Christian Criticisms, Islamic Proofs: Rashid Rida’s Modernist Defence of Islam

Muhammad Rashid Rida is among the most influential Muslim thinkers of the modern period and yet, until this book, his writings on religious reform remained unpublished in English. In this paperback version of the flagship English edition, esteemed academic Simon A. Wood rights this wrong by translating and analysing one of his most important works, The Criticisms of the Christians and the Arguments of Islam. Responding to arguments made in the ninetenth century that Islam is ‘irrational’ or ‘inferior to Christianity’, and that the unification of religious and political power is a ‘barrier to progress’, Rida sought to defend Islam and often charged Christianity of its own brand of irrationality. Wood analyses these arguments, showing that Rida’s work cannot be separated from the period of colonial humiliation in which it originated. He also takes on the traditional accusation that Rida was a fundamentalist and argues that he was in fact distinctly modernist. Simon A. Wood is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is a leading expert on Rashid Rida.