The Islam of Mohamed

The Islam of Mohamed
By S. Khuda Bukhsh

Originally published as a two-part article in the Hindustan Review in 1909, this essay by the Indian Muslim scholar Salahuddin Khuda Bukhsh attempts to describe Islam "stripped of the accretions of ages of theological disputes and controversies" — that is, to recover the faith as taught by the Prophet Muhammad himself, apart from later doctrinal accumulation.

A concise work of Islamic modernist scholarship, it reflects the broader early 20th-century South Asian Muslim intellectual project of reexamining Islamic origins through historical and critical method.

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

Excerpt

I do not desire to explain the importance and significance of Islam among the religious systems of the world; nor am I to fix and ascertain the exact position of Mohamed as a religious teacher among the world's great teachers of religions. My effort in this paper is simpler and yet not altogether free from bewildering perplexities. I desire to explain what Islam is and what its teachings are: Islam as preached and delivered by the prophet of Arabia; Islam stripped of the accretions of ages of theological disputes and controversies; in other words to sketch out, to the best of my light and leading, Islam of the prophet Mohamed.