Islam

Islam
By Syed Ameer Ali

Written by Syed Ameer Ali, one of the most influential Muslim modernist thinkers and jurists of colonial India, this concise volume presents Islam's core beliefs, history, and civilization for a general Western readership, part of the "Religions Ancient and Modern" series.

Ameer Ali was known for his sympathetic, reformist interpretation of Islamic history, and this work reflects his effort to correct Western misconceptions of the faith while presenting its theology and historical development in accessible form.

A public-domain work, offered as a free digital edition by Nile Book Store.

Excerpt

It is difficult, if not impossible, for any one not endowed with a spirit of sympathy, or the faculty of transporting the mind to the social conditions and moral needs of other times, to do justice to the Teacher of another Faith, especially if that Faith is imagined to be in rivalry with his own.

Generally speaking, the attitude of Christian writers towards Mohammed and his religion is akin to that of the critical Jew towards the Teacher of Nazareth, or of the philosophical Celsus towards Christianity.

In the brochure which the liberalism and enterprise of the publishers enables me to place before the public, I have endeavoured to outline from inside the essential teachings of Islâm and the prominent features of its History.