The Search for Beauty in Islam: A Conference of the Books

by Khaled Abou El Fadl

Overview

Khaled Abou El Fadl is a classically-trained Islamic jurist, an American lawyer and law professor, and one of the most important Islamic thinkers today. In this updated and expanded edition of The Search for Beauty in Islam, Abou El Fadl offers eye-opening and enlightening insights into the contemporary realities of the current state of Islam and the West. Through a "conference of the books," an imagined conference of Muslim intellects from centuries past, Abou El Fadl examines the ugliness that has come to plague Muslim realities and attempts to reclaim what he maintains is a core moral value in Islam-the value of beauty. Does Islamic law allow, or even call for, the gruesome acts of ugliness that have become so commonly associated with Islam today? Has Islam become a religion devoid of beauty, compassion and love?

Based on actual cases, this book tackles different issues and problems in each chapter through a post-9/11 lens, discussing such topics as marriage, divorce, parental rights, the position of women, the veil, sexual abuse, wife-beating, terrorism, bigotry, morality, law, and the role of tradition. Abou El Fadl argues that the rekindling of the forgotten value of beauty is essential for Muslims today to take back what has been lost to the fundamentalist forces that have denigrated their religion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781461645542
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/02/2005
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law where he teaches Islamic law, immigration, human rights, and international and national security law. He holds degrees from Yale University (B.A.), University of Pennsylvania Law School (J.D.) and Princeton University (M.A./Ph.D.). He serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch and was also appointed by President George W. Bush as a commissioner on the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Author of numerous books and articles on Islamic law and Islam, his most recent work focuses on issues of authority, tolerance and democracy in Islam.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Preface for the New Edition	xiii
	Introduction	xv
1	The Conference of Books: The First Admission	1
2	The Night's Visitor	5
3	The Pirates of the Intellect	8
4	The Terror of Bigotry	12
5	The Civilization of the Book	14
6	The Interminable Conference	18
7	On Betrayal	20
8	A Prayer	22
9	Donkeys Carrying Books	25
10	To Murder the Soul	28
11	A One More Knowing	31
12	Women as an 'Awra	33
13	The Authoritative and the Authoritarian	35
14	On Obedience	37
15	To Suffer the Children	40
16	On Forms of Terror	43
17	Dial-a-Fatwa	45
18	On Knowledge	47
19	NYC Bombing	50
20	Umm Ahmad and the Judge	52
21	The Book Massacres	54
22	To Kill Parenthood	56
23	Killing Flies	59
24	Attending Jum'a	61
25	Burdens of a Generation	63
26	The Dialectics of an Apology	65
27	The Essential Individual	68
28	The Search for Beauty	70
29	Hegemony and Terrorism	73
30	Longing for Brotherhood	76
31	The Culture of the Mamnu'	78
32	On Being in Love	81
33	Lecturing on the Ugly	84
34	A Night With the Qalam	87
35	A Homily for Ibn Rushd	90
36	The Sunna of the Beloved	95
37	Colonizing Women	97
38	The Page	99
39	My Friend	102
40	The Truth of Silence	105
41	On the Beating of Wives	107
42	The Beating of Wives Revisited	114
43	In Praise of the Marginal	123
44	A Love Song	125
45	Migrating to the Shaykhs	127
46	On Revising Bigotry	132
47	An Encounter With the Shaykh (On the Delusions of the Fog)	137
48	Finding the Shaykh	141
49	The Book of Suspended Judgment	147
50	Dreaming of the Prophet	153
51	Women as a Colony	160
52	In the Footsteps of the Beloved	165
53	The State Between Two States (A Partnership With God)	168
54	The Pearls of Beauty (On Re-Finding Our Lost Civilization)	176
55	The Intellectual Refugee	186
56	When the Devil Speaks	190
57	Corrupting God's Book	193
58	The Remembrance	203
59	The Scholar's Road	219
60	Muhammad, the Child	229
61	The Revelation	231
62	Shades of Divine Light	233
63	The Restorations of the Night	235
64	The Exorcisms of the Night	237
65	The Unity of Strangers	240
66	The Testimony	242
67	Searching for the House of God	245
68	Incoherence	248
69	A Breath from God	251
70	Derangements	254
71	A Leader Among Us	257
72	When God Asks the Child	261
73	The Sites of Purity	264
74	Banning the Conference	268
75	9/11	272
76	Divine Threads	274
77	Embraced by the Beloved	279
78	The Shaykha's Endless Jihad	281
79	Waves and Rocks	298
80	The Lord of the Essence: A Fatwa on Dogs	316
81	Thieves of the Dark	331
82	Quietus	335
83	Notes of the Night	341
84	Notes of the Transformation	344
85	The First Admission	348
	Glossary of Terms	355
	Selected Biographies	377
	Index	389
	About the Author	407

Editorial Reviews

This highly original book is in part a dialogue with Muslim scholars in the past, and, in part, a hymn to an enthralling vision that 'beauty' is to bring life to the truth of the Prophet. The dialogue shows the enormous breadth of [the author's] reading in classic works of learning by Muslims, and his vision suggests a new spiritual esthetic, which is both inspiring and challenging.

Roy Parviz Mottahedeh

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, the most important scholar writing on Islamic jurisprudence and its development in the American context today, sets a high standard here for legal discourse and practice among North American Muslims.

Karen Leonard

Each independent essay may be read in any order, but collectively they illustrate richness and diversity.

Charles C. Kolb

Khaled Abou El Fadl is emerging as a major Muslim voice for the twenty-first century. Conference of the Books is an excellent introduction to the ideas, insights, and reflections of this important scholar of Islam and Islamic law, author, and poet.

John L. Esposito

El Fadl attempts to offer interpretations that are humanistic and accommodating to modern values, yet simultaneously challenging for traditionalist scholars and preachers.

The Library Quarterly - An-Chi Hoh Dianu

El Fadl attempts to offer interpretations that are humanistic and accommodating to modern values, yet simultaneously challenging for traditionalist scholars and preachers.--An-Chi Hoh Dianu "The Library Quarterly "

Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, the most important scholar writing on Islamic jurisprudence and its development in the American context today, sets a high standard here for legal discourse and practice among North American Muslims.--Karen Leonard, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine

This highly original book is in part a dialogue with Muslim scholars in the past, and, in part, a hymn to an enthralling vision that 'beauty' is to bring life to the truth of the Prophet. The dialogue shows the enormous breadth of [the author's] reading in classic works of learning by Muslims, and his vision suggests a new spiritual esthetic, which is both inspiring and challenging.--Roy Parviz Mottahedeh, Gurney Professor of History, Harvard University

From the Publisher

El Fadl attempts to offer interpretations that are humanistic and accommodating to modern values, yet simultaneously challenging for traditionalist scholars and preachers.
— An-Chi Hoh Dianu

The Library Quarterly