The Heart of Islam

Description

The worldà ¢â‚ ¬â„ ¢s leading Islamicist and foremost Muslim expert on the West offers a timely expression of the core spiritual and social values of Islam, showing their complementarity to Jewish and Christian values, as well as their positive contribution to a peaceful and humane global future. As the spectre of religious extremism has become a fact of life today, the temptation is great to allow the evil actions and perspectives of a minority to stand for the values of an entire tradition. In the case of Islam, there has been much recent confusion in the Western world centred on distorted portrayals of its core values. Seyyed Hossein Nasr offers a timely presentation of the core spiritual and social values of Islam, such as peace, compassion, social justice, tolerance, and the like. Each chapter shows the roots of these values in Islamic scripture, teaching, and tradition, and shows parallels with their counterparts in Jewish and Christian traditions. Nasr calls the followers of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) to a new future of mutual respect and common global purpose, as he portrays the beauty and appeal of the heart of the faith of 1.2 billion people.