Notes on Islam

In 1915, a British-educated Muslim father sits down to answer his sons' difficult questions. Protestant missionaries have been challenging the value of Islam, and the young men want to know: what is worth believing? Sir Hussain Ahmed was not interested in defensive apologetics. Instead, he embarked on a radical project: separating 'true Islam' from what he called 'Muhammadanism' the cultural and legalistic accumulation that had calcified around the faith's spiritual core. This short, searching work argues that when properly understood, Islam is not merely compatible with modern science and morality but essentially rational in its design. Written for his sons but addressed to any thinking believer wrestling with faith in an age of doubt, this is a document of early Islamic modernism. It will appeal to readers curious about how turn-of-the-century intellectuals navigated the collision between tradition and modernity.