71221- Cover, page 2 @ Preflight


The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1150

Daniel W. Brown A New Introduction to Islam, 2nd ed.
West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. pbk. 339 pages

A New Introduction to Islam is an excellent undergraduate textbook pre-
senting a thorough history of Islam. It introduces students to the history 
and development of Islamic studies as a discipline—showing how Islam-
ic studies has shaped our understanding of Islam—and it also examines 
how the vibrant religious culture of the Near East produced a unique and 
brilliant intellectual and religious tradition spanning the fields of Islamic 
law, theology, philosophy, and mysticism. In addition, it shows the ways 
in which the Islamic tradition has enriched the world, and in turn, how it 
has been enriched by interaction with other civilizations. And against the 
background of social and cultural contexts that extend from North Africa 
to South and Southeast Asia, it also considers the opportunities and chal-
lenges facing Muslims today and provides a new and illuminating perspec-
tive of the development of Muslim beliefs and practices.

The book consists of four parts (with seventeen chapters): Part 1, “The 
Formation of the Islamic Tradition” (six chapters); Part 2, “The Expansion 
of Islam” (three chapters); Part 3, “Islamic Institutions” (three chapters); 
and Part 4, “Crisis and Renewal in Islamic History” (five chapters). These 
parts are preceded by a list of illustrations (thirty-three diagrams and pic-
tures and seven maps), a preface to the second edition, source acknowledg-
ments, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index.

Part 1, “The Formation of the Islamic Tradition,” explores the histori-
cal and religious context of the rise of Islam, and provides a survey of the 
central elements of the Islamic tradition. Beginning with Pre-Islamic Ara-
bia, it immediately raises the critical questions, such as: “How significant 
is the Arab background for understanding the rise of Islam?” and “Is sixth-
century Arabia a credible context for the rise of a new, vigorous monotheis-
tic faith and a vibrant civilization?” (See 15.) These questions are answered 
in Chapter 3, which provides an exploration of Near Eastern civilization 
and religion before the rise of Islam, and Chapter 4 (which examines the 
sacred history of Islam, beginning with the key narrative in that history, the 
life of Muhammad [pbuh]). Chapters 5 and 6 discuss how the Qur’an came 
into its present form, and the authenticity of the Hadith literature. Here, 
Brown contends that with two centuries of “critical scholarship” have in-
creasingly brought into question the traditional account of how Islam came 
into being. For him: 



151Book Reviews

• the Qur`an is largely “inaccessible,” because its “narratives are allusive,” 
“constructions devoid of context,” and much “vocabulary opaque” (86)

• and the Islamic tradition was not fully formed but “grew, took root, and 
flourished over the course of several turbulent centuries” (100)

In Part 2, “The Expansion of Islam,” the focus is turned from sacred 
history and the formative elements of Islam to the “complex historical 
context” beginning with the Arab conquests, in which Islamic civilization 
grew to maturity. Chapter 8 examines the worldview of the early Arab con-
querors. The focus of this chapter is how Arab identity combined with Near 
Eastern patterns of religious life to form something completely new. Fi-
nally, in Chapter 9, the focus is on the history (from the rise of the Abbasid 
caliphate) of the maturing of Islamic political thought and the emergence 
of the major schisms in Islam.

Part 3, “Islamic Institutions,” surveys the great institutions of Islamic 
civilization in their maturity: Islamic law; Islamic theology, and Islamic 
philosophy—and Sufism (the “spiritual center” of Islam). The elucidation 
of Islamic law (Shar‘iah) preoccupied the greatest minds of the Islamic 
world, and the resulting system was a signature achievement of Islamic 
civilization, and the ideals of Islamic law continued to give the Islamic 
world unity and coherence long after it had fragmented politically. These 
three great institutions—the law, theology and philosophy—and Sufism 
are the defining features of Islam in its maturity, the characteristics that 
gave it the coherence, the brilliance, and the resiliency that marked Islamic 
civilization at its height.

Part 4, “Crisis and Renewal in Islamic History.” Its five chapters ex-
amine Muslim responses to the challenge of history and the patterns of re-
newal and reform in Islam. The ways in which Muslims met the challenges 
of the Crusades and the Mongol invasions are both of intrinsic interest and 
are harbingers for understanding of what would follow. What did follow 
was first of all a blossoming of great Islamic empires on the eve of moder-
nity. The sixteenth century Muslims witnessed a complete redrawing of the 
map of their world with the rise of “three great empires”—the Ottoman, the 
Safavid, and the Mughal—all rooted in the “Mongol-Turkish synthesis,” 
and the masterpieces of these empires are still visible in the architectural 
treasures of Istanbul, Isfahan, Agra, and Lahore (234). From the eighteenth 
century onwards, the power and pervasiveness of Western civilization has 
proved to be a challenge in Islamic history.



The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 28:1152

In Chapter 16, “The Turbulent Twentieth Century,” the author adopts a 
“different approach,” and that approach is the focus on the question “What 
is it that Muslims are responding to?” “What changes has the modern world 
brought to Islam in each of the classical Islamic institutions: political insti-
tutions, Islamic law, theology, and Sufism?” “How has each of these insti-
tutions fared in the modern world?” and “What has changed, and what has 
remained the same/unchanged?” (260). In this chapter, the author main-
tains that the “major institutions and intellectual traditions” of Islam have 
shown “remarkable resilience” in the face of the “challenge of modernity” 
(280). For Brown, Islamic political thought, legal ideas, and theological 
speculation have all demonstrated a “surprising vitality” (ibid.).

The concluding chapter (Chapter 17), “Islam in the Twenty-First Cen-
tury,” surveys the most important currents in recent Islamic thought (the 
discussions on major challenges facing Muslims in the twenty-first cen-
tury): the challenge of pluralism, Islamic liberalism, Islam in the West, 
Islamic feminism. For Brown, the most urgent set of “theological, ethical 
and political problems” faced by the Muslim community in the contempo-
rary world is posed by the “challenge of pluralism” (283)

A New Introduction to Islam is one of the most lucidly organized in-
troductions to Islam; it is informative and clear on all the major issues 
and historical events pertaining to Islam, and it is also a thoughtful and a 
comprehensive guide to the study of the materials and the ways of thinking 
about Islam. The book is up-to-date—not only in its discussion of issues 
like “Islam and Modernity” but also in bringing up recent scholarly debates 
about the Qur`an and Islamic traditions.

 
Tauseef Ahmad Parray

Ph.D. Research Scholar (Doctoral Candidate), Department of Islamic Studies,
Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), India.

email: tauseef.parray21@gmail.com