Asma Afsaruddin

For Western appraisals of Islam, it is often hard to separate Islam, the religion, and Muslims, the community. Furthermore, due to what I can only describe as propaganda, Westerners (esp. Americans) have a hard time separating religious issues from geopolitical issues. This book attempts to focus on current (circa 2015) issues within Islam, the religion. While political changes are acknowledged (the book wouldn't be serving its purpose without doing so), they are acknowledged as far as they need to be so that they are properly lensed within religious studies.

That said, the book's main pitfall is one that it cannot avoid; given that there is a considerable conflation between the religious and the political, the book has to devote time, energy, and ink to properly separating the two, and it has to re-frame the narrative constantly to prevent the reader from making errors. Thus, my critique of the book is more the critique of the reader, (and also since things are changing constantly so "contemporary" isn't a great label in hindsight). Otherwise, it serves as a good textbook.… (mehr)