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Critique of Religious Discourse: Naqd al-Khitab al-Dini

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd; Translated by Jonathan Wright

Summary

First published in Arabic in 1994, progressive Muslim scholar Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd’s controversial essay argued that conventional fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran and other Islamic religious texts are ahistorical and misleading. Conservative religious leaders accused him of apostasy. Marking the first time a work by Abu Zayd is available in its entirety in any Western language, this English edition makes his erudite interpretation of classical Islamic thought accessible to a wider audience at a critical historical moment.

Publication Information

Introduction by Carool Kersten

Its Strategies and Intellectual Premises

First: The Strategies Used in the Discourse

Second: The Intellectual Premises

A Reading of the Project of the Islamic Left

Interpretation: The Linguistic Sense and the Technical Sense

Coloring: A Tendentious Reading

Productive Readings

The Islamic Left and the Priorities of Religious Discourse

The Past and the Present: The Root and the Branch

Tradition: A Construct of Consciousness or a Historical Construct

Tradition: Rebuilding or a Fresh Coat of Paint

The Texts: Interpretation or Coloring

Syncretism: Success and Failure

An Exploratory Study of Types of Meaning

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