Critique of Religious Discourse, by Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd

An important work of contemporary Islamic thought argues against the programmatic use of Islamic religious texts to support fundamentalist beliefs

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.

After his exile, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943–2010) became the Ibn Rushd Chair of Humanism and Islam at the University for Humanistics, Utrecht. Jonathan Wright is an award-winning translator. Carool Kersten is a scholar of Islam at King’s College London.