Islamic Thought: An Introduction

Although a great idea - to give an introductory overview of the history and content of all the major Islamic disciplines in a single concise book - Saeed does a poor job of executing this endeavor.Pros:- Arranged well: starts from a general overview of the history of differences amongst the early Muslims and progresses to discuss Qur'anic interpretation, approaches to the Sunna, legal thought, mystical though, political thought, etc.- Provides a good overview of key trends in Islamic thought, albeit most chapters contain highly superficial discussions.- Some sections are decently written and provide a coherent and balanced coverage, such as the section on Qur'anic interpretation and Sunna.- Provides much needed coverage on modernist and contemporary trends in Islamic thought.Cons:- Saeed uses outdated sources and doesn't seem to be familiar with the leading edge in several fields. For instance, instead of relying on Hallaq's works on Islamic Law, which is now considered the standard history, he frequently cites studies from the 1970's like N.J. Coulson and Schacht. On the section about Sufism, he relies on Margaret Smith, A.J. Arberry, and other writers from the 1970's. A serious scholar of Sufism today cannot ignore the now standard history by Nile Green and the many strides in the history of Sufism that have occurred since the 70's. Yet Saeed ignores all of that.- Saeed uses unreliable and questionable sources in some cases. Eg. he cited Bilal Phillip's book 'Evolution of Fiqh' in a section on the early development and influence of Umayyads. Bilal Phillips is a hardline Salafi preacher, and has no weight in academic discourse. In addition, it is not clear at times from which side he is writing for. Is this a book about Islamic sciences from a Muslim point of view, or from the point of view of Western academics? Saeed at times includes a mishmash of both sources which results in awkward conclusions.- Content is really uneven and sometimes leaves the reader with a very vague idea. For example, in the section on theology, 4 pages is about Mu'tazila, 3 about Asharis, but a small paragraph each for Maturidis and Imami Shi'as. The reader is left with a very vague and superficial understanding of the latter. The small paragraphs themselves explain them simply in comparison to the former. Eg. "Maturidism was founded by .... and shares some similarities with Asharism in X issues and Mu'tazilism in Y issues. Done."- Contains some blatant errors: this could be a misunderstanding on my part, but for example in the section on Maturidi theological thought, Saeed stated that we have no published writings from the founder, Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, and therefore it is better to refer to this strand of theological thought as 'Maturidism' since all we have are interpreters of his thought like al-Nasafi and Taftazani. But what about Kitab al-Tawhid and the Tafsir Ta'wilat Ahl-Sunna of Imam Maturidi. Aren't these published works of his? Unless I am wrong, this is a grave error that casts doubt into Saeeds expertise.TL;DR: Saeed's intro book is a great idea but poorly executed since he presents outdated surveys, unbalanced coverage, and uses questionable sources. Useful possibly as a quick read over the weekend, or max 1 week. **Saeed needs to completely revise this book and update it with the leading edge research in the field, and provide a more coherent picture on the interrelations of these fields of Islamic thought, and include more balanced and in-depth coverage.

Good for basics on introduction to Islam. Covers a lot of topics and is good for basic reference for introductory studies to Islam