Islam and the Destiny of Man

by Gai Eaton

Overview

Gai Eaton's Islam and the Destiny of Man is a wide-ranging study of the religion of Islam from a traditional point of view. Covering all aspects that a reader would wish to know about Islam—including the Qur'an, the life of the Prophet, Islamic history, Islamic law, art and mysticism—Islam and the Destiny of Man explains what it means to be a Muslim and describes how Islam has shaped the hearts and minds of Muslims down the centuries. However, in Islam and the Destiny of Man, Gai Eaton is concerned not simply with Islam in isolation, but with the very nature of religious faith, its spiritual and intellectual foundations and the light it casts upon the mysteries and paradoxes of the human condition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780946621477
Publisher:	Islamic Texts Society
Publication date:	01/28/1994
Pages:	261
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Charles Le Gai Eaton was born in Switzerland and educated at Charterhouse and King's College, Cambridge. He worked for many years as a teacher and journalist in Jamaica and Egypt (where he embraced Islam in 1951) before joining the British Diplomatic Service. For more than twenty years, he was consultant to the Islamic Cultural Centre in London. He is also the author of King of the Castle, Reflections and Remembering God, all published by the Islamic Texts Society. He died in 2010.

Read an Excerpt

Since Islam was strong in arms and Christendom was weak, words were the only available weapons against what was seen first as a 'heresy' and later a false religion of satanic origin, and all the resources of language was pressed into the service of a propaganda campaign which might have brought a blush to the cheeks of the late Doctor Goebbels. One can still catch its echoes in our time. Pope Innocent III had identified Muhammad as the Anti-Christ; almost 700 years later the explorer Doughty described him as 'a dirty and perfidious Arab'. In his History of Europe, published in 1936 and a standard work in schools for many years after, H. A. L. Fisher called him 'cruel and crafty, lustful and ignorant' and made reference to the 'crude outpourings of the Koran'.
   The contemporary Muslim, however, is often less troubled by books which show an open and clear-cut bias, whether this arises from a narrow denominational point of view or as part of a generalized attack on traditional religion, than he is by works which are sympathetic (or condescending) in intention, but which in practice undermine the foundations of his faith. To take the most obvious example, many writers who might be considered well-disposed work on the unspoken assumption that Muhammad was the 'author' of the Quran. To suggest that the Quran had a human author, even if it is admitted that he was 'an inspired genius', is to do away with the religion of Islam. These authors refer readily to the 'greatness' of the Prophet; like sympathetic schoolmasters, they find in him much to admire, and they are astonished by his magnanimity to his enemies. They rebut charges that he was anything sincere, brave and honourable and are shocked by the scurrilous charges brought against him by earlier writers. At the same time there emerges, quite unconsciously, that note of amiable condescension which—ever since the end of Empire—Europeans have adopted towards the 'backward' or 'developing' peoples of the Third World.
   Where Christian writers are concerned certain limitations are appropriate and acceptable. One does not expect them to be untrue to the principles of their own faith, and the fact that they are themselves believers gives them an understanding of religion as such which opens doors and may, on occasion, lead to the very heart of things; and there are some who understand very well that to speak of another religion with courtesy is not only a gesture of respect to its adherents but is also a courtesy to God in the face of the mysteries of divine Self-revelation. This was well-expressed by the Catholic Islamicist, Emile Dermenghem, in his Life of Mohammet, when—writing of 'the barriers which must be destroyed'—he said that 'the sense of true relativity does not destroy the sense of the Absolute', adding that, 'The divine Revelation comes from the mouths of human beings, adapting itself to times and places… What seems to us contradictory is only the refraction of the eternal ray in the prism of time'.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: An Approach to the Faith
   1 Islam and Europe
   2 Continuity and Contrast
   3 Truth and Mercy
Part II: The Making of the Faith
   4 The World of the Book
   5 The Messenger of God
   6 The City of the Prophet
   7 The Successors
   8 The Way of the World
Part III: The Fruits of the Faith
   9 The Rule of Law
   10 The Human Paradox
   11 Art, Environment and Mysticism
   12 Other Dimensions
Index

Editorial Reviews

'Considered essential by [those] seeking to understand Islam.'

From the Publisher

'One of the most important works on Islam to appear in the English language. It should really be read by all Westerners interested in an understanding of Islamic tradition and also by those Muslims who have become cut off from the authentic message of their own religion.'

S. H. Nasr

'The most remarkable accomplishment of this book is not that it leaves the reader with a basic understanding of Muhammad, the Qur'an and the daily practices of Muslims everywhere, although it certainly does these things. Nor does it lie merely in the clear, open, loving approach the author brings to his subject, though this is striking. Rather his main contribution lies in building bridges of understanding—in showing the Christian's and Jew's essential oneness with the Muslim.'

Joseph K. Blackman

"Considered essential by [those] seeking to understand Islam."

Sunday Telegraph

"This book deserves to be read over and over again."

Muslim Education Quarterly

"This is a beautifully written book. It offers a taste of theology, of history, of aesthetics and of eschatology blended in such way as to provide a whole and balanced image, a vision of life that is both comprehensive and thoroughly Islamic."

Parabola