Following Muhammad

Following Muhammad is a scholarly, but not academic, book directed atthe general reading public. Written by a religious studies scholar with anevident sympathy for Islam, it seeks to address western prejudices about Islam by presenting a clear, concise, and accessible picture of the faith incontext. Although the author explores Islam’s historical evolution, his primaryfocus is to balance this with insights into how Muslims themselvesunderstand their religion in contemporary as well as historical times.Although primarily directed toward non-Muslims, whose essentialistmedia-driven assumptions about Islam are constantly lamented by Ernst,it is also of interest to the Muslim reading public as a refreshing departurefrom standard accounts of Muslims and Islam. Although not a textbook,it could be profitably used as a text for discussion in a variety ofcourses.Two key issues to which Ernst returns repeatedly are, first, the erroneouswestern tendency of assuming that fundamentalists are the “true”representatives of Islam, and, second, the importance of recognizing thepart colonialism has played in shaping contemporary developments in theMuslim world. By drawing comparisons with Christianity, Judaism, andother faiths, he highlights the unacceptability – and indeed absurdity – ofmany generic assumptions about Islam and Muslims. Instead, he stressesthe importance of non-Muslims recognizing the diversity of faith and practicein time and space that characterizes Islam, just as it does all other worldreligions.The book is divided into six chapters organized in a thematic ratherthan a chronological manner in order to reflect the author’s self-proclaimedemphasis on “rethinking” Islam today. Chapter 1 explores western perceptionsof, and prejudices toward, Islam in modern and medieval times andsuggests ways to avoid such prejudices in our own time. Chapter 2 looks atwhat is meant by the term religion and how evolving western definitions ofreligion have shaped western perceptions of other faiths, including Islam.This is counterbalanced by a survey of how Muslims have defined Islam byassessing its historical vocabulary and the vocabulary used by present-dayMuslims ...