Rethinking islam in the contemporary world/ Carl W. Ernst.

1. Islam in the Eyes of the West 1
Islam as Part of the Contemporary World 2
Anti-Islamic Attitudes from Medieval Times
to the Present 11
Avoiding Prejudice in Approaching Islam 28
2. Approaching Islam in Terms of Religion 37
Islam and the Modern Concept of Religion 38
Islam and the Historical Study of Religion 47
Islam Defined by the State and by the Numbers 57
Islamic Religious Language 62
3. The Sacred Sources of Islam 71
The Seal of the Prophets: The Prophet Muhammad 73
The Word of God: The Qur'an 93
4. Ethics and Life in the World 107
Islamic Religious Ethics 108
Greek Philosophy as a Source of Ethics 119
Islamic Ethics in the Colonial Age 127
The End of the Caliphate and the Concept of the
Islamic State 131
Examples of Islam and the Modern State in Practice 136
Liberal Islam ^39
Gender and the Question of Veiling 142
Islam and Science 151
5. Spirituality in Practice 163
Early Sufism and the Cultivation of
Mystical Experience 164
The Spirituality of Shi'ism 168
Later Sufism 74
What Is Islamic Art?
6. Postscript:
Reimagining Islam in the Twenty-first Century 199
Beyond East and West 200
New Images of Islam 203
Islam and Pluralism 211