that is killing the soul of Islam today. If you want to understand how to concretely argue in favor of a moral Islam, and how to answer back to the ridiculous, anti-human and counter-intuitive claims of the so-called "true Islam" that is so popular in mosque-culture today, then this book will educate and liberate you. There is something for everyone in this book. For the hard core scholars and wanna be scholars, the first few chapters will make your head spin with meticulous detail, analysis and other good brainiac food. The methodology presented for establishing Islamic authenticity is powerful and intuitively rational--great stuff! For those who just want to enjoy some very satisfying discussion, argumentation and refutation of the stupid stuff that never made any sense (ie., why women can or cannot wear bras, high-heels, go to graveyards, drive cars, etc.), the last few chapters and appendices are excellent! The appendices translate amazing and shocking Saudi legal opinions, and argue and apply the author's methodology to demonstrate why they can or cannot work. It is fine to jump to the back chapters if you are not interested in the "fine print". This is such an important work--it is the hope for change and a renaissance, to get out of the dark place that Muslims are in today.

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Summary: The Spirit of Balance
Review: This work demonstrates an immense amount of erudition in both Western and Islamic traditions, and perhaps, this quality is what makes this work so engrossing. One can spend hours working through the footnotes alone. On that note, one should mentioned that K. A. El Fadel genuinely tries to present each perspective on a topic. He doesn't decieve his Western audiences by concealing the ugliness of much that exists in Islamic tradition and he doesn't shy away from criticizing many of the sacred cows of his fellow Muslims. In many ways, I found reading this book to be much like peering into the modern condition of religious authority in Islam. El Fadl doesn't paint a pretty picture, but he does demonstrate that there is hope, and the juristic tradition, as moribund as it may at time seems, shall likely continue into the future though in a radically transformed way than its previous incarnation.
Some criticisms of the book are his awkward attempts to merge insights from Western philosophy with Muslim tradition. Thinkers such as Muhammad Iqbal proved long ago that this can be done with grace and skill, but El Fadl does so awkwardly at times. It seems that these elements remain unmixed like oil and water despite various attempts. Also, I wish he would have desisted from always using the Wahhabi CRLO as his main polemical opponent. There are so many other fatwa bodies, international ones at that, that I found this decision to be rather odd. Moreover, I would have liked to have seen a deeper examination of the historical contingencies surrounding these fatwas to be explored. Nonetheless, it's without a doubt a must read for anyone interested in American Muslim scholars.

Rating:
Summary: Authority wihout the Authoratarian
Review: This work demonstrates an immense amount of erudition in both Western and Islamic traditions, and perhaps, this quality is what makes this work so engrossing. One can spend hours working through the footnotes alone. On that note, one should mentioned that K. A. El Fadel genuinely tries to present each perspective on a topic. He doesn't decieve his Western audiences by concealing the ugliness of much that exists in Islamic tradition and he doesn't shy away from criticizing many of the sacred cows of his fellow Muslims. In many ways, I found reading this book to be much like peering into the modern condition of religious authority in Islam. El Fadl doesn't paint a pretty picture, but he does demonstrate that there is hope, and the juristic tradition, as moribund as it may at time seems, shall likely continue into the future though in a radically transformed way than its previous incarnation.
Some criticisms of the book are his awkward attempts to merge insights from Western philosophy with Muslim tradition. Thinkers such as Muhammad Iqbal proved long ago that this can be done with grace and skill, but El Fadl does so awkwardly at times. It seems that these elements remain unmixed like oil and water despite various attempts. Also, I wish he would have desisted from always using the Wahhabi CRLO as his main polemical opponent. There are so many other fatwa bodies, international ones at that, that I found this decision to be rather odd. Moreover, I would have liked to have seen a deeper examination of the historical contingencies surrounding these fatwas to be explored. Nonetheless, it's without a doubt a must read for anyone interested in American Muslim scholars.

Rating:
Summary: An Invaluable Book!!
Review: What Mr. El Fadl has done in this book is nothing short of extraordinary. His project is to first explain to the reader how the Islamic jurisprudential system works: this is the system by which religious pronouncements were rated on a scale of reliability. He then proceeds to demonstrate that many of the current ethical pronouncements and fatwas issued by Islamic religious authorities (especially those concerning women's rights) do not meet Islam's criteria of reliability and rigor. El Fadl is not interested in denouncing Islam as heresy. He is a believer who is arguing only that those in positions of power in Islam must meet Islam's standards for reliability and rigor when making a pronouncement about a sacred text. The writing is lucid and vibrant and one does not need to have a scholarly understanding of Islam to appreciate the work El Fadl is doing at UCLA.

Rating:
Summary: An Invaluable Book!!
Review: What Mr. El Fadl has done in this book is nothing short of extraordinary. His project is to first explain to the reader how the Islamic jurisprudential system works: this is the system by which religious pronouncements were rated on a scale of reliability. He then proceeds to demonstrate that many of the current ethical pronouncements and fatwas issued by Islamic religious authorities (especially those concerning women's rights) do not meet Islam's criteria of reliability and rigor. El Fadl is not interested in denouncing Islam as heresy. He is a believer who is arguing only that those in positions of power in Islam must meet Islam's standards for reliability and rigor when making a pronouncement about a sacred text. The writing is lucid and vibrant and one does not need to have a scholarly understanding of Islam to appreciate the work El Fadl is doing at UCLA.