Khaled Abou El Fadl
Author of The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists
About the Author
Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor in Islamic Law at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, where he is also chair of the Islamic Studies program. He received the University of Oslo Human Rights Award, was named a Carnegie Scholar in show more Islamic Law, and has served on the board of directors for Human Rights Watch, among other honors. He is the author of numerous books, including The Great Theft and The Search for Beauty in Islam. show less
Works by Khaled Abou El Fadl
Associated Works
Fresh Air with Terry Gross: Faith, Reason, and Doubt: Interviews on Religion (2008) — Contributor — 9 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1963-10-23
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Yale University (BA | 1986)
University of Pennsylvania (JD | 1989)
Princeton University (PhD | Islamic Studies | 1999) - Occupations
- professor (Law)
Islamic scholar - Organizations
- University of California, Los Angeles
Yale University
Princeton University
University of Texas at Austin
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom
Middle East Watch (show all 7)
Human Rights Watch - Awards and honors
- Carnegie Scholar (Islam, 2005)
Lisl and Leo Eitinger Prize/Oslo Human Rights Award (2007)
Members
Reviews
The book has been placed on my shelf for an year or so and I now feel sorry for not reading it before. I believe it should be among the modern classics of Islamic studies among Hodgson, Bennabi and Fazlur Rahman. The strength of the book is two dimensional, i.e., the amount of research Abou El Fadl has put in as well as the lucidity of expression with which such a complex subject of religion and authority has been tackled with. In a way, Abou El Fadl has tried to supply answers to most of show more the questions he asked in Conference of the Books and in my opinion, he is successful; at the same time, he has also raised some new questions regarding intricacies of interpretation. I believe the book is among the pioneers to take the field of Islamic Law from the domain of religious studies to the domain of law proper. show less
In a way, Abou El Fadl is neatly limning the political dimensions of the discourse he has started in his other book Speaking in God's Name. The book is indeed for a wider audience who is not fully equipped (perhaps not interested as well) with the nuances of Islamic law and theology. I liked the book but I don't believe it has enough to wrestle Islam from the extremists; however, it would serve well to find the least common denominators in scattered and extremely diverse Muslim thought.
I really enjoyed this short book of essays on the place of tolerance in Islam post-9/11. A few of the essays seemed to get off topic, but others were very strong and they all enriched my understanding of either Islam or how different people and groups in the world view Islam and its practitioners. If you read this, ask someone else to do so as well so that you can talk about it - my mom's going to read it soon so that we can share our thoughts.
This was our first book for the Ill Fated Muslim Book Club. It is a nice collection of essays by the big guns of Muslim intelligensia around the topic of tolerance.
There are enough different opinions expressed in this book that we thought it would make a great discussion: readers could champion the essayist whose opinion was closest to their own.
What we didn't know at the time is that Muslims don't read - especially Muslim men. As a friend of ours in the publishing industry said, "When age show more matched for education and income with their non-Muslim peers, Muslims do not read as much." So if you are a Muslim here on librarything.com, know that you are, indeed, a very rare bird.
Our book club was co-ed, and we did find that the women would read the book. The idea was to have families get together, pot-luck dinner followed by the kids playing in the basement or second floor while the adults talked about the book.
The women read the book but said very little. The men didn't read the book, but gave their opinions freely. At least for the first session we had a good turn-out, which could probably be explained by mere curiousity, like the freak show at the circus. This gave my husband and I the very false hope that something like this could actually work. Little did we know..... show less
There are enough different opinions expressed in this book that we thought it would make a great discussion: readers could champion the essayist whose opinion was closest to their own.
What we didn't know at the time is that Muslims don't read - especially Muslim men. As a friend of ours in the publishing industry said, "When age show more matched for education and income with their non-Muslim peers, Muslims do not read as much." So if you are a Muslim here on librarything.com, know that you are, indeed, a very rare bird.
Our book club was co-ed, and we did find that the women would read the book. The idea was to have families get together, pot-luck dinner followed by the kids playing in the basement or second floor while the adults talked about the book.
The women read the book but said very little. The men didn't read the book, but gave their opinions freely. At least for the first session we had a good turn-out, which could probably be explained by mere curiousity, like the freak show at the circus. This gave my husband and I the very false hope that something like this could actually work. Little did we know..... show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 26
- Also by
- 2
- Members
- 601
- Popularity
- #41,821
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 7
- ISBNs
- 54
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